Lexis as most local context: towards an SFL approach to lexicology

The world of lexis is vast and complex and it is generally accepted in psycholinguistics that it is represented as part of a large complex network. However, in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) modelling lexis has remained a relatively underdeveloped area of the theory. The ideas underpinning this paper stem from exploring the interface of context and lexicology, asking how SFL does and could handle lexis within the theory. Here the SFL concept of context is used to develop a similar account of lexis. The argumentation is based on the assumption that ‘knowing about’ context and 'knowing about’ lexis is contained and maintained within a networked cognitive system. The common view of the relationship between context and lexis is generally one of disambiguation, frequently through collocation. However, I argue that there is more involved than that. In this paper, I use the SFL approach to context to establish the first steps towards an analogous approach to lexicology. The conclusion offered here is that it is theoretically plausible to draw on the dimension of instantiation, in a complementary way to delicacy, in order to model lexis as most local context, where the lexeme (or lemma) is modelled as meaning potential

A Critique of Four Grounded Theory Texts

This article is a review of Discovery of Grounded Theory by Glaser and Strauss, Basics of Qualitative Research by Strauss and Corbin, Constructing Grounded Theory by Charmaz, and Situational Analysis by Clarke across six categories, including the authors\u27 purposes, structure of the books, practical applications of the books\u27 methods, how the authors approach theory and data emergence, how the authors judge grounded theory research and finally, if the authors have achieved their purposes. For the most part, I found that all books accomplished their purposes. Discovery was weak in practical applications but strong on logical arguments for the usage of grounded theory. Basics contained many practical tools but some of the techniques discussed forced data into certain categories. Constructing was written in a very clear, easy-to-follow format that novices might find useful. Situational contained many tools, but with a focus on situations rather than actors

Statistical and Clinical Aspects of Hospital Outcomes Profiling

Hospital profiling involves a comparison of a health care provider's structure, processes of care, or outcomes to a standard, often in the form of a report card. Given the ubiquity of report cards and similar consumer ratings in contemporary American culture, it is notable that these are a relatively recent phenomenon in health care. Prior to the 1986 release of Medicare hospital outcome data, little such information was publicly available. We review the historical evolution of hospital profiling with special emphasis on outcomes; present a detailed history of cardiac surgery report cards, the paradigm for modern provider profiling; discuss the potential unintended negative consequences of public report cards; and describe various statistical methodologies for quantifying the relative performance of cardiac surgery programs. Outstanding statistical issues are also described.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342307000000096 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Less-Networked Speaker Communities and Digital Language Archives

Fieldwork, description, and preservation of research results are often seen as endpoints of language documentation projects. Although archives are doing their best to ensure that source communities can ultimately gain access to the language materials they produce, little is being done to facilitate their involvement in the ongoing curation of those materials. Enhancing and extending such involvement will significantly increase both the scholarly value of documented materials and its impact in source communities. Using the situations of rural Papua New Guinea and Cameroon as model cases, this project will bring together an international group of scholars, technical experts, and community members for a two day conference to intensively explore appropriate “bridging” technologies and make recommendations to help digital language archives overcome fundamental obstacles to maintaining direct, ongoing relationships with archive stakeholders who reside in less-networked communities

Norwegian dairy farmer's preferences for breeding goal traits and associations with herd and farm characteristics

The aims of this study were to investigate variation and clustering in breeding goal trait preferences among Norwegian dairy farmers and to identify factors with a systematic influence on their preferences. An internet-based questionnaire was sent out to dairy farmers connected to the Norwegian co-operative breeding organization Geno (N = 8222), of which 10.8% answered (N = 888). Of the 15 suggested traits fertility had the highest overall ranking, while parasite resistance and methane emission had the lowest. Four distinct preference clusters were identified by the means of cluster analysis, of which two had a high preference for milk production. Differences in terms of farm and herd characteristics between clusters suggests a mixture of systematic and intrinsic effects on breeding goal trait priorities. This study shows that Norwegian dairy farmers’ preferences for breeding goal traits fall into four distinct clusters, both affected by herd and farm characteristics along with intrinsic value

Collaboration or Participant Observation? Rethinking Models of 'Linguistic Social Work'

Documentary linguists aspiring to conduct socially responsible research find themselves immersed in a literature on ‘collaborative methods’ that does not address some of the most pressing interpersonal challenges that fieldworkers experience in their community relationships. As recent controversies about the nature of collaboration indicate, collaborative models embed assumptions about reciprocity, negotiation, and the meaning and moral valence of categories like ‘research,’ ‘language,’ and ‘documentation,’ which do not translate equally well across all communities. There is thus a need for a method flexible enough to respond to the complexity and diversity of what goes on in particular cross-cultural researcher-community relationships. In this article, we encourage documentary linguists to consider the benefits of participant observation, a research method that is designed specifically to deal with the interpersonal nature of fieldwork in the human sciences. Because it ties knowledge production directly to the development of social relationships across difference, participant observation can help documentary linguists think fruitfully about the social approaches they take in their fieldwork, whether these ultimately come to involve formal collaboration or some other form of reciprocity.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Self-organisation to criticality in a system without conservation law

We numerically investigate the approach to the stationary state in the nonconservative Olami-Feder-Christensen (OFC) model for earthquakes. Starting from initially random configurations, we monitor the average earthquake size in different portions of the system as a function of time (the time is defined as the input energy per site in the system). We find that the process of self-organisation develops from the boundaries of the system and it is controlled by a dynamical critical exponent z~1.3 that appears to be universal over a range of dissipation levels of the local dynamics. We show moreover that the transient time of the system $t_{tr}$ scales with system size L as $t_{tr} \sim L^z$. We argue that the (non-trivial) scaling of the transient time in the OFC model is associated to the establishment of long-range spatial correlations in the steady state.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in Journal of Physics

You never surf alone. Ubiquitous tracking of users' browsing habits

In the early age of the internet users enjoyed a large level of anonymity. At the time web pages were just hypertext documents; almost no personalisation of the user experience was o ered. The Web today has evolved as a world wide distributed system following specific architectural paradigms. On the web now, an enormous quantity of user generated data is shared and consumed by a network of applications and services, reasoning upon users expressed preferences and their social and physical connections. Advertising networks follow users' browsing habits while they surf the web, continuously collecting their traces and surfing patterns. We analyse how users tracking happens on the web by measuring their online footprint and estimating how quickly advertising networks are able to pro le users by their browsing habits

Le groupe au service des familles. Analyse comparative de deux types d’interventions complémentaires

Cet article fait l'analyse comparative de deux interventions de groupe effectuées dans le cadre d'un projet-pilote de formation et de soutien aux familles d'un milieu à « haut risque ». Le projet regroupait des familles-gardiennes et des familles-utilisatrices, et se voulait un moyen de contrer l'isolement et la surcharge ressentis par de nombreuses familles et de favoriser leur implication dans la recherche de réponses novatrices à leurs besoins. Les objectifs, le programme, le fonctionnement et les résultats de ces groupes sont examinés à la lumière de la théorie et de la pratique du service social des groupes

Are pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and CA 125 measurements after IVF-ET possible predictors of early pregnancy wastage?

Pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A), a macromolecular glycoprotein of placental origin, was reported to be depressed in established ectopic pregnancies. CA 125 is a known marker for ovarian cancer found to be elevated during the first trimester of pregnancy and in women with pelvic inflammatory disease. The present study investigated the usefulness of these parameters to predict the outcome of pregnancy in asymptomatic patients with a positive pregnancy test after in-vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET). Blood samples (n = 159) were obtained at different periods of time post-ET from 39 women, 21 of whom experienced a normal pregnancy, 12 had an intrauterine abortion and six had an ectopic pregnancy. PAPP-A and CA 125 were measured by radioimmunoassays. From day 30 onwards in normal pregnancies, PAPP-A was significantly increased over non-pregnant controls. In the spontaneous abortion group, the levels of PAPP-A were significantly lower than in normal pregnancy but higher than in non-pregnant controls. In ectopic pregnancy, PAPP-A remained at the level of non-pregnant controls throughout the entire observation period. CA 125 was significantly increased in all types of pregancy. However, in two cases of hyperstimulation followed by a normal pregancy and in four cases of ectopic pregnancy with signs of peritoneal irritation (hydrosalpinx, ruptured ectopic or salpingitis) the levels of CA 125 were 15-50 times higher than in normal pregnancies. PAPP-A levels < 10th percentile, measured after 30 days post-ET, were an excellent diagnostic parameter for ectopic pregnancy or intrauterine abortion with a sensitivity of 87.5% and a predictive value of disease of 100%. In contrast, CA 125 determinations had no diagnostic value and were only indicative of peritoneal inflammation in either normal or pathological pregnancies. It is concluded that PAPP-A is a good parameter by which to monitor post-implantation viability of embryos in IVF-ET patient