506 research outputs found
Quantum Cryptography Beyond Quantum Key Distribution
Quantum cryptography is the art and science of exploiting quantum mechanical
effects in order to perform cryptographic tasks. While the most well-known
example of this discipline is quantum key distribution (QKD), there exist many
other applications such as quantum money, randomness generation, secure two-
and multi-party computation and delegated quantum computation. Quantum
cryptography also studies the limitations and challenges resulting from quantum
adversaries---including the impossibility of quantum bit commitment, the
difficulty of quantum rewinding and the definition of quantum security models
for classical primitives. In this review article, aimed primarily at
cryptographers unfamiliar with the quantum world, we survey the area of
theoretical quantum cryptography, with an emphasis on the constructions and
limitations beyond the realm of QKD.Comment: 45 pages, over 245 reference
Initiating competence in intercultural communication 一 New approaches for Chinese learners in a university English language class
The phenomenon of World English has made English the lingua franca of international business and trade. This thesis explores how English has spread, and to what extent it has changed. It also considers how local knowledge and concerns about identity can be dealt with while teaching students to use English towards a global perspective. Relevant pedagogical principles are then identified and applied to the production of teaching materials that fit within the context and parameters of an academic English course at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, China. Research is conducted to determine whether an approach of using film clips and role plays can initiate competence in intercultural communication while satisfying the academic writing objectives that were set by Lingnan University
Presenting Himself as an Approved Worker: The Narratological Function of the Prayers in the Book of Nehemiah
Penhallegon, Philip W. “Presenting Himself as an Approved Worker: The Narratological Function of the Prayers in the Book of Nehemiah.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2012. 240 pp.
Prayer can serve as a key feature with important functions in a narrative text. The abundant prayers in Nehemiah and the lack of scholarly attention to their function within the narrative suggest the need for fresh research into this question. This dissertation addresses the question, “Given the prominence of prayers in the book of Nehemiah, how do the various prayers function in the narrative?”
The exploration of that question has resulted in the following thesis: Attention to the narratological function of the prayers in the book of Nehemiah reveals that the book is Nehemiah’s apologia—his appeal to God in which he argues that he should be remembered as a faithful servant. This attention to the prayers improves upon former narrative readings of Nehemiah by recognizing the apologetic nature of the book and demonstrating a greater coherence than has been recognized formerly. It also helps distinguish the book from Ezra with which it is often combined.
Chapter 1 demonstrates the need for this study and sets it into its scholarly context. Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of narrative analysis as well as preliminary application to the book of Nehemiah. Chapter 3 provides a detailed exegetical treatment of each prayer in the book of Nehemiah in narrative order and then classifies the prayers as recorded, reported, and interjected. Chapter 4 gives a narrative reading of Nehemiah, giving special attention to the function of the prayers and their effect upon the narrative whole. The prayers are found to be an integral part of the compositional and narrative strategy. Some of the prayers are important to the story being told while a distinctive subset, the remember prayers, provide the interpretive key to the entire narrative. This reading demonstrates that the book of Nehemiah can be read and understood as Nehemiah’s apologia to God to be remembered as a faithful servant. In so doing it shows that Nehemiah has coherence of its own, apart from Ezra and Chronicles. Finally, chapter 5 summarizes the outcomes of this study and expounds on some of the scholarly implications resulting from this dissertation’s work
Cut Off From(One\u27s) People_Punitive Expulsion In The Torah
Hobson, G. Thomas. “‘Cut Off From (One’s) People’: Punitive Expulsion in the Torah.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2010. 245 pp.
This dissertation argues that the Torah’s penalty “cut off from (one’s) people” (kareth) is normally a form of expulsion from the community of Israel, in contrast to the view that this penalty is a threatened divine extermination curse, a view reflected in the LXX and rabbinic traditions. The author traces a punitive expulsion interpretation from the fifth century B.C.E. Jewish community, to Maccabean-era practice as described by Josephus, to expulsion at Qumran. The use of the verb כדת is examined, including evidence from synonyms and from the Jewish and Samaritan Targumim. Evidence for punitive expulsion elsewhere in the ancient Near East is also assembled. The closest parallels to the biblical kareth penalty are found to be the expulsion of the unclean uzug in early Mesopotamia, and expulsion for the crime of hurkel practiced by the Hittites. Biblical kareth is found to be a merciful alternative to the death penalty, which also removes a source of contamination that endangers the community
Arguing with annihilationism:a doctrinal assessment with special reference to recent evangelical debate
SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN036840 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
SPELLing out energy leaks: Aiding developers locate energy inefficient code
Although hardware is generally seen as the main culprit for a computer's energy usage, software too has a tremendous impact on the energy spent. Unfortunately, there is still not enough support for software developers so they can make their code more energy-aware.This paper proposes a technique to detect energy inefficient fragments in the source code of a software system. Test cases are executed to obtain energy consumption measurements, and a statistical method, based on spectrum-based fault localization, is introduced to relate energy consumption to the source code. The result of our technique is an energy ranking of source code fragments pointing developers to possible energy leaks in their code. This technique was implemented in the SPELL toolkit.Finally, in order to evaluate our technique, we conducted an empirical study where we asked participants to optimize the energy efficiency of a software system using our tool, while also having two other groups using no tool assistance and a profiler, respectively. We showed statistical evidence that developers using our technique were able to improve the energy efficiency by 43% on average, and even out performing a profiler for energy optimization. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This work is funded by the ERDF -European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization -COMPETE 2020 Programme within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006961, and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT -Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia within project POCI010145FEDER016718, UID/EEA/50014/2013, and by FCT grant SFRH/BD/132485/2017. This work is also supported by operation Centro010145FEDER000019 -C4 -Centro de Competencias em Cloud Computing, cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Programa Operacional Regional do Centro (Centro 2020), in the scope of the Sistema de Apoio a Investigacao Cientifica e Tecnologica -Programas Integrados de IC&DT, and the first author was financed by post-doc grant referencia C4_SMDS_L1-1_D
Acquisition of european portuguese cleft structures by L1 Mandarin learners
A presente dissertação debruça-se sobre a aquisição de estruturas clivadas do português europeu
(PE) por aprendentes que têm chinês mandarim (CM) como L1 e inglês como L2. Foi realizado um
estudo experimental, com base numa tarefa de juízo de aceitabilidade, sobre a aquisição das seguintes
estruturas em PE: clivadas de é que, clivadas canónicas, semipseudoclivadas e pseudoclivadas; foi
ainda testada uma estrutura superficialmente idêntica à clivada canónica mas sem C preenchido,
agramatical em PE.
As questões de investigação que guiaram o presente trabalho são: (i) que diferenças estruturais
apresentam as clivadas do PE e as do CM? (ii) as diferenças sintáticas levantam obstáculos à aquisição
de clivadas do PE por sujeitos que têm o CM como L1? (iii) em caso afirmativo, os alunos podem
superar os obstáculos potenciais? (iv) que tipo de clivadas do PE colocam mais dificuldade na
aquisição por falantes L1-CM? (v) outras línguas previamente adquiridas pelos alunos influenciarão a
aquisição destas estruturas do PE?
Têm sido avançadas propostas diversificadas da sintaxe das estruturas clivadas em PE. Discutindo
se todos tipos de clivadas têm por base uma estrutura sintática idêntica, as análises sintáticas prévias
dividem-se em dois tipos: análises unificadas (Ambar, 1999; Costa e Duarte, 2001, 2005) e análises
não-unificadas (Lobo, 2006; Soares, 2006). No tocante à aquisição da linguagem, atestou-se uma
escala de emergência e diferente frequência de diferentes estratégias de clivagem (Lobo, Santos e
Soares-Jesel, 2016), o que forneceu argumentos para a análise não-unificada. Em linha com Lobo
(2006), Soares (2006) e Lobo, Santos e Soares-Jesel (2016), assume-se que: i) as clivadas canónicas
envolvem movimento do constituinte clivado para uma posição periférica associada a um traço [+foco]
na oração encaixada; ii) uma estrutura mono-oracional é proposta para as clivadas de é que, em que
esta expressão lexicaliza uma categoria funcional na periferia esquerda da frase, a que se associa um
traço [+foco]; iii) as pseudoclivadas são estruturas identificacionais em que o verbo “ser” seleciona
uma Oração Pequena composta por uma oração clivada que é semelhante a uma relativa livre e um
constituinte focalizado externo à oração tipo CP; iv) nas semipseudoclivadas, o verbo “ser”,
reanalisado como um marcador de foco contrastivo, marca a fronteira da periferia esquerda de vP, e o constituinte clivado está in situ, sob escopo do marcador de foco. No que respeita à aquisição de língua
não materna, prediz-se que o desenvolvimento da gramática das diferentes estruturas clivadas de
aprendentes não ocorre de forma homogénea. Para as estruturas clivadas do CM, comparando as
diferentes análises (Huang, 1988, 1998; Simpson e Wu, 2002; Cheng, 2008; Paul e Whitman, 2008;
Hole, 2011, etc.), propomos que: i) as pseudoclivadas do CM e do PE partilham na base uma estrutura
sintática semelhante, i.e. uma estrutura identificacional; ii) nas clivadas de shì simples, está envolvido
foco prosódico, não sendo a posição de focalização associada à periferia esquerda ou a uma projeção
de foco interna; iii) nas clivadas shì...de, à luz de Belletti (2004), o traço [+foco] é associado a uma
projeção abaixo de vP, FocP, para a qual sobe o sujeito ou adjunto clivado, e o objeto, quando recebe
o foco, fica na posição final de frase, de acordo com a Regra do Acento Nuclear (Nuclear Stress Rule),
em linha com Cinque (1993). É de notar que, no CM, o objeto não pode ser clivado nas clivadas de
shì simples ou nas clivadas shì V O de, ao contrário do que acontece com sujeito. Em suma, o facto de
o português dispor de categorias que marcam foco contrastivo e a associação do traço [+foco] a
diferentes categorias funcionais nas duas línguas determinam as diferenças entre as clivadas do CM e
a sua contrapartida portuguesa. No que diz respeito à aquisição de língua não materna (ALNM), dado que estes aprendentes
geralmente adquiriram inglês como L2 antes do PE, levou-se também em consideração a influência
potencial da L2 inglês. À luz da Hipótese de Reconfiguração de Traços (Lardiere, 2008, 2009),
assume-se que, para adquirir as estruturas clivadas do PE, um aprendente L1-CM teria de desassociar
o traço [+ foco] do Foc0 baixo no CM e associá-lo a categorias diferentes, mais especificamente, uma
categoria funcional na periferia esquerda nas clivadas de é-que e nas clivadas canónicas; nas
semipseudoclivadas, deve ser associado ao verbo “ser” na fronteira da periferia esquerda de vP; nas
pseudoclivadas, assume-se que a configuração do PE é idêntica à do CM, e nesse caso, o simples
mapeamento dos traços na L1 e na L2 poderá assegurar a aquisição da gramática-alvo, pelo que não
se espera que haja problemas para os aprendentes. No entanto, considera-se também que a aquisição
de clivadas canónicas pode ser facilitada pela L2 inglês, conforme predizem os modelos da aquisição
de L3 como o Modelo da Melhoria Cumulativa (MMC, e.g., Flynn et al. 2004) e o Modelo de Primazia
Tipológica (MPT, e.g., Rothman, 2011).
Para testar a aceitação, pelos falantes de L3, de diferentes estruturas clivadas do PE, foram aplicadas duas tarefas de juízo de aceitabilidade, um teste centrado em diferentes clivadas de sujeito e
objeto (de é que, canónicas, estruturas superficialmente idênticas às clivadas canónicas sem C
preenchido, semipseudoclivadas e pseudoclivadas), e outro centrado na concordância sujeito-verbo em
clivadas com sujeito plural. Foi usada uma escala de Likert com quatro pontos. Os testes foram
aplicados a três grupos de falantes do CM (N = 60), subdivididos por nível de proficiência (B1-23;
B2-20; C1-17), e a um grupo de controlo de 21 falantes nativos do PE. Adicionalmente, foram
aplicados dois testes centrados em clivadas do inglês para examinar a transferência eventual da L2.
A observação global dos resultados mostra que os aprendentes não rejeitam clivadas de objeto.
As clivadas canónicas de sujeito e objeto são aceites pelos participantes independentemente da sua
proficiência, seguidas pelas pseudoclivadas. Ao contrário, as clivadas de é que de sujeito parecem
problemáticas para os grupos dos níveis intermédios por contraste com o grupo de controlo; no caso
das clivadas de é que de objeto, ainda que os aprendentes em geral rejeitassem a estrutura, a
surpreendente baixa aceitação por parte do grupo de controlo torna a comparação mais complexa. As
estruturas sem C preenchido e as semipseudoclivadas foram uniformemente rejeitadas por todos os
aprendentes. Quanto às questões de concordância, analisadas no teste 2, a aceitação de clivadas
canónicas sem concordância é sobretudo observada no grupo do nível mais baixo testado, B1. Contudo,
a aceitação de pseudoclivadas com concordância não esperada é persistente em todos os níveis, sendo
também atestada no grupo de controlo, embora de forma reduzida. Assim, embora os falantes aceitem
no teste 1 as clivadas canónicas e pseudoclivadas, não adquiriram completamente a gramática-alvo. Os resultados apresentados não questionam um possível efeito facilitador da L2, esperado de
acordo com modelos como o MMC ou o MPT, uma vez que não se atesta rejeição generalizada de
clivadas de objeto nem aceitação de C vazio em clivadas, o que implica que a associação do traço
[+foco] à periferia esquerda está adquirida. No caso das clivadas de é que e das semipseudoclivadas,
explorámos a hipótese de que a dificuldade dos falantes possa ser associar um traço [+foco] à expressão
é que e a “ser” nas semipseudoclivadas. Quanto à concordância em pseudoclivadas e em clivadas
canónicas, a persistência dos problemas pode sugerir uma influência da concordância semântica.
O presente estudo realizou uma análise comparativa da sintaxe das estruturas clivadas do PE e do
CM, e evidenciou uma escala de dificuldade na aquisição de L3 de estruturas clivadas do PE por falantes de L1-CM: clivadas canónicas > pseudoclivadas > clivadas de é-que > semipseudoclivadas.
Não obstante, as estruturas sintáticas dos vários tipos de estruturas clivadas do PE, CM e inglês e a
natureza de tais estruturas na interface sintaxe-discurso requerem uma análise mais aprofundada. A
sensibilidade mostrada pelos falantes nativos aos diferentes padrões de clivadas e às diferentes funções
sintáticas dos constituintes clivados também despertou a nossa atenção e pode levar a uma investigação
mais aprofundada. Além de testar clivadas de sujeito e de objeto, mais testes poderão ser conduzidos
sobre a clivagem de outros constituintes com diversas funções sintáticas. Os contrastes nas respostas
dos falantes nativos e dos aprendentes no trabalho experimental deixam questões em aberto. Por
exemplo, na área do processamento linguístico, seria interessante averiguar se os falantes nativos e os
falantes L2 avançados processam certas estruturas distintamente. No que diz respeito a questões mais
gerais no âmbito dos estudos em ALNM, embora não seja o objetivo deste estudo corroborar nenhum
modelo de SLA, estudos futuros poderiam concentrar-se em discernir os potenciais efeitos de L1 ou/e
de L2 na aquisição de L3 da sintaxe do PE.This dissertation addresses the L3 acquisition of European Portuguese (EP) cleft structures by
L1- Mandarin Chinese (MC) learners who acquired English as L2. An experimental study was
conducted, adopting the method of acceptability judgement task, on the acquisition of the following
structures in EP: é-que clefts, standard clefts, semipseudoclefts and pseudoclefts. Additionally,
standard-cleft-like structures with empty C, ungrammatical in EP, were also tested.
The research questions that guided this study are: (i) what structural differences do EP clefts and
MC clefts display? (ii) are the syntactic differences a source of difficulties for the acquisition of EP
clefts by MC speakers? (iii) if so, can these learners overcome the potential obstacles? (iv) what kinds
of EP clefts present more difficulty for the learners? (v) will other languages previously acquired by
learners influence the acquisition of EP?
Various proposals have been put forward on the syntax of EP cleft structures. Debating whether
different EP clefts have the same underlying syntactic configuration, previous syntactic analyses are
divided into two types: unified analyses (Ambar, 1999; Costa & Duarte, 2001, 2005) and non-unified
analyses (Lobo, 2006; Soares, 2006). L1 acquisition data on the frequency and order of emergence of
the different clefting strategies (Lobo, Santos & Soares-Jesel, 2016) provided arguments for a non-
-unified analysis. In line with Lobo (2006) and Soares (2006), we assume that: i) the standard clefts
involve the movement of the clefted constituent to the left periphery of an embedded clause, to which
a [+focus] feature is associated; ii) a monoclausal structure is proposed for the é-que clefts, in which
such an expression lexicalizes a functional category associated with a [+focus] feature in the left
periphery of the clause; iii) pseudoclefts involve a small clause that consists of a base-generated
focused constituent and an unselected (relative clause) CP; iv) in semipseudoclefts, the verb ser “be”,
reanalyzed as a contrastive focus marker, marks the boundary of the left periphery of vP and the clefted
constituent stays in situ. In the case of second language acquisition, it is predicted that the development
of the L2 grammar of the different cleft structures does not occur in a homogeneous way. For the MC cleft structures, after comparing different analyses (Huang, 1988, 1998; Simpson &
Wu, 2002; Cheng, 2008; Paul & Whitman, 2008; Hole, 2011), we propose that: i) the pseudoclefts of MC share a similar underlying structure with EP, i.e. an identificational structure; ii) in bare-shì
subject clefts, a prosodic focus is at play, and neither the left periphery nor an internal focus projection
is projected; iii) in shì…de clefts, in light of Belletti (2004), the [+focus] feature is associated to a
projection below vP, FocP, whose specifier position is the landing site for the clefted subject or adjunct,
and the object bearing the focus stays in the original sentence-final position in light of the Nuclear
Stress Rule, in line with Cinque (1993). It is worth noting that, in MC, the object cannot be clefted in
bare-shì clefts or in shì V O de clefts, as opposed to the subject. In sum, it is the association of a
[+focus] feature to different functional categories that determines the differences between cleft
structures in EP and MC. In terms of second language acquisition (SLA), given that Chinese learners generally have
acquired English as L2 before learning EP, the potential influence of L2 English was taken into
consideration. In the light of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009), we assume
that, to ultimately acquire the EP cleft structures, apart from the mastery of the lexical items, an L1-
MC learner would have to untangle the [+focus] feature from the low Foc0 in MC and reassembly it
onto different categories, i.e., a functional category in the left periphery in é-que clefts and standard
clefts; in semipseudoclefts, it should be attached to the verb ser “be”; in pseudoclefts, a learner would
be expected to exhibit apparent knowledge of the target grammar at the mapping stage, resulting from
mapping of MC pseudoclefts. The acquisition of standard clefts may be facilitated due to L2 English,
as predicted by L3 acquisition models such as the Cumulative-Enhancement Model (CEM, e.g., Flynn
et al. 2004) and the Typological Primacy Model (TPM, e.g., Rothman, 2011).
To test the acceptance by L3 learners of different clefts in EP, two acceptability judgment tasks
were applied, one centered on different types of subject and object clefts (é-que clefts, standard clefts,
standard-cleft-like structures with empty C, semipseudoclefts and pseudoclefts), and the other centered
on the subject-verb agreement patterns in clefts when the clefted subject is plural. A four-point Likert
scale was used. The tests were applied to three groups of MC speakers (N = 60), subdivided by
proficiency level (B1-23; B2-20; C1-17), and a control group of 21 native EP speakers. The tested
learners later participated in English tests to examine the possibility of L2 transfer. General observation of the results shows that the learners do not reject object clefts. Subject and
object standard clefts are accepted by the participants regardless of their proficiency, followed by
pseudoclefts. On the contrary, subject é-que clefts seem problematic for the groups at intermediate
proficiency levels when compared with the control group; in the case of object é-que clefts, even
though learners in general rejected the structure, the surprisingly low acceptance by the control group
makes the comparison more complicated. Standard-cleft-like structures with an empty C and
semipseudoclefts were uniformly rejected by all learners. As for the questions concerning agreement
patterns, which were analyzed in test 2, the acceptance of standard clefts without agreement is mainly
observed in the group at the lowest proficiency level tested, B1. However, the acceptance of
pseudoclefts with unexpected agreement is persistent at all levels, and is also attested in the control
group, although at a reduced scale. Thus, although in test 1 the learners accepted standard clefts and
pseudoclefts, they did not completely acquire the target grammar.
The results presented do not question a possible facilitating effect of L2, since there is no evidence
of generalized rejection of object clefts or acceptance of empty C in clefts, which implies that the
association of the [+focus] feature to the left periphery is acquired. In the case of é-que clefts and
semipseudoclefts, we explored an explanation for the difficulty faced by the learners and we suggest
that it lies in the association of a [+focus] feature to the expression é que, and to ser “be” in the
semipseudoclefts. As for the agreement patterns in standard clefts and pseudoclefts, the persistence of
the problems may suggest an influence of semantic agreement. The study conducted a comparative analysis of the syntax of EP and MC cleft structures,
suggesting a scale of difficulty concerning the L3 acquisition of EP cleft structures by L1-MC learners:
standard cleft > pseudocleft > é-que cleft > semipseudocleft. Notwithstanding, the syntactic structures
of various clefting strategies in EP, MC and English and the nature of such structures at the syntaxdiscourse
interface require further analysis. The native speakers’ sensitivity to the different clefting
patterns considering the different syntactic functions of the clefted constituents also captured our
attention and can lead to more profound investigation of these structures. Apart from testing the subject
and the object, more testing could be conducted on other clefted constituents with diverse syntactic
functions. The contrasts shown in the responses of the native speakers and the learners in the experiment allow to formulate new research questions. For instance, in the field of linguistic
processing, it would be relevant to examine whether the native speakers and the advanced L2 speakers
process certain structures distinctly. As regards SLA, although it was not the goal of this work to
corroborate any SLA model, future studies could focus on discerning the potential effects of the L1
or/and the L2 on the L3 acquisition of EP syntax
Mission: Vol. 19, No. 6
Mission: Vol. 19, No. 6. The articles in this issue include: Unto You a Child is Born from the Editor, John by George Ewing, God in Our Arena by Frank C. Perry, When the Time Was Ripe by Leroy Garrett, Going Home for Christmas by Robert E. Seymour, Seasons by William T. Stewart, Missing by C. Leonard Allen, Intellectual Pursuits in Our Colleges by Robert M. Randolph, Getting to Know Us the Editor, Doctrinal Reflections: Restorationism: The Past and the Future by Lynn E. Mitchell, Jr., BOOKS: Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces (Peter J. Schakel) reviewed by Bruce L. Edwards, Jr., and Forum
The Sacramental Work of John Mill, Minister at Dunrossness, Shetland, 1743-1805, As Illustrative of Practices at and Preaching on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in Eighteenth Century Scotland
Our aim is to present, as an Appendix, a transcription of the sacramental work of John Mill from the original, written in his own hand, and to discover what that document and related works reveal of sacramental practice and preaching in 18th. Century Scotland
Missional Metamorphosis: How Identity, Presence, and Praxis Are Reshaping Disciple Making within Post-Christian Contexts
The American Church’s current disciple-making paradigm is struggling to engage post-Christian contexts with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Despite American society’s steady trending away from a biblical worldview, dwindling church attendance, and declining religious affiliation, the American Church is still operating under a disciple-making paradigm conducive for the Christendom era. What changes must occur to help churches break away from an antiquated paradigm and embrace a more contextually appropriate expression? This project helps to answer that question by capturing and expressing how changes in ecclesial identity, contextual presence, and corporate praxis are altering disciple-making paradigms within post-Christian contexts. Utilizing quantitative data derived from local churches within the Florida Baptist Association and qualitative data from leading practitioners within the field of the missional church movement, this project offers a way forward and suggests the changes necessary for transitioning toward a new disciple-making paradigm within post-Christian contexts
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