Research Infinity - All Articles

Humanities and Arts

Not One Space for Y

I see Y reading the comments her teacher left on her paper. She uses Google Translate to add perfectly spelled words clarifying a detail about her grandmother’s aspiration to become literate. At least this is how I imagine Y to have prepared her college essay. I have not met Y. But I am certain that she never expected her writing to be the focus of a teachers’ planning meeting.
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

Are You There?

With or without cameras on, my students always feel out of reach to me. There is a screen--and a few boroughs, in some cases even states or countries--between us. I can’t tell how they’re feeling; I can’t watch their faces or their hands as they work on a piece for our writing class. The whole enterprise has started to feel epistolary. I am never sure if my recipient is going ...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

Ordinal numbers: Not superlatives, but modifiers of superlatives

The few existing accounts of the semantics of ordinal numbers attribute to them all or almost all of the semantic properties of superlatives. This work discusses a construction problematic for existing theories of ordinals: the ordinal superlative construction (e.g. Joel climbed the third highest mountain). Existing theories give ordinals and superlatives such similar semantics that they s...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

A higher-order plurality solution to Xiang's (2021) puzzle

Xiang (2021) notes the following puzzle: plural wh-questions involving certain collective predicates are predicted to carry a uniqueness presupposition (Dayal 1996), yet intuitively they don’t (cf. Gentile & Schwarz 2020). She proposes that such questions have ‘higher-order readings’ (Spector 2007, 2008), and crucially that they have answers naming boolean conjunctions. I show that f...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

Non-maximality and vagueness: Revisiting the plural Sorites paradox

This paper is an attempt at a synthesis of two superficially conflicting approaches to non-maximality: the issue-based approach (Malamud 2012, Križ 2015, Križ & Spector 2021 a.o.), which generates clear-cut truth conditions once the issue parameter has been fixed, and the strict/tolerant approach (Burnett 2017 a.o.), on which non-maximal construals involve vagueness. I argue that there a...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

Which Presuppositions are Subject to Contextual Felicity Constraints?

Some sentences with presupposition triggers can be felicitously uttered when their presuppositions are not entailed by the context, whereas others are infelicitous in such environments, a phenomenon known as Missing Accommodation / Informative Presupposition or varying Contextual Felicity Constraints (CFCs). Despite an abundance of recent quantitative work on presuppositions, this aspect o...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

Referential effects on verb agreement: Finnish numeral-noun constructions

This paper explores seemingly puzzling subject-verb agreement patterns with Finnish numeral noun constructions (NNCs, e.g. three birds) in subject position, which can occur with singular or plural verbs. This alternation is not predicted by current theories. Building on properties of Finnish independent of NNCs, I argue that the Finnish data can be reconciled with prior analyses if we anal...
Posted 1 week ago

Biomedical

Factors Associated with Progression to Preeclampsia with Severe Features in Pregnancies Complicated by Mild Hypertensive Disorders

In this retrospective cohort study, we aimed to investigate the variables associated with progression to preeclampsia with severe features in parturients already diagnosed with mild hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. The study was conducted in a single university-affiliated medical center between 2018 and 2020. All women admitted due to hypertensive disorders were included. Data collecte...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

The Then and There

"The Then and There" is a dialogue between artist Flaka Haliti and architect Markus Miessen, published in MaHKUscript. Journal of Fine Art Research in 2016. The conversation delves into Haliti's artistic practice, exploring themes of political engagement, personal identity, and the influence of her Kosovar background on her work. Haliti emphasizes her approach of responding to provocations rather ...
Posted 1 week ago

Humanities and Arts

Conversation on Futurability

"Conversation on Futurability" is an interview between Geert Lovink and Franco Berardi, published in MaHKUscript. Journal of Fine Art Research in 2019. In this dialogue, Lovink and Berardi explore the concept of "futurability," delving into the disappearance of the future in contemporary society. They discuss the impact of technological acceleration on human perception of time, the distinction bet...
Posted 1 week ago