Questioning to Resolve Transduction Problems

Elgot & Mezei (1965) show that non-deterministic regular functions (NDRFs) are compositions ρ ⚬ λ of two contradirectional subsequential functions (SSQs), where λ is unbounded lookahead for ρ. Such decompositions facilitate the identification of processes that require supra-SSQ expressivity. We use concepts adapted from decision theory to outline a set of necessary and sufficient properties for a composition ρ ⚬ λ to define a non-SSQ NDRF . These conditions define a set of functions between the IF-WDRFs (McCollum et al. 2018, Hao & Andersson 2019) and proper NDRFs, organized in terms of a precise notion of the degree of lookahead that λ provides for ρ

Activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase δ syndrome: Update from the ESID Registry and comparison with other autoimmune-lymphoproliferative inborn errors of immunity

Background: Activated phosphoinositide-3-kinase d syndrome (APDS) is an inborn error of immunity (IEI) with infection susceptibility and immune dysregulation, clinically overlapping with other conditions. Management depends on disease evolution, but predictors of severe disease are lacking. Objectives: This study sought to report the extended spectrum of disease manifestations in APDS1 versus APDS2; compare these to CTLA4 deficiency, NFKB1 deficiency, and STAT3 gain of-function (GOF) disease; and identify predictors of severity in APDS. Methods: Data was collected from the ESID (European Society for Immunodeficiencies)-APDS registry and was compared with published cohorts of the other IEIs. Results: The analysis of 170 patients with APDS outlines high penetrance and early onset of APDS compared to the other IEIs. The large clinical heterogeneity even in individuals with the same PIK3CD variant E1021K illustrates how poorly the genotype predicts the disease phenotype and course. The high clinical overlap between APDS and the other investigated IEIs suggests relevant pathophysiological convergence of the affected pathways. Preferentially affected organ systems indicate specific pathophysiology: bronchiectasis is typical of APDS1; interstitial lung disease and enteropathy are more common in STAT3 GOF and CTLA4 deficiency. Endocrinopathies are most frequent in STAT3 GOF, but growth impairment is also common, particularly in APDS2. Early clinical presentation is a risk factor for severe disease in APDS. Conclusions: APDS illustrates how a single genetic variant can result in a diverse autoimmune-lymphoproliferative phenotype. Overlap with other IEIs is substantial. Some specific features distinguish APDS1 from APDS2. Early onset is a risk factor for severe disease course calling for specific treatment studies in younger patients. (J Allergy Clin Immunol 2023;152:984-96.

Modelling human choices: MADeM and decision‑making

Research supported by FAPESP 2015/50122-0 and DFG-GRTK 1740/2. RP and AR are also part of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics FAPESP grant (2013/07699-0). RP is supported by a FAPESP scholarship (2013/25667-8). ACR is partially supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)

Functional pressures and linguistic typology

The explanation of linguistic variation and change is one of the central questions in the language sciences. Functional explanations focus on how the needs and abilities of language users shape the distribution of linguistic structures that typically conventionalize -- e.g. structures that are harder to perceive or learn accurately are less likely to conventionalize accurately. Perceptibility effects are common sound patterns that seem closely related to the relative confusability of different speech sound sequences. One class of explanations -- purely phonological accounts --have assumed speakers (implicitly) know how confusability varies as a function of immediately adjacent sounds, and that this is a rich enough description of confusability to explain perceptibility effects. Chapter 2 shows that the perceptibility of tokens of any given sound in American English systematically varies based on a listener's incrementally-adjusted expectations about what the speaker intends to say, and shows that this variation is significantly greater than variation due to immediately adjacent sounds. To derive this result, I present a computational psycholinguistic model of word recognition and apply it to experimental confusability data and a transcribed lexicon of 10^4 words. I conclude that purely phonological accounts of perceptibility effects need to be more complicated and less modular than currently appreciated. Chapter 3 applies the same word recognition model and novel information-theoretic measures of confusability to two conversational corpora and shows that words that are more contextually confusable are lengthened in contexts where they are more confusable, and shortened where they are less so. This is a crucial step towards a linking hypothesis between the realtime perceptibility of different speech sound sequences and conventionalized perceptibility effects. Chapter 4 considers morphology. Prior research has observed an inverse relation between morphological complexity and demographic variables like speech community size and proportion of adult learners. Recent work has hypothesized that higher complexity may be helpful to child learners, and that populations with differing demographics constitute environments with different 'selection pressures' for language variants to 'evolve' in. I argue that mathematical formulations of Darwinian evolution suggest a more likely explanation: 'neutral' change caused by random fluctuations in variant frequency ('drift') is much more powerful in small populations and can easily overwhelm selection relative to large populations

Functional pressures and linguistic typology

The explanation of linguistic variation and change is one of the central questions in the language sciences. Functional explanations focus on how the needs and abilities of language users shape the distribution of linguistic structures that typically conventionalize -- e.g. structures that are harder to perceive or learn accurately are less likely to conventionalize accurately. Perceptibility effects are common sound patterns that seem closely related to the relative confusability of different speech sound sequences. One class of explanations -- purely phonological accounts --have assumed speakers (implicitly) know how confusability varies as a function of immediately adjacent sounds, and that this is a rich enough description of confusability to explain perceptibility effects. Chapter 2 shows that the perceptibility of tokens of any given sound in American English systematically varies based on a listener's incrementally-adjusted expectations about what the speaker intends to say, and shows that this variation is significantly greater than variation due to immediately adjacent sounds. To derive this result, I present a computational psycholinguistic model of word recognition and apply it to experimental confusability data and a transcribed lexicon of 10^4 words. I conclude that purely phonological accounts of perceptibility effects need to be more complicated and less modular than currently appreciated. Chapter 3 applies the same word recognition model and novel information-theoretic measures of confusability to two conversational corpora and shows that words that are more contextually confusable are lengthened in contexts where they are more confusable, and shortened where they are less so. This is a crucial step towards a linking hypothesis between the realtime perceptibility of different speech sound sequences and conventionalized perceptibility effects. Chapter 4 considers morphology. Prior research has observed an inverse relation between morphological complexity and demographic variables like speech community size and proportion of adult learners. Recent work has hypothesized that higher complexity may be helpful to child learners, and that populations with differing demographics constitute environments with different 'selection pressures' for language variants to 'evolve' in. I argue that mathematical formulations of Darwinian evolution suggest a more likely explanation: 'neutral' change caused by random fluctuations in variant frequency ('drift') is much more powerful in small populations and can easily overwhelm selection relative to large populations

Analysis

A description of the statistical analyses to be performed