1,720,974 research outputs found
[Christiansen, Morten H.; Chater, Nick. The language game: how improvisation created language and changed the world]
No full textThe nature of alternatives in the processing of scalar implicatures and focus
No full textHearers often reason about what their interlocutors did not say, but could have said within the context. These meaning alternatives figure centrally in focus and scalar implicatures. This dissertation deals with how alternatives are generated when comprehenders are processing these phenomena in real time. Based on earlier literature, it argues that alternatives in focus and scalar implicatures are underpinned by a single mechanism (Fox & Katzir, 2011). Recently, the Alternative Activation Account, a theory of how alternatives are generated in focus, has been extended to scalar alternatives (Gotzner & Lacina, 2025). The theory proposes two stages, an initial activation of associates stage followed by the selection of proper alternatives. The current dissertation sets out to test this theory for scalar implicatures as well to explore whether alternatives are represented in hitherto unstudied focus cases. Three studies tested scalar alternatives. Using the lexical decision task, Lacina et al. (in revision) finds that in early processing, both proper alternatives as well as other expressions that must later be selected out, such as antonyms are activated with no difference between the two. Next, it showed that when the restriction of negation is added and scalar implicatures are blocked, the activation of both alternatives and antonyms is no longer present. Lacina & Gotzner (2025) examines the final representation of scalar alternatives in the mental model of the discourse. Using probe recognition, it found that only the proper alternatives are represented whereas antonyms had been selected out. These studies supported the extension of the Alternative Activation Account, albeit with issues regarding differences in the timing of selection. Lastly, Lacina & Gotzner (2024) asked whether the strength of the activation of alternatives can be linked to the propensity of comprehenders deriving a scalar implicature for a particular scale. Contrary to the predictions of the Alternative Activation Account, it found that for gradable adjectives, higher activation was associated with lower implicature derivation rates. In terms of focus alternatives, Lacina et al. (2024) tests whether comprehenders represent alternatives when focus has a broader scope over the whole VP. It found some evidence in favour of this, but an unexpected difference from cases of narrow single word focus in terms of the alternatives’ interaction with the focus particle only whereby only the nominal parts of alternative phrases showed this effect and not the verbs or whole phrases. Lacina et al. (2023) researched whether focus alternatives are represented by Czech comprehenders when focus is marked solely by word order. The study found preliminary evidence for this, but also that the representation depended on the point in the experiment, showing an adaptation with time. Overall, this dissertation found support for the extension of the Alternative Activation Account to scalar implicatures and for the representation of alternatives in novel focus cases. However, it argues that in the case of gradable adjectives, the theory fails. The discussion then covers what other proposals could explain the case of gradable adjectives (Gotzner & Lacina, 2025)
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
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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Exploring scalar diversity through priming: A lexical decision study with adjectives
Full text linkWhen someone says 'My soup was warm', they are often understood as saying that it was warm, but not hot. This is assumed to arise via a scalar implicature. According to the standard assumption, 'warm' and 'hot' are in competition and by saying 'warm', we reason that the speaker did not intend to convey 'hot'. This exclusion of alternatives should apply uniformly to any expression that can be ordered on a scale. Yet there are substantial differences in the endorsement rates of the strengthened meaning between various scales. These could be due to the availability of expressions or to the underlying semantic structure. We use priming to measure how active in the mind lexical expressions are. Contrary to the standard assumption, the more an expression was primed, the less likely a scalar implicature was endorsed. We discuss how the semantic structure of adjectives can support pragmatic reasoning without lexical alternatives
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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