City University of New York. Department of Linguistics

This paper gives reasons to recover the notion of "last resort" found in Chomsky (1991) by examining two uses of the antipassive suffix -ni in Jacaltec, an ergative Mayan language. This suffix is inserted as a last resort where UG makes the assignment of case to the object (transitive aspectless embedded clauses) and the extraction of the subject with ergative agreement (aspectual main clauses) otherwise impossible. Therefore, this notion cannot be restricted to instances of movement, as in Chomsky (1994). Rather, it must also include lexical insertion of affixal material in the derivation, as in the broader view found in Chomsky (1991).Aquest treball proposa de recuperar la noció d'"últim recurs" que trobem a Chomsky (1991) tot inspirant-se en dos usos del sufix antipassiu -ni del jacaltec, una llengua ergativa de la família maia. Aquest sufix s'inserta com a últim recurs quan la GU fa impossible assignar cas a l'objecte (oracions subordinades transitives sense aspecte) i extreure el subjecte amb concordança ergativa (oracions matriu amb aspecte). Per tant, aquesta noció no es pot restringir a casos de moviment, com fa Chomsky (1994). Més aviat, ha d'incloure la inserció lèxica d'afixos durant la derivació, com trobem en la visió més àmplia de Chomsky (1991)

Some Clitic Combinations in the Syntax of Romance

The purpose of this paper is to account for certain gaps in the syntactic distribution of certain combinations of clitics in varieties of Aragonese, Catalan, Occitan and Spanish. A view in which ordering of clitics is only determined by templates is insufficient since templates enter into play after the syntactic component, either in the morphology or in some other post-syntactic component. The alternative I propose is to assume that the ordering of clitic combinations can be done in the syntax, as anticipated by Kayne (1994) and Terzi (1999). I will specifically propose that some of the anomalies involve clitic combinations that are actually non-constituents (split clitics) while in others one element is not actually a clitic but an element with a different morphological status or weak pronominals as in Cardinaletti and Starke (1999).L'objectiu d'aquest article és donar compte de certs buits en la distribució sintàctica de les combinacions de clítics en varietats de l'aragonès, el català, l'occità i el castellà. La perspectiva segons 'ordre dels clítics ve determinat per patrons és insuficient perquè els patrons entren en joc després del component sintàctic, ja sigui a la morfologia, ja sigui en algun altre component postsintàctic. En l'alternativa que proposo l'ordenació de les combinacions de clítics es pot donar a la sintaxi, com anticipaven Kayne (1994) i Terzi (1999). En concret, proposaré que en algunes de les anomalies hi ha involucrades combinacions de clítics que no formen constituents (clítics escindits), mentre que, en altres, un dels elements no és realment un clític, sinó un element amb un estatus morfològic diferent o un pronom feble com a Cardinaletti i Starke (1999)

Microvariation in the Languages of the Iberian Peninsula

This issue of the Catalan Journal of Linguistics was conceived with the idea to promote comparative studies of the languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. The importance of comparison in linguistics dates back to neogrammarians in the xix century due to their interest of discovering the common roots of most of the languages spoken in Europe. In order to get to that objective, comparison of phonological patterns were crucial to retrieve the common Indo-European origin

A novel 2.5D spectral approach for studying thin-walled waveguides with fluid-acoustic interaction

This paper presents a novel formulation of two spectral elements to study guided waves in coupled problems involving thin-walled structures and fluid-acoustic enclosures. The aim of the proposed work is the development of a new efficient computational method to study problems where geometry and properties are invariant in one direction, commonly found in the analysis of guided waves. This assumption allows using a two-and-a-half dimensional (2.5D) spectral formulation in the wavenumber-frequency domain. The novelty of the proposed work is the formulation of spectral plate and fluid elements with an arbitrary order in 2.5D. A plate element based on a Reissner-Mindlin/Kirchhoff-Love mixed formulation is proposed to represent the thin-walled structure. This element uses approximation functions to overcome the difficulties to formulate elements with an arbitrary order from functions. The proposed element uses a substitute transverse shear strain field to avoid shear locking effects. Three benchmark problems are studied to check the convergence and the computational effort for different strategies. Accurate results are found with an appropriate combination of element size and order of the approximation functions allowing at least six nodes per wavelength. The effectiveness of the proposed elements is demonstrated studying the wave propagation in a water duct with a flexible side and an acoustic cavity coupled to a Helmholtz resonator.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BIA2013-43085-P y BIA2016-75042-C2-1-RCentro Informático Científico de Andalucía (CICA

Las nuevas tecnologías como recursos de apoyo para el aprendizaje de las personas con necesidades educativas especiales

En la presente comunicación hemos pretendido dar a conocer cómo las nuevas tecnologías cada vez más pueden facilitar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de los sujetos con necesidades educativas especiales, así como su posible integración en el mundo laboral. Debido a las limitaciones de espacio sólo hemos mostrado algunos de los posibles recursos tecnológicos como posibles dispositivos flexibles aplicables a un colectivo especialmente marginado; concretamente los sujetos con deficiencias motóricas.In the present communication we have sought to give to know how the new technologies more and more they can facilitate the process of teaching-learning of those subject with special educational necessities, as well as their possible integration in the labor world. Due to the space limitations we have only shown some of the possible technological resources as possible applicable flexible devices to a specially excluded community; concretely those subject with deficiencies motóricas

Deep convolutional and LSTM recurrent neural networks for multimodal wearable activity recognition

Human activity recognition (HAR) tasks have traditionally been solved using engineered features obtained by heuristic processes. Current research suggests that deep convolutional neural networks are suited to automate feature extraction from raw sensor inputs. However, human activities are made of complex sequences of motor movements, and capturing this temporal dynamics is fundamental for successful HAR. Based on the recent success of recurrent neural networks for time series domains, we propose a generic deep framework for activity recognition based on convolutional and LSTM recurrent units, which: (i) is suitable for multimodal wearable sensors; (ii) can perform sensor fusion naturally; (iii) does not require expert knowledge in designing features; and (iv) explicitly models the temporal dynamics of feature activations. We evaluate our framework on two datasets, one of which has been used in a public activity recognition challenge. Our results show that our framework outperforms competing deep non-recurrent networks on the challenge dataset by 4% on average; outperforming some of the previous reported results by up to 9%. Our results show that the framework can be applied to homogeneous sensor modalities, but can also fuse multimodal sensors to improve performance. We characterise key architectural hyperparameters’ influence on performance to provide insights about their optimisation

Percepción de los docentes ecuatorianos sobre la inclusión de estudiantes sordos en la escuela regular

International educational practice is oriented towards the inclusion of deaf students in regular school classrooms. In Ecuador, according to current regulations, deaf people can access special or regular schools. However, the access of deaf students to regular schools can generate conceptual, methodological and evaluative tensions in teachers, which must be considered. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the perception of Ecuadorian teachers about the inclusion of deaf students in regular school classrooms. For the execution of the investigative process, the quantitative approach has been selected, with a non-experimental, transectional design, of an exploratory level. The technique used is the survey and the instrument is a 5-question questionnaire, designed by the research team, applied through Google forms. The survey was applied to a non-probabilistic sample of 556 Ecuadorian teachers from various levels of education (except higher education); and was formed by means of the snowball technique. Among the main results, it stands out that 65.8% believe that deaf students should be included in the regular school, but 75.5% confess that they do not feel qualified for it. It is concluded that, according to the teachers' perception, the inclusion of deaf students in the regular school should be accepted, but that the teachers do not feel qualified to fulfill this responsibility. Keywords: perception, teachers, inclusion, deaf students, regular schoolLa práctica educativa internacional se orienta a la inclusión de los estudiantes sordos en las aulas de la escuela regular. En el Ecuador, según la normativa vigente, las personas sordas pueden acceder a escuelas especiales o regulares. No obstante, el acceso de estudiantes sordos a escuelas regulares puede generar tensiones conceptuales, metodológicas y evaluativas en los docentes, que deben ser consideradas. Por ello, la presente investigación se propone analizar la percepción de los docentes ecuatorianos sobre la inclusión de estudiantes sordos en las aulas de la escuela regular. Para la ejecución del proceso investigativo se ha seleccionado el enfoque cuantitativo, con un diseño no experimental, transeccional, de nivel exploratorio. La técnica utilizada es la encuesta y el instrumento un cuestionario de 5 preguntas, diseñado por el equipo de investigación, aplicado por medio de Google forms. La encuesta fue aplicada a una muestra no probabilística de 556 docentes ecuatorianos de diversos niveles de educación (excepto educación superior); y se conformó por medio de la técnica de bola de nieve. Entre los principales resultados se destaca que el 65,8% considera que los estudiantes sordos deben ser incluidos en la escuela regular, pero el 75,5% confiesa que no se siente capacitado para ello. Se concluye que, según la percepción de los docentes, se debe aceptar la inclusión de estudiantes sordos en la escuela regular, pero que los docentes no se sienten capacitados para cumplir con esta responsabilidad. Palabras clave: percepción, docentes, inclusión, estudiantes sordos, escuela regula

Observacions sobre la posició dels subjectes postverbals en català i castellà

This is a comparative study of the different positions of postverbal subjects in two closely related languages that nevertheless show clear differences in this respect. The comparative study will allow us to reject the idea that postverbal subjects in Romance languages are in a unique in situ position Spec VP as has been proposed recently (Motapayane1995, Ordóñez 1998, Costa 2000, Alexiadou i Anagnostopoulou 2001, Cardinaletti 2001). On the contrary, this study will show clearly that there is a need for two positions for postverbal subjects in order to understand the parametric differences between Catalan and Spanish. The general hypothesis will be that the subjects can access a higher Spec of what I will call SubjP, but not Catalan. This will account for the different distribution of subjects respects to adverbs, quantifiers, and restructuring contexts. This paper clearly shows that a finer and richer functional structure above VP and below the final landing site of subjects is needed to account for the differences between Catalan and Spanish. Therefore, this paper is another contribution to the cartographic studies initiated by Rizzi (1997)