Composing with gerunds and QC clauses: A case of factivity alternation in Bangla

This paper deals with a Bangla attitude verb, viz. bhab- ‘think’ which displays both factive and non-factive readings on the basis of the type of the items it combines with. It turns out to be factive with a gerundial DP, while it is not factive with QC clauses. This is a clear case of factivity alternation. I argue that this kind of alternation is caused mainly due to different compositional routes which this concerned attitude verb selects while composing with these two types of items. In case of the QC clauses, the composition happens by modifying the eventuality argument of the verb, which does not cause any sort of factive interpretation. Instead, the compositional route is of argumenthood which along with the pre-existence presupposition (Bondarenko 2020a) associated with the internal argument of this verb leads us to having factive inferences with gerundial complements

Coarse Cohomology of the Complement and Applications

John Roe [15] introduced the notion of coarse cohomology of a metric space to studylarge scale geometry of the space. Coarse cohomology of a metric space roughly measures the way in which uniformly large bounded set in that space fit together. In the first part of this dissertation, we describe a joint work with Boris Okun that generalizes Roe’s theory to define coarse (co)homology of complement of any given subspace in a metric space. Inspired by the work of Kapovich and Kleiner [12], we introduce a notion of a manifold like object in the coarse category (called coarse PD(n) space) and prove a coarse version of the Alexander duality for these spaces. In the second part of this dissertation, we generalize a Theorem of Roe [15] to compute coarse cohomology of the complement for many spaces by relating coarse cohomology of the complement with the Alexander–Spanier cohomology. In the final part of this dissertation, we introduce an equivariant version of coarse cohomology of the complement. We then use this theory to find obstruction to coarse embedding of a given space into any uniformly contractible n-manifold. i

The role of -i-na in Bangla ki-exclamatives

This paper analyzes the role of -i-na in Bangla ki ‘what’-exclamative structures. The distribution and behaviour of the negative marker na in the -i-na particle suggests that it is expletive in nature and is attached to the emphatic particle -i. We argue that -i-na attaches at the phrasal, but not at the sentential level. We also claim that -i-na carries an uninterpreted exclamative clause type feature and serves the purpose of domain widening which, as per Zanuttini and Portner (2003), is a crucial component of exclamatives. In this paper, we put on an argument in favour of Bangla ki having two lives: an argument life and a modifier life which is exclamatory by itself. We propose a unified semantics of -i-na, which can be compatible with both the lives of ki. Throughout the paper, we embrace the Hamblin denotation while analyzing the wh, ki and base our analysis of exclamatives on Balusu’s (2019) rendition of widening

Multivariate strong invariance principles in Markov chain Monte Carlo

Strong invariance principles in Markov chain Monte Carlo are crucial to theoretically grounded output analysis. Using the wide-sense regenerative nature of the process, we obtain explicit bounds in the strong invariance converging rates for partial sums of multivariate ergodic Markov chains. Consequently, we present results on the existence of strong invariance principles for both polynomially and geometrically ergodic Markov chains without requiring a 1-step minorization condition. Our tight and explicit rates have a direct impact on output analysis, as it allows the verification of important conditions in the strong consistency of certain variance estimators

Cosmological signatures of fundamental physics

This thesis deals with the study of the cosmological signatures of certain aspects of fundamental physics, and how cosmological observables can be used to constrain properties of fundamental particles. Over the past decades, increasingly precise measurements in cosmology have become powerful probes of fundamental physics - for example, the inference of dark matter and dark energy from cosmological observations remain the most significant evidence of new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Another example is the cosmological scalar-to-tensor ratio, which can potentially differentiate different models of inflation and other early Universe theories. Determining the absolute mass scale of neutrinos is an interesting problem in particle physics, and can shed light on the mass generation mechanism for neutrinos, which, in turn, can tell us about physics beyond the Standard Model. To fully exploit the signatures of massive neutrinos on cosmological observables, one needs to perform accurate simulations. In this thesis, we explore a new method for performing neutrino simulations, which overcome the shortcomings of previous methods which were employed. From these simulations, we identify an observable which is very sensitive to the neutrino mass - the clustering of cosmological voids on large scales. We also forecast how well the neutrino masses and thermal ``dark radiation'' models can be constrained in future cosmological surveys using their effect on various observables in these surveys, such as the clustering of galaxies, galaxy-galaxy lensing, and cosmic shear. Cosmological observables can also be used to constrain the properties of Dark Matter itself. While Dark Matter has traditionally been considered a collisionless fluid, there has been recent interest in self-interactions of dark matter. We consider a special form of self-interactions in this thesis - where the interactions are elastic but anisotropic. We develop the formalism and methods to simulate these interactions, and study the signatures of these interactions on the properties of dark matter halos