Basic Operations : minimal Syntax-Semantics

In this programmatic paper, we articulate a minimalist conception of linguistic composition, syntactic and semantic, with the aim of identifying fundamental operations invoked by the human faculty of language (HFL). On this view, all complex expressions are formed via the operation COMBINE(A, B). But this operation is not primitive: COMBINE(A, B) = LABEL[CONCATENATE(A, B)]. We take labeling to be a computationally simple but perhaps distinctively human operation that converts a mere concatenation of expressions, like A^B, into a more complex unit like [A A^B], with the subscript indicating a copy of the dominant constituent. We discuss several virtues of this spare conception of syntax. With regard to semantics, we take instances of COMBINE(A, B) to be instructions to build concepts. More specifically, we claim that concatenation is an instruction to conjoin monadic concepts, while labeling provides a vehicle for invoking thematic concepts, as indicated by the relevant labels

Low temperature magnetic transitions of single crystal HoBi

We present resistivity, specific heat and magnetization measurements in high quality single crystals of HoBi, with a residual resistivity ratio of 126. We find, from the temperature and field dependence of the magnetization, an antiferromagnetic transition at 5.7 K, which evolves, under magnetic fields, into a series of up to five metamagnetic phases.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Democratic lockdown, forced digitalization and blended participation of young citizens

The lockdowns implemented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have had profound effects on many areas of society. In this blog, Paul Jacobsen and Professor Dr Norbert Kersting of the Department of Political Science at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster write about their study on young people’s political participation during the lockdown in Germany. They found that in order to sustain online political participation, it needs to be linked to offline elements

Topological houses

Many properties of houses are of topological nature. The problem of three-dimensional encoding is solved here by first giving an axiomatic description of a simplified concept of "house" as a certain generalisation of a cw-complex and, secondly, by generalising local observation structures of embedded unconnected planar graphs to the three-dimensional case and proving that they allow retrieving all topological properties of these simplified houses. In the more general case of an architectural complex (a certain generalisation of a "house") still much topolgical information is kept in these structures still making them a useful approach to encoding topological spaces. Finally, a lossless representation of observation structures in a relational database scheme which we call PLAV (Points, Lines, Areas, Volumes) is given. We expect PLAV to be useful for encoding higher dimensional (architectural) space-time complexes. Schlagworte / Keywords: topologisches Modell; Gebäudeproduktmodel