No description available.

In dealing with the Pauline concept of the church as the body of Christ (s oma Christou), numerous New Testament scholars and others have tried to come to grips with a fundamental but yet unresolved issue--the nature of the relationship between Christ via his own body and the church as body. Embedded in much of the discussion is the implicit assumption that s oma Christou as ecclesiological language does point to Christ's once crucified but now risen body in some direct way. / This thesis examines that basic assumption in the light of the 18 ecclesiological references to soma found in the Pauline corpus. We argue that such an assumption is implausible and we conclude that it is simply the human body (any human body) which acts as a metaphorical signifier for the church; further, that Christ's personal body, crucified and risen, becomes relevant only in a larger Christological and soteriological sense.

No description available.

This thesis presents two novel methods for isolated word speech recognition based on sub-word components. A digital neural network is the fundamental processing strategy in both methods. The first design is based on the 'Separate Segmentation & Labelling' (SS&L) approach. The spectral data of the input utterance is first segmented into phoneme-like units which are then time normalised by linear time normalisation. The neural network labels the time-normalised phoneme-like segments 78.36% recognition accuracy is achieved for the phoneme-like unit. In the second design, no time normalisation is required. After segmentation, recognition is performed by classifying the data in a window as it is slid one frame at a time, from the start to the end of of each phoneme-like segment in the utterance. 73.97% recognition accuracy for the phoneme-like unit is achieved in this application. The parameters of the neural net have been optimised for maximum recognition performance. A segmentation strategy using the sum of the difference in filterbank channel energy over successive spectra produced 80.27% correct segmentation of isolated utterances into phoneme-like units. A linguistic processor based on that of Kashyap & Mittal [84] enables 93.11% and 93.49% word recognition accuracy to be achieved for the SS&L and 'Sliding Window' recognisers respectively. The linguistic processor has been redesigned to make it portable so that it can be easily applied to any phoneme based isolated word speech recogniser.

No description available.

Word of mouth (WOM) – or information shared among consumers themselves – has long been regarded as one of the most influential information sources for consumers (Brown and Reingen 1987). Unlike offline word of mouth, which typically occurs among people who know each other, online word of mouth typically occurs among strangers who do not know, and are unlikely to ever know, one other. While it is reasonable to assume that social concerns, such as maintaining relationships, are likely to influence people’s offline word of mouth behavior among familiar others, it is unclear whether social concerns dictate people’s online word of mouth behavior. In my dissertation, I look at how social considerations – thoughts about other people – affect people’s online word of mouth behavior. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I examine how people’s choice of word of mouth topic online is influenced by social considerations. Specifically, I find that while people enjoy talking about controversial topics because the topics are intrinsically interesting, people often times avoid these topics because they fear social rejection by their conversation partner. In chapter three, I examine how reviewers’ desire to appear logical (vs. imaginative) during word of mouth transmission affects their memory for the experience. I find that attempting to be logical negatively affects reviewer’s memory and this is due to the logic mindset activating verbal instead of perceptual processes during subsequent recall. In other words, impression management goals (e.g., to present oneself as a rational person) during word of mouth communication may be detrimental for people’s memory . Chapter four examines how consumer evaluations of reviews are driven by consumer beliefs about why reviews are written. I find that, in general, consumers tend to discount positive reviews because they think positive reviews are written for reviewer-specific reason such a self-enhancement or signaling expertise. When temporal contiguity cues – words and phrases indicating that the review was written immediately after the consumption experience – are present, however, people tend to give more credence to positive reviews because these cues make consumers think that the product experience, rather than reviewer-specific goals, precipitated the writing of the review. Taken together, my dissertation shows that social considerations affect both the transmission of word of mouth and the reception of online word of mouth. More generally, my dissertation showcases how thoughts about others (e.g., will others be offended?) influence consumer behavior even in situations where present and future social interactions are unlikely to occur.

Photocopy of typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1978. / Bibliography: leaves [155]-160. / Microfiche. / x, 160 leaves ill

Thesis (Th. M.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1989. / Abstract. Bibliography: leaves 74-83.

Thesis (M.A.B.S.)--Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-49).

Thesis (M.A.)--Columbia Biblical Seminary and Graduate School of Missions, Columbia, S.C., 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-87).