Context Sensitivity

Authentic materials support language learning by connecting classroom experiences with everyday communication. This article examines secondary-level teachers' perceptions and practices regarding the use of authentic materials in EFL classes to facilitate students' English learning. It employed an interpretive phenomenological research design under the interpretative research paradigm. Semi-structured interviews with purposively selected 10 community school English teachers from Birendranagar Municipality, Surkhet, and classroom observations were used to collect data. Semistructured interview guidelines and observation protocols were used to facilitate 10 interviews and 30 classroom observations (three classes of each teacher). The interviews were transcribed, and observation sheets were compiled for coding and thematic analysis. The teachers argued that authentic materials help teachers encourage and motivate students to use English appropriately and to build an interactive classroom environment for learning the target language. Findings suggest that when used appropriately, authentic materials can significantly enrich the language learning experience and better prepare learners for real-world communication, foster student engagement, enhance critical thinking, and develop essential language skills. Teachers need to select authentic materials creatively and critically, and other educational stakeholders must recognize the importance of using authentic materials in learning a second or foreign language and implement measures to manage such materials and support teachers' appropriate use for students' learning.

This article introduces an approach termed 'evolutionary pragmatism in the philosophy of science': a view that understands rationality not as a set of fixed rules but as a dynamic, problem-oriented, and evolutionary process. In contrast to Popper's emphasis on falsifiability, this approach holds that cognitive systems evolve through the generation of variation, competition among solutions, and selection based on practical effectiveness. Here, the criterion of success is the capacity to reduce error and to achieve step-by-step adaptation to reality, rather than the attainment of absolute truth.
Applying this approach to the analysis of cognitive systems, from the experimental sciences to Artificial Intelligence, shows that human knowledge is an unfinished project dependent on environmental feedback. Within this framework, the value of theories is assessed by their practical success, predictive power, and normative justification.

Stereotypes have been assumed to be long-lasting knowledge structures that persist even in the face of contrary evidence. However, there is almost no within-participant research relevant to this assumption. The authors describe 4 studies (N ϭ 267), the first 3 of which assessed within-participant stereotype stability over a few weeks with measures of stereotypic trait verification, typicality ratings of exemplar sets, and exemplar retrieval. In the 4th study, the authors manipulated context stability. Overall, results showed only low-to-moderate stereotype stability. The stability obtained was a function of the perceived centrality of traits or exemplars and of context constancy. The authors discuss the implications of these results for abstractionist, exemplar, mixed, and connectionist models and identify possible mechanisms that underlie within-participant stereotype instability.

With the prolific growth in usage of smartphones across the spectrum of people in the society it becomes mandatory to handle and configure these devices effectively to achieve optimum results from it. This paper proposes a context sensitive model termed COSMOS (COntext Sensitive MOdel for Smartphones) for configuring the smartphones using multifactor analysis with the help of decision trees. The COSMOS model proposed in this paper facilitates the configuration of various smartphone settings implicitly based on the user's current context, without interrupting the user for various inputs. The COSMOS model also proposes multiple context parameters like location, scheduler data, recent call log settings etc to decide the appropriate settings for the smartphones. The proposed model is validated by a prototype implementation in the Android platform. Various tests were conducted in the implementation and the settings relevancy metric value of 90.95% confirms the efficiency of the proposed model.

J este li čitali Alisu u zemlji čudesa, poznato djelo Lewi- sa Carrolla? Znate li tko su Ludi Klobučar, Ožujski Zeci Gušter Bill? Možete li nabrojiti još neke likove iz toga djela? Znate li da je na temelju tog djela nastala knjiga Alica u zemlji (logičkih) zagonetaka autora Raymonda Smullyana? Ako ne znate, ovdje ćete upoznati Alicu (kao i neke druge likove Carrollovog djela) uz malo matematičke logike. Alica u zemlji (logičkih) zagonetaka zbirka je nekoliko zagonetki koje se nalaze u različitim pričama s radnjom i dijalozima. U svakoj priči netko je ukrao jedan od sastojaka potrebnih za pečenje pite, a zadatak je otkriti počinitelja toga nedjela kako bi se sastojak mogao vratiti Kraljici da ispeče pitu. U posljednjoj priči Kraljica je ispekla pitu, ali ju je netko ukrao. Kako bi se otkrio kradljivac pite, potrebno je riješiti najsloženiju zagonetku te knjige. U prvom dijelu treće priče treba odgonetnuti tko je ukrao papar. -Eto ti brašna -reče kralj sretno -Hajde, ispeci tu pitu! -Pitu bez papra? -reče Kraljica. -Papar?! -vrisne Kralj u čuđenju i nevjerici. -Ti stavljaš papar u pitu? -Ne stavljam ga puno -odgovori Kraljica. -Pretpostavljam da je i on ukraden! -Dakako -reče Kraljica. -Pronađi papar, a kada pronađeš i lopova, skini mu... -Ma stani malo! -reče joj Kralj. No, papar je, dakako, morao pronaći. Kao što svi znate, oni koji kradu papar nikada ne govore istinu. Najsumnjivija je bila Damina kuharica. Na sudu je izjavila tek ovo: -Znadem tko je ukrao papar! Je li Damina kuharica ukrala papar? Često se susrećemo sa zagonetkama poput ovakvih, ili radi zabave i mozganja, ili ih u stvarnom životu gledamo kao probleme koje moramo riješiti kako bismo uspjeli donijeti nekakvu odluku.

In the globally competitive market landscape, companies, in order to remain sustainable, must shift their focus towards constantly improving their PSS offerings by incorporating lean thinking approaches. PSS are complex, dynamic, and multi-dimensional systems, which are supported by appropriate infrastructure and networks. At the same time, PSS require robust engineering methods and tools for their design, which allow multi-dimensional exchange of knowledge between the designers and the relevant stakeholders across the value chain. Currently, enabling technologies such as Cloud technology, social media and networking, knowledge management, and context sensitivity present new possibilities to enhance the knowledge exchange and the collaborative process of PSS design. These technologies allow the gathering and analysis of big volumes of data from scattered heterogeneous IT systems and, at the same time, allow PSS design improvements by processing the experiences of the business customers, consumers, designers, shop-floor, and provide feedback to the design phase. However, a number of challenges are encountered during the gathering, visualization, monitoring, and assessment of related data, such as the lack of context sensitivity. Simultaneously, PSS evaluation approaches are still immature and there is limited work that correlates the impact of the entire PSS lifecycle with the performance assessment of the PSS design. The present work includes a review of the aforementioned technologies from academic, market, and industrial perspectives. Based on an extensive literature review and on constructive discussions with three European SMEs, several barriers and limitations of adopting the aforementioned technologies in practice are identified. Finally, a conceptual eco-innovative framework for lean PSS design is presented, explaining how these technologies could be combined for the improvements of PSS design and evaluation procedures.

Students can be motivated by making them aware of their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Guiding the student could include addressing the subject’s goals, the nature of the activities, and the techniques used to complete the tasks, including supporting them in determining the best ways to learn. Providing learning facilities indicates that the instructor should be able to facilitate and simplify learning. This is essentially characterized as creating and establishing suitable learning settings and providing learning resources. This piece of paper will emphasise a literature review on the KARDS Model as an alternative conceptualization for language training. The review is based on journal papers, conference proceedings, and book chapters that explore Kumaravadivelu's KARDS Model. The scope of this discussion is limited to the following points:(1) presenting Postmodernism as a relevant theoretical framework in the context of language teacher education and (2) presenting the KARDS model as an alternative conceptual outline that can help language teachers address teaching issues more effectively. This finding demonstrates that teachers must keep their knowledge, which serves as their academic medium of communication, up to date in order to survive in academic contexts. Their enhanced professional and personal knowledge is projected to lead to more positive perceptions. This distinction may be justified by the circulation of knowledge transfer and building, the routine exchange of knowledge, and academicians' access to the most recent results.

The traditional view is that 'now' is a pure indexical, denoting the utterance time. Yet, despite its initial appeal, the view has faced criticism. A range of data reveal 'now' allows for discourse-bound (i.e., anaphoric) uses, and can occur felicitously with the past tense. The reaction to this has typically been to treat 'now' as akin to a true demonstrative, selecting the prominent time supplied by the non-linguistic context or prior discourse. We argue this is doubly mistaken. The first mistake concerns the semantic value of 'now', which is not a time, but a state-the consequent state of a prominent event. The second is that 'now' is a pure indexical after all, insofar as its interpretation is determined without recourse to extra-linguistic supplementation. Specifically, we argue that any occurrence of 'now' selects the consequent state of the most prominent event, where event-prominence is linguistically maintained through prominence-affecting updates contributed by coherence relations. Our analysis accounts straightforwardly for a wide range of discourse initial and discourse bound uses of 'now', while giving it a simple indexical meaning.

Fake is often considered the textbook example of a so-called ‘privative’ adjective, one which, in other words, allows the proposition that ‘(a) fake x is not (an) x’. This study tests the hypothesis that the contexts of an adjectivenoun combination are more different from the contexts of the noun when the adjective is such a ‘privative’ one than when it is an ordinary (subsective) one. We here use ‘embeddings’, that is, dense vector representations based on word co-occurrences in a large corpus, which in our study is the entire English Wikipedia as it was in 2013. Comparing the cosine distance between the adjective-noun bigram and single noun embeddings across two sets of adjectives, privative and ordinary ones, we fail to find a noticeable difference. However, we contest that fake is an across-the-board privative adjective, since a fake article, for instance, is most definitely still an article. We extend a recent proposal involving the noun’s qualia roles (how an entity is made, w...

This paper compares the semantic interpretation of logical, programming, and natural languages. It shows that they are based on different ontologies, and investigates the relation between the ontology assumed and the analysis of empirical phenomena such as truth, the Epimenides paradox, propositional attitudes, and vagueness. Furthermore, it shows that there is a basic difference between a metalanguage-based and a procedural semantics, and that the choice between them depends on the ontology presumed. In logic, a semantic relation between the formal language and the world is established by defining the (object-)language, the world (model), and the relation between them in terms of a metalanguage definition. The theory behind this method was presented by ALFRED TARSKI (1902-1983) in a form still valid today. In logical semantics, the task of the interpretation is to specify under which circumstances the expressions of the object language are true. The object language is the language to be semantically interpreted (e.g. quoted expressions like 'φ & ψ'), while the definitions of the semantic interpretation are formulated in a metalanguage. Tarski's schema for characterizing truth is the so-called T-condition. T: x is a true sentence if and only if p. The T-condition as a whole is a sentence of the metalanguage, which quotes the sentence x of the object language and translates it as p. Tarski illustrates this method with the following example: 'Es schneit' is a true sentence if and only if it snows. This example is deceptively simple, and has resulted in misunderstandings by many non-insiders. 1 What the provocative simplicity of 1.1 and 1.2 does not express when

Quantum cryptographic systems have been commercially available, with a striking advantage over classical systems that their security and ability to detect the presence of eavesdropping are provable based on the principles of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, quantum protocol designers may commit more faults than classical protocol designers since human intuition is poorly adapted to the quantum world. To offer formal techniques for modeling and verification of quantum protocols, several quantum extensions of process algebra have been proposed. An important issue in quantum process algebra is to discover a quantum generalization of bisimulation preserved by various process constructs, in particular, parallel composition, where one of the major differences between classical and quantum systems, namely quantum entanglement, is present. Quite a few versions of bisimulation have been defined for quantum processes in the literature, but in the best case they are only proved to be pres...

This paper advocates a realist position with respect to science and common sense. It considers the question of whether science provides knowledge of reality. It presents a positive response to that question. It rejects the anti-realist claim that we are unable to acquire knowledge of reality in favour of the realist view that science yields knowledge of the external world. But it remains to be specified just what world that is. Some argue that science leads to the rejection of our commonsense view of the world. If so, the world about which science informs us is not the world of common sense. Common sense is “stone-age metaphysics”. It is false theory inherited from our primitive ancestors that is to be eliminated in favour of science. Against such an elimination of common sense, it is argued that science both preserves and explains our commonsense experience of the world. Science may well lead to the overthrow of some of our most deeply held beliefs. But common sense reflects a more basic and durable level of experience. Commonsense beliefs are well-confirmed beliefs that are vindicated by their role in successful practical action each and every day. Common sense provides a firm basis on which to base a realist philosophy of science.

Sir William Golding is one of the finest writers of the 20th Century post war British literary period. Born in September 1911, he produced 12 novels, television scripts, screenplays, plays, non-fiction and poems till he died in 1993. The novel The Double Tongue was posthumously published in 1995. Born to Alec Golding and Mildred, Golding started his literary career with the publication of Poems in 1934.
After mixed success, his first novel Lord of the Flies was published in 1954 and made him earn the distinction of a serious writer. His five year stint in the Royal Navy gave him a life time experience, which would serve as the bedrock of his literary career. Besides Booker Prize in 1980, he was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 and was knighted in 1988.
The publication of Rites of Passage in 1980, affirms the faith of Golding in the virtue of man. It is about the voyage of Edmund Talbot who maintains a journal to amuse his godfather who funds his journey to Australia in the early nineteenth Century. The contrasting characters in Rites of Passage bring out the crux of changed perceptions of Golding towards human beings. The novel won the Booker Prize for Golding. Following the success of the „sea-novel‟, Golding set off writing the second and the third in the sequel to the sea voyage story of Rites of Passage in the form of Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989). The Sea Trilogy was later published into one volume called To the Ends of the Earth.

Objective: The study aims to explore the influence of Post-Method
Pedagogy (PMP) on Chinese English as a Foreign Language (CEFL) teachers’ perceptions of their teaching approaches. Methods: A case study was conducted involving four CEFL teachers at a university. Data were collected through interviews, reflective journals, surveys, and observation checklists. Results: Exposure to PMP positively impacted the teachers’ teaching approaches, shifting their roles from primary authorities to facilitators of learning. The emphasis was on context-sensitivity, reflective teaching, and building connections with students. Influencing factors included teachers’ educational background, institutional demands, and preconceived notions of teacher-student relationships. Teachers developed more open, inclusive, and autonomous attitudes and beliefs towards PMP, becoming more sensitive to learners’ needs and showing improvements in teaching autonomy. Conclusion: Integrating PMP into early teacher training programs can positively prepare future EFL teachers for globalized teaching contexts. Challenges in implementing PMP were also identified, suggesting the need for ongoing support and development in this pedagogical approach.

Die zunehmende Globalisierung erfordert eine neue Sichtweise auf das User Interface Design. Aufgrund der interkulturellen Überschneidungssituation von Produktdefinition und Produktnutzung und um die Erwartungen des Benutzers erfüllen zu können, müssen dessen kulturellen Präferenzen bei der Produktentwicklung berücksichtigt werden. Dazu muss das Produkt internationalisiert und lokalisiert werden. Dieser Prozess bezieht sich sowohl auf die Funktionalität des Gerätes als auch auf das User Interface Design. Der Einsatz von Methoden des interkulturellen Usability Engineerings sichert dabei die Gebrauchsfähigkeit der Produkte. Daher sollte interkulturelles User Interface Design mit in den Rahmen der Lehrpläne für HMI Design aufgenommen werden.

I argue that practically all vague language is contextsensitive in a covert and unfamiliar way. I first outline a novel puzzle concerning the interaction of conditionals and vagueness. I then argue that the best way of resolving the puzzle is through positing context-sensitive penumbral connections between sundry parts of language. I argue that these penumbral connections shift through a distinct form of Lewisian accommodation. The upshot is that meaning is a far shiftier thing than has typically been thought.

I argue that practically all vague language is contextsensitive in a covert and unfamiliar way. I first outline a novel puzzle concerning the interaction of conditionals and vagueness. I then argue that the best way of resolving the puzzle is through positing context-sensitive penumbral connections between sundry parts of language. I argue that these penumbral connections shift through a distinct form of Lewisian accommodation. The upshot is that meaning is a far shiftier thing than has typically been thought.

Product Service Systems (PSS) are new industrial offerings which integrate a product and related services into a customer-specific bundle and offer the customer an overall solution to a specific issue. The lifecycle of PSS is characterized by merged product and service structures and a close interaction among the provider, the suppliers, and the customer, not only in the development phase but especially during the operation of PSS. Therefore a lifecycle management approach for PSS has to merge both the virtual and real (operational) lifecycle of PSS. To reach that goal operational knowledge about a PSS instance must be gathered, aggregated, managed, and used by enhanced lifecycle management methods in order to support providers, suppliers, and customers by developing, delivering and operating PSS. The paper in hand presents a knowledge-based lifecycle management approach for PSS, which considers an ontological representation of PSS knowledge and 3 knowledgebased lifecycle methods to make engineering processes adaptive, to provide the involved actors with the appropriate PSS knowledge and support the stakeholders in their decision making processes. The components of this approach have been identified as key lifecycle management methods for managing PSS. They are still being developed within the collaborative research center TR29 funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), who investigate the overall engineering of PSS.

interpreters rely on the existence of a fixpoint algorithm that calculates a least upper bound approximation of the semantics of the program. Usually, that algorithm is described in terms of the particular language in study and therefore it is not directly applicable to programs written in a different source language. In this paper we introduce a generic, block-based, and uniform representation of the program control flow graph and a language-independent fixpoint algorithm that can be applied to a variety of languages and, in particular, Java. Two major characteristics of our approach are accuracy (obtained through a topdown, context sensitive approach) and reasonable efficiency (achieved by means of memoization and dependency tracking techniques). We have also implemented the proposed framework and show some initial experimental results for standard benchmarks, which further support the feasibility of the solution adopted.

* John Limber, The genesis of complex sentences. In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press, 1973. http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel/JLimber/Genesis_complex_sentences.pdf 6 Child Reasoning A mother talking with her son, about the same age as Laura: * Mother: Which of your animal friends will come to school today? Son: Big Bunny, because Bear and Platypus are eating. * Reported by the father, the psychologist Gary Marcus, in an interview with Will Knight (2015) http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/544606/can-this-man-make-ai-more-human/#comments * From Charles Sanders Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things, The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, Harvard University Press, p. 151.

Researchers have proposed that the culture in which we are raised shapes the way that we attend to the objects and events that surround us. What remains unclear, however, is how early any such culturally-inflected differences emerge in development. Here, we address this issue directly, asking how 24-month-old infants from the US and China deploy their attention to objects and actions in dynamic scenes. By analyzing infants' eye movements while they observed dynamic scenes, the current experiment revealed striking convergences, overall, in infants' patterns of visual attention in the two communities, but also pinpointed a brief period during which their attention reliably diverged. This divergence, though modest, suggested that infants from the US devoted relatively more attention to the objects and those from China devoted relatively more attention to the actions in which they were engaged. This provides the earliest evidence for strong overlap in infants' attention to objects and events in dynamic scenes, but also raises the possibility that by 24 months, infants' attention may also be shaped subtly by the culturally-inflected attentional proclivities characteristic of adults in their cultural communities.

In recent years the modern vehicle has developed into a sophisticated sensor and computing environment. This development has been motivated by an ambition to enhance operations. In order to increase customer service and revenues, vehicle manufacturers are now interested in using the sensor data generated in the vehicle for remote vehicle services, i.e., mobile services connecting the vehicle to service stations while on the road. Our results from three years of case studies in collaboration with a vehicle manufacturer indicate, however, that it will not be possible to make such services profitable unless the vehicle manufacturer is willing to open up the vehicle for external service providers. The reluctance to do so, we argue, is a consequence of the product focus still characterizing vehicle manufacturers, in spite of a growing understanding of the need for a more customer oriented service perspective. Using information infrastructure theory, we argue for an open information infrastructure that can distribute costs, and support the development of both product and customer oriented services across different business sectors. Our paper is a contribution to information infrastructure theory and to a theory of services, by pointing out some important dependencies between services and information infrastructures.

Highly flexible manufacturing systems require continuous run-time (self-) optimization of processes with respect to various parameters, e.g. efficiency, availability, energy consumption etc. A promising approach for achieving (self-) optimization in manufacturing systems is the usage of the context sensitivity approach. Thereby the Cyber-Physical Systems play an important role as sources of information to achieve context sensitivity. In this paper it is demonstrated how context sensitivity can be used to realize a holistic solution for (self-) optimization of discrete flexible manufacturing systems, by making use of Cyber-Physical System integrated in manufacturing systems/processes. A generic approach for context sensitivity, based on self-learning algorithms, is proposed aiming at a various manufacturing systems. The new solution is propos encompassing run-time context extractor and optimizer. Based on the self-learning module both context extraction and optimizer are continuously...

bernhard nickel Ceteris Paribus Laws: Generics and Natural Kinds philosophers' imprint-2vol. 10, no. 6 (july 2010) bernhard nickel Ceteris Paribus Laws: Generics and Natural Kinds ence, rather than the genetic endowment they are born with, would falsify (2) without intuitively leading us to reject (1). And it seems as if, for any way of adding more qualifications to the unless-clause, we can come up with more mere exceptions we have not yet captured. Let's call such an unless-clause open-ended, and let's call the cp-generalization that gives rise to such an unless-clause open-ended, as well. 4 Of course, there are some ways of listing the exceptions that does not result in an open-ended unless-clause. We could say that ravens are black unless they are abnormal. By itself, this does not represent any advance beyond (1). But if we do not help ourselves to these expressions, the list of merely apparent exceptions is open-ended. This observation suggests that we won't make progress on saying what a cp-generalization means simply by listing exceptions. It also introduces the first phenomenon to be accounted for: why are cpgeneralizations open-ended, and what unifies the apparently heterogeneous class of a cp-generalization's exceptions? Let me add another striking feature that is not usually discussed, but that is also concerned with the contrast between exceptions and counterexamples. The point is easiest to state with respect to the contrast between cp-generalizations and straightforward universal generalizations. The former, but not the latter, are insensitive to small changes in the way the world is. (1) is true in the actual world, and it would still be true if there happened to be one or a few more nonblack ravens than there actually are. By contrast, a true universal generalization all As are Bs would be false if there was an extra A that was not B. In order to find a pair of worlds such that a cp-generalization is true with respect to one, false with respect to the other, the two worlds need to differ in very significant respects. For example, a world that clearly falsifies (1) is a world in which ravens have evolved to have the color scheme of Crimson Rosellas. 4. The problem concerns the potential exceptions to the generalization. Even if at some point only black ravens exist, (1) still poses the same problem, since it would not be falsified by certain non-black ravens. CP-generalizations also contrast with other run-of-the-mill generalizations, such as ones of the form most As are Bs. The truth-value of such a claim is, in many cases, robust with respect to adding a single A that is not B. That most students are under forty years old would remain true even if there was another student over forty. However, As that are not Bs are all potential counterexamples to the majority claim. The robustness of the truth of the claim derives from the fact that we need enough counterexamples in order to falsify it. By contrast, a cpgeneralization ceteris paribus, all As are Bs that is true in the actual world would not only remain true if there was an extra A that wasn't B, that extra A would simply be another exception. The very status of an A that is not a B as exception or counterexample depends on larger patterns in the world. This gives us our second explanandum: why is the truth of cp-generalizations only sensitive to large-scale changes? I want to end this section by situating my account with respect to the way the problem of cp-generalizations is most commonly stated in the literature. Many theorists argue that the open-endedness of cpgeneralizations threatens them with triviality. 5 A generalization is nontrivial if there could be counterexamples, i.e., if there are circumstances that would falsify it. But since the list of exceptions to a cp-generalization is open-ended, anything could be covered by that list. In that case, there couldn't be any counterexamples (not even potentially), making the generalization trivial. That is the triviality worry. Applied to my example, it says that (1) amounts to no more than all ravens are black, unless they aren't. The triviality worry is by far the most important point of debate in the literature on cp-generalizations. A subsidiary one focuses on epistemic considerations, concerning the claim that cp-generalizations 5. Pietroski and Rey (1995, 87) give a prominent statement. Woodward, who argues that there is a significant problem with cp-generalizations, cites this passage as stating the problem (Woodward, 2002, 308). Other authors who also take triviality to be the main problem include:

Peace education is often carried out without being appropriately adapted to the contexts in which it takes place and rarely involves those most affected by the work in the design and planning of their own initiatives. This article reports on an original participatory action research project designed to contextualise a peace education initiative with local communities in Bolivia. It draws on fieldwork, including interviews and focus groups with policymakers, educators, and students, to show how local actors, including students, were involved in influencing what peace education should look like for them, focussing on its purpose, pedagogy, and content. Lessons learned are also discussed. The case study is offered within a larger context of how the international community can work with the direct beneficiaries to co-develop peace and education-related initiatives that are responsive to the needs of the particular groups and contexts they are trying to affect.

What is the relationship between the claim that generics articulate psychologically primitive generalizations and the claim that they exhibit a unique form of context sensitivity? This paper maintains that the two claims are compatible. It develops and defends an overlooked form of contextualism grounded in the idiosyncrasies of System 1 thought.

U radu branim tezu da, kad je riječ o singularnoj referenciji, semantički značajna kontekstualna uvjetovanost nije ograničena samo na standardne singularne indeksikale (poput »ja«, »sad«, »on«, »danas«, »ovo«, »ono« itd.). Drugim riječima, središnja je teza rada koju branim da u slučaju drugih singularnih termina – prvenstveno vlastitih imena i određenih opisa – njihova referencija, barem u nekim slučajevima, uvjetovana je kontekstom upotrebe na takav način da to utječe na propozicijski sadržaj i istinitosne uvjete rečenica u kojima se singularni termini pojavljuju. Uz to, priklanjam se teoriji izravne referencije te tvrdim da je ono što kao sastavnicu singularni termini pridonose propozicijskom sadržaju rečenica u kojima se pojavljuju sam referent, a ne neka opisna ili kvantifikacijska građa. U razmatranju semantički značajne kontekstualne uvjetovanosti, kao model uzimam kontekstualnu uvjetovanost standardnih indeksikala. Kako bismo vidjeli na što se središnja teze svodi, i kako bismo primjereno promatrali kontekstualnu uvjetovanost i njezin semantički značaj, argumentiram da se trebamo rukovoditi takvim modelom.
Kako ja shvaćam središnju tezu, izazov koji priklanjanje toj tezi postavlja jest sljedeći. Standardni singularni indeksikali neprijeporno su singularni termini (tj. referencijski izrazi), a njihova je referencija neprijeporno kontekstualno uvjetovana u semantički značajnom smislu (to je, uostalom, i bio razlog za prihvaćanje njihove kontekstualne uvjetovanosti kao modela po kojemu treba promišljati druge slučajeve kontekstualne uvjetovanosti). Vlastita imena, s druge strane, neprijeporno su singularni termini, no tvrditi da im je referencija kontekstualno uvjetovana na semantički značajan način, čini se prilično prijepornim. Tvrditi pak da su određeni opisi, barem u nekim slučajevima, singularni termini, tj. tvrditi da barem u nekim slučajevima njihove referencijske upotrebe, takva upotreba utječe na propozicijski sadržaj i istinitosne uvjete rečenica u kojima se tako upotrijebljeni pojavljuju – u svjetlu russellovske kvantifikacijske analize – prilično je prijeporno. No, ako opisi u nekim takvim slučajevima funkcioniraju referencijski na semantički značajan način, u većini takvih slučajeva referencija će im biti kontekstualno uvjetovana na isti način kao i referencija standardnih singularnih indeksikala. Dakle, kako bi se podržalo središnju tezu, treba učiniti dvije stvari. Treba pokazati da je referencija vlastitih imena kontekstualno uvjetovana na relevantan način te da opisi mogu funkcionirati referencijski na relevantan način. To je smjer argumentacije koji sam slijedio u radu.
U prva dva poglavlja razmatram niz pojmovnih problema i zacrtavam smjer argumentacije za podršku središnjoj tezi. U tim poglavljima bavim se pitanjima: kako se općenito nositi sa singularnim terminima i singularnom referencijom, što je kontekst i koje vrste kontekstualnih uvjetovanosti postoje, kako povući granicu između semantike i pragmatike, koja je priroda propozicijskog sadržaja, razlikovanje između jezičnog i govorničkog značenja, te izazov koji fenomen semantički značajne kontekstualne uvjetovanosti stavlja pred projekt izgradnje formalne semantičke teorije za neki prirodni jezik. Kako bi se shvatilo što priklanjanje središnjoj tezi rada donosi sa sobom, spomenute stvari trebale bi nam biti što jasnije.
U trećem poglavlju razmatram neke primjere s vlastitim imenima i određenim opisima koji prima facie podržavaju središnju tezu, kao i probleme s kojima se pozivanje na te primjere kao podršku središnjoj tezi suočava. Smatram da se takvi primjeri suočavaju s dva velika izazova. Prvi izazov svodi se na prigovor da razmotreni prima facie primjeri nisu semantički značajni. Taj prigovor temelji se na griceovskom razlikovanju govornikove i semantičke referencije te podjednako vrijedi za primjere s određenim opisima kao i za slučajeve s vlastitim imenima. Drugi izazov dotičnoj podršci poziva se na razlikovanje tipova i primjeraka riječi te se prvenstveno tiče primjera s vlastitim imenima. Poenta koju iz rasprave u trećem poglavlju izvodim jest da ako se želi zastupati središnju tezu, treba se uhvatiti u koštac s ta dva izazova. Moje je gledište da oni predstavljaju ozbiljan problem za prima facie slučajeve kao podršku središnjoj tezi, ali da ti izazovi nisu odlučujući, te da ih se može eliminirati – kako, pokazujem u posljednjem poglavlju.
U četvrtom poglavlju argumentaciju za središnju tezu (da je referencija vlastitih imena i određenih opisa kontekstualno uvjetovana u semantički značajnom smislu) temeljim na dvije teorije. Prva teorija tiče se opisa. Po njoj, opisi su semantički višeznačni te imaju svoje referencijsko i atributivno značenje. Tu teoriju izvorno je predložio Donnellan, a kasnije su je u izmijenjenom obliku branili autori poput Burgea, Wettsteina i Devitta. Razmatram neke argumente protiv te teorije, kao i neke argumente za tu teoriju, te zaključujem da je teza o višeznačnosti opisa plauzibilna i podržana dobrim argumentima. Ako je ta teorija točna, kada se opise upotrebljava referencijski, oni funkcioniraju kao složeni demonstrativi. Druga teorija tiče se vlastitih imena. Predložio ju je Burge. Osnovna je ideja te teorije da su vlastita imena predikati, a da sve doslovne upotrebe vlastitih imena u prirodnom jeziku predstavljaju ili prikrivenu kvantifikacijsku konstrukciju ili prikrivenu demonstrativnu konstrukciju ili predikatnu konstrukciju. U svojoj standardnoj upotrebi, vlastita imena funkcioniraju kao složeni demonstrativi. Budući da su složeni demonstrativi i referencijski izrazi i kontekstualno uvjetovani izrazi, slijedi da je u slučaju standardne upotrebe imena njihova referencija kontekstualno uvjetovana. Zaključujem da imamo dobre razloge prihvatiti teoriju o opisima kao višeznačnima kao i Burgeovu predikatnu teoriju imena te da te dvije teorije pružaju čvrstu podršku središnjoj tezi rada da je referencija vlastitih imena i određenih opisa kontekstualno uvjetovana u semantički značajnom smislu.

One of the main goals of introductory courses of a university is to make freshmen well prepared for subsequent intermediate courses. But nowadays it becomes difficult because academic skills of freshmen differ very much. To resolve this problem, this paper proposes an ontology-based backward learning support system called EduGraph. If a student cannot understand some learning item, EduGraph, based on its ontology, suggests him or her prerequisites for understanding the item, and he or she can learn them using EduGraph. For the student, to understand the incomprehensible item can be a short-term goal because prerequisites for it are suggested, and he or she is expected to keep intrinsically motivated to understand the item. EduGraph can also support a student to organize what he or she learns into his or her integrated knowledge, because its ontology is based on a well-designed upper ontology for learning and can organize learning items properly. Actual applications to several introductory courses from 2015 suggest that EduGraph is effective.

Speakers convey messages in a variety of ways, including assertion, presupposition, and conversational implicature. Assertion is the paradigm vehicle for acts of testifying. The speaker gives her word to her audience that the presented content is true, allowing them to gain knowledge via a distinctive mechanism: believing on the speaker's say-so. This is made possible by the conventions and norms that govern the social practise of making assertions, encapsulated in assertion's being governed by the norm that one must: assert that P only if one knows that P. Do other means of conveying a message also amount to testifying to it? I first examine presupposition, which we see can be used as a sneaky way to inculcate belief in an audience without it being subject to attention and scrutiny. I then turn to conversational implicature, which I show is an epistemically fragile means of conveying a message, resulting in implicatures often being deniable by the speaker. As such implicature is not apt to be, and is not, governed by a social norm, as the robust communicative means assertion is. We see that only explicit assertion of a conveyed message amounts to testifying to it. The paper revisits and expands upon arguments first broached in my earlier paper, Stating and Insinuating (PAS SV 2012).

1. Introduction. The question we were asked to consider for this workshop is whether contextualism���understood as the claim that context-sensitivity goes beyond indexicality and affects every natural language sentence���is incompatible with compositionality, and threatens the project of building a systematic semantics for natural language.

In the globally competitive market landscape, companies, in order to remain sustainable, must shift their focus towards constantly improving their PSS offerings by incorporating lean thinking approaches. PSS are complex, dynamic, and multi-dimensional systems, which are supported by appropriate infrastructure and networks. At the same time, PSS require robust engineering methods and tools for their design, which allow multi-dimensional exchange of knowledge between the designers and the relevant stakeholders across the value chain. Currently, enabling technologies such as Cloud technology, social media and networking, knowledge management, and context sensitivity present new possibilities to enhance the knowledge exchange and the collaborative process of PSS design. These technologies allow the gathering and analysis of big volumes of data from scattered heterogeneous IT systems and, at the same time, allow PSS design improvements by processing the experiences of the business customers, consumers, designers, shop-floor, and provide feedback to the design phase. However, a number of challenges are encountered during the gathering, visualization, monitoring, and assessment of related data, such as the lack of context sensitivity. Simultaneously, PSS evaluation approaches are still immature and there is limited work that correlates the impact of the entire PSS lifecycle with the performance assessment of the PSS design. The present work includes a review of the aforementioned technologies from academic, market, and industrial perspectives. Based on an extensive literature review and on constructive discussions with three European SMEs, several barriers and limitations of adopting the aforementioned technologies in practice are identified. Finally, a conceptual eco-innovative framework for lean PSS design is presented, explaining how these technologies could be combined for the improvements of PSS design and evaluation procedures.

A standard objection to Cappelen and Lepore's (Insensitive semantics: a defense of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism, Blackwell, Oxford, 2005) Semantic Minimalism is that minimal propositions are explanatorily idle. But Schoubye and Stokke (Noûs 50:759-793, 2016) recently proposed that minimal proposition and the question under discussion of a conversation jointly determine what is said in a systematic and explanatory way. This note argues that their account both overgenerates and undergenerates.

Was steckt hinter einer Benutzungsschnittstelle wie der des Apple iPhone, des HTC Sense oder des Microsoft Surface? Bei Natural User Interfaces (NUI) bedienen Nutzer die Oberfläche mit den Händen und knüpfen dabei an bereits vorhandenes Wissen an. Eine Studie untersuchte, wie Nutzer mit der gestenbasierten Bedienung zurechtkommen. Dabei wurde nicht nur getestet, wie leicht oder schwer einzelne MultitouchInteraktionen den Testpersonen fallen, sondern auch, ob es Unterschiede zwischen älteren und jüngeren Nutzern gibt. Das Ergebnis der Studie zeigt, dass die Bedienung von NUI-Oberflächen für Nutzer jeden Alters leicht zu verstehen ist und eine sehr niedrige Einstiegshürde hat, auch wenn diese für ältere Nutzer geringfügig höher liegt. Bei einer Erhebung nannten Nutzer am Häufigsten die gestenbasierte Bedienung auf die Frage, was sie am iPhone am meisten fasziniert. Doch was Nutzer begeistert, stellt Entwickler und Designer vor neue Herausforderungen: Multitouch, Multi-User, Objekterke...

Davidson famously declared "there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed" (Davidson, 1986, 107). Naturally, Davidson did not intend to deny the existence of language, or even languages, tout court. What he was rejecting was a certain conception of language, one that he took to enjoy widespread endorsement. Davidson characterizes this conception in terms of three components: first, the meanings that are involved in communication must be systematic; second, they must be shared; and third, they must be governed by convention (ibid. 93). Davidson rejects just the last of these components-he argues that conventions are not necessary for linguistic communication. In particular, as we shall see, Davidson rejects the idea that the audience can understand the speaker just by a straightforward application of some antecedent grammar. Rather, for Davidson, successful communication is fundamentally a matter of opportunistic inference and creative insight. Davidson's urgent rhetoric reflects the stark implications he draws from discovering such holistic, open-ended leaps of interpretation at the heart of ordinary communication. Davidson's argument is ultimately an argument about how to explain successful communication. What Davidson takes to be the received view explains communication by appeal to convention. As Davidson himself puts the view (Davidson, 1994, 110), "in learning a language, a person acquires the ability to operate in accord with a precise and specifiable set of syntactic and semantic rules; verbal communication depends on speaker and bearer sharing such an ability, and it requires no more than this." The claim that meaning is conventional can be understood in diverse ways, 1 but when philosophers invoke conventions to explain communication, they rely only on a broad commitment that conventions are regularities that interlocutors are party to that are established in advance of communication. In brief, the rules are given; in speaking and understanding, we abide by them; and this is what enables us to understand one another. 2 Ultimately, Davidson rejects the received view because he concludes that communication can be successful even when the meaning a speaker wants to get

the paper is one of the few attempts to develop a Product Service System (PSS) ontology aiming to facilitate Knowledge Management in collaborative PSS design, focusing upon machine industry. The PSS ontology includes concepts such as products, services, PSS, PSS lifecycle, process and stakeholders, including direct customers, consumers and their feedback. The context sensitivity approach is proposed to fully support the use of different tools for PSS development by various stakeholders. The context model includes both PSS ontology and a so-called usercentric ontology. The process to develop the ontologies is described. The approach to build the PSS ontology is based on the so-called Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The foreseen applications of both ontologies in industrial practice of machine vendors and the expected benefits are being elaborated.

Context modifies the influence of any trading indicator. Ceteris paribus, a buyer would be more cautious buying in a selling market context than in a buying market. In order for automated, adaptive systems like neural networks to better emulate and assist human decision-making, they need to be context sensitive. Most prior research applying neural networks to trading decision support systems neglected to extract contextual cues, rendering the systems blind to market conditions. This paper explores the theoretical development and quantitative evaluation of context sensitivity in a novel fast learning neural network architecture, Echo ARTMAP. The simulated risk and cost adjusted trading results compare very favorably on a 10-year, random stock study against the market random walk, regression, auto-regression, and multiple neural network models typically used in prior studies. By combining human trader techniques with biologically inspired neural network models, Echo ARTMAP may represe...

the paper is one of the few attempts to develop a Product Service System (PSS) ontology aiming to facilitate Knowledge Management in collaborative PSS design, focusing upon machine industry. The PSS ontology includes concepts such as products, services, PSS, PSS lifecycle, process and stakeholders, including direct customers, consumers and their feedback. The context sensitivity approach is proposed to fully support the use of different tools for PSS development by various stakeholders. The context model includes both PSS ontology and a so-called usercentric ontology. The process to develop the ontologies is described. The approach to build the PSS ontology is based on the so-called Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The foreseen applications of both ontologies in industrial practice of machine vendors and the expected benefits are being elaborated.

Vagueness is a familiar but deeply puzzling aspect of the relation between language and the world. It is highly controversial what the nature of vagueness is; a feature of the way we represent reality in language, or rather a feature of reality itself? Assuming standard logical principles, Sorites' arguments suggest that vague terms are either inconsistent or have a sharp boundary. The account we give of such paradoxes plays a pivotal role for our understanding of natural languages. If our reasoning involves any vague concepts, is it safe from contradiction? Do vague concepts really lack any sharp boundary? If not, why are we reluctant to accept the existence of any sharp boundary for them? And what rules of inference can we validly apply, if we reason in vague terms? This book presents the latest work towards a clearer understanding of these old puzzles about the nature and logic of vagueness. The collection offers a stimulating series of original chapters on these and related ...

User behavior is significantly influenced by the surrounding environment. Especially complex and dynamically changing environments (like mobile environment) are represented by a wide variety of extraneous variables, which influence the user behavior in an unpredictable and mostly uncontrolled way. For researchers it is challenging to measure and analyze the user behavior in such environments. We introduce a complex tool-the IVE tool-which provides a unique way of context visualization and synchronization of measured data of various kinds. Thanks to this tool it is possible to efficiently evaluate data acquired during complex usability tests in a mobile environment. The functionality of this tool is demonstrated on the use-case "Navigation of visually impaired users in the building with support of a navigation system called NaviTerier". During the experiment we focused on collection and analysis of data that may show user stress and which may influence his/her ability to navigate. We analyzed objective data like Galvanic Skin Response parameter (GSR), Heart Rate Variability parameters (HRV) and audio video recordings and also subjective data like the user's subjective stress feeling and observation of the user's behavior.

We investigate the role of two possible sets of factors, cognitive and social, in modulating an individual's linguistic context-sensitivity: the capacity of a neurocognitive system to identify information in a communicative context that satisfies the meaning requirements of a given expression in that context. We assess whether the degree of contextual facilitation of an otherwise dispreferred reading of an English have-sentence is correlated with domain-general cognitive factors-by using the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) to index an individual's 'autistic-like' traits-and/or with social factors associated with gender expression-by using participants' gender group. Acceptability ratings (n = 271) for a dispreferred but plausible locative reading were significantly higher only after the facilitatory context, suggesting that relevant context can modulate the acceptability of different readings of a have-sentence. Crucially, the degree of facilitation correlates with participants' AQ scores, but not gender group, directly implicating cognitive variability in linguistic context-sensitivity differences, and leaving open the question of individual-level variability arising from social factors. Our findings are consistent with a model of language variation in which individuals with certain cognitive styles implement their grammatical knowledge at a larger 'communicative scope' than others, thereby inducing novel usage patterns of existing variants in their speech community.*

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