Universal quantification in children’s English

Researchers since Inhelder and Piaget (1964) have replicated a curious finding. When using a picture-verification task (e.g., a picture of four elephants, three of them being ridden by boys), children have been shown to supply a non-adult answer in response to a question such as ‘Is every boy riding an elephant?’, e.g. ‘no, not that one’ (pointing to the extra elephant). The question we will address here is whether or not this response by children reflects a non-adult linguistic semantic representation of the meaning of the universal quantifier. Non-adult accounts of children’s interpretation of the universal quantifier (‘every’) suggest that children answer ‘no’ to questions like ‘Is every boy riding an elephant?’ because they may not initially interpret the subject set of ‘boys’ as the restrictor of every. By contrast, adult-like accounts of children’s interpretation of every maintain that children do correctly interpret the set of ‘boys’ as the restrictor of every in such sentences, suggesting that children’s non-adult responses can be eliminated by satisfying contextual demands on the use of the universal quantifier. In this paper, we present longitudinal data from 4 two-year-old children, children far younger than have previously been studied experimentally. We show that even from the earliest stages of language acquisition, so long as sentences are presented in felicitous discourse contexts, children’s interpretation of universal quantification appears adult-like. The data therefore support the adult-like accounts of children’s acquisition of universal quantification

Two Negations for the Price of One

Standard English is typically described as a double negation language. In double negation ­languages, each negative marker contributes independent semantic force. Two negations in the same clause usually cancel each other out, resulting in an affirmative sentence. Other dialects of English permit negative concord. In negative concord sentences, the two negative markers yield a single semantic negation. This paper explores how English-speaking children interpret sentences with more than one negative element, in order to assess whether their early grammar allows negative concord. According to Zeijlstra’s (2004) typological generalization, if a language has a negative syntactic head, it will be a negative concord language. Since Standard English is often analysed as having a negative head, it represents an apparent exception to Zeijlstra’s ­generalization. This raises the intriguing possibility that initially, children recognize that English has a negative head (i.e., 'n’t') and, therefore, assign negative concord interpretations to sentences with two negations, despite the absence of evidence for this interpretation in the adult input. The present study investigated this possibility in a comprehension study with 20 3- to 5-year-old ­children and a control group of 15 adults. The test sentences were presented in contexts that made them amenable to either a double negation or a negative concord interpretation. As expected, the adult participants assigned the double negation interpretation of the test sentences the majority of the time. In contrast, the child participants assigned the alternative, negative concord interpretation the majority of the time. Children must jettison the negative concord interpretation of sentences with two negative markers, and acquire a double negation interpretation. We propose that the requisite positive evidence is the appearance of negative expressions like 'nothing 'in object position. Because such expressions exert semantic force without a second negation, this informs children that they are acquiring a double negation language

Stolen wages, corruption, and selective application of the law : is APUNCAC a solution?

APUNCAC is a draft international convention designed to address systemic corruption, strengthening UNCAC’s provisions and adding mechanisms to make it more effective. ‘Corruption’ includes public officials abusing their powers. This article addresses an especially insidious form: when laws are created and applied to deny equal protection under the law. Ruling elites control the executive and parliament, to pass laws that selectively target and disadvantage a segment of the population. Our empirical data comes from a historical case, massive government-sanctioned wage theft from Western Australian Aboriginal workers between 1901 and 1972. We use these data to analyse how this kind of corruption works in practice, to evaluate APUNCAC’s measures and strategies, to see what specific measures might be used or modified, and where APUNCAC might need supplementing. We argue that Article 4(3) could have a major impact, especially supported by other Articles and processes, such as dedicated independent courts and strategic engagement with local courts. We evaluate two scenarios: The first scenario is prospective, assuming that APUNCAC is adopted. We evaluate the possible impact of APUNCAC in deterring future corruption involving selective application of the law. The second scenario is retrospective. We evaluate the possible support that APUNCAC might provide regarding court actions that seek redress for potential litigants, such as WA Aboriginal people who were injured in the past

A qualitative process evaluation of Social Recovery Therapy for enhancement of social recovery after first-episode psychosis (SUPEREDEN3)

Background: Many individuals with first-episode psychosis experience severe and persistent social disability despite receiving specialist early intervention. The SUPEREDEN3 trial assessed whether augmenting early intervention services with social recovery therapy (SRT) would lead to better social recovery. Aims: A qualitative process evaluation was conducted to explore implementation and mechanisms of SRT impact from the perspective of SUPEREDEN3 participants. Method: A subsample of trial participants (n=19) took part in semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Trial participants were early intervention clients aged 16-35 years with severe and persistent social disability. Both SRT plus early intervention and treatment as usual arm participants were interviewed to facilitate better understanding of the context in which SRT was delivered and aid identification of mechanisms specific to SRT. Results: The six themes identified were used to generate an explanatory model of SRT’s enhancement of social recovery. Participant experiences highlight the importance of the therapist cultivating increased self-understanding and assertively encouraging clients to face feared situations in a way that is perceived as supportive, while managing ongoing symptoms. The sense of achievement generated by reaching targets linked to personally meaningful goals promotes increased self-agency, and generates hope and optimism. Conclusions: The findings suggest potentially important processes through which social recovery was enhanced in this trial, which will be valuable in ensuring the benefits observed can be replicated. Participant accounts provide hope that, with the right support, even clients who have persistent symptoms and the most severe disability can make a good social recovery

Inhibition of Ubc13-mediated ubiquitination by GPS2 regulates multiple stages of B cell development

Non-proteolytic ubiquitin signaling mediated by Lys63 ubiquitin chains plays a critical role in multiple pathways that are key to the development and activation of immune cells. Our previous work indicates that GPS2 (G-protein Pathway Suppressor 2) is a multifunctional protein regulating TNF signaling and lipid metabolism in the adipose tissue through modulation of Lys63 ubiquitination events. However, the full extent of GPS2-mediated regulation of ubiquitination and the underlying molecular mechanisms are unknown. Here, we report that GPS2 is required for restricting the activation of TLR and BCR signaling pathways and the AKT/FOXO1 pathway in immune cells based on direct inhibition of Ubc13 enzymatic activity. Relevance of this regulatory strategy is confirmed in vivo by B cell-targeted deletion of GPS2, resulting in developmental defects at multiple stages of B cell differentiation. Together, these findings reveal that GPS2 genomic and non-genomic functions are critical for the development and cellular homeostasis of B cells

Stolen Wages, Corruption, and Selective Application of the Law: Is APUNCAC a Solution?

APUNCAC is a draft international convention designed to address systemic corruption, strengthening UNCAC’s provisions and adding mechanisms to make it more effective. ‘Corruption’ includes public officials abusing their powers. This article addresses an especially insidious form: when laws are created and applied to deny equal protection under the law. Ruling elites control the executive and parliament, to pass laws that selectively target and disadvantage a segment of the population. Our empirical data comes from a historical case, massive government-sanctioned wage theft from Western Australian Aboriginal workers between 1901 and 1972. We use these data to analyse how this kind of corruption works in practice, to evaluate APUNCAC’s measures and strategies, to see what specific measures might be used or modified, and where APUNCAC might need supplementing. We argue that Article 4(3) could have a major impact, especially supported by other Articles and processes, such as dedicated independent courts and strategic engagement with local courts. We evaluate two scenarios: The first scenario is prospective, assuming that APUNCAC is adopted. We evaluate the possible impact of APUNCAC in deterring future corruption involving selective application of the law. The second scenario is retrospective. We evaluate the possible support that APUNCAC might provide regarding court actions that seek redress for potential litigants, such as WA Aboriginal people who were injured in the past

The scope of logical expressions in child language

"A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy""Submitted November 2011"Thesis by publication.Includes bibliographical references.1. Introduction -- 2. Children's interpretation of disjunction in the scope of 'before': a comparison of English and Mandarin -- 3. Children's interpretation of focus expressions in English and Mandarin -- 4. Children's interpretation of conjunction in the scope of negation in English and Mandarin: new evidence for the semantic subset maxim -- 5. The early stages of universal quantification -- 6. English-speaking children's interpretation of disjunction in the scope of 'not every' -- 7. Conclusion -- Appendix.This thesis explores the way children choose to resolve certain kinds of semantic scope ambiguities. The aim is to answer two main questions: (i) which reading of scopally ambiguous sentences do children favour, if either? (ii) if children favour one reading, why do they do so? Several hypotheses have been put forward to account for what we currently know about children's scope preferences, suggesting different answers to (i) and (ii) above. The main contribution of this thesis is to reformulate one of these hypotheses to address some of its observed shortcomings, and to test the predictions of the new formulation on three sentence types that have not yet been investigated in the previous literature. These are sentences containing (a) the temporal conjunction before and disjunction (e.g. The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or the bunny), (b) negation and conjunction (e.g. The elephant did not eat both the carrot and the capsicum), and (c) the compound quantifier not every and disjunction (e.g. Not every princess took a star or a shell). Each of these sentence types gives rise to two possible scope interpretations, although languages can vary as to which of these readings is preferred. We present the results of three major studies (and two supporting studies) to determine which of the possible scope interpretations children prefer for each of these sentence types. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the scope preference hypotheses. Chapter 2 looks at English- and Mandarin-speaking children's interpretative preferences for sentence type (a). Chapter 3 investigates children's interpretation of the pre-subject focus operator 'only'. These findings inform our experimental design in Chapter 4, which examines English- and Mandarin-speaking children's interpretative preferences for sentence type (b). Chapter 5 investigates children's interpretation of the universal quantifier 'every'. These findings inform our experimental design in Chapter 6, which examines English-speaking children's interpretative preferences for sentence type (c). Chapter 6 also explores how logical principles underpin the scope interpretations available in sentences (a)-(c), and whether children are sensitive to these principles. In Chapter 7, we discuss the implications of the findings for current accounts of children's scope preference and we offer answers to the two main questions of this thesis.Mode of access: World Wide Web.1 online resource (xii, 319 pages) illustrations (some coloured

The materiality of globital memory:Bringing the cloud to earth

The cloud is a metaphor that helps to obscure the material realities that rest beneath our digital memories. However, a number of scholars in memory studies have suggested that cultural memory has always had a material basis and some, though limited, scholarly attention has already considered the toxic by-products and unethical practices involved in mining minerals that are used in making digital memories. This article draws on earlier work on the materiality of cultural memory as well as Tsing’s (Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 2005) concept of ‘friction’ in global commodity chains to help analyse our own empirical research in Australia and Malaysia that looks at the production of rare earth minerals, whose use in making digital communication technologies is not widely known. Our analysis concludes that that not all citizens are equally bearing the burden of the risks and damages caused by our growing desire and addiction for information and communication gadgets and digital memory. We argue that any conceptualization of digitized and globalized or ‘globital memory’ must resist metaphors, narratives and concepts that attempt to remove digital memory from its material consequences; to do this scholars must incorporate an understanding of memory’s materialism into their research, rather than focusing predominantly or exclusively on its energetic or ‘virtual’ properties

The shift in infant preferences for vowel duration and pitch contour between 6 and 10 months of age

This study investigates the influence of the acoustic properties of vowels on 6- and 10-month-old infants’ speech preferences. The shape of the contour (bell or monotonic) and the duration (normal or stretched) of vowels were manipulated in words containing the vowels /i/ and /u/, and presented to infants using a two-choice preference procedure. Experiment 1 examined contour shape: infants heard either normal-duration bell-shaped and monotonic contours, or the same two contours with stretched duration. The results show that 6-month-olds preferred bell to monotonic contours, whereas 10-month-olds preferred monotonic to bell contours. In Experiment 2, infants heard either normal-duration and stretched bell contours, or normal-duration and stretched monotonic contours. As in Experiment 1, infants showed age-specific preferences, with 6-month-olds preferring stretched vowels, and 10-month-olds preferring normal-duration vowels. Infants’ attention to the acoustic qualities of vowels, and to speech in general, undergoes a dramatic transformation in the final months of the first year, a transformation that aligns with the emergence of other developmental milestones in speech perception