Aspectuo-Temporal Underspecification in Anindilyakwa: Descriptive, Theoretical, Typological and Quantitative Issues

So-called ‘zero’ or ‘null’ tenses have often been characterized as functionally deficient forms, deprived of any inherent content. In this paper, we will focus on the semantics of a morpho-phonologically null inflectional verbal paradigm in Anindilyakwa (Groote Eylandt, N.T., Australia, which is both temporally and aspectually underspecified. Through a quantitative corpus study conducted in the paper, we establish that ‘zero inflection’ in this language, contra prior works on such tenses in general (e.g. Bybee 1990) and in Anindilyakwa in particular (Bednall 2019), presents various degrees of sensitivity to traditional Vendlerian aspectual parameters. We show that while telicity is not a significant predictor for the temporal interpretation of zero-inflected Anindilyakwa verbs, and dynamicity is a good but not very good predictor, only a very broad opposition between change-of-state (including qua boundedness) and non-change-of-state, or perfective/imperfective, gives very significant biases towards past vs. present anchoring. We also show that atomic telicity is the only categorical Aktionsart predictor for temporal anchoring in this context correctly predict the temporal anchoring of such verbs, and stativity is not biased towards present interpretations, thereby questioning currently received typological theories of the semantics of so-called ‘zero-tenses’ / aspectuo-temporally underspecified tenses.

Calculations of The Change of State of a Gas By Integrating The Partial Derivatives

It will not be denied that the calculations of the change of state for a gas is highly important in most engineering applications. For determining the gas’s properties such as the pressure (P), the volume (V) and the temperature (T), engineers and scientists uses the Boyle’s, Charles’s and Gay-Lussac’s (B-C-G) law of P1V1/T1=P2V2/T2. Although the B-C-G law provides the accurate property values of a gas, it give no detailed information embedded in the process when a gas changes its state. In this study, the author theoretically carried out the integrations of the partial differentials when differentiating the B-C-G law, which has not been tried by anyone up to now. The integration results of this study were thoroughly compared with the experimentally measured data and it was confirmed that the integration methods suggested in this study accurately provides the differential properties on ΔP, ΔV and ΔT. In addition to it, through the stepwise analysis of the integration of the partial differentials, it revealed that the efficiency in the change of state of a gas inherently exists higher than the Carnot cycle, which is operating between the same conditions. Therefore, the results of this study can be lead to the conclusion that all changes of state of all materials inevitably accompanies an energy loss and it is a natural phenomenon.

AR Module for Learning Changes of Matter in Chemistry

Internal Visualization challenges concerning sub-microscopic particles in chemistry often result in some difficulties in learning the change of state of matter. Therefore, this study aims at developing an augmented reality ProCAR module that utilizes a project-based learning approach to facilitate learning changes of matter. This study employs ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation) instructional design model. The quality of the module was evaluated by a group of 5 Chemistry teacher-educator experts of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to identify the suitability of the module. Inter-rater reliability (IRR) percentages were determined and the feedback was analyzed based on thematic analysis. The result shows that 100% of its learning objectives, Content, Usability, and Assessment and 75% of its performances were good and reliable all having IRR value 75% and above. Such revealed that AR Module is potentially effective for the teaching phase change to Secondary school students. Recommendations for future studies were highlighted

Causal motifs and existence of endogenous cascades in directed networks with application to company defaults

Motivated by the problem of detection of cascades of defaults in economy, we developed a detection framework for an endogenous spreading based on causal motifs we define in this paper. We assume that the change of state of a vertex can be triggered either by an endogenous (related to the network) or an exogenous (unrelated to the network) event, that the underlying network is directed and that times when vertices changed their states are available. After simulating default cascades driven by different stochastic processes on different synthetic networks, we show that some of the smallest causal motifs can robustly detect endogenous spreading events. Finally, we apply the method to the data of defaults of Croatian companies and observe the time window in which an endogenous cascade was likely happening.

Electric charge in clouds at temperatures above 0° C

It is well-established that heavy rain can fall under certain conditions, from clouds whose temperatures are nowhere below the freezing point and where the Bergeron mechanism is pot applicable, and coalescence of droplets can provide the initial step in the growth of rain drops. It is, however, generally believed that lightning discharges occur in heavy cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds in which glaciations has begun to be apparent, and most of the theories so far advanced on the development of electric charges in the clouds assume the change of state to play a direct role in the electrification of the cloud.

Tense and aspect in Xhosa

This dissertation investigates the semantics of each tense and aspect in Xhosa. Since tense and aspect perform important pragmatic functions, the analysis takes into account the correlation between the verb and the wider discourse in which it is embedded. Tense reflects the temporal relation between the time of the utterance (speech time) and an interval the speaker makes the assertion about (reference time). The Remote Past and the Remote Future tenses differ from their Recent/Immediate counterparts in that they denote events which occurred in a significantly different situation than the speech time and/or events in the surrounding discourse. Aspect does not only indicate the relation between the time occupied by the real world event and the reference time chosen by the speaker. The Perfective aspect represents an event as a unique change-of-state that pertains to a single point on the timeline which at the same time functions as the reference time. By contrast, for the Imperfective aspect temporally links the event to a contextually provided reference time, e.g. the utterance time, a time adverbial, a period of time previously introduced in the preceding discourse, or the interlocutors’ shared experience. At the pragmatic level, the Perfective aspect tends to introduce an event’s resulting state into the discourse, whereas the Imperfective aspect tends to rule it out. Like the Imperfective aspect, the Anterior and the Prospective aspects assert an event’s occurrence from a contextually defined reference time. They refer to the consequent and the preparatory states of an event, respectively. On the pragmatic level, the Anterior aspect may also indicate that the truth-conditionality of the event’s resulting state is contradicted in the immediate discourse. This study shows that tense and aspect temporally represent different means of temporally assigning an event to a particular portion of the timeline. I further argue that aspect indicates whether the reference time is provided in the context (Imperfective, Anterior, Prospective) or whether it is introduced by the verb itself (Perfective). Furthermore, this study shows that aspect exhibits a pragmatic function by laying focus on different parts of the event that are relevant in the upcoming discourse.

Semantics-oriented resultatives: Evidence from valency alternation verbs

Resultative phrases are generally believed to conform to the Direct Object Restriction: that is, they describe the direct object if verbs are transitive. However, some exceptions have occasionally been reported, and this paper investigates the problem by focusing on resultative phrases that occur with the valency alternation verbs in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Verbs that license the locative alternation and locatum-subject alternation describe events that involve two arguments, the location and the locatum, which are perceived to concurrently undergo a change of state. It will be shown that resultative phrases with a valency alternation verb can be predicated of either argument regardless of whether it is expressed as direct object. Furthermore, resultative verbal suffixes in Mandarin, interpreted as description of either the location or the locatum, give rise to the locative alternation while their interpretation remains the same. Thus, it is claimed that in Japanese and Mandarin, the predication relation of resultative phrases is not determined by the grammatical function of arguments as generally believed, but rather by the lexical semantics of the verbs.