Perspective and attribution : the cognitive representation of biblical narrative

Frequently, a narrative leaves room for different interpretations. Perspectival ambiguities, in particular, may lead to different interpretations of narrative discourse. In this paper, it is argued that the analysis of perspectival ambiguities can be grounded in a cognitive-linguistic approach to mental space representations or embedded domains. In such cases, readers may arrive at different possible domain structures as a representation of the narrative. This model is exemplified by the study of the biblical story Solomon's Judgment. The domain structure analysis offers explanations for different ways in which translators and readers represent ambiguities in this story. Eleven translations were compared. In a pilot experiment, students of Tilburg University were randomly assigned to an idiolect translation group (N= 20), or a dynamic-equivalent translation group (N = 20). Differences in the students' representation of the story were found. The implications of these findings are discussed and re-examined by means of a second experiment

Tunable sensor response by voltage-control in biomimetic hair flow sensors

We present an overview of improvements in detection limit and responsivity of our biomimetic hair flow sensors by electrostatic spring-softening (ESS). Applying a DC-bias voltage to our capacitive flow sensors improves the responsively by up to 80% for flow signals at frequencies below the sensor’s resonance. Application of frequency matched AC-bias voltages allows for tunable filtering and selective gain up to 20 dB. Furthermore, the quality and fidelity of low frequency flow measurements can be improved using a non frequency-matched AC-bias voltage, resulting in a flow detection limit down to 5 mm/s at low (30 Hz) frequencies. The merits and applicability of the three methods are discussed

Smoothly moving through mental spaces. Linguistic patterns of viewpoint transfer in news narratives

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Пекинская опера – достояние Китайского национального театра

Contains fulltext : 161924.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)20 p

The Use of Perspective Markers and Connectives in Expressing Subjectivity: Evidence from Collocational Analyses

This study explores how subjectivity is expressed in coherence relations, by means of a distinctive collocational analysis on two Chinese causal connectives: the specific subjective kejian ‘so’, used in subjective argument-claim relations, and the underspecified suoyi ‘so’, which can be used in both subjective argument-claim and objective cause-consequence relations. On the basis of both Horn’s pragmatic Relation and Quality principles and the Uniform Information Density Theory, we hypothesized that the presence of other linguistic elements expressing subjectivity in a discourse segment should be related the degree of subjectivity encoded by the connective. In line with this hypothesis, the association scores showed that suoyi is more frequently combined with perspective markers expressing epistemic stance: cognition verbs and modal verbs. Kejian, which already expresses epistemic stance, co-occurred more often with perspective markers related to attitudinal stance, such as markers of expectedness and importance. The paper also pays attention to similarities and differences in collocation patterns across contexts and genres

Narrative Elements in Expository Texts: A Corpus Study of Educational Textbooks

While the use of narrative elements in educational texts seems to be an adequate means to enhance students’ engagement and comprehension, we know little about how and to what extent these elements are used in the present-day educational practice. In this quantitative corpus-based analysis, we chart how and when narrative elements are used in current Dutch educational texts (N=999). While educational texts have traditionally been considered prime exemplars of expository texts, we show that the distinction between the expository and narrative genre is not that strict in the educational domain: prototypical narrative elements – particularized events, experiencing characters, and landscapes of consciousness – occur in 45% of the corpus’ texts. Their distribution varies between school subjects: while specific events, specific people, and their experiences are often at the heart of the to-be-learned information in history texts, narrativity is less present in the educational content of biology and geography texts. Instead publishers employ narrative-like strategies to make these texts more concrete and imaginable, such as the addition of fictitious characters and representative entities

Dynamics of rotating nanoparticles mediated by the Casimir torque

The vacuum and thermal fluctuations of the electromagnetic field give rise to important phenomena, such as Casimir forces and torques, which can dominate the dynamics of nanoscale particles. Although these interactions have hindered the design of early nanomechanical devices by causing their moving parts to stall due to friction and stiction, they also present a unique opportunity to achieve efficient momentum and energy transfer at the nanoscale, when properly controlled. In that context, we study how the Casimir torque can mediate the transfer of angular momentum in chains of rotating nanoparticles. To that end, we derive an analytic expression describing the Casimir torque experienced by each particle in the chain, which we use to calculate the rotational dynamics of the chain and, thereby, analyze the angular momentum transfer. We show that these dynamics are fully determined by a set of natural modes and corresponding decay rates. With this paradigm, we investigate examples of exotic and driven dynamics. These results show that the Casimir torque can play a dominant role in angular momentum transfer at the nanoscale and, therefore, holds important possibilities for the design of nanomechanical devices

The Littlewood-Gowers problem

We show that if A is a subset of Z/pZ (p a prime) of density bounded away from 0 and 1 then the A(Z/pZ)-norm (that is the l^1-norm of the Fourier transform) of the characterstic function of A is bounded below by an absolute constant times (log p)^{1/2 - \epsilon} as p tends to infinity. This improves on the exponent 1/3 in recent work of Green and Konyagin.Comment: 31 pp. Corrected typos. Updated references