Van Rooy Research Articles

Examining the Social Consequences of Automation and Artificial Intelligence in Industrial Management

This article examines the social consequences of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in industrial management, drawing on the findings of Damioli, Van Rooy, and Vertsy’s (2021) study on the impact of AI on labor productivity. The integration of AI technologies in industrial settings has led to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. However, these advancements come with substantial social implications that affect both the workforce and broader societal structures. Internally, automation and AI have shifted the demand from low-skilled to high-skilled labor, necessitating ongoing education and skill development for employees. Additionally, the reliance on AI for managerial decisions raises ethical concerns regarding algorithmic biases and the potential erosion of human judgment.Externally, the broader societal impact includes economic disparities, as regions with a high concentration of low-skilled jobs experience greater unemployment and underemployment. The displacement of workers due to automation presents challenges such as increased socio-economic divides and disruptions to community stability. Ethical considerations, including data privacy and security, are crucial to ensuring fair and responsible AI deployment. This article underscores the need for strategic collaboration between industry leaders, policymakers, and educational institutions to address these social consequences. By fostering an inclusive approach to technological advancement, it is possible to balance the productivity benefits of AI with the imperative to mitigate its adverse social impacts.

From Nazism to Pro‐Kurdish Activism: The International Society Kurdistan, Silvio van Rooy and the struggle against communism in the 1960s and 1970s

AbstractKurdish studies was born as a field of study in imperial Russia, and for much of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union remained the centre of ‘Kurdology’. With the foundation of the International Society Kurdistan (ISK) in Amsterdam in 1960, however, this centre started to move westwards. Officially established as a non‐party democratic action group helping the Kurdish nation in its struggle for democratic independence, the ISK’s unwritten aim was to support national struggles as a means to prevent communism, particularly the Soviet Union, from expanding its sphere of influence. Silvio van Rooy, who had been an active collaborator with the Nazi occupying forces in the Netherlands, devoted a decade of his life to what he considered an experiment in psychological warfare to influence the Kurdish intelligentsia, and for this he made every effort to establish a centre for Kurdish studies in the West that could develop a political programme around anti‐communist ethno‐nationalism. Yet Van Rooy’s involvement with the Kurds was intense, but also passing. In the second half of the 1970s his loyalty to anti‐communism took a new turn as he drew close to the Iraqi nationalist Ba’ath regime. The research data employed here has primarily been obtained through archival work. Based on an analysis of these primary documents and augmented by personal recollections, this study thus contextualises the work of the ISK through the political trajectory and views of Silvio van Rooy, the society’s founder and president.

Current perspectives on Learner Corpus Research

Learner Corpus Research (LCR) is a relative newcomer to the scene of research paradigms and methodologies within applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) research. In addition to other types of data that have traditionally been used in SLA research, learner corpora provide large-scale principled collections of authentic, continuous and contextualized language use by foreign/second language (L2) learners that are stored in electronic format. They enable the systematic and (semi-)automatic extraction, visualization and analysis of large amounts of learner data in a way that was not possible before. Access to and analysis of learner corpus data is greatly facilitated by the digital medium, and the sheer quantity of data can help to explore SLA phenomena from non-experimental perspectives (Callies 2015). Although the majority of learner corpora may appear relatively small in size when compared to large reference corpora of several major European languages that comprise billions of words of text, they contain datasets for general use that are still many times larger than the oftentimes narrow(er) datasets collected in SLA research through more strictly controlled elicitation techniques. LCR as a field only emerged and became visible at the turn of the 1990s in the context of the popularization of corpus linguistics at large, but has rapidly evolved and grown in scope and sophistication over the past three to four decades. It now bears all signs of an established discipline: it has an academic journal, the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, that has been publishing studies in LCR since 2013; two handbooks that survey the field and its links to the major neighbouring disciplines of corpus linguistics, SLA and language teaching (Granger, Gilquin and Meunier, eds., 2015; Tracy-Ventura and Paquot, eds., 2021); and a biennial, international conference that has been organised since 2011 under the aegis of the field’s own professional organisation, the Learner Corpus Association, officially founded in 2013. Because of its origin, LCR has initially been a relatively European-centred research field but has in the meantime made significant inroads into North America, South Africa (van Rooy 2019) and the Asia-Pacific region (Jung 2022). It is by now a vibrant and growing international community. This paper provides some perspectives on recent and current achievements and developments in the field, highlights several new trends and initiatives, but also discusses some challenges. The focus will be on LCR and the study of learner English.

Disentangling Some Conceptual Knots.

Disentangling Some Conceptual Knots.

Die Theologie der Septuaginta / The Theology of the Septuagint

Die Theologie der Septuaginta / The Theology of the Septuagint

Die Geleerde Digter: Antieke Griekse Pastorale en Epigrammatiese Poësie by W.J. Henderson

Reviewed by: Die Geleerde Digter: Antieke Griekse Pastorale en Epigrammatiese Poësie by W.J. Henderson Johan Thom Henderson, W.J. 2018. Die Geleerde Digter: Antieke Griekse Pastorale en Epigrammatiese Poësie. 3 vols. Pretoria: Imprimatur. Pp. 179, 226, 239. ISBN 978-0-6399219-0-7, 978-0-6399219-1-4, 978-0-6399219-2-1. ZAR600 ea. Professor Bill Henderson is a well-known Classicist who has established an international reputation over many years for his work on ancient Greek poetry. Noteworthy in the present context, however, is the fact that he has made an exceptional contribution over several decades to the study of these poems in Afrikaans. Important book publications in this regard are Kalliope I (1986) and Kalliope II (1988), both in collaboration with J.H. Barkhuizen and C.A. van Rooy; Op Griekse Lier (2004); Vir Griekse Fluite (2009); and Die Berispende Stem (2011).1 In the present publication Henderson continues this outstanding tradition. The three-volume book functions as the next instalment in his series on Greek poetry. His previous publications focus on lyric, elegiac, and iambic poetry of the Classical period, while this volume deals with pastoral poetry and epigrams from the Hellenistic Age. The book is divided into three separate volumes, each with its own pagination. This division is probably due to the limitations of a paperback binding (the three volumes taken together contain almost 650 pages), but each volume has its own bibliography and glossary and thus functions more or less independently. The first volume begins with a general introduction to the culture and poetics of the Hellenistic period. It continues with an introduction to pastoral poetry, followed by an introduction to selected pastoral poemsof the poets Theocritus of Syracuse, Moschus of Syracuse, and Bion of Smyrna, each with an Afrikaans translation and commentary. The second volume contains an introduction to Greek epigram from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, again followed by introductions, a selection of poems in translation, and discussion, of works by Simonides of Ceos, Erinna of Telos, Anyte of Tegea, Nossis of Locri, Leonidas of Tarentum, Hedulus of Samos, Asclepiades of Samos, and Posidippus of Pella. The third volume contains selections and discussion of epigrammatic poems by Callimachus of Cyrene, Theocritus of Syracuse, Rhianus of Biene, Theodoridas of Syracuse, Dioscorides of Nicopolis, Alcaeus of Messene, Antipater of Sidon, and Meleager of [End Page 295] Gadara. The introductory chapters and sections of the work aim to orientate the general educated reader in the cultural and literary history and background of the poets and their poems, and of the genres concerned. These include brief summaries of the life and works of each of the poets. The introductions do indeed provide lucid, succinct, and informative discussions, well worth reading on their own. The selection of poets and poems included in this publication has been carefully made to be most representative of the genres on which the book focuses. As indicated by the title of this work (which can be translated into English as 'The Learned Poet') the poetics of the Hellenistic period was characterized by a conscious and sophisticated use of 'literary' language and intertextual allusions. This 'literariness' can make these poems daunting for the non-specialist reader and poses exceptional challenges to the translator. Henderson succeeds in providing lucid translations that are nevertheless faithful renderings of the Greek. To achieve this, he frequently makes use of the ability of Afrikaans to create new compounds to emulate the Greek: see, for example, 'liefdeliewende rose', 'soetlokkige Heliodora', 'welgevlegte hare' (vol. 3, p. 163), all from Meleager's Epigram 46 G-P. Most of his discussions of the poems are brief and to the point, focusing on providing the reader with just enough information to appreciate the poetry. More technical information is relegated to endnotes. In the case of the longer pastoral poems in the first volume he does, however, devote several pages of interpretation to each poem. In addition to the introductions, translations, and interpretations, the volumes contain other useful information to guide the non-specialist reader. Henderson gives very extensive references to the most important modern publications on the respective poets and poems that encourage further study. Each volume contains a...

Raf van Rooy Language or dialect? The history of a conceptual pair

La pareja conceptual lengua/dialecto reviste un especial interés para la historiografía de la lingüística por ser ubicua tanto en la terminología especializada de las ciencias del lenguaje como en el vocabulario común. Precisamente, su condición intersticial complica hacerla operativa en los estudios del lenguaje, al punto de que muchas especialistas hoy prefieren recurrir a términos menos cargados de connotaciones y prejuicios, tales como el de variedad lingüística, o bien optan por cuestionar los fundamentos mismos de la distinción (esto es: no habría tales cosas como lenguas y dialectos; serían solo reificaciones de abstracciones, y, en cualquier caso, probablemente hay abstracciones que reflejan mejor la naturaleza del lenguaje). Su complejo entramado conceptual y connotativo se debe tanto a dicha situación intersticial como a la profundidad de la historia de sus usos, cuestión esta última que ha solido quedar soslayada por presumirse la naturalidad y atemporalidad de la pareja conceptual.

Van Rooy, Raf. 2020. Greece’s labyrinth of language. A study in the early modern discovery of dialect diversity

Contrairement a divers patois et dialectes vernaculaires, qui ont attendu bien longtemps pour sortir de l’ombre, les dialectes du grec ancien (desormais d.g.) ont retenu l’attention des erudits depuis l’Antiquite. Certes, cette destinee particuliere, ils la doivent a leur statut litteraire, puisque pour certains d’entre eux la distribution geographique etait doublee d’une distribution en genres litteraires : divers genres, comme la poesie lyrique, la poesie bucolique, l’epopee ou la prose, av...

Methanesulfonic acid and sulfuric acid Aerosol Formed through oxidation of reduced sulfur compounds in a humid environment

Particulate sulfuric acid and methanesulfonic acid (MSA) are known to form through oxidation of reduced sulfur compounds, however, the mechanisms by which these compounds form are not well understood. Additionally, the aerosol yields and ratio of MSA to sulfuric acid particulate formation are not well documented, making it difficult to estimate the health and climate impacts of reduced sulfur compounds. To investigate these unknowns, dimethylsulfide (DMS) and dimethyldisulfide (DMDS) were oxidized, using a variety of oxidants, in a 37.5 cubic meter Teflon environmental chamber with relative humidity ranging from 2% to 55%. The mass fraction of particulate MSA was estimated based on unique aerosol fragments, at m/z 79 and 96, measured by a High Resolution Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer. MSA to sulfuric acid particulate ratios varied depending on initial conditions. This study revealed that substantial water vapor is necessary to form MSA. The mass fraction of MSA increases in the presence of NOx. Nitrate radical oxidation of DMS and DMDS resulted in nearly 100% of the aerosol estimated to be MSA, suggesting nighttime chemistry may play an important role in ambient MSA formation. This study builds upon results from similar experiments, presented in Van Rooy et al. (2021), which were conducted under extreme dry conditions.

Alternative questions: Distinguishing between negated and complementary disjuncts

Polar Questions such as “is the light on?” (henceforth, PQs) and Negative Alternative Question such as “is the light on or not?” (henceforth, NAQ), despite being seemingly semantically equivalent, are known to differ pragmatically (Bolinger, 1978, van Rooy and Safařova 2003, Biezma 2009). This paper explores the difference between these two question types and Complement Alternative Questions (henceforth, CAQ), a type of question that mentions two mutually exclusive propositions but makes no use of negation (e.g., “is the light on or off?”). Based on experimental evidence, we show that CAQs feature a different pragmatic profile from the other two question types. First, while PQs and NAQs are homogeneously felicitous or infelicitous as invitations, rhetorical questions or inference-corroborating questions, CAQs do not behave uniformly in such contexts. Second, while NAQs are confirmed to be infelicitous discourse-initially, neither NAQs nor CAQs are not necessarily limited to a discourse-final position. We take these findings to suggest that all accounts proposed cannot fully capture the full paradigm of these questions types and highlight several areas of future research to revise them. EARLY ACCESS Supplementary materials available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CNINZM

Stative progressives in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English

Stative progressives in Inner and Outer Circle varieties of English

FROM THE EDITOR

Contributions to this issue all display a pragmatic orientation. H C van Rooy analyses Ezk. 29:1-26 in its exilic and post-exilic setting, to draw certain conclusions for the role of contemporary prophetic teaching. Jan Botha explains why rhetoric is so much in vogue, and what implications it might have for the practice of exegesis and for current New Testament scholarship. Cornel du Toit discusses basic concepts relating to ideology, and demonstrates how a constructive approach to ideology critique can be developed. Hermie van Zyl concludes with a basic overview of librarian theology and its main proponents.

Translation, Translation Technique, and the Psalm Superscriptions of the Aramaic Targum

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2020) Copyright © 2020 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Fall 2020) 621–651 A RTICLE S Translation, Translation Technique, and the Psalm Superscriptions of the Aramaic Targum ABRAHAM J. BERKOVITZ THE PSALTER PROV IDE S a distinctive vista into the history of late antique biblical reception.1 Jews and Christians cited the book of Psalms more often than other biblical texts and suffused their exegesis, polemic, liturgy, and piety with citations from the Psalter.2 Thus, the reception history of the Psalms offers a microcosm of the religious world of Late Antiquity. In order fully to appreciate its story, however, we must pay attention to the ways that ancient readers engaged with the Psalter’s most enigmatic feature: the superscriptions that adorn almost ­ every psalm.3­These titles provide a special challenge for interpreters. They are usually short and sometimes repetitive, and they very often contain distinctive terminology found nowhere ­ else in Scripture. The serious attempt by ancient readers to render psalm superscriptions comprehensible offers us a win­ dow I owe thanks to Prof. Gary Rendsburg for commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. 1. Some recent works include John F. A. Sawyer, “The Psalms in Judaism and Chris­ tian­ ity: A Reception History Perspective,” in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms, ed. S. E. Gillingham (Oxford, 2013), 134–43; Susan E. Gillingham, “The Reception of Psalm 137 in Jewish and Christian Traditions,” in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. S. E. Gillingham (Oxford, 2013), 64–82; Gillingham, A Journey of Two Psalms: The Reception of Psalms 1 and 2 in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Oxford, 2014); William P. Brown, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms (New York, 2014), 253–310; and see the essays in Peter W. Flint et al., eds., The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception (Leiden, 2005), 443–579. 2. For a thorough analy­ sis, see Abraham J. Berkovitz, “The Life of Psalms in Late Antiquity” (Ph.D. diss., Prince­ ton University, 2018). 3. On the genesis of ­ these superscriptions, see Brevard S. Childs, “Psalm Titles and Midrashic Exegesis,” Journal of Semitic Studies 16.2 (1971): 137–50; Elieser Slomovic , “­ Toward an Understanding of the Formation of Historical Titles in the Book of Psalms,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 91.3 (1979): 350–80. 622 JQR 110.4 (2020) through which to gaze upon the under­ lying mechanics of meaning production in biblical interpretation. This essay ­ will reconstruct the exegetical practices of one type of reader: a translator. A translator, unlike a homilist, cannot easily ignore the base text from which he works.4 Superscriptions, therefore, must be made legible. How the Greek and Syriac traditions rendered psalm titles has been studied in depth.5 The Aramaic targum, however, has not.6 This essay ­ will thus fill in a missing chapter in the history of psalm reception by providing a systematic and detailed analy­ sis of exactly how Targum Psalms rendered each Hebrew superscription into Aramaic. In the course of ­ doing so, it ­ will bring to light vari­ ous characteristics of the targum, such as the tools the targumist used to translate, the connection between the title of a psalm and its body, and the targum’s relationship to the larger world of rabbinic tradition. 4. See Moshe J. Bern­ stein, “A Jewish Reading of Psalms: Some Observations on the Method of the Aramaic Targum,” in The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception, ed. P. W. Flint et al. (Leiden, 2005), 480–81. 5. See the works of Albert Pietersma, “Exegesis and Liturgy in the Superscriptions of the Greek Psalter,” in Proceedings of the Xth Congress of the International Organ­ ization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies Oslo July–August, 1998, ed. B. A. Taylor (Atlanta, 2001), 99–138; Albert Pietersma, “Septuagintal Exegesis and the Superscriptions of the Greek Psalter,” in The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception, ed. P. W. Flint et al. (Leiden, 2005), 443–75; Harry van Rooy...

Tagging L2 Writing: Learner Errors and the Performance of an Automated Part-of-Speech Tagger

This paper is concerned with the application of technologies developed in other disciplines, in particular with the use of text processing techniques to investigate the problems of second language learner writing in English. The question addressed is whether learner texts produced by L1-Malay learners at the University of Malaya can usefully be processed using the Constituent Likelihood Automatic Word-tagging System (CLAWS); a part-of-speech (POS) tagger developed for and trained on texts written by native speakers of the language. The study adopts the procedure employed by van Rooy and Schafer (2002).CLAWS was used to automatically POS tag a subset of the Malaysian Corpus of Learner English (MACLE), and the texts were then analyzed for tagging accuracy.CLAWS was found to perform less well on learner text than on native speaker texts, but still with an accuracy rate of over 90%. The sources of error are traced, and spelling errors are found to be the most common source. Closer inspection indicates that successful tagging is likely to lead to problems downstream in later processing, which suggests that to optimize performance, some modifications will be required in tagger design.

Register, Source Language, and Cognateness Effects on Lexical Choice in Translated Dutch

In line with recent studies about register and source language effects on translated language (Delaere, De Sutter, et al. 2012; De Sutter, Delaere, et al. 2012; Kruger and Van Rooy 2012; Delaere and De Sutter 2017), the aim of this paper is twofold: to further investigate the influence of register and source language, and to study any potential influence of the variable “cognateness” on translated language. We focus on specific onomasiological choices (lexical choices) in the semantic field of inchoativity, made by translators into Dutch and attested in corpus observations (Dutch translated texts in the Dutch Parallel Corpus). First, we performed a multinomial regression analysis on our dataset and carried out an Analysis of Deviance to determine whether the predictor variables “source language lexeme” and “register” (“text type”) have a significant influence on the response variable (the set of lexemes representing the onomasiological choice range in translated Dutch inchoativity). Doing a second multinomial regression analysis, followed by an Analysis of Deviance, we investigate the influence of the new variable “cognateness” on the translator’s onomasiological choice (in the target language). Classification trees were generated as statistics-based visualizations of onomasiological choice in translated Dutch (translated from French and translated from English) within the semantic field of inchoativity. The results of the statistical analyses show that register, source language, and cognateness significantly influence the specific lexical choices made by translators. In addition, the visualizations show how the onomasiological choice for some target lexemes can be predicted on the basis of a single source language lexeme, while other choices are more complex, and will also be determined by the register of the text.

Negative polarity items: a case for questions as licensers

Existing analyses of NPI licensing in questions instantiate two differentapproaches. One approach holds that questions are NPI licensers in their own right(Kadmon & Landman 1990; Krifka 1995, 2003; van Rooy 2003); the other holdsthat, in virtue of their syntax, questions host silent expressions that do the licensingfor them, such as a silent version of exclusive only (Nicolae 2013, 2015) or negationnot (Guerzoni & Sharvit 2014). Based one a pattern of NPI licensing in alternativequestions, this paper presents a case for the former approach. Specifically, it offersan argument for the analysis developed in Krifka 1995, 2003 and van Rooy 2003,which centrally refers to questions’ information theoretic entropy (Shannon 1948).

P080 HLA disease association assignment by multiplexed NGS assay

Strong association of HLA molecules with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases have been identified, strengthening the value of HLA genetic screening for diagnostic purposes. There’s a strong association between Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) and HLA-B27. In ∼90% of European patients, B27 alleles strongly predispose for AS. In ∼90% of patients with Coeliac Disease, the HLA-DQ2.5 phenotype is expressed, encoding HLA-DQA1∗05:01 and DQB1∗02:01 alleles, with the remaining 10% mostly expressing the HLA-DQ8 molecule, encoding the DQA1∗03 variant and DQB1∗03:02 alleles. Also in the field of pharmacogenetics there’s a growing interest in the role of HLA. HLA-B∗57:01 screening to prevent Abacavir hypersensitivity syndrome is now a routine clinical use in the developed world. We developed a novel NGS-based genetic screening test that enables 2nd field resolution typings of HLA-B, DQA1, and DQB1 in a single tube. A multiplexed amplification assay was established that encompass HLA-B, HLA-DQA1 and HLA-DQB1 locus-specific amplification of exon 2 and 3 in a single tube. The assay was compatible with the multiplex PCR kit (Qiagen) and required a PCR enhancer (GenDx). Analytical performance studies were assessed including screening of a large gDNA reference panel (n = 96 samples) to verify robustness. Amplicons were pooled and processed into the NGSgo workflow for Illumina (GenDx) and analyzed by NGSengine software (GenDx). For all samples tested (n = 96) strong amplicons of the expected sizes were generated in a multiplexed PCR. NGS data showed high locus mappability (>94%), and full coverage of the amplicon with even distribution of reads, especially for HLA-B, and HLA-DQA1, having average read depths >1500. For all samples, HLA-B, HLA-DQB1 and HLA-DQA1 typings were obtained that are in concordance with the pre-types. The multiplexed assay showed to be robust and capable of detecting both alleles when present in a balanced manner. We developed a novel NGS-based genetic screening test that enables HLA-B, DQA1, and DQB1 typings in a single tube. The genetic screening test proved to be robust and useful for pharmacogenetic screening of HLA-B alleles and identification of autoimmune disease associated genetic susceptibilities like celiac disease. N. Westerink: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx.I. van Rooy: Employee; Company/Organization; Gendx. M. Van Heck: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. C. Rebel: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. E. Rozemuller: Stock Shareholder; Company/Organization; GenDx. M. Penning: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx.

George J. Metcalf, On Language Diversity and Relationship from Bibliander to Adelung. Ed. by Toon Van Hal & Raf Van Rooy (Amsterdam, 2013)

George J. Metcalf, <i>On Language Diversity and Relationship from Bibliander to Adelung</i>. Ed. by Toon Van Hal &amp; Raf Van Rooy (Amsterdam, 2013)

High-throughput and cost-effective NGS strategy for intermediate-resolution HLA typing

Aim The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) requires that each newly recruited donor is typed at intermediate resolution level for HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1 and optionally -DQB1. Therefore we developed an NGS assay specifically designed for intermediate resolution HLA typing (class I exon 2 & 3, and class II exon 2) that is suitable for high-throughput. PCR conditions were optimized such to reduce the costs of reagents. Moreover, the limited size of the amplicon allows for an increased sample capacity per run on either the MiSeq or Ion Torrent platform: a four-fold increase on average compared to the whole-gene amplification strategy. Method We integrated this NGSessenz strategy into the previously developed NGSgo workflows for MiSeq and Ion Torrent platforms. For the MiSeq platform, high-throughput and reproducibility was verified by running 4 × 96 DNA samples on a micro flow cell. For IonTorrent, we verified the capacity of the smallest (314 chip) and the largest (318 chip) by running a variety of samples. For each sample, loci were pooled prior to the execution of the NGSgo platform-specific library preparation and subsequent NGS procedures were performed. Results We will present the NGS data that were obtained for the robustness of amplification, mappability of the reads, read depth per locus, concordance of NGS typing with reference type, reproducibility of the NGS data generated, and the capacity of the NGSessenz assay on the different platforms. Conclusions Taken together, we will demonstrate the major advantage of this new NGSessenz strategy in ease-of-use and cost-effectiveness for HLA registry typing by means of NGS. I. Van Rooy: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. C. Rebel: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. R. Van Aard: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. M. Bacelar: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. B. Luiken: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. L. Van de Pasch: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. E. Bouwmans: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. R. Kooter: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. E. Rozemuller: Stock Shareholder; Company/Organization; GenDx. M. Penning: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx. W. Mulder: Stock Shareholder; Company/Organization; GenDx. N. Westerink: Employee; Company/Organization; GenDx.

On the Licensing of Understating NPIs: Manipulating the domain of degrees for Japanese 'anmari' and 'sonnani'

Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) often have an effect of strengthening the statements which contain them. However, there are also NPIs that contribute to make a weaker claim such as all that (Israel 1996, 2006; van Rooy 2003). I analyze two kinds of such NPIs, namely the degree modifier 'a(n)mari' and 'sonnani' in Japanese, which roughly translate as 'very/much' and '(all) that'. In doing so, two points are considered. First, since the NPIs in question are degree modifiers, I would like to adopt a degree-based semantics and combine it with the idea of domain widening proposed for determiner NPIs such as any. In particular, building on a version of Chierchia’s (2006) framework, I consider domain widening in terms of domains of degrees. Second, to capture the nature of understatement, I refer to the notion of quality-based strengthening, rather than informativity/entailment-based strengthening (Israel 2006; Krifka 1995; van Rooy 2003).