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Mereo-Topological Construction of Time from Events
No full textRecent work in temporal reasoning tends to reduce events to mere time intervals, or intervals cum description. In this paper we follow the opposite strategy, arguing that the formal connection between the way events are perceived to be ordered and the underlying temporal dimension is essentially that of a construction of a linear ordering from the mereotopological properties of an orientable structure including events as bona fide individuals. the account is expressed as a first-order theory using the primitives of parthood and boundary and can be extended - we venture to claim - to proide a similar treatment of spatial entities such as physical bodies and masse
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Refining Temporal Reference in Event Structures
Full text linkReasoning and talking about time is to a great extent reasoning and talking about what actually happens or might happen at some time or another. This is perhaps not crucial if our concern is with abstract temporal reasoners or planners intended for specific applications, but it arguably matters for the prospects of knowledge representation and natural language semantics. The variety of the world is the variety of the things that happen, and we can’t deal with it without taking events at face value (just as we cannot deal with physical bodies or masses by confining ourselves to their spatial coordinates). The purpose of this paper is to expand on this by further investigating the subtle connections between time and events. After a brief review, in the first part we shall generalize the notion of an event structure to that of a refinement structure, where various degrees of temporal granularity are accommodated. In the second part we shall then investigate how these structures can account for the context-dependence of temporal structures in natural language semantics
Events, Topology, and Temporal Relations
No full textthis paper we present an alternative account, based primarily on the basic network of formal ontological relations---specifically, mereological and topological relations---that a domain of events must arguably satisfy. The motivations for this approach are quite general and lie beyond the specific issue of temporal constructions. Among other things, we also believe it may shed light on the first question above. In the following, however, we shall not go much beyond the main issue that we just outlined; our only concern will be to show how mereological and topological reasoning---which we take to be among the basic tools for ontological analysis---provides adequate grounds for the construction of temporal relations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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