10,296 research outputs found
What do languages encode when they encode reality status?
No full textIntroduction to the special issue "What do languages encode when they encode reality status?" (Guest editors: Caterina Mauri, Andrea Sanso'
What do languages encode when they encode reality status?
No full textIntroduction to the special issue "What do languages encode when they encode reality status?" (Guest editors: Caterina Mauri, Andrea Sanso'
The reality status of directives and its coding across languages
No full textIn languages in which there is an opposition between realis and irrealis markers, directives (i.e.
forms encoding positive directive situations: imperatives, hortatives, jussives, etc.) happen to be
encoded by irrealis markers, by realis markers, by both, or they may be neutral with respect to this
distinction. This apparently messy behaviour raises the question of what the use of (ir)realis
markers in directives means, and, more generally, of how relevant reality status as such is to the
coding of directive situations across languages. In this paper, we propose an explanation for the
cross-linguistic behaviour of directives with respect to (ir)realis marking based on diachrony and on
the functional components of the directive situation: after identifying the commonest diachronic
sources of directives, we argue that the distinction between actualized and unactualized states of
affairs is not directly relevant to the cross-linguistic coding of directive situations, but it may be
relevant to the coding of other functional domains, which in turn provide the main diachronic
sources for directive constructions. In other words, the presence of (ir)realis markers (or their
absence) is to be explained simply as one of the possible morphosyntactic properties of the source
construction, which tends to be maintained also in the target, not as the manifestation of an inherent
realis, irrealis or hybrid nature of directive situations. Moreover, the extension of a source
construction to the coding of directive situations is not motivated by the logical irreality shared by
the source and the target function, but is based on more local semantic similarities between the
source and the target construction that are independent of the notion of (un)actualized state of
affairs as such
How directive constructions emerge: Grammaticalization, cooptation, constructionalization
No full textNell'articolo vengono prese in esame le sorgenti diacroniche delle strutture imperative nelle lingue del mondo, trovando interessanti conferme in tipologia della teoria di P. Grice sugli atti linguistici indiretti
Pathways to conditionality: Two case studies from Italian
No full textL’obiettivo di questo articolo è indagare la nascita e lo sviluppo di due connettivi
condizionali complessi dell’italiano (secondo la definizione di Visconti 2000: 70),
sempre che e caso mai, utilizzando come base di dati un ampio corpus diacronico
dell’italiano dalle origini a oggi. Sempre che come connettivo condizionale nasce dal
connettivo temporale sempre che dell’italiano antico, equivalente a ‘tutte le volte
che’/‘in ogni occasione in cui’. La componente semantica responsabile dello sviluppo
del significato condizionale è la genericità delle situazioni che sono messe in relazione
nella costruzione temporale con sempre che. Caso mai nasce, attraverso l’ellissi del
complementatore, dalla costruzione caso (mai) che; quest’ultima costruzione, attestata
in un periodo che va dal XVI al XIX secolo, subisce un rapido declino parallelo alla
nascita e alla diffusione di caso mai
Methodologies for the development of crowd and social-based applications
No full textEven though search systems are very efficient in retrieving world-wide information, they cannot capture some peculiar aspects of user needs, such as subjective opinions, or information that require local or domain specific expertise. In these scenarios the knowledge of an expert or a friend’s advice can be more useful than any information retrieved by a search system. This way of exploiting human knowledge for information seeking and computational task is called Crowdsourcing. The main objective of this work is to develop methodologies for the creation of applications based on Crowdsourcing and social interaction. The outcome will be a framework based on model-driven approach that will allow end user to develop their own application with a fraction of the effort required by the traditional approaches. It will guarantee a strong control of the execution of the crowdsourcing task by mean of a declarative specification of objectives and quality measures. A prototype will be developed that will allow the creation and execution of task on various platforms. Validation of the approach will consist of quantitative and qualitative analysis of results and performance of the system upon some sample scenarios, where real users from social networks and crowdsourcing platforms will be involved
Linguistic strategies for ad hoc categorization: Theoretical assessment and cross-linguistic variation
No full textAd hoc categorization is the bottom-up abstraction of a category starting from concrete exemplars of the category itself. When we observe linguistic data, we find various phenomena that provide evidence for the ubiquity of such an on-line, goal-driven and context-dependent categorization in everyday communication. Beyond offering concept labels in the form of words, language indeed provides speakers with a great number of strategies to convey reference to a class by naming representative individuals. After providing a semantic and pragmatic account of ad hoc categorization in terms of indexicality, we will survey ad hoc categorization strategies in discourse and across languages: they can be syntactic (lists, general extenders, exemplifying constructions), morphological (heterogeneous plurals, collectives, aggregates, compounds), or in-between (reduplication). We will argue that all these strategies show a similar abstract structure consisting in a categorization trigger, that is, some prosodic, morphological or syntactic element triggering the abstractive inferential process towards the category identification, plus a linguistic expression referring to some overt category member, which is processed as the starting point for abstraction. The diachronic connections between these strategies and the pathways leading to their emergence and conventionalization also speak in favor of their unified treatment
Dissolution or Growth of a Liquid Drop Embedded in a Continuous Phase of Another Liquid via a Phase-Field Ternary Mixture Model based on the NRTL (Non-Random Two Liquid) equation.
No full textWe simulate the diffusion-driven dissolution or growth of a single-component drop embedded in a continuous phase of a binary liquid (or viceversa). Our theoretical approach follows a phase field model of partially miscible ternary liquid mixtures, which is based on a regular solution assumption together with a Cahn-Hilliard representation of the nonlocal components of the Gibbs free energy of mixing. In addition, the excess free energy is modeled with either a Flory-Huggins or an NRTL model equation. Based on 2D simulation results, we show that for a single-component drop embedded in a continuous phase of a binary liquid (which is highly miscible with either one component of the continuous phase but immiscible with the other) the size of the drop can either shrink to zero or reach a stationary value, depending on whether the global composition of the mixture is within the one-phase region or the unstable range of the phase diagram. Similar results are obtained in the case of an isolated two-component drop embedded in a continuous phase of a single-component liquid. Finally, we show that the results obtained using the two excess free energy models are virtually identical to each other
Heterogeneous sets: a diachronic typology of associative and similative plurals
No full textThis paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call ‘heterogeneous plurals’, an overarching term comprising associative plurals (expressions meaning X[person] & company) and similative plurals (expressions meaning X and similar entities). Based on a 110-language sample, we identify the most recurrent sources of these two types of plurals by means of various types of evidence (homophony/identity, internal reconstruction, comparison with cognate languages). The two types of plurals develop out of different source types: while the sources of associative plurals include elements that work as set constructors (plural anaphoric elements, plural possessives, names meaning ‘group’), those of similative plurals comprise elements with vague reference such as interrogative/indefinite items or uncertainty markers. There are also a few source types that may develop into both associative and similative plurals, such as connectives (‘and/with’) and universal quantifiers (‘every/all’). The differences in the diachronic pathways leading to the two types of plurals are explained in terms of the different referential properties of the nominal bases from which they are formed (proper names/kin terms vs. common nouns), but also taking into account the typical discourse contexts in which the two types of plurals are employed
Dubitative-corrective constructions in Italian
No full textThis paper investigates the properties of a set of poorly described Italian constructions characterized, at the same time, by (i) a dubitative component, challenging a presupposition generated by the preceding context and (ii) a corrective function. These constructions revolve around four adverbial elements (al massimo, al limite, tutt’al più and caso mai) that have other functions besides the dubitative-corrective one. The analysis will illustrate how their dubitative-corrective function emerges in specific discourse configurations and will discuss their further pragmatic uses as mitigators, which appear to be crucially connected to the dubitative component. The theoretical implications of the analysis concern the definition itself of dubitative-corrective construction and the role of dialogical contexts in the development of a dubitative-corrective function. It will be shown that the constructions in question, though sharing a dubitative-corrective function, differ in various respects. These differences can be traced back to their different diachronic sources, namely a scalar construction for al massimo, al limite, and tutt’al più, and a conditional construction in the case of caso mai. The evolutionary paths leading from these source constructions to dubitative-corrective constructions present a different configuration, whereby the dubitative function emerges after the corrective function in the case of elements originally participating in a scalar construction (al limite, al massimo, tutt’al più) while in the development of caso mai the simple dubitative function precedes the dubitative-corrective one
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