612 research outputs found

    Thick Concepts and Variability

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    Some philosophers hold that so-called "thick" terms and concepts in ethics (such as 'cruel,' 'selfish,' 'courageous,' and 'generous') are contextually variable with respect to the valence (positive or negative) of the evaluations that they may be used to convey. Some of these philosophers use this variability claim to argue that thick terms and concepts are not inherently evaluative in meaning; rather their use conveys evaluations as a broadly pragmatic matter. I argue that one sort of putative examples of contextual variability in evaluative valence that are found in the literature fail to support the variability claim and that another sort of putative examples are open to a wide range of explanations that have different implications for the relationship between thick terms and concepts and evaluation. I conclude that considerations of contextual variability fail to settle whether thick terms and concepts are inherently evaluative in meaning. In closing I suggest a more promising line of research

    The semantics of gradation

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    The term 'gradation' is meant to cover a range of phenomena which for the time being I shall call quantitative evaluations regarding dimensions or features. I shall actually be looking into the principles governing the way gradation is expressed in language. The quantitative aspect of the adjectives of dimension occupies a key position which can be systematically explained and this aspect will be the crucial point of the discussion. I shall focus on the various grammatical forms of comparison: comparative, equative, superlative and some related constructions, and indications of measurement and adverbial indications of degree

    Impersonation, Expectation and Humorous Affiliation

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    This thesis investigates how comedians employ impersonation and expectation to create humorous affiliation in stand-up comedy texts. Stand-up comedy is enjoying a surge in popularity and diversification as web-based content streaming services offer comedians opportunities to record live performances for global dissemination. As such, the genre constitutes a rich site for the study of how semiotic resources contribute to interactional humour. However, despite its increasing relevance, stand-up comedy remains relatively underexplored, especially from a linguistic perspective. Consequently, this thesis aims to advance the linguistic cartography of how meaning making resources contribute to humour in stand-up comedy. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is adopted as the theoretical foundation to undertake this investigation as it provides a unitary theoretical and analytical model for interpreting the relationship between instances of meaning in context and language as a system for enacting social relations. By drawing on emergent work on multimodality and paralanguage, the thesis extends and develops the SFL affiliation model to explore how language and laughter can be analysed as negotiations of social bonds. This allows the research to explore instances of humour that mark shared community affiliation. It also enables the thesis to develop a consolidated analytical framework for identifying and analysing the intermodal semiotic resources that contribute to impersonation and expectation in humorous affiliation. This framework incorporates analysis of gesture and voice quality – vital but underexplored paralinguistic resources in humour. The framework is then applied through close discourse analysis of three stand-up comedy texts by different comedians. The findings of the thesis outline typical and more complex realisations of intermodal impersonation, differentiate categories in how comedians employ impersonation to create humour, and describe how linguistic expectation can be established and subverted for humorous effect. Across these results, a common theme observed is that impersonation and expectation resources afford comedians the ability to specify the context within which particular social bonds are interpreted, which in turn grants them greater influence over how the audience will respond to their jokes

    Take 2 personality factors: A study of two fundamental ways of trait differentiation in eleven trait taxonomies

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    We investigated a two-dimensional structure of traits in eleven trait-taxonomies. Ratings from 7,104 participants on 4,642 trait variables were used. We studied exploratory two-factor (PCA) results, hierarchies of solutions with two and five factors, second-order structures of solutions with five factors, and confirmatory analyses. Moreover, we did the same analyses on the joint data set (using Simultaneous Components Analyses), initially consisting of 4,642 trait variables, but reduced on the basis of common trait terms to 922 terms. The two factors were easily identified in the separate data sets, though the relation with the Big Five factors was not consistently the same for those data sets. The analyses of the joint data set clearly supported the two-factor model

    Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of approach- and avoidance-related social information.

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    Lawful functions and program verification in Miranda

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    AbstractLaws in the Miranda programming language provide a means of implementing non-free algebraic types, by means of term rewriting. In this paper we investigate program verification in such a context. Specifically, we look at how to deduce properties of functions over these “lawful” types. After examining the general problem, we look at a particular class of functions, the faithful functions. For such functions we are able, in a direct manner, to transfer properties of functions from free types to non-free types. We introduce sufficient model theory to explain these transfer results, and then find characterisations of various classes of faithful functions. Then we investigate an application of this technique to general, unfaithful, situations. In conclusion we survey Wadler's work on views and assess the utility of laws and views

    Aesthetic Adjectives

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    Among semanticists and philosophers of language, there has been a recent outburst of interest in predicates such as delicious, called predicates of personal taste (PPTs, e.g. Lasersohn 2005). Somewhat surprisingly, the question of whether or how we can distinguish aesthetic predicates from PPTs has hardly been addressed at all in this recent work. It is precisely this question that we address. We investigate linguistic criteria that we argue can be used to delineate the class of specifically aesthetic adjectives. We show that there are, in fact, good motivations for keeping PPTs and aesthetic predicates apart: the semantic structure of the former, but not the latter, entails an experiencer. There are many adjectives whose semantic structure arguably also entails an experiencer, yet which are readily used in expressing aesthetic judgments. Adjectives such as provocative or moving are a case in point, since as adjectives they arguably maintain the experiencer argument from the verb they are derived from. Nevertheless, when we describe, say, a sculpture as provocative, or a theater performance as moving, we clearly make aesthetic judgments. The difficult question, then, is to articulate the relationship between an aesthetic predicate (of which beautiful and ugly are paradigms) and other predicates that just happen to be used in making an aesthetic judgment. Tightly related to this point is the more general question of the relationship between an evaluative predicate and a predicate that occurs in an evaluative judgment. One of our aims is to make some progress in addressing these questions

    Aesthetic Adjectives

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    International audienceWe investigate various linguistic criteria that may be used in delineating the class of aesthetic adjectives. We also discuss the relationship between genuinely aesthetic adjectives (of which 'beautiful' and 'ugly' are paradigms) and other adjectives that may, but need not, be used in making an aesthetic judgment
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