1,973 research outputs found

    Disfluency in dialogue:an intentional signal from the speaker?

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    Disfluency is a characteristic feature of spontaneous human speech, commonly seen as a consequence of problems with production. However, the question remains open as to why speakers are disfluent: Is it a mechanical by-product of planning difficulty, or do speakers use disfluency in dialogue to manage listeners' expectations? To address this question, we present two experiments investigating the production of disfluency in monologue and dialogue situations. Dialogue affected the linguistic choices made by participants, who aligned on referring expressions by choosing less frequent names for ambiguous images where those names had previously been mentioned. However, participants were no more disfluent in dialogue than in monologue situations, and the distribution of types of disfluency used remained constant. Our evidence rules out at least a straightforward interpretation of the view that disfluencies are an intentional signal in dialogue

    James Bond: international man of gastronomy

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    This article is concerned with the representation of food and drink in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. In particular, it examines how the author uses Bond’s culinary knowledge and habits of consumption as an important constituent of his hero’s character. Similarly, the food choices of other characters, notably villains, are shown to be linked, by Fleming, to core aspects of their identity − principally their ethnicity. Bond’s impulse to observe and classify, very much in evidence in the novels’ food sequences, is examined in terms of the texts’ construction of Bond as a skilled identifier of signs

    REIT capital structure : an examination of the use of unsecured debt over traditional equity and changes in dividend policy

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    Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1997 (first author), and Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1997 (second author).Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-98).by Joshua T. Anderson and Ian R. Ponniah.M.S

    Transforming Power Relationships: Leadership, Risk, and Hope. IHS Political Science Series No. 135, May 2013

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    Chronic communal conflicts resemble the prisoner’s dilemma. Both communities prefer peace to war. But neither trusts the other, viewing the other’s gain as its own loss, so potentially shared interests often go unrealized. Achieving positive-sum outcomes from apparently zero-sum struggles requires a kind of riskembracing leadership. To succeed leaders must: a) see power relations as potentially positive-sum; b) strengthen negotiating adversaries instead of weakening them; and c) demonstrate hope for a positive future and take great personal risks to achieve it. Such leadership is exemplified by Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in the South African democratic transition. To illuminate the strategic dilemmas Mandela and de Klerk faced, we examine the work of Robert Axelrod, Thomas Schelling, and Josep Colomer, who highlight important dimensions of the problem but underplay the role of risk-embracing leadership. Finally we discuss leadership successes and failures in the Northern Ireland settlement and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

    URI Disambiguation in the Context of Linked Data

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    The Linked Data initiative has given rise to an increasing number of RDF datasets, many of which are freely accessible online. These resources often arise as a result of database exports; however sufficient consideration may not be given to the unseen implications caused when they are used in the wider context of the Semantic Web. This paper investigates two popular resources, DBLP and DBpedia, and discusses whether the issues regarding identity management and co-reference resolution have been suitably addressed. We find that a large percentage of authors in DBLP have been conflated, and that disambiguation pages have been incorrectly linked using owl:sameAs within DBpedia. Systems for dealing with these issues are presented, and directions are given for future research

    Productivity Drivers in British Columbia: Strategic Areas for Improvement

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    A brief analysis of British Columbia’s productivity performance and the state of the drivers of this performance reveals that five areas merit additional focus and research. They are, in the proposed order of completion: Education and literacy, including professional qualifications and education for targeted groups such as aboriginals and recent immigrants, credentials recognition. Public and private investment, including public infrastructure, business investment and taxation structure. Research and innovation, including R&D investment, product and process innovation, knowledge diffusion and technology adoption. Resource reallocation, including competition policy, improving market mechanisms, product market regulation and foreign ownership rules. Trade and migration, including interprovincial and international movement of goods and services, skilled and unskilled immigration and emigration and interprovincial migration.Productivity, Diagnosis, British Columbia,Human Capital, Physical Capital, Innovation,

    Forward to the Past: la sfida della Storia in Machines Like Me di Ian McEwan

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    In his novel, Machines Like Me (2019), Ian McEwan offers an interesting example of “alternate history” while dealing with crucial ethical issues connected with the development of Artificial Intelligence. Instead of setting his story in the future, the author chooses to set it in the past, but he radically changes the contours of the latter. Hence, the England of the early 1980s is turned into a technologically advanced society, well ahead of the scientific progress of the early 21st century. Thus, the future casts its light on the past in what appears as a typically postmodernist mélange: besides mingling genres (from speculative fiction to uchronia), McEwan also performs an intriguing hybridization of fact and fiction. The paper intends to explore the rich historical dimension of the novel, which betrays the author’s interest in the reflection on history and on its narrativization – as well as its manipulation and/or contamination – within the literary text

    Towards a social archaeology of the mesolithic in Eastern Scotland : landscapes, contexts and experience

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    The research reported here arose from perceived lacunae regarding archaeological understanding of mesolithic settlement in eastern Scotland. Historically this area, for a number of reasons, has seen 1ittle archaeological research in comparison to the maritime west of the country, a bias that requires redressing. The characteristics, problems and potentials of available data are assembled for the first time and critically assessed. Discussion of methodologies appropriate to this material is developed, and small-scale fieldwork undertaken within this framework presented. Any introduction of a new range of data is, in part, a construction of that data, and the particular interpretative and thematic stresses of the thesis arise from the argument that narratives of gatherer-hunter communities in the past have objectified those groups, consequently hindering comprehension of them. To this end an approach to a social archaeology of the mesolithic is developed, stressing the importance of examining skills and routines that, through thei; extension in particular contexts, may have structured an agent's experience of landscapes in the past. In order to flesh out these arguments and introduce the material evidence in more detail, a series of overlapping case studies is developed exploring in turn, the relationships between mesolithic folk and woodlands, the significance of salmon fishing, the inhabitation of the coast, and stone tool procurement, production and discard. These varied narratives incorporate the results of a range of small-scale desktop projects and fieldwork designed to test the potential of this approach to a social archaeology of the period. Whilst these studies are at present fragmentary, it is contended that they demonstrate that accounts of gatherer-hunter communities in the east of Scotland can aspire to a meaningful level of engagement with human lives in the past. The project scholarship was funded by Historic Scotland
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