The potential use of the Internet for apparel retail marketing is extremely viable (Murphy, 1998); however, most of the journal papers on apparel Internet shoppers are limited to the comparison of demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics between shoppers and non-shoppers (McKinney, 2004). Little empirical research has addressed the role of impulsiveness in online apparel shopping behavior. In the past, impulse buying was considered as something bad and consumers felt guilty after impulse buying (Ainslie 1975; Levy 1976). However, most researchers now no longer view impulse buying as a negative phenomenon because studies showed that impulse buying satisfies a number of hedonic desires (Piron 1991; Rook & Fisher 1995; Thompson, Locander, & Pollio 1990). Impulse buyers exhibited greater feelings of amusement, delight, enthusiasm, and joy (Weinberg & Gottwald, 1982) and often felt uplifted or energized after a shopping experience that involves impulse buying (Rook, 1987; Gardner & Rook, 1988; 1993) because impulse buying can provide the enjoyment of novelty and surprise, and the ability of mood alteration (i.e., breaking out of negative mood state) (Gardner & Rook, 1988; Rook, 1987). Recognizing the positive feelings generated from impulse buying and considering the increasing frequency of college students'' Internet shopping (Seock, 2003), one strategy to create competitive advantages in the apparel market of college students is to understand the variables related to impulse buying and based on the understanding provide a website that generates pleasurable shopping. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between online apparel impulse buying behavior and apparel involvement, apparel website attributes, and product category/price. The data were collected using an online survey with a structured questionnaire. To recruit participants, 37,590 e-mails were sent to six universities located in different regions of the United States. A total of 687 college students responded to the survey including 284 online apparel buyers, 194 non-online apparel buyers, and 209 non-apparel website visitors. When the impulsiveness of online apparel purchases in general was used to divide the participants into impulse buyer and non-impulse buyer groups, the Chi-square test results showed that there were significantly more female respondents in the impulse buyer group than in the non-impulse buyer group. However, when impulsiveness of last purchase was used to divide the participants into impulse purchase and non-impulse purchase groups, the results showed no significant difference between the genders. For other results, the findings were all consistent. Respondents in the impulse buyer and purchase groups than the non-impulse buyer and purchase groups had a greater amount of total monthly income and spent more money on apparel products. The impulse buyer and purchase groups visited websites that sold clothing/accessories more frequently and purchased more apparel products online over the past six months than the non-impulse buyer and purchase groups. These results suggest that impulse buyers are an important segment of the apparel online market. Four hypotheses were put forward to test the relationships among the variables. Before the proposed hypotheses could be examined, the factor analysis was first conducted to determine the constructs of apparel involvement and website attributes. The results showed that apparel involvement consisted of three factors (i.e., sign value/perceived importance, pleasure value, risk importance/probability) and website attributes consisted of four factors (i.e., website design, product presentation, promotion, product search/policy information). The results of MANOVA showed that the impulse buyer group perceived the sign value/perceived importance and the pleasure value of apparel involvement significantly higher, and perceived the risk importance/probability of apparel involvement significantly lower than the non-impulse buyer group. Based on the results, H1 was supported. Impulsive and non-impulsive online apparel buyers differed significantly in their apparel involvement. For H2, the results indicated that the impulse purchase group evaluated the website where they bought the last apparel item significantly better in website design, product presentation, promotion, and product search/policy information than the non-impulse purchase group. Based on the results, H2 was supported. The evaluations of the attributes of websites where impulse purchases and non-impulse purchases of apparel products were made were significantly different. Test of H3 showed that some product categories purchased by the respondents in the impulse purchase group were significantly different from those bought by the non-impulse purchase group. Categories such as shirt/blouse and belt were bought more frequently by the respondents in the impulse purchase group whereas shoes were bought more frequently by those in the non-impulse purchase group. The respondents in the impulse purchase group bought more items that cost less than $25 than those in the non-impulse purchase group. Based on the results H3 was supported. The product categories purchased by the impulse purchase group and non-impulse purchase group were significantly different. The multiple regression results showed that the sign value/perceived importance of apparel involvement contributed the most in explaining impulsiveness of online apparel buying behavior, followed by product price, risk importance/probability of apparel involvement, and product presentation of website attributes. Other factors, such as the pleasure value of apparel involvement and website attributes in website design, promotion, and product search/policy information, had no significant linear relationships with the impulsiveness of online apparel buying behavior. Based on the results, H4 was partially supported. From the results of the present study, it is concluded that apparel involvement, website attributes, and product price are closely related to the impulsiveness of consumers'' online apparel buying behavior. This study is beneficial to researchers and marketers by identifying possible psychological reasons for impulse buying as well as suggesting strategies to develop an apparel website that facilitate impulse buying behavior. / Ph. D.

In this work we set up a general framework for exact computations of the associativity, commutativity and duality morphisms in a quite general class of tortile categories. The source of the categories we study is the work of Gelfand and Kazhdan, Examples of tensor categories, Invent.Mlath. 109 (l992), 595-617. They proved that, associated to the quantized enveloping algebra of any simple Lie group at a primitive prime root of unity, there is a semisimple monoidal braided category with finite number of simple objects. The prime p needs to be greater than the Coxeter number of the corresponding Lie algebra. We show that each of the Gelfand-Kazhdan categories has at least two subcategories which are tortile, and offer algorithms for computing the associativity, commutativity and duality morphisms in any of those categories. A careful choice of the bases of the simple objects and of the product of two such objects rnake the exact computations possible. The algorithms have been implemented in Mathemetica and tested for the categories A₂,p=5, A₃,p=7, A₄.p=7, C₂,p=7, and G₂,p=11. This work was supported by the Center for Mathematical Computations through NSF grant DMS-9207973. / Ph. D.

Avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) causes a wide range of diseases in chickens called colibacillosis, resulting a substantial economic loss to the poultry industry. This dissertation aims at addressing this disease by exploring key virulence-associated genes (VAGs), swarming motility (SM), and multi-locus sequence types (MLST) of E. coli isolates obtained from colibacillosis-infected or asymptomatic commercial hens. Secondly, by classifying the E. coli isolates into different virulence categories based on the presence of five key VAGs [iroN, ompT, hlyF, iutA, and iss]. Finally, by performing embryo lethality assays and experimental infection studies to establish the effect of these VAGs. Our findings showed a significantly higher proportion of E. coli isolates obtained from colibacillosis lesions possessed the ompT gene compared to the isolates of asymptomatic commercial hens. A trend of a higher occurrence of the iutA gene was also observed in the isolates of colibacillosis cases. Based on the presence of all five VAGs, we categorized 87.5% of the isolates obtained from colibacillosis lesions into the virulent category and 64.71% of the isolates obtained from asymptomatic commercial hens into the avirulent category. During the embryo lethality assay, we found an interaction effect of virulence categories and SM on embryo mortality. Motile and hyper-motile isolates of virulent and moderately virulent categories caused significantly higher embryo mortality than the non-motile isolates of the same categories. Isolates of the avirulent category significantly reduced the relative embryo weight of the remaining live embryos. The MLST of the isolates did not have any influence on embryo lethality, or relative embryo weight. Yolk sac retention of the remaining live embryo was unaffected by virulence category, MLST, and SM of the isolates. During the experimental infection studies, we observed higher mortality and lesion scores in layer chicks inoculated intratracheally by virulent isolates compared to avirulent isolates. These two classes of isolates also had a different colonization pattern in the extra-intestinal tissues. The avirulent isolates preferably colonized deeper respiratory tracts such as airsacs whereas, the virulent isolates colonized systemic organs such as the liver. Overall, we expect this dissertation will establish the contribution of five key VAGs on embryo and chick mortality, lesion development, and colonization pattern of E. coli isolates. These findings will facilitate the selection of VAGs for field diagnosis of APEC.

Les questions <EM>"Qu'est-ce qu'une preuve?"</EM> et <EM>"Quand deux preuves sont-elles identiques?"</EM> sont fondamentales pour la théorie de la preuve. Mais pour la logique classique propositionnelle --- la logique la plus répandue --- nous n'avons pas encore de réponse satisfaisante. C'est embarrassant non seulement pour la théorie de la preuve, mais aussi pour l'informatique, où la logique classique joue un rôle majeur dans le raisonnement automatique et dans la programmation logique. De même, l'architecture des processeurs est fondée sur la logique classique. Tous les domaines dans lesquels la recherche de preuve est employée peuvent bénéficier d'une meilleure compréhension de la notion de preuve en logique classique, et le célèbre problème NP-vs-coNP peut être réduit à la question de savoir s'il existe une preuve courte (c'est-à-dire, de taille polynomiale) pour chaque tautologie booléenne. Normalement, les preuves sont étudiées comme des objets syntaxiques au sein de systèmes déductifs (par exemple, les tableaux, le calcul des séquents, la résolution, ...). Ici, nous prenons le point de vue que ces objets syntaxiques (également connus sous le nom d'arbres de preuve) doivent être considérés comme des représentations concrètes des objets abstraits que sont les preuves, et qu'un tel objet abstrait peut être représenté par un arbre en résolution ou dans le calcul des séquents. Le thème principal de ce travail est d'améliorer notre compréhension des objets abstraits que sont les preuves, et cela se fera sous trois angles différents, étudiés dans les trois parties de ce mémoire: l'algèbre abstraite (chapitre 2), la combinatoire (chapitres 3 et 4), et la complexité (chapitre 5).

Submitted by Juliana Trad Verissimo (juliana.trad@gmail.com) on 2012-09-24T16:20:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTATION_JULIANA_VERISSIMO.pdf: 6958070 bytes, checksum: b8c2ba13a57f7e7c59bcc1d2b033be9c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Eliene Soares da Silva (eliene.silva@fgv.br) on 2012-09-24T16:24:14Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTATION_JULIANA_VERISSIMO.pdf: 6958070 bytes, checksum: b8c2ba13a57f7e7c59bcc1d2b033be9c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-09-24T16:47:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTATION_JULIANA_VERISSIMO.pdf: 6958070 bytes, checksum: b8c2ba13a57f7e7c59bcc1d2b033be9c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-18 / In a dynamic and competitive global environment, many companies realize that continuous development and introduction of new products are key activities to their survival and growth. One of today’s biggest challenges to businesses involves knowing how to act in a world in which both the frame and the basis of competition are constantly changing, and where restructuring and portfolio shifting are central activities for capturing a fair share of global growth. Both the fast pace of technological innovation and the rising affluence of developing economies present businesses with risks and opportunities, and it is not only important that companies pay attention to the launch of top-notch products in developed markets, but also mandatory that they know how to launch old news to new markets. Using the Brazilian market as an example, this dissertation sought to study how multinational companies have been using advertising in the launch of new product categories and subcategories that are already sold elsewhere to new geographies. After reviewing the literature available, developing propositions, and evaluating those with the help of three case studies, it was possible to verify some linearity between the cases and the literature studied. These included the search for category legitimation preceding that of brand legitimation; the usage of expert sources to legitimate new categories; the usage of argument based appeals; and the advertising of more than one product feature per ad. Nevertheless, given some discrepancies noticeable between what was observed in Brazil and the literature consulted, it was also possible to verify that the way advertising cues are conducted in new geographies likewise depends on the competitive scenario faced, as well as on country specific economic and cultural variants. / Em um ambiente global dinâmico e competitivo, muitas empresas notam que constante desenvolvimento e lançamento de novos produtos são atividades-chave para seu crescimento e sobrevivência. Hoje, um dos maiores desafios enfrentados por tais empresas envolve saber como agir em um mundo em que tanto o escopo como a estrutura do ambiente competitivo estão em constante mudança, e em que reestruturações e mudanças de portfólio são centrais para as companhias que visam capitalizar com o crescimento global. Tanto o rápido ritmo de inovação tecnológica quando a crescente afluência de economias emergentes apresentam riscos e oportunidades para as empresas, o que torna importante não apenas que estas estejam atentas ao lançamento de produtos de última geração para mercados desenvolvidos: faz-se também necessário que saibam como lançar produtos antigos para novos mercados. Usando o mercado brasileiro como um exemplo, esta dissertação procurou estudar como multinacionais têm utilizado anúncios publicitários no lançamento, para novos mercados, de categorias e subcategorias de produtos já vendidas em outros países. Após uma revisão da literatura disponível, do desenvolvimento de proposições, e da avaliação destas através de três estudos de caso, foi possível verificar a existência de alguma linearidade entre os casos e a literatura estudada, incluindo: uma busca pela legitimação da categoria que precede àquela pela da marca; o uso de 'especialistas' para a legitimação da categoria; o uso de apelos baseados em argumentos; e a divulgação de mais de uma característica de produto por anúncio. No entanto, dadas algumas discrepâncias entre o que foi observado nos casos e aquilo descrito na literatura consultada, também foi possível verificar que a maneira como os anúncios são feitos em diferentes lugares depende igualmente do cenário competitivo enfrentado pela empresa, bem como de variantes econômicas e culturais específicas da localidade em questão.

Submitted by Pablo Possamai (pablopossamai@hotmail.com) on 2018-10-18T10:10:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Pablo Possamai_ Dissertacao MPA.pdf: 1765131 bytes, checksum: 4e094916d32dc4277f82617c65e9b309 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Mayara Costa de Sousa (mayara.sousa@fgv.br) on 2018-10-25T15:10:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Pablo Possamai_ Dissertacao MPA.pdf: 1765131 bytes, checksum: 4e094916d32dc4277f82617c65e9b309 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzane Guimarães (suzane.guimaraes@fgv.br) on 2018-10-26T12:47:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Pablo Possamai_ Dissertacao MPA.pdf: 1765131 bytes, checksum: 4e094916d32dc4277f82617c65e9b309 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-26T12:47:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pablo Possamai_ Dissertacao MPA.pdf: 1765131 bytes, checksum: 4e094916d32dc4277f82617c65e9b309 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-09-20 / A busca por eficiência e constante redução de custos tem levado muitas organizações a reestruturarem seus processos e suas atividades de compras com o objetivo de gerar maior competitividade para o negócio a partir de processos mais robustos. As compras estratégicas de bens e serviços indiretos têm ganhado espaço nas organizações, o que pode ser explicado, em parte, pela competitividade global, pressão por resultados financeiros e mudanças estruturais na indústria. O objetivo deste trabalho foi demonstrar, mediante estudos de caso centrados em serviços de marketing, jurídico e de logística internacional, como as compras indiretas podem ser gerenciadas de forma mais estratégica, para tanto, analisando como esses processos são conduzidos em uma indústria de cosméticos e como se comparam com a literatura. Este estudo abordou as diferentes situações de gastos indiretos, nesse sentido, identificando os gaps e as oportunidades existentes que possam ser explorados. Neste estudo foi abordado como o gerenciamento por categorias de compras, de acordo com a Matriz de Kraljic (1983), comparase com a classificação interna da empresa segundo as áreas clientes e compras. Demonstra-se que as compras de bens e serviços, quando realizadas de forma estratégica, com o uso de tecnologia e uma estrutura independente, geram ganhos competitivos por meio da redução de custos e permite que as áreas funcionais concentrem seus esforços na atividade principal da área. Os campos analisados foram: gerenciamento por categoria, processo de compras e como compras se relaciona com as outras áreas. Na conclusão, algumas recomendações são propostas para aumentar a efetividade da gestão de compras indiretas de serviços. / The search for efficiency and constant cost reduction has led many organizations to restructure their processes and their sourcing activities in order to generate greater competitiveness for the business thru more robust processes. Strategic sourcing of indirect goods and services have gained space in organizations, which can be partly explained by global competitiveness, pressure for financial results and structural changes in industry. The objective of this work was to demonstrate, through case studies focused on marketing, legal and international logistics services, how indirect sourcing can be managed in a more strategic way, by analyzing how these processes are conducted in a cosmetics industry and how they are compared to the literature. This study addressed the different situations of indirect costs, in this sense, identifying the existing gaps and opportunities that can be explored. In this study it was approached how the category management, according to the Kraljic Matrix (1983), compares with the internal classification of the company according to the internal customers and sourcing areas. It is demonstrated that the sourcing of goods and services, when carried out in a strategic way, using technology and an independent structure, generates competitive gains through cost reduction and allows the functional areas to concentrate their efforts on thei main activities. The fields analyzed were: category management, sourcing processes and how the sourcing interacts with the other areas in the organization. In the conclusion, some recommendations are proposed to increase the effectiveness of indirect sourcing management.

We define and study the fundamental pro-finite 2-groupoid of varieties X defined over a field k. This is a higher algebraic invariant of a scheme X, analogous to the higher fundamental path 2-groupoids as defined for topological spaces. This invariant is related to previously defined invariants, for example the absolute Galois group of a field, and Grothendieck’s étale fundamental group. The special case of Brauer-Severi varieties is considered, in which case a “sections conjecture” type theorem is proved. It is shown that a Brauer-Severi variety X has a rational point if and only if its étale fundamental 2-groupoid has a special sort of section.

This thesis is about the problem of compositionality in distributional semantics. Distributional semantics presupposes that the meanings of words are a function of their occurrences in textual contexts. It models words as distributions over these contexts and represents them as vectors in high dimensional spaces. The problem of compositionality for such models concerns itself with how to produce distributional representations for larger units of text (such as a verb and its arguments) by composing the distributional representations of smaller units of text (such as individual words). This thesis focuses on a particular approach to this compositionality problem, namely using the categorical framework developed by Coecke, Sadrzadeh, and Clark, which combines syntactic analysis formalisms with distributional semantic representations of meaning to produce syntactically motivated composition operations. This thesis shows how this approach can be theoretically extended and practically implemented to produce concrete compositional distributional models of natural language semantics. It furthermore demonstrates that such models can perform on par with, or better than, other competing approaches in the field of natural language processing. There are three principal contributions to computational linguistics in this thesis. The first is to extend the DisCoCat framework on the syntactic front and semantic front, incorporating a number of syntactic analysis formalisms and providing learning procedures allowing for the generation of concrete compositional distributional models. The second contribution is to evaluate the models developed from the procedures presented here, showing that they outperform other compositional distributional models present in the literature. The third contribution is to show how using category theory to solve linguistic problems forms a sound basis for research, illustrated by examples of work on this topic, that also suggest directions for future research.

Dans cette thèse, nous présentons les relations entre le principe de réflexion MRP introduit par Moore, les propriétés d'arbres généralisées ITP et ISP introduites par Weiß, ainsi que les propriétés square introduites par Jensen et développées par Schimmerling. Le résultat principal de cette thèse est que MRP+MA entraine ITP(λ, ω2) pour tout cardinal λ ≥ ω2. Ce résultat implique par conséquent que les méthodes actuelles pour prouver la consistance de MRP+MA nécessitent au moins l'existence d'un cardinal supercompact. Il s'avère que MRP seul ne suffit pas à démontrer ce résultat, et nous donnons la démonstration que MRP n'entraine pas la propriété d'arbre plus faible, à savoir TP(ω2, ω2). De plus MRP+MA n'entraine pas le principe d'arbre plus fort ISP(ω2, ω2). Enfin nous étudions les relations entre MRP et des versions faibles de square. Nous montrons que MRP implique la négation de square(λ, ω) et MRP+MA implique la négation de square(λ, ω1) pour tout λ ≥ ω2.

"Thèse présentée à la Faculté des études supérieures en vue de l'obtention du grade de Docteur en droit (LL.D.)" / Cette suite d'essais analyse la conception de la monnaie en droit, cherchant à isoler l'originalité de sa nature abstraite. La tradition juridique caractérise la monnaie à la fois comme un fait et comme un droit parce qu'elle présuppose un sens substantif au nom commun 'monnaie', étant ainsi incapable d'admettre que la monnaie, par sa place unique dans les catégories du droit, est le mécanisme qui suppose l'avenir indéterminé en y enchâssant le présent. La difficulté de la monnaie est que, comme catégorie, elle n'est pas incluse aux catégories usuelles de droit privé. Son caractère abstrait l'empêche d'ailleurs d'être incluse parmi les objets qui ont une extension. La monnaie se définit plutôt par négation relativement aux catégories usuelles. Elle est donc reconnaissable entre toutes. Dans la relation sujet-objet, la monnaie versée n'est évidemment pas un sujet. Dans son sens strict, la monnaie réfère aujourd'hui au papier-monnaie. Il est vrai que ce dernier existe matériellement puisqu'il est tangible. Mais paradoxalement, en tant qu'objet, la monnaie est ni une somme, ni une obligation en nature, ni un bien, ni une représentation de dette, ni une mesure, ni consomptible, ni fongible au sens pertinent de ces mots. Comment saisir la substance d'une notion qui se soustrait aux catégories usuelles de la doctrine? Voilà la difficulté fondamentale de la thèse. Répétons son mode original de définition: la monnaie n'est pas identique à une somme due, mais - en étant payée - elle en éteint une; conversement, la somme due n'est pas identique à la monnaie perçue, mais -lorsque payée en trop - cette dernière est déclarée indue et sujette à répétition (l'indu devient dû). La définition de la monnaie procède par 'corécurrence' : elle définit quelque chose d'indéterminé puisqu'un membre de la définition réfère à l'autre et viceversa. Sa nature s'exprime par sa fonction dans la structure des prestations. Mais la doctrine la traite d'abord comme une somme due, sans distinguer outre mesure ce type de dette des autres prestations. Or, à titre d'exécution d'une obligation, une somme d'argent non seulement éteint d'autant les montants, dus à une époque ou l'autre, mais, puisque ces derniers sont appariés aux obligations en nature en tant que prix dû en contrepartie des prestations caractérisées à être effectuées, la perception des sommes d'argent conduit encore à la mobilité des biens parmi les personnes. D'où le paradoxe: une somme d'argent est destinée à circuler précisément pour être la fin des sommes dues. La doctrine enseigne la thèse unitaire du paiement des obligations (en son acception large du droit civil) : sont mis dans un même sac les faits exécutés pour satisfaire à des obligations en nature et les paiements de sommes d'argent dues. Or, elles sont en premier dues, puis payées. Ils sont dits former un ensemble. Ce sac est le temps lui-même. Il s'agit d'une interprétation de l'univers des prestations, précisément une interprétation de la notion d'univers où l'actualité homogène d'un ensemble exclut de faire une place à l'éventualité de valeurs futures par contraste aux valeurs passées. Pour réduire la notion d'univers à celle d'ensemble actuel, l'astuce est de fermer la dualité 'ensemble/membre' en substituant au membre l'ensemble: l'un des objets inclus à l'ensemble doit être à la fois un élément existant de l'ensemble et la collection de tous ses éléments, constituant ainsi la jonction substantive sous-jacente à cette dualité. IV Cet objet fondateur est d'habitude nommé le zéro de l'ensemble. Traitant ainsi l'ensemble des exécutions des obligations, il doit y avoir un élément qui ait à la fois la nature d'une promesse et celle d'un fait. Cet élément est la monnaie. Ainsi, la monnaie a une nature double, à la fois concept et référent du concept. La somme due est exécutée en monnaie et, conversement, la monnaie est la somme transférée à titre de paiement: substituant une définition dans l'autre, l'exécution de la somme due est la somme transférée, une formule conduisant à la régression infinie. Qui donc est le débiteur de cette somme transférée depuis aussi longtemps que la monnaie a circulé et circulera? La difficulté conceptuelle de la monnaie est de comprendre cette métamorphose, où l'exécution d'un fait en satisfaction d'une obligation se révèle elle même être une promesse. Pourquoi alors distinguer une obligation et son exécution? La monnaie cumule la nature catégorique d'une chose matérielle délivrée - autrefois l'or, aujourd'hui le papier-monnaie - et la nature d'une somme due; cette façon de penser mène à réifier les dettes, à leur conférer une existence matérielle. Mais devoir l'argent est fondamentalement la durée du terme d'une relation entre deux personnes. Et payer la monnaie est l'extinction de ce terme. Alors paradoxalement, l'exprimant dans une dualité catégorique, la monnaie a une durée et en même temps n'en a pas. Cette postulation d'une union des termes opposés d'une dualité n'est pas sans précédent. Pour aider le lecteur à s'en rendre compte, je documente que le thème de la migration de la valeur pécuniaire des choses par la médiation de la monnaie dans le paiement des sommes dues rappelle celui de la métempsycose (migration de l'âme) utilisée pour conceptualiser le fondement de la Couronne médiévale, le don de Dieu qui sacrait la continuité des règnes successifs d'une lignée héréditaire de régents. À cette époque, on conceptualisait la continuité historique d'un peuple par les deux corps du roi; sa nature cumulait à la fois celle d'un individu et celle de l'ensemble des individus soumis à son règne. Unique entre tous, on considérait que l'un des individus était un ensemble d'un. Cette attitude platonique était crue nécessaire en droit public pour résoudre la difficulté conceptuelle de la continuité historique d'une communauté en dépit de la nature temporelle de ses membres; elle recevait son écho en droit privé. La thèse unitaire du paiement d'obligations - où, tout comme en économique, la capacité de permutation de biens est elle-même considérée être un bien ordinaire - semble reposer sur cette même conception d'une nécessaire nature double. Dans l'univers des prestations, selon la doctrine, un ensemble infini de valeurs successives formées sur une période de temps indéfinie est considéré être fondé sur un objet transcendant qui cumule les faces opposées d'une dualité: à la fois somme (d'argent) et chose, à la fois droit et fait accompli en exécution d'une obligation, à la fois fait et valeur future. Ce paradigme traditionnel est indifférent à la dualité des prestations: non pécuniaire et pécuniaire. TI y arrive en substantivant la non-existence d'une somme. L'explication proposée ici en est une de structure. L'univers des prestations serait plutôt une dichotomie de deux dualités distinctes: 10 une dualité catégorique, celle de l'exécution de prestations particulières - où avoir fait quelque chose et ne pas l'avoir fait sont des action et abstention caractérisées, et 20 une dualité modale (circulaire), devoir un montant libellé en iv-a devise ou (exclusivement) ne pas le devoir, l'avoir payé ou non. L'obligation de livrer une prestation caractérisée à quelqu'un est appariée à la somme d'argent due par ce dernier en contrepartie de cela; on alterne d'une obligation non pécuniaire à la promesse de payer un montant d'argent sans que quiconque puisse cumuler le beurre et l'argent du beurre à un instant donné. Mais encore, une somme due en suit une autre au travers de la monnaie, cette dernière étant toujours le revers de la somme due. Il n'est pas nécessaire de dire que la monnaie existe, ni de dire qu'elle n'existe pas; il suffit de dire qu'elle éteint la somme due. Non seulement la somme due - versée (renversée) en monnaie - est éteinte, mais encore par le nominalisme elle peut toujours acquitter de nouveau une somme d'autant; il suffit qu'un créancier accepte qu'on la lui doive plutôt que de s'en remettre au troc de choses existantes. Cette nouvelle perspective du paiement des obligations distingue deux types de raisonnements. La vérification catégorique rétrospective d'une exécution en nature survenue se démarque de la modalité où la conséquence juridique de l'extinction d'une somme due se retourne en la possibilité a priori de réitérer cette conséquence encore contre une somme pouvant pourtant n'être pas encore déterminée. La possibilité d'une continuité historique n'a pas la nature finie d'un fait. L'objet qu'est la monnaie déborde de la notion ordinaire d'objet puisqu'il est circulaire: la 'monnaie' est "éteindre une somme (due) puis (est encore) monnaie". Dans la lignée héréditaire des sommes, constituées pour être éteintes, éteintes pour être constituées, la monnaie est ni le prédécesseur, ni un successeur particulier; elle est la fonction qui ouvre continuellement l'éventualité d'autres successeurs. La monnaie est une abstraction et sa nature unique est confirmée au Canada depuis 1967. Une fois la convertibilité du papier-monnaie abandonnée, la monnaie n'est plus une promesse de payer: la banque centrale n'est plus tenue de délivrer l'or à la demande du porteur, ni d'échanger le billet de banque en billets du Dominion. Le papiermonnaie est, depuis, trivialement remplacé seulement par du papier-monnaie. Enfin, l'abstraction monétaire donne à la banque centrale une personnalité morale inédite. Si la Couronne est créancière des uns et débitrice aux autres, alors en contraste la banque centrale qui n'est pas une banque - est ni créancière, ni débitrice du papier-monnaie. La problématique de l'inclusion de la monnaie dans les catégories traditionnelles du droit a une solution inédite. La monnaie s'offre en complément des concepts du discours juridique. L'encaissement d'une somme due emporte comme conséquence la fin de son terme, mais encore il en appelle à nouveau une autre, éventuellement. Ainsi, la monnaie est le bain de renouvellement des sommes. Sa qualification ni ... ni... louvoie entre les deux termes en les niant alternativement. / This series of essays analyses the concept of money in the law, seeking to isolate its unique and highly abstract nature. Traditionallaw teaching characterizes money both as a fact and as a right premised as it is on the idea that common nouns like 'money' must have substantive meaning; it is thereby unable to accept that money, by virtue of its unique place amongst the categories of private law, is the mechanism supposing the indeterminate future by embedding the present into it. The difficulty with money is that, as a category, it is not included amongst the usual categories ofprivate law. Its abstract character prevents it from being included amongst objects that have extension. Rather money is defined by negation with respect to the usuallegal categories. It is thereby uniquely recognizable. In the subject-object relationship, paid money is obviously not a subject. In its strict meaning, money refers today to paper-money. It is true that the latter does exist physically because it is tangible. But paradoxicalIy, as an object, money is neither a sum owed, nor an obligation in kind, nor a good, nor representing a debt, nor a measurement, nor consumable, nor fungible in the relevant sense ofthose terms. How does one capture the substance of a notion that defies the usual categories of legal discourse? That is the fundamental difficulty of the thesis. The entirely unique way of defining money bears repeating: Cash money is not identical to a sum owed but extinguishes one as it is being paid; conversely, a sum owed is not identical with money received, since when money is paid without obligation, the sum can be recovered as undue (the undue becomes due). The definition ofmoney proceeds by 'corecurrence': it defines something indeterminate, in that one definition refers to the other and vice versa. Its nature stems from its function in the structure of prestations. But the legal scholarship treats it principally as a sum owed, without further distinguishing this type of debt from other prestations. Now, as the performance of an obligation, a sum ofmoney not only as much pays off any amount, due at one time or another, but, because those are paired to obligations in kind as the price owed in consideration ofparticular performances to be accomplished; the cashing of sums of money still conducts the movement of goods among persons. Whence a paradox: A sum of money is destined to circulate precise1y to extinguish sums (due). Legal scholarship generally teaches the thesis of unity of performance of obligations (payment in its broad civillaw meaning): AlI acts accomplished in the performance of obligations in kind and all payments of sums of money are put in the same bag. Now, they are first owed, then received. These operations are said to form a single set. This bag is time itself. 1t is an interpretation of the universe of prestations, more precise1y an interpretation of the notion of universe where the homogeneous actuality of a set excludes to give place to the possibility of future values by contrast to past values. To close the notion of a universe to that of an actual vi set, the trick is to close the duality 'set/member' by replacing the member by the set: one of the objects included in the set must be at once an existing element of the set and be the collection of aIl its elements, constituting thereby the substantive junction underlying this duality. This foundational object is usually called the zero of the set. In the set of performances of obligations (prestations) with which we are dealing here, there must similarly be an element in the nature of both a promise and a fact. That element is money. So money has a dual nature, both concept and referent of the concept. The sum owed is performed in money and, conversely, money is the sum transferred as payment: substituting one definition in the other, the performance of the sum owed is the sum transferred, a formula leading to infinite regression. Who then is the debtor of this sum transferred for as long as money did and will circulate? The conceptual difficulty with money is to understand this metamorphosis, where the performance of a fact in satisfaction of an obligation reveals itselfto be a promise. Why then bother to distinguish a promise from the performance of it? Money cumulates the categorical nature of a physical thing being delivered - in olden days gold, today paper-money - and the nature of a sum owed; this way of thinking would tend to reify debts, to confer them physical existence. Yet to owe money is fundamentally the duration of the term of a relationship between two persons. And to pay money is to put an end to this term. So paradoxically, to express it in a categorical duality, money has duration and at the same time it has none. Such a union of the polar opposites of a duality is not unprecedented. To help the reader realise this, l document how the theme of migration ofpecuniary value ofthings by means ofmoney being given in payment of amounts owed is reminiscent of metempsychosis (migration of the soul) used to conceptualise the foundation of the medieval Crown, the gift ofGod that consecrated the continuity of successive reigns of an hereditary line of regents. At that time, the historical continuity of the people was conceptualised by the King's two bodies: both that of an individual and that of the set of individuals subject to his reign. Unique amongst aIl, one foundational individual was considered to constitute a set of one. This platonic attitude was believed necessary in public law to resolve the conceptual difficulty of the historical continuity of a community despite the temporal nature of its individuals; it was put to similar use in private law with respect to money. The thesis of unity of performance of obligations - where, like in economics, the capacity to exchange goods is considered an ordinary good itself - appears to rely on the same conception of a necessary dual nature. In the universe of prestations, according to traditionallegal scholarship, an infinite set of successive values taking shape over an indefinite period of time is viewed as founded on a transcendental object which cumulates the opposite faces ofa duality: both sum (of money) and thing, both right and act accomplished in the performance of an obligation, both fact and future value. This traditional paradigm disregard the duality of prestations: pecuniary and non-pecuniary. It does so by giving a substantive value to the non vi-a existence of a sumo The explanation proposed here is one of structure. The universe of prestations is rather a dichotomy of two distinct dualities: 10 a categorieal duality, that of the performance of specifie prestations - where to have done something and not to have done it are characterised action and abstention, and 20 a modal (circular) duality: to owe an amount in currency or (exclusively) not to owe it, to have paid it or not. The obligation to deliver a particular performance to someone is paired to the sum of money owed by him in consideration of it; we altemate from nonpecuniary obligation to promises to pay an amount of money without one being able to have his cake and eat it too at any time. But still, one amount owed follow another thru money, money always being the tuming over of the sum owed. We are not obliged to state that money exists, or that it does not; it suffiees to say that it extinguishes the sum owed. Not only is the sum owed extinguished upon money being tumed (paid) in, but by virtue of nominalism it still can extinguish anew a further sum of same amount; it is sufficient that a creditor accept to be owed a sum ofmoney rather than to revert to the barter ofphysical things. This new reading of the payment of obligations draw apart two types of reasoning. The categorieal proof of a past specifie performance is different from the modality where the legal consequence of the extinction of a sum due is tumed over into the a priori possibility to still reiterate that same consequence against a sum that now may not yet be determined. The possibility of an historieal continuity does not have the finite nature of a fact. Money as an object transcends the concept of an ordinary object because it is circular: 'money' is "the end of a sum (owed) and (is still) money". In the hereditary line of sums, created to be extinguished or extinguished to be created, money is neither the predecessor nor a particular successor; it is the function of continuously opening up the possibility of further successors. Money is an abstraction and its unique character is confirmed in Canada since 1967. Once the convertibility of paper-money is dropped, money is no longer a promissory note: no longer does the central bank undertakes to exchange a bank note for gold or Dominion bonds. Paper-money is now trivially replaced only by paper-money. Finally, the abstract character ofmoney gives the central bank an most unusual status as a legal person. If the Crown is creditor of sorne persons and debtor to others, then by contrast the central bank - who is not a bank - is neither creditor, nor debtor ofpaper-money. The problem of fitting money within the traditional categories of the law does have an unexpected ending. Money presents itself as the complement of the concepts oflegal discourse. The cashing in of a sum triggers the end of its term, but still it calls one anew, eventually. So money is the bath of renewal of sums. In being characterised as neither... nor... it hops between the two terms by altematively negating them.