Towards a complete multiple-mechanism account of predictive language processing [Commentary on Pickering & Garrod]

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing

Process algebra for performance evaluation

This paper surveys the theoretical developments in the field of stochastic process algebras, process algebras where action occurrences may be subject to a delay that is determined by a random variable. A huge class of resource-sharing systems – like large-scale computers, client–server architectures, networks – can accurately be described using such stochastic specification formalisms. The main emphasis of this paper is the treatment of operational semantics, notions of equivalence, and (sound and complete) axiomatisations of these equivalences for different types of Markovian process algebras, where delays are governed by exponential distributions. Starting from a simple actionless algebra for describing time-homogeneous continuous-time Markov chains, we consider the integration of actions and random delays both as a single entity (like in known Markovian process algebras like TIPP, PEPA and EMPA) and as separate entities (like in the timed process algebras timed CSP and TCCS). In total we consider four related calculi and investigate their relationship to existing Markovian process algebras. We also briefly indicate how one can profit from the separation of time and actions when incorporating more general, non-Markovian distributions

Bialgebraic Semantics for Logic Programming

Bialgebrae provide an abstract framework encompassing the semantics of different kinds of computational models. In this paper we propose a bialgebraic approach to the semantics of logic programming. Our methodology is to study logic programs as reactive systems and exploit abstract techniques developed in that setting. First we use saturation to model the operational semantics of logic programs as coalgebrae on presheaves. Then, we make explicit the underlying algebraic structure by using bialgebrae on presheaves. The resulting semantics turns out to be compositional with respect to conjunction and term substitution. Also, it encodes a parallel model of computation, whose soundness is guaranteed by a built-in notion of synchronisation between different threads

Conflicts of laws unbounded: the case for a legal-pluralist revival

This paper attempts to bring the specific insights of conflict of laws to issues challenging contemporary legal theory in its efforts to integrate the changes wrought by globalisation in the normative landscape beyond the nation-state. Indeed, conflicting norms and social systems are now at the centre-stage of jurisprudence. Conversely however, private international legal thinking can benefit from attention to the other legal disciplines that have preceded it in ‘going global’. It needs to undergo a conceptual overhauling in order to capture law’s novel foundations and features and adjust its epistemological and methodological tools to its transformed environment. It must reconsider the debate about legitimacy of political authority and the values that constitute its normative horizon. From this perspective, societal constitutionalism, as mooted by Teubner, provides a particularly promising avenue for unbounding the conflict of laws, which might then emerge as a form of de-centred, reflexive coordination of global legal interactions. [Abstract editor

Speaking to an imagined community. How the Paris Peace Agreements shaped ideas of the new political order in Cambodia 1992-93

Despite the importance that current peacebuilding literature assigns to internal legitimacy, we know next to nothing about the development and the negotiation of ideas in the context of an intervention: How exactly do interveners convey an image of the new political order? How do local political actors imagine the political future? What is the image they convey to their constituency? And how do converging or contradicting ideas affect the relationship between interveners and local actors and the reforms at large? Designed as a contribution to the theorization of external nation building, this work develops a theoretical framework to observe the ongoing struggles between local and international actors over the meaning of political reforms. It proposes an understanding of political authority that is tied to processes of identity formation. The analysis draws on UNTAC produced audio- and video material, the internal and public communication of its Information and Education Unit, and interviews with Cambodian politicians and former members of the large scale intervention that took place in the early 90s. Based on these materials it documents the strategies of the Transitional Authority to discipline public political discourse based on their interpretation of the Paris Peace Agreements, and the attempts of Cambodian political actors to generate political authority by confirming, rejecting, or re-interpreting their claims. Ideas of the new political order, this is the central argument, are formed as a result of this creative negotiation process