Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Thesis (MCur)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: No clear description exists in S.A. of the role and functions of a forensic psychiatric nurse. The researcher conducted a research project based on more than 20 years of practice experience to define and describe the role and functions of the forensic nurse practitioner. A non-experimental descriptive study was done. Questionnaires and checklists were compiled to determine the perceptions of forensic psychiatric patients/clients (n =24) and nursing staff (n = 15) .The nursing activities in a selected forensic psychiatric unit was evaluated through nonparticipative observation. Results indicated that: • Patients experienced their environment as isolated and has a need for better support by the nursing staff; • Nursing staff indicated their need for more specific training in forensic psychiatric nursing; and • A need exists for specific protocols and procedures to guide his/her practice. The recommendations are made that: • A special training program for forensic psychiatric nursing needs to be planned and implemented; and • Procedures and guidelines must be established to guide the practice of the nurse practitioner. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Daar bestaan in S.A. geen duidelike omskrywing van die rol en funksies van die forensiese psigiatriese verpleegkundige nie. Die navorser het gegrond op meer as 20 jaar praktykervaring 'n navorsingsprojek gedoen om die rol en funksies van die verpleegpraktisyn te definieer en te omskryf. 'n Nie-eksperimentele, beskrywende studie is gedoen. Vraelyste en kontrolelyste is opgestel om die persepsies van forensiese psigiatriese pasiënte/kliënte (n=24) en verpleegpersoneel (n=15) te bepaal. Die verpleegaktiwiteite in 'n geselekteerde forensiese psigiatriese eenheid is deur nie-deelnemende observasie geëvalueer. Resultate het daarop gedui dat: • Pasiënte hulle omgewing as geïsoleerd ervaar en het 'n behoefte aan beter ondersteuning deur die verpleegpersoneel; • Verpleegpersoneel het aangedui dat hulle 'n behoefte het aan spesifieke opleiding in forensiese psigiatriese verpJeging;en • Daar 'n behoefte is aan spesifieke protokolle en prosedures om sy/haar praktyk te rig . Die aanbevelings word gemaak dat: • 'n Spesiale opleidingsprogram vir forensiese psigiatriese verpleging beplan en geïmplementeer word; en • Prosedures en riglyne daargestel moet word om die praktyk van die verpleegpraktisyn te rig.

The overarching topic of this dissertation is the semantics and pragmatics of definite descriptions. It focuses on the question whether sentences such as ‘the king of France is bald’ literally assert the existence of a unique king (and therefore are false) or simply presuppose the existence of such a king (and thus fail to express propositions). One immediate obstacle to resolving this question is that immediate truth value judgments about such sentences (sentences with non-denoting descriptions) are particularly unstable; some elicit a clear intuition of falsity whereas others simply seem awkward or strange. Because of these variations, truth value judgments are generally considered unreliable. In the first chapter of the dissertation, an explanation of this phenomenon is developed. It is observed that when these types of sentences are considered in the context of a discourse, a systematic pattern in judgments emerges. This pattern, it is argued, should be explained in terms of certain pragmatic factors, e.g. whether a speaker’s utterance is interpreted as cooperative. A detailed and general explanation of the phenomenon is then presented which draws importantly on recent research in the semantics and pragmatics of questions and focus. It is shown that the behavior of these judgments can be systematically explained, that truth value judgments are not as unreliable as standardly assumed, and that the proposed explanation best supports the conclusion that definite descriptions presuppose rather than assert existence. In the second chapter, the following problem is investigated. If definite descriptions are assumed to literally assert existence, a sentence such as ‘Hans wants the ghost in his attic to be quiet’ is incorrectly predicted to be true only if Hans wants there to be a (unique) ghost in his attic. This prediction is often considered evidence against Russell’s quantificational analysis and evidence in favor of the referential analysis of Frege and Strawson. Against this claim, it is demonstrated that this problem is a general problem about the existence commitments of natural language determiners, i.e. not an argument in favor of a referential analysis. It is shown that in order to avoid these undesirable predictions, quite radical changes to the semantic framework are required. For example, it must be assumed that a sentence of the form ‘The F is G’ has the open sentence ‘x is G’ as its asserted content. A uniform quantificational and presuppositional analysis of definites and indefinites is outlined which by exploiting certain features of so-called dynamic semantics unproblematically assumes that the asserted contents indeed are open sentences. In view of the proposed quantificational/presuppositional analysis, the dissertation is concluded by a rejection of the argument put forward by Reimer (1998) and Devitt (2004) that definite descriptions are ambiguous between attributive (quantificational) and referential (indexical) uses. Reimer and Devitt’s argument is (in contrast to Donnellan, 1966) based primarily on the assumption that definite descriptions are conventionally used to communicate singular thoughts and that the conventional meaning of a definite description therefore must be fundamentally indexical/directly referential. I argue that this argument relies crucially on tacit assumptions about semantic processing for which no empirical evidence is provided. I also argue that the argument is too general; if sound, it would be an argument for an indexical treatment of most, if not all, other determiners. I then conclude by demonstrating that the view does not explain any new data and thus has no clear motivation. In short, this dissertation provides a detailed pragmatic explanation of a long-standing puzzle about truth value judgments and then outlines a novel dynamic semantic analysis of definites and indefinites. This analysis solves a significant problem about existence commitments — a problem that neither Russell’s nor the Frege/Strawson analysis are equipped to handle. This analysis is then defended against the claim that definite descriptions are ambiguous.

Background: Taxonomic descriptions are traditionally composed in natural language and published in a format that cannot be directly used by computers. The Exploring Taxon Concepts (ETC) project has been developing a set of web-based software tools that convert morphological descriptions published in telegraphic style to character data that can be reused and repurposed. This paper introduces the first semi-automated pipeline, to our knowledge, that converts morphological descriptions into taxon-character matrices to support systematics and evolutionary biology research. We then demonstrate and evaluate the use of the ETC Input Creation - Text Capture - Matrix Generation pipeline to generate body part measurement matrices from a set of 188 spider morphological descriptions and report the findings. Results: From the given set of spider taxonomic publications, two versions of input (original and normalized) were generated and used by the ETC Text Capture and ETC Matrix Generation tools. The tools produced two corresponding spider body part measurement matrices, and the matrix from the normalized input was found to be much more similar to a gold standard matrix hand-curated by the scientist co-authors. Special conventions utilized in the original descriptions (e.g., the omission of measurement units) were attributed to the lower performance of using the original input. The results show that simple normalization of the description text greatly increased the quality of the machine-generated matrix and reduced edit effort. The machine-generated matrix also helped identify issues in the gold standard matrix. Conclusions: ETC Text Capture and ETC Matrix Generation are low-barrier and effective tools for extracting measurement values from spider taxonomic descriptions and are more effective when the descriptions are self-contained. Special conventions that make the description text less self contained challenge automated extraction of data from biodiversity descriptions and hinder the automated reuse of the published knowledge. The tools will be updated to support new requirements revealed in this case study.

Esta tese tem por objetivo discutir algumas das questões semântico- pragmáticas relacionadas com as descrições demonstrativas, especificamente aquelas ligadas aos usos dêiticos dessas expressões, os quais englobam, ao nosso ver, os usos dêiticos canônicos, os uso descritivos e os usos com referência deferida (NUNBERG, 1993, 2004; ELBOURNE, 2005, 2008). Para realizar nossas análises, utilizamos a semântica de situações (KRATZER, 1989) e as noções de situação default e situa_c~ao não-default (WOLTER, 2006). Para iniciar a investigação, no Capítulo 1, retomamos conceitos da abordagem de Kaplan (1989), uma das pioneiras em relação ao es- tudo dos demonstrativos. Além disso, também expomos os principais aspectos da teoria de Wolter (2006) { uma abordagem semântico- pragmática elegante que tenta explicar diferentes usos das descrições demonstrativas através da semântica de situações. Utilizamos a teoria de Wolter (2006) como parâmetro de comparação pela sua importância e simplicidade em relação as outras abordagens. Por isso, a partir da abordagem da autora levantamos algumas questões no primeiro capítulo, as quais nortearam nossa investigação ao longo da tese. No Capítulo 2, detemo-nos no papel da demonstração nos usos dêiticos das descrições demonstrativas. Nossa investigação procurava entender se apontamentos (gestos físicos que acompanham e são importantes para a determinação do valor semântico das expressões dêiticas) são elemento\essenciais", no sentido de serem convencionalmente ligados às descrições demonstrativas. Concluímos que demonstrações e saliência são fatores ”não-essenciais" da semântica das descrições demonstrativas, porque eles podem ser substituídos por outros elementos dado um contexto adequado, ponto de vista que se aproxima da abordagem de Wolter (2006). No Capítulo 3, buscamos elucidar a influência e/ou a função semântica do conteúdo descritivo adicional na interpretação das descrições demonstrativas dêiticas. Tendo como pano de fundo a abordagem de Wolter (2006), suas noções de situação default e de situação não- default e suas análises dos \usos descritivos W" ou NDNS (KING, 2001), verificamos que a ideia da autora de que o material adicional introduz uma variável de situação extra na forma lógica _e uma assunção desnecessária. Afirmamos isso, com base na constatação de que o conteúdo descritivo adicional é o ultimo e o mais poderoso meio de restrição do domínio de referentes das descrições demonstrativas, i.e., ele é o elemento que assegura a unicidade quando outros elementos { apontamento, saliência, informação espacial do determinante não são suficientes. No Capítulo 4, analisamos os usos descritivos e os usos com referência deferida das descrições demonstrativas. Buscamos verificar a natureza e a importância do componente relacional, proposto por Nunberg (1993) e formalizado por Elbourne (2005), na semântica/pragmática dessas expressões. Concluímos, após análises empíricas, que o componente relacional é resultado de muitos processos pragmáticos, o que torna sua representação demasiadamente complexa e, muitas vezes, não completamente fiel aos processos envolvidos. Os usos descritivos e com referência deferida também serviram para elucidarmos o nível de semelhança/diferença semântico-pragmática das descrições demonstrativas e das descrições definidas. Chegamos à conclusão que devido às diferenças nos processos de interpretação desses dois grupos de expressões, aspecto evidenciado pelos usos descritivos e com referência deferida, elas não devem ser consideradas expressões similares do ponto de vista semântico-pragmático, apesar de alguns autores afirmarem o contrário (WOLTER, 2006; ELBOURNE, 2005, 2008, entre outros). / This dissertation aims to discuss some of the main points about seman- tics and pragmatics of demonstratives descriptions, speci cally those related to deictic uses of these expressions, which in our point of view include canonical deictic uses, descriptive uses and, uses with deferred reference (NUNBERG, 1993, 2004; ELBOURNE, 2005, 2008). We use the situations semantics (KRATZER, 1989) and conceptions of default situation and non-default situation (WOLTER, 2006) to work in our analyzes. To begin the investigation, in Chapter 1, we recall concepts from Kaplan's approach (1989), one of the pioneers in relation to the study of demonstratives. In addition, we also discuss the main aspects of Wolter's theory (2006); an elegant semantic-pragmatic approach that tries to explain different uses of demonstrative descriptions through situation semantics. Wolter (2006) is our parameter of comparison for its importance and simplicity. Because of this, in this chapter we also raise some questions related to Wolter's theory which guide our investigation throughout the thesis. The purpose of Chapter 2 is analyzing the role of demonstration in deictic uses of demonstrative descriptions. Our investigation tryes to explain whether pointings (physical gestures associated to deictic ex- pressions and important to semantic value determination) are \essential elements" in the sense of being conventionally related to demonstrative descriptions. We conclude that demonstrations and salience are \non- essential" elements to the semantics of the demonstrative descriptions, mainly because they can be replaced by other elements given a suitable context. In Chapter 3, our focus is to elucidate the semantic in uence and/or the semantic function of additional descriptive content in the interpretation of deictic demonstrative descriptions. Our investigation is based on Wolter's approach (2006), her concepts of default and non-default situations and her analysis of \W descriptive uses" or NDNS's uses (KING, 2001) { these uses are distintc from deictic uses, but they also have additional descriptive content associated with demonstrative descriptions. We conclude that Wolter's conception, in which the additional material introduces an extra situation variable in logical form, is an unnecessary assumption. We affirm this, based on examples where the additional descriptive content is the last resource and the most powerful means of restricting the domain of reference of demons- trative descriptions, i.e., it is the element that ensures the uniqueness when other elements, such as pointing, contextual salience and, spatial information of the determiner, are not enough to do this. In Chapter 4, we analyze descriptive uses and uses with deferred reference of demonstrative descriptions. We verify the nature and the importance of the relational component, proposed by Nunberg (1993) and formalized by Elbourne (2005), in the semantics / pragmatics of these expressions. We conclude, after empirical analysis, that the relational component is the result of many pragmatic processes. This complexity makes its formal representation too complicated and often not completely faithful to all the processes involved in interpretation. The descriptive uses and uses with deferred reference also contributed to elucidate the semantics / pragmatics level of similarity / difference between demonstrative descriptions and de nite descriptions. We conclude that the distinct processes of interpretation of these two groups of expressions are relevant, so they should not be considered similar expressions from the semantic-pragmatic point of view, although some authors affirm the opposite (WOLTER, 2006; ELBOURNE, 2005, 2008, among others).

A presente pesquisa pretende analisar o período do pensamento filosófico de B. Russell e L. Wittgenstein entre os anos de 1905 e 1914 descrevendo o desenvolvimento da filosofia do atomismo lógico presente no Tractatus logico-philosophicus de Wittgenstein. Para tanto, será observada a crítica deste à teoria do juízo desenvolvida por Russell, a qual seria fundamento para a teoria do conhecimento que o último elaborava. Reconhecemos, com base nas críticas, que Russell sofria uma forte influência do empirismo de sua época, o que tornou sua epistemologia frágil. Essa fragilidade é evidenciada por Wittgenstein, que, ao criticar alguns pontos fundamentais da teoria do juízo, fez com que Russell assumisse essa característica de suas teses e inevitavelmente parasse a produção de seu segundo projeto filosófico depois de Principia mathematica, intitulado atualmente Theory of knowledge e geralmente conhecido como \"o manuscrito de 1913\". Wittgenstein, por outro lado, produz nesse mesmo período sua primeira e única obra publicada em vida, o Tractatus logico-philosophicus, em que inaugura e propõe um novo entendimento da lógica da linguagem por meio de uma radicalização da teoria russelliana das descrições. Essa radicalização é feita mediante a postulação de nomes logicamente simples que designam objetos simples. Essa postulação é justificada pela teoria da figuração elaborada no Tractatus, a qual sustenta o elo necessário entre lógica e mundo e contribui para que o sentido de todo e qualquer pensamento seja mostrado sem a exigência de explicações atreladas ao empirismo. / This research aims to analyze the period of philosophical thought of B. Russell and L. Wittgenstein between the years of 1905 and 1914 describing the development of the philosophy of logical atomism present in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus of Wittgenstein. For this aim, will be observed the criticism of Wittgenstein to the theory of judgment developed by Russell and which would be grounds for the theory of knowledge that Russell was elaborating. We recognize, from the criticism, that Russell had a strong influence of the empiricism of his day, which made his epistemology fragile. This weakness is evidenced by Wittgenstein that, by criticizing some key points of the theory of judgment, made Russell take the fragility of his own arguments and inevitably stopped with the production of his second philosophical project after Principia mathematica, as currently entitled Theory of knowledge and usually known as \"the 1913 manuscript.\" Wittgenstein, on the other hand, produces in the same period his first and only book published in life, the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, which opens and proposes a new understanding of the logic of language through a radicalization of Russell\'s theory of descriptions. This radicalization is done through the postulation of logically simple names that designate simple objects. The postulation is justified by the picture theory drafted in the Tractatus, which maintains the necessary link between logic and world and contributes that the sense of any thought be shown without the requirement of explanations linked to empiricism.

La probabilité des fautes transitoires augmente avec l'évolution des technologies. Plusieurs approches ont été proposées pour analyser très tôt l'impact de ces fautes sur un circuit numérique. Il est notamment possible d'utiliser une approche fondée sur l'injection de fautes dans une description VHDL au niveau RTL. Dans cette thèse, nous apportons plusieurs contributions à ce type d'analyse. Un premier aspect considéré est la prise en compte de l'environnement du circuit numérique lors des campagnes d'injection. Ainsi, une approche basée sur une analyse de sûreté de fonctionnement multi-niveaux a été développée et appliquée sur un exemple. Les injections sont réalisées dans le circuit numérique décrit au niveau RTL alors que le reste du système est décrit à un niveau d'abstraction plus élevé. L'analyse des résultats montre que certaines défaillances apparaissant au niveau du circuit n'ont en fait aucun impact sur le système. Nous présentons ensuite les avantages de la combinaison de deux types d'analyses : la classification des fautes en fonction de leurs effets, et l'analyse plus détaillée des configurations d'erreurs activées dans le circuit. Une campagne d'injection de fautes de type SEU a été réalisée sur un microcontrôleur 8051 décrit au niveau RTL. Les résultats montrent que la combinaison des analyses permet au concepteur de localiser les points critiques, facilitant l'étape de durcissement. Ils montrent également que, dans le cas d'un processeur à usage général, les configurations d'erreurs peuvent être dépendantes du programme exécuté. Cette étude a également permis de montrer que l'injection d'un très faible pourcentage des fautes possibles permet déjà d'obtenir des informations utiles pour le concepteur. La même méthodologie a été utilisée pour valider la robustesse obtenue avec un durcissement au niveau logiciel. Les résultats montrent que certaines fautes ne sont pas détectées par les mécanismes implémentés bien que ceux-ci aient été préalablement validés par des injections de fautes basées sur un simulateur de jeu d'instructions. Le dernier aspect de cette thèse concerne l'injection de fautes dans des blocs analogiques. En fait très peu de travaux traitent du sujet. Nous proposons donc un flot global d'analyse pour circuits numériques, analogiques ou mixtes, décrits au niveau comportemental. La possibilité d'injecter des fautes dans des blocs analogiques est discutée. Les résultats obtenus sur une PLL, choisie comme cas d'étude, sont analysés et montrent la faisabilité de l'injection de fautes dans des blocs analogiques. Pour valider le flot, des injections de fautes sont également réalisées au niveau transistor et comparées à celles réalisées à haut niveau. Il apparaît une bonne corrélation entre les résultats obtenus aux deux niveaux.

Le travail présenté dans cette thèse se situe dans le domaine de la représentation des connaissances. Il s'intègre dans le projet AMICAL ( Architecture Multi-agents Interactive Compagnon pour l' Apprentissage de la Lecture) dont l'objectif est de de développer un environnement informatique d'aide à l'apprentissage de la lecture. Cette étude est centrée sur la recherche d'une représentation sémantique de textes utilisés dans des sessions d'apprentissage. La problématique est de trouver un formalisme de représentation de connaissances capable de répondre à une situation fonctionnelle particulière tout en prenant compte de contraintes de natures différentes. Trois possibilités nous sont offertes : retenir un formalisme de représentation de connaissances existant, faire coopérer des formalismes existants ou proposer un nouveau formalisme. C'est cette troisième solution qui a été retenue après avoir montré les difficultés rencontrées par quelques formalismes existants à remplir certaines contraintes formulées. Nous proposons dans ce mémoire un système de représentations de connaissances, basé sur des structures de de connaissances appelées DCAS (Description Composite A Signification). Elles sont les unités de base du raisonnement. Ces structures reposent sur un ensemble d'entités cognitives de types différents. Nous décrivons les rôles différents joués par ces entités au sein d'une DCAS, ainsi que les capacités représentationnelles et inférentielles d'un système basé sur ces notions. Nous terminons cette étude par l'application de ce formalisme dans la problématique définie dans AMICAL.