Social theory without wholes

Language is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words — of maxims once true, but of which the truth is ceasing or has ceased. As a man’s family go on muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer.     

Start-up Rhetoric in Eight Speeches of Barack Obama

Our purpose in the following was to investigate the start-up rhetoric employed by U.S. President Barack Obama in his speeches. The initial 5 min from eight of his speeches from May to September of 2009 were selected for their variety of setting, audience, theme, and purpose. It was generally hypothesized that Barack Obama, widely recognized for the excellence of his rhetorical performance, would pursue both constant and variable strategies in his effort to establish contact with his audience. More specifically, it was hypothesized that the make-up of the audience—primarily native or non-native speakers of English—would be a prominent independent variable. A number of temporal and verbal measures were used as dependent variables. Variations were evident in mean length in syllables and duration in seconds of utterances (articulatory phrases), articulation rate in syllables per second of ontime, mean duration of silent pauses in seconds, and frequency of fillers, hesitations, colloquial words and phrases, introductory phrases, and 1st person singular pronominals. Results indicated that formality versus informality of the setting and presence or absence of a teleprompter were more prominent than native versus non-native audiences. Our analyses confirm Obama’s skillfulness in challenging and variable settings and clearly detect orderliness and scientific generalizability in language use. The concept of orality/literacy provides a theoretical background and emphasizes dialogical interaction of audience and speaker.     

Moore’s Paradoxes and Conscious Belief*

For Moore, it is a paradox that although I would be absurd in asserting that (it is raining but I don’t believe it is) or that (it is raining but I believe it isn’t), such assertions might be true. But I would be also absurd in judging that the contents of such assertions are true. I argue for the strategy of explaining the absurdity of Moorean assertion in terms of conscious Moorean belief. Only in this way may the pathology of Moorean absurdity be adequately explained in terms of self-contradiction. David Rosenthal disagrees with this strategy. Ironically, his higher-order thought account has the resources to fulfil it. Indeed once modified and supplemented, it compares favourably with Brentano’s rival account of conscious belief. *This paper was written with the support of a grant from the SMU-Wharton Research center.     

Generation,interiority and the phenomenology of Christianity in Michel Henry

In this paper I focus on a central phenomenological concept in Michel Henry’s work that has often been neglected: generation. Generation becomes an especially important conceptual key to understanding not only the relationship between God and human self but also Henry’s adoption of radical interiority and his critical standpoint with respect to much of the phenomenological tradition in which he is working. Thus in pursuing the theme of generation, I shall introduce many phenomenological-theological terms in Henry’s trilogy on Christianity as well as how he understands the relationship between phenomenology and theology. In the final sections of the paper, I turn to positively defining Henry’s notion of divine generation and examine the theological implications of it in light of his confrontation and rejection of the doctrine of creation in the book of Genesis found in his book, Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair. Humans are not created but are eternally generated, a bold claim that brings Henry to the brink of a kind of interiorized pantheism or Gnostic dualism. Finally, I offer some critical comments specifically about Henry’s doctrine of generation in light of the tension between auto-affection and hetero-affection and thus how one might think “after Henry” in light of the basic Augustinian theological distinction between self and God and the intentionality of faith opened up by that distinction.     

Memory determinants of response latency to produce speech

In three experiments, subjects were asked to memorize related phrase pairs and then to produce one of these phrases from a cue. In Experiment 1, it was found that both memorization times and response latencies increased with the number of words that differed between the phrases. In Experiment 2 and 3, it was shown that the presence of a strong modifying or semantic relationship between words in one phrase influenced both memorization time and response latency when those same words were contrasted between the two phrases. The implications of the results for models of storage, retrieval, and planning of speech are considered.     

Memory for sentences and noun phrases of extreme depth

Memory for orally presented noun phrases and sentences was investigated in two experiments. Syntactic depth (D) of the phrases and sentences was varied with D approaching the values of 7 ± 2. Consistent with recent investigations, these studies found D not to be generally related to recall of sentences, phrases, or individual words within sentences. However, recall of individual words from an adverbial noun phrase apparently was related to D. The apparent relationship is accounted for not by depth of individual words, but in terms primarily of superior noun retention and its interaction with serial position effects. In addition, conditional recall probabilities for another type of phrase, a noun phrase with prenominal adjectives, indicate stronger relationships between adjectives and the noun than between successive adjectives. It is concluded that the Yngve grammar is deficient as a psycholinguistic model.     

“Plausible insofar as it is intelligible”: Quine on underdetermination

Quine’s thesis of underdetermination is significantly weaker than it has been taken to be in the recent literature, for the following reasons: (i) it does not hold for all theories, but only for some global theories, (ii) it does not require the existence of empirically equivalent yet logically incompatible theories, (iii) it does not rule out the possibility that all perceived rivalry between empirically equivalent theories might be merely apparent and eliminable through translation, (iv) it is not a fundamental thesis within Quine’s philosophy, and (v) it does not carry with it the anti-realistic consequences often associated with the thesis in recent debates. The paper analyzes Quine’s views on the matter and the changes they underwent over the years. A conjecture is put forth about why Quine’s thesis has been so widely misrepresented: Quine’s writings up to 1975 tackled primarily the formulation and justification of the thesis, but afterwards were concerned mostly with the question whether empirically equivalent rivals to the theory we hold are to be considered true also. When this latter discussion is read without bearing in mind Quine’s earlier formulation and justification of the thesis, his thesis seems to have stronger epistemic consequences than it actually does. A careful reading of his later writings shows, however, that the formulation of the thesis remained unchanged after 1975, and that his mature and considered views supported only a very mitigated version of the thesis.     

Do Father-Friendly Policies Promote Father-Friendly Child-Rearing Practices? A Review of Swedish Parental Leave and Child Health Centers

By reviewing the literature, we looked at how parental leave policies in Sweden have influenced two well-defined areas of early father involvement: participating in parental leave and at visits/activities at the Child Health Centers. Sweden has one of the most comprehensive and egalitarian parental leave policies in the world, permitting parents to take 480 days off of work, receive 80% of their pay for the first 15 months, and divide their leave however they see fit, barring that both parents receive 2 months of parental leave that is exclusive to them. Additionally, fathers are permitted to take the first ten working days off to be at home with his family. Most parents, especially mothers, use parental leave throughout their infant’s first year. During the parents’ time off from work, nearly all Swedish parents (95–99%) utilize the Child Health Centers between 11 and 13 times during the infant’s first year of life. The Child Health Centers help to monitor a child’s growth and development, provide parenting support, immunizations, health education, health screenings, and provide referral sources if the child has any special needs. However, fathers only use 22% of all parental leave days. Studies have pointed out that fathers may not use parental leave because of corporate, maternal, and financial attitudes. Despite the Child Health Centers’ policy of including both parents, fathers do not utilize the Child Health Centers to the same extent as mothers. Research has shown that fathers may not use Child Health Centers as they are mainly only open during normal working hours, they are dominated by females (staff and mothers), and many conversations during the child’s first year are directed towards mothers. Barriers for why father involvement is lower than mothers are discussed.     

Salience of the word as a unit in the perception of language

Seven interlocking experiments are reported in which both guessing and recognition thresholds for words are compared with those for other linguistic units both smaller than (nonword morphemes and trigrams) and larger than (nominal compounds, ordinary noun phrases, and nonsense compounds) the word. Thresholds were consistently lower for words than for morphemes or trigams (matched or even much higher in visual usage frequency) and lower for word-like nominal compounds (e.g.,stumbling block) than for ordinary noun phrases (copper block) or nonsense compounds (sympathy block). Prior exposure (through two correct recognitions) to ordinary noun phrases, nonsense compounds, and the constituent single words of nominal compounds significantly facilitated subsequent recognition of the single-word constituents, but prior exposure to nominal compounds had no effect whatsoever on subsequent recognition of their sin~e-word constituents. These results as a whole are interpreted as supporting the following conclusions: (1)that the word has special salience in the perception of language; (2)that the reason for this salience is the unique meaningfulness of the word (or the word-like nominal compound) as a whole; and (3) that the mechanism for this salience is the convergence of feedback from central mediational processes with feed-forward from peripheral sensory processes upon the integration of word-form percepts.     

大学生心中父亲形象的结构分析

通过对当代大学生心目中“父亲”的概念表征进行研究,采用字词联想法进行数据收集,以父亲形象为刺激,让231名被试进行自由联想,选出前43个联想频率在4.7%以上的高频词语（概念）作为分析单位,做成卡片。另请100名被试进行分类,然后根据它们之间的关系亲疏程度实施系统聚类分析。结果发现,“父亲”概念在大学生的心目中可以从以下4个方面进行表征: (1)“依靠性”;(2)“情义性”;(3)“自律性”;(4)“阳光性”。     

On the Matter of Essential Richness

Alfred Tarski (1944) wrote that “the condition of the ‘essential richness’ of the metalanguage proves to be, not only necessary, but also sufficient for the construction of a satisfactory definition of truth.” But it has remained unclear what Tarski meant by an ‘essentially richer’ metalanguage. Moreover, DeVidi and Solomon (1999) have argued in this Journal that there is nothing that Tarski could have meant by that phrase which would make his pronouncement true. We develop an answer to the historical question of what Tarski meant by ‘essentially richer’ and pinpoint the general result that stands behind his essential richness claim. In defense of Tarski, we then show that each of the several arguments of DeVidi and Solomon are either moot or mistaken. One of the fruits of our investigation is the reclamation of what Tarski took to be his central result on truth. This is a reclamation since: (i) if one does not understand ‘essential richness’, one does not know what that result is, and (ii) we must unearth a heretofore unrecognized change that occurs in Tarski's view – an alteration of his main thesis in light of a failing he discovered in it.     

Husker du?

Sven Bernecker develops a theory of propositional memory that is at odds with the received epistemic theory of memory. On Bernecker’s account the belief that is remembered must be true, but it need not constitute knowledge, nor even have been true at the time it was acquired. I examine his reasons for thinking the epistemic theory of memory is false and mount a defense of the epistemic theory.     

Context effects of pictures and words in naming objects, reading words, and generating simple phrases

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.     

Verbal Style,Gubernatorial Strategies,and Legislative Success

This article examines the relationship between a governor's verbal style and his success in achieving his legislative goals. We add a measure of verbal style developed by Roderick Hart to a traditional model used by scholars of political chief executives to explain legislative success. We apply this model to the State of the State addresses of six governors of Florida who served between 1966 and 2006. Our findings reflect the validity of the truism “words matter.” Governors who use words and phrases that connote enthusiasm, activity, and realism are more successful in the legislative arena than those who do not.     

Context effects of pictures and words in naming objects,reading words,and generating simple phrases

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.     

Chomsky On The ‘Ordinary Language’ View Of Language

There is a common-sense view of language, which is held by Wittgenstein, Strawson Dummett, Searle, Putnam, Lewis, Wiggins, and others. According to this view a language consists of conventions, it is rule-governed, rules are conventionalised, a language is learnt, there are general learning mechanisms in the brain, and so on. I shall call this view the ‘ordinary language’ view of language. Chomsky’s attitude towards this view of language has been rather negative, and his rejection of it is a major motivation for the development of his own theory. In this paper I shall review Chomsky’s long-standing criticisms. I shall show that (1)Chomsky’s argument does not constitute a dismissal of the ‘ordinarylanguage’ view of language, (2) Chomsky’s conclusions about language do not follow from his argument, and (3) the ‘ordinary language’ view actually points to a promising way for us to understand the true nature of language and mind. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

How Word Familiarity Facilitates Visual Search for Verbal Material

Two experiments assessed the impact of word familiarity on visual search for phrases. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they memorized target phrases and then searched for them within more or less similar phrases. The phrases were written with either familiar or unfamiliar, neuroscience‐specific vocabulary. Most participants did not search for the target by reading lines in a systematic way but scanned the first words of phrases to identify those beginning with the same words as the target. Visual search for unfamiliar target phrases was associated with an increase in the number of non‐target phrases that were scanned. The only search phase during which fixation durations depended on word familiarity was the final recognition of the target phrase. Hence, the data support a model of search within menu‐like displays in which searchers primarily rely on fast, visual match mechanisms and engage in reading‐like processing only during the critical decision‐making phase. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

汉语惯用语的产生机制

惯用语是固定表达的一种。非构造观点认为, 惯用语已经词汇化, 惯用语理解是提取过程; 构造观点认为, 惯用语意义是建构的, 成分的字面意义对惯用语理解起重要作用。混合模型认为, 惯用语既有整体表征, 又有成分单词表征, 二者都可以成为表征和通达的单元。通过三个实验, 考察了汉语惯用语的产生机制。实验1考察在惯用语产生中是否存在整体表征和成分表征; 实验2考察在惯用语产生中是否存在从成分单词或成分词素表征到整体表征的激活; 实验3考察在惯用语产生中是否存在从整体表征到成分单词或成分词素的激活。结果表明: (1) 汉语惯用语属于混合表征, 既有整体表征, 又有成分单词、成分词素表征; (2)成分词素表征是惯用语整体表征和成分单词表征联结的桥梁; (3) 语义可分性影响惯用语表征。     

On Latour’s Social Theory and Theory of Society,and His Contribution to Saving the World

Latour is widely considered a critic and renewer of research in the social sciences. The ecologically minded Left has also acclaimed him as a theorist interested in bringing nature back both into sociological theory and into society and politics. To enable a more detailed discussion of Latour’s claims, I will here outline his theory and the ways in which it is related to classical theory, such as Durkheim, and the methodology of the interpretive paradigm, such as Schütz. My thesis is that Latour’s empirical studies may be read as unfolding the methodological consequences of the interpretive paradigm, and that his early work is a brilliant proof of Durkheim’s theory of the morphology of social facts. Latour has now elaborated the insights he gained from concrete laboratory studies toward a general theory of the social, of society, and of politics. These generalizations have made his theory at least partly problematic. The political implication of Latour’s theory of society is a generalization of the call for equality to encompass everything; in other words, Latour criticizes the exclusion of nonhuman entities from political representation. The paper closes by discussing the political consequences of this proposal.     

Working Memory in the Acquisition of Vocabulary and Syntax: Putting Language in Good Order

This paper argues that working memory is heavily involved in language acquisition as (a) a major part of language learning is the learning of sequences, (b) working memory allows short-term maintenance of sequence information, and (c) short-term rehearsal of sequences promotes the consolidation of long-term memories of language sequences. It first reviews evidence supporting this position. Next it presents an experiment that demonstrates that subjects encouraged to rehearse foreign language (FL) utterances are better than both silent controls and subjects who are prevented from rehearsal by articulatory suppression at (a) learning to comprehend and translate FL words and phrases, (b) explicit metalinguistic knowledge of the detailed content of grammatical regularities, (c) acquisition of the FL forms of words and phrases, (d) accuracy in FL pronunciation, and (e) some aspects of productive (but not receptive) grammatical fluency and accuracy. Finally, it describes possible mechanisms underlying these effects.