The Conventionalization of the Passive in Late Modern Scientific English

[Abstract] This paper is part of a larger project in which I seek to find out the reasons behind the radical decrease in the use of passives in Present-day English scientific discourse. After discarding a number of linguistic factors, my hypothesis is that passives are being elided because they have lost the pragmatic function which justified their high frequency in scientific discourse; they have become conventionalised in this text-type and, as any other linguistic feature which does not have a clear function in informative writing, are being suppressed. This paper tries to check this hypothesis by analysing the function of passives in scientific discourse before the change started to take place, that is, in Late Modern English. With data from ARCHER and other sources I will try to show that passives in LModE scientific English exemplify the conventionalisation of pragmatic strategies, a scenario that inevitably leads to linguistic change.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación: HUM2007-60706/FILOGalicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 08PXIB204016P

Telling the true Gibraltarian Story: an Interview with Gibraltarian writer M.G. Sanchez

Born in Gibraltar in 1968, writer M. G. Sanchez moved to the UK to study English Literature at the age of twenty-seven, where he has lived ever since, with interludes in New Zealand (2004), India (2005-2008) and, more recently, Japan (2014-2016). He took BA, MA and PhD degrees at the University of Leeds, completing his studies in 2004 with a thesis exploring perceptions of ‘hispanicity’ in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature. His first publication was Rock Black: Ten Gibraltarian Stories, a collection of short narratives. Since then he has written three novels on Gibraltar – The Escape Artist, Solitude House and Jonathan Gallardo – as well as numerous stories and essays. His latest work, Past: A Memoir, was published in October 2016, and explores his own family history on the Rock

Modelling morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes from a register perspective

This paper addresses Miller’s (2000) and Brown and Miller’s (2017) hypothesis that the adverbs just, (n)ever and yet are becoming markers of perfect meaning in spoken English, and this at the expense of weakening semantically and reducing the use of the have + past participle periphrasis. The hypothesis is tested in eight varieties of Present-Day English from the perspective of Usage Based Theory (Bybee 2006, 2011, 2013) and with a corpus-based, onomasiological methodology. The results confirm the hypothesis only partially; crucially, data reveal that in order to model morphosyntactic variation in a rigorous way we need to adopt a register perspective such as that used by Biber and associates (e.g. Biber and Gray 2016), who demonstrate that language variation and change is mediated by register variation.Este artículo versa sobre la hipótesis vertida en Miller (2000) y Brown y Miller (2017) sobre los adverbios just, (n)ever y yet, según la cual estos adverbios se están convirtiendo paulatinamente en marcadores de perfecto a expensas del debilitamiento semántico de la perífrasis de perfecto have + participio de pasado. Este trabajo comprueba esta hipótesis en ocho variedades de inglés contemporáneo desde el enfoque de la UBT (Usage Based Theory, cf. Bybee 2006, 2011, 2013), con una metodología basada en corpus y un enfoque onomasiológico. Los resultados confirman la antedicha hipótesis solamente de modo parcial pero, crucialmente, los datos revelan que para describir de modo riguroso la variación morfosintáctica se necesita adoptar una perspectiva de registro como hacen Biber y colegas (por ejemplo, Biber y Gray 2016), quienes demuestran que la variación el cambio lingüístico está mediado y depende de los patrones de variación observados en los distintos registros

Lightweight and static verification of UML executable models

Executable models play a key role in many software development methods by facilitating the (semi)automatic implementation/execution of the software system under development. This is possible because executable models promote a complete and fine-grained specification of the system behaviour. In this context, where models are the basis of the whole development process, the quality of the models has a high impact on the final quality of software systems derived from them. Therefore, the existence of methods to verify the correctness of executable models is crucial. Otherwise, the quality of the executable models (and in turn the quality of the final system generated from them) will be compromised. In this paper a lightweight and static verification method to assess the correctness of executable models is proposed. This method allows us to check whether the operations defined as part of the behavioural model are able to be executed without breaking the integrity of the structural model and returns a meaningful feedback that helps repairing the detected inconsistencies.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Characteristics of apposition in The Great Gatsby

The aim of this paper is to study the syntactic and semantic characteristics of apposition as exemplified in The Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, which, due to its narrator's tendency to poeticize reality and to detailed description, provides a good many examples of the use of apposition in all its varieties. In the pages that follow I first establish a set of definite criteria which define apposition and then I go on to illustrate these in the appositions found in the novel mentioned above. Finally I offer a pragmatic and stylistic explanation for the author's frequent use of appositions

The Effect of Prominence Hierarchies on Modern English Long Passives: Pragmatic vs. Syntactic Factors

This paper examines the effect of the most relevant crosslinguistic prominence hierarchies on long passives (or passives with an overt by-phrase), in order to identify the factors which condition their choice over actives as order-rearranging strategies in Modern English (1500-1900). With empirical data drawn from the Helsinki Corpus and ARCHER, I will study the effect of (i) familiarity hierarchies, such as given-before-new or definite-before-indefinite, (ii) dominance hierarchies, like the animacy, empathy and semantic role hierarchies, and (iii) formal hierarchies such as short-before-long. The analysis reveals a clear predominance of pragmatic and syntactic factors, namely discourse status (given-before-new) and structural complexity (short-before-long), both of which facilitate utterance planning, production and parsing. Despite the apparent correlation between these two factors, this paper also shows that they are independent and that, when in competition, discourse status is a more powerful factor than syntactic complexity

Aportaciones del POMS a la medida del estado de ánimo de los deportistas : estado de la cuestión

Diseñado por McNair, Lorr y Droppleman (1971) para el ámbito clínico, el Perfil de los Estados de Ánimo (POMS) se ha convertido en un instrumento importante para la investigación en Psicología del Deporte. El presente trabajo sintetiza las principales aportaciones del cuestionario a la evaluación psicológica de los deportistas. El interés inicial por su efectividad en la predicción del rendimiento deportivo ha derivado, fruto del número creciente de estudios, en una serie de aplicaciones. Se ha empleado para analizar el efecto de la participación en programas de ejercicio, así como en el seguimiento psicológico del sobreentrenamiento y la fatiga. Ha sido adaptado a diferentes segmentos de la población y a distintos idiomas. A pesar de que existen ciertas dificultades de tipo metodológico que afectan al desarrollo de la escala, los resultados obtenidos con el POMS son muy prometedores y parece que su viabilidad y popularidad se mantendrán en el futuro.Created by McNair, Lorr and Droppleman (1971) for clinical settings, the Profile of Mood States (POMS) has become one of the most important instruments for research in Sport Psychology. This work is a synthesis of POMS contributions to the psychological assessment of athletes. Due to the increasing number of research studies, the initial interest in its accuracy in predicting sports performance has led to a series of applications. It has been used to examine the effects of exercise participation on mood, as well as for monitoring of overtraining and staleness. It has been adapted to different population

Finding of gravestones with megalithical art in fonte Touron (Lalín, Pontevedra)

23 páxinas, 11 figuras.[GL] No contexto dos traballos arqueolóxicos previos á execución dunha obra (unha liña eléctrica de media tensión), localizáronse unhas lousas con gravados na zona de Fonte Tourón, en Lalín. Trátase dunhas lousas que presentan uns gravados de estilo propio do megalitismo e que agora forman parte dos lindes das fincas nas que se atopan. As características destes gravados, sumado á propia forma das pedras, a un contexto onde se localizan outras mámoas e sobre todo, á información dos veciños que vinculan estas pedras cunha mámoa desfeita fai uns anos, apuntan a que formaron parte dun monumento megalítico, e que moi probablemente se trata dos esteos dunha cámara.[EN] In an archaeological context before a works execution took place (an electric half tension line), some engraved gravestones were found around the area of Fonte Touron, Council of Lalín. These gravestones have engravings representative of megalithism and nowadays they became boundary markers of the yards in which they are. The features of the engravings, besides the very shape of the stones and the context where other mounds are located, and above everything, the information provided by local neighbors that relate the stones of this mound to one set apart some years ago, points that they were part of a megalithic monument, and it is highly probable that they were the orthostats of a chamber.Peer reviewe

A computation tool for estimating non-linear impairments in optical fibres

Las modulaciones coherentes para transmisión en fibra óptica están implicando grandes avances en los alcances y tasas. Estas modulaciones son capaces de compensar ciertos efectos con procesado en el receptor, como la dispersión cromática o la dispersión de polarización. Los efectos no lineales son el nuevo cuello de botella. Recientemente, el modelo de ruido gaussiano se ha propuesto para estimación de la degradación de la señal a ruido causada por estos efectos no lineales. Posteriormente, la herramienta GNPY desarrollada en el marco del proyecto TIP (Telecom Infra Project) por el Politécnico di Torino, ha ofrecido una implementación del mismo. Este proyecto se centra en la creación de una interfaz desde Net2Plan con la herramienta GNPY para el cálculo de las penalizaciones de la OSNR según este modelo, y en la realización de una implementación propia integrada en Net2Plan, accesible al usuario a través de informe de calidad de línea WDMEscuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de TelecomunicaciónUniversidad Politécnica de Cartagen