The brain is a prediction machine that cares about good and bad - Any implications for neuropragmatics?

Experimental pragmatics asks how people construct contextualized meaning in communication. So what does it mean for this field to add neuroas a prefix to its name? After analyzing the options for any subfield of cognitive science, I argue that neuropragmatics can and occasionally should go beyond the instrumental use of EEG or fMRI and beyond mapping classic theoretical distinctions onto Brodmann areas. In particular, if experimental pragmatics ‘goes neuro’, it should take into account that the brain evolved as a control system that helps its bearer negotiate a highly complex, rapidly changing and often not so friendly environment. In this context, the ability to predict current unknowns, and to rapidly tell good from bad, are essential ingredients of processing. Using insights from non-linguistic areas of cognitive neuroscience as well as from EEG research on utterance comprehension, I argue that for a balanced development of experimental pragmatics, these two characteristics of the brain cannot be ignored

L’ABÎME DU SENS OU LE CHAUDRON DES SIGNES. SENS ET TERTIUM QUID : SHAKESPEARE TRADUCTEUR ?

Sum of atoms or molecules that are the signs that the author of a text organizes in speech, the text contains meaning, in latency. To activate it, reveal it must be interpreted, whether or not the purpose is to translate it. When it comes to translating, the difficulties presented by the translation of normative texts are due in large part to the notional burden, the degree of “juridical status” of the message conveyed by the text and the cultural singularity revealed by its mode of writing. While the substance of a text is of paramount importance in its interpretation, the manner in which it is written and presented – its form – is far from negligible. Each way of saying carries its own, and participates in the, meaning. The approach defined for the translation, sourcing (least-cultural) or targeting (most-cultural), guides the meaning. That is when the final interpretation of the two versions of the instrumental text by the courts fulfils the canonical function of law and language: to say the law by determining the meaning of all or part of a text. Until then, the signs generating the speech and its meaning nested in this place of uncertainty that is the tertium quid, where rest, like the ingredients that the Sisters of Destiny (Macbeth) stir in their cauldron, the signs of where meaning will come out, an uncertain and precarious truth deduced by the original interpreter of the instrumental text, the translator, transcribed into the target text. Would Shakespeare provide an answer to the existential questions posed by the translator, when the spectre (Hamlet) and the witches (Macbeth), enigmatic oracles, answer the protagonists' ontological questions about the meaning and direction of their lives? The bard indeed launches this injunction: keep law and form and due proportion in Richard II (3.4.43)! Will the translator follow him in each of these three directions

A Behavioral Confirmation and Reduction of the Natural versus Synthetic Drug Bias

Research reveals a biased preference for natural versus synthetic drugs; however, this research is based upon self-report and has not examined ways to reduce the bias. We examined these issues in five studies involving 1,125 participants. In a Pilot Study (N = 110), participants rated the term natural to be more positive than the term synthetic, which reveals a default natural-is-better belief. In Studies 1 (N = 109) and 2 (N = 100), after a supposed personality study, participants were offered a thank you “gift” of a natural or synthetic pain reliever. Approximately 86% (Study 1) and 93% (Study 2) of participants chose the natural versus synthetic pain reliever, which provide a behavioral choice confirmation of the natural drug bias. In Studies 3 (N = 350) and 4 (N = 356), participants were randomly assigned to a control or experimental condition and were asked to consider a scenario in which they had a medical issue requiring a natural versus synthetic drug. The experimental condition included a stronger (Study 3) or weaker (Study 4) rational appeal about the natural drug bias and a statement suggesting that natural and synthetic drugs can be good or bad depending upon the context. In both studies, the natural bias was reduced in the experimental condition, and perceived safety and effectiveness mediated this effect. Overall, these data indicate a bias for natural over synthetic drugs in preferences and behavioral choices, which might be reduced with a rational appeal

Proud to be a Goan: colonial memories, post-colonial identities and music

During 451 years of colonial history, catholic Goans used music as a mediator of identity negotiation. In a political context repressing musical sonority of Indian flavour, in which Portuguese was the official language, catholic Goans created their own music, sung in Konkani and performed according to Portuguese models. Mandó among other hybrid and ambivalent musical genres, comprehen- sible for colonial rulers and Goans but with different significance for both, acquired an emblematic status. After 1961 Goa becomes an Indian territory, and the Goan diaspora, into Europe, America and Africa, increased. With it, the homeland myth created the ne- cessity to isolate some cultural ingredients in order to maintain their cultural ties within an alien territory. Musical genres de- veloped in Goa were recreated not for their colonial memory but because they allowed Goans to prove their difference. This paper tries to inscribe Goans as a paradigmatic case of diasporic com- munities where music acquires central status in the process of post-colonial identification and as an instrument of conciliation.FCTFundação Orient

Secondary predication in Russian

The paper makes two contributions to semantic typology of secondary predicates. It provides an explanation of the fact that Russian has no resultative secondary predicates, relating this explanation to the interpretation of secondary predicates in English. And it relates depictive secondary predicates in Russian, which usually occur in the instrumental case, to other uses of the instrumental case in Russian, establishing here, too, a difference to English concerning the scope of the secondary predication phenomenon

Modelling and interpreting spectral energy distributions of galaxies with BEAGLE

We present a new-generation tool to model and interpret spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies, which incorporates in a consistent way the production of radiation and its transfer through the interstellar and intergalactic media. This flexible tool, named BEAGLE (for BayEsian Analysis of GaLaxy sEds), allows one to build mock galaxy catalogues as well as to interpret any combination of photometric and spectroscopic galaxy observations in terms of physical parameters. The current version of the tool includes versatile modeling of the emission from stars and photoionized gas, attenuation by dust and accounting for different instrumental effects, such as spectroscopic flux calibration and line spread function. We show a first application of the BEAGLE tool to the interpretation of broadband SEDs of a published sample of ${\sim}10^4$ galaxies at redshifts $0.1 \lesssim z\lesssim8$. We find that the constraints derived on photometric redshifts using this multi-purpose tool are comparable to those obtained using public, dedicated photometric-redshift codes and quantify this result in a rigorous statistical way. We also show how the post-processing of BEAGLE output data with the Python extension PYP-BEAGLE allows the characterization of systematic deviations between models and observations, in particular through posterior predictive checks. The modular design of the BEAGLE tool allows easy extensions to incorporate, for example, the absorption by neutral galactic and circumgalactic gas, and the emission from an active galactic nucleus, dust and shock-ionized gas. Information about public releases of the BEAGLE tool will be maintained on http://www.jacopochevallard.org/beagle.Comment: added missing term in equation 4.1 (Erratum submitted to MNRAS

Compositional data analysis in archaeometry

We shall call an n × p data matrix fully-compositional if the rows sum to a constant, and sub-compositional if the variables are a subset of a fully-compositional data set1. Such data occur widely in archaeometry, where it is common to determine the chemical composition of ceramic, glass, metal or other artefacts using techniques such as neutron activation analysis (NAA), inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy (ICPS), X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) etc. Interest often centres on whether there are distinct chemical groups within the data and whether, for example, these can be associated with different origins or manufacturing technologiesGeologische Vereinigung; Universitat de Barcelona, Equip de Recerca Arqueomètrica; Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya; International Association for Mathematical Geology; Patronat de l’Escola Politècnica Superior de la Universitat de Girona; Fundació privada: Girona, Universitat i Futur

Psychotherapy and social support - Integrating research on psychological helping

Psychotherapy interactions and social support conversations have many similarities, as well as some important differences. Researchers studying these two manifestations of psychological helping - often known as formal and informal helping - usually apply a separate set of concepts and methods to each and tend to locate their work in separate bodies of literature. This paper argues that such a division of the field is unnecessary and unproductive. It outlines several ways in which the two bodies of literature might inform each other and argues for conceptual integration of the two fields. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved