On the Necessity of a Multiple-viewpoint Analysis of Aspectual Opposition

In the first part of the paper, the aspectual opposition of the Russian verb is analyzed both as a privative and as an equipollent opposition, taking into account two different levels of approach: an abstract approach of the semantic invariant and a specific relation to contextual meanings. On this basis, the types of cases of the so-called strong and weak opposition are explained, as well as the trivial positions of aspects. In the second part special attention is given to the peculiarities of the basic semantic types of aspectual pairs that have arisen under the influence the verbal lexical meaning character. According to the conception put up by the author, the types distinguished are 1) telic/boundedpairs, 2) pairs with relative boundary of the perfective action, 3) trivial pairs, 4) pairs with perfective meaning, 5) pairs with multiplicative-semelfactive relation and 6) delimitative pairs.

Prosodic Boundary Effects on Syntactic Disambiguation in Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8–12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries. Results Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups. Conclusions Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.

RELATIONS BETWEEN VARIOUS BOUNDARIES OF RELATIVELY HYPERBOLIC GROUPS

Suppose a group G is relatively hyperbolic with respect to a collection ℙ of its subgroups and also acts properly, cocompactly on a CAT(0) (or δ-hyperbolic) space X. The relatively hyperbolic structure provides a relative boundary ∂(G, ℙ). The CAT(0) structure provides a different boundary at infinity ∂X. In this paper, we examine the connection between these two spaces at infinity. In particular, we show that ∂(G, ℙ) is G-equivariantly homeomorphic to the space obtained from ∂X by identifying the peripheral limit points of the same type.

Factors affecting the accuracy of forest clear-cut area estimation on medium spatial resolution satellite winter images

Keskmise ruumilise lahutusega talvistelt satelliidipiltidelt tehtavate lageraiealade pindalahinnangute täpsust mõjutavad faktorid The aim of this paper was to investigate the influence of attributes, describing clear-cut patch size, age, shape, nearest neighbours and habitat conditions on classification results of medium spatial resolution Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite images. The study area was Võru State Forest District in South-East Estonia and the satellite images used were made in late winter when the ground was covered with snow. Clear-cuts as significantly changed areas in forests were discerned from non-changed areas with thresholding of a two-date difference image. The results of the statistical analysis showed that clear-cut attributes had an influence on image classification results. The most influential variables (presented in decreasing order of significance) are the mean of clear-cut patch pixel values on the difference image, the relative boundary length with forest, the relative boundary length with coniferous forest and the clear-cut area to perimeter ratio. The age of clear-cut and habitat conditions had no statistically significant influence on classification results. The set of influential attributes remained the same when the classifications were performed on two more liberal and on two more conservative thresholding levels. Images in the visible and near infrared spectral region (Landsat TM bands 1-4) revealed appropriate for clear-cut mapping. The difference in the area of a single clear-cut patch represented in the forestry database to that classified from a Landsat TM image was about a sixth of the patch size. This implies the utility of medium resolution satellite images in clear-cut activity assessments in particular areas but not so much the applicability of these images for single patch area estimations.

CONVEX REGIONS IN THE PLANE AND THEIR DOMES

We make a detailed study of the relation of a euclidean convex region $\Omega \subset \mathbb C$ to $\mathrm{Dome} (\Omega)$. The dome is the relative boundary, in the upper halfspace model of hyperbolic space, of the hyperbolic convex hull of the complement of $\Omega$. The first result is to prove that the nearest point retraction $r: \Omega \to \mathrm{Dome} (\Omega)$ is 2-quasiconformal. The second is to establish precise estimates of the distortion of $r$ near $\partial \Omega$.

A MODIFIED INFINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR ACOUSTIC RADIATION

An infinite element method is proposed to help solve practical problems in engineering and extend the applicability of infinite element. Based on the Helmholtz's equation, a novel governing equation is derived in terms of the modified sound pressure. The relative boundary conditions are established and the system matrices in using the combination of conventional finite element and new infinite element are subsequently formed. As a result, the use of coarser finite element meshes is permitted for a given frequency. The effectiveness and accuracy of this method are demonstrated in application to two typical examples.

P-harmonic dimensions on ends

Consider an end Ω in the sense of Heins (cf. Heins [3]): Ω is a relatively non-compact subregion of an open Riemann surface such that the relative boundary ∂Ω consists of finitely many analytic Jordan closed curves, there exist no non-constant bounded harmonic functions with vanishing boundary values on ∂Ω and Ω has a single ideal boundary component. A density P = P(z)dxdy (z = x + iy) is a 2-form on Ω∩∂Ω with nonnegative locally Holder continuous coefficient P(z).

Dirichlet integral and Picard principle

A density P on the punctured unit disk Ω:0 < |z| <1 is a 2-form P(z)dxdy whose coefficient P(z) is a real valued nonnegative locally Hölder continuous function on the closed punctured unit disk Ω:0< |z| <≦1. Here we consider Ω as an end of the punctured sphere 0 < |z| ≦ + + so that the point z = 0 is viewed as the ideal boundary δΣ of Σ and the unit circle |z| = 1 as the relative boundary δΣ of Σ. We denote by D = D(Σ) the family of densities on Σ.