scholarly journals The strong and the weak: evaluation in modal desideratives

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Zaroukian ◽  
Charley Beller
Keyword(s):  
Strict Preference ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries ◽  
Comparison Operator ◽  
Weak Evaluation

<p>Modal auxiliaries can generate two desiderative readings: strong (1) and weak (2) desiderativity. These differ notably in whether they express strict preference and whether they are felicitous out of the blue.</p><p>(1) (A: Cookie anyone?) B: I would like/enjoy a cookie.</p><p>(2) #(A: Cookie anyone?) B: I would/might have/take/eat a cookie.</p><p>We provide an analysis that accounts for the contrast by introducing 1) a comparison operator ≥ as part of the subjective morphology that can be pragmatically strengthened to &gt; and 2) a criterion determining how alternative situations are introduced for comparison which allows introduction by evaluatives (<em>like</em>, <em>enjoy</em>).</p>

Recent change in non-present perfect constructions in British and American English

Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Yao ◽  
Peter Collins
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
British English ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries

A number of recent studies of grammatical categories in English have identified regional and diachronic variation in the use of the present perfect, suggesting that it has been losing ground to the simple past tense from the eighteenth century onwards ( Elsness, 1997 , 2009 ; Hundt and Smith, 2009 ; and Yao and Collins, 2012 ). Only a limited amount of research has been conducted on non-present perfects. More recently, Bowie and Aarts’ (2012) study using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English has found that certain non-present perfects underwent a considerable decline in spoken British English (BrE) during the second half of the twentieth century. However, comparison with American English (AmE) and across various genres has not been made. This study focusses on the changes in the distribution of four types of non-present perfects (past, modal, to-infinitival and ing-participial) in standard written BrE and AmE during the thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using a tagged and post-edited version of the Brown family of corpora, it shows that contemporary BrE has a stronger preference for non-present perfects than AmE. Comparison of four written genres of the same period reveals that, for BrE, only the change in the overall frequency of past perfects was statistically significant. AmE showed, comparatively, a more dramatic decrease, particularly in the frequencies of past and modal perfects. It is suggested that the decline of past perfects is attributable to a growing disfavour for past-time reference in various genres, which is related to long-term historical shifts associated with the underlying communicative functions of the genres. The decline of modal perfects, on the other hand, is more likely to be occurring under the influence of the general decline of modal auxiliaries in English.

scholarly journals Roberts’ weak welfarism theorem: a minor correction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Euclidean Space ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Utility Function ◽  
Weak Continuity ◽  
Strict Preference ◽  
Counter Example ◽  
Independence Of Irrelevant Alternatives ◽  
Unrestricted Domain ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Minor Correction

AbstractRoberts’ “weak neutrality” or “weak welfarism” theorem concerns Sen social welfare functionals which are defined on an unrestricted domain of utility function profiles and satisfy independence of irrelevant alternatives, the Pareto condition, and a form of weak continuity. Roberts (Rev Econ Stud 47(2):421–439, 1980) claimed that the induced welfare ordering on social states has a one-way representation by a continuous, monotonic real-valued welfare function defined on the Euclidean space of interpersonal utility vectors—that is, an increase in this welfare function is sufficient, but may not be necessary, for social strict preference. A counter-example shows that weak continuity is insufficient; a minor strengthening to pairwise continuity is proposed instead and its sufficiency demonstrated.

ENGLISH MODAL AUXILIARIES: A RECONSIDERATION

Linguistics ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 10 (90) ◽  
Author(s):  
YOSHINOBU HAKUTANI
Keyword(s):  
Modal Auxiliaries

Efficient Computation of Probabilistic Dominance in Multi-objective Optimization

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Faramarz Khosravi ◽  
Alexander Rass ◽  
Jürgen Teich
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Problems ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Optimization Techniques ◽  
Simultaneous Optimization ◽  
Sampled Data ◽  
Efficient Computation ◽  
Multi Objective Optimization ◽  
Multi Objective ◽  
Conflicting Objectives ◽  
Comparison Operator

Real-world problems typically require the simultaneous optimization of multiple, often conflicting objectives. Many of these multi-objective optimization problems are characterized by wide ranges of uncertainties in their decision variables or objective functions. To cope with such uncertainties, stochastic and robust optimization techniques are widely studied aiming to distinguish candidate solutions with uncertain objectives specified by confidence intervals, probability distributions, sampled data, or uncertainty sets. In this scope, this article first introduces a novel empirical approach for the comparison of candidate solutions with uncertain objectives that can follow arbitrary distributions. The comparison is performed through accurate and efficient calculations of the probability that one solution dominates the other in terms of each uncertain objective. Second, such an operator can be flexibly used and combined with many existing multi-objective optimization frameworks and techniques by just substituting their standard comparison operator, thus easily enabling the Pareto front optimization of problems with multiple uncertain objectives. Third, a new benchmark for evaluating uncertainty-aware optimization techniques is introduced by incorporating different types of uncertainties into a well-known benchmark for multi-objective optimization problems. Fourth, the new comparison operator and benchmark suite are integrated into an existing multi-objective optimization framework that features a selection of multi-objective optimization problems and algorithms. Fifth, the efficiency in terms of performance and execution time of the proposed comparison operator is evaluated on the introduced uncertainty benchmark. Finally, statistical tests are applied giving evidence of the superiority of the new comparison operator in terms of \epsilon -dominance and attainment surfaces in comparison to previously proposed approaches.

scholarly journals Stance and modals of obligation and necessity in academic writing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Parkinson
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Student Writing ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries ◽  
Objective Meaning ◽  
Published Research

Abstract Variation has been demonstrated in modal use between written and spoken registers and between disciplines. This article investigates variation within a discipline by comparing modals of obligation and necessity used in three science genres. Obligation modals project strong authoritative stance, thus contrasting with the tendency in academic writing towards tentativeness. The modal auxiliaries must and should and quasi-modals have to and need to are investigated using student writing from the BAWE (British Academic Written English) corpus and a corpus of published research articles. Findings include a dearth of obligation modals in the empirical genres (research articles and laboratory reports). Also a greater prominence was found of dynamic modal meaning (where necessity arises from circumstances) rather than deontic meaning (where the necessity arises from human authority or rules). A further finding is the prominence of objective meaning in the science register compared with the International Corpus of English (Collins 2009a).

A relevance-theoretic account of be going to

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEVE NICOLLE
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Domains ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries

This paper provides a relevance theoretic account of the semantics of the be going to construction in English, based on Klinge's (1993) model for the semantics of the modal auxiliaries, and in particular of will. The semantics of both forms will be accounted for in terms of the relation between linguistic representations of situations and cognitive domains. Finally the pragmatics of utterances of sentences containing will and be going to will be discussed.

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