On the Borders of the Ostensive

This chapter studies uses of blushing as emotional expression both independently and in combination with the scalar expression almost in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Introducing the notion of ‘emotional vigilance’, it argues that uses of involuntary emotional expression play an essential role in the communicative effect of the novel and are enacted at both the ostensive and the non-ostensive level, through authorial agency and character behaviour respectively. The scalar expression almost pinpoints how the almost-but-not-quite-fulfilled love story between the two main characters is articulated, and arguably made to happen, by such expressions. Together, they create a rich web of implicatures and implications, the space in which the suspense of the novel and its tragic outcome are played out. The chapter thus explores the borders of the ostensive; that is to say, of the conditions within which relevance itself operates.

Extension of Freudenstein’s Equation to Geared Linkages

Freudenstein’s equation for planar four-bar function generators correlates input and output crank positions implicitly in a scalar expression, with coefficients that are functions of link proportions. Applying this approach to planar geared function generator linkages leads to nonlinear systems of algebraic equations. By the principle of superposition taken from the matrix theory of linear systems and by Sylvester’s dyalitic elimination, closed form solutions are obtained. When the geared linkages are changed into the planar four-bar by setting certain link lengths equal to zero, the generalized equations derived here specialize to Freudenstein’s well-known equation. Results of computer programs for synthesis and analysis based on this theory are tabulated.