PAST TENSE FORMS OF THE VERB ’BE’ IN MODAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN UDMURT

In Udmurt the past tense forms of the verb ’be’ ( val and vylem ) appear in different modal constructions and in the non-declarative moods. The paper focuses on the use of val and vylem in four modal constructions: two deontic, a desiderative and a permissive one. It is established that in such constructions val and vylem can have non-modal and modal use as well. In their non-modal sense val and vylem primarily modify the clause temporally and form the past tense equivalent of the given modal construction. The difference between the non-modal use of val and vylem lies in the difference between the first and second past tense in general. In their modal use val and vylem decrease the degree of modal force (also called as modal attenuation) and should be analyzed as particles. In such cases modal constructions can be interpreted as counterfactual conditionals. Differences can be characterized between the modal use of val and vylem . The particle vylem is associated with greater mental distance between the speaker and factuality and expresses that the likelihood of realization is small or nonexistent. therefore, it can be considered epistemic. The particle val does not distance the events from factuality to such a high extent as vylem . Also, native speakers associated a higher probability of fulfilment with the utterances formed with val . In my opinion, the difference between the modal use of the particles originates from their verbal use and from the differences between the first and second past tense.

Finding the force: a novel word learning experiment with modals

This study investigates the semantic and pragmatic challenges of acquiring the force of English modals, which express possibility (e.g., might) and necessity (e.g., must). Children seem to struggle with modal force through at least age 4, over-accepting both possibility modals where adults would prefer necessity modals, and necessity modals in possibility situations. These difficulties are typically blamed on pragmatic or conceptual immaturity. In this study, we sidestep these immaturity issues by investigating the challenges of modal learning through a novel word learning experiment with adults, for different 'flavors' of modals: epistemic (knowledge-based) versus teleological (goal-based), and comparing novel modals with actual English modals. We find that when learning possibility modals, adult learners behave as expected: they accept novel modals in necessity situations, both in epistemic and teleological contexts, but less often after they've learned a pragmatically more appropriate necessity modal. However, when learning necessity modals, participants manage to learn the right force (i.e., reject them in possibility situations) for epistemic scenarios only; with teleological scenarios, they accept them in possibility situations. We propose that an overlap in modal flavor explains their behavior, specifically, the competition with an ability interpretation in teleological but not epistemic scenarios, which could also contribute to children's difficulty with necessity modals reported in the acquisition literature.

Varieties of dispositional essentialism about natural laws

An important task for metaphysicians and philosophers of science is to account for laws of nature – in particular, how they distinguish themselves from ‘mere’ regularities, and the modal force they are endowed with, ‘natural necessity’. Dispositional essentialism about laws (for short: ‘essentialism’) is roughly the view that laws distinguish themselves by being grounded in the essences of natural entities (e.g. kinds, properties). This paper does not primarily concern how essentialism compares to its main rivals – Humeanism and Armstrongeanism. Rather, it distinguishes and comparatively assesses various brands of essentialism – which mainly differ as to where exactly they take laws to find their essentialist sources (e.g. in particular entities, like electrons, or in larger pluralities of entities, or in the world as a whole), and what they take to be the targets of laws, namely what they apply to. Yet, this internal comparison is not unrelated to the more general debate about laws: the main criteria with which I compare these essentialist views concern how they can deal with some of the main objections faced by essentialism in general (the modal status it typically attributes to laws, which some think is too strong; and its alleged incapacity to account for the most 'general' laws, like conservation laws), and how they can keep what is arguably the main intuitive advantage of essentialism over its rivals (the fact that, on this view, things “govern themselves”). Thus, the paper also concerns the relative position of essentialism in the larger debate about laws – ultimately bringing support to it.

Influence of Stator Hub Cavities on the Forced Response Behaviour of an Embedded Compressor Rotor

This paper focuses on the impact of hub labyrinth seal leakage flows on the aeromechanical behavior of an embedded compressor rotor. End wall flows are critical in determining the performance of gas turbine engine compressors, particularly the hub leakage flows that can contribute to a significant reduction in performance due to the loss in efficiency induced by the leakage. While the current literature does contribute extensively to the understanding of the influence of this leakage flow on the steady compressor performance, no attention has been given to its impact on the multi-row unsteady aeromechanical influence. The authors of this paper have talked about the multi-row influence at various modes and operating condition using models without the hub cavities included [11–12;33–34]. The embedded compressor rotor utilized for this study is a part of a 3.5 stage subsonic rig located at the Zucrow Laboratory at Purdue University. The current paper first addresses the steady aerodynamics of a multi-row compressor with hub cavities and talks in detail about the effect of cavities on the performance at both the torsional mode and a higher order mode. Next the influence on the forcing function utilizing both 3-row (S1/R2/S2) and 4-row (S1/R2/S2/R3) simulations at both the Peak Efficiency (PE) and the High Loading (HL) operating conditions is determined. To reduce the computational domain significantly, the time transformation (TT) method was utilized within ANSYS CFX. The first part of the paper describes the multi-row influence of two neighboring stators having the same vane count, which excites the embedded rotor at the same resonant frequency; the second part shows the influence of having physical waves reflecting from a rotating row downstream (R3). The results show the significance of modelling the stator hub cavities and the drastic improvement in the modal force prediction with the cavities included. However, the authors observed that the impact tends to be more significant when the computational domain is small, i.e., fewer rows are included. As the number of rows are increased the influence of hub cavities diminish. Some of the conclusions drawn from this study are: 1) The presence of hub cavities changes the angle of incidence to the stators thereby reducing flow separation at the hub. The influence of these propagate throughout the domain i.e., a change in the angle of incidence in the first stage has an effect even at a downstream row. 2) The modal force prediction improved by ∼10% for the 3-row case and 1% for the 4-row case and the values moved closer to the experimental values in both cases. 3) The influence of hub cavities is more significant at torsional modes compared to higher order modes.

Variable Modality in Pintupi-Luritja Purposive Clauses

This paper investigates the modal and non-modal uses and readings of the purposive suffix in the Western Desert (Pama-Nyungan) language Pintupi-Luritja. It is shown that the suffix is associated with a range of root-modal readings, with some variability in modal force. The modal readings are investigated in a variety of non-upward-entailing environments and compared with those of other variable modal force languages as described in the literature. I suggest that the purposive suffix does not behave in the same way as in these languages, which suggests that the typology of variable force modality is not uniform. I conclude by suggesting a connection to the modality described in non-finite and nominalised environments in a number of other languages.

Terminologia związana z tłem konwersacyjnym w opisie modalności językowej oraz propozycja jej przekładu na język polski

The article aims at bringing the model of the semantic field of modal expressions presented by Angelika Kratzer to the attention of Polish-speaking readers. The framework consists of three domains: modal force, modal base and ordering source. The last two are conversational backgrounds. The duality of the modal base also allows for a binary typology of modality. In addition, the paper proposes Polish equivalents of English-language terminology.

Comparison of Flexoelectric and Piezoelectric Actuating of Beams

The flexoelectric and piezoelectric effect on the actuating of a cantilever beam are compared in this study to explore how the size-dependent effect could affect the application of the flexoelectric effect. An AFM (atomic force microscopy) probe is used to generate the electric field in the flexoelectric patch, significant electric field gradient is induced. The electric field, distribution of control moment, induced modal force and the vibration control efficiency in terms of transverse displacements are analyzed in case studies. Analytical results show that the control moment of flexoelectric effect highly concentrates at the location of the AFM probe due to the inhomogeneous electric field, which shrink the effect area of flexoelectric patch size. The distribution of the flexoelectric control moment is an impulse function and the distribution of the piezoelectric control moment is a step function, which results to the flexoelectric modal force strongly affected by the electric field gradient while the piezoelectric modal force highly depends on the patch size. For the flexoelectric actuating, decreasing the AFM probe radius can increase the electric field gradient and induce larger modal force. The thickness effect of flexoelectric patch depends on the electric field gradient and the control moment arm, and in the current study, increasing the patch size, the induced flexoelectric modal force increases slightly. Case studies on vibration control show that both the flexoelectric actuating and piezoelectric actuating could generate larger transverse tip displacement with increasing the patch size. This study proves that the flexoelectric actuating can provide effectively actuating and control effect to engineering structures when the size decreases.