On Left and Right Dislocation: A Dynamic Perspective

The paper argues that by modelling the incremental and left-right process of interpretation as a process of growth of logical form (representing logical forms as trees), an integrated typology of left-dislocation and right-dislocation phenomena becomes available, bringing out not merely the similarities between these types of phenomena, but also their asymmetry. The data covered include hanging topic left dislocation, clitic left dislocation, left dislocation, pronoun doubling, expletives, extraposition, and right node raising, with each set of data analysed in terms of general principles of tree growth. In the light of the success in providing a characterisation of the asymmetry between left and right periphery phenomena, a result not achieved in more wellknown formalisms, the paper concludes that grammar formalisms should model the dynamics of language processing in time.Articl

Ancestor Worship in The Logic of Games. How foundational were Aristotle\u27s contributions?

Notwithstanding their technical virtuosity and growing presence in mainstream thinking, game theoretic logics have attracted a sceptical question: Granted that logic can be done game theoretically, but what would justify the idea that this is the preferred way to do it?\u27\u27 A recent suggestion is that at least part of the desired support might be found in the Greek dialectical writings. If so, perhaps we could say that those works possess a kind of foundational significance. The relation of being foundational for is interesting in its own right. In this paper, I explore its ancient applicability to relevant, paraconsistent and nonmonotonic logics, before returning to the question of its ancestral tie, or want of one, to the modern logics of games

Reciprocity as a foundation of financial economics

This paper argues that the subsistence of the fundamental theorem of contemporary financial mathematics is the ethical concept ‘reciprocity’. The argument is based on identifying an equivalence between the contemporary, and ostensibly ‘value neutral’, Fundamental Theory of Asset Pricing with theories of mathematical probability that emerged in the seventeenth century in the context of the ethical assessment of commercial contracts in a framework of Aristotelian ethics. This observation, the main claim of the paper, is justified on the basis of results from the Ultimatum Game and is analysed within a framework of Pragmatic philosophy. The analysis leads to the explanatory hypothesis that markets are centres of communicative action with reciprocity as a rule of discourse. The purpose of the paper is to reorientate financial economics to emphasise the objectives of cooperation and social cohesion and to this end, we offer specific policy advice

Asymmetric function theory

The classical theory of symmetric functions has a central position in algebraic combinatorics, bridging aspects of representation theory, combinatorics, and enumerative geometry. More recently, this theory has been fruitfully extended to the larger ring of quasisymmetric functions, with corresponding applications. Here, we survey recent work extending this theory further to general asymmetric polynomials.Comment: 36 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Written for the proceedings of the Schubert calculus conference in Guangzhou, Nov. 201

A game theoretical analysis of economic sanction

Economic sanction has been widely used and increasingly a popular tool in maintaining peace and political stability in the world. The use of economic sanction, as opposed to the use of military power, to punish target countries have been supported by the Charter of United Nations (UN). Tsebelis (1990) modelled economic sanctions using game theory and found that any attempt to increase the severity of the sanctions was counterintuitive, namely the policy reduced the likelihood of sender country(s) in enforcing economic sanction, however, it did not change the probability of the target country(s) in violating international agreement/law. This paper focuses on the refinement of the sanction game proposed by Tsebelis (1990) to analyse international relations. Recent findings from various studies on the effectiveness of economic sanction have been used to reconstruct the game. In contrast to Tsebelis’(1990) findings, any attempt to increase the severity of economic sanction may reduce the probability of the target country(s) in violating international agreement/law. A similar result was obtained in the case for which the sender country(s) applies any policy in preventing violation of international agreement/law by providing aids, assistances, and incentives to the target country.Economic Sanction; the Sanction/Inspection Games; Mixed Strategy Equilibrium