Local versus long-distance bound implicit arguments of inalienable relational nouns in Chinese

This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (KNs, e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (BPNs, e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive argument. Based on a syntactic comparison between KNs, BPNs, locally and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of BPNs must be locally bound, whereas that of KNs can either be locally or long-distance bound. We conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to locally and long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. We analyze this difference in connection with binding theory and a theory of logophoricity. We argue that the implicit argument of BPNs is a locally bound anaphor and cannot be used as a logophor, whereas that of KNs can, supporting a proposal that the logophoric property leads to long-distance binding, as argued by Huang & Liu’s (2001) for reflexives in Mandarin Chinese.

From Generalization of Bacon-Shor Codes to High Performance Quantum LDPC Codes

We utilize a concatenation scheme to construct new families of quantum error correction codes that include the Bacon-Shor codes. We show that our scheme can lead to asymptotically good quantum codes while Bacon-Shor codes cannot. Further, the concatenation scheme allows us to derive quantum LDPC codes of distance Ω(N2/3/loglogN) which can improve Hastings’s recent result [arXiv:2102.10030] by a polylogarithmic factor. Moreover, assisted by the Evra-Kaufman- Zémor distance balancing construction, our concatenation scheme can yield quantum LDPC codes with non-vanishing code rates and better minimum distance upper bound than the hypergraph product quantum LDPC codes. Finally, we derive a family of fast encodable and decodable quan- tum concatenated codes with parameters Q = [[N,Ω(√N),Ω(√N)]] and they also belong to the Bacon-Shor codes. We show that Q can be encoded very efficiently by circuits of size O(N) and depth O(√N), and can correct any adversarial error of weight up to half the minimum distance bound in O(√N) time. To the best of our knowledge, they are the most powerful quantum codes for correcting so many adversarial errors in sublinear time by far.

A Spectrum-Efficient Cross-Layer RF Distance Bounding Scheme

Distance bounding protocols guarantee a credible distance upper bound between the devices which require the spatial distance as a security parameter to defend Mafia Fraud attacks. However, in RF systems, the realization of distance bounding protocol faces obstacles due to low spectrum efficiency, since the distance bound estimation consumes a significant amount of frequency band in existing schemes. This hinders RF distance bounding from being practically deployed, especially in commonly used ISM bands. In this work, we propose an alternative, spectrum-efficient scheme for RF distance bounding. We build the physical layer as well as a protocol design based on SFCW signal and SFCW ranging. Thus, comparing existing schemes that consume many frequency bands, our scheme frees many spectrum resources. We propose solutions to the unique challenges facing such an SFCW-based scheme design, namely, data communication over unintelligent SFCW signals, and secure synchronization in the SFCW-based challenge-response exchange. We evaluate our scheme via the security analysis and physical layer simulations. The results show (i) its resistance to attacks commonly concerned in distance bounding, (ii) the feasibility of the physical layer design such as accurate ranging and data communication function, and (iii) the communication noise tolerance and the ability of multipath signal discrimination.

Experimental evidence supporting the overlapping distribution of core and exempt anaphors: Re-examination of long-distance bound caki-casin in Korean

The Korean anaphor caki-casin, which has been regarded as a local anaphor, has been shown to allow long-distance binding when local binding is not an option (Kim, Ji-Hye & James Yoon. 2009. Long-distance bound local anaphors in Korean: An empirical study of the Korean anaphor caki-casin. Lingua 119. 733–755). In this study, we examined the long-distance binding of caki-casin in domains where local binding is possible, and compare it with the long-distance binding of caki, the representative long-distance anaphor in Korean. Our investigation revealed that the availability of local binding does not rule out long-distance/exempt binding of caki-casin. The results imply that core and exempt binding may not be in complementary distribution, at least in Korean.

Reducing Long-Distance Binding to Logophoric Exemption

This chapter re-examines the hypothesis that some anaphors can be long-distance bound independently of their discursive conditions. All analyses of long-distance anaphora, whether they assume binding domain parameterization or covert movement, rely on the existence of a specific type of anaphors that can be bound out of the Condition A domain and are further characterized by monomorphemicity, subject orientation, sloppy readings, and blocking effects. The goal of this chapter is to question this empirical claim and examine the hypothesis that such purported long-distance anaphors can in fact be reduced to exempt anaphors subject to logophoric conditions. Some tests are proposed and applied to Icelandic sig, Mandarin ziji, French soi, and Norwegian seg/sin using online questionnaires. The results suggest that the hypothesis that long-distance binding should be eliminated from the theory and reduced to logophoric exemption is viable—pending further cross-linguistic studies.

Minimum distance histograms with universal performance guarantees

We present a data-adaptive multivariate histogram estimator of an unknown density f based on n independent samples from it. Such histograms are based on binary trees called regular pavings (RPs). RPs represent a computationally convenient class of simple functions that remain closed under addition and scalar multiplication. Unlike other density estimation methods, including various regularization and Bayesian methods based on the likelihood, the minimum distance estimate (MDE) is guaranteed to be within an $$L_1$$ L 1 distance bound from f for a given n, no matter what the underlying f happens to be, and is thus said to have universal performance guarantees (Devroye and Lugosi, Combinatorial methods in density estimation. Springer, New York, 2001). Using a form of tree matrix arithmetic with RPs, we obtain the first generic constructions of an MDE, prove that it has universal performance guarantees and demonstrate its performance with simulated and real-world data. Our main contribution is a constructive implementation of an MDE histogram that can handle large multivariate data bursts using a tree-based partition that is computationally conducive to subsequent statistical operations.

Covert reflexive argument in inalienable relational nouns

This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive argument. Based on a syntactic comparison between kinship nouns, body-part nouns, local- and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of kinship nouns and body-part nouns differ from each other: The implicit argument of kinship nouns must be locally bound, whereas that of body-part nouns can either be locally bound or long-distance bound. Therefore, we conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to local- long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. Finally, we relate this difference to binding theory concerning local and long-distance anaphors.