European structuralism

European structuralism is a paradigm for the study of language developed by prominent European linguists during the inter-war period and the first decades after World War II that radically rejected the prevailing atomism of 19th century (particularly neo-grammarian) linguistics and language psychology

ἔγραψέ μοι γάρ ... τὰ νῦν οὖν γράφω σοι. οὖν and γάρ as inferential and elaborative discourse markers in Greek papyrus letters (I – IV AD)

I analyse the use of the particles οὖν and γάρ in a corpus of documentary texts ranging from the first to the fourth century AD. I attempt to answer three main research questions: (i) with what frequency are οὖν and γάρ used; was one of these particles used more frequently than the other?; (ii) what are the functional/syntactic similarities and differences between the two particles; (iii) are there signs of functional development? My observations are framed within ‘discourse marker theory’, whereby οὖν and γάρ are viewed as ‘inferential’ and ‘elaborative’ discourse markers

Componential analysis

Componential analysis is a method of semantic analysis based on the assumption that the meaning of words can be adequately described by a set of primitive semantic features

The syntax of the periphrastic progressive in the Septuagint and the New Testament

In this article, I discuss the use of the periphrastic progressive construction of εἰμί "be" with present participle in the Septuagint and the New Testament. I argue that a broad distinction can be made between two main uses, called ‘durative progressive’ and ‘focalized progressive’. In both cases, a number of syntactic frames can be specified in which the periphrastic construction occurs. I conclude the article by discussing the relationship between the Septuagintal and the New Testamental use of the periphrastic construction, arguing that while there are many similarities, this relationship should not be conceived of in terms of imitation, as some scholars have suggested

Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC analysis)

Immediate Constituent Analysis is a structural method for analysing the hierarchical relations among the constituents of complex linguistic constructions, proceeding consecutively from the higher to the next lower level until no further breakdown into smaller units is possible

Country size and publicly provided goods

This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in small countries have greater influence over the nature of political decision making while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more public goods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists excessive incentives to separate, though this need not be the case for all sets of secession rules studied; (ii) an exogenous increase in public spending decreases country size; (iii) countries with a presidential-congressional democracy are larger than countries with a parliamentary democracy

The Fine-Tuning Argument

Our laws of nature and our cosmos appear to be delicately fine-tuned for life to emerge, in a way that seems hard to attribute to chance. In view of this, some have taken the opportunity to revive the scholastic Argument from Design, whereas others have felt the need to explain this apparent fine-tuning of the clockwork of the Universe by proposing the existence of a `Multiverse'. We analyze this issue from a sober perspective. Having reviewed the literature and having added several observations of our own, we conclude that cosmic fine-tuning supports neither Design nor a Multiverse, since both of these fail at an explanatory level as well as in a more quantitative context of Bayesian confirmation theory (although there might be other reasons to believe in these ideas, to be found in religion and in inflation and/or string theory, respectively). In fact, fine-tuning and Design even seem to be at odds with each other, whereas the inference from fine-tuning to a Multiverse only works if the latter is underwritten by an additional metaphysical hypothesis we consider unwarranted. Instead, we suggest that fine-tuning requires no special explanation at all, since it is not the Universe that is fine-tuned for life, but life that has been fine-tuned to the Universe.Comment: 16 pages, written for a general audienc

Dimensions of social meaning in post-classical Greek towards an integrated approach

Especially in the first half of the twentieth century, language was viewed as a vehicle for the transmission of facts and ideas. Later on, scholars working in linguistic frameworks such as Functional and Cognitive Linguistics, (Historical) Sociolinguistics and Functional Sociolinguistics, have emphasized the social relevance of language, focusing, for example, on linguistic concepts such as deixis, modality, or honorific language, or embedding larger linguistic patterns in their social contexts, through notions such as register, sociolect, genre, etc. The main aim of this article is to systematize these observations, through an investigation of how the central, though ill-understood notion of “social meaning” can be captured. The starting point for the discussion is the work that has been done in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. This framework distinguishes “social” (“interpersonal”) meaning from two other types of meaning, and offers a typology of different types of contexts with which these different meanings resonate. In order to achieve a more satisfactory account of social meaning, however, I argue that we need to connect to a theory of how signs convey meaning. The discussion is relevant for Ancient Greek in its entirety, but focuses specifically on Post-classical Greek: as a case study, I discuss five private letters from the so-called Theophanes archive

Parallel on-line parsing in constant time per word

An on-line parser processes each word as soon as it is typed by the user, without waiting for the end of the sentence. Thus, in an interactive system, a sentence will be parsed almost immediately after the last word has been presented.\ud \ud The complexity of an on-line parser is determined by the resources needed for the analysis of a single word, as it is assumed that previous words have been processed already. Sequential parsing algorithms like CYK or Earley need O(n2) time for the nth word. A parallel implementation in O(n) time on O(n) processors is straightforward. In this paper a novel parallel on-line parser is presented that needs O(1) time on O(n2) processors