University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T14:53:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlos Jorge Martins Simoes.pdf: 962411 bytes, checksum: 87911f5c69b2002fab8c9a82f914f9e8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-06-21 / The democratic rule-of-law is a legal-political formation of a different nature of the welfare state. Its institution has not resulted from the reform of the rule-of-law and the welfare state, but its historical and logical-categorical synthesis. It presents unique distinctions and specifications, in which political density required the constitutionality of its own state formation. It originated pioneer universal social rights, integrated into civil and political rights, forming an indivisible interdependent and interrelated category. This follows from the insemination of Fundamental Principles and Guarantees, coupled with constitutional ethical values, which ends in new state institutions. As a result, it links the state onto social policies applied through plans, programs and projects. In an original way it separated the Economic and Financial Order from the Social Order, characterizing it not as a mere reflection of mechanistic economic development, but by a set of axiological guidelines disconnected from the market, to be enforced by state initiative with the participation of civil society. Social rights acquired thus a new legal-political nature, which requires not only the seizure of teleological criteria, generally reduced into social purposes like the minimum basic necessities, but by institutional criteria, based on assumptions of its acquisition, allowing the distinction into classic, linked to employment and universal which is related to incomes. Its universalization is consistent with the institution of participatory democracy, with new functional links and the reform of state policies. It thus promotes the overcoming of the traditional strict separation between state and civil society by direct democracy, particularly through councils as it assists in the establishment and control of social policies, as well as the federal decentralization of the judiciary branch in three dimensions; administrative, financial and functional and also new institutional competencies and charges for Federal and State Courts which are holders of the new and more effective constitutional rights / O Estado Democrático de Direito é uma formação jurídico-institucional de natureza distinta do Estado Social. Sua instituição não resultou da simples reforma do Estado de Direito e do Estado Social, mas de sua síntese histórica e lógico-categorial. Apresenta distinções e especificidades, cuja densidade política exigiu a constitucionalidade de uma formação estatal própria. Instituiu pioneiramente os direitos sociais universais, integrados aos direitos civis e políticos, em uma unidade categorial indivisível, interdependente e inter-relacionada. Tal decorre da instituição pioneira dos Princípios e Garantias Fundamentais, conjugada com valores éticos constitucionais, que inseminam novas instituições estatais. Em decorrência, vincula a ação estatal às políticas sociais por meio de planos, programas e projetos. E, para isso, de modo original, separou a Ordem Econômica e Financeira da Ordem Social, superando a concepção mecanicista anterior, por meio de diretrizes axiológicas, desvinculadas da lógica do mercado, a serem efetivadas pela iniciativa estatal, com a participação da sociedade civil. Os direitos sociais adquiriram uma nova natureza jurídico-política, cuja apreensão exige não somente o critério teleológico, reduzindo-os à sua finalidade social (necessidades básicas), mas sobretudo o critério institucional, com base nos pressupostos de sua aquisição, que nos permite distingui-los em clássicos, vinculados às relações de trabalho e universais, às relações de consumo e renda. Sua universalização coaduna-se com a instituição da democracia participativa, com novos vínculos funcionais e a reforma das competências estatais. Promove a superação da separação rígida e tradicional entre o Estado e a sociedade civil; a democracia direta, sobretudo por meio por meio dos conselhos, na instituição das políticas sociais e na fiscalização de sua execução, assim como a iniciativa popular das leis; a municipalização tridimensional; a autonomia administrativa, financeira e funcional do Poder Judiciário; novas competências e encargos do Ministério Público e da Defensoria Pública, agora titulares dos interesses transindividuais; e novas garantias constitucionais para maior efetividade dos direitos

Contemporary philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright (b. 1944) has raised many an eyebrow with her books How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983) and The Dappled World (1999), among others. The primary task of this dissertation is to link her philosophy with that of Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914)—a link that includes Duns Scotus. My focus is especially on the criticism Peirce would have of Cartwright, and on the philosophical support he can offer her. The question is this: Given her stated philosophy of science, to what else must Cartwright be philosophically committed? This includes discussions of metaphysics, scholastic realism, laws of nature, and the very possibility of science. There are many striking similarities between Peirce and Cartwright, but I argue that he sees further and deeper into the metaphysical implications of her views on science. / Graduate

La communication humaine vise principalement à transmettre de l'information par le biais de l'utilisation de langues. Plusieurs chercheurs ont soutenu l'hypothèse selon laquelle les limites de la capacité du canal de transmission amènent les locuteurs de chaque langue à encoder l'information de manière à obtenir une répartition uniforme de l'information entre les unités linguistiques utilisées. Dans nos recherches, la stratégie d'encodage de l'information en communication parlée est connue comme résultant de l'interaction complexe de facteurs neuro-cognitifs, linguistiques, et sociolinguistiques et nos travaux s'inscrivent donc dans le cadre des systèmes adaptatifs complexes. Plus précisément, cette thèse vise à mettre en évidence les tendances générales, translinguistiques, guidant l'encodage de l'information en tenant compte de la structure des langues à trois niveaux d'analyse (macrosystémique, mésosystémique, et microsystémique). Notre étude s'appuie ainsi sur des corpus oraux et textuels multilingues dans une double perspective quantitative et typologique. Dans cette recherche, la langue est définie comme un système adaptatif complexe, régulé par le phénomène d'auto-organisation, qui motive une première question de recherche : "Comment les langues présentant des débits de parole et des densités d'information variés transmettent-elles les informations en moyenne ?". L'hypothèse défendue propose que la densité moyenne d'information par unité linguistique varie au cours de la communication, mais est compensée par le débit moyen de la parole. Plusieurs notions issues de la théorie de l'information ont inspiré notre manière de quantifier le contenu de l'information et le résultat de la première étude montre que le débit moyen d'information (i.e. la quantité moyenne d'information transmise par seconde) est relativement stable dans une fourchette limitée de variation parmi les 18 langues étudiées. Alors que la première étude propose une analyse de l'auto-organisation au niveau macro- systémique, la deuxième étude porte sur des sous-systèmes linguistiques tels que la phonologie et la morphologie : elle relève donc d'une analyse au niveau mésosystémique. Elle porte sur les interactions entre les modules morphologique et phonologique en utilisant les mesures de la complexité linguistique de ces modules. L'objectif est de tester l'hypothèse d'uniformité de la complexité globale au niveau mésosystémique. Les résultats révèlent une corrélation négative entre la complexité morphologique et la complexité phonologique dans les 14 langues et vont dans le sens de l'hypothèse de l'uniformité de la complexité globale d'un point de vue typologique holistique. La troisième étude analyse l'organisation interne des sous-systèmes phonologiques au moyen de la notion de charge fonctionnelle (FL) au niveau microsystémique. Les contributions relatives des sous-systèmes phonologiques (segments, accents, et tons) sont évaluées quantitativement en estimant leur rôle dans les stratégies lexicales. Elles sont aussi comparées entre 2 langues tonales et 7 langues non-tonales. En outre, la distribution interne de la charge fonctionnelle à travers les sous-systèmes vocaliques et consonantiques est analysée de façon translinguistique dans les 9 langues. Les résultats soulignent l'importance du système tonal dans les distinctions lexicales et indiquent que seuls quelques contrastes dotés d'une charge fonctionnelle élevée sont observés dans les distributions inégales de charge fonctionnelle des sous-systèmes dans les 9 langues. Cette thèse présente donc des études empiriques et quantitatives réalisées à trois niveaux d'analyse, qui permettent de décrire des tendances générales parmi les langues et apportent des éclaircissements sur le phénomène d'auto-organisation. / The main goal of using language is to transmit information. One of the fundamental questions in linguistics concerns the way how information is conveyed by means of language in human communication. So far many researchers have supported the uniform information density (UID) hypothesis asserting that due to channel capacity, speakers tend to encode information strategically in order to achieve uniform rate of information conveyed per linguistic unit. In this study, it is assumed that the encoding strategy of information during speech communication results from complex interaction among neurocognitive, linguistic, and sociolinguistic factors in the framework of complex adaptive system. In particular, this thesis aims to find general cross-language tendencies of information encoding and language structure at three different levels of analysis (i.e. macrosystemic, mesosystemic, and microsystemic levels), by using multilingual parallel oral and text corpora from a quantitative and typological perspective. In this study, language is defined as a complex adaptive system which is regulated by the phenomenon of self-organization, where the first research question comes from : "How do languages exhibiting various speech rates and information density transmit information on average ?". It is assumed that the average information density per linguistic unit varies during communication but would be compensated by the average speech rate. Several notions of the Information theory are used as measures for quantifying information content and the result of the first study shows that the average information rate (i.e. the average amount of information conveyed per second) is relatively stable within a limited range of variation among the 18 languages studied. While the first study corresponds to an analysis of self-organization at the macrosystemic level, the second study deals with linguistic subsystems such as phonology and morphology and thus, covers an analysis at the mesosystemic level. It investigates interactions between phonological and morphological modules by means of the measures of linguistic complexity of these modules. The goal is to examine whether the equal complexity hypothesis holds true at the mesosystemic level. The result exhibits a negative correlation between morphological and phonological complexity in the 14 languages and supports the equal complexity hypothesis from a holistic typological perspective. The third study investigates the internal organization of phonological subsystems by means of functional load (FL) at the microsystemic level. The relative contributions of phonological subsystems (segments, stress, and tones) are quantitatively computed by estimating their role of lexical strategies and are compared in 2 tonal and 7 non-tonal languages. Furthermore, the internal FL distribution of vocalic and consonantal subsystems is analyzed cross-linguistically in the 9 languages. The result highlights the importance of tone system in lexical distinctions and indicates that only a few salient high-FL contrasts are observed in the uneven FL distributions of subsystems in the 9 languages. This thesis therefore attempts to provide empirical and quantitative studies at the three different levels of analysis, which exhibit general tendencies among languages and provide insight into the phenomenon of self-organization.

Den här studien behandlar fenomenet tolkspråk – tanken om att tolkat språk skiljer sig från icke-tolkat språk. Översättningsvetenskapen och dess motsvarighet översättarspråk har utgjort en stor inspirationskälla till arbetet, då forskningen kommit längre där. Ett forskningsområde behandlar så kallade översättningsuniversalier – universella regler eller lagar för hur översatt språk ser ut. En av dessa lagar kallas för normalisering. I studien undersöks om normalisering är applicerbart även på teckenspråkstolkning, med utgångspunkt i påståendet att normalisering kan vara synligt i översatt text som en överrepresentation av typiska målspråksdrag. För att undersöka detta har två jämförbara korpusar använts, dels Svensk teckenspråkskorpus (SSLC) med icke-tolkade teckenspråkstexter, dels Korpus för simultantolkade teckenspråkstexter (KST) med tolkade teckenspråkstexter. Det typiska, teckenspråkiga drag som valts för undersökningen är det tecken som glosas KOPPLA. Förekomsten av tecknet i de båda korpusarna har undersökts för att kunna upptäcka en eventuell överrepresentation i KST. Resultaten visar att KOPPLA mycket riktigt är överrepresenterat i KST, men att det är svårt att generalisera på grund av flera begränsande faktorer. / This essay is concerned with the subject of interpretese – the idea that interpreted language differs from non-interpreted language. Within translation studies, the corresponding term is translationese, and this essay draws upon much of the research in this field, as it is more developed. One particular area of research into translationese revolves around so called translation universals, or universal features of translation. They could be described as rules or laws that define translated language. One of those universals is called normalisation. This essay seeks to answer if normalisation also exists in Sign Language interpreting, with reference to exaggeration of typical target language patterns. Two comparable corpora were used, Swedish Sign Language Corpus (SSLC) with non-interpreted Sign Language texts, and Korpus för simultantolkade teckenspråkstexter (KST) with interpreted Sign Language texts. The typical target language pattern that was chosen for the investigation is the Swedish sign KOPPLA. Instances of the sign were investigated in both corpora, to spot any exaggeration in KST. The results show that KOPPLA is in fact overrepresented in KST, but that one should be careful to generalize, as several limiting factors were at play.

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La ricerca studia le riscritture delle opere di Gianni Rodari (1920-1980) in traduzione inglese attraverso la mediazione degli editori, critici letterari ma soprattutto dei traduttori tra il 1960 e il 2011. Nell’ambito degli studi sul contesto di produzione delle opere tradotte (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998; Chesterman et al., 2000), la prima parte della ricerca presenta le caratteristiche traduttive della letteratura per l’infanzia attraverso un’analisi retrospettiva (Toury, 2012) utile a contestualizzare le opere di Rodari in inglese per il pubblico Anglo-Americano. La seconda parte illustra la mediazione linguistica dei traduttori in quattro di queste opere in inglese a partire dagli S-Universals (Chesterman, 2004). L’analisi delle traduzioni di Patrick Creagh (1965, 1971), Jack Zipes e Antony Shugaar (2008, 2011 rispettivamente), condotta attraverso le nove categorie traduttive proposte da J. L. Malone nel 1988, ha mostrato diversi gradi di addomesticamento ed estraniamento traduttivo (Venuti, 1995) a seconda dell’età del pubblico ricevente. Specificamente, le traduzioni addomesticanti si sono rivelate creative al punto da avvicinarsi all’intento narrativo di Rodari nei testi originali. La traduzione estraniante di Shugaar del 2011 ha mantenuto i riferimenti alla cultura italiana del testo rodariano, mostrando un cambiamento di pubblico ricevente dal testo fonte (pubblico giovane) al testo di arrivo (adulti). / The research investigates the extent to which Gianni Rodari’s (1920-1980) works changed in their English translations through the mediating presence of publishers, reviewers, and especially translators between the 1960s and 2011. With reference to the cultural context of production of translated works (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998; Chesterman et al., 2000), translational patterns of children’s literature were firstly studied from a retrospective point of view (Toury, 2012) to contextualise Rodari’s books in English in the UK and the US. Secondly, the intervention of translators in four of these books was analysed within the mediation framework provided by S-Universals in translation (Chesterman, 2004). The discrete analysis of the translations by Patrick Creagh (1965, 1971), Jack Zipes and Antony Shugaar (2008, 2011 respectively), based on the nine translational trajections identified by J. L. Malone (1988), showed that the translators adopted different foreignising and domesticating strategies (Venuti, 1995) according to the intended public. More specifically, domesticating strategies presented a high degree of creativity in line with Rodari’s original narrative purpose, whereas Shugaar’s foreignising translation (2011) retained references to the Italian culture as in Rodari’s source text, marking a shift of audience from children to adults, from the Italian to the English target text.

Chez l'être humain, le pouvoir d'influence peut être accordé volontairement aux individus qui se démarquent par leurs habiletés exceptionnelles. Dans cette étude, deux théories issues de la perspective évolutionniste sur ce type de pouvoir sont confrontées : celle de la transmission sociale de l'information (Henrich et Gil-White 2001) et celle de l'échange social (Chapais 2012). Cinq hypothèses principales sont extraites et mises à l'épreuve : 1) la compétence supérieure de certains individus leur permet d'acquérir un statut supérieur; 2) la compétence d'un individu est évaluée par comparaison sociale et par l'intermédiaire de mécanismes psychosociaux; 3) les experts sont utiles à autrui puisqu'ils sont de meilleurs modèles à imiter et de meilleurs partenaires de coopération; 4) ces experts reçoivent de la déférence de leurs admirateurs en échange d'un partenariat avec eux ; 5) conséquemment, une compétition pour l'acquisition d'un statut supérieur émerge via la démonstration publique de la compétence et la recherche d'une réputation favorable. Ces prévisions sont testées par une analyse comparative de la littérature ethnographique portant sur dix sociétés de chasseurs-cueilleurs relativement égalitaires en utilisant la base de données du eHRAF of World Cultures. Les résultats appuient très fortement toutes les prévisions et indiquent que des asymétries de statut sont omniprésentes chez tous les peuples de l'échantillon, ce qui refléterait l'universalité des propensions psychosociales qui sous-tendent ces inégalités. / In humans, influence power can be freely given to highly skilled individuals. In this study, two evolutionary theories on the origin of this type of power are considered: the information goods theory (Henrich and Gil-White 2001), and the social exchange theory (Chapais 2012). Based on this theoretical framework, five main hypotheses were extracted and tested: 1) individuals with higher competence in specific domains of activities have a superior status; 2) an individual's higher competence is evaluated through social comparison; 3) highly skilled individuals are useful to others because they constitute better models to imitate and better partners to cooperate with; 4) followers defer to experts in exchange for their partnership ; 5) as a result, individuals compete for status by exhibiting their competence and attempting to improve their reputation. Those predictions were tested by using the eHRAF of World Cultures database and analysing the data relating to ten relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies. The results strongly support all predictions and indicate that status asymmetries are ubiquitous in the sampled societies. This suggests that the underlying psychosocial mechanisms constitute human universals.

Ontologies are foundational to, and upper ontologies provide semantic integration across, the Semantic Web. Multilingualism has been shown to be a key challenge to the development of the Semantic Web, and is a particular challenge to the universality requirement of upper ontologies. Universality implies a qualitative mapping from lexical ontologies, like WordNet, to an upper ontology, such as SUMO. Are a given natural language family's core concepts currently included in an existing, accepted upper ontology? Does SUMO preserve an ontological non-bias with respect to the multilingual challenge, particularly in the context of the African languages? The approach to developing WordNets mapped to shared core concepts in the non-Indo-European language families has highlighted these challenges and this is examined in a unique new context: the Southern African languages. This is achieved through a new mapping from African language core concepts to SUMO. It is shown that SUMO has no signi ficant natural language ontology bias. / Computing / M. Sc. (Computer Science)

The content of this thesis is premised on a reflexive examination of some historical juxtapositions culminating in critical aspects of being Māori in the twenty first century and how such aspects have informed contemporary indigenous identity. That is, the continuing acknowledgement and exponential public recognition of critical concepts which inextricably link indigenous and civic identity. The theoretical sources for this research are, in the main, derived from anthropological and religious studies, particularly on the significance of mythologies and oral histories, as well as from the oral theorising of elders in Aotearoa New Zealand. A very significant contribution from one such elder, a senior Māori woman academic, has been included in the form of the transcript of an interview. She herself had collected the views of a number of elders on myth, creating a rare and valuable resource. In the interview she married her reflections on these with her own experiences and her cogent analyses. From the outset, it was necessary to be discerning so as to ensure the thesis workload was manageable and realistic. For this reason the selected critical aspects that have been used to frame this research are (1) a developing Western validation (that is, acknowledgement and respect) of Māori, Māori culture and their mythology; (2) oral history (genealogy) and traditions that have remained constant despite the influences of modernity; and (3) notions of fluidity, negotiation and pragmatism regarding kinship legacies and cultural heritage. The thesis is comprised of six chapters starting from a subjective narrative leading through increasingly objective discourses that culminate in a conclusion which supports a belief that modern Māori require a balancing of critical aspects of cultural heritage, with a broad understanding of the world of the 'other', in order to realise and develop their contemporary indigenous identity. Ultimately, indigenous ideologies, practices and knowledge recorded and examined in the world of academia today, become potential resources for tomorrow. The intention of this research is to aggregate and discuss intrinsic aspects of the Māori past as well as developing aspects of the present, in order to better understand the significance of the future, and to add to the growing corpus of indigenous worldviews.