We investigate the effects of alternative utterances on pragmatic interpretation of language. We focus on two specific cases: specificity implicatures (less specific utterances imply the negation of more specific utterances) and Horn implicatures (more complex utterances are assigned to less likely meanings). We present models of these phenomena in terms of recursive social reasoning. Our most ...

This paper serves as a self-contained, tutorial introduction to combinatory models of the untyped lambda calculus. We focus particularly on the interpretation of free variables. We argue that free variables should not be interpreted as elements in a model, as is usually done, but as indeterminates. We claim that the resulting interpretation is more natural and leads to a closer correspondence b...

Knowledge representation of “open data” involves aggregation of disparate information in a semantically meaningful context. This task is challenging as such datasets are arbitrarily structured and fragmented with no overarching contextual framework in which the datasets are uploaded. The utility of such datasets is determined by the “context” in which they are presented and the same dataset can...

L abor costs have recently come under scrutiny by policymakers, business economists, and financial market participants. The primary concern has been that tight labor markets might lead to faster compensation growth and, ultimately, to upward pressure on general inflation. The employment cost index (ECI) has received particularly close attention because many analysts consider it to be one of the...

Although many theories of on-line syntactic processing invoke the parallel activation of multiple syntactic representations, evidence supporting simultaneous activation has been inconclusive. Here, we exploited the continuous and non-ballistic properties of computer mouse movements, identified by recording streaming x, y coordinates, in order to determine the validity of serial versus parallel ...

There are many respects in which the conventional content of an utterance reflects speaker assumptions about the context of utterance and the relation between that context and the intended interpretation of the utterance. Taken together, these constitute what Vallduví (1992,1993) called the Information Packaging of the utterance, aka its Information Structure. Two central aspects of this Inform...

We introduce a concrete semantics for floating-point operations which describes the propagation of roundoff errors throughout a computation. This semantics is used to assert the correctness of an abstract interpretation which can be straightforwardly derived from it. In our model, every elementary operation introduces a new first order error term, which is later combined with other error terms,...

A lack of straightforward, child-appropriate methodologies has hindered the study of on-line syntactic processing in young children. Here, we exploited the continuous and non-ballistic properties of computer mouse movements, ,, identified by recording streaming x, y coordinates, to test how young children integrate multiple sources of information on-line in order to extract meaning. Participant...

Despite the fact that several event studies have investigated the market’s reaction to information technology (IT) investment announcements, little is known about how specific transactional risks influence the market value of a firm. This study examines stock market data to assess investors’ responses to various transactional risks associated with IT outsourcing. More specifically, we develop a...

Research designs are plans and the procedures for research that span the decisions from broad assumptions to detailed methods of data collection and analysis. This plan involves several decisions, and they need not be taken in the order in which they make sense to me and the order of their presentation here. The overall decision involves which design should be used to study a topic. Informing t...