Architecture Specifications in CλaSH

This paper introduces CλaSH, a novel hardware specification environment, by discussing several non-trivial examples. CλaSH is based on the functional language Haskell, and exploits many of its powerful abstraction mechanisms such as higher order functions, polymorphism, lambda abstraction, pattern matching, type derivation. As a result, specifications in CλaSH are concise and semantically clear, and simulations can be directly executed within a Haskell evaluation environment. CλaSH generates synthesizable low-level VHDL code by applying several transformation rules to a functional specification of a digital circuit

Orientalism and the puzzle of the Aryan invasion theory

The origin of the Aryan invasion theory (AIT) is generally located in the discovery of the Indo-European and Dravidian language families. However, these discoveries cannot account for the emergence of the AIT, because the postulation of the invasion preceded the linguistic research. In its search for an alternative account of the cognitive conditions under which this theory could come into being, this article illustrates a particular way of studying the intellectual history of Orientalism. The Orientalist discourse on India is approached as a body of reflections on the western cultural experience of India. This perspective brings us to the thesis that the pre-conditions for the emergence of the AIT lay in the postulation of two entities in the Orientalist discourse on India: the ‘Hindu religion’ and its ‘caste system’. Both these notions and the AIT appeared cogent and coherent to European minds, because they mirrored internal developments within European culture and its intellectual debates, which had given shape to Europe’s experience of India

Ever Closer Union or Babylonian Discord?

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union. However, a large number of official languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. We address the merits of multilingualism and formulate an analytical framework to determine the optimal number of official languages in the EU. Using the results of a 2005 Eurobarometer survey of languages in the EU 27, we first derive the sets of languages that minimize aggregate linguistic disenfranchisement of the Unionís citizens for any given number of languages. We then proceed by discussing the political-economy framework and feasibility of a potential linguistic reform in the EU under alternative voting rules. We argue that a six-language regime would be a reasonable intermediate choice: a lower number of official languages results in excessive linguistic disenfranchisement whereas adding further languages increases the costs but brings only limited benefits. We also show that even though a linguistic reform reducing the number of official languages to six is unlikely to gain sufficient support at the present, this may change in the future since young people are more proficient at speaking foreign languages.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64410/1/wp887.pd