This paper shows that the semantics of shenme ‘what’ in Chinese bare conditionals may exhibit a phenomenon of double quantification. I argue that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for if one adopts Carlson's (1977a, b) semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the following two assumptions: (i) shenme ‘what’ can be a proform of bare NPs and hence has the same kind of denotation as bare NPs, and (ii) Chinese bare NPs are names of kinds (...) of things. This analysis of Chinese bare conditionals lends support to Carlson's approach to bare plurals despite Wilkinson's (1991) criticisms. I also show that an extension of Heim's (1987) analysis of what as ‘something of kind x’ to Chinese shenme ‘what’ encounters problems when shenme ‘what’ is a shared constituent of a predicate which applies to kinds and another predicate which applies to objects. (shrink)

This paper gives an analysis of the Chinese distributivity marker dou 'all', which can occur not only with definite plural NPs but also with NPs whose determiner is a quantifier word such as mei 'every' or dabufen-de 'most'. Besides normal distributive predicates, it can also occur with certain types of collective predicates. The difficulties of giving a compositional interpretation to constructions of these kinds are discussed in detail. I show that we can solve those difficulties if we treat dou as (...) a generalized distributivity marker in the sense of Schwarzschild (1991, 1996), which distributes over the members of a plurality cover. Apart from the above topic, which is more narrowly a semantics topic, this paper also discusses some syntax-semantics interface issues related to the distribution of dou's associates. (shrink)

This paper shows that the semantics of shenme ‘what’ in Chinese bare conditionals may exhibit a phenomenon of double quantification. I argue that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for if one adopts Carlson's (1977a, b) semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the following two assumptions: (i) shenme ‘what’ can be a proform of bare NPs and hence has the same kind of denotation as bare NPs, and (ii) Chinese bare NPs are names of kinds (...) of things. This analysis of Chinese bare conditionals lends support to Carlson's approach to bare plurals despite Wilkinson's (1991) criticisms. I also show that an extension of Heim's (1987) analysis of what as ‘something of kind x’ to Chinese shenme ‘what’ encounters problems when shenme ‘what’ is a shared constituent of a predicate which applies to kinds and another predicate which applies to objects. (shrink)

A recent popular analysis of English indefinites isthat they involve a choice function mechanism in their semantic interpretation. However,there are diversified views regarding how intermediate scope readings should be dealt withand which level(s) existential closure should apply to. This paper attempts to make acontribution to this debate by examining existential polarity wh-phrases in Chinese. I showthat unlike the behaviors of polarity indefinites in St''át''imcets reported by Matthewson(1999), intermediate scope readings are possible for polarity wh-phrases in Chinese but aresubject to some (...) locality conditions. I suggest that implicit arguments of choice functionsmight have a parametric value the choice of which affects availability of intermediate readings.The findings in this paper thus revive the possibility, rejected by Matthewson (1999), that thechoice function mechanism may vary from language to language or from indefinite NPs in onelanguage to indefinite NPs in another language or even from one type of indefiniteNP to another type of indefinite NP within the same language. (shrink)

This paper argues that superiority comparatives in Mandarin Chinese are all phrasal comparatives that can be directly interpreted, and makes a new suggestion of taking the bǐ-phrase (‘compare-phrase’) to be an adjunct and one constituent, but with bǐ-shells. This syntactic analysis allows one to combine into one phrase various compared constituents that would otherwise not be analyzed as forming a phrase by themselves. Semantically, in extension of work by Heim as well as Bhatt and Takahashi, bǐ is taken to compare (...) two sequences of arguments of a gradable predicate along the dimension given by that predicate. It is also suggested that comparatives across languages may be subject to three parameters: (i) argument-dependent comparison vs. non-argument dependent comparison, (ii) phrasal comparison vs. clausal comparison, and (iii) monoadic comparison vs. dyadic comparison. (shrink)

The main objective of this article is to provide a formal semantics of comparative correlatives of the form ‘ yuè …, yuè … ’ in Mandarin Chinese. A new analysis is proposed which treats the comparative correlatives as one which involves a quantificational tripartite structure and which derives all the meanings of the ‘ yuè …, yuè … ’ constructions through a comparison of degrees which relate to different or same individuals. The comparison of the same or different degrees of (...) a given property is shown to be the consequences of the general processing strategy for noun phrase interpretations suggested by Partee, as well as of the constituent structure of the sentence. It is also shown that the same semantics for Chinese yuè can be extended to the - er in English comparative conditionals, as well as to similar constructions in other languages. At the same time a superficial cross-linguistic variation from independent factors can also be derived. (shrink)

The controversy concerning the identity of thinking and being has been under way for several months. The truth is bound to become more clear when it is debated further. Our understanding of this problem has also been enhanced through discussion, and this discussion has all the more demonstrated its important significance. It will become very evident that this is by no means a problem of the individual term, which Engels used in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, (...) but also a problem concerning the basic principles of Marxist philosophy; nor is it merely an abstract theoretical problem, but rather a problem of great realistic significance. (shrink)

BackgroundThe interRAI 0–3 Early Years was recently developed to support intervention efforts based on the needs of young children and their families. One aspect of child development assessed by the Early Years instrument are motor skills, which are integral for the maturity of cognition, language, social-emotional and other developmental outcomes. Gross motor development, however, is negatively impacted by pre-term birth and low birth weight. For the purpose of known-groups validation, an at-risk sample of preterm children using the interRAI 0–3 Early (...) Years was included to examine correlates of preterm risk and the degree of gross motor delay.MethodsParticipant data included children and families from 17 health agencies in Ontario, Canada. Data were collected as part of a pilot study using the full interRAI 0–3 Early Years assessment. Correlational analyses were used to determine relationships between prenatal risk and preterm birth and bivariate analyses examined successful and failed performance of at-risk children on gross motor items. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine the mean difference in gross motor scores for children born at various weeks gestation.ResultsCorrelational analysis indicated that prenatal and perinatal factors such as maternal nicotine use during pregnancy did not have significant influence over gross motor achievement for the full sample, however, gross motor scores were lower for children born pre-term or low birth weight based on bivariate analysis. Gross motor scores decreased from 40 weeks’ gestation, to moderate to late preterm, and to very preterm, however extremely preterm performed comparably to very preterm.InterpretationThe interRAI 0–3 was evaluated to determine its efficacy and report findings which confirm the literature regarding delay in gross motor performance for preterm children. Findings confirm that pre-term and low birth weight children are at greater risk for motor delay via the interRAI 0–3 Early Years gross motor domain. (shrink)

Christianity during Portuguese era in Kerala, India.

This paper reconciles an inconsistency between the benefits of mind wandering and a prominent conception of attention in philosophy and cognitive psychology, namely, the prioritization view. Since we prioritize the information in a task less if we are doing it while mind wandering compared to solely concentrating on it, why does our performance in the task sometimes improve when we are mind wandering? To explain this, we offer a conception of diffuse attention that generalizes from external to internal forms of (...) attention and captures deep commonalities between the two (Chun et al. 2011). We conceptualize mind wandering as an instance of internal diffuse attention that also induces diffuse attention in other concurrent tasks. Moreover, pace the prioritization view, certain tasks are in fact better performed with diffuse attention, which prioritizes information less than focused attention. Our account of mind wandering as an instance of the more general category of diffuse attention improves upon current leading philosophical views of mind wandering (such as Irving 2016) by better explaining the interaction between mind wandering and other tasks. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn everyday situations, people regularly receive information from large groups of people and from single experts. Although lay opinions and expert opinions have been studied extensively in isolation, the present study examined the relationship between the two by asking how many laypeople are needed to counter an expert opinion. A Bayesian formalisation allowed the prescription of this quantity. Participants were subsequently asked to assess how many laypeople are needed in different situations. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive to the (...) relevant factors identified for determining how many lay opinions are required to counteract a single expert opinion. People's assessments were fairly good in line with Bayesian predictions. (shrink)

By means of comparison between Lao Tzu’s theory of Tao in ancient China and the concept of metaphysics originated from ancient Greece, the author redefined the concept of “form” and therefore, elaborated the meaning of metaphysics from its Chinese translation. According to the author’s re-interpretation of Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu had resolved the ontological questions in a different way with that of ancient Greek philosophers, and he had answered the question of “One and Many”. In the past, people had (...) omitted the fact that there are actually two different “ones” in this question, and hence, metaphysics and ontology had been remained in a confused state. By giving an example in natural science, the author had illustrated clearly what is the metaphysical Tao, and then extendedthe idea to metaphysics of morals. As a conclusion, the author suggests that it is better to use a new term to replace the imperfectly defined “metaphysics”, for example, metaformology. (shrink)

For scene analysis, it is important to ask the question of how synchronized population codes – the basic representation employed in the target article – are generated. Recent computational advances have resolved the critical challenges of rapid synchronization with local coupling and rapid desynchronization. The synchronized codes make real contributions to tackling the problem of scene analysis.

Integrating power dependence and gender role theories, we investigate the interactive effects of followers’ gender and leaders’ Machiavellian orientation in predicting followers’ usage of upward influence tactics. Using a sample of 156 matched leader–follower dyads, we found that followers’ gender moderated the relationship between Time 1 leaders’ Machiavellian orientation and followers’ use of upward influence tactics at Time 2. Specifically, the relationship between Time 1 leaders’ Machiavellianism and Time 2 followers’ ingratiation was significant and positive for women followers and non-significant (...) for men followers, while the relationship between Time 1 leaders’ Machiavellianism and Time 2 followers’ assertiveness was significant and positive for men followers but non-significant for women followers. These results suggest that gender plays an important role in how followers react to Machiavellian leaders. The social and ethical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Continuing rapid developments in the life sciences offer the promise of providing tools to meet global challenges in health, agriculture, the environment, and economic development; some of the benefits are already being realized. However, such advances also bring with them new social, ethical, legal, and security challenges. Governance questions form an increasingly important part of the discussions about these advances--whether the particular issue under debate is the development of ethical principles for human genome editing, how to establish regulatory systems for (...) the safe conduct of field trials of gene drive-modified organisms, or many others. However there are continuing concerns that the knowledge, tools, and techniques resulting from life sciences research could also enable the development of bioweapons or facilitate bioterrorism. Between June 10 and 13, 2018, more than 70 participants from 30 different countries and 5 international organizations took part in an international workshop, The Governance of Dual Use Research in the Life Sciences: Advancing Global Consensus on Research Oversight, in Zagreb, Croatia. Hosted by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the workshop was a collaboration among the InterAcademy Partnership, the Croatian Academy, the Croatian Society for Biosafety and Biosecurity, and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop."--Publisher's description. (shrink)