An Eleméntàry Linguistic Definition of Upstate New York

This paper examines a hitherto undiscussed dialectological feature of Upstate New York: the pronunciation of words like elementary (documentary, complimentary, etc.) as eleméntàry, with secondary stress on the penultimate syllable. We report the results of three studies examining the geographic distribution of this feature. In the first study, data from 119 sociolinguistic interviews in communities in eastern New York establish the widespread usage of the feature in this region. In the second study, data from 59 sociolinguistic interviews in far western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania show that the geographic extent of the feature hews very close to the New York–Pennsylvania state line in that region. The third study is a rapid and anonymous telephone survey of the lexical item elementary including 188 towns across the entire state of New York and nearby parts of adjacent states. This study finds that the stressed-penultimate pattern is nearly confined to Upstate New York, bleeding only into the Northern Tier of counties in Pennsylvania and a few towns in southwestern Vermont. In addition to providing empirical evidence for the geographic extent of this dialectolgical feature, this study analyzes the relationship between the distribution of the -méntàry pronunciation and other isoglosses that serve as boundaries between major dialect regions in the area. The analysis shows that the geographic extent of the -méntàry pronunciation does not always pattern closely with dialect regions defined by phonological criteria; rather, it coincides more closely with the cultural boundary delimiting the region of Upstate New York. We argue that this type of linguistic boundary is caused primarily by communication patterns (as opposed to constraints internal to the linguistic system), and that it is more likely to be observed in variants involving analogical change, such as the -méntàry pronunciation

Mining Duplicate Questions of Stack Overflow

There has a been a significant rise in the use of Community Question Answering sites (CQAs) over the last decade owing primarily to their ability to leverage the wisdom of the crowd. Duplicate questions have a crippling effect on the quality of these sites. Tackling duplicate questions is therefore an important step towards improving quality of CQAs. In this regard, we propose two neural network based architectures for duplicate question detection on Stack Overflow. We also propose explicitly modeling the code present in questions to achieve results that surpass the state of the art

Statue supports and decorative accessories on Greek and Roman sculptures

peer reviewe

De la déesse Héra à la Panaghia. Réflexions sur le problème des continuités religieuses en Grèce et en Grande-Grèce

Le problème des continuités entre le polythéisme antique et le christianisme suscite, notamment dans le domaine grec, des polémiques scientifiques. Actuellement, de nombreux chercheurs tendent à réduire l’importance de ces phénomènes, voire à en nier l’existence. À contre-courant de cette opinion, l’article montre qu’une grande déesse « totalisante » comme Héra, vénérée dans le culte et rayonnante malgré sa mauvaise réputation sur le plan mythique, fait l’objet d’un syncrétisme avec la figure de la Vierge Marie. Les preuves sont nombreuses, de nature textuelle ou cultuelle, en Grèce propre comme en Grande-Grèce. Elles témoignent d’un processus continu de création religieuse qui n’a rien à voir avec les prétendues « survivances ».The problem of continuities between polytheism and christianism gives rise, especially in Greek area, to scientific controversies. Nowadays, many scholars incline to reduce the importance of this kind of phenomenas, if not to deny their mere existence. Going against the general trend, the paper demonstrates that an all-embracing goddess like Hera, venerated in the cult and of great influence – in spite of her bad reputation in the myth – undergoes a syncretism with the Virgin Mary. The pieces of evidence are numerous, from textual sources as from cult, in Greece proper as in Magna Graecia. They show an unbroken process of religious creation – nothing to do with “survivals”

De la déesse Héra à la Panaghia. Réflexions sur le problème des continuités religieuses en Grèce et en Grande-Grèce

Le problème des continuités entre le polythéisme antique et le christianisme suscite, notamment dans le domaine grec, des polémiques scientifiques. Actuellement, de nombreux chercheurs tendent à réduire l’importance de ces phénomènes, voire à en nier l’existence. À contre-courant de cette opinion, l’article montre qu’une grande déesse « totalisante » comme Héra, vénérée dans le culte et rayonnante malgré sa mauvaise réputation sur le plan mythique, fait l’objet d’un syncrétisme avec la figure de la Vierge Marie. Les preuves sont nombreuses, de nature textuelle ou cultuelle, en Grèce propre comme en Grande-Grèce. Elles témoignent d’un processus continu de création religieuse qui n’a rien à voir avec les prétendues « survivances ».The problem of continuities between polytheism and christianism gives rise, especially in Greek area, to scientific controversies. Nowadays, many scholars incline to reduce the importance of this kind of phenomenas, if not to deny their mere existence. Going against the general trend, the paper demonstrates that an all-embracing goddess like Hera, venerated in the cult and of great influence – in spite of her bad reputation in the myth – undergoes a syncretism with the Virgin Mary. The pieces of evidence are numerous, from textual sources as from cult, in Greece proper as in Magna Graecia. They show an unbroken process of religious creation – nothing to do with “survivals”

The Future of 'Asian Premium'

Asia is becoming a dominant buyer’s market, whether its oil or natural gas, and consumers are finding a new impetus to push for sweeter deals as their options for suppliers grow, like, on March 30, 2018, India got is first U.S. LNG shipment at Dabhol. Buyers aren’t just looking to break from oil-linked contracts, they’re also pushing for the right to re-sell the gas they import, an important step towards spot pricing. So, if Asia isn’t going to continue paying top dollar for its petrol energy needs, producers around the world are going to have to work that much harder to stay profitable or perish

Radium annotated bibliography compiled in 1903 in the USA

References compiled in the USA (as distinct from Europe) for the years to 1903 are contained in this bibliography. The summaries provide an interesting insight into the opinions and knowledge on radium which were held in the USA during the first few years after its discovery in 1898. The compiler of these references was almost certainly a professor of chemistry and mineralogist, Charles Baskerville (1872–1922) of New York. Some references are from academic scientific journals whereas others are from the popular scientific press. In these early years following the discovery of radium, publications and commentaries on them were far more in Europe than in the United States. This scientific fact gives some importance to this bibliography. I have retained the original spelling and punctuation used by Baskerville

Mining question-answer pairs from web forum: a survey of challenges and resolutions

Internet forums, which are also known as discussion boards, are popular web applications. Members of the board discuss issues and share ideas to form a community within the board, and as a result generate huge amount of content on different topics on daily basis. Interest in information extraction and knowledge discovery from such sources has been on the increase in the research community. A number of factors are limiting the potentiality of mining knowledge from forums. Lexical chasm or lexical gap that renders some Natural Language Processing techniques (NLP) less effective, Informal tone that creates noisy data, drifting of discussion topic that prevents focused mining and asynchronous issue that makes it difficult to establish post-reply relationship are some of the problems that need to be addressed. This survey introduces these challenges within the framework of question answering. The survey provides description of the problems; cites and explores useful publications to the reader for further examination; provides an overview of resolution strategies and findings relevant to the challenges