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Traditionally, the conflict over the question what is the role of proper names in ordinary language has centred around two proposals: a sense-reference account, where the meaning of a name is given by some favoured description of the bearer, or a designatory account, where the bearer is the meaning of the name. There is a predisposition towards the former account. largely apparent ease in dealing with a supposedly central question: what is the role of "Pegasus" in the sentence "Pegasus does not exist". If we consider sane more standard cases of proper names two facts are clear: speakers use a name from one occasion to the next with one and the same meaning, and what two men may know of a particular individual may not be the same thing. These facts not only undermine the traditional accounts but they also prohibit a uniform account of all names, bearerless or otherwise, in terms of the bare intentions of speakers irrespective of what populates the universe. These failures indicate the need for a different approach to the issue. The search for a direct answer to the question "what is the meaning of a name", prescribed by a sense-reference approach, should be replaced by seeking the conditions which must be satisfied by someone who knows the contribution a name makes to determining the truth grounds of statements. The role of standard proper names can then be explained without appeal to something which is the meaning; and further an account of why "Pegasus" is still with us can be given, which explains our intentions on the matter without unduly detracting from an ontology of middle sized hardware.

A theory of descriptive names is developed and defended against several objections. Descriptive names pose an interesting challenge to any theory of reference, since they possess both features of proper names and definite descriptions, i.e. of expressions which are often considered to be radically different. These features are referentiality and descriptive sense. The thesis takes as its point of departure Gareth Evans's theory of descriptive names, improves upon it and discusses several other authors and related theories along the way. Chapter I provides an brief introduction to the topic and an abstract of the main lines of argument. Chapter 2 argues that descriptive names possess both referential status and descriptive sense, and that these qualities constitute the two most basic elements of the notion of descriptive reference (which is contrasted with Russellian reference). It is demonstrated that not all names introduced by description are descriptive names, a claim which is given additional substance by a comparison between Evans's and Kripke's accounts of such names. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with two major challenges to the possibility of descriptive names. Chapter 3 explores the possibility of a truth-conditional theory of meaning for descriptive names, but it is shown that if we follow Evans's suggestion that the semantic value of a descriptive name is to be construed according to model theory - namely, as an entity distinct from the referent (a set) - such a theory will result in treating descriptive names as predicates, and thus eliminate then qua referring expressions. Similar accounts given by other authors are also examined and found to be problematic. I conclude by rejecting the model-theoretic notion of semantic value. Chapter 4 addresses a second challenge, posed by the fact that if a descriptive name has a descriptive sense, then given a Russellian analysis of definite descriptions, descriptive names must be quantifier phrases, and thus, again, non-referring expressions. It is argued that if this is true, then the use of negative free logic is unnecessary. Using the idea of rigidified descriptions, it is shown that Evans's arguments, based on modality and simplicity considerations, fail to save both the referentiality and descriptive sense of descriptive names while semantically dissociating them from descriptions. I show that descriptive names can be treated as shorthand for rigidified descriptions and thus semantically on a par with the latter, which, as I demonstrate, is still consistent with Evans's own (convincing) solution of the puzzle of the contingent a priori. Nevertheless, this still does not guarantee the referentiality of descriptive names. Chapter 5 presents in detail the argument that we can only save the referentiality and descriptive sense of descriptive names if we treat definite descriptions as referring expressions. Several negative arguments undermining the most influential defences of the Russellianism are given and three positive accounts of referring descriptions, Wettstein's, Sainbury's and Strawson's, are critically discussed, finally settling, with some proviso, for Strawson's. Finally, the principles of a 'Fregean' free logic for Strawsonian semantics are sketched, and I suggest ways in which a truth theory could be expressed by means of these principles. Chapter 6 summarises the achievements, sketches possible research concerning descriptive names and concludes that the analysis of descriptive names is useful in at least three ways: it provides us with means to, first, solve problems that arise from the introduction of artificial expressions such as descriptive names (e.g. the problem of the contingent a priori), second, to better understand our natural language and its relation to formal theories of meaning, and, last but not least, to give a strong rationale for a referential treatment of definite descriptions. Chapter 7 includes the bibliography and Chapter 8 a list of axioms and formulas.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

L’enceinte de confinement est la dernière barrière de protection des bâtiments réacteurs nucléaires (BR), mais les mécanismes de vieillissement du béton précontraint peuvent dégrader l’étanchéité de l’enceinte interne (EI) des BR à double paroi au cours du temps. C’est une problématique majeure pour l’exploitation à long terme et l’extension de la durée de vie des BR tout en respectant les exigences de sûreté. La taille de telles structures et la complexité de tous les phénomènes couplés qui interagissent à différentes échelles rendent difficile la mise au point d’un outil industriel opérationnel de modélisation. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse introduit une stratégie numérique de prévision du taux de fuite des EI en exploitation. Elle repose sur une discrétisation adaptée par macroéléments, sur une modélisation thermo-hydro-mécanique chainée faiblement couplée physiquement représentative et sur un élément fini 3D spécialement conçu pour calculer les transferts à travers le béton insaturé et fissuré. La stratégie proposée a été appliquée à la maquette d’enceinte VeRCoRs (échelle 1/3) : les résultats obtenus sont validés avec les données expérimentales disponibles jusqu’au premier essai de mise sous pression puis prolongés jusqu’au troisième.La stratégie proposée permet aux opérateurs de :- Prendre en compte les variabilités et incertitudes des paramètres d’intérêt et de quantifier leur impact sur le taux de fuite total ;- Introduire les défauts relevés au cours d’inspections visuelles dans le calcul ;- Anticiper et optimiser les actions de mitigation des fuites pour éviter un prolongement d’arrêt de tranche et les pertes d’exploitation associées. / The containment building represents the third and last protection barrier of nuclear reactors buildings (NRB). Yet ageing mechanisms of prestressed concrete could strongly affect the tightness capacity of the inner containment of a double-wall reactor building over time. That is a major issue considering the long term operation and the possible life extension of NRB while ensuring safety and regulatory requirements. Considering the size of such structures and the complexity of all interacting phenomena, it is very difficult to build an industrial and operational tool modeling all the strong couplings occurring at different scales. In that context, this Ph.D. thesis introduces a numerical strategy aiming at forecasting the leakage rate evolution of inner containments during operation. It is based on an adapted macro-element mesh, on a simple but physically representative chained weakly-coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical modeling and on a 3D finite element specially designed for computing air leakage through unsaturated porous and cracked concrete. The proposed strategy has been applied to the scale 1:3 VeRCoRs mock-up: results are validated with available experimental data until the first internal pressurization test before being extended until the third one.The proposed strategy enables operators to:- Take into account variabilities and uncertainties of main parameters to quantify their impact on the total leak rate;- Numerically introduce defects coming from visual inspections;- Pre-empt and optimize leak mitigation actions to avoid outage extensions and associated losses of income.

Sedulius sive Ilarleh. Bynames (cognomina) in the early medieval memorial tradition. – More than 2.000 personal names occurring in the libri vitae of Reichenau (D), St. Gall (CH) and Brescia (I) and also in the early documents of St. Gall are listed in this essay. These names are cognomina because of the significant appellative meaning in Old and Middle High German times. They are divided in 10 groups: (1.) ethnic bynames (type: Hesso, Latinus), (2.) bynames given at birth (type: Willicomo, Gotedanc) (3.) bynames designating relationship (type: Fater, Muatir), (4.) bynames from animals (type: Fisc, Swein), (5.) bynames from plants (type: Palma, Pluoma), (6.) bynames from professions (type: Choufman, Chnehto), (7.) religious bynames (type: Kotechind, Seraphim), (8.) bynames based on physical attributes (type: Barbatus, Panzleip), (9.) bynames indicating intellectual qualities (type: Chusc, Heitar), (10.) negative bynames (type: Unarg, Untol). These appellations widen the vocabulary of Old High German.

Surnames of rulers in medieval historiography. Attempt to classify on the basis of name-giving and use. – Historical surnames and nicknames of medieval rulers are very popular due to their ability to distinguish individuals, and their awareness pointedly. However, the historical research criticized their lack of explanatory power for the actual personality of the signified. The paper, therefore, proposes to turn our gaze away from the conformity of the epithets with the character and deeds of historical figures on the surnamegiving and -using practices including the motives of the authors and users. To this end, a typology is created.

The ability to reason about categories and category membership is fundamental to human cognition, and as a result a considerable amount of research has explored the acquisition and modelling of categorical structure from a variety of perspectives. These range from feature norming studies involving adult participants (McRae et al. 2005) to long-term infant behavioural studies (Bornstein and Mash 2010) to modelling experiments involving artificial stimuli (Quinn 1987). In this thesis we focus on the task of natural language categorisation, modelling the cognitively plausible acquisition of semantic categories for nouns based on purely linguistic input. Focusing on natural language categories and linguistic input allows us to make use of the tools of distributional semantics to create high-quality representations of meaning in a fully unsupervised fashion, a property not commonly seen in traditional studies of categorisation. We explore how natural language categories can be represented using distributional models of semantics; we construct concept representations for corpora and evaluate their performance against psychological representations based on human-produced features, and show that distributional models can provide a high-quality substitute for equivalent feature representations. Having shown that corpus-based concept representations can be used to model category structure, we turn our focus to the task of modelling category acquisition and exploring how category structure evolves over time. We identify two key properties necessary for cognitive plausibility in a model of category acquisition, incrementality and non-parametricity, and construct a pair of models designed around these constraints. Both models are based on a graphical representation of semantics in which a category represents a densely connected subgraph. The first model identifies such subgraphs and uses these to extract a flat organisation of concepts into categories; the second uses a generative approach to identify implicit hierarchical structure and extract an hierarchical category organisation. We compare both models against existing methods of identifying category structure in corpora, and find that they outperform their counterparts on a variety of tasks. Furthermore, the incremental nature of our models allows us to predict the structure of categories during formation and thus to more accurately model category acquisition, a task to which batch-trained exemplar and prototype models are poorly suited.

蕭世昌. / "2008年7月". / "2008 nian 7 yue". / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 176-181). / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Xiao Shichang. / Chapter 第一章 --- 緒論 --- p.1 / Chapter 第二章 --- 佛典漢譯槪覽 --- p.11 / Chapter 第三章 --- 譯場緣起 --- p.26 / Chapter 第四章 --- 譯場槪況 --- p.41 / Chapter 第五章 --- 譯經流程 --- p.62 / Chapter 第六章 --- 譯經題材 --- p.91 / Chapter 第七章 --- 譯經方法 --- p.107 / Chapter 第八章 --- 羅什譯場與帝王參與 --- p.131 / Chapter 第九章 --- 結語 --- p.151 / 附錄：《維摩經》梵漢對照 --- p.164 / 書目 --- p.176