What's really going on with the ham sandwich? An investigation into the nature of referential metonymy

Working within the framework of Relevance Theory, I investigate the nature of referential metonymy (specifically, metonymically-used definite descriptions), aiming to elucidate (i) the pragmatic mechanisms involved in referential metonymy comprehension, and (ii) the contribution of a metonymically-used definite description to the explicitly communicated content of an utterance. I propose that, while the interpretation of referential metonymy is properly inferential in nature, it cannot be explained in terms of 'meaning modulation' (narrowing and broadening); rather, the literal meaning of a metonymically-used referring expression remains intact, and is used as evidence of the speaker's target referent. In addition, I argue that the referential/attributive distinction proposed by Donnellan (1966) for literally-used definite descriptions also applies to metonymically-used definite descriptions. Thus, the contribution of a metonymically-used definite description to explicit utterance content differs according to whether the definite description is used 'referentially' or 'attributively'

An Experimental Study of Centrifugal Pump Impellers

This report summarizes about three years of experimental work on centrifugal pump impellers by the hydraulic machinery group of the Hydrodynamics Laboratory. Some of the work discussed herein has already been reported as individual investigations by this project. This report embodies these earlier results together with more complete and recent investigations of centrifugal pump impellers

Effect of the Volute on Performance of a Centrifugal-Pump Impeller

An experimental study of volute influence on radial flow-impeller performance was conducted by operating a single impeller with three different sets of volute vanes. In each case, over-all performance was measured and an internal-flow study within the volute was made. The results show that at their respective design flow rates the influence of the volutes is least and the deviation of performance from the free-impeller operation is small. At off-design flow rates there are major changes in the impeller performance resulting from the presence of the volutes. Large real fluid effects, coupled with a nonuniform velocity pattern at the impeller exit, result in a flow through the volute that does not resemble a potential flow. Even so, the fluid losses through the volute are comparatively small

An Experimental Study of Centrifugal-Pump Impellers

Experimental investigations were made on four two-dimensional impellers and on a well-designed commercial three-dimensional Francis impeller. The over-all performance of each of these impellers was measured and internal-energy loss and pressure-distribution data were also obtained for several impellers. The exit angle of the two-dimensional impellers was fixed and the inlet angle was systematically varied. However, the hydraulic characteristics of these impellers were all found to differ, the source of the variation being in the various loss distributions and hence internal flow patterns in the impellers. The two-dimensional and three-dimensional impeller-loss distributions were also different. The Francis-impeller performance agreed better with potential theory than that of the two-dimensional impellers, and it is included that the different loss distributions of the two types are responsible

Cut and break clips

How do different languages treat a particular semantic domain? It has already been established that languages have widely varied words for talking about “cutting” and “breaking” things: for example, English has a very general verb break, but K’iche’ Maya has many different ‘break’ verbs that are used for different kinds of objects (e.g., brittle, flexible, long). The aim of this task is to map out cross-linguistic lexicalisation patterns in the cutting/breaking domain. The stimuli comprise 61 short video clips that show one or two actors breaking various objects (sticks, carrots, pieces of cloth or string, etc.) using various instruments (a knife, a hammer, an axe, their hands, etc.), or situations in which various kinds of objects break spontaneously. The clips are used to elicit descriptions of actors’ actions and the state changes that the objects undergo