I Might Not Would Say That: A Sociolinguistic Study of Double Modal Acceptance

While the double modal (e.g., I might could go to the store) is a well know feature of Southern United States English, most previous studies have focused mainly on explaining the double modal’s syntactic structure. With this focus on syntax these studies generally have used small and/or socially homogeneous samples; thus there we have little information about what social constraints might exist on double modal usage. Because the double modal is a relatively infrequently occurring syntactic form that does not alternate with another easily identifiable form, sociolinguistic methods of counting occurrences and non-occurrences in spontaneous speech are not adequate. In light of this, the present study utilized syntactic acceptability judgments to examine the effect of social factors on double modal acceptance in Northeast Tennessee. Age, gender, and educational level were found to significantly constrain respondents’ acceptance of double modal sentences. Age was the strongest predictor of acceptance with the youngest respondents the most accepting of double modal forms, followed by the oldest, and then the middle aged suggestive of possible age grading. Furthermore, men and respondents with less education were more likely to accept double modals than were women and respondents with more education; however, the gender and education effects hold only for the middle and old age groups. Thus, the young respondents are the most accepting and the most homogeneous group. This distribution supports a hypothesis that double modals are avoided by those who most value unmarked forms: adults in the prime years for employment. Planned future work including language attitude data will be beneficial in fully understanding the social distribution and perception of double modals

The effects of a high quality teaching professional development program on fourth grade student achievement

In many states, local school systems are under pressure to implement educational programs to help students pass the statewide Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (ASK) in science, mathematics, and language arts literacy. The school district in which this study was conducted implemented a high quality teaching professional development (HQTPD) program for grade four teachers in 2008. The research problem was that, at the data site, fourth grade students were not making academic progress, and elementary schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP). The HQTPD program intervention was grounded in social learning theory. The main research question that guided this quantitative study was whether or not HQTPD affected fourth grade students\u27 science, mathematics, and language arts literacy ASK scores. ASK test scores in science, mathematics, and language arts literacy were collected for 1,185 grade four students. The data were analyzed using a nonequivalent quasi-experimental pretest and posttest control group design, which involved two cohorts of fourth grade students before and after the implementation of the HQTPD program. Empirical evidence revealed that the HQTPD program had a positive impact on fourth grade students\u27 science, mathematics, and language arts literacy ASK scores. The local school district and the surrounding institutes of higher education and professional development providers in this state may benefit from having an awareness of the effectiveness of HQTPD on student achievement. Implications for social change include including more programs like HQTPD that have the potential to increase student academic achievement

Finding Needles in the Right Haystack: Double Modals in Medical Consultations

In this paper we present a case study of a syntactic sociolinguistic variable that has resisted previous attempts at quantitative analysis of usage, the double modal construction of Southern United States English (e.g., You know what might could help that is losing some weight). While naturally-occurring double modals have been exceedingly rare in sociolinguistic interviews, our study represents the very first corpus investigation of double modals through a search of the right ‘haystack’: the nationwide Verilogue, Inc database of recorded and transcribed physician-patient interactions (~85 million words). As a vast source of potentially face-threatening negotiations, the Verilogue corpus provides the ideal speech situation in which to search for low frequency, non-standard syntactic features like the double modal. A quantitative analysis of the 76 tokens extracted from doctor-patient consultations in the US South revealed that double modals are favored by doctors, especially women and those with many decades of professional experience. Among patients, those not currently in employment use double modals more frequently than the employed. We interpreted these findings with reference to the literature on the pragmatics of physician-patient talk, arguing that the double modal is used to negotiate the imbalanced power dynamic of a doctor-patient consultation. In general, the greater use of double modals by doctors shows that the construction is an active part of a doctor’s repertoire for mitigating directives. Collectively, we present a complex socio-pragmatic picture of double modal use that could not be seen without a corpus of naturally-occurring speech in a potentially face-threatening speech situation

Noise-induced dynamics in bistable systems with delay

Noise-induced dynamics of a prototypical bistable system with delayed feedback is studied theoretically and numerically. For small noise and magnitude of the feedback, the problem is reduced to the analysis of the two-state model with transition rates depending on the earlier state of the system. In this two-state approximation, we found analytical formulae for the autocorrelation function, the power spectrum, and the linear response to a periodic perturbation. They show very good agreement with direct numerical simulations of the original Langevin equation. The power spectrum has a pronounced peak at the frequency corresponding to the inverse delay time, whose amplitude has a maximum at a certain noise level, thus demonstrating coherence resonance. The linear response to the external periodic force also has maxima at the frequencies corresponding to the inverse delay time and its harmonics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Monomeric Bistability and the Role of Autoloops in Gene Regulation

Genetic toggle switches are widespread in gene regulatory networks (GRN). Bistability, namely the ability to choose among two different stable states, is an essential feature of switching and memory devices. Cells have many regulatory circuits able to provide bistability that endow a cell with efficient and reliable switching between different physiological modes of operation. It is often assumed that negative feedbacks with cooperative binding (i.e. the formation of dimers or multimers) are a prerequisite for bistability. Here we analyze the relation between bistability in GRN under monomeric regulation and the role of autoloops under a deterministic setting. Using a simple geometric argument, we show analytically that bistability can also emerge without multimeric regulation, provided that at least one regulatory autoloop is present

Deterministic and stochastic descriptions of gene expression dynamics

A key goal of systems biology is the predictive mathematical description of gene regulatory circuits. Different approaches are used such as deterministic and stochastic models, models that describe cell growth and division explicitly or implicitly etc. Here we consider simple systems of unregulated (constitutive) gene expression and compare different mathematical descriptions systematically to obtain insight into the errors that are introduced by various common approximations such as describing cell growth and division by an effective protein degradation term. In particular, we show that the population average of protein content of a cell exhibits a subtle dependence on the dynamics of growth and division, the specific model for volume growth and the age structure of the population. Nevertheless, the error made by models with implicit cell growth and division is quite small. Furthermore, we compare various models that are partially stochastic to investigate the impact of different sources of (intrinsic) noise. This comparison indicates that different sources of noise (protein synthesis, partitioning in cell division) contribute comparable amounts of noise if protein synthesis is not or only weakly bursty. If protein synthesis is very bursty, the burstiness is the dominant noise source, independent of other details of the model. Finally, we discuss two sources of extrinsic noise: cell-to-cell variations in protein content due to cells being at different stages in the division cycles, which we show to be small (for the protein concentration and, surprisingly, also for the protein copy number per cell) and fluctuations in the growth rate, which can have a significant impact.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures; Journal of Statistical physics (2012

Comments on Non-Commutative Phenomenology

It is natural to ask whether non-commutative geometry plays a role in four dimensional physics. By performing explicit computations in various toy models, we show that quantum effects lead to violations of Lorentz invariance at the level of operators of dimension three or four. The resulting constraints are very stringent.Comment: Correction of an error in the U(1) and U(N) calculation leads to stronger limits than those given previously Clarifying comments and reference adde

An examination of the effects of self-regulatory focus on the perception of the media richness: the case of email

Communication is a key element in organizations’ business success. The media richness theory and the channel expansion theory are two of the most influential theories regarding the selection and use of communication media in organizations; however, literature has focused little on the effects of self-regulation by managers and employees in these theories. To analyze these topics, this study develops an empirical investigation by gathering data from 600 managers and employees using a questionnaire. The results suggest that the perception of media richness is positively affected when the individual shows a promotion focus or strategy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft