On the Decline of Pleonastic that in Late Middle English and Early Modern English

The origin of pleonastic that can be traced back to Old English where it could appear in syntactic constructions consisting of a preposition + demonstrative pronoun (i.e. for þy þat, for þæm þe) or a subordinator (i.e. oþ þat). Its diffusion with other subordinators is considered an early Middle English development as a result of the standardization of this item as the general subordinator in the period, which motivated its use as a pleonastic word in combination with all kinds of conjunctions (i.e. now that, gif that, when that, etc.) and prepositions (i.e. before that, save that, in that) (Fischer 1992: 295). Its use considerably increased in late Middle English, reaching its climax in the 16th century. In the 17th century, however, its use rapidly declined, to such an extent that it was virtually obliterated at the end of that same century (Rissanen 1999: 303-304). The list of subordinating elements includes relativizers (i.e. this that), adverbial relatives (i.e. there that) and a number of subordinators (i.e. after, as, because, before, beside, for, if, since, sith, though, until, when, while, etc. The decline of pleonastic that, however, is not a simultaneous process with all these subordinators insofar as the subordinator for seems to have retained this pleonastic item longer than other conjunctive words. In the light of this, the present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of pleonastic that in a corpus of early English medical writing (in the period 1375–1700); b) to classify the construction in terms of the two different varieties of medical texts, i.e. treatises and recipes; and c) to assess the decline of the construction with the different conjunctive words. The data used as sources of evidence come from The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, i.e. Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT for the period 1375–1500) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT for the period 1500–1700).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

From demonstratives to degree words: on the origin of the intensifying function of this/that in american english

The intensifying function of this/that can be traced back to the 14th century, when they acquired their adverbial status as a result of a grammaticalization process that turned them from deictic demonstratives into degree adverbs with the meaning of ‘to this/that extent, so much, so’ (OED s.v. this/that adv.). These intensifiers have had different ups and downs in the history of English. In spite of their origin in Late Middle English, they are practically not attested from the 16th to the 18th centuries, starting to appear again from the beginning of the 19th century onwards. The actual rise of the construction, however, takes place at the beginning of the following century, even though the intensifier this is usually found to lag behind its counterpart that, both in terms of occurrence and collocational use. The present paper investigates the use and distribution of the intensifying function of this/that in American English with the following objectives: (a) to trace their origin and grammaticalization as degree words in English; (b) to evaluate their quantitative dimension from a historical perspective; and (c) to assess their distribution across speech, writing and text types; and (d) to cast light on the lexico-semantic structure of the right-hand collocates in terms of their mode of construal. The source of evidence comes from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Gauge-invariant implications of the LHCb measurements on Lepton-Flavour Non-Universality

We study the implications of the recent measurements of $R_K$ and $R_{K^*}$ by the LHCb collaboration. We do that by adopting a model-independent approach based on the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT), in which the dominant new physics effects are encoded in the coefficients of dimension-six operators respecting the full Standard Model (SM) gauge symmetry. After providing simplified expressions for $R_K$ and $R_{K^\ast}$, we determine the implications of the recent LHCb results for these observables on the coefficients of the SMEFT operators at low and high energies. We also take into account all $b\to s \ell\ell$ data, which combined lead to effective New Physics (NP) scenarios with SM pulls in excess of 5~$\sigma$. Thus the operators discussed in this paper would be the first dimension-six terms in the SM Lagrangian to be detected experimentally. Indirect constraints on these operators are also discussed. The results of this paper transcend the singularity of the present situation, and set a standard for future analyses in $b\to s$ transitions when the NP is assumed to lie above the electroweak scale.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. v2: references added, typos corrected, improved discussion in Sec. V, corrected coefficient of C7 in formula for RKstar in the low-bin, new figure with global fit in terms of SMEFT coefficients. Conclusions unchanged. v3: minor addition, shorter version to be published in PR

Modeling Sensor Knowledge of a National Hydrologic Information System

In this paper we describe our experience in modeling and using sensor knowledge of a national hydrologic information system in Spain. We developed a web application called VSAIH supported by a knowledge-based system to analyze sensor data and to generate explanations that help users to make decisions based on hydrologic behavior. In the paper, we describe the characteristics of the infrastructure of hydrologic sensors and the representa-tion we used to model sensor knowledge to provide support to the VSAIH application. We also describe semi-automatic procedures that we applied to construct the final model

On the numerical radius of operators in Lebesgue spaces

We show that the absolute numerical index of the space $L_p(\mu)$ is $p^{-1/p} q^{-1/q}$ (where $1/p+1/q=1$). In other words, we prove that $$\sup\{\int |x|^{p-1}|Tx|\, d\mu \, : \ x\in L_p(\mu),\,\|x\|_p=1\} \,\geq \,p^{-\frac{1}{p}} q^{-\frac{1}{q}}\,\|T\|$$ for every $T\in \mathcal{L}(L_p(\mu))$ and that this inequality is the best possible when the dimension of $L_p(\mu)$ is greater than one. We also give lower bounds for the best constant of equivalence between the numerical radius and the operator norm in $L_p(\mu)$ for atomless $\mu$ when restricting to rank-one operators or narrow operators.Comment: 14 page

Description of the spider Verita williamsi, a new genus and species from Santa Fe, Argentina (Araneae, Gnaphosidae)

Verita williamsi, nuevo género y especie (Araneae, Gnaphosidae) se describe a partir de especímenes colectados recientemente en el norte de la provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina. Estas arañas muestran una peculiar combinación de caracteres, solamente dos fúsulas de glándulas piriformes, setas alineadas en la escópula de las patas y las hileras anteriores no muy apartadas entre ellas, que sugieren que la especie está cercanamente emparentada a Micaria y a algunos de los representantes pequeños del grupo de géneros Anzacia. Se distingue de todos ellos por tener tres dientes en el retromargen queliceral y por carecer de setas escamosas iridiscentes en el abdomen.Verita williamsi, nuevo género y especie (Araneae, Gnaphosidae) se describe a partir de especímenes colectados recientemente en el norte de la provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina. Estas arañas muestran una peculiar combinación de caracteres, solamente dos fúsulas de glándulas piriformes, setas alineadas en la escópula de las patas y las hileras anteriores no muy apartadas entre ellas, que sugieren que la especie está cercanamente emparentada a Micaria y a algunos de los representantes pequeños del grupo de géneros Anzacia. Se distingue de todos ellos por tener tres dientes en el retromargen queliceral y por carecer de setas escamosas iridiscentes en el abdomen.Fil: Ramirez, Martin Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Grismado, Cristian José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; Argentin

On the robustness of the primordial power spectrum in renormalized Higgs inflation

We study the cosmological consequences of higher-dimensional operators respecting the asymptotic symmetries of the tree-level Higgs inflation action. The main contribution of these operators to the renormalization group enhanced potential is localized in a compact field range, whose upper limit is close to the end of inflation. The spectrum of primordial fluctuations in the so-called universal regime turns out to be almost insensitive to radiative corrections and in excellent agreement with the present cosmological data. However, higher-dimensional operators can play an important role in critical Higgs inflation scenarios containing a quasi-inflection point along the inflationary trajectory. The interplay of radiative corrections with this quasi-inflection point may translate into a sizable modification of the inflationary observables.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures - matches the published versio