With the proliferation of networked electronic communication came daunting capabilities to collect, process, combine and store data, resulting in hitherto unseen transformational pressure on the concepts of trust, security and privacy as we know them. The Future Internet will bring about a world where real life will integrate physical and digital life. Technology development for data linking and mining, together with unseen data collection, will lead to unwarranted access to personal data, and hence, privacy intrusion. Trust and identity lie at (...) the basis of many human interactions and transactions, and societies have developed legitimate concern for privacy being essential for freedom and creativity. The burgeoning development of the Information Society, particularly during the past fifteen years, transcended the societal readiness to respond to the transformational change evoked by ICT. We have reached the eleventh hour for the preservation of trust and privacy as elements that can be transposed into our digital future. Europe has been at the forefront in recognizing the importance of privacy protection in relation to digital data, witness the advanced European legislation in this domain. The European Commission recognizes that appropriate measures need to combine technology development with legal means, user awareness and tools supporting data controllers to comply with law in an accountable and transparent way, and that empower users with a controlling stake in managing their personal data. Activities are underway at many levels. European RTD programmes play their role in supporting research in trustworthy ICT, privacy enhancing technologies, privacy-by-design in service layers as well as in networks, enabling technologies such as cryptography, and in generalized frameworks for trust and privacy-protective identity management. (shrink)

Elicitation materials like language portraits are useful to investigate people’s perceptions about the languages that they know. This study uses portraits to analyse the underlying conceptualisations people exhibit when reflecting on their language repertoires. Conceptualisations as manifestations of cultural cognition are the purview of cognitive sociolinguistics. The present study advances portrait methodology as it analyses data from structured language portraits of 105 South African youth as a linguistic corpus from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. The approach enables the uncovering of (...) (a) prominent underlying conceptualisations of African language(s) and the body, and (b) the differences and similarities of these conceptualisations vis-à-vis previous cognitive (socio)linguistic studies of embodied language experiences. In our analysis, African home languages emerged both as ‘languages of the heart’ linked to cultural identity and as ‘languages of the head’ linked to cognitive strength and control. Moreover, the notion of ‘degrees of proficiency’ or ‘magnitude’ of language knowledge emerged more prominently than in previous studies of embodied language experience. (shrink)

In this paper we study language use and language organisation by making use of Lewisean signalling games. Standard game theoretical approaches are contrasted with evolutionary ones to analyze conventional meaning and conversational interpretation strategies. It is argued that analyzing successful communication in terms of standard game theory requires agents to be very rational and fully informed. The main goal of the paper is to show that in terms of evolutionary game theory we can motivate the emergence and self-sustaining force of (...) (i) conventional meaning and (ii) some conversational interpretation strategies in terms of weaker and, perhaps, more plausible assumptions. (shrink)

In Codex Ambrosianus of the Syro-Hexapla, marginal readings related to the headings of some of the Psalms occur. The importance of these variants for the history of the Greek and Syriac Psalm headings warrants further discussion. To this end, this paper undertakes a comparative study of the marginal notes that accompany the headings of the Psalms in the Syro-Hexapla. These notes do not occur for all headings and only rarely do variants from all three occur. These variants are compared to (...) the readings of the headings of the Septuagint and the Syro-Hexapla. Three matters are investigated in this paper, namely the rendering of the technical term לַמְנַצֵּ֥חַ in the Three, references to the name of David and some instances where the LXX has a substantial plus in comparison to the Masoretic Text, such as in Psalms 98, 104, 43 and 56. Research to date demonstrates that Field did not use these notes in Codex Ambrosianus to their full extent. As far as the three elements under investigation are concerned, this paper demonstrates that the Three frequently differ from the LXX in their rendering of certain aspects of the headings. In some instances, the Three reflect a rendering much closer to the Hebrew. In others, they contain a rendering that is dependent on the Hebrew, but which displays a lack of understanding of especially some of the technical terms in the Hebrew.Contribution: The research shed new light on the variants recorded in the margin of Codex Ambrosianus and their value for the text-critical study of the headings in the Psalms in the MT and the Septuagint. Textual Criticism is one of the core disciplines for the study of the text of the Hebrew Bible and its translation and transmission in different ancient languages. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 1 Seiten: 207-222.

The Bible Society of South Africa is currently in the process of publishing a new Afrikaans translation of the Bible. In its introduction, the 1983 translation refers to earlier Hebrew manuscripts used but not to the early translations, such as the Septuagint or Vulgate. The 2020 translation uses the ancient versions but tries to remain as faithful as possible to the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. When comparing instances where the 2020 translation refers to the ancient versions, it becomes clear that the (...) two earlier Afrikaans translations used them as well, 1983 more than 1933/53. The use of the Septuagint in these three translations is elucidated by a number of examples from the books of Ezekiel and 1 Samuel. All three Afrikaans translations of the Old Testament made use of the ancient versions in some instances where the Masoretic Text presented serious problems. This was done to a lesser extent in the 1933/53 translation. This translation does not discuss the issue in its introduction and contains no notes referring to the practice. The 1983 translation used the Septuagint and the other versions more than the earlier translations did, and has notes about its preferences in some, but not all, instances. The 2020 translation will contain notes in all instances where it deviates from the MT, and even in some instances where it translated the MT, but where the Septuagint or other ancient versions have important variant readings.Contribution: The 1933/53, 1983 and 2020 Afrikaans translations of the Bible used the Septuagint to solve some text-critical issues in the Masoretic Text. The 1983 translation indicates this with footnotes in some instances and the 2020 translation in all instances. Bible translation is related to the core focus of HTS. (shrink)

When the language-dialect dichotomy first emerged in the early modern period, several scholars devised terminological alternatives, particularly for the subordinate lower half of the dichotomy. This article examines a series of terminological alternatives in their social and linguistic contexts, considering terms from the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic linguistic zones. Our case studies suggest that there were two main reasons for coining neologisms, or for devising new meanings for existing words. Some scholars sought terms with stronger pejorative connotations, others acted from (...) language purism. Pejorative neologisms generally proved unsuccessful, but several purist neologisms endured. (shrink)

In The Entangled Brain, Pessoa criticizes standard approaches in cognitive neuroscience in which the brain is seen as a functionally decomposable, modular system with causal operations built up hierarchically. Instead, he advocates for an emergentist perspective whereby dynamic brain networks are associated, not with traditional psychological categories, but with behavioral functions characterized in evolutionary terms. Here, we raise a number of concerns with such a radical approach. We ultimately believe that while much revision to cognitive neuroscience is welcome and needed, (...) Pessoa’s more radical proposals may be counterproductive. (shrink)

Why do we ask questions? Because we want tohave some information. But why this particular kind ofinformation? Because only information of this particularkind is helpful to resolve the decision problemthat the agent faces. In this paper I argue thatquestions are asked because their answers help toresolve the questioner's decision problem, and that thisassumption helps us to interpret interrogativesentences. Interrogative sentences are claimed to have asemantically underspecified meaning and thisunderspecification is resolved by means of the decisionproblem.

In this paper I will discuss why (un) marked expressionstypically get an (un)marked interpretation: Horn''sdivision of pragmatic labor. It is argued that it is aconventional fact that we use language this way.This convention will be explained in terms ofthe equilibria of signalling games introduced byLewis (1969), but now in an evolutionary setting. Iwill also relate this signalling game analysis withParikh''s (1991, 2000, 2001) game-theoretical analysis ofsuccessful communication, which in turn is compared withBlutner''s: 2000) bi-directional optimality theory.

The paper deals with credible and relevantinformation flow in dialogs: How useful is it for areceiver to get some information, how useful is it fora sender to give this information, and how much credibleinformation can we expect to flow between sender andreceiver? What is the relation between semantics andpragmatics? These Gricean questions will be addressedfrom a decision and game-theoretical point of view.

The paper deals with credible and relevantinformation flow in dialogs: How useful is it for areceiver to get some information, how useful is it fora sender to give this information, and how much credibleinformation can we expect to flow between sender andreceiver? What is the relation between semantics andpragmatics? These Gricean questions will be addressedfrom a decision and game-theoretical point of view.

In this paper I argue that anaphoric pronouns should always be interpreted exhaustively. I propose that pronouns are either used referentially and refer to the speaker's referents of their antecedent indefinites, or descriptively and go proxy for the description recoverable from its antecedent clause. I show how this view can be implemented within a dynamic semantics, and how it can account for various examples that seemed to be problematic for the view that for all unbound pronouns there always should be (...) a notion of exhaustivity/uniqueness involved. The uniqueness assumption for the use of singular pronouns is also shown to be importantto explain what the discourse referents used in dynamic semantics represent. (shrink)

Recently, natural language pragmatics started to make use of decision-, game-, and information theoretical tools to determine the usefulness of questions and assertions in a quantitative way. In the first part of this paper several of these notions are related with each other. It is shown that under particular natural assumptions the utility of questions and answers reduces to their informativity, and that the ordering relation induced by utility sometimes even reduces to the logical relation of entailment. The second part (...) of the paper shows how different proposals (using either protocols or likelihood functions) to measure the relevance/utility of non-partitional questions come down to the same thing. (shrink)

The original essays in this volume present new research on unstructured theories of content, which have traditionally played a central role in linguistics and philosophy of language. The volume explores a wide range of themes related to unstructured content, including both the continued controversy over whether unstructured theories individuate contents too coarsely and various applications of unstructured theories to topics like rationality, epistemic commitment, semantic expressivism, relevance, and propositional attitude ascriptions. It contains contributions from different theoretical perspectives, including both those (...) sympathetic to unstructured theories of content and those who are skeptical, as well as from different methodological backgrounds, with philosophy, logic, and linguistics all represented. With contributions from leading scholars in philosophy and linguistics, this volume will be of interest to anyone working in logic, metaphysics, or the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Drawing on letters, orations and disputations, this book argues that during the seventeenth century, the Amsterdam Athenaeum, despite the revolutionary debates of the time, and despite the intellectual liberalism characteristic of Amsterdam, remained traditional in its teaching.