When Relevance saves

In this paper I wish to address one or two problems related to the treatment of natural language connectives within the framework of Relevance theory. In particular, I will address the problem of the constrainability of the theory while I will only just raise the problem of globality. I take the view that while Relevance theory may well provide an initial first order treatment of connectives it is incapable of accounting for the most interesting aspects of their meanings and functions on grounds of the maxim of Relevance alone as this would posit no independent constraints beyond the competence of the individual speaker

Problems connected with the notion of implicature

As the title suggests, the primary concern of this study is with problems arising from a very widely used notion in the recent literature of linguistics and philosophy, the notion of implicature. As this concept was introduced and developed by the philosopher H. P. Grice, the main part of the study will understandably be centred around his work. Grice distinguished between two main types of implicature, the conventional and the conversational. In the first part we will be concerned with, what Grice called, conventional implicature, and in particular with the linguistic items generating it, as described in his work. Thus the aim of this part of the study will be to investigate the nature of conventional implicata, and to ask whether they can be justifiably claimed to be nonconsequential for truth-evaluation and invariable, as Grice argues. Grice's account in this respect will be found to be partly implausible, as regards his treatment of 'therefore', and partly inadequate, as it fails to take into account the wide ranging function of 'but' - his paradigm of conventional implicature - but treats its variable meaning aspects as invariable, conventional implicature. In view of the intriguing linguistic behaviour of 'but', the main contributions to this topic in the literature will be reviewed. In the second part of the study our primary aim will be to consider in detail linguistic phenomena that come under the rubric of conversational implicature in the literature - with an emphasis on Grice's examples - with a view to detecting common characteristics that can be taken as the parameters along which these phenomena can be defined as a homogeneous class. It will be concluded that they cannot. More stringent criteria will be proposed for membership in a narrowly defined class of conversational implicature. Two classes of background knowledge and assumptions will be described and shown to bear significantly on language production and understanding and, in particular, on the production and understanding of linguistic facts that have been called conversational implicatures. It will be concluded that the term 'conversational implicature' has been misused and abused. The view taken here will be that background knowledge schemes must be taken into account and represented in a language theory, though the difficulties facing such an enterprise are well understood and acknowledged. However, the overall conclusion will be that Grice's proposal effects a cut and dried demarcation between a neat but narrowly defined truth-functional semantics, on the one hand, and an unexplicated pragmatics, on the other, that would, however, include the most intriguing aspects of language use. , This view of language is not very revealing and, hence, uninteresting and unappealing

The Reactivity of Dissolved Organic Matter for Disinfection By-Product Formation

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) in 6 water samples collected from 4 surface waters were fractionated using some or all of 5 physicochemical separation processes (activated carbon and XAD-8 batch adsorption, alum coagulation, ultrafiltration (UF), and XAD-8 column fractionation). Activated carbon, XAD-8 batch adsorption and alum coagulation processes fractionated DOM by preferentially removing high-SUVA components from solution. The XAD-8 column method fractionated DOM into hydrophobic and hydrophilic components while UF separated DOM into different size fractions. Over 40 DOM fractions, characterized using carbon-normalized (specific) ultraviolet absorbance (SUVA), were obtained for each water. Trihalomethane (THM) and haloacetic acid (HAA_9) formation after chlorination was quantified for each fraction. For each natural water, a strong correlation was observed between the SUVA values of DOM fractions and their THM and HAA_9 formations, independent of the separation processes used to obtain the fractions. Therefore, the correlation obtained for each water appears to represent its natural disinfection by-product (DBP) reactivity profile. However, SUVA is not a universal predictor of DOM reactivity because a unique DBP reactivity profile was obtained for each water tested. The distribution of SUVA within a source water and its relationship to reactivity were found to be more informative than the source water aggregate SUVA value. Individual DBP species also correlated well with the SUVA of DOM fractions in a single water. Formation of trichloroacetic acid (TCAA) was dominant over dichloroacetic acid (DCAA) for high-SUVA fractions, whereas the formation of TCAA and DCAA was comparable for low-SUVA fractions

Component resolved IR bleaching study of the blue LM-OSL signal of various quartz samples

The present work provides an initial component resolved analysis concerning the effect of infra-red (IR) exposure at elevated temperatures on the blue LM-OSL signal of quartz (stimulated at 470 nm). The study was performed on a total of seven quartz samples, among which five originated from Turkey, one from Greece and one synthetic quartz sample. For these quartz samples, the presence of 6 or even 7 independent LM-OSL components was previously reported, after the application of a computerized decomposition analysis. IR bleaching of each one of these components is studied and compared to the respective signal reduction due to the same thermal treatment solely. It is clearly demonstrated that IR stimulation at temperatures above 50 degrees C does not deplete only the fast component in most sedimentary quartz samples studied. Net depletion of fast and medium components resulting from IR exposure is sample-dependent and occurs faster as the stimulation temperature increases. Weak IR bleaching of slow components is also reported in some cases, being more effective for stimulation temperatures up to 100 degrees C. No depletion of either the medium or the slow components was detected for stimulation temperatures above 150 degrees C. Finally, IR does not stimulate any of the LM-OSL components in the case of the synthetic quartz sample.The present work was partially funded by the Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology and the E.C., under the programme “Excellence in Research Institutes GSRT (2nd round)”, sub-programme “Support for Research Activities in C.E.T.I.”.Publisher's Versio

Investigation of the OSL signal from very deep traps in natural quartz

It has been recently reported by several studies that a thermally transferred optically stimulated luminescence (TT-OSL) signal from quartz grains can be used to extend the dating range for quartz samples. The TT-OSL signals are believed to consist of a recuperated OSL (ReOSL) component and a basic-transferred OSL (BT-OSL) component. In the present work the TT-OSL signals from several types of unfired quartz samples were studied. A special protocol was used, which allowed the measure the OSL from very deep traps (VDT) as a function of the OSL stimulation temperature. It was found that all quartz samples exhibit TT-OSL signals, which are depended on sample and on the OSL stimulation temperature. The activation energy of the process was evaluated and the influences of the TT-OSL on the ReOSL dating protocol are discussed.Publisher's Versio

Preliminary results towards the equivalence of transformed continuous-wave Optically Stimulated Luminescence (CW-OSL) and linearly-modulated (LM-OSL) signals in quartz

The present paper presents a comparative experimental study of two commonly measured Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) signals in quartz. The experimental study measures both the continuous wave OSL (CW-OSL) and the linearly modulated (LM-OSL) signals from the same quartz sample for a range of stimulation temperatures between 180 and 280A degrees C, while the former is transformed to pseudo LM-OSL (ps LM-OSL). A computerized deconvolution curve analysis of the LM-OSL and ps LM-OSL signals was carried out, and the contributions of several OSL components to the initial OSL signal (0.1 s) were shown to be independent of the stimulation temperature used during the measurement. It was also found that the composite OSL (0.1 s) signal consists mainly of the first two OSL components present in the OSL curves. The equivalence of the ps LM-OSL (transformed CW-OSL) and of LM-OSL measurements was also examined by an appropriate choice of the experimental stimulation times, and of the stimulation power of the blue LEDs used during the measurement.George S. Polymeris is financially supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey), in the framework of a Post-doc Fellowship for foreign citizensPublisher's Versio

Electromagnetic Radiation Hardness of Diamond Detectors

The behavior of artificially grown CVD diamond films under intense electromagnetic radiation has been studied. The properties of irradiated diamond samples have been investigated using the method of thermally stimulated current and by studying their charge collection properties. Diamonds have been found to remain unaffected after doses of 6.8 MGy of 10 keV photons and 10 MGy of MeV-range photons. This observation makes diamond an attractive detector material for a calorimeter in the very forward region of the proposed TESLA detector.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figure