61 research outputs found
Two Negations for the Price of One
No full textStandard English is typically described as a double negation language. In double negation languages, each negative marker contributes independent semantic force. Two negations in the same clause usually cancel each other out, resulting in an affirmative sentence. Other dialects of English permit negative concord. In negative concord sentences, the two negative markers yield a single semantic negation. This paper explores how English-speaking children interpret sentences with more than one negative element, in order to assess whether their early grammar allows negative concord. According to Zeijlstra’s (2004) typological generalization, if a language has a negative syntactic head, it will be a negative concord language. Since Standard English is often analysed as having a negative head, it represents an apparent exception to Zeijlstra’s generalization. This raises the intriguing possibility that initially, children recognize that English has a negative head (i.e., n’t) and, therefore, assign negative concord interpretations to sentences with two negations, despite the absence of evidence for this interpretation in the adult input. The present study investigated this possibility in a comprehension study with 20 3- to 5-year-old children and a control group of 15 adults. The test sentences were presented in contexts that made them amenable to either a double negation or a negative concord interpretation. As expected, the adult participants assigned the double negation interpretation of the test sentences the majority of the time. In contrast, the child participants assigned the alternative, negative concord interpretation the majority of the time. Children must jettison the negative concord interpretation of sentences with two negative markers, and acquire a double negation interpretation. We propose that the requisite positive evidence is the appearance of negative expressions like nothing in object position. Because such expressions exert semantic force without a second negation, this informs children that they are acquiring a double negation language. © 2016 The Author(s)
Restricted access : young people, online networks and school
No full textThere are some good reasons for prohibitive policies that restrict the Internet use of young people but we need to consider how prohibition can affect those who might already suffer from social inequalities. In 2008 the author surveyed young people\u27s Internet access in nine urban, rural and remote regions in Queensland, and analysed how 75 teenagers living in these places were using Internet-based networking environments in their everyday lives. Almost all of the participants liked to consider themselves technologically savvy, but the fact is that most were not and had exaggerated their skills when they completed the author\u27s questionnaire. The author also found that there were vast differences in levels of ICT access at home and in Internet provision and broadband uptake. This led her to think about the vital equalising role of computer and Internet access in schools, but when she looked at education policies and practices, however, she found that when an online network became popular the typical response of Education Queensland was to block its use in state schools. The author argues that these sorts of policies serve to widen social inequalities and that the new opportunities that ICT affords are being unevenly distributed. [Author abstract, ed
Children's interpretation of conjunction in the scope of negation in English and Mandarin : new evidence for the semantic subset maxim
No full textWe tested 3- to 5-year-old English- and Mandarin-speaking children on their interpretation of sentences like The elephant didn't eat both the carrot and the capsicum. These sentences are scopally ambiguous. Adult English speakers favor a weak interpretation of such sentences, with negation taking scope over conjunction (i.e., the elephant probably ate one of the vegetables, but not both). In contrast, adult Mandarin speakers favor a strong interpretation of the corresponding Mandarin sentences, with conjunction taking scope over negation (i.e., the elephant ate neither vegetable). The semantic subset maxim (Notley, Zhou, Jensen, & Crain, 2012) predicts that children acquiring all human languages should initially prefer the strong (subset) reading of such sentences. In contrast, the question–answer requirement model (Gualmini, Hulsey, Hacquard, & Fox, 2008; Hulsey, Hacquard, Fox, & Gualmini, 2004) predicts that children should initially prefer the scope reading that constitutes a good true answer to a question under discussion in the context. We designed a task in which the weak reading of our sentences corresponded to a good true answer to the question under discussion. We found that children across languages nonetheless preferred to assign a strong interpretation to our test sentences, providing empirical support for the semantic subset maxim.34 page(s
Between the earth and a hard place : John Ray's inquiry into the dissolution of the world in Miscellaneous Discourses (1692)
No full textMickaël Popelard (Université de Caen Normandie) [télécharger la proposition] As a fellow of the Royal Society and the author of several botanical treatises, including the Methodus plantarum nova (1682) and the three volumes of the Historia generalis plantarum (1686, 1688, 1704), John Ray (1627-1705) is sometimes presented as "the father of natural history" (as his blue plaque in Black Notley, Essex, proudly proclaims). But he is also the author of the Miscellaneous Discourses, a curious book ..
The materiality of globital memory : bringing the cloud to earth
No full textThe cloud is a metaphor that helps to obscure the material realities that rest beneath our digital memories. However, a number of scholars in memory studies have suggested that cultural memory has always had a material basis and some, though limited, scholarly attention has already considered the toxic by-products and unethical practices involved in mining minerals that are used in making digital memories. This article draws on earlier work on the materiality of cultural memory as well as Tsing’s (Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 2005) concept of ‘friction’ in global commodity chains to help analyse our own empirical research in Australia and Malaysia that looks at the production of rare earth minerals, whose use in making digital communication technologies is not widely known. Our analysis concludes that that not all citizens are equally bearing the burden of the risks and damages caused by
our growing desire and addiction for information and communication gadgets and
digital memory. We argue that any conceptualization of digitized and globalized or ‘globital memory’ must resist metaphors, narratives and concepts that attempt to remove digital memory from its material consequences; to do this scholars must incorporate an understanding of memory’s materialism into their research, rather than focusing predominantly or exclusively on its energetic or ‘virtual’ properties
Stolen Wages, Corruption, and Selective Application of the Law: Is APUNCAC a Solution?
No full textAPUNCAC is a draft international convention designed to address systemic corruption, strengthening UNCAC’s provisions and adding mechanisms to make it more effective. ‘Corruption’ includes public officials abusing their powers. This article addresses an especially insidious form: when laws are created and applied to deny equal protection under the law. Ruling elites control the executive and parliament, to pass laws that selectively target and disadvantage a segment of the population. Our empirical data comes from a historical case, massive government-sanctioned wage theft from Western Australian Aboriginal workers between 1901 and 1972. We use these data to analyse how this kind of corruption works in practice, to evaluate APUNCAC’s measures and strategies, to see what specific measures might be used or modified, and where APUNCAC might need supplementing. We argue that Article 4(3) could have a major impact, especially supported by other Articles and processes, such as dedicated independent courts and strategic engagement with local courts. We evaluate two scenarios: The first scenario is prospective, assuming that APUNCAC is adopted. We evaluate the possible impact of APUNCAC in deterring future corruption involving selective application of the law. The second scenario is retrospective. We evaluate the possible support that APUNCAC might provide regarding court actions that seek redress for potential litigants, such as WA Aboriginal people who were injured in the past
The scope of logical expressions in child language
No full textThis thesis explores the way children choose to resolve certain kinds of semantic scope ambiguities. The aim is to answer two main questions: (i) which reading of scopally ambiguous sentences do children favour, if either? (ii) if children favour one reading, why do they do so? Several hypotheses have been put forward to account for what we currently know about children's scope preferences, suggesting different answers to (i) and (ii) above. The main contribution of this thesis is to reformulate one of these hypotheses to address some of its observed shortcomings, and to test the predictions of the new formulation on three sentence types that have not yet been investigated in the previous literature. These are sentences containing (a) the temporal conjunction before and disjunction (e.g. The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or the bunny), (b) negation and conjunction (e.g. The elephant did not eat both the carrot and the capsicum), and (c) the compound quantifier not every and disjunction (e.g. Not every princess took a star or a shell). Each of these sentence types gives rise to two possible scope interpretations, although languages can vary as to which of these readings is preferred. We present the results of three major studies (and two supporting studies) to determine which of the possible scope interpretations children prefer for each of these sentence types. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the scope preference hypotheses. Chapter 2 looks at English- and Mandarin-speaking children's interpretative preferences for sentence type (a). Chapter 3 investigates children's interpretation of the pre-subject focus operator 'only'. These findings inform our experimental design in Chapter 4, which examines English- and Mandarin-speaking children's interpretative preferences for sentence type (b). Chapter 5 investigates children's interpretation of the universal quantifier 'every'. These findings inform our experimental design in Chapter 6, which examines English-speaking children's interpretative preferences for sentence type (c). Chapter 6 also explores how logical principles underpin the scope interpretations available in sentences (a)-(c), and whether children are sensitive to these principles. In Chapter 7, we discuss the implications of the findings for current accounts of children's scope preference and we offer answers to the two main questions of this thesis
The shift in infant preferences for vowel duration and pitch contour between 6 and 10 months of age
No full textThis study investigates the influence of the acoustic properties of vowels on 6- and 10-month-old infants’ speech preferences. The shape of the contour (bell or monotonic) and the duration (normal or stretched) of vowels were manipulated in words containing the vowels /i/ and /u/, and presented to infants using a two-choice preference procedure. Experiment 1 examined contour shape: infants heard either normal-duration bell-shaped and monotonic contours, or the same two contours with stretched duration. The results show that 6-month-olds preferred bell to monotonic contours, whereas 10-month-olds preferred monotonic to bell contours. In Experiment 2, infants heard either normal-duration and stretched bell contours, or normal-duration and stretched monotonic contours. As in Experiment 1, infants showed age-specific preferences, with 6-month-olds preferring stretched vowels, and 10-month-olds preferring normal-duration vowels. Infants’ attention to the acoustic qualities of vowels, and to speech in general, undergoes a dramatic transformation in the final months of the first year, a transformation that aligns with the emergence of other developmental milestones in speech perception
Entanglements : activism and technology : editorial
No full textThis issue was motivated by our shared desire to explore these entanglements with scholars and activists who are working within, experiencing, and researching the frictions caused by technologies when they are used for activism. We use the term ‘friction’ as Anna Tsing does—as a metaphor for the diverse and sometimes conflicting engagements that make up our contemporary world or what she calls ‘zones of awkward engagement.’ Tsing defines friction as ‘the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’ that continually co-produce culture (Tsing, 2005: 4). Through an examination of frictions between aspirations and realities, between needs and constraints, a critical analysis of global connection is possible. In this way, the concepts of entanglements and frictions support us to explore the complex realities of co-dependent relationships between activists, technologies and the corporations who create them, in ways that support us to move beyond the old, dull and tired ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ technology narratives
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