Anaphoric choices in Japanese fictional novels: the discourse arrangement of noun phrases, zero and third person pronouns

By examining Japanese fictional novels, this article will discuss how anaphoric devices (noun phrases (NPs), third person pronouns (TPPs), and zero anaphors) are selected and arranged in a given discourse. The traditional view of anaphora considers the co-referential relationship between anaphoric devices to be syntagmatic; that is, a pronoun, for example, refers back to its antecedent. It also declares the hierarchical order of information values between anaphoric devices; NPs are semantically the most informative, indicating an episode boundary, and pronouns less informative. Furthermore, zero anaphora is the most referentially transparent, showing the most accessibility of a topic. However, real text shows the contrary. NPs occur frequently while there is no apparent discourse boundary, and the same episode is continuous. This is because zero anaphors and TPPs (if they occur) break down readily due to the nature of a forthcoming sentence and the NP is reinstated, in order to continue the same topic in a given discourse. Therefore, the article opposes the traditional view of anaphora. Based on the concept of text processing, using ‘mental representations’, this article will determine certain occurrence patterns of the three anaphoric devices.

Mid Ulster Locality Group

To improve the pharmaceutical care in the community for older people and their carers working towards giving carers support and raising their awareness of the support which is on offer to them.

Engendered Conversations: Gender Subversion Through Fictional Dialogue in Lawrence, Hemingway and Forster

This dissertation examines gendered fictional dialogue in popular works by D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and E.M. Forster, including Howards End (1910), The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). I apply Judith Halberstam’s notion of female masculinity to direct speech, to explore how speech traits inform modernist literary aesthetics. My introduction frames this discussion in sociolinguistics, Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, M.M. Bakhtin’s discourse theory, and gender studies. It provides an opportunity to establish experimental dialogue techniques, and the manipulation of gendered talk, in transgressive texts including James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) and Radcyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928). The first chapter discusses taboos and dialect in D.H. Lawrence’s fictional dialogue. The second chapter establishes gender subversion as a crucial element in Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue style. The third chapter contrasts Forster’s latently gendered speech with his techniques of dialect emphasis and dialect suppression. Finally, my conclusion discusses gender identity in the poetry of Dorothy Parker and Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, and the temporality of gender in “Time Passes” from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). New Woman characters like Lady Brett Ashley typified a crucial moment in women’s liberation. They not only subverted stereotypes of womanhood through their dress or sexual freedom, they also adopted/adapted masculine idiom to shock, to rebel against and challenge male dominance. Different speech acts incited fashionable slang, became a political protest symbol or inspired psychoanalytic theory. The intriguing functions of women’s masculine speech in early twentieth century fiction establishes the need to examine additional connections between gender and talk in literary studies.

Fictional characters' emotional state representation : What is its degree of specificity?

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Humans ignore motion and stereo cues in favor of a fictional stable world

As we move through the world, our eyes acquire a sequence of images. The information from this sequence is sufficient to determine the structure of a three-dimensional scene, up to a scale factor determined by the distance that the eyes have moved [1, 2]. Previous evidence shows that the human visual system accounts for the distance the observer has walked [3,4] and the separation of the eyes [5-8] when judging the scale, shape, and distance of objects. However, in an immersive virtual-reality environment, observers failed to notice when a scene expanded or contracted, despite having consistent information about scale from both distance walked and binocular vision. This failure led to large errors in judging the size of objects. The pattern of errors cannot be explained by assuming a visual reconstruction of the scene with an incorrect estimate of interocular separation or distance walked. Instead, it is consistent with a Bayesian model of cue integration in which the efficacy of motion and disparity cues is greater at near viewing distances. Our results imply that observers are more willing to adjust their estimate of interocular separation or distance walked than to accept that the scene has changed in size.

The distinction between real and fictional worlds: Investigating individual differences in fantasy understanding

In this paper, two studies are reported in which children’s ability to distinguish reality from fantasy was investigated. In Experiment 1, children of different ages made pairwise comparisons of 12 pictures of fictional figures and 3 photographs of real people by evaluating on a 6-point scale how easily these figures could meet each other. The results revealed that fantasy/reality distinction develops with age: 7–8-year-old showed a fundamental categorical distinction (comparable to that of adults) whereas 3–4-year-old treated the real world like one of many worlds. In Experiment 2, we took an individual differences approach and tested 116 4–5-year-old who performed the same fantasy task. In addition, they were presented with theory-of-mind tasks and tests measuring non-verbal intelligence and language skills. The results showed that, after statistically controlling for age, non-verbal intelligence, and language skills, theory-of-mind abilities still significantly contributed to the prediction of fantasy understanding.

Comparing Common Data Environment Platforms for Student Collaborative Working: A Case Study from Ulster University

PAS1192-2 (2013) outlines the “fundamental principles of Level 2 information modeling”, one of these principles is the use of what is commonly referred to as a Common Data Environment (CDE). A CDE could be described as an internet-enabled cloudhosting platform, accessible to all construction team members to access shared project information. For the construction sector to achieve increased productivity goals, the next generation of industry professionals will need to be educated in a way that provides them with an appreciation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) working methods, at all levels, including an understanding of how data in a CDE should be structured, managed, shared and published. This presents a challenge for educational institutions in terms of providing a CDE that addresses the requirements set out in PAS1192-2, and mirrors organisational and professional working practices without causing confusion due to over complexity. This paper presents the findings of a two-year study undertaken at Ulster University comparing the use of a leading industry CDE platform with one derived from the in-house Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), for the delivery of a student BIM project. The research methodology employed was a qualitative case study analysis, focusing on observations from the academics involved and feedback from students. The results of the study show advantages for both CDE platforms depending on the learning outcomes required.