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Loci and rhetorical functions of diglossic code-switching in spoken Arabic: an analysis of the corpus of homilies of the Egyptian hegumen Mattā al-Miskīn (1919-2006)
No full textThis study falls within a broad field of the sociolinguistics of Arabic, namely the diglossic variation between spoken Standard Arabic (SA) and Native Arabic (NA). I borrow the latter term from Owens (2001) which seems to me more “neutral” than ‘colloquial’ or ‘dialect’: NA is, in fact, the first variety of Arabic people learn since they are children. It deals with one of the main approaches to variation, code-switching (CS), within a specific region, Egypt, and within a specific genre, Christian homilies. I will use EA to generically indicate Egyptian native varieties. Whenever I need to specify that I deal only with Cairene Arabic, I will use the abbreviation CEA (Cairene Egyptian Arabic).
The general question this study starts from is: if the combined use of SA and NA at various level of Spoken Arabic is a very common practice among Arab speakers, attestable through simple linguistic observation, what are the rhetorical motivations for which Arabs code-switch from SA to NA and vice-versa? And specifically what does CS add to the argumentative construction of an oral text, specifically a Christian religious discourse?
The hypotheses posited that will be tested in the course of this study are: 1) diglossic CS occurs with considerable frequency in Christian religious discourse as well as in other genres; 2) these switches occur only at an intersentential level; 3) switches are always rhetorically functional, that is they help the speaker build his discourse, differentiating textual material, just like other rhetorical mechanisms, such as figures of speech; 4) functions of CS are distinguishable from loci (i.e., parts of the text where CS is most probable to happen); 5) patterns of rhetorical CS (loci and functions) are clearly definable and divisible between “general” (common to all the genres) and “particular” (specific of one genre); 6) frequency of CS is related to specific part of discourse. Whenever the term SA will be used, it will mostly refer to Spoken Standard Arabic unless otherwise specified.
Many of the scholars have dealt with CS within a genre (political discourse, mainly, but also Islamic religious discourse, panel presentation, academic lectures). I focused on another genre, that of the Coptic Christian homilies. The corpus chosen for the analytical part is part of a more vast unexplored and only partially published corpus of homilies of father Mattā al-Miskīn (1919-2006) , also known in the English-speaking world as father Matthew the Poor, the spiritual father and hegumen of the Monastery of St. Macarius in the desert of Scetis in Egypt. As a cultured person, and an important reformer of the Coptic Orthodox church, he was a controversial figure who has left, in addition to publications concerning spiritual, social and political topics, a huge corpus of recordings ranging from 1973 to 2001, all affected by the phenomenon of mixed varieties of spoken Arabic.
Four main loci have been selected for the analysis - quotation, reiteration and argumentative elaboration, prayers and praises – which comprehend other main subloci: quotation (biblical quotation and pseudo-quotations, self-quotation vs. allo-quotation, imaginary quotes, personalization of quotes); reiteration (semantic equivalence, elliptical repetition, elaborative repetition); argumentative elaboration (text[quotation] vs. oral comment, text[quotation] vs. parenthetical comment, abstraction vs. concretization (examples), analysis vs. synthesis, story framing, contrastive argumentation, rhetorical questions, personalization). What emerges is that it has not always been possible to find a specific locus or a specific function for CS though it can be said, in the light of the data, that the basic function for all the cases of CS is essentially to generate a contrast within the text. Any other consideration on CS of whatever nature (social, psychological, textual, participant-related or situational) must be built on this preliminary consideration. The contrast created by CS, in fact, allows the speaker to focus or de-focus on certain segments helping him argumentatively structure his discourse. The strength and the success of the argumentation is given by a “good” dosage of the contrast within the discourse. This contrast can be charged or not with the symbolic values of the codes at stake. If the contrast is not charged with symbolic values (that is it is not rhetorically functional), then what is meaningful is not the direction of CS but only the opposition itself achieved by CS. If the contrast exploits these symbolic values, and makes them rhetorically functional, it means that the direction of CS is rhetorically meaningful.
The distinction made by Auer (1995:120) of conversational loci and functions of CS has proved to be particularly operative, although presenting a numbers of limitations. The data show that Mattā al-Miskīn also code-switches without a specific locus. The function of this unlocalized CS is to give a dramatic effect to a part of a sentence in order to highlight it in the sentence and to temporarily attract listeners’ attention and then relax it by CS again. Another major difficulty encountered with the distinction locus/function was the overlapping of the loci. It is not always easy to determine where quotation ends and where reiteration begins, as often the same quote is repeated over and over again in the same monologue. The solution that was found was to consider as a quotation only the first time that this appears in the text while the following times it was considered as a repetition (i.e. a reiteration of a quotation). Still, comment can represent a repetitive segment, abstraction can represent a self-quotation, an elaborated repetition can represent a distinction between analysis vs. synthesis etc. Also, detachment and involvement seem to be attached to the switched codes in many loci. This means that if SA conveys abstraction it is also because it conveys detachment (and abstraction is, by definition, an expression of detachment). It seems that this problem, that repeats itself for all the loci, cannot be solved, unless we look at the loci as potentially multi-layered, apt to be interpreted in more than only one way. A code-switched passage can thus be read, for instance, as a repetition or a comment and explained accordingly.
At the level of the clause, it is probably possible to speak of a sort of rhetorical climax through CS. The switch begins slowly in the first contextual part and it increases with SA markers until it ends the movement. The opposite process is a sort of anticlimax: after drawing the attention on the climax in SA, the speaker relaxes it down by CS to EA. Yet, topicalization seems to be a more profitable key to better understand CS at this level. Normally SA conveys topical clauses while EA conveys the comment part. SA conveys that about which one intends to speak. By uttering a clause in SA, the speaker probably invites the interlocutor to store the following information (in EA) as relative to the proposed topic. SA represents the static part of the communication. Comment is conveyed by EA and normally refers to the portion of the statement that contains the higher degree of information and communicative dynamism. Nevertheless, SA often conveys the peak of the comment part or a sort of restatement of the topic in different words. This is certainly a possible development for future research. Other possible paths for research would be studying the existence of phraseological loci, that is syntactic or phraseological structures that are more than others “sensible” to CS, and the links between style-raising and code-mixing
Performance monitoring and Progressive privacy in Virtual Distro Dispatcher, a Desktop-as-a-Service solution
No full textAlthough it is not exactly a new concept, Cloud computing architectures are rapidly spreading over the world of IT,
supporting the idea of provisioning various computing capabilities “as-a-service”, in a transparent way for users.
Information is stored in servers on a network and cached temporarily on clients, such as desktops, notebooks,
handhelds, kiosks, wall computers, etc. Reliable services are delivered to clients from next-generation data centers
based on virtualization technologies. Some of the most relevant issues brought about by this paradigm are whether or
not this is really feasible on a geographical scale, where network latency matters, and, more generally, whether or not a
browser can really substitute every kind of computer application. Finally, big privacy issues rise: users data and work
are given away in the hands of third parties, without any control and any real guarantee.
According to Utility computing, system resources, such as computation and storage, can be precisely metered and
packaged, similarly to what happens with a traditional public utility. In Cloud Computing, the distribution of such a
service can occur at different levels. As long as applications are concerned, one talks about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS
): applications are hosted as a service provided to users across a network (e.g., the Internet). If systems are concerned,
one can talk about Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS): desktops can be transformed into a cost-effective, scalable and
comfortable subscription service. Desktops are instantiated on a server and then provided to clients on demand across a
network. Virtual Distro Dispatcher (VDD) is a distributed system whose aim is to project virtual, fully operational and
multiple operating system instances on terminals in a network. Client terminals can be random PCs or energy saving
thin clients (such as mini-ITX) managed by a powerful, multiprocessor (and possibly clustered) central system.
Desktops are instantiated on a server and then provided to thin clients on demand across a network. VDD gives users
the possibility to use their own favorite operating systems, at the same time, on each single thin client. Thin clients are
interfaces to proper and isolated machines, that can be made to measure for whatever need and in whatever number
(within server limits, of course). This is completely transparent to users, who, even from an obsolete machine, can select
a particular machine with certain characteristics and then do everything they would do on such a machine as if it was
physical and with its defined performance. Contrary to other systems such as LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project),
VDD offers not only the host operating system to thin clients (e.g., GNU/Linux), but projects virtualized guest systems,
i.e. fully operational and independent machines, equipped with diversified desktop systems.
Server workloads are relatively predictable and GNU/Linux systems support such workloads well. When desktop
environments are concerned, the primary requirement of interactive applications is to respond to user events under
human perception bounds rather than to maximize end-to-end throughput. In order to analyze performance of VDD, at
first quite an extensive amount of data from tests and benchmarks have been collected. They were related to system
aspects, such as CPU usage, memory speed, network bandwidth, disk responsiveness, and so on. Unfortunately, those
tests do not say much about user experience. In order to map system performance to desktop performance, a method for
coupling system monitoring with desktop benchmarking has been developed. Such method consists in observing low-
level system parameters while desktop operations take place and describing correlations, thus tracing a mapping. Such
ex-post analysis is used to foresee desktop behaviour while doing system monitoring. It is so possible to react
proactively, in order to scale resources accordingly. This way, elasticity property of Cloud Computing becomes relevant
at user level, in desktop experience.
In public clouds, where data are provided to an infrastructure hosted outside user's premises, privacy issues come to the
fore front. The right to act without observation becomes even more important in Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)
environments. The thesis describes the design, implementation and experimental evaluation of a progressive privacy
solution for a DaaS system. Progressive privacy is a privacy preserving model that is configurable by a user not only
quantitatively but rather qualitatively, i.e., the user is allowed to discriminate what type of information must be
preserved and to what extent, according to his/her desired profiles of privacy. The progressive privacy solution has been
embedded into VDD. Specifically, a client-side proxy has been implemented in VDD such that non-intelligible VDD
contents and non-traceable VDD actions are guaranteed by means of homomorphic encryption, oblivious transfer and
query obfuscation schemes enabled by the proxy. An experimental evaluation of the progressive privacy in VDD has
been carried out. The principal results of such evaluation are presented and aim at assessing the performances
experienced by users of VDD against the progressive privacy achievements that can be obtained. As expected, the
perceived client performances when using VDD highly decrease when augmenting the level of privacy protection. In
other words, there exists a trade-off between the level of privacy that can be guaranteed and the performances: the more
robust required privacy profile, the strongest enabled privacy policy (large key encryption size, high obfuscation density
), the higher performances experienced by users when they interact with VDD.Binario Etico, NLNet Foundation, DI
trasformazione cronica e fattori di rischio cardiovascolari nell' emicrania episodica: studio prospettico su coorte
No full textAspetti linguistici e culturali dell'italiano di migrazione in California
No full textQuesto progetto di ricerca mi venne proposto dalla Prof. B. Turchetta nel Marzo del 2007. In un breve incontro all’Università di Viterbo, dove mi trovavo in visita, Turchetta mi disse che negli ambienti specialistici si parlava dell’esistenza di una lingua italo americana ma che mancava un vero e proprio studio sull’argomento. Inoltre, quello che era considerato il principale lavoro sull’argomento, era stato condotto da Haller (1993) sugli italiani di New York. Poteva quindi essere interessante studiare la lingua degli italiani in California, uno stato con una forte concentrazione di americani di origine italiana, primo fra gli stati dell’ovest, terzo dopo quelli di New York e del New Jersey che si trovano sulla costa orientale. Turchetta mi propose pertanto di svolgere quello studio come tesi di un Dottorato di Ricerca presso il dipartimento di Linguistica Storica all’Università della Sapienza. Ci accordammo su un numero di cinquanta interviste sulle quali studiare successivamente i fenomeni di natura linguistica e gli aspetti socio culturali emergenti.Table of Contents
Capitolo 1 L’emigrazione italiana in California. Inquadramento storico.
1.1 Premessa.
1.2 Il periodo coloniale.
1.3 Le tre fasi dell’immigrazione italiana in California.
1.4 Caratteristiche dell’emigrazione italiana in California.
1.5 Una colonia prospera: consensi e dissensi.
1.6 Gli uomini influenti.
1.7 Andrea Sbarboro e l’Italian Swiss Colony.
1.8 Amedeo Giannini e la Bank of Italy.
1.9 Attività lavorative.
1.11 La lingua italiana migrata e la stampa.
1.12 Gli spettacoli.
1.13 Migranti e fascismo.
1.14 Epilogo. 54
Capitolo 2 Aspetti socio-culturali emersi dall’analisi d’interviste condotte su italo americani residenti in California.
2.1 Genesi del progetto e metodologia.
2.2 Gli intervistati: primi dati statistici.
2.3 Analisi tematica dei risultati e questioni di identità.
2.4 Temi ricorrenti: la famiglia.
2.5 I “paesani”.
2.6 Il mangiare. Le feste.
2.7 Scappare dalla miseria.
2.9 Il viaggio e l’arrivo ad Ellis Island.
2.10 Lavorare sodo, vivere frugalmente. 106
2.11 L’italiano come espressione d’identità culturale.
2.13 Le donne.
2.14 La religione. Le scuole cattoliche.
2.15 La discriminazione.
2.16 Mussolini e l’impatto del fascismo.
2.17 Come vedono l’Italia d’oggi.
2.18 Italia o America?
Capitolo 3 Note linguistiche sull’italiano in California
3.1 Premessa
3.2 Tratti d’italiano popolare rilevati nel corpus
3.3 Prestiti e calchi dall'inglese
3.4 Spoglio dei prestiti e dei calchi analizzati
3.5 Isole linguistiche
3.6 Spoglio delle isole linguistiche analizzate
4. Appendice Trascrizione integrale di alcune interviste
4.1 Trascrizione AB
4.2 Trascrizione DRC
4.3 Trascrizione FP
4.4 Trascrizione SS
Bibliografia
Note 50
Globular Clusters and Galactic Nuclei
No full textDynamical evolution plays a key role in shaping the current properties of star clusters and star cluster systems. We present the study of stellar dynamics both from a theoretical and numerical point of view. In particular we investigate this topic on different astrophysical scales, from the study of the orbital evolution and the mutual interaction of GCs in the Galactic central region to the evolution of GCs in the larger scale galactic potential.
Globular Clusters (GCs), very old and massive star clusters, are ideal objects to explore many aspects of stellar dynamics and to investigate the dynamical and evolutionary mechanisms of their host galaxy. Almost every surveyed galaxy of sufficiently large mass has an associated group of GCs, i.e. a Globular Cluster System (GCS). The first part of this Thesis is devoted to the study of the evolution of GCSs in elliptical galaxies. Basing on the hypothesis that the GCS and stellar halo in a galaxy were born at the same time and, so, with the same density distribution, a logical consequence is that the presently observed difference may be due to evolution of the GCS. Actually, in this scenario, GCSs evolve due to various mechanisms, among which dynamical friction and tidal interaction with the galactic field are the most important. On the other side, the collisionless stellar halo component stands unchanged, thus the difference between the two profiles may correspond to mass lost by the GCS to the galactic center. There the GCs merge and they contribute to the formation/accretion of a luminous and compact central Nuclear Star Cluster (NSC). This is known as the “merger model” for the formation of NSCs, observed at the center of many galaxies and also in the Milky Way (MW) center.
In the second part of this work a new high performance code, NBSymple, is presented. NBSymple is an efficient N-body integrator implemented on a hybrid CPU+GPU platform, exploiting a double-parallelization on CPUs and on the hosted Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). The precision is guaranteed by direct summa- tion for force evaluation, and on the use of high order, symplectic time integration methods. The code allows the choice between two different symplectic integrators: a second-order algorithm (commonly known as leapfrog) and a much more accurate (but also time consuming) sixth-order method. The effect of the external galactic field is represented as an analytical approximation of its gravitational potential. The code has been widely tested and benchmarked. Moreover, it has been used for various applications (globular clusters quasi-radial orbit through a galactic massive central object, primordial evolution of young stellar clusters, etc.).
NBSymple and another, publicly available, direct summation code, φGRAPE, have been used to explore the the previously described merger mode for the Galactic NSC formation. In particular, we used self consistent N-body simulations where the Galaxy was modeled using observational data about the Milky Way, and including the presence of the Galactic central supermassive black hole. We let decay 12 GCs initially located on different circular orbits at the same galactocentric distance. The merging of clusters in the central zone of the Galaxy and its following evolution due to two-body relaxation generates a NSC that actually resembles the one observed at the center of the MW.
By mean of numerical simulations carried on with NBSymple, we investigated more in detail the dynamical evolution of GCs in the MW potential with particular attention to the formation of clumpy structures in the tidal tails that arise around the orbiting cluster. Although various hypothesis have been proposed, the formation process of these clumps is not yet clearly understood. Through a statistical analysis of the orbital properties of the stars that “escape” from the cluster we aimed to a better understanding of the on going process. Studying and comparing such simulations with observational data we could gain to a deeper knowledge of the shape Galactic potential and, more generally, of the Galactic dynamics.PhD Thesi
Change detection performance in ADHD and autism
No full textChange-blindness (CB) occurs when large changes are missed under natural viewing conditions because they occur simultaneously with a brief visual disruption, like an eye movement, a blank screen, an ocular blink, or a camera cut in a film sequence. In the typical CB paradigm, the flicker task, pictures of daily life scenes are used to assess visual search efficiency (Rensink, 2000). Two versions of a picture are presented. The pictures are identical except in a specific detail. The pictures alternate repeatedly and are separated by a brief gray screen. The observers have to search the scene for what has changed between the two pictures until they detect it. As the task uses pictures of natural scenes, participants tend to give priority to some areas of the scene than to others. Consequently, they detect changes in objects of central interest (CI) faster than changes in marginal interest (MI) objects (Rensink et al. 1997). Both perceptual and semantic characteristics of the visual scene might be taken to create a sort of priority list that determines which items are going to be attended first. Changes in objects of CI pop out from the pictures, and they are usually efficiently detected. Changes in objects of MI are more difficult to detect and require serial visual search, and therefore performance is less efficient.
This study aims to evaluate the visual search ability in tipically developing children and in children with psychiatric disorders.
In Experiment 1, 52 healthy children and 22 adults executed the flicker task with IAPS emotional pictures. The valence of the images interferes with the attentional performance showing slower RT in detecting changes in front of emotional images. In particular, the negative pictures interfere more the CI detection, whereas the positive ones interfere more the MI detection. The results are discussed in term of biological VS motivational aspects. We hypothesize that the evolutionary role of the negative stimuli makes to interfere the attentional performance during the more automatic CI change. In contrast, the positive images interfere it through a more voluntary mechanism; the likeness of the stimuli makes the partecipants look at the picture rather than search for the change. In experiment 2, 14 children with a disorder of the autistic spectrum and 14 controls executed the same task of Experiment 1. Our results show that autistic children are slower than controls only in the MI detection. Furthermore, they differ from controls when detecting CI changes in front of negative picture and when detecting MI changes in front of positive pictures. Our results confirm the Fletcher-Watson et al’s results suggesting an impairment in the disengagement from the most rilevant items or, in alternative, in the orienting of attention.
In Experiment 3, 75 healthy children and 19 adults executed the flicker task with pictures rated as appealing or unappealing. The appealingness of the images interferes with the attentional performance showing slower RT only when detecting MI change. The results are discussed in term of motivational aspects. We hypothesize that the appealingness of the stimuli interfere with the attentional performance obstructing the execution of the task. In experiment 4, 18 children with ADHD and 18 controls executed the same task of Experiment 1. Our results show that children with are overall slower than controls. Furthermore, they specifically differ from controls when detecting MI changes. The slower RT and the poor accuracy of children with ADHD on the highest demanding condition (e.g., detection of MI changes) is consistent with a deficit in attentional resources, or with a specific impairment in using serial top-down strategies due to their limited attentional resources.
Overall, our results of the present study replicate the findings consistently observed with the flicker task (Fletcher-Watson, Collis, Findlay, & Leekam, 2009), demonstrating the robust nature of change blindness. All the children showed a strong change blindness effect and a clear difference between CI and MI trials
TECHNOLOGIES AND METHODS EMPLOYED TO DESIGN A UNIVERSITY-CLASS MICROSATELLITE, ACCORDING TO ESA STANDARDS
No full textProcedure, modalità e tecnologie per l’housing sociale - Linee guida generaliper la programmazione di interventi in linea con le esperienze europee
No full textIn Europa sono in atto profondi fenomeni di trasformazione sia del tessuto urbano che di quello edilizio, dovuti a molteplici fattori, in questo senso è possibile pensare ad una diversa concezione e costruzione dell’involucro.
Se l’urbanistica contemporanea, in continua evoluzione, può gestire il nuovo scenario urbano assicurando una corretta “gestione” in materia di housing sociale, usando strumenti di controllo per la riqualificazione e la qualità ambientale, la tecnologia ha l’opportunità di sperimentare nuovi percorsi e nuove applicazioni tecniche ad un campo che negli anni è sempre stato trascurato per motivi economici (gli interventi sono sempre stati finanziati da fondi pubblici che tendevano ad minimizzare le spese affidandosi a tecnologie tradizionali ed immobili nel tempo).E’ importante pensare anche alla grande quantità di patrimonio edilizio residenziale pubblico che verte in forte stato di degrado, oltre che edilizio anche energetico, e che necessita di una politica di riqualificazione e di recupero, consentendo così di fronteggiare il fenomeno sociale dell’emergenza casa con un immediata
risposta. Partendo dalla necessità di un adeguamento per il quadro esigenziale di riferimento, ormai evoluto, la ricerca individua una serie di conseguenze, e quindi relativi cambiamenti, al livello di dotazioni della residenza sociale. Una ricerca, questa, che cerca di isolare delle corrette procedure di riqualificazione e di
recupero insediativo dedicate ad una fascia debole della popolazione in continuo mutamento ed espansione.
La tesi di dottorato analizza gli “ingredienti” che caratterizzano il tema dell’ housing sociale: la sostenibilità economica, in riferimento ai metodi di finanziamento che possano permettere una concreta e costante alimentazione del settore per programmare interventi di riqualificazione e di nuova realizzazione;
la sostenibilità urbanistica, che deve farsi carico di modellare lo spazio residenziale urbano e deve consentire attraverso diverse operazioni (agevolazioni e/o concessioni di aree) di individuare le aree sulle quali
sviluppare interventi di housing sociale; i processi di riqualificazione e recupero insediativo che devono essere programmati per offrire un nuovo panorama edilizio di adeguata qualità architettonica ed energetica;
la sostenibilità tecnologica, che possa garantire attraverso strumenti innovativi per il settore dell’ housing sociale, la realizzazione di efficienti involucri edilizi, di processi realizzativi di nuova concezione, di edifici trasformabili e manutenibili nel tempo. Sviluppare un “servizio” come quello dell’ housing sociale, significa sviluppare, riqualificare ed innovare il territorio
