5,261 research outputs found
Linguistics and some aspects of its underlying dynamics
In recent years, central components of a new approach to linguistics, the
Minimalist Program (MP) have come closer to physics. Features of the Minimalist
Program, such as the unconstrained nature of recursive Merge, the operation of
the Labeling Algorithm that only operates at the interface of Narrow Syntax
with the Conceptual-Intentional and the Sensory-Motor interfaces, the
difference between pronounced and un-pronounced copies of elements in a
sentence and the build-up of the Fibonacci sequence in the syntactic derivation
of sentence structures, are directly accessible to representation in terms of
algebraic formalism. Although in our scheme linguistic structures are classical
ones, we find that an interesting and productive isomorphism can be established
between the MP structure, algebraic structures and many-body field theory
opening new avenues of inquiry on the dynamics underlying some central aspects
of linguistics.Comment: 17 page
The KB paradigm and its application to interactive configuration
The knowledge base paradigm aims to express domain knowledge in a rich formal
language, and to use this domain knowledge as a knowledge base to solve various
problems and tasks that arise in the domain by applying multiple forms of
inference. As such, the paradigm applies a strict separation of concerns
between information and problem solving. In this paper, we analyze the
principles and feasibility of the knowledge base paradigm in the context of an
important class of applications: interactive configuration problems. In
interactive configuration problems, a configuration of interrelated objects
under constraints is searched, where the system assists the user in reaching an
intended configuration. It is widely recognized in industry that good software
solutions for these problems are very difficult to develop. We investigate such
problems from the perspective of the KB paradigm. We show that multiple
functionalities in this domain can be achieved by applying different forms of
logical inferences on a formal specification of the configuration domain. We
report on a proof of concept of this approach in a real-life application with a
banking company. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).Comment: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP
Synthesis of Attributed Feature Models From Product Descriptions: Foundations
Feature modeling is a widely used formalism to characterize a set of products
(also called configurations). As a manual elaboration is a long and arduous
task, numerous techniques have been proposed to reverse engineer feature models
from various kinds of artefacts. But none of them synthesize feature attributes
(or constraints over attributes) despite the practical relevance of attributes
for documenting the different values across a range of products. In this
report, we develop an algorithm for synthesizing attributed feature models
given a set of product descriptions. We present sound, complete, and
parametrizable techniques for computing all possible hierarchies, feature
groups, placements of feature attributes, domain values, and constraints. We
perform a complexity analysis w.r.t. number of features, attributes,
configurations, and domain size. We also evaluate the scalability of our
synthesis procedure using randomized configuration matrices. This report is a
first step that aims to describe the foundations for synthesizing attributed
feature models
Main clause external constituents and the derivation of subject-initial verb Second
This paper discusses V3-patterns with a sentence-initial adverbial clause in Standard Dutch (StD) and West-Flemish (WF), which appear to violate the V2 restriction which normally regulates word order in these languages. V3-patterns occur in both languages; they can be interpreted as complying with the V2 constraint provided they are analyzed as the result of merging a regular root clause with V2 order with an extra-sentential adverbial clause. The paper shows that the distribution of V3-patterns is slightly wider in WF than in StD: StD requires that the root clause which combines with the extra-sentential constituent either exhibits subject-verb inversion (XP-V-S) or, in the case of subject initial V2 clauses, that the subject has a distinguished information-structural status such as contrastive focus/topic; WF allows V3-structures more freely, regardless of whether they display subject-verb inversion and regardless of the informational-structural status of the subject. The analysis takes as its point of departure the earlier claim that V2-languages can be symmetric in the sense that the finite verb always leaves the TP domain and occupies the highest head position in the root clause, the complementizer position C in the traditional generative analysis, or asymmetric in the sense that the position of the finite verb varies in that it occupies the C-position when the root clause exhibits subject-verb inversion or a lower TP internal tense position (T) in root clauses without inversion. The hypothesis is that V3-patterns with a sentence-initial adverbial clause are only possible if the initial adverbial clause attains a local relation with the finite verb, and that this requires the finite verb to be in the (higher) C-position. By assuming that StD is an asymmetric V2-language while WF is a symmetric V2-language the variation with respect to the distribution of V3-patterns in these languages can be captured
A simplified picture for Pi electrons in conjugated polymers : from PPP Hamiltonian to an effective molecular crystal approach
An excitonic method proper to study conjugated oligomers and polymers is
described and its applicability tested on the ground state and first excited
states of trans-polyacetylene, taken as a model. From the Pariser-Parr-Pople
Hamiltonian, we derive an effective Hamiltonian based on a local description of
the polymer in term of monomers; the relevant electronic configurations are
build on a small number of pertinent local excitations. The intuitive and
simple microscopic physical picture given by our model supplement recent
results, such as the Rice and Garstein ones. Depending of the parameters, the
linear absorption appears dominated by an intense excitonic peak.Comment: 41 Pages, 6 postscript figure
Generalized Approximate Survey Propagation for High-Dimensional Estimation
In Generalized Linear Estimation (GLE) problems, we seek to estimate a signal
that is observed through a linear transform followed by a component-wise,
possibly nonlinear and noisy, channel. In the Bayesian optimal setting,
Generalized Approximate Message Passing (GAMP) is known to achieve optimal
performance for GLE. However, its performance can significantly degrade
whenever there is a mismatch between the assumed and the true generative model,
a situation frequently encountered in practice. In this paper, we propose a new
algorithm, named Generalized Approximate Survey Propagation (GASP), for solving
GLE in the presence of prior or model mis-specifications. As a prototypical
example, we consider the phase retrieval problem, where we show that GASP
outperforms the corresponding GAMP, reducing the reconstruction threshold and,
for certain choices of its parameters, approaching Bayesian optimal
performance. Furthermore, we present a set of State Evolution equations that
exactly characterize the dynamics of GASP in the high-dimensional limit
- …