From immediate to extended intersubjectification:a gradient approach to intersubjective awareness and semasiological change

This paper provides a theoretical and methodological contribution to the heated debate on intersubjectivity and intersubjectification (Nuyts, 2001, 2012; Traugott & Dasher, 2002; Traugott, 2003, 2010, 2012; Verhagen, 2005; Narrog, 2010, 2012; Dancygier & Sweetser, 2012). I will argue that intersubjectivity, intended as a subject’s awareness of the other persona(s)’ feelings, knowledge, and beliefs, can be construed alternatively on an ‘immediate’ and on an ‘extended’ level. Immediate intersubjectivity (I-I) corresponds to the mutual awareness of the speech participants during the ongoing speech event, whereas extended intersubjectivity (E-I) includes an assumed third party (specific or generic) who has an indirect social bearing on the utterance (cf. Tantucci 2013, 2014). Along a unidirectional cline of change, extended intersubjectification constitutes a further stage of semantic and/or grammatical reanalysis with respect to its immediate counterpart. In order to empirically justify the diachronic continuum between the two, I provide some corpus-illustrated (cf. Tummers et al., 2005, p. 235) examples from Mandarin and corpus-based evidence about the constructions [you don’t want X] and believe it or not in American English

Toward a typology of constative speech acts:actions beyond evidentiality, epistemic modality, and factuality

The present study joins the long-running debate about the semantic– pragmatic distinction of the three domains of epistemic modality, evidentiality, and factuality. In particular, this work aims at providing both a theoretical and operational framework to investigate what type of speech act is at stake when a speaker/writer alternatively decides to mark a proposition as an epistemic modal, an evidential, or a factual construction. In fact, three basic types of illocutionary force will be shown to determine the modal marking of a constative speech act: evaluational (EvF(p)), presentative (PrF(p)), and assertive (AsF(p)) force. This classification is based on a set of tests that can effectively address either grammaticalized constructions or pragmatic strategies, independent from the specificity of the item under enquiry. This approach is first used to disen- tangle the controversial meaning of MUST-type predicates and then further theorized as a speech-act based framework of epistemic disambiguation

Satellite on-board solutions for precise orbit determination on Earth and Moon orbit

Precise Orbit Determination, which is the problem of finding the satellite ephemeris by estimating the satellite position and velocity based on Earth observations data, has always been one of the most important aspects of satellite navigation. Satellite positioning is used daily by smartphones to provide several features and also by military personnel. Both of these users require different levels of accuracy. In the last decades the increasing interest in space exploration has brought forward the necessity to provide the satellites with on-board estimation algorithms. The ability to self-estimate their position and velocity is of utmost importance in scenarios in which data from Earth are not available, like in Moon or Mars orbiting. Artificial Intelligence has proven to be one of the best solutions, able to provide the satellite with non-standard measurements. The abstraction and generalization capability of neural networks allow to perform complex tasks while satisfying real-time constraints. In this context Crater Matching is one of the most promising solutions for orbit determination. In this thesis two different approaches for on-board Precise Orbit Determination will be proposed: one making use of standard GNSS measurements coming from Earth and the other one making use of non-standard ones provided by neural networks. In the former case an end-to-end analysis, going from satellite propagation to satellite visibility has been performed. In the latter case a first step toward the development of a full Terrain Relative Navigation system has been carried out: a benchmarking of different neural networks architectures has been performed, by using a space-qualified processor, in order to identify the best on-board solution to deal with the crater detection problem. Two additional research projects tackling important aspects of the space domain, satellite communication and Earth observation respectively, will also be detailed. A mixed Artificial Intelligence and Reinforcement Learning solution has been proposed for the first topic with extensive simulations and comparisons to validate the approach. A full Artificial Intelligence approach has instead been taken to tackle the second project, in which a Convolutional Neural Network has been trained to detect wildfires in real-time and has been tested over a space-qualified processor to verify its feasibility to be deployed on-board

A53T-alpha-synuclein overexpression impairs dopamine signaling and striatal synaptic plasticity in old mice

BACKGROUND: Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most frequent neurodegenerative disorder at old age, can be caused by elevated expression or the A53T missense mutation of the presynaptic protein alpha-synuclein (SNCA). PD is characterized pathologically by the preferential vulnerability of the dopaminergic nigrostriatal projection neurons. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we used two mouse lines overexpressing human A53T-SNCA and studied striatal dysfunction in the absence of neurodegeneration to understand early disease mechanisms. To characterize the progression, we employed young adult as well as old mice. Analysis of striatal neurotransmitter content demonstrated that dopamine (DA) levels correlated directly with the level of expression of SNCA, an observation also made in SNCA-deficient (knockout, KO) mice. However, the elevated DA levels in the striatum of old A53T-SNCA overexpressing mice may not be transmitted appropriately, in view of three observations. First, a transcriptional downregulation of the extraneural DA degradation enzyme catechol-ortho-methytransferase (COMT) was found. Second, an upregulation of DA receptors was detected by immunoblots and autoradiography. Third, extensive transcriptome studies via microarrays and quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qPCR) of altered transcript levels of the DA-inducible genes Atf2, Cb1, Freq, Homer1 and Pde7b indicated a progressive and genotype-dependent reduction in the postsynaptic DA response. As a functional consequence, long term depression (LTD) was absent in corticostriatal slices from old transgenic mice. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Taken together, the dysfunctional neurotransmission and impaired synaptic plasticity seen in the A53T-SNCA overexpressing mice reflect early changes within the basal ganglia prior to frank neurodegeneration. As a model of preclinical stages of PD, such insights may help to develop neuroprotective therapeutic approaches

Verbal engagement in doctor–patient interaction: Resonance in Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine

This study provides a framework for assessing doctors' verbal engagement during medical consultations. It quantifies doctors' degrees of resonance (Du Bois, 2014), a form of interactional alignment (Pickering and Garrod, 2021) that occurs when speakers imitate and re-use words and constructions uttered by their interlocutors. Resonance often involves creativity and active participation in others’ speech, overtly signalling that what they said is relevant for continuing the interaction (Tantucci and Wang, 2021). We looked at Chinese naturalistic consultations and explored whether resonance produced by Chinese doctors with a background in Western medicine (WM) differs from Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctors. Our data includes 60 online medical consultations and shows that TCM doctors’ resonance is remarkably higher. This reflected stronger involvement in patients’ speech in combination with other interactional indicators of engagement such as sentence peripheral markers of intersubjectivity (Tantucci, 2021) and strategies of relevance acknowledgement (Tantucci, 2023). The pragmatics of TCM doctors is also characterised by a more directive language geared towards a healthy lifestyle, whereas WM doctors favour etiological assessment, with a predominant use of assertive speech acts

Glycopyrrolate/formoterol fumarate metered dose inhaler for maintenance-naïve patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease:a post-hoc analysis of the randomized PINNACLE trials

Background: Glycopyrrolate (GP)/formoterol fumarate (FF; GFF) metered dose inhaler is a fixed-dose combination dual bronchodilator for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); however, whether the efficacy in patients without current maintenance treatment is consistent with currently maintenance-treated patients is unclear.Methods: Data from patients who were not maintenance-treated at screening (NMT) (n = 1943) and patients who were maintenance-treated at screening (MT) patients (n = 3040) receiving GFF, FF, GP, or placebo were pooled from the Phase III PINNACLE studies (NCT01854645, NCT01854658, NCT02343458) for post-hoc analysis. MT patients had received long-acting bronchodilators and/or inhaled corticosteroids in the 30 days prior to screening, and/or prior to randomization. NMT patients had received short-acting bronchodilators or no treatment. Outcomes included forced expiratory volume over 1 s (FEV1), clinically important deterioration (CID), rescue medication use, and safety.Results: GFF provided significant lung function improvements at Week 24 versus placebo, GP, and FF for NMT patients, with pre-dose trough FEV1 treatment differences of 152 (117-188) mL, 73 (45-100) mL, and 56 (29-84) mL, respectively (least squares mean change from baseline versus comparators [95% CI]; all P &lt; 0.0001). GFF reduced the risk of CID by 17-43% in NMT (P ≤ 0.0157) and 18-52% (P ≤ 0.0012) in MT patients compared with monotherapy and placebo, and reduced rescue medication use by 1.5 puffs/day over 24 weeks for both cohorts. Safety profiles for all cohorts were consistent with each other and the parent studies.Conclusions: NMT patients achieved better lung function with GFF versus monotherapy and placebo, without increased safety risk. Dual bronchodilator therapy may offer better outcomes than monotherapy for COPD patients when administered as first-line treatment.</p

Artificial intelligence‐based data path control in low Earth orbit satellites‐driven optical communications

Free Space Optical Communication has emerged as a promising technology for high‐speed and secure data transmission between ground stations on Earth and orbiting satellites. However, this communication technology suffers from signal attenuation due to atmospheric turbulence and beam alignment precision. Low Earth Orbit satellites play a pivotal role in optical communication due to their low altitude over the Earth surface, which mitigates the atmospheric precipitation effects. This paper introduces a novel data path control law for satellite optical communication exploiting Artificial Intelligence‐based predictive weather forecasting and a node selection mechanism based on Reinforcement Learning. Extensive simulations on three case studies demonstrate that the proposed control technique achieves remarkable gains in terms of link availability with respect to other state‐of‐the‐art solutions

Entrenchment inhibition:Constructional change and repetitive behaviour can be in competition with large-scale “recompositional” creativity

This paper addresses creativity as inhibition of repetitive behaviour. We argue that entrenchment and constructional change can be in competition with large-scale creative attempts of recomposition of constructions’ internal constituency. After undergoing chunking, the recurrent usage of a construction may be significantly counterbalanced with new attempts of entrenchment inhibition (viz. inhibition of entrenchment). These are cases where speakers opt for more compositional and less predictable ways to express a similar meaning of a conventionalised form. We focus on the constructionalisation of noun–participle compounds (e.g. snow-covered) in the Historical Corpus of American English. During the second part of the twentieth century, speakers increasingly inhibit the usage of conventionalised noun phrase–past participle forms in favour of more compositional strategies involving the same internal constituents. This entails that constructional change not only affects the meaning of the chunk that undergoes constructionalisation but also the way speakers creatively rediscover its internal constituency. These results additionally aim to inform research in cognitive architectures and artificial intelligence, where creativity is often merely considered as a problem-solving mechanism rather than a potential process of inhibition of automatised behaviour

Textual factualization:the phenomenology of assertive reformulation and presupposition during a speech event

This work provides an operational framework to study the unfolding of new factual propositions out of originally suspended-factual (Narrog 2009, Tantucci 2015b) statements during a speech event. In particular, this model is centered on the dynamic relationship between cognitive control (i.e. Kan et al. 2013) and epistemic certainty. A speaker/writer’s epistemic inclination towards the factuality of a proposition P occurs throughout a text, either in the form of the assertive reformulation of an originally suspended-factual proposition P, or in the form of a presupposition trigger also turning P into a new factual statement. I refer to this phenomenon as textual factualization (TF) and I provide corpus data from the British National Corpus (BNC) to demonstrate it to be a frequent mechanism where an originally suspended-factual proposition [apparently P] is subsequently factualized both in written and spoken texts. I argue that TF instantiates as a form of interference/misinformation effect (cf. Ecker et al. 2015) as it triggers the qualitative alteration of an event memory by partially overwriting an original memory trace: from [apparently P] to [P