The epistemic use of yào in Mandarin Chinese and its theoretical implications

The epistemic use of the Mandarin Chinese modal yào comes with typologically interesting properties. In this paper, the distribution and meaning of the epistemic use of yào will be described first. This use of yào is restricted to certain explicit strict comparative constructions, but forbidden in many other degree and non-degree constructions. Second, epistemic yào cannot appear above or below negation. Third, epistemic yào has a quantificational force stronger than that of existential modals, yet weaker than that of strong necessity modals. In the theoretical component of the paper, I argue that epistemic yào is a modifier for strict comparative morphemes, a syntactic/semantic function that sets it apart from many other epistemic modals that take propositions as direct argument. The weak necessity quantificational force of epistemic yào is encoded in its semantics by making recourse to alternative modal bases. Epistemic yào's inability to form scopal relation with negation arises from two factors: (i) its status as a strict comparative morpheme modifier, and (ii) competition between lexical items with identical semantics. Through investigating the epistemic use of yào, some hitherto unnoticed interesting modal properties in natural language are brought to the forefront, and new intra- and inter-linguistic variations in the distribution and meaning of modals are revealed

Concealed Questions from a Cross-linguistic Perspective

The paper draws on empirical data of concealed questions from Banda Acehnese and revives the proposal that CQs are questions in disguise, contra many recent analyses. To show that the proposal works for English CQs, we examine five prominent empirical patterns with them: identity interpretation, Heim’s Ambiguity, quantified and indefinite CQs, coordination, and Greenberg’s Contrast. They do not pose any real challenge to the question-in-disguise analysis. Towards the end of the paper we discuss a couple of remaining issues

Numerical simulation of clouds and precipitation depending on different relationships between aerosol and cloud droplet spectral dispersion

The aerosol effects on clouds and precipitation in deep convective cloud systems are investigated using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with the Morrison two-moment bulk microphysics scheme. Considering positive or negative relationships between the cloud droplet number concentration (Nc) and spectral dispersion (ɛ), a suite of sensitivity experiments are performed using an initial sounding data of the deep convective cloud system on 31 March 2005 in Beijing under either a maritime (‘clean’) or continental (‘polluted’) background. Numerical experiments in this study indicate that the sign of the surface precipitation response induced by aerosols is dependent on the ɛ−Nc relationships, which can influence the autoconversion processes from cloud droplets to rain drops. When the spectral dispersion ɛ is an increasing function of Nc, the domain-average cumulative precipitation increases with aerosol concentrations from maritime to continental background. That may be because the existence of large-sized rain drops can increase precipitation at high aerosol concentration. However, the surface precipitation is reduced with increasing concentrations of aerosol particles when ɛ is a decreasing function of Nc. For the ɛ−Nc negative relationships, smaller spectral dispersion suppresses the autoconversion processes, reduces the rain water content and eventually decreases the surface precipitation under polluted conditions. Although differences in the surface precipitation between polluted and clean backgrounds are small for all the ɛ−Nc relationships, additional simulations show that our findings are robust to small perturbations in the initial thermal conditions. Keywords: aerosol indirect effects, cloud droplet spectral dispersion, autoconversion parameterization, deep convective systems, two-moment bulk microphysics schem

Exhaustifying Focus Intervention Effects: A Crosslinguistic Study

BLS 39: General Session and Special Session on Space and Directionalit

Weak Generic Sentences: Partitioning and Comparison

BLS 38: General Session and Thematic Session on Language Contac

Existence of solutions for fractional boundary value problem with nonlinear derivative dependence

We investigate the existence of solutions for fractional boundary value problem including both left and right fractional derivatives by using variational methods and iterative technique

On indoor visible light communication systems with spatially random receiver

This paper studies the performance of an indoor optical wireless communication system with visible light communication (VLC) technology in a cuboid room with a spatially random receiver. Considering that the receiver is uniformly distributed on the floor of a 4a m x 4b m x H m (where a > 0, b > 0 and H > 0) cuboid room, 4 light emitting diode (LED) lamps are all located at the center of 2a m x 2b m rectangle, which is a quarter of the ceiling area. The receiver chooses the best channel link to receive the information from the LED lamps, which depends on the distance between the receiver and each lamp. By using stochastic geometry theory, we derive the exact/approximated analytical expressions for the outage probability and the ergodic capacity, respectively. Finally, our derived analytical results are verified by Monte Carlo simulations