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Published: 4 June 2021
Last updated: 31 July 2024

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1

Kim, Young-eun. "Focus and old information : polarity focus, contrastive focus, and contrastive topic /." Digital version:, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p9992836.

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2

Larsson, Sandra, and Johan Nikula. "Spelifierings effekt på studiemotivation och fokus med Focus Plant." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för elektroteknik och datavetenskap (EECS), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-299273.

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Spelifiering innebär implementation av spelelement i icke-spelmiljöer. Målet med spelifiering är i många fall att öka användarens motivation till att genomföra en aktivitet. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur civilingenjörsstudenters motivation och fokus vid studier påverkas av att använda den spelifierade mobilapplikationen Focus Plant, vars syfte är att minska mobiltelefonanvändning under exempelvis studier. Spelifiering är ett relativt nytt fenomen som på senare år har fått uppmärksamhet då det hävdas kunna appliceras på allt från marknadsföring till inlärning och hälsa. Kritik har dock riktats mot bland annat begreppets vaghet, att det simplifierar teorier om hur motivation uppstår, och att forskningen ännu inte klargjort exakt hur spelifiering verkar. Med utgångspunkt i forskning om spelifiering och motivation undersöker denna studie effekten av en spelifierad applikation och hur väl implementering av olika spelelement fungerat. För att utreda detta fick 12 studenter under en period på två veckor testa Focus Plant. Efter testperioden hölls individuella intervjuer med samtliga deltagare för att samla data om hur applikationen uppfattats och dess påverkan på varje deltagares motivation och fokus. Resultatet av studien tyder på att vid användning av applikationen blev mobiltelefonen ett mindre störningsmoment. Studenterna blev däremot inte motiverade till att studera mer tack vare applikationen, men under ett studiepass kände de sig mer motiverade till att avsluta hela passet. Intervjusvaren tyder på att en möjlig förklaring till att fokuset förbättrades var att en timer och låsfunktion i Focus Plant fick studenterna att känna att de inte kunde lämna applikationen under studiepasset och därför använde de inte andra mobilapplikationer. Samtliga deltagare tyckte att många spelelement blev störande vilket kan vara en anledning till att de inte blev motiverade till att studera mer när de använde Focus Plant. Andra bidragande faktorer var att deltagarna upplevde belöningssystemet som otillräckligt och att många spelelement verkade motstridigt mot syftet. Vår slutsats är att spelifiering kan spela en roll i att påverka motivation och fokus, men för bästa resultat krävs att man i implementeringen av spelelement lägger vikt vid balansen mellan användarens inre och yttre motivation.
Gamification refers to the implementation of game elements in non-game environments. The goal of gamification is often to increase motivation to perform a task. The purpose of this study is to examine how motivation and focus among engineering students are affected by using the gamified mobile phone application Focus Plant. The purpose of Focus Plant is to reduce mobile phone usage during studies or work. Gamification is a relatively new concept and is expanding into different areas such as marketing, learning and well-being. Gamification has previously been criticized for being too general and for simplifying how motivation is created. The effects of gamification from previous research are still not clear. This study uses previous research about gamification and motivation to examine the effects of a gamified mobile application and how well the game elements have been implemented. To investigate this, 12 students tested Focus Plant while studying during a two week period. After the test period, individual interviews were held with each of the participating students to gather data on their experience with the application as well as its effects on their motivation and focus on their studies. The results of the study shows that by using the application, the mobile phone became somewhat less of a distraction. The students did not become motivated to study more, however they felt more motivated to finish a study session they had already started, when using the application. A timer and lock function were two features in the application that made the phone less of a distraction. According to the participants, these features made it feel like they could not do other things on the phone while the timer in Focus Plant was on. A common theme among all participants was that many of the game elements were distracting instead of motivating and encouraging. Other factors were that the participants felt that the reward system was insufficient and that some game elements were contradictory to the purpose of the application. Our conclusion is that gamification can affect both motivation and focus among students, but to achieve the best results it is important that the implementation of game elements pays attention to the balance between the user’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
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3

Cail, Martin Austin. "Focus." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1321893390.

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4

Watterson, Susan J. "Changing focus." Chicago, Ill : McCormick Theological Seminary, 1999. http://www.tren.com.

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5

Abusch, Dorit. "Focus presuppositions." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1966/.

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This paper reviews notions related to focus and presupposition and addresses the hypothesis that focus triggers an existential presupposition. Presupposition projection behavior in certain examples appears to favor a presuppositional analysis of focus. It is argued that these examples are open to a different analysis using givenness theory. Overall, the analysis favors a weak semantics for focus not including an existential presupposition.
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6

Zimmermann, Malte. "Contrastive focus." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1968/.

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The article puts forward a discourse-pragmatic approach to the notoriously evasive phenomena of contrastivity and emphasis. It is argued that occurrences of focus that are treated in terms of ‘contrastive focus’, ‘kontrast’ (Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998) or ‘identificational focus’ (É. Kiss 1998) in the literature should not be analyzed in familiar semantic terms like introduction of alternatives or exhaustivity. Rather, an adequate analysis must take into account discourse-pragmatic notions like hearer expectation or discourse expectability of the focused content in a given discourse situation. The less expected a given content is judged to be for the hearer, relative to the Common Ground, the more likely a speaker is to mark this content by means of special grammatical devices, giving rise to emphasis.
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7

Gillis, Dawn R. "Shifting Focus." VCU Scholars Compass, 2016. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4101.

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My photographic and craft works focus on the flowing forms of flowers; the delicate, ruffled edges of feathers; and the complex veining patterns of leaves. To highlight these natural elements I use a limited palette, often no more than two close value colors. My photographs are extreme close-ups and are referred to as macrophotography. The images are abstracted yet still hint at the organic original. In my crafts, which include jewelry, textiles, and books, I also use a reduced palette when presenting abstracted natural structures. I use a process-oriented approach to allow for repetitive tasks. The repetition is rewarding in both the calm it grants me and the meticulously created end result. My imagination wanders as my hands are engaged in crocheting for hours or when I am shooting a range of digital photographs. Within these media, I experiment with different techniques to create variety within my work and to build my skill-base as an artist and an art teacher.
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8

Gussenhoven, Carlos. "Notions and subnotions in information structure." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1970/.

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Three dimensions can be distinguished in a cross-linguistic account of information structure. First, there is the definition of the focus constituent, the part of the linguistic expression which is subject to some focus meaning. Second and third, there are the focus meanings and the array of structural devices that encode them. In a given language, the expression of focus is facilitated as well as constrained by the grammar within which the focus devices operate. The prevalence of focus ambiguity, the structural inability to make focus distinctions, will thus vary across languages, and within a language, across focus meanings.
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9

Hartmann, Katharina, Peggy Jacob, and Malte Zimmermann. "Focus asymmetries in Bura." Universität Potsdam, 2008. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1938/.

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(Chadic), which exhibits a number of asymmetries: Grammatical focus marking is obligatory only with focused subjects, where focus is marked by the particle án following the subject. Focused subjects remain in situ and the complement of án is a regular VP. With nonsubject foci, án appears in a cleft-structure between the fronted focus constituent and a relative clause. We present a semantically unified analysis of focus marking in Bura that treats the particle as a focusmarking copula in T that takes a property-denoting expression (the background) and an individual-denoting expression (the focus) as arguments. The article also investigates the realization of predicate and polarity focus, which are almost never marked. The upshot of the discussion is that Bura shares many characteristic traits of focus marking with other Chadic languages, but it crucially differs in exhibiting a structural difference in the marking of focus on subjects and non-subject constituents.
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10

Rooth, Mats. "Notions of focus anaphoricity." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1962/.

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This article reviews some of the theoretical notions and empirical phenomena which figure in current formal-semantic theories of focus. It also develops the connection between “alternative semantics” and “givenness” accounts of focus interpretation.
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11

Kubozono, Haruo. "Focus and intonation in Japanese : Does focus trigger pitch reset?" Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/2447/.

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This paper discusses how focus changes prosodic structure in Tokyo Japanese. It is generally believed that focus blocks the intonational process of downstep and causes a pitch reset. This paper presents experimental evidence against this traditional view by looking at the prosodic behavior of Wh words, which receive focus lexically in Japanese as in other languages. It is demonstrated, specifically, that the focused Wh element does not block downstep although it receives a much higher pitch than its preceding element. This suggests that presence of lexical focus does not trigger pitch reset in Japanese.
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12

Hartmann, Katharina. "Focus and Tone." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1972/.

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Tone is a distinctive feature of the lexemes in tone languages. The information-structural category focus is usually marked by syntactic and morphological means in these languages, but sometimes also by intonation strategies. In intonation languages, focus is marked by pitch movements, which are also perceived as tone. The present article discusses prosodic focus marking in these two language types.
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13

Hulsey, Sarah McNearney. "Focus Sensitive Coordination." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45897.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-118).
This thesis investigates the role of the Focus Sensitive Operators (FSOs) even and also when found inside of a coordination. Coordinations of this form are called Focus Sensitive Coordinations (FSC) and include or even, and even, and also, not only...but also, let alone, and as well as. I argue that let alone and as well as are composed of a coordination component and an (overt or covert) FSO adjoined to the left-hand coordinate. This analysis, taken together with Karttunen (1973)'s analysis of presupposition projection in disjunction, accounts for the fact that the existential presupposition of even does not project in an or even sentence, but it does in a let alone sentence. It is further shown that Focus Sensitive Coordination has a restricted distribution relative to ordinary coordination. In particular, FSC is generally possible only with propositional coordinates or coordinates that can be derived from propositional coordinates by way one of the kinds of ellipsis that can target coordination. Apparently smaller coordinates are subject to a range of prohibitions on remnants for gapping. This can be accounted for by a particular lexical entry for the FSOs and a prohibition against movement of the FSOs. Furthermore, a restriction on coordinations containing even adjoined to a noun phrase can be accounted for if we treat the resulting phrase as a generalized quantifier. Evidence from FSC also provides a new argument in favor of a treatment of even as being ambiguous between ordinary even and an NPI even (Rooth 1985).
(cont.) It is shown that an alternative treatment which achieves the NPI-like meaning by QR of even above a downward-entailing operator (Karttunen and Peters 1979) cannot account for the FSC cases where even is found inside of a coordination. That theory incorrectly predicts that coordinations in which even is associated with the less likely disjunct should be as grammatical as those in which it is associated with the more likely one. Finally, I provide an account of a scope asymmetry between conjunction and disjunction in gapping and show that, together with a pragmatic entailment that arises from one of the presuppositions of even, this provides an account for the fact that the scope of disjunction in FSC is restricted in a way that the scope of ordinary disjunction is not.
by Sarah McNearney Hulsey.
Ph.D.
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14

Soza, Jessica. "Focus of Attention." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10784104.

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The MFA Acting and Performance Pedagogy program at CSULB has inspired me to investigate non-psychological based acting techniques. These newfound techniques, coupled with my classical singing background, led me to discover how to perform with joy and ease. Sanford Meisner acting technique exercises effectively redirected my attention away from myself and onto my scene partner in singing and acting. In performance and teaching, I am able to utilize the Meisner technique to uncover what inhibits the actor’s attention and subsequently redirect their focus to the present moment. Declan Donnellan’s The Actor and the Target and Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis, provide strategies to free the actor from inhibiting factors that prevent him/her from behaving naturally under imaginary circumstances. The use of all these concepts both in practice and performance allows actors to redirect their attention onto the imaginary circumstances and discover true freedom and joy in performance.

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15

Merriman, Carolyn S. "Multicultural Focus Groups." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 1999. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/8465.

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16

VanKrevelen, Steve. "Measuring regulatory focus." Thesis, Kansas State University, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/36210.

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Master of Science
Department of Psychological Sciences
Clive J. A. Fullagar
Regulatory focus has emerged as an important construct in the organizational sciences. In the past ten years more than 200 papers have been published applying regulatory focus to a wide variety of contexts ranging from marketing and persuasion to feedback and performance appraisal (Johnson et al., 2015). Despite the ubiquity of RFT’s application, only a few studies have targeted the psychometric properties of measures of regulatory focus; and the findings thus far suggest that improvement is needed. Haws (2010) evaluated five measures of regulatory focus and concluded that they differed substantially with respect to their theoretical content, and that most demonstrated unacceptably low internal consistency. Summerville & Roese (2008) drew similar conclusions in their evaluation of the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ) and the General Regulatory Focus Measure (GRFM) and added that the two scales might actually be measuring different underlying constructs. Given the inconsistencies and problems associated with existing measures of regulatory focus, the purpose of the current research is to extend the critical evaluation of existing measures of regulatory focus and then to propose the development of a new measure based on rigorous scale development practices like those set forth in Hinkin, (1995) and Crocker & Algina, (1986). A new scale of Regulatory Focus was developed designed to measure all aspects of RFT and to test whether a two-factor or a four-factor SEM model fit the data best. The final scale consisted of 14 items. CFAs were used to test whether a two-factor or a four-factor model of regulatory focus fit the data best. Results suggested that both models fit the data equally well. However, for parsimony reasons and given that one of the latent factors of the four-factor model contained only two items (making any estimates of internal consistency difficult) the two factor model of regulatory focus was retained as the preferred model.
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17

D'Ely, Raquel Carolina Souza Ferraz. "Focus on interaction." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFSC, 2013. https://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/106211.

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Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 1983.
Made available in DSpace on 2013-12-05T19:41:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 321746.pdf: 10967431 bytes, checksum: ba3158d220fc8210f3f91d70ed83f655 (MD5)
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18

Fiedler, Ines. "Focus expressions in Foodo." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1942/.

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This paper aims at presenting different ways of expressing focus in Foodo, a Guang language. We can differentiate between marked and unmarked focus strategies. The marked focus expressions are first syntactically characterized: the focused constituent is in sentence-initial position and is second always marked obligatorily by a focus marker, which is nɩ for non-subjects and N for subjects. Complementary to these structures, Foodo knows an elliptic form consisting of the focused constituent and a predication marker gɛ́. It will be shown that the two focus markers can be analyzed as having developed out of the homophone conjunction nɩ and that the constraints on the use of the focus markers can be best explained by this fact.
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19

Språng, Joakim, and Jessika Troedsson. "Behov i fokus vid oväntad död - Needs in focus facing unexpected death." Thesis, Kristianstad University College, Department of Health Sciences, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hkr:diva-4287.

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Bakgrund Oväntad död är en traumatisk upplevelse för

närstående, kris och sorg i någon form är ofrånkomligt i

samband med död och saknad. Vårdpersonal står inför en svår

utmaning i omvårdnaden för att ge ett kompetent

omhändertagande. Det korta mötet mellan vårdpersonal och

närstående har visat sig vara av betydelse. Syfte Syftet med

litteraturstudien var att belysa närståendes behov och

vårdpersonals uppfattningar om närståendes behov i samband

med en oväntad död. Metod Metoden var en litteraturstudie där

det ingick både kvalitativa och kvantitativa artiklar. Resultat

Tre kategorier bildades; behov av information, behov av

emotionellt stöd samt behov av att ta avsked. Kategorin behov

av att närvara återfanns endast under vårdpersonals

uppfattningar. Diskussion Vårdpersonal och närstående har

liknande uppfattningar kring behov i samband med oväntad

död. Hur dessa behov tillgodoses på bästa sätt är individuellt

och behoven är inte tillfredställda i alla avseenden. Slutsats

För att på bästa sätt utveckla ett direktiv som ser till att ett

kompetent omhändertagande ges till närstående krävs ett

gemensamt arbete mellan vårdpersonal och närstående.

Background Unexpected death is a traumatic experience for

those closely related. In times of death and in sense of loss,

crisis and grief is inevitable. Nursing staff are challenged with

how to deliver professional support. The brief encounter

between nursing staff and those closely related has been shown

to be of great importance. Aim The aim of this literature

review was to illuminate the needs of those closely related and

the nursing staff´s understanding of their need in connection to

unexpected death. Method The method used was a literature

review including both qualitative and quantitative articles.

Results Three categories were produced; need for information,

need for emotional support and need of saying goodbye. The

category need of being present where only found under nursing

staff´s understanding. Discussion The study showed that

nursing staff and those closely related both had similar

understandings of the needs that arose in connection with

unexpected deaths. How these needs are best fulfilled is

individual and not always satisfied. Conclusion A mutual

effort between nursing staff and those closely related is needed

in order to develop professional care.

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20

Karvovskaya, Lena, Vadim Kimmelman, Christine Tanja Röhr, Pepi Stavropoulou, Elena Titov, and Putten Saskia van. "Information structure : empirical perspectives on theory." Universität Potsdam, 2013. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2013/6480/.

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The papers collected in this volume were presented at a Graduate/Postgraduate Student Conference with the title Information Structure: Empirical Perspectives on Theory held on December 2 and 3, 2011 at Potsdam-Griebnitzsee. The main goal of the conference was to connect young researchers working on information structure (IS) related topics and to discuss various IS categories such as givenness, focus, topic, and contrast. The aim of the conference was to find at least partial answers to the following questions: What IS categories are necessary? Are they gradient/continuous? How can one deal with optionality or redundancy? How are IS categories encoded grammatically? How do different empirical methods contribute to distinguishing between the influence of different IS categories on language comprehension and production? To answer these questions, a range of languages (Avatime, Chinese, German, Ishkashimi, Modern Greek, Old Saxon, Russian, Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands) and a range of phenomena from phonology, semantics, and syntax were investigated. The presented theories and data were based on different kinds of linguistic evidence: syntactic and semantic fieldwork, corpus studies, and phonological experiments. The six papers presented in this volume discuss a variety of IS categories, such as emphasis and contrast (Stavropoulous, Titov), association with focus and topics (van Putten, Karvovskaya), and givenness and backgrounding (Kimmelmann, Röhr).
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21

Jannedy, Stefanie. "Prosodic focus in Vietnamese." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1947/.

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This paper reports on pilot work on the expression of Information Structure in Vietnamese and argues that Focus in Vietnamese is exclusively expressed prosodically: there are no specific focus markers, and the language uses phonology to express intonational emphasis in similar ways to languages like English or German. The exploratory data indicates that (i) focus is prosodically expressed while word order remains constant, (ii) listeners show good recoverability of the intended focus structure, and (iii) that there is a trading relationship between several phonetic parameters (duration, f0, amplitude) involved to signal prosodic (acoustic) emphasis.
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22

Renans, Agata, Malte Zimmermann, and Markus Greif. "Questionnaire on focus semantics." Universität Potsdam, 2010. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2010/3682/.

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This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006).
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23

Arregui-Urbina, Karlos 1971. "Focus on Basque movements." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8159.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-227).
This thesis can be summarized in the following two objectives: (i) to develop a new version of the Nuclear Stress Rule (NSR) which overcomes certain problems found with previous versions, and (ii) to explain the so-called preverbal focus position in Basque in terms of the new NSR and prosodic principles imposed on focused phrases. With respect to the NSR, I argue that certain generalizations about stress above the word level can be reduced to two basic syntactic properties of phrases: headedness and branchingness. The proposal is based on certain crucial insights found in previous work on the topic (Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff 1956, Chomsky and Halle 1968, Liberman and Prince 1977, Halle and Vergnaud 1987, Cinque 1993, Zubizarreta 1998). The work reported in this thesis puts these insights together, resulting in a new version of the NSR, within the formalism of the metrical grid, which makes explicit reference to syntactic structure. With respect to the preverbal focus position in Basque, I argue, contra much previous work on the topic, that it is not a syntactically defined position. Rather, it is to be explained in terms of certain prosodic conditions imposed on focused phrases. More specifically, focused phrases need to have primary stress in the sentence.
(cont. ) The analysis is based on insights about the relation between syntax and discourse found in Cinque 1993, Zubizarreta 1998 and Reinhart 1995. The basic idea is that, given certain indepedently motivated hypotheses about Basque syntax, the NSR proposed in this thesis predicts that, in many cases, sentence stress is on the preverbal constituent. Since focused phrases need to have sentence stress, it follows that they must be in the preverbal position. However, in certain cases, the analysis correctly predicts that the focused phrase is not the one preceding the verb, but one containing the verb. I argue that this provides further evidence in favor of this analysis, and against analyses in which the preverbal focus position is defined syntactlically.
by Karlos Arregui-Urbina.
Ph.D.
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24

Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka. "Movement out of focus." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/93027.

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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-200).
This dissertation investigates the consequences of overt and covert movement on association with focus. The interpretation of focus-sensitive operators such as only and even depends on the presence of a focused constituent in their scope. I document the complex conditions under which operators are able to associate with a focused constituent which has moved out of their scope. In particular, I concentrate on the ability of English even but not only to associate "backwards" in this configuration. I propose a theory based on the Copy Theory of movement which predicts the attested patterns of backwards association. When an operator gives the appearance of associating backwards, it is in fact associating with focus in the lower copy of the movement chain, within its scope. This is possible with even but not only due to independent differences in their compositional semantics: only uses focus alternatives to compute new truth conditions, whereas even uses the alternatives to introduce a presupposition without modifying the truth conditions. I furthermore argue that neither syntactic reconstruction nor covert movement of even (the scope theory) are adequate as a general solution to the problem of backwards association. This analysis supports a view where focus is represented in the narrow syntax and then interpreted at the interfaces. The analysis is built upon a general framework for focus interpretation based on Kratzer (1991) which I apply to structures involving copy chains, combined with new facts regarding the projection behavior of the scalar inference of even. After presenting my proposal, I discuss its implications for the internal structure of DPs and show that it offers a new structural diagnostic for the derivational path of movement. Moreover, the inbty of scope reconstruction to feed focus association in English motivates a new approach to syntactic reconstruction. The proposal developed here explains a range constraints on patterns of focus association, and more generally contributes to our understanding of the interaction of syntactic operations such as movement with the semantic and information-structural notion of focus.
by Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine.
Ph. D.
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25

Bader, Christopher (Christopher Banks) 1954. "Givenness, focus, and prosody." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8199.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2001.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-171).
In this dissertation, I investigate the grammatical effects of focus and the inseparable phenomenon of givenness. As Schwarzschild (1999) has proposed, a proper understanding of givenness eliminates the need for a separate concept of focus, which is notoriously hard to define, either semantically, syntactically, or phonologically. I propose a semantic constraint, the Givenness Interpretation Principle based on Rooth's (1992) Focus Interpretation Principle, that accounts, in part, for the semantic effects of givenness and focus. I also propose a phonological constraint, *GIVEN, that accounts for the prosodic effects of givenness and focus in Chichewa, Japanese, Hungarian, and Italian. Givenness and focus are represented in the syntax by a functional head G which takes a given constituent in its complement and a focussed constituent in its specifier. This is demonstrably the correct representation in Hungarian, and I propose that this is the representation of givenness and focus in Universal Grammar. A phrase may raise out of the complement of G to its specifier, either overtly as in Hungarian, or covertly at LF.
(cont.) Givenness has demonstrable phonological effects that, as I show, cannot be ascribed to a FOcus constraint (Truckenbrodt 1995) requiring focussed constituents to be the most prominent in their domains of focus. The constraint *GIVEN bars given constituents from being metrically prominent. Since the effects of FOcus and *GIVEN are sometimes difficult to tease apart, I present an in-depth study of the phrasal phonology of Italian, showing how phonological and intonational phrases are formed in Italian, with the aid of the segmental phenomena of raddoppiamento sintattico and gorgia toscana. Once the constraints governing these phenomena are established, I present a rigorous, controlled comparison of the effects of *GIVEN and FOcus in Italian, showing that it is *GIVEN, not FOCUS, that gives the correct results.
by Christopher Bader.
Ph.D.
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26

Wells, W. H. G. "Focus in spoken English." Thesis, University of York, 1988. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10783/.

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Tulchak, L. V., A. O. Kontsevoi, Л. В. Тульчак, and А. О. Концевой. "Focus on developing android." Thesis, Вінницький національний аграрний університет, 2015. http://ir.lib.vntu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/7676.

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Android is a mobile operating system (OS) based on the Linux kernel and currently developed by Google. Android is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers with specialized user interfaces for televisions (Android TV), cars (Android Auto) and wrist watches (Android Wear).
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28

Bondesson, Joakim, and Emelie Rindbro. "Students’ experiences in focus." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-32598.

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Föreliggande studie baseras på intervjuer med verksamma lärare för årskurs 4-6 i de samhällsorienterade ämnena. Syftet med studien har varit att undersöka vilka undervisningsstrategier lärare använder för att ta tillvara elevers erfarenheter samt vilka förekommande faktorer lärare upplever utgör hinder för att ta tillvara elevers erfarenheter.I studien intervjuades fyra olika lärare varpå intervjumaterialet sammanställdes och analyserades. Då två intervjuer liknade varandra valdes tre av intervjuerna ut att presenteras i studiens resultat. Intervjumodellen valdes utifrån Alvehus (2013) gällande olika intervjumodeller vilket ledde till att semistrukturerade intervjuer utfördes. Intervjuerna genomfördes på respektive lärares arbetsplats.Resultatet av studien visar att lärare som väljer tematiskt samt problembaserat arbetssätt i större utsträckning anser sig ta tillvara elevers erfarenheter i undervisningen. I enlighet med både Dewey och Vygotskijs teorier om att lärande sker i samspel med andra visar även resultatet att de lärare som bedriver den typen av undervisning också är de lärare som faktiskt planerar för och använder elevers erfarenheter i undervisningen. Dessutom visar resultaten att faktorer som lärarna upplever utgör hinder för tillvaratagandet av elevers erfarenheter främst utgörs av inre ramar så som tid, elevgruppens storlek samt alla elevers olika erfarenheter.
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D'Amico, Melanie Lynn. "Comparing focus on form instruction to focus on forms and focus on meaning instruction of the Spanish direct object clitic pronouns." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2006. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0014865.

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30

Dal, Farra Chiara <1991&gt. "Focalization matters. On focus typology, feature checking and the position(s) of focus." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/8141.

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The present dissertation explores the properties of focalization, considering some of the main unsolved problems concerning its theoretical account. The first problem regards the possibility of having a focus typology, namely the distinction of (at least) two types of focus and the description of their different realizations and properties. The second one concerns two distinct accounts which try to explain focus movement and its trigger: a feature-driven approach, which claims the necessity of checking a [+ focus] feature contra a non-feature driven approach, which states the importance of the prosodic relation (rather than the syntactic one) between focus and stress. Whether or not [+ focus] is an inherent and legitimate feature, and the possibility of having more than one feature, will be considered. The last problem I will take into account is about the movement of focused constituents. This is still a debated question in the literature: according to some authors there is movement to the left periphery, whereas others claim that focus may be in situ or that it can have two positions. Moreover, I will consider the position(s) of focus in the syntactic structure and I will try to explain how these data can account for some of the most problematic focused structures, such as parasitic gaps and negative words. Since these problems are strictly connected, they must be considered in order to solve this open issue.
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Hartmann, Katharina, and Malte Zimmermann. "Morphological focus marking in Gùrùntùm (West Chadic)." Universität Potsdam, 2006. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1952/.

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The paper presents an in-depth study of focus marking in Gùrùntùm, a West Chadic language spoken in Bauchi Province of Northern Nigeria. Focus in Gùrùntùm is marked morphologically by means of a focus marker a, which typically precedes the focus constituent. Even though the morphological focus-marking system of Gùrùntùm allows for a lot of fine-grained distinctions in information structure (IS) in principle, the language is not entirely free of focus ambiguities that arise as the result of conflicting IS- and syntactic requirements that govern the placement of focus markers. We show that morphological focus marking with a applies across different types of focus, such as newinformation, contrastive, selective and corrective focus, and that a does not have a second function as a perfectivity marker, as is assumed in the literature. In contrast, we show at the end of the paper that a can also function as a foregrounding device at the level of discourse structure.
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32

Gabelman, Richard A. "Sharpening the focus of leadership." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1986. http://www.tren.com.

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33

Dertinger, Thomas. "Two-Focus fluorescence correlation spectroscopy." Jülich : Forschungszentrum, Zentralbibliothek, 2007. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=016575922&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.

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34

Ingram, Joanne. "Focus, polarity and framing effects." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1446/.

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The experiments reported in this thesis examine a reader's ability to draw inferences about a situation from desires, emotion words and logically equivalent frames. Previous research has provided evidence that listeners (or readers) are able to make inferences about current or presupposed states from the speaker's choice of frame. That is, in experiments involving pronominal reference readers can infer that an expectation has not been reached from the use of a negative natural language quantifier (NLQ) (Moxey, 2006). In experiments on framing effects a listener is able to infer a previous volume of liquid in a glass from the way the glass is now described (Sher & McKenzie, 2006). The experiments reported here aim to take a closer look at how these inferences are made during reading. In the first two experimental chapters character desire and emotion words were used to promote references to the complement set without use of a negative NLQ. Where sentences such as 'The waitress was annoyed by the number of customers who left her a tip' were presented to participants a preference for the complement set was found in sentence continuation and eye-tracking experiments, but not with event related potentials. These results suggest that with such complex inferences to be made participants are able to hold a number of referents in mind during reading. The remainder of the experiments examine reader's interpretation of the logically equivalent frames half full and half empty. In eye-tracking and written experiments it was found that when a character desires a vessel to be full a statement of half full does not fulfil this desire. In contrast when a character desires a vessel to be empty a statement of half empty is satisfactory. It is possible that these results are due to markedness of the terms, where empty is considered marked and full unmarked (Greenberg, 1966). The final two experiments look at two sets of logically equivalent frames in neutral contexts and find that participants find it easier to read about situations which are more familiar or likely to occur. The likelihood of a situation is in turn related to polarity and frequency which is found to be connected to markedness. The thesis as a whole suggests that reader's inferences are affected by their pragmatic knowledge of situations. This is discussed in more detailed with respect to pronominal reference and logically equivalent frames.
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35

PASLARU, VIOREL. "ECOLOGICAL MECHANISMS IN PHILOSOPHICAL FOCUS." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1195862599.

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36

Cormack, Sophia Harriet. "Focus and discourse representation theory." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/19646.

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The thesis puts forward a psychologically plausible and computationally explicit theory of pronoun resolution, concentrating on semantic and focusing effects and their interaction. Hans Kamp's (1981) Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) was the first of a series of recent formal semantic theories able to describe semantic accessibility conditions on anaphora occurring outside the logical scope of a quantifier. Kamp's original aim was to capture the truth conditions and anaphoric constraints in so-called 'donkey sentences'. DRT also opened up the possibilities of inter-sentential anaphoric connections. Kamp claimed psychological plausibility for DRT. However, in allowing intersentential anaphora DRT permits too many possible anaphoric connections - for instance a discourse containing no triggers for semantic embedding results in a model where every noun phrase is accessible to every anaphor: (1) I picked up some meringues with the tongs. They were mildly singed but I put them on a plate and gave them to Lisa. They were still very hot. (*tongs) In text (1), DRT allows the final they to access the tongs, which I claim is psychologically implausible for two reasons: firstly because the preferred antecedent for they is the much more salient focused nominal the meringues. Since this choice is also contextually plausible it would block out any less preferred candidates for resolution. Secondly, I argue that the discourse referent for the tongs is in fact no longer available for reference: it has passed from the hearer's memory of the entities being discussed and is only retrievable using a full definite noun phrase.
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Primavera, Robert Badoiu. "SWEF - Social Web Focus Projektevaluierung." [S.l. : s.n.], 2005. http://www.bsz-bw.de/cgi-bin/xvms.cgi?SWB11759329.

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38

Meera, B. M. "Profound management focus - Mandatory necessity." School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/106401.

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Seamless information and their accessibility in different formats have created a turbulent atmosphere in the ever-changing library and information domain. A multitude of resources, such as information, human, financial and many more, and the need for their management, makes it imperative for advanced training in ‘Management’ as a discipline on a larger scale in LIS programs. In view of the changing paradigms of library and information organizations in the recent past, an attempt is made to frame appropriate course contents with management facets to be included in the 2 years integrated Master’s level programs in India.
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Akin, Faith W. "Panel Discussion: Vestibular Focus Discussion." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2009. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2447.

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Harley-McClaskey, Deborah. "Focus: Achieving Your Highest Priorities." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2007. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/4716.

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Gorman, C. Allen, and Reyes D. A. Chavez. "Full Range Focus: How Regulatory Focus Influences the Relationship Between Leader Behavior and Subordinate Outcomes." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2613.

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Excerpt: The current study explores these variables simultaneously to illustrate how both leader and follower characteristics influence organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB).
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42

Pertuz, Arroyo Said David. "Modeling and applications of the focus cue in conventional digital cameras." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/123829.

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El enfoque en cámaras digitales juega un papel fundamental tanto en la calidad de la imagen como en la percepción del entorno. Esta tesis estudia el enfoque en cámaras digitales convencionales, tales como cámaras de móviles, fotográficas, webcams y similares. Una revisión rigurosa de los conceptos teóricos detras del enfoque en cámaras convencionales muestra que, a pasar de su utilidad, el modelo clásico del thin lens presenta muchas limitaciones para aplicación en diferentes problemas relacionados con el foco. En esta tesis, el focus profile es propuesto como una alternativa a conceptos clásicos como la profundidad de campo. Los nuevos conceptos introducidos en esta tesis son aplicados a diferentes problemas relacionados con el foco, tales como la adquisición eficiente de imágenes, estimación de profundidad, integración de elementos perceptuales y fusión de imágenes. Los resultados experimentales muestran la aplicación exitosa de los modelos propuestos.
The focus of digital cameras plays a fundamental role in both the quality of the acquired images and the perception of the imaged scene. This thesis studies the focus cue in conventional cameras with focus control, such as cellphone cameras, photography cameras, webcams and the like. A deep review of the theoretical concepts behind focus in conventional cameras reveals that, despite its usefulness, the widely known thin lens model has several limitations for solving different focus-related problems in computer vision. In order to overcome these limitations, the focus profile model is introduced as an alternative to classic concepts, such as the near and far limits of the depth-of-field. The new concepts introduced in this dissertation are exploited for solving diverse focus-related problems, such as efficient image capture, depth estimation, visual cue integration and image fusion. The results obtained through an exhaustive experimental validation demonstrate the applicability of the proposed models.
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Hardy, Richard Lee. "The plasma focus as a thruster." Thesis, Texas A&M University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/1534.

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The need for low propellant weight, high efficiency propulsion systems is a glaring need for various space missions. This thesis presents the thrust modeling of the Dense Plasma Focus plasma motion phases. It also contrasts some of the engineering tradeoffs between the existing coaxial plasma thrusters and the Dense Plasma Focus. Modeling the thrust generated by the DPF started with seeing how far the working models for the MPD would take the DPF. The effect of pulsed compared to quasi-steady state operation is computed. There is no known experimental data regarding thrust measurements for any DPF, so the thrust is analytically calculated using experimental data for the TAMU DPF. The calculated thrust is slightly higher than the thrust predicted by the models. The developed model shows that the force generated by the DPF will produce a thrust roughly three times the thrust for the MPD for similar input currents and electrode geometry. For the TAMUDPF to compete with the MPD as a thruster, it will need to be able to fire roughly 75 more times a second than the MPD.
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44

Renans, Agata, Malte Zimmermann, and Markus Greif. "Questionnaire on focus semantics. - 2nd edition." Universität Potsdam, 2011. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2011/5035/.

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This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006).
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Karagjosova, Elena. "Correction and acceptance by contrastive focus." Universität Potsdam, 2006. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2006/1025/.

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An account is presented of the focus properties, common ground effect and dialogue behaviour of the accented German discourse marker "doch" and the accented sentence negation "nicht".
It is argued that "doch" and "nicht" evoke as a focus alternative the logical complement of the proposition expressed by the sentence in which they occur, and that an analysis in terms of contrastive focus accounts for their effect on the common ground and their function in dialogue.
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46

Littell, Patrick William. "Focus, predication, and polarity in Kwak'wala." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/57609.

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In this dissertation, I investigate the formal semantics and pragmatics of alternative focus in Kwak'wala, a critically endangered Northern Wakashan language of British Columbia, Canada. I show that several notable phenomena and outstanding mysteries of Kwak'wala grammar involve focus expression, and by making their discourse contexts explicit we can observe how changes in discourse-relevant alternatives correspond to changes in morphosyntactic expression. These observations invite reappraisals of classic claims about Kwak'wala and Wakashan grammar, such as the claims that Kwak'wala lacks a noun/verb/adjective distinction (Boas et al., 1947, p. 280) and also lacks a copula (Boas et al., 1947, p. 205). Instead, I argue that Kwak'wala does indeed have a noun/verb/adjective distinction as well as equative (but not predicative) copulas, and show that these are tied up closely with the expression of focus. I argue, contra Koch's (2008) proposal for Nɬeʔkepmxcín focus, that Kwak'wala focus is not based on alignment to the edges of prosodic phrases, but based on the use of marked predication structures in which speakers choose non-optimal predicates like NPs and DPs over unmarked predicates like VPs. I also examine Kwak'wala additive and exclusive focus operators, and in particular investigate their distinctive association patterns, in which different exclusive operators associate with different types of “focus phrase” (Drubig 1994), while additive operators exhibit free association. I propose a hybrid focus model, a combination of the models in Wold (1996), Roberts (1996/2012) and Krifka (2006), among others, in which Kwak'wala focus operators associate with focus phrases, but derive their specific alternatives indirectly, through constraints on a contextual “question under discussion” variable. Finally, I examine the ubiquitous “discourse” enclitic =ʔm, which I propose expresses a discourse-relevant bipolar (e.g., {P,¬P}) contrast, and thereby distinguishes bipolar from monopolar (e.g., {P}) questions and answers (cf. Krifka 2013). The appearance of =ʔm in all additive and exclusive sentences provides morphological evidence that such sentences respond to complex alternative sets consisting of both constituent-type and polar-type contrasts (Krifka 1998, Rullmann 2003).
Arts, Faculty of
Linguistics, Department of
Graduate
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47

Schwartz, Rebecca A. "Conversational self focus in youths' friendships." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/4536.

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Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006.
The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (June 27, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.
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Winkler, Susanne. "Ellipsis and focus in generative grammar." Berlin New York Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2704341&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.

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49

Green, Melanie Jane. "Focus and copular constructions in Hausa." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.265837.

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This thesis examines the syntax of Focus constructions in Rausa within a Principles and ParameterslMinimalist framework. An analysis is presented to account for the properties of Focus-fronting constructions in Rausa as well as of 'copular' constructions which are also shown to have Focus properties. It is argued that the 'copula' found in both Focusfronting and 'copular' constructions in Rausa is not a verbal or inflectional element as argued by McConvell (1973) and Tuller (1986a) respectively, but instead the spellout of a functional category F(ocus) in the sense of Brody (1990). Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the main syntactic characteristics of Rausa, including word order, inflectional properties and case, and data surrounding Focus and related constructions. Chapter 2 presents a general introduction to the phenomenon of Focus, including typological and comparative discussion to show the various crosslinguistic syntactic manifestations of Focus. The theoretical framework is established and and pre-Minimalist literature surrounding Focus is reviewed. Chapter 3 presents the analysis, which argues for a Focus Phrase (FP) structure for Focus-fronting constructions in Rausa and discusses the advantages ofthis approach on the basis of empirical and theoretical considerations. In chapter 4 the analysis is extended to 'copular' constructions in Rausa; these apparently unrelated constructions are shown to have Focus properties and the FP analysis is argued to account for this fact in a straightforward and principled manner. Chapter 5 considers the FP analysis from a cross-linguistic perspective to see how it might account for Focus and copular constructions in a range of languages related to Rausa, and it is shown that although some languages present challenging cases for an FP analysis, there is considerable support for an approach of this nature.
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Law, Yan Kei Ann. "Sentence-final focus particles in Cantonese." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.408742.

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This thesis aims at gaining a better understanding of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of Cantonese sentence-final particles and, in particular, two focus particles zaa3 ('only') and tim} ('also'). Despite their importance in the language, these particles have not been well studied. Research on the two sentence-final focus particles will also contribute to the area of focus which has attracted much attention in recent years. A two-position account for the syntax of all sentence-final particles occurring in the CP domain couched in the minimalist framework (Chomsky 1995) is proposed to explain observations on their syntactic distributions, scopal properties and interactions with other elements such as questions and quantifiers. Focus particles, zaa3 ('only') and tim} ('also'), and the particle laa3 ('inchoative') occur in the lower position (SFP2), immediately under the higher topic, while other particles that encode speech acts, speaker-oriented modality and epistemic knowledge are generated in the higher position (SFP1) in the Force field (Rizzi 1997). Following Rooth (1985, 1992), I suggest that the sentence-final particles zaa3 ('only') and tim} ('also') are focus operators that associate with identificational focus (E. Kiss 1998, Ballantyne Cohan 2000). A distinction between information focus and identificational focus is drawn and three identificational focus-marking devices in Cantonese are discussed, namely contrastive stress, Right Dislocation and the cleft hai {'be')-construction. In addition to their respective restrictive and additive semantics, the sentence-final particles also encode procedural information (Blakemore 1987, 2000, 2002) that constrains inferential computations of conceptual representations. It is shown that scalar usage is a reflection of their procedural information encoded, and conditions licensing their usage are also discussed.
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