A theoretical and practical study on linear reforms of dual taxes

[cat] En aquest treball extenem les reformes lineals introduïdes per Pfähler (1984) al cas d’impostos duals. Estudiem l’efecte relatiu que els retalls lineals duals d’un impost dual tenen sobre la distribució de la desigualtat -es pot fer un estudi simètric per al cas d’augments d’impostos-. Tambe introduïm mesures del grau de progressivitat d’impostos duals i mostrem que estan connectades amb el criteri de dominació de Lorenz. Addicionalment, estudiem l’elasticitat de la càrrega fiscal de cadascuna de les reformes proposades. Finalment, gràcies a un model de microsimulació i una gran base de dades que conté informació sobre l’IRPF espanyol de l’any 2004, 1) comparem l’efecte que diferents reformes tindrien sobre l’impost dual espanyol i 2) estudiem quina redistribució de la riquesa va suposar la reforma dual de l’IRPF (Llei ’35/2006’) respecte l’anterior impost.

OCP effects in catalan cliticization

In Catalan, sequences of sibilants are never pronounced as such. In most contexts all varieties coincide in the «strategies» used to avoid these sequences, namely epenthesis or deletion. Variation is only found in the domain of pronominal clitics (but not with other types of clitics). One source of variation is accounted for by decomposing a general constraint into two specific ones, which implies partial constraint reranking. The other source of variation, which involves a case of apparent opacity, is explained through an Output-Output constraint that makes reference to paradigmatic relations.

Babel y la Biblioteca, máscaras del mito en la lingüística

Los manuales de historia de la lingüística tratan del mito bíblico de Babel y del nacimiento de la gramática en Alejandría de manos de Dionisio de Tracia. Estos pasajes de la historia, que corresponden a épocas diferentes, remiten a dos problemas fundamentales de la lingüística: por una parte, el origen del lenguaje y la diversidad lingüística; por la otra, la invención de la gramática como instrumento para la edición de textos y para el conocimiento formal de la lengua. Pese a las diferencias, Babel y la biblioteca de Alejandría tienen en común una naturaleza mítica. Sus relatos contienen elementos de la ficción y de la realidad que suelen pasar desapercibidos. El artículo señala estos elementos y establece ciertas afinidades entre Babel y la biblioteca, de suerte que articulados componen un ciclo narrativo. // Abstract.- Babel and the Library, the myth masks in Linguistics. History textbooks of linguistics explain the biblical myth of Babel and the birth of grammar in Alexandria at the hands of Dionysius Thrax. These passages of history, which correspond to different times, refer to two fundamental problems of linguistics: first, the origin of language and linguistic diversity and on the other, the invention of grammar as a tool for text editing and formal knowledge of the language. Despite the differences, Babel and the library of Alexandria share a mythical nature. These stories contain elements of fiction and reality that often go unnoticed. The article points out these elements and establishes affinities between Babel and the library, so that it should be considered as a narrative cycle. Keywords: Babel, Library of Alexandria, myth, story, grammar, institution, Dionysius Thrax.

Basc i tecnologia lingüística

En aquest article reflexionem sobre el monopoli de les llengües "majoritàries" en l'àmbit de les tecnologies lingüístiques. Analitzem, així mateix, com les llengües minoritàries poden afrontar aquest desafiament i examinem el cas de l'èuscar. Un cop estudiat el desenvolupament de l'èuscar en el camp de les tecnologies lingüístiques, analitzem fins a quin punt aquestes tecnologies poden ajudar el procés de normalització de la llengua.

On Paraphrase and Coreference

By providing a better understanding of paraphrase and coreference in terms of similarities and differences in their linguistic nature, this article delimits what the focus of paraphrase extraction and coreference resolution tasks should be, and to what extent they can help each other. We argue for the relevance of this discussion to Natural Language Processing.

Unnatural Mothers, Mothering Unnaturally: Technologies of Reproduction and the Politics of Maternity in Hiromi Goto's "Hopeful Monsters"

Through scientific discourse and reproductive technologies, the reproductive body and the maternal body continue to be constructed as ‘natural’. At the same time,these technologies have begun to blur the boundaries between what is consideredan acceptable reproductive body, and consequently an acceptable maternal body,and an unnatural or a socially undesireable one. As science purports to offerwomen greater control over how and when they choose to procreate, through methods which range between delaying or eliminating the possibility of contraception to those which extend the possibility of conception to postmenopausal or infertile women, these same procedures raise questions about thenature and ‘naturalness’ of reproduction. Added to these concerns are thesuitablility of the reproductive body as a maternal body. Consequently, and moreand more frequently, bodies which defy ideals about maternity and motherhoodemerge, and questions about what it means to mother are raised. Bodies whichcontest the construction of motherhood as natural are frequently represented asmonstrous or freakish, and the debate between science and nature is heightened.Hiromi Goto’s short story ‘Hopeful Monsters’ resists the construction of the‘natural’ maternal body by highlighting the way in which women’s bodies areshaped by scientific discourse. In turn, images of ‘monstrous’ mothers emerge andare challenged, suggesting the need to reimagine what it means to mother and whatit means to be a mother. Through reading a selection of the stories this paper willinterrogate possible alternatives to constructions of the ‘natural’ maternal body and motherhood, suggesting that the Goto’s ‘monsters’ are perhaps only monstrous as a result of scientific discourse which constructs them as such.

Financial reforms and capital flows: Insights from general equilibrium

As a result of debt enforcement problems, many high-productivity firms in emergingeconomies are unable to pledge enough future profits to their creditors and this constrains thefinancing they can raise. Many have argued that, by relaxing these credit constraints, reformsthat strengthen enforcement institutions would increase capital flows to emerging economies. Thisargument is based on a partial equilibrium intuition though, which does not take into account theorigin of any additional resources that flow to high-productivity firms after the reforms. We showthat some of these resources do not come from abroad, but instead from domestic low-productivityfirms that are driven out of business as a result of the reforms. Indeed, the resources released bythese low-productivity firms could exceed those absorbed by high-productivity ones so that capitalflows to emerging economies might actually decrease following successful reforms. This resultprovides a new perspective on some recent patterns of capital flows in industrial and emergingeconomies.

Paraphrase concept and typology. A linguistically based and computationally oriented approach

In this paper, we present a critical analysis of the state of the art in the definition and typologies of paraphrasing. This analysis shows that there exists no characterization of paraphrasing that is comprehensive, linguistically based and computationally tractable at the same time. The following sets out to define and delimit the concept on the basis of the propositional content. We present a general, inclusive and computationally oriented typology of the linguistic mechanisms that give rise to form variations between paraphrase pairs.

Interoperability and Technology for a Language Resources Factory

This document describes some of the technological aspects of a project devoted to the creation of a factory for language resources. The project’s objectives are explained, as well as the idea to create a distributed infrastructure of web services. This document focuses on two main topics of the factory: (1) the technological approaches chosen to develop the factory, i.e. software, protocols, servers, etc. (2) and Interoperability as the main challenge is to permit different NLP tools work together in the factory. This document explains why XCES and GrAF are chosen as the main formats used for the linguistic data exchange.

Les partícules modals de la llengua alemanya i l’anàlisi del seu ús comparant el llenguatge oral real i el fingit

Resum: El treball està enfocat en les anomenades “partícules modals” de la llengua alemanya. La part teòrica inclou informació extreta de diferents fonts bibliogràfiques i a la part pràctica se n’analitza l’ús a partir d’un exercici elaborat amb fragments del guió de dues pel·lícules (llenguatge oral fingit) i la col·laboració d’estudiants de diferents parts d’Alemanya.

Rigor metodológico e investigación filológica

In recent decades, technological advances have made extensive documentation available to us. But the philologist must be aware of the dangers of poor use of the documentary corpus in order to avoid creating dreaded ghost words. In this paper we recall the main sources of this type of error: folk etymology phenomena among speakers, copyists" errors, transcribers" errors in the interpretation of some abbreviations and graphic variants of the manuscripts, onomastic changes introduced by cartographers" ignorance of linguistic variants, gaps in the dating of some documents, confusion in the processes of lemmatization and the evaluation of texts... All these sources of error contribute, to a greater or lesser degree, to the distortion or to the masking of the data on which the research of philologists is based. Hence the importance of philological rigour in the transmission and study of ancient texts.

Plagiarism meets paraphrasing: insights for the new generation in automatic plagiarism detection

Although paraphrasing is the linguistic mechanism underlying many plagiarism cases, little attention has been paid to its analysis in the framework of automatic plagiarism detection. Therefore, state-of-the-art plagiarism detectors find it difficult to detect cases of paraphrase plagiarism. In this article, we analyse the relationship between paraphrasing and plagiarism, paying special attention to which paraphrase phenomena underlie acts of plagiarism and which of them are detected by plagiarism detection systems. With this aim in mind, we created the P4P corpus, a new resource which uses a paraphrase typology to annotate a subset of the PAN-PC-10 corpus for automatic plagiarism detection. The results of the Second International Competition on Plagiarism Detection were analysed in the light of this annotation. The presented experiments show that (i) more complex paraphrase phenomena and a high density of paraphrase mechanisms make plagiarism detection more difficult, (ii) lexical substitutions are the paraphrase mechanisms used the most when plagiarising, and (iii) paraphrase mechanisms tend to shorten the plagiarized text. For the first time, the paraphrase mechanisms behind plagiarism have been analysed, providing critical insights for the improvement of automatic plagiarism detection systems.

The Social Politics of Fatherhood in Spain and France: a Comparative Analysis of Parental Leave and Shared Residence

The Social Politics of Fatherhood in Spain and France: A Comparative Analysis of Parental Leave and Shared Residence The article provides a comparative analysis of policy developments on leaves for fathers and joint custody in Spain and France in the last decade. These two types of measures have been selected because they are both widely recognised as main instruments to promote new fathering styles and consequently more gender equality in the European Union. While the rhetoric of choice has been developed in both countries in relation to maternal employment and childcare, with better results in France than in Spain, it remains to be seen to what extent choice will also be extended to fathers. Keywords: Fatherhood. Family. Comparative social policy. Parental leave. Joint custody.

L’envers du miroir: le verlan, une histoire d’ouf!

Des de ja fa uns quants anys existeix un fenomen lingüístic a França que encara avui dia no deixa de sorprendre ni de cridar l'atenció; es tracta d'una parla, o més aviat d’un argot que s’anomena verlan. El verlan, doncs, és un argot que troba el seu origen als barris marginals dels afores de les ciutats (les banlieues), i per la qual cosa s’associa normalment a la classe baixa i marginal d’aquestes. Així, aquest argot es va convertir en un autèntic “art del parlar” del sector juvenil del segle XX, el qual era utilitzat bàsicament per marcar una diferència de classe social i que els seu parlants es poguessin comunicar entre ells sense que ningú altre que no formés part del seu entorn pugui entendre el què deien. El verlan és un argot que es caracteritza per fer una inversió de les paraules, però tot i que sembli inventada, aquesta inversió de fonemes es fa segons unes regles i en funció del nombre de síl•labes del terme. Els mitjans de comunicació van contribuir molt en l’expansió d’aquest argot, però el moviment hip-hop va ser un dels principals mitjans d’expansió, ja que va "vulgaritzar" el verlan i va difondre’l a totes les capes de la societat a partir de les seves peculiars cançons. Així doncs, la pregunta que molts ens plantegem és la de si el verlan és realment una amenaça per al francès estàndard o no.

El dialecte saxó:Presència escrita i prestigi social

El treball següent ofereix una visió global d'un dels dialectes de la llengua alemanya que menys ha estat objecte de recerca i investigació, el saxó, centrant-se en la presència escrita de què gaudeix aquesta varietat actualment i el seu prestigi social a Alemanya a través dels anys