'Grammatici certant. Review article of 'The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'(2002) by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum

The first large-scale modern grammars of English were Quirk et al.'s A grammar of contemporary English (1972) and A comprehensive grammar of the English language (1985). It has taken 18 years for a major competitor to be published. Many linguists, especially those whose main focus is English, will have looked forward to the publication of the present book. The Cambridge grammar of the English language (henceforth CaGEL) is first and foremost the brainchild of Rodney Huddleston, whose 1984 Introduction to the grammar of English had already established itself as an important text. He was joined by Geoffrey Pullum and the other authors listed above at various points in time

Exact and Truncated Dynamics in Nonequilibrium Field Theory

Nonperturbative dynamics of quantum fields out of equilibrium is often described by the time evolution of a hierarchy of correlation functions, using approximation methods such as Hartree, large N, and nPI-effective action techniques. These truncation schemes can be implemented equally well in a classical statistical system, where results can be tested by comparison with the complete nonlinear evolution obtained by numerical methods. For a 1+1 dimensional scalar field we find that the early-time behaviour is reproduced qualitatively by the Hartree dynamics. The inclusion of direct scattering improves this to the quantitative level. We show that the emergence of nonthermal temperature profiles at intermediate times can be understood in terms of the fixed points of the evolution equations in the Hartree approximation. The form of the profile depends explicitly on the initial ensemble. While the truncated evolution equations do not seem to be able to get away from the fixed point, the full nonlinear evolution shows thermalization with a (surprisingly) slow relaxation.Comment: 30 pages with 12 eps figures, minor changes; to appear in Phys.Rev.

Dynamics of broken symmetry lambda phi^4 field theory

We study the domain of validity of a Schwinger-Dyson (SD) approach to non-equilibrium dynamics when there is broken symmetry. We perform exact numerical simulations of the one- and two-point functions of lambda phi^4 field theory in 1+1 dimensions in the classical domain for initial conditions where < phi(x) > not equal to 0. We compare these results to two self-consistent truncations of the SD equations which ignore three-point vertex function corrections. The first approximation, which sets the three-point function to one (the bare vertex approximation (BVA)) gives an excellent description for < phi(x) > = phi(t). The second approximation which ignores higher in 1/N corrections to the 2-PI generating functional (2PI -1/N expansion) is not as accurate for phi(t). Both approximations have serious deficiencies in describing the two-point function when phi(0) > .4.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

The Caregivers’ Voice

to provide the caregivers’ perspective on being involved in design for well-being, Christine De lille spoke to care professionals at De Wever, an institution which specialises in care for elderly with dementia

Hitting Sets when the Shallow Cell Complexity is Small

The hitting set problem is a well-known NP-hard optimization problem in which, given a set of elements and a collection of subsets, the goal is to find the smallest selection of elements, such that each subset contains at least one element in the selection. Many geometric set systems enjoy improved approximation ratios, which have recently been shown to be tight with respect to the shallow cell complexity of the set system. The algorithms that exploit the cell complexity, however, tend to be involved and computationally intensive. This paper shows that a slightly improved asymptotic approximation ratio for the hitting set problem can be attained using a much simpler algorithm: solve the linear programming relaxation, take one initial random sample from the set of elements with probabilities proportional to the LP-solution, and, while there is an unhit set, take an additional sample from it proportional to the LP-solution. Our algorithm is a simple generalization of the elegant net-finder algorithm by Nabil Mustafa. To analyze this algorithm for the hitting set problem, we generalize the classic Packing Lemma, and the more recent Shallow Packing Lemma, to the setting of weighted epsilon-nets.Comment: Accepted by WAOA202

Profiling the English verb phrase over time: Modal patterns

In recent work it has been demonstrated by various scholars that the use of modal verbs has changed in past decades (Krug Reference Krug2000; Leech Reference Leech and Facchinetti2003; Smith Reference Smith and Facchinetti2003; and especially Leech et al. Reference Leech, Hundt, Mair and Smith2009). In earlier work Close and Aarts (Reference Close, Aarts, Lenker, Huber and Mailhammer2010) and Aarts, Close, and Wallis (Reference Aarts, Close, Leech and Wallis2013) looked at the changing use of the modal and semi-modal auxiliaries in spoken English. While the results of these investigations are extremely valuable, they tell us very little about how modal verb usage has changed within the various modal verb phrase patterns. To our knowledge no one has ever looked at the frequencies of these various patterns, let alone how they have changed over time. In Section 4.2 we briefly introduce the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE; Aarts and Wallis 2006) which has been used as a database for the present research. In Section 4.3 we look at previous research on changes in the use of modal verbs as individual items (‘core modals’) in written English. We will compare our findings on spoken English with those obtained by Leech (Reference Leech and Facchinetti2003) and Leech et al. (Reference Leech, Hundt, Mair and Smith2009) for written English in Section 4.4. In Section 4.5 we look at relative changes, while in Section 4.6 we will present the results of the research we have done on modal verbs occurring in various patterns, and how modal usage in these patterns has developed over time. In Section 4.7 we discuss our results. The final section is the conclusion

Transport coefficients from the 2PI effective action

We show that the lowest nontrivial truncation of the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action correctly determines transport coefficients in a weak coupling or 1/N expansion at leading (logarithmic) order in several relativistic field theories. In particular, we consider a single real scalar field with cubic and quartic interactions in the loop expansion, the O(N) model in the 2PI-1/N expansion, and QED with a single and many fermion fields. Therefore, these truncations will provide a correct description, to leading (logarithmic) order, of the long time behavior of these systems, i.e. the approach to equilibrium. This supports the promising results obtained for the dynamics of quantum fields out of equilibrium using 2PI effective action techniques.Comment: 5 pages, explanation in introduction expanded, summary added; to appear in PR

The Complex Langevin method: When can it be trusted?

We analyze to what extent the complex Langevin method, which is in principle capable of solving the so-called sign problems, can be considered as reliable. We give a formal derivation of the correctness and then point out various mathematical loopholes. The detailed study of some simple examples leads to practical suggestions about the application of the method.Comment: 14 pages, including several eps figures and tables; clarification and minor corrections added, to appear in PR