scholarly journals Assessing sensitivity to Condition A in the case of Chinese reflexives

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 775
Author(s):  
Jun Lyu ◽  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Assessing Sensitivity

There are two reflexives in Mandarin Chinese, ziji (‘self’) and ta-ziji (‘s/he-self’). It is often assumed that ziji can be bound by a non-local antecedent while ta-ziji cannot. This is because ziji can be used as an exempt anaphor licensed by discourse-pragmatic conditions. However, prior research shows that, in contexts without perspectival cues, ziji tends to be interpreted as a ‘regular’ syntactically bound reflexive, exhibiting a similar locality bias as ta-ziji. However, prior studies comparing the locality biases of ziji and ta-ziji present divergent results. In this study, we report two forced choice judgment experiments to assess which reflexive, ziji or ta-ziji, exhibits a stronger locality bias. Overall, our results fit better with claims that in local contexts, ta-ziji is preferred over ziji; we find no clear evidence of ziji being preferred over ta-ziji in local contexts. Our results are compatible with the idea that ta-ziji, rather than ziji, is more constrained by Condition A.

scholarly journals Branching Space-Times

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuel Belnap ◽  
Thomas Müller ◽  
Tomasz Placek
Keyword(s):  
Single Case ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Rigorous Theory ◽  
Quantum Non Locality ◽  
Foundations Of Physics ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Rigorous Framework ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Non Locality

This book develops a rigorous theory of indeterminism as a local and modal concept. Its crucial insight is that our world contains events or processes with alternative, really possible outcomes. The theory aims at clarifying what this assumption involves, and it does it in two ways. First, it provides a mathematically rigorous framework for local and modal indeterminism. Second, we support that theory by spelling out the philosophically relevant consequences of this formulation and by showing its fruitful applications in metaphysics. To this end, we offer a formal analysis of modal correlations and of causation, which is applicable in indeterministic and non-local contexts as well. We also propose a rigorous theory of objective single-case probabilities, intended to represent degrees of possibility. In a third step, we link our theory to current physics, investigating how local and modal indeterminism relates to issues in the foundations of physics, in particular, quantum non-locality and spatio-temporal relativity. The book also ventures into the philosophy of time, showing how the theory’s resources can be used to explicate the dynamic concept of the past, present, and future based on local indeterminism.

scholarly journals Aggressive reduplication and dissimilation in Sundanese

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Stanton
Keyword(s):  
Long Distance ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Statistical Trends

Most cases of long-distance consonant dissimilation can be characterized as local (occurring across a vowel) or unbounded (occurring at all distances). The only known exception is rhotic dissimilation in Sundanese (Cohn 1992; Bennett 2015a,b), which applies in certain non-local contexts only. Following a suggestion by Zuraw (2002:433), I show that the pattern can be analyzed in a co-occurrence-based framework (Suzuki 1998) by invoking two unbounded co-occurrence constraints, *[r]…[r] and *[l]…[l], whose effects in local contexts are obscured by a drive for identity between adjacent syllables. Statistical trends in the lexicon are consistent with this analysis. I compare the predictions of this analysis to those of Bennett’s (2015a,b) and suggest that the present proposal is preferable.

Breathy voice and low-register: A case of trading relation in Shanghai Chinese tone perception?

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 582-607
Author(s):  
Jiayin Gao ◽  
Pierre Hallé ◽  
Christoph Draxler
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Voice Quality ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Tone Perception ◽  
Natural Stimuli ◽  
Trading Relation ◽  
Open Question

In Shanghai Chinese as well as many other Wu dialects, breathy voice is a well-documented accompaniment of the low-register tone syllables with obstruent as well as sonorant onsets. But Shanghai Chinese is rapidly changing and the breathy voice associated with low-register tones tends to disappear in young speakers’ productions. In this study, we asked whether breathy voice is nevertheless still perceived and whether it pushes tone identification toward low-register tones. We conducted forced-choice tone identification tests on young native listeners of Shanghai Chinese, using low–high register tone continua—from tone T3 (23) to tone T2 (34)—imposed on base syllables with either modal or breathy voice quality, and beginning with various onset consonants. We used continua constructed from either naturally produced or synthesized syllables. Our results show that breathy voice does bias tone identification responses toward the low-register tone T3. This result held for both synthesized and natural stimuli, except for the /m/-onset stimuli derived from naturally produced syllables. We propose that the phonetic change at issue—loss of breathiness in production—is not due to misperception but reflects the ever-stronger influence of Standard Mandarin Chinese. In other words, this particular case of sound change seems to be led by production rather than perception. It remains an open question whether this kind of sound change is only determined by sociolinguistic factors (here, the dominance of Mandarin Chinese) or is independently motivated by phonetic and/or phonological factors.

Variation in loanword adaptation: A case from Mandarin Chinese

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832096144
Author(s):  
Yangyu Chen ◽  
Yu-An Lu
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Perceptual Similarity ◽  
Loanword Adaptation ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Adaptation Pattern ◽  
Syllable Duration ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Mandarin Speakers

Mandarin speakers tend to adapt intervocalic nasals as either an onset of the following syllable (e.g. Bruno → bù.lŭ .n uò), as a nasal geminate (e.g. Daniel → dā n.n í.ěr), or as one of the above forms (e.g. Tiffany → dì.fú. n í or dì.fē n.n í). Huang and Lin (2013, 2016) identified two factors that may induce the nasal gemination repair: (1) when stress falls on the pre-nasal vowel and (2) when the pre-nasal vowel is a non-high lax vowel. They hypothesized that Mandarin Chinese speakers insert a nasal coda to perceptually approximate the stronger nasalization and longer syllable duration associated with the stressed syllables, and the shorter vowel duration of a lax vowel because the vowels in closed syllables are shorter in Mandarin. The results from two forced-choice identification experiments and an open-ended transcription task showed that although Mandarin speakers’ choices of different repairs were indeed biased by the different phonetic manipulations, suggesting an effect of perceptual similarity, their decisions were mainly guided by native phonotactics. The overall findings suggest that phonotactic, phonetic, as well as non-linguistic (i.e. frequency) factors interact with each other, resulting in the variable adaptation pattern.

Toward High-Resolution Low-Voltage SEM

1988 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 218-219
Author(s):  
Zhifeng Shao
Keyword(s):  
Low Voltage ◽  
Spherical Aberration ◽  
Chromatic Aberration ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Operating Voltage ◽  
Probe Radius ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Electron Microscopes ◽  
Image Position ◽  
Scanning Electron Microscopes

Recently, low voltage (≤5kV) scanning electron microscopes have become popular because of their unprecedented advantages, such as minimized charging effects and smaller specimen damage, etc. Perhaps the most important advantage of LVSEM is that they may be able to provide ultrahigh resolution since the interaction volume decreases when electron energy is reduced. It is obvious that no matter how low the operating voltage is, the resolution is always poorer than the probe radius. To achieve 10Å resolution at 5kV (including non-local effects), we would require a probe radius of 5∽6 Å. At low voltages, we can no longer ignore the effects of chromatic aberration because of the increased ratio δV/V. The 3rd order spherical aberration is another major limiting factor. The optimized aperture should be calculated as

Chromatic aberration and low-voltage SEM

1987 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 546-547
Author(s):  
Zhifeng Shao ◽  
A.V. Crewe
Keyword(s):  
Electron Energy ◽  
Low Voltage ◽  
Spherical Aberration ◽  
Chromatic Aberration ◽  
Primary Electron ◽  
Probe Size ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Optical Treatment ◽  
Electron Microscopes ◽  
Scanning Electron Microscopes

For scanning electron microscopes, it is plausible that by lowering the primary electron energy, one can decrease the volume of interaction and improve resolution. As shown by Crewe /1/, at V0 =5kV a 10Å resolution (including non-local effects) is possible. To achieve this, we would need a probe size about 5Å. However, at low voltages, the chromatic aberration becomes the major concern even for field emission sources. In this case, δV/V = 0.1 V/5kV = 2x10-5. As a rough estimate, it has been shown that /2/ the chromatic aberration δC should be less than ⅓ of δ0 the probe size determined by diffraction and spherical aberration in order to neglect its effect. But this did not take into account the distribution of electron energy. We will show that by using a wave optical treatment, the tolerance on the chromatic aberration is much larger than we expected.

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