Search

This paper offers an exploration of a European linguistic area at the dawn of history and of shifting convergence zones (Sprachbunde) in Europe since prehistoric times. Its main focus is on the dev...

This paper compares the initial state of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition for English articles to examine the influence of L2 proficiency on positive transfer from L2 to L3. We tested 36 L1 Turkish/L2 German adolescent learners of L3 English (L3 group), 41 L1 Turkish adolescent learners of L2 English (L2 group), and 10 native English speakers (L1 group) on a forced-choice elicitation task involving English articles. The overall results from both tasks showed that L3 group was significantly more accurate than L2 group in the four article contexts: [–definite; +specific] and [ + definite; –specific], [ + definite; +specific] and [–definite; –specific], which confirms morhosyntactic positive transfer from L2 German to L3 English. The further analysis of the L3 group revealed that L3 learners with high L2 German proficiency were significantly more successful than those with low L2 German proficiency in the four article contexts. This confirms that L2 proficiency is a determining factor in the positive morhosyntactic transfer from L2 to L3. The results from error analyses revealed that the L2 group committed more substitution errors than omission errors suggesting fluctuation between definiteness and specificity settings of universal semantics rather than negative transfer from L1.

A positive-definite homogeneous multivariate form plays a critical role in the medical imaging and automatic control, and the definiteness of this form can be identified by a special structure tens...

Speakers use speech and gestures to represent referents in discourse. Depending on referents’ information status, in speech speakers will vary richness of expression (e.g., lexical noun phrase [NP]/pronoun), nominal definiteness (indefinite/definite), and grammatical role (subject/object). This study tested whether these three linguistic markers of information status interact with presence of gestures and gestural viewpoint (observer/character). The results show that gestures are more frequent with less accessible referents expressed with richer spoken forms but that richness of expression does not interact with viewpoint. In contrast, nominal definiteness and grammatical role interact with both presence and viewpoint of gestures. Gestures occur mainly with indefinite lexical NPs and objects. Character viewpoint gestures occur mainly with indefinite lexical NPs and objects plus predicates. The results shed light on when and how speakers use gestures in connected discourse and specifically highligh...

In Spanish ditransitive clauses with Dative Clitic Doubling (DClD), the goal may be doubled by a dative clitic pronoun. Applying a chi-square decomposition analysis to examples with the prototypical ditransitive verb dar “give”, from a corpus of journalistic language characteristic of River Plate Spanish, I show that DClD is disfavoured when the theme is a bare noun, and also that the distinction between bare and non-bare themes is more statistically significant than the distinction between definite and indefinite themes. The relational effect of definiteness on DClD in clauses with the verb dar is accounted for by extending Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) Transitivity Hypothesis to clauses with three arguments.

Both reading habits and cerebral asymmetries may play a role on bisection bias. There has been shown to be more recruitment of the right hemisphere in reading Chinese, compared to Japanese or alphabetic scripts. One therefore would expect that for sentence bisection in Chinese compared to Italian, a stronger allocation of attention to the left, mediated by the right hemisphere, would yield larger leftward bisection errors. In this study, native Chinese and Italian speakers bisected Chinese and Italian sentences, respectively, which varied in linguistic domain (syntactic or semantic coherence, definiteness and heaviness) and in the position of the linguistic manipulation (left, right and absent). The sentences were bisected more leftwards for Chinese than for Italian. Bisection deviations were further modulated by the position of the linguistic manipulation, though only for Chinese. We concluded that visuo-perceptual, linguistic and attentional factors influence sentence bisection, in a different w...

L2 learners’ problems with English articles have been linked to learners’ L1 and their access to universal semantic features (e.g., definiteness and specificity). Studies suggest that L2 adults rely on their L1 knowledge, while child L2 learners rely more on their access to semantic universals. The present study investigates whether child L2 learners access features like adult L2 learners (i.e., reassembling the features of the L1) or as L1 acquirers (i.e., choosing from the inventory of universal features). We evaluated the acquisition of English articles in 30 Spanish-speaking children learning English as their L2 and found that they transfer knowledge from their L1 much in the same way as do adults. However, the error analysis also suggests that article acquisition in child L2 learners is restricted by Universal Grammar resembling L1 acquisition. In conclusion, we propose that article acquisition in child L2 learners patterns with both adult L2 and L1 acquisition.

A new eigenvalue localization set for tensors is given, and proved to be tighter than those in [Qi L. Eigenvalues of a real supersymmetric tensor. J. Symbolic Comput. 2005;40:1302–1324] and [Li CQ, Li YT, Kong X. New eigenvalue inclusion sets for tensors. Numer. Linear Algebra Appl. 2014;21:39–50]. Based on this set, we give two checkable sufficient conditions of the positive definiteness of tensors, and two checkable sufficient conditions of the positive semi-definiteness of tensors.

Volkmar Lehmann: Properties and the Grammatical Reconstruction of Episodicity The paper considers episodicity as an essentially pragmatic meaning potential of verbs, as the main procedure to generate temporal coherence. Episodicity is not directly opposed to genericity (which is a property of noun phrases). Its subcategories are episodic and nonepisodic (characterising) situations, in Slavonic linguistics often called temporal (non)localisation or temporal (in)definiteness. A situation is defined as episodic if its corresponding time interval is closed and if it is localised in a closed interval together with the interval of the reference time, which itself is also a closed interval. The reference time can be either deictic (speech time), narrative (the time of processing the non-deictic verb situation), or omnitemporal (any time interval; this kind of a reference time is not addressed in the paper). By default, the intervals which correspond to perfective verbs are closed and are localised toget...

The Gospel of Mark is more than a Vita of Jesus; Jesus and his message cannot be understood apart from the worldview against which the Gospel functions and that determines the narratives and discourses in the Gospel. If this worldview is apocalyptic, as suggested in the article, it has consequences for the way the different discourses and narratives are interpreted. An attempt is made to illustrate the main points in the narrative of Mark in terms of its apocalyptic definiteness.

The Yoruba pronoun wọn is equivalent to the English pronoun they, and can occur in various syntactical constructions including passives. Indefinite pronouns of passive constructions by definition are silent about the identity of their subject. However, Yoruba peoples' cultural interpretation attributes definiteness, concreteness, and agency to the indefinite pronoun wọn in specific usages. Based on the study of utterances obtained from popular, contemporary usages, and individual narratives all featuring the passivized pronoun wọn, this article examines Yoruba habitual practices. It argues that understanding the cultural meaning of wọn is invaluable for understanding the Yoruba peoples' habitual view of causality in addition to the way it guides their interpersonal interactions. Further, wọn is shown to index a certain Yoruba worldview and to guide their efforts to achieve their presumed goals of earthly existence. The article does four things: (1) it explicates the content of the pronoun wọn, exemp...

In ‘Definability and the Structure of Logical Paradoxes’ (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, this issue) Haixia Zhong takes issue with an account of the paradoxes of self-reference to be found in Beyond the Limits of Thought [Priest 1995. The point of this note is to explain why the critique does not succeed. The criterion for distinguishing between the set-theoretic and the semantic paradoxes offered does not get the division right; the semantic paradoxes are not given a uniform solution; no reason is provided as to why the naive denotation relation is ‘indefinite’ (other than that its definiteness leads to contradiction); and the account of the denotation relation given clearly misses the mark, even by consistent standards.

The paper argues against the wide-spread view that assumes a direct correlation between object–verb agreement and object pro-drop in Hungarian. Whereas object–verb agreement has been present in Hungarian since the first written sources, and can be traced back to Proto-Ugric and even Proto-Uralic, object pro-drop will be shown to be a sporadic phenomenon in Old Hungarian, spreading in Middle Hungarian, and becoming general only in the twentieth century. Recent results concerning the evolution of object–verb agreement also argue against its direct relation to object pro-drop. Object-agreement morphemes evolved from topic-doubling pronouns, and originally they encoded the topicality of the object in an SOV sentence. The present function of object–verb agreement is due to iterated exaptation. When the evolution of topic movement rendered its topic-marking role redundant, it was reanalysed as a marker of the definiteness of the object, and when the evolution of a system of articles rendered its definiteness-ma...

Old Scandinavian (represented here by the Scanic dialect of Old Danish) allowed zero arguments (null-arguments) in any nominal (argument) position, that is: for NPs as subjects, objects and in PPs. In generative grammar, zero arguments are held to be variants of pronouns, but in this article, I shall claim that zero arguments in Scanic are semantically different from pronouns, and therefore pronouns and zero arguments are not variants. At one level, zero arguments and pronouns are similar with respect to function, namely to supply means for establishing co-reference in text; however, they are not semantically equivalent. By reducing these two categories to one single underlying category, such as pro, one would miss this point. On the contrary, zero arguments are arguably full-bodied signs with their own content, thus corresponding to Melcuk's Zero Sign Introduction Principle (2006).My analysis is intended as an example of the way Danish Functional Grammar unites a functional approach with important insigh...

General (or existential) yes-no questions are considered to be the typical context for the so-called general-factual (obseefaktieeskoe) meaning of the imperfective aspect. If the imperfective aspect is used in its general-factual meaning in general yes-no questions such as Vasja ran´se perevodil etot tekst? ‘Has Vasja translated this text before?’, the question seeks to clarify whether there has been at least one such situation in which the given text was translated by Vasja. In this case the description of the situation has the status of non-referential indefiniteness: Has there been at least one such situation as X? It will be shown that general yes-no questions in the imperfective aspect completely analogous to general yes-no questions in the perfective aspect can also be related to an individualized situation, that is, to a situation that the speaker assumes to be known to the addressee. Vasja perevel/perevodil tekst, kotoryj emu dali? On zametil, eto ne chvataet dvuch stranic? ‘Did Vasja translate th...

This paper addresses the issue of whether there are determiners in the Polynesian language Niuean. In the literature, determiners are viewed as having three main functions: allowing a nominal phrase to serve as an argument, encoding definiteness and specificity, and providing referentiality. The left peripheral elements in the Niuean noun phrase are detailed, and it is argued that case in conjunction with a feature for proper/common serves the first function, that definiteness and specificity are not encoded in Niuean except in a secondary manner, and that referentiality is provided by number, which is distributed across several items in the noun phrase. It is demonstrated that while definiteness and specificity are not contrastive features in Niuean, a feature encoding focused and new information is central to the Niuean nominal system. Niuean thus supports a view of determiners that allows them to vary in their semantic and featural content.

The present article deals with paradigmatic structure as part of grammar and as part of grammaticalization theory. Grammatical paradigms are necessary parts of any theory of grammaticalization and of grammar as such. The empirical issue studied is the development of definiteness and determiner phrases in Scandinavian, illustrated by late Middle Danish. The later phase of this development integrates morphology with word order systems and constructional systems, and is therefore well suited to being an illustration of the main claim: that paradigmatic structure is found not only in morphological systems, but also in syntax (constructional syntax and word order). Paradigmatic change will always involve semantic change, and the rise of Scandinavian determiners and determiner phrases during the late Middle Ages can be shown to be semantic change as well, including changes of the meaning of possessive pronouns and of the genitive form. These changes must be seen in connection with the rise of an obligatory, com...

This study is a corpus analysis of nominal uses of ‘public’ as a reference to a group of humans, a category of reference that has animated the debate over membership in the body public among theorists of publicity and deliberative democracy. The study finds that the public metonym is the most common nominal use of ‘public’ as a reference to a group of humans in ordinary English. In addition, it presents a fine-grained analysis of the discourse features of the public metonym based on the corpus results, finding that three features characterize the public metonym: definiteness, non-assignability, and anthropomorphism. It shows how these features are encoded by linguistic constructions, then extends the analysis by drawing attention to some basic contradictions among these three features. Finally, it shows how these contradictions can be accounted for by describing ‘public’ as metonymic. The paper draws together public sphere research, discourse studies, and rhetoric in order to describe the features of a ce...

Main principles of the complex nonlinear thinking which are based on the notions of the modern theory of evolution and self-organization of complex systems called also synergetics are under discussion in this article. The principles are transdisciplinary, holistic, and oriented to a human being. The notions of system complexity, nonlinearity of evolution, creative chaos, space-time definiteness of structure-attractors of evolution, resonant influences, nonlinear and soft management are here of great importance. In this connection, a prominent contribution made to system analysis and to a necessary reform of education and thinking by Edgar Morin is considered.

espanolEste articulo se ocupa de la pronta aparicion de silabas de relleno en posicion prenominal, especialmente en las lenguas romanicas. Los datos de tres criaturas hispanoparlantes nos permiten concluir que no hay una etapa pregramatical, que las categorias gramaticales de genero y definitud aparecen simultaneamente y desde muy pronto en castellano, y que la accesibilidad de las categorias funcionales depende de las caracteristicas prosodicas de la lengua ambiental, lo que nos lleva a abogar por un papel mas central de la fonologia en el Programa Minimista. EnglishThe paper focuses on prenominal fillers, which appear very early, especially in the Romance languages. Data from three Spanish-speaking children reveal that there is no pregrammatical stage, although full forms are learned relatively slowly; that the grammatical categories of gender and definiteness appear simultaneously and very early in Spanish, and that functional categories are made available depending on the prosodic characteristics of the target language, thus a more central role for phonology is advocated in the Minimalist Program

This article investigates the morphosyntactic realisation of definiteness in Xhosa and Northern Sotho, representative of African languages, characterised respectively by the presence and absence of a noun class preprefix (i.e. initial vowel). The Minimalist theory (Chomsky, 1995) is employed as theoretical framework for the study. It is argued that definiteness in these African languages is realised morphosyntactically by the definite morpheme (l)a- which typically occurs as stem of the demonstrative, and which also appears in the inflectional morphology of nominal modifiers such as the adjective, nominal relative and verbal (clausal) relative. It is proposed that the definite morpheme -a- is a functional category Det(erminer) that heads argument Determiner phrases (DPs) dominating an NP. Evidence for this view is invoked from a range of definiteness phenomena in Xhosa, where the absence of the noun preprefix correlates with the non-occurrence of the definite morpheme -a- in the inflectional morphology of...

The history of the definite article in Danish represents an interesting case of reanalysis and generalisation, the result of which is a semantically and typologically restructured system of definiteness. More generally, it is part of a restructuring process of Danish morphology from the fusional (inflexional) Indo-European type to the agglutinative type.

The development of the determiner system in Romance is one of the standard examples of grammaticalization; and the demonstrative, in this case represented chiefly by Latin ille, is a classic source of articles (cf. Greenberg 1991). This study takes another look at the development from Latin to Modern French (Non-Standard as well as Standard), examining in particular the role of definiteness in the process.

The two comprehensive reference grammars for Biblical Hebrew, Gesenius/Kautzsch and Jouon/Muraoka, in addition to the more or less generally accepted categories of use of the definite article, make use of a category which they describe as not having to do with definiteness in the sense that we know it. In this category they group the instances of use of the article that do not seem to fit into the generally accepted categories, instances where the Hebrew definite article, in German and English respectively, is said to be expressed by an indefinite article. In the present article, I analyse the 67 examples given to substantiate the existence of the proposed category. I argue that this category probably does not exist and I contend that most of the examples, when carefully analysed, are examples of regular article usage. When the nouns in question are perceived as nondetermined and translated as such, it is because we are not sufficiently familiar with ancient Hebrew language and culture and hence do not po...

In this article, the property of indefiniteness is explored within the generative framework of the theory of Government and Binding to clarify the position of the property within the theory and the extent of its influence in the Zulu noun phrase. The property of indefiniteness is associated with the internal argument of predicate structures in Zulu where it is influenced by the negative element. It is also associated with the adjunct NP in expletive sentences with khona (there) as a copulative predicate. The property of indefiniteness is seen to influence the genitive modifiers of all classes of genitive, as an optional property in the NP. However a definiteness feature associated with some modifiers of the NP, can prevent the influence of the indefiniteness property being associated with all modifiers of the Zulu NP.

An Important Event in Linguistics Olga T. Yokoyama and Emily Klenin, eds. Selected Essays of Catherine V. Chvany. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, Inc., 1996. Notes. List of publications of Catherine V. Chvany. Index. 391 pp. $39.50, paper. This book brings together many of the papers that the prominent Slavist Catherine V. Chvany, professor of Russian at MIT, wrote over her entire career (1968-1995). Selected and edited by two of her former students, colleagues and friends, this collection won AATSEEL's award for the best monograph in Slavic linguistics published in 1995 and 1996. The publication is significant for two reasons. Firstly, because it manifests what I would call the "Chvany phenomenon." By this I mean the exceptional breadth and courage of her theoretical positions-the result of training in several theoretical frameworks (Generative Grammar, Jakobsonian Poetics and linguistic analysis, Prague Functionalism) and of intimate acquaintance with other schools (both traditional and contemporary), not only in North America but also in Western and Eastern Europe. Second, the collection offers the reader a holistic view of Chvany's significant role in contemporary linguistics. Many of her ideas were so much ahead of their time that only now can they be fully appreciated. Thus, this book is of interest to linguists of all affiliations and theoretical orientations; to specialists in literary studies, poetics, discourse and semiotics; and to psychologists, philosophers and specialists in the visual arts. The Foreword by Professors Olga T. Yokoyama and Emily Klenin-both from UCLA and prominent scholars in their own right-is an informative introduction to Chvany's research. It is also absorbing reading for anyone interested in women's studies. Written by women scholars about a woman scholar, it illuminates not only Chvany's academic achievements, but also her personality. She had immense courage in proposing ideas, which were often contrary to the dominant linguistic paradigms. She was generous in recognizing other scholars' contributions and always ready to help younger (not yet recognized) scholars, by bringing their work to the attention of the linguistic community. Those who ever had any contact with Professor Chvany will always remember her as a scholar exemplifying the highest ethical standards. All papers in the collection have updated references; one paper, "Decontmucting Agents and Subjects," is published here for the first time. The book is organized into four parts representing the directions of Chvany's research. Each part is introduced by a prominent scholar in the area: "Syntax and Morphosyntax" (L. H. Babby, Princeton University); "Lexical Specification and Storage" (M. S. Flier, Harvard University); "Modelling Grammatical Categories" (C. J. Neidle, Boston University); and "Linguistic Poetics and Narrative Structure" (Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, UC, Davis). "Syntax and Morphosyntax" The first part of the collection is a bold testing of the boundaries of applicability of Generative Grammar (henceforth GG), and its descendants, against challenges presented by the Russian language. Chvany proposes for some problematic Russian constructions alayses which are commensurable not only with GG but also with such other theories as Functional grammars and Typology-oriented grammars. This is important since the constructions discussed (constructions with the verb byt' - 'be'; syntactically derived words; impersonal constructions; etc.) pose challenges to any theoretical framework, and are a touchstone of the theory's adequacy for the data. Besides making this contribution to grammatical meta-theory, Chvany was among the first scholars to introduce discoursal dimensions (role of presupposition, "definiteness/indefiniteness," fore- and backgrounding, cognitive and psychological factors) in defining the principles of grammatical description. Because of space restrictions, only some topics will be discussed here. …

In Hungarian, distinguishing subjects and objects in transitive clauses requires the processing of five m ajor types of cues: subject-verb agreement-marking, object-verb agreement-marking, case-marking, anim acy and word order. Two studies examined the relative strength of these cues in a sentence interpretation task. Because Hungarian has a “double agreement-marking” system, it was possible to compare the relative strengths of the two types of agreement-marking. Despite the fact that object-verb agreement is a fully deterministic grammatical marker, the studies showed that this type of agreement has a very weak impact on sentence processing. This weakness is dem onstrated in two experiments, the first using only sentences with definite objects and the second varying the definiteness of the object. The weakness of the object-verb cue is attributed to its lower contrast availability. The preservation of this marking in the Hungarian language is testimony to the diachronic tenacity of morphological markings...

The apparent omission of determiners by young English-speaking children has led to the proposal that the DP-layer is universally absent in very early child grammars. In this article, I challenge this hypothesis by investigating the longitudinal development of the determiner system of a Swedish child (age 1;8-2;1). The article addresses phenomena such as suffixed and free articles, double definiteness, genitives, pronouns and "nominal style." I show that analyses of these early data must invoke at least one functional projection above the NP. These data therefore argue against any claim about the universal absence of functional structure in early child grammar.

Until now it has generally been accepted that interrogative words in Northern Sotho such as mang ‘who’, eng ‘what’ and neng ‘when’ are restricted to the postverbal position and cannot occur (without the particle ke) in the initial sentence position, unlike their English or Afrikaans counterparts. Traditional linguists consequently formulated strict constraints on the syntax of such interrogative words in terms of old versus new information, definiteness versus indefiniteness, etc. and did not attempt to study those interrogatives which do occur preverbally satisfactorily. This view firstly created the impression that such words cannot occur preverbally and secondly that they automatically presume interrogativity. No attempt has been made to do an in-depth study of the syntax of these words nor to differentiate between different polysemic values conveyed by these words. It has also been exhaustively argued in existing publications that Northern Sotho is typologically being reinterpreted from an OV to a VO ...

The concept of definiteness has been biased by Western languages, especially by the English article system. In this paper, human perception and cognition are examined in order to see how human perceive something to be definite or indefinite. It is suggested that definiteness is denotational term, whereas anaphoricity is a functional one. Therefore, being anaphoric does not necessary entail being definite. The broadest claim made in this paper is that the correct interpretation of definiteness status is not conveyed exclusively by any particular linguistic form, such as definite and indefinite articles, as was once thought to be the case

Consider any consistent, asymptotically normal estimate ǎ of an arbitrary rectangular or square matrix A. This article derives an explicit test for the rank of A and a related test of (semi) definiteness of A. Potential applications include testing for identification of structural models, testing for the number of state variables in state-space models (including tests for the order of autoregressive moving average (ARMA) processes), consumer demand analysis applications, and testing for the number of factors in factor analysis and related procedures. The test is based on the Gaussian elimination Lower-Diagonal-Upper triangular (LDU) decomposition. The test is illustrated with an empirical application to testing the order of ARMA processes.

The relationship between parental divorce and body boundary definiteness was studied in a group of Swedish children. Rorschach tests were administered to a nonclinical sample of 90 school children between the ages of 10 and 12. Forty-six of the children's parents were divorced (hereafter called divorce children), and 44 of the children's parents were not divorced (hereafter called nondivorce children). Divorce children were interviewed after the testing. Nondivorce children were found to have firmer body boundaries (i.e., higher barrier and lower penetration. scores) than divorce children. The quality of the child's relationship with the noncustodial father and the child's age at the time of separation were found to be related to the barrier score among boys but not among girls. The vulnerability of body boundaries appears to persist even years after the family breakup, indicating that for children of either sex the effects of divorce are long-term.

Dans les dialectes sorabes contemporains, l’emploi d’un article, notamment de l’article defini, montre une interference evidente issue de l’allemand. En sorabe, les formes du pronom demonstratif t o n ont assume la fonction de l’article defini, tandis que les formes de l’adjectif numeral jedyn/jaden servent la fonction de l’article indefini. Malgre le contact si long entre les dialectes sorabes et allemands, le sorabe a resiste a l’integration complete de l’article. En effet, le caractere multifonctionnel de l’article en allemand a entraine en sorabe une serie d’options dont les unes ont ete grammaticalisees, tandis que les autres sont restees en dehors du systeme syntaxique comme variations facultatives ou stylistiques.Dans ce travail, nous nous limiterons a une analyse contrastive de l’emploi de l’article defini dans deux dialectes sorabes (Wochozy et Radwor) et dans les dialectes allemands en Lusace. Cette analyse nous amene a la conclusion que la resistance du sorabe a l’integration de l’artic...

This study investigated factors that might mediate the occurrence of male sexual aggression in dating relationships. In Experiment 1, 33 female undergraduates role-played their refusal of unwanted sexual advances in dating situations that varied in the level of the woman's romantic interest in her date and in the intimacy level of the sexual activities. The results indicated that the definiteness of the nonverbal component of the women's responses did not vary across scenes. However, the women were found to be less verbally definite in situations in which they were romantically interested in their dates and in the low-intimacy situations. In Experiment 2, 58 male college students rated selected women's responses differing in verbal definiteness for their effectiveness in stopping unwanted sexual advances. Responses that were more verbally definite were rated as more effective at stopping the unwanted advances, regardless of the level of intimacy. Men rated the responses as more effective in stopping their...

Theorems are proved that give necessary and sufficient conditions for solutions of semi-state models to be appropriately bounded on finite and infinite time intervals. For a non-linear subclass of models considered, as well as for general time-varying linear semi-state models, necessary and sufficient conditions reduce to the test of semi-definiteness or definiteness of a time-dependent matrix.

An attempt is made in this contribution to identify some of the linguistic devices according to which definite and indefinite noun phrases are formally distinguished from each other in Northern Sot...

Latvian adjectives can be marked for definiteness.* Thus the marked, definite form (vecais koks: the old tree ) contrasts both formally and functionally with the unmarked, indefinite form (vecs koks: an old tree), and the adjectival system contains two parallel but distinct paradigms. There is no mention of any such distinction in the work of the earliest grammarians, however, and we may safely assume that they were unaware of it.' Mancelius, for example, while glossing the German Grosvater ('grandfather') as watzais Tahws, provides tas schehliex Deews as the Latvian equivalent of Der gnadiger (sic!) GOtt ('the merciful God').1 Langius happily juxtaposes Swahtais (ein Heiliger: 'a saint") and Swahts Gurr s ( der H [eilige) Geist: 'the Holy Ghost').2 The adjectival paradigms supplied by the earliest grammarians list the indefinite forms only.3 The distinction between the parallel definite and indefinite declensions of adjectives is neutralized, logically enough, in the superlative degree, giving

The oscillation theorem for two simultaneous Sturm-Liouville systems in two parameters is well known when the coefficients of the differential equations are subjected to the usual definiteness condition. However, in practical applications the usual definiteness condition may fail to hold, and hence in this paper we consider the oscillation theorem under another important definiteness condition.

The article begins by outlining Naess's pluralistic theory of philosophical systems and indicating its connection with Naess's semantics, i.e. his account of interpretation, preciseness, definiteness of intention, and level of discrimination. Reference is also made to the indeterminacy relation which Naess claims holds between, on the one hand, philosophically relevant preciseness, definite‐ness of intention, and level of discrimination, and, on the other, comparability and philosophical neutrality of standpoints. Naess claims philosophical neutrality for his theory of systems, on the basis of its purported low level of preciseness with respect to philosophical issues. The correctness of this claim is questioned. Naess's semantics and theory of systems seem to involve commitment in relation to epistemological and ontological issues. His view of the relationship between objects (entities) and systems seems to be of a kind that might be called system‐relativism. If Naess claims that he avoids such a commitm...

Andrews and Phillips (1986) gave a simplified proof for the result that established the nonnegative definiteness of the difference of the Moore-Penrose inverses of two nonoegative definite matrices, a result originally due to Milliken and Akdeniz (1977), The purpose of this paper is to offer a simple proof for a generalization of this result

If I were asked to characterize Vasil' Bykov's prose in a single word, I would say: definiteness. All his stories aim at a common goal. They hit it as the bullets of a top marksman hit a bull's-eye. There is no scattering: story matches story as though fitted together.

Our discussion deals with conclusions, the evaluation of the development of literature, and at the same time with its future prospects. Since Soviet literature is being created before our eyes and with our participation, both literary critics and literary historians are speaking out here. The fact that our dialogue is thus proceeding on two planes and two levels of meaning is natural and necessary. Equally necessary is breadth of views, accuracy of characterization, definiteness of evaluation.

The multiple-choice or best-answer form of test predominates in both standardized and informal tests of achievement in most high-school subjects. The predominance of this form is due in part to the fact that it combines definiteness and scope which are the distinctive features of true-false and the essay forms of tests. The true-false test restricts the pupil's thinking to a choice between alternatives and is therefore entirely definite. The essay test im poses no restrictions whatever, within the limits of the topic, and accordingly affords large scope for the pupiFs responses. The best-answer test, while restricting the pupil's thinking to a central issue, allows him the choice of several possibilities. Thus it is a device well suited to the stimulation and direction of individual thinking. In view of these facts it is somewhat surprising that best-answer forms have not been used more extensively as teaching devices. For the sake of emphasizing their value, this article contains illustrations of best-answer exercises that have proved useful in various high school subjects. The illustrations are followed by suggestions for the guidance of teachers in constructing similar exercises for personal use. Like any other mechanical device, the best-answer exercise is open to abuse ; it can easily be made too definite and so become the end instead of the means of the pupil's thinking. The exercise directs thinking by restricting the considerations which apply to a given situation. There is consequently the danger that these restrictions may go too far and serve to isolate the given situation from other situations in the course; as when, for example, one learns to demonstrate successiye theorems in geometry without recognizing their common elements. This danger may be somewhat minimized by constructing exercises which involve the situations treated in previous exercises. When the exercises are substituted for the conventional class room discussion, their value is somewhat conspicuous. When any high-school staff is asked to state its more serious teaching problems, a majority of the problems are likely to demand the sort of pupil direction which the best-answer exercise provides. The well-con structed exercise makes perfectly clear to each member of a class 10

For a multi-extrema search method to be systematic, there are three main difficulties : (a) attraction of the previously found point; Lpar;b) definiteness of the search trajectory between two points ; (c) exhaustiveness of the overall search. In this paper it is shown that these difficulties can be overcome in the following ways : (a) destabilization of the previously found point by transforming it into a saddle point ; (b) force the search trejectory to remain on the invariant analytical line between two points, and (c) stabilization-destabilization alternation of all points found.

Summary The hypothesis was examined that the more definite an individual's body image boundaries the more likely he is to manifest behavior in an interview situation indicating that he is in clear communication with himself and others. Boundary definiteness was measured by means of the barrier score derived from responses to the Rorschach blots. Trained interviewers evaluated 195 Ss with regard to three behavioral categories (communicativeness, awareness of own motives, clarity of identity). The results consistently supported the hypothesis.

Teaching is an art, and like any art it is difficult to master. It is true nevertheless that the requirements of successful teaching can be stated with a substantial degree of definiteness. It is one thing, of course, to know the requirements of successful teaching and something else to be able to apply them. On the other hand, it is certain that there can be no application of knowledge in the absence of knowledge. It is important therefore that we come to know the requirements of successful teaching at the level of verbal understanding as the first step in coming to know them at the level of application.

Summary In three different groups of boys boundary definiteness was related to the effectiveness of the boys' classroom behavior. In emotionally disturbed boys it was correlated with the teachers' reports of how much difficulty the child had in adjusting to the classroom. In normal fifth and sixth graders, it was correlated positively with teachers' ratings of classroom effectiveness. Teacher ratings of maturity behavior of the group of first grade boys was also significantly related to boundary definiteness. The results indicate that boundary definiteness is a significant generalized predictor of classroom behavior. The boy who has a clear sense of his boundaries and his demarcation from others behaves effectively in the school environment.

Various textbooks on time series analysis assert that the usual version of the sample autocovariance function (1) is nonnegative definite. Two simple proofs of this result are presented.