This study explores two stylistic features in the films of contemporary Hong Kong film-maker Wong Kar-Wai: colour and sound. In particular, it focuses on how transitions in colour palettes (e.g. from a natural colour spectrum to a monochromatic effect of black-and-white) and specific sound resources (such as silence) function as important semiotic resources in the films, even when they appear to create a disjunctive effect. The study draws on two perspectives on communication to explore film. The first is the metafunctional hypothesis of Systemic-Functional Linguistics, which theorises that the communicative dimensions of texts can be explored from three simultaneous ???macro-functions???: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunction. The second is multimodal communication, which stresses that multiple semiotic resources are used for meaning-making purposes and that meanings created multimodally are multiplicative in essence. From this theoretical basis the study aims to illuminate two inter-related objectives. First, that the meaning potentials of colour transition and sound are construed and enabled by the co-ordinations of meanings across different co-present semiotic resources ??? known as intersemiosis in the study. Second, that the semiotic capacities of the two resources can be usefully explored from a functional perspective. Drawing especially the notions of intersemiosis and resemiotisation the study shows that colour transition and sound are multivalent resources in Wong???s films. In other words, their meaning potentials are metafunctionally complex and are never static. The thesis argues that colour transition and sound should not be seen as having ???a??? meaning, but rather, that it is the semiotic complexities among the co-patterned resources that shape the meaning-making potential of the resources, and in turn, help contribute meaning potentials to the films.

This study explores two stylistic features in the films of contemporary Hong Kong film-maker Wong Kar-Wai: colour and sound. In particular, it focuses on how transitions in colour palettes (e.g. from a natural colour spectrum to a monochromatic effect of black-and-white) and specific sound resources (such as silence) function as important semiotic resources in the films, even when they appear to create a disjunctive effect. The study draws on two perspectives on communication to explore film. The first is the metafunctional hypothesis of Systemic-Functional Linguistics, which theorises that the communicative dimensions of texts can be explored from three simultaneous ???macro-functions???: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunction. The second is multimodal communication, which stresses that multiple semiotic resources are used for meaning-making purposes and that meanings created multimodally are multiplicative in essence. From this theoretical basis the study aims to illuminate two inter-related objectives. First, that the meaning potentials of colour transition and sound are construed and enabled by the co-ordinations of meanings across different co-present semiotic resources ??? known as intersemiosis in the study. Second, that the semiotic capacities of the two resources can be usefully explored from a functional perspective. Drawing especially the notions of intersemiosis and resemiotisation the study shows that colour transition and sound are multivalent resources in Wong???s films. In other words, their meaning potentials are metafunctionally complex and are never static. The thesis argues that colour transition and sound should not be seen as having ???a??? meaning, but rather, that it is the semiotic complexities among the co-patterned resources that shape the meaning-making potential of the resources, and in turn, help contribute meaning potentials to the films.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Texas, 2006. / Adviser: Harry Benshoff. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-103)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 36).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36). Also available in print.

In the work we estimate the rate of convergence of the Wong-Zakai type of approximations for SDEs and SPDEs. Two cases are studied: SDEs in finite dimensional settings and evolution stochastic systems (SDEs in the infinite dimensional case). The latter result is applied to the second order SPDEs of parabolic type and the filtering problem. Roughly, the result is the following. Let Wn be a sequence of continuous stochastic processes of finite variation on an interval [0, T]. Assume that for some a > 0 the processes Wn converge almost surely in the supremum norm in [0, T] to W with the rate n-k for each k < a. Then the solutions Un of the differential equations with Wn converge almost surely in the supremum norm in [0, T] to the solution u of the "Stratonovich" SDE with W with the same rate of convergence, n-k for each k < a, in the case of SDEs and with the rate of convergence n-k/2 for each k < a, in the case of evolution systems and SPDEs. In the final chapter we verify that the two most common approximations of the Wiener process, smoothing and polygonal approximation, satisfy the assumptions made in the previous chapters.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-71).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 46-48).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 46-48). Also available in print.