376 research outputs found
More ergodic billiards with an infinite cusp
In a previous paper (nlin.CD/0107041) the following class of billiards was
studied: For convex,
sufficiently smooth, and vanishing at infinity, let the billiard table be
defined by , the planar domain delimited by the positive -semiaxis, the
positive -semiaxis, and the graph of .
For a large class of we proved that the billiard map was hyperbolic.
Furthermore we gave an example of a family of that makes this map ergodic.
Here we extend the latter result to a much wider class of functions.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
Retranslation of humour as a positive intercultural communication strategy
Humorous discourse is a positive communication strategy, which contributes to the success of intercultural encounters. On the other hand, wrong interpretation of humorous culture-specific meanings can be a cause of communication failures. The present paper analyses five translations of I. Ilf and E. Petrov's books The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf from Russian into English. The study shows that the key factors which influence the construction of cultural meanings include: background knowledge, presuppositions, imagery, evaluation, emotional perception, cultural context, connection with precedent concepts and texts, and intertextuality. The treatment of cultural meanings also depends on the historical period when the translation is done and the political views of the translator
Escape Orbits for Non-Compact Flat Billiards
It is proven that, under some conditions on , the non-compact flat
billiard
has no orbits going {\em directly} to . The relevance of such
sufficient conditions is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 3 postscript figures available at
http://www.princeton.edu/~marco/papers/ . Minor changes since previously
posted version. Submitted to 'Chaos
CHINESE NARRATIVE SONG: STRUCTURE, LANGUAGE AND HISTORICAL DYNAMICS
The purpose of this paper is to examine the cultural and linguistic features of Chinese narrative songs of the 20th - early 21st centuries. They are explored through the theoretical frameworks and research instruments of narratology, cultural anthropology and linguistics (M. Bakhtin, R. Barthes, G. Genette, V. Propp, T. Todorov, etc.). The paper highlights the most important changes of narrative songs determined by historical events in China during the period under investigation: a) dynamics of themes, plots and attitudes towards related events - from ideological praise of the Communist party and Chair-man Mao - to a more personalized narration about people’s life and love in a globalized world; b) evo-lution of characters from selfless fighters for communism with clearly defined social identity - to general-ized lyrical personalities motivated by love, suffering, kinship and loyalty to their country; c) growth of genre variability due to the relaxation of ideological pressure and the influence of Western musical culture; d) return to the values of ancient Chinese culture and restoration of traditional national identity, implemented in background knowledge, binary oppositions and intertextual connections; e) new forms of linguistic expression.The findings indicate that the algorithm of text analysis developed in the course of the research may be used to investigate other types of Chinese narratives, as well as narratives from other cultures
Entropy production in a mesoscopic chemical reaction system with oscillatory and excitable dynamics
Stochastic thermodynamics of chemical reaction systems has recently gained
much attention. In the present paper, we consider such an issue for a system
with both oscillatory and excitable dynamics, using catalytic oxidation of
carbon monoxide on the surface of platinum crystal as an example. Starting from
the chemical Langevin equations, we are able to calculate the stochastic
entropy production P along a random trajectory in the concentration state
space. Particular attention is paid to the dependence of the time averaged
entropy productionP on the system sizeN in a parameter region close to the
deterministic Hopf bifurcation.In the large system size (weak noise) limit, we
find that P N^{\beta} with {\beta}=0 or 1 when the system is below or abovethe
Hopf bifurcation, respectively. In the small system size (strong noise) limit,
P always increases linearly with N regardless of the bifurcation parameter.
More interestingly,P could even reach a maximum for some intermediate system
size in a parameter region where the corresponding deterministic system shows
steady state or small amplitude oscillation. The maximum value of P decreases
as the system parameter approaches the so-called CANARD point where the maximum
disappears.This phenomenon could be qualitativelyunderstood by partitioning the
total entropy production into the contributions of spikes and of small
amplitude oscillations.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Nonlinear interaction of light with Bose-Einstein condensate: new methods to generate subpoissonian light
We consider -type model of the Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium
atoms interacting with the light. Coefficients of the Kerr-nonlinearity in the
condensate can achieve large and negative values providing the possibility for
effective control of group velocity and dispersion of the probe pulse. We find
a regime when the observation of the "slow" and "fast" light propagating
without absorption becomes achievable due to strong nonlinearity. An effective
two-level quantum model of the system is derived and studied based on the su(2)
polynomial deformation approach. We propose an efficient way for generation of
subpoissonian fields in the Bose-Einstein condensate at time-scales much
shorter than the characteristic decay time in the system. We show that the
quantum properties of the probe pulse can be controlled in BEC by the classical
coupling field.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl
Metaphor power and language typology: Analysis of correlation on the material of the United Nations Declarations
The established approaches to language typology share the notion that the features used as a starting point for any classification are linguistic rather than discursive. This study aims to reveal the connection between typological characteristics of languages and linguacultural patterns of expressing metaphoric meaning in discourse. We seek to answer the question: is there a correlation between the way the human mind processes metaphors, and typological characteristics of languages in which those metaphors are verbalised? The research material includes the texts of the United Nations Millennium Declaration and A Universal Declaration on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World in three languages – Russian, English and Chinese. The methodological framework is based on the quantitative analysis of indicators connected with language typology (synthesis, agglutination and isolation) and metaphor power in discourse. To determine the degree of text metaphorisation, we employed the Metaphor-driven discourse analysis (MDDA) based on the calculation of metaphor indices: Metaphor Density Index (MDI), Metaphor Intensity Index (MII), and Metaphor Functional Typology Index (MfTI). The study further juxtaposed the typology indices and metaphorisation indices to identify the correlation between the typology index values and metaphor power on the example of the UN Declarations in three languages. Research results indicate that isolating analytical languages tend to be more figurative than synthetic ones, which is reflected in higher metaphoric density, intensity of metaphor use and frequent employment of structural metaphors. The example of the Chinese language has demonstrated that its typological characteristics on the levels of graphics, word formation and syntactic structures act as prerequisites for metaphor use. The findings contribute to the understanding of the connection between fundamental frameworks of thinking, typological characteristics of languages and linguacultural patterns of expressing identical or similar meanings in discourse
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