Notions of focus anaphoricity

This article reviews some of the theoretical notions and empirical phenomena which figure in current formal-semantic theories of focus. It also develops the connection between “alternative semantics” and “givenness” accounts of focus interpretation

Epistemic NP Modifiers

The paper considers participles such as "unknown", "identified" and "unspecified", which in sentences such as "Solange is staying in an unknown hotel" have readings equivalent to an indirect question "Solange is staying in a hotel, and it is not known which hotel it is." We discuss phenomena including disambiguation of quantifier scope and a restriction on the set of determiners which allow the reading in question. Epistemic modifiers are analyzed in a DRT framework with file (information state) discourse referents. The proposed semantics uses a predication on files and discourse referents which is related to recent developments in dynamic modal predicate calculus. It is argued that a compositional DRT semantics must employ a semantic type of discourse referents, as opposed to just a type of individuals. A connection is developed between the scope effects of epistemic modifiers and the scope-disambiguating effect of "a certain".Comment: Final pre-publication version, 27 pages, Postscript. Final version appears in the proceedings of SALT VI

Using a Probabilistic Class-Based Lexicon for Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

This paper presents the use of probabilistic class-based lexica for disambiguation in target-word selection. Our method employs minimal but precise contextual information for disambiguation. That is, only information provided by the target-verb, enriched by the condensed information of a probabilistic class-based lexicon, is used. Induction of classes and fine-tuning to verbal arguments is done in an unsupervised manner by EM-based clustering techniques. The method shows promising results in an evaluation on real-world translations.Comment: 7 pages, uses colacl.st

An Experimental Study of Sex Segregation in the Swedish Labour Market: Is Discrimination the Explanation?

This paper studies whether sex discrimination is the cause of sex segregation in the Swedish labour market. The correspondence testing (CT) method was used, which entails two qualitatively identical applications, one with a female name and one with a male name, being sent to employers advertising for labour. The results show that females have a somewhat higher callback rate to interview in female-dominated occupations, while in male-dominated occupations there is no evidence of any difference. The conclusion is that the sex segregation prevailing in the Swedish labour market cannot be explained by discrimination in hiring. Instead, the explanation must be found on the supply side.sex discrimination, segregation, exit from unemployment

Employer Attitudes, the Marginal Employer and the Ethnic Wage Gap

Ethnic minorities have lower wages compared to the ethnic majority in most EU-countries. However, to what extent these wage gaps are the result of prejudice toward ethnic minority workers is virtually unknown. This study sets out to examine what role prejudice play in the creation of the ethnic wage gap in one of Europe's most egalitarian countries, Sweden. The analysis takes into account the important distinction between average employer attitudes and the attitude of the marginal employer. Our results confirm that the attitudes of the marginal employer – but not those of the average employer – are important for the ethnic wage gap. This relationship becomes even stronger when potential measurement error and other forms of endogeneity are accounted for by controlling for a rich set of variables and implementing instrumental variable techniques.attitudes, prejudice, marginal employer, ethnic wage gap

The Income Gap Between Natives and Second Generation Immigrants in Sweden: Is Skill the Explanation?

This is the first study to use an achievement test score to analyze whether the income gap between second-generation immigrants and natives is caused by a skill gap rather than ethnic discrimination. Since, in principle, every male Swedish citizen takes the test when turning 18, we are able to bring more evidence to bear on the matter by estimating the income gap for a very large sample of individuals who are of the same age and have the same years of schooling at the test date. Once the result of the Swedish Military Enlistment Test is controlled for, the income gap almost disappears for second generation immigrants with both parents born in Southern Europe or outside Europe. However, when using a regular set of control variables the income gap becomes overestimated. This difference in results is most likely explained by the fact that schooling is a bad measure of productive skills for these groups of second-generation immigrants. It indicates that they compensate for their lower probability of being employed by investing in (in relation to their skill level) more schooling than otherwise similar natives.Productive skills, discrimination, incomes, wages

Is It Your Foreign Name or Foreign Qualifications? An Experimental Study of Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring

This paper contributes to the existing literature on ethnic discrimination of immigrants in hiring by addressing the central question of what employers act on in a job application. The method involved sending qualitatively identical resumes signalling belonging to different ethnic groups to firms advertising for labour. The results show that whether the applicant has a native sounding or a foreign sounding name explains approximately 77 per cent of the total gap in the probability of being invited to an interview between natives and immigrants, while having foreign qualifications only explains the remaining 23 per cent. This in turn, suggests a lower bound for statistical discrimination of approximately 23 per cent of total discrimination. The analysis indicates further that the 77 per cent are most likely driven by a mixture of preference-based and statistical discrimination.statistical discrimination, ethnic discrimination, hiring, job search, preference-based discrimination, correspondence testing

Do when and where matter? Initial labor market conditions and immigrant earnings

This paper investigates the long-term effects on immigrant earnings and employment from labor market conditions encountered upon arrival. We find substantial effects both of the state of the national labor market and of local unemployment rates. Comparing refugees entering Sweden in a severe and unexpected recession to refugees arriving in a preceding economic boom, we attempt to handle the issue of selective migration. The analysis of effects at the local level exploits a governmental refugee settlement policy to get exogenous variation in local labor market conditions.Immigration; earnings: labor market conditions