The influence of linguistic and social factors on the recent decline of French ne

In this article we present some results showing the decline in radio speech in the use of the French negative particle ne over the last forty years or so. These results derive from a comparison of two radio corpora: an archival corpus recorded by Ågren (1973) in 1960–61. The second, contemporary corpus was recorded and analysed by one of the present authors (Smith) in 1997. Having described the variable in question, we present these corpora in turn and analyse results deriving from them. We then examine some of the linguistic constraints that endorse the progressive decline of ne in some contexts while hindering the process in others. Finally we consider some elements of the social context within which the decline of ne has been occurring

Nonexistence of positive supersolutions of elliptic equations via the maximum principle

We introduce a new method for proving the nonexistence of positive supersolutions of elliptic inequalities in unbounded domains of $\mathbb{R}^n$. The simplicity and robustness of our maximum principle-based argument provides for its applicability to many elliptic inequalities and systems, including quasilinear operators such as the $p$-Laplacian, and nondivergence form fully nonlinear operators such as Bellman-Isaacs operators. Our method gives new and optimal results in terms of the nonlinear functions appearing in the inequalities, and applies to inequalities holding in the whole space as well as exterior domains and cone-like domains.Comment: revised version, 32 page

Local asymptotics for controlled martingales

We consider controlled martingales with bounded steps where the controller is allowed at each step to choose the distribution of the next step, and where the goal is to hit a fixed ball at the origin at time $n$. We show that the algebraic rate of decay (as $n$ increases to infinity) of the value function in the discrete setup coincides with its continuous counterpart, provided a reachability assumption is satisfied. We also study in some detail the uniformly elliptic case and obtain explicit bounds on the rate of decay. This generalizes and improves upon several recent studies of the one dimensional case, and is a discrete analogue of a stochastic control problem recently investigated in Armstrong and Trokhimtchouck [Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations 38 (2010) 521-540].Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AAP1123 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Long-time asymptotics for fully nonlinear homogeneous parabolic equations

We study the long-time asymptotics of solutions of the uniformly parabolic equation $$u_t + F(D^2u) = 0 \quad {in} \R^n\times \R_+,$$ for a positively homogeneous operator $F$, subject to the initial condition $u(x,0) = g(x)$, under the assumption that $g$ does not change sign and possesses sufficient decay at infinity. We prove the existence of a unique positive solution $\Phi^+$ and negative solution $\Phi^-$, which satisfy the self-similarity relations $$\Phi^\pm (x,t) = \lambda^{\alpha^\pm} \Phi^\pm (\lambda^{1/2} x, \lambda t).$$ We prove that the rescaled limit of the solution of the Cauchy problem with nonnegative (nonpositive) initial data converges to $\Phi^+$ ($\Phi^-$) locally uniformly in $\R^n \times \R_+$. The anomalous exponents $\alpha^+$ and $\alpha^-$ are identified as the principal half-eigenvalues of a certain elliptic operator associated to $F$ in $\R^n$.Comment: 20 pages; revised version; two remarks added, typos and one minor mistake correcte

Sharp Liouville results for fully nonlinear equations with power-growth nonlinearities

We study fully nonlinear elliptic equations such as $$F(D^2u) = u^p, \quad p>1,$$ in $\R^n$ or in exterior domains, where $F$ is any uniformly elliptic, positively homogeneous operator. We show that there exists a critical exponent, depending on the homogeneity of the fundamental solution of $F$, that sharply characterizes the range of $p>1$ for which there exist positive supersolutions or solutions in any exterior domain. Our result generalizes theorems of Bidaut-V\'eron \cite{B} as well as Cutri and Leoni \cite{CL}, who found critical exponents for supersolutions in the whole space $\R^n$, in case $-F$ is Laplace's operator and Pucci's operator, respectively. The arguments we present are new and rely only on the scaling properties of the equation and the maximum principle.Comment: 16 pages, new existence results adde