This study investigates the nature of semantic compatibility between constructions and lexical items that occur in them in relation with language use, and the related concept, coercion, based on a usage-based approach to language, in which linguistic knowledge (grammar) is grounded in language use. This study shows that semantic compatibility between linguistic elements is a gradient phenomenon, and that speakers’ knowledge about the degree of semantic compatibility is intimately correlated with language use. To show this, I investigate two constructions of English: the sentential complement construction and the ditransitive construction. I observe speakers’ knowledge of the semantic compatibility between the constructions and lexical items and compared it with empirical data obtained from linguistic corpora and experiments on sentence processing and acceptability judgments. My findings specifically show that the relative semantic compatibility of the lexical items and the construction is significantly correlated with the frequency of use of their co-occurrences and the processing effort and speakers’ acceptability judgments for the co-occurrences. The empirical data show that a lexical item and a construction which are less than fully compatible can be actually used together when the incompatibility is resolved. The resolution of the semantic incompatibility between the lexical item and its host construction has been called coercion. Coercion has been invoked as a theoretical concept without being examined in depth, particularly without regard to language use. By correlating degree of semantic compatibility with empirical data of language use, this study highlights that coercion is an actual psychological process which occurs during the composition of linguistic elements. Moreover, by examining in detail how the semantics of a lexical item and a construction interact in order to reconcile the incompatibility, this study reveals that coercion is semantic integration that involves not only dynamic interaction of linguistic components but also non-linguistic contexts. Investigating semantic compatibility and coercion in detail with empirical data tells about the processes by which speakers compose linguistic elements into larger units. It also supports the assumption of the usage-based model that grammar and usage are not independent, and ultimately sheds light on the dynamic aspect of our linguistic system.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T17:40:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo720_1.pdf: 2087569 bytes, checksum: 4e440439e51674690e086dbc501c7a58 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / A modelagem de deterioracão tem estado na vanguarda das analises Bayesianas de confiabilidade. As abordagens mais conhecidas encontradas na literatura para este proposito avaliam o comportamento da medida de confiabilidade ao longo do tempo a luz dos dados empiricos, apenas. No contexto de engenharia de confiabilidade, essas abordagens têm aplicabilidade limitada uma vez que frequentemente lida-se com situacões caracterizadas pela escassez de dados empiricos. Inspirado em estrategias Bayesianas que agregam dados empiricos e opiniões de especialistas na modelagem de medidas de confiabilidade não-dependentes do tempo, este trabalho propõe uma metodologia para lidar com confiabilidade dependente do tempo. A metodologia proposta encapsula conhecidas abordagens Bayesianas, como metodos Bayesianos para combinar dados empiricos e opiniões de especialistas e modelos Bayesianos indexados no tempo, promovendo melhorias sobre eles a fim de encontrar um modelo mais realista para descrever o processo de deterioracão de um determinado componente ou sistema. Os casos a serem discutidos são os tipicamente encontrados na pratica de confiabilidade (por meio de simulacão): avaliacão dos dados sobre tempo de execucão para taxas de falha e a quantidade de deterioracão, dados com base na demanda para probabilidade de falha; e opiniões de especialistas para analise da taxa de falha, quantidade de deterioracão e probabilidade de falha. Estes estudos de caso mostram que o uso de informacões especializadas pode levar a uma reducão da incerteza sobre distribuicões de medidas de confiabilidade, especialmente em situacões em que poucas ou nenhuma falha e observada.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / The effective and efficient delivery of social services in South Africa has suffered as a result of the apartheid policies and practices. Now that we have legitimate political structures in our country, social workers in local authorities have the opportunity to take their rightful place in our social service delivery system. In order to enhance the quality of life in South Africa, we must ensure that people are not serviced at a distance. The broad intention of this study is to critically examine social work practice in local authorities in South Africa in order to identify the pertinent elements of a model of practice and to clarify the role of the local authority social worker. Five theoretical issues are identified within structural Marxism which was selected as the theoretical orientation for this study. These are the individual-society relationship, basic needs and services, social change, community participation and professionalism. The literature review of the h-uman services rendered by local authorities in the United Kingdom and the U.~nite-d-S-ta-tes of America, and in South Africa. of which there is a Raucity of research, sensi-ti-ze-d-the res-earcher to the-relevant issues and debates, and informed the empirical study.Ten (10) directors and fifty (50) social work practitioners of social services departments completed the mailed questionnaires. The response rate was, 24,39% and 27,47%, respectively. The empirical data has provided important information about the rationale and types of social services provided by local authorities in 1992-1993. To varying degrees, casework, group work, research and community work/development are practised. While the latter method was purported by many respondents to be their priority, casework was found to be the most popular method. These services were often provided because no other services existed in the area or were inaccessible. In most cases, the social services departments, unfortunately, did not have a mission statement nor terms of reference to guide their planning and interventions. As the majority of the South African population were excluded from the political process, local authority structures were discredited by many people and this caused anxiety among many practitioners and tensions with the communities. There was a high level of co-operation between social services departments and their respective health departments. The conclusions drawn from this study are that local authorities should provide social services through a comprehensive social services department which should include, among other, the health department; and that local government is an important site for the practice of developmental social work. Other researchers could build on this foundation so as to develop clearer policy and practice guidelines for this field of speciality.

The City of Cape Town is the most congested city in South Africa, with Johannesburg coming in second. Capetonians are spending 75% more time in traffic because of the congestion during peak hours, thus reducing time spent on leisure and other activities. Due to population growth, increasing car ownership and declining capacity of rail infrastructure, Cape Town's road infrastructure will continue to be under severe pressure if the status quo is maintained. Research shows that congestion levels in urban areas are key factors in determining the effectiveness and productivity of the transport system. Traffic congestion poses a threat to the economy and the environment. Increasing corridors' capacity by increasing the number of lanes does not necessarily solve the problem. Effective urban traffic management and efficient utilization of existing infrastructure are critical in creating sustainable solutions to congestion problems. To achieve this, it is important that appropriate urban-scale models and monitoring strategies are put in place. Effective traffic management and monitoring strategies require accurate characterization of the traffic state of an urban-scale network. Several approaches, including kinetic wave theory and cell transmission models or macroscopic traffic simulation models, have been proposed and developed to describe the traffic state of an urban-scale network. However, these approaches are limited and require significant amounts of computational time and effort. The application of macroscopic fundamental diagram (herein referred to as MFD) to characterize the state of an urban-scale network has thus far proven to be more effective than other approaches. MFD represents the state of urban traffic by defining the traffic throughput of an area at given traffic densities. It describes the characteristics and dynamics of urban-scale traffic conditions, allowing for improved and sustainable urban scale traffic management and monitoring strategies. Against this backdrop, the existence of MFD for the City of Cape Town (CoCT) urbanscale network is yet to be established and the implications yet to be understood, as in other parts of the world. The main aim of this research was, therefore, to empirically estimate the macroscopic fundamental diagram for the CoCT's freeway network and analyse its observed features. To achieve this, observed data of 5 minutes periods for the month of May 2019 was used to estimate the MFD. The results confirmed that when the chaotic scatter-plots of flow and density from individual fixed loop detectors were aggregated the scatter nearly disappeared and points grouped neatly to form a clearly defined free-flow state, critical state and the formation of hysteresis loops past the critical density corresponding with the network observed maximum flow. Further analysis of the MFDs showed that a single hysteresis loop always forms past the critical density during the evening peak in a weekday MFD. However, it was inconclusive during the morning peak period in weekday MFDs. Lastly, an explicit hysteresis loop seldom appears in a Saturday MFD when the peak of traffic demand is lower than on weekdays. In order to understand the dynamics of the congestion spread, the freeway network was partitioned into penetrating highways network and the ring highway network. The results showed that the maximum flows observed for the two sub-networks were significantly different (943 veh/hr/lane for the penetrating highways network and 1539 veh/hr/lane for the ring highway network). The penetrating highways network's MFD indicated the presence of congestion in the network whereas the ring highway network indicated only the free-flow state (no indication of congestion) during peak periods. The congestion seen on the penetrating highways network was found not to be sufficiently spread on those highways. On the 24th May, congestion on the penetrating highway network was observed during both the morning and evening peak periods, whereas on the 31st May congestion was observed mainly during the evening peak period, with hysteresis-like shape. These observations confirmed that congestion during peak periods is not homogenously spread across the entire network, certain areas are more congested than others, hence the observed formation of hysteresis loops and slight scatters. Lastly, the hysteresis loops observed in the penetrating highways network's MFD was further characterized in terms of their shape and size. First, the results showed that the slight scatter and hysteresis patterns observed in penetrating highways network MFD's vary in size and shape across different days. The shapes of the hysteresis loops observed during both the morning and evening peak periods, were type H2 hysteresis loops, signifying a stable recovery of the network with the average network flow remaining unchanged as average network density decreases during the recovery. Characterization of the size of the observed hysteresis loops showed that the drop of the hysteresis (an indicator of network level of instability during recovery phase) was smaller, signifying a more stable network traffic and homogenous distribution of congestion during the recovery phase.

This paper aims to develop and validate an efficient method for delineation of public transit analysis zones (PTTAZ), particularly for origin-destination (OD) matrix prediction for transit operation planning. Existing methods have a problem in reflecting the level of spatial precision, travel characteristics, travel demand growth, access to transit stations, and most importantly, the direction of transit routes. This study proposes a new methodology to redelineate existing traffic analysis zones (TAZ) to create PTTAZ in order to allocate travel demand to transit stops. We aim to achieve an accurate prediction of the OD matrix for public transportation (PT). The matrix should reflect the passenger accessibility in the socioeconomic and socio-spatial characterization of PTTAZ and minimize intrazonal trips. The proposed methodology transforms TAZ-based to PTTAZ-based data with sequential steps through multiple statistical methods. In short, the generation of PTTAZ establishes homogeneous sub-zones representing the relationship between passenger flow, network structure, land use, population, socio-economic characteristics, and, most importantly, existing bus transit infrastructure. To validate the proposed scheme, we implement the framework for India’s Vishakhapatnam bus network and compare the results with the household survey. The results show that the PTTAZ-based OD matrix represents a realistic scenario for PT demand.

Text in Afrikaans / Practical research has shown that children experiencing learning restraints may suffer from high stress levels. These children encounter difficulty adapting to normal scholastic challenges and their performance often appear marginalised. The objective of this study is to explore the phenomenon of stress experienced by three eleven year old learners with learning restraints in the intermediate phase. The literature study on this topic has shown that learning restraints not only affect a child scholastically, but in his entire being. Based on this understanding, learning restraints may cause stress due to habitual underachievement in the learning environment. These learners might not necessarily have extremely poor cognitive abilities, but perceive themselves as incompetent or "dumb". In the empirical study, projection techniques were mainly utilised to determine stress levels experienced by learning restrained learners, from their internal frame of reference. From these findings, certain recommendations are proposed for psychotherapy. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Guidance and Counseling)

A stochastic model for the dynamics of a limit order book is evaluated and tested on empirical data. Arrival of limit, market and cancellation orders are described in terms of a Markovian queuing system with exponentially distributed occurrences. In this model, several key quantities can be analytically calculated, such as the distribution of times between price moves, price volatility and the probability of an upward price move, all conditional on the state of the order book. We show that the exponential distribution poorly fits the occurrences of order book events and further show that little resemblance exists between the analytical formulas in this model and the empirical data. The log-normal and Weibull distribution are suggested as replacements as they appear to fit the empirical data better.

Text in Afrikaans / Practical research has shown that children experiencing learning restraints may suffer from high stress levels. These children encounter difficulty adapting to normal scholastic challenges and their performance often appear marginalised. The objective of this study is to explore the phenomenon of stress experienced by three eleven year old learners with learning restraints in the intermediate phase. The literature study on this topic has shown that learning restraints not only affect a child scholastically, but in his entire being. Based on this understanding, learning restraints may cause stress due to habitual underachievement in the learning environment. These learners might not necessarily have extremely poor cognitive abilities, but perceive themselves as incompetent or "dumb". In the empirical study, projection techniques were mainly utilised to determine stress levels experienced by learning restrained learners, from their internal frame of reference. From these findings, certain recommendations are proposed for psychotherapy. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Guidance and Counseling)