Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 162-164).

Y a-t-il un point de rencontre entre l’anthropologie et la sémiotique ? C’est la question à laquelle cette thèse essaye de répondre, à la recherche notamment du dialogue entre les disciplines en question et en interrogeant leurs objets de recherche : la culture et le sens. La découverte d’un « ancêtre commun » des idées, fondant leurs domaines théoriques, ouvre à la possibilité d’une vision commune qui est celle d’une science de la signification à vocation scientifique. Le problème de la culture en sémiotique et celui du sens en anthropologie ne sont pas résolus par de nouveaux paradigmes théoriques à étiqueter selon les modes académiques,mais ils constituent l’occasion pour réfléchir sur les fondements théoriques et sur le statut épistémologique de l’ancienne sémiotique structurale et de l’hypothèse générative. Cette sémiotique archaïque et oubliée, à côté de la réflexion anthropologique, peut-elle dire encore quelque chose de sensé sur le sens ? / Does it exists an interaction point between antropology and semiotics? This is the question this thesis tries to aswer to and it tries to do it by looking for a way of communication between these two disciplines and their main subjects of research: culture and sense. Discovering a common ancestor for the fundamental ideas of these two theoretical areas allows the possibility of a common vision that is the cornerstone of a discipline of meaningwith a scientific vocation. The problem of semiotics culture and the one of sense for anthropology don't need new theoretical paradigms, maybe following academic trends, butthey are themselves the chance to think about the fundamental theoretical principles and theepistemological statute of the ancient structural semiotics and of the generative hypothesis.Does this forgotten archaic semiotics, maybe together with the anthropological thought, still say something reasonable about sense and culture?

In this thesis I investigate the implications, for one's account of mathematics, of holding an anti-realist view. The primary aim is to appraise the scope of revision imposed by anti-realism on classical inferential practice in mathematics. That appraisal has consequences both for our understanding of the nature of mathematics and for our attitude towards anti-realism itself. If an anti-realist position seems inevitably to be absurdly revisionary then we have grounds for suspecting the coherence of arguments canvassed in favour of anti-realism. I attempt to defend the anti-realist position by arguing, i) that it is not internally incoherent for anti-realism to be a potentially revisionary position, and ii) that an anti-realist position can, plausibly, be seen to result in a stable intuitionistic position with regard to the logic it condones. The use of impredicative methods in classical mathematics is a site of traditional intuitionistic attacks. I undertake an examination of what the anti-realist attitude towards such methods should be. This question is of interest both because such methods are deeply implicated in classical mathematical theory of analysis and because intuitionistic semantic theories make use of impredicative methods. I attempt to construct the outlines of a set theory which is anti-realistically acceptable but which, although having no antecedent repugnance for impredicative methods as such, appears to be too weak to offer an anti-realistic vindication of impredicative methods in general. I attempt to exonerate intuitionistic semantic theories in their use of impredicative methods by showing that a partial order relying on the nature of our grasp of the intuitionistic meaning stipulations for the logical constants precludes a possible circularity.

We report a series of experiments using a new methodology to investigate the relationships between visual and verbal representations and the process of acquiring new semantic associations. Transfer of associative information between stimulus modalities was investigated by training paired associations between novel pictures and novel words. Our results showed that the transfer of associations is a symbolic process, occurring only when participants are aware of the correspondence between the visual and the verbal items afforded by the name relations. We also obtained evidence to suggest that symbolic associations develop more readily from picture associations than from word associations. We argue that this is evidence that semantic knowledge is grounded in perceptual experience. Our most striking result, replicated across experiments, is that transfer of associations between modalities only occurs when subjects have specific conscious awareness about the relationships among associations. This should have implications for cognitive theories of symbolic representation. The methods we developed to expose this phenomenon can be extended to examine those implications more thoroughly. We discuss some of these implications in the terms of competing and complementary cognitive and behavioural theories relating representation to perception and symbols. Dual coding models fit our modality-transfer results more readily than single semantic store models, but neither is well suited for interpreting our awareness results, or for iv discussing perceptual grounding of representation. The models of Deacon and Barsalou both focus on systems of distributed representations grounded in perception; the role of awareness in symbol acquisition in their models is discussed and contrasted with theories from the stimulus equivalence tradition of behaviourist research. From these considerations, we argue that implicit associations underpin symbolic associations, but that semantic knowledge is conscious knowledge about the patterns of association which link representations.

This thesis seeks to develop our understanding of the contemporary crime communication landscape. While this landscape is considered in its constituent parts, including specific features of current British politics, the evolving media sphere and the voice of the public, this thesis argues for a conceptualization of this realm that grasps its fluid and dynamic character. Original research is conducted through case studies of the 2010 UK General Election, the Phone Hacking Scandal and the 2011 Riots. Discourse analysis is employed in order to enhance our awareness of supralinguistic behaviour and of the play of power in the construction of crime narratives. This is contrasted with influential current accounts of ‘populism’ which, it is argued here, tend to be unduly deterministic and to err towards the dystopian. The research suggests that structural shifts in the media landscape, specifically the recent ubiquity of new media coinciding with an undermining of the singular tabloid narrative, have enabled a redistribution of power in the symbolic construction of crime which can make it harder for political actors to capture the crime question for populist purposes. Furthermore, this shift has empowered the public voice and has infused political debate with a chaotic plurality of views. Nevertheless, the symbolic weight of crime issues remains prominent in this landscape and Randall Collins’ Interaction Ritual Chains (2004) is employed to add a microsociological picture of the escalation from small scale narrative to broad righteous anger. This requires an adaptation of this model to address interactions that occur outside the context of physical co-presence. Such perspectives on the plurality of mediated communication today both broaden and update our grasp of the political communication of crime and in so doing argue for a degree of optimism concerning the scope for democratic debate about criminal justice issues.

On étudie en combinatoire les objets munis d’une taille (la taille dans le cadre informatique peut se traduire par exemple par la mémoire occupée par l’objet). On appelle classe combinatoire un ensemble d’objets qui pour toute taille possède un nombre fini d’éléments. On peut par exemple considérer les textes régis par une certaine grammaire, dans ce cas la taille est le nombre de caractères, ou des arbres avec comme taille le nombre de noeuds. Une méthode naturelle pour décrire les classes, la méthode symbolique, consiste à décomposer les objets en sous-objets plus élémentaires à l’aide d’opérateurs (tels que l’union disjointe, le produit cartésien,...). On peut ensuite traduire ces décompositions sur des séries formelles. Le premier volet de résultats présentés dans cette thèse traite de la méthode symbolique et de son utilisation. On y présente des résultats asymptotiques sur des modèles d’arbres croissants issus de la théorie de la concurrence, puis une discussion sur comment décomposer certains opérateurs en réplications élémentaires. Le deuxième volet de résultats s’intéresse au sujet de la génération aléatoire uniforme d’objets dans une classe donnée. On montre tout d’abord comment générer des structures croissantes en adaptant les méthodes de génération récursive classiques aux opérateurs de produit croissant. On présente ensuite des résultats sur la génération de Boltzmann, avec une comparaison quantitative de deux méthodes, puis une extension permettant de conserver les propriétés d’uniformité de la génération en utilisant des approximations. / We study in combinatorics objects with a size (size in informatics setting can be the memory space used to represent an object). We call a combinatorial class a set of objects who for a given size have only a finite number of elements. We can for example look at text generated by a given grammar, with the number of characters as size, or trees with the number of nodes as size. A natural way of describing classes, the symbolic method, consists in decomposing objects in more elementary sub-objects with operators (disjoint union, cartesian product,...). Then we can translate theses decompositions to formal power series.The first batch of results in this thesis deals with the symbolic method and its usage. We present asymptotic results on models of increasing trees coming from concurrency theory, then we discuss on how to decompose some operators in elementary replications. The second batch of results deals with uniform random generation of objects in a given class. We first show how to generate increasing structures by adapting the recursive generation techniques to increasing product operators. Then we present two results on Boltzmann generation, with a quantitative comparison of two methods and with an extension allowing us to use approximatives values while retaining the uniformity of the generation.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T16:01:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo7274_1.pdf: 1733810 bytes, checksum: 2d9eb7a4489382e5afbf1790810474a0 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / A análise de dados simbólicos (Symbolic Data Analysis) é um novo domínio na área de descoberta automática de conhecimento que visa desenvolver métodos para dados descritos por variáveis que podem assumir como valor conjuntos de categorias, intervalos ou distribuições de probabilidade. Essas novas variáveis permitem levar em conta a variabilidade e/ou a incerteza presente nos dados. O tratamento de dados simbólicos através de técnicas estatísticas e de aprendizagem de máquina necessita da introdução de medidas de distância capazes de manipular tal tipo de dado. Com esse objetivo, diversas funções de dissimilaridade têm sido propostas na literatura. Entretanto, nenhum estudo comparativo acerca do desempenho de tais funções em problemas que envolvem simultaneamente dados simbólicos booleanos e modais foi realizado. A principal contribuição dessa dissertação é realizar uma análise comparativa e uma avaliação empírica sobre funções de dissimilaridade para dados simbólicos, uma vez que esse tipo de estudo, apesar de muito relevante, é quase inexistente na literatura. Além disso, este trabalho também introduz novas funções de dissimilaridade que podem ser usadas no agrupamento dinâmico de dados simbólicos. Os algoritmos de agrupamento dinâmico consistem em obter, simultaneamente, uma partição em um número fixo de classes e a identificação de um representante para cada classe, minimizando localmente um critério que mede a adequação entre as classes e os seus representantes. Para validar esse estudo, foram realizados experimentos com bases de dados de referência na literatura e dois conjuntos de dados artificiais de intervalos com diferentes graus de dificuldade de classificação, objetivando a comparação das funções avaliadas. A precisão dos resultados foi mensurada por um índice externo de agrupamento aplicado na validação cruzada não supervisionada, para as bases de dados reais, e também no quadro de uma experiência Monte Carlo, para as bases de dados artificiais. Com os resultados alcançados é possível verificar a adequação das diversas funções de dissimilaridade aos diferentes tipos de dados simbólicos (multivalorado, multivalorado ordinal, intervalar, e modal de mesmo suporte e de suportes diferentes), bem como identificar as melhores configurações de funções. Testes estatísticos validam as conclusões

M.Sc. (Mathematics) / This dissertation describes the solution toa specific logical problem, the satisfiability problem, in a logic of games called Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL). Computation Tree Logic (CTL) is a discrete branching-time temporal logic for reasoning about labelled transition systems. ATL extends CTL to describe gametheoretic situations, where multiple agents together determine the evolution of the system. In particular, ATL explicitly provides for describing the abilities of coalitions of agents in such systems. Weprovide an automata-based decision procedure for ATL by translating the satisfiability problem for an ATL formula to the nonemptiness problem for an Alternating Biichi 'free Automaton. The key result that enables this translation is a oundedbranching tree model theorem for ATL, proving that a satisfiable formula is also satisfiable in a tree model of bounded branching degree. In terms of complexity, we show that satisfiability in ATL is complete for exponential time, which agrees with the corresponding complexity result for the fragment CTL. Closely related to ATL is an independently developed family of modal logics, the Coalition Logics. The presented results also provide a satisfiability procedure for Extended Coalition Logic interpreted over strongly playable coalition models. The structure of the dissertation is as follows: • Chapter 1 is an introduction to the topic, provides an overview of the results and a preview of the dissertation. • Chapter 2 presents some mathematical preliminaries regarding trees, automata, fixed points and game theory. • Chapter 3 discusses CTL and in particular an automata-based satisfiability procedure for CTL. • Chapter 4 introduces Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) as a logic of games. • Chapter 5 contains the main results of the dissertation: first we prove a boundedbranching tree model property for ATL. Then the construction of the required automaton for satisfiability checking is described. • Chapter 6 relates the present work to some other logics of games, and in particular the Coalition Logics. • Chapter 7 finalises the dissertation with a conclusion and a look at some future research directions that might be pursued following the present work.

M.Sc. / This short dissertation is intended to give a brief account of the history and current state of affairs in the field of study called 'Zero-one Laws'. The probability of a property P on a class of finite relational structures is defined to be the limit of the sequence of fractions, of the n element structures that satisfy the property P, as n tends to infinity. A class of properties is said to have a Zero-One law if the above limit, which is usually called the asymptotic probability of the property with respect to the given class of finite structures, is either 0 or 1 for each property. The connection to the field of Mathematical Logic is given by the surprising fact that the class of properties definable by a first-order sentence has a Zero-One law with respect to the class of all finite relational structures of the common signature. We cover this result in more detail and discuss several further Zero- One laws for higher-order logics. In particular we will be interested in all those modal formulae which are 'almost surely' frame valid in the finite, i.e. those which have an asymptotic probability equal to 1 with respect to the class of all finite frames. Our goal is to find a purely logical characterization of these formulae by finding a set of axioms which describe such modal formulae absolutely. We devise a strategy and provide some Java programs to aid in this search for future research

Alzheimer disease (AD) and related dementias affect nearly one in thirteen Canadians over the age of 65. Difficulties in communicating are frequently cited as the greatest source of stress for individuals who have a diagnosis of dementia and their families. Despite the wide recognition that the family is affected by a relative’s diagnosis of dementia, there has been little research aimed at understanding the experience of the family as a unit. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the family experience of communicating with a relative who has dementia. This study used a qualitative single case study design, drawing on the theory of Symbolic Interactionism. Three members of one family participated in two individual interviews and a family interview. The family member who was experiencing symptoms associated with AD but whose diagnosis was referred to as “cognitive impairment” (CI), participated in one individual interview. Interviews were transcribed and the data was analyzed using constant comparative analysis. The findings that emerged from the data indicate that the participating family approached communication with the intention of achieving three particular goals in their interactions. These goals were to include, protect, and bring happiness to their afflicted family member. Three strategies were identified as the primary strategies used to achieve these goals: interpreting, scripting, and translating. Further, the family was organized in such a way that members were positioned either as part of the ‘core’ of the family or on the ‘outskirts’ of the family. Family members that pursued and achieved the three goals in their interactions with the relative who has CI were considered to be part of the core while others who were not willing or capable of interacting in this way were positioned on the outskirts of the family. Understanding the communication experience of the family as a unit offers a vital link to meet the needs of families dealing with the effects of CI. This knowledge will aid in formulating important new questions and insights for researchers and clinicians to provide the care and support necessary to promote the well-being of families affected by CI. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate