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Teletraffic engineering/What is the High loss calculation

tephen Kyalo Musango Makonge

Module 7 of the Teletraffic Textbook

What is the high loss and how can it be calculated (High loss calculation)?

Introduction
High loss systems is a common phenomenon in many telecommunications systems and therefore the knowledge of what it is, how it can be determined, and how it can be alleviated is of importance to any telecommunications service provider. This discussion is aimed at providing an understanding the high-loss system and its calculation. Emphasis has been made to generalize the theory based on a switching system that suffers a high loss situation generated by a ‘peculiar’ but common subscriber calling phenomenon. Traditional erlang lost calculations do not take into considerations the abnormal behavior that occurs in high loss systems and therefore an alternative approach must be sought.

High loss system
A high loss system is characterized by a considerable increase in offered traffic above the system capacity and resultant congestion which may result to overload. This is a phenomenon that occurs when callers reattempt calls when faced with congestion. Congestion leads to further congestion [1]. The offered traffic ceases to follow a poissonian arrival process and becomes a function of blocking. This avalanche like effect leads to an overload which may in turn go to the extent of bringing down the system leading to zero carried traffic. As this happens, the size of offered traffic continues to grow immensely.

Consider an example when a telecommunications service company announces a very attractive tariff promotion that has a stated time of offer. Subscribers will want to take advantage of the promotion and if the company did not anticipate the increase in traffic or considered classical methods in forecasting traffic, will suffer congestion. Circuits will all get occupied and subscribers encountering blocked calls will redial one or more times. Many events that can lead a switching system going to a high-loss situation such as:

·	Failure of a load sharing component/s leading to reduced capacity under normal traffic conditions.

·	Failure of a link or a switching system leading to callers attempting to call their intended calls at about the same time.

·	Unplanned introduction of a service that attracts a sudden or upswing demand.

Users may affect the system in two kinds of behavior: Impatience and reattempts [2].

Impatience
Impatience can be placed in two kinds which are: premature dialing and premature hanging up[2].

Premature dialing
Premature dialing comes in to play when the traffic load is high an the normal call setup times are not as fast. For instance, when a caller has been used to an instant dial tone goes off-hook and start dialing before the dial tone arrives, he is unaware that the digits recognized are from when the dial tone arrived. The switch will get only part of the digits dialed[2]. The subscriber will interpret this as a failed attempt and redial, but the switch has circuits and processor resources occupied.

Premature hang-up
The subscriber may go on-hook while his call is still being processed. But because of impatience hangs up. Use of tones to signal the user that connection is in progress can help to clear such a situation [2].

Reattempts
Erlang traffic calculations make assumptions about call arrival process which only apply in a balanced traffic scenario and where the user has patience. They assume that a queuing model where the caller has indefinite patience. They assume that the calls follow a poisonnian distribution process and calls encountering congestion exit from the system. They do not sufficiently take into consideration the abnormal process introduced about a high-loss system. In a high loss system, offered traffic is no longer a function of poissonian demand but a function of blocking[2].

A brief definition of terminology used in reattempts is necessary to understanding the analysis of a high loss system. Below are the main significant ones [2]:

Call demand: This is an intention or desire to make a call and results in a call attempt.

Call attempt: The operation of attempting to make a connection to the intended party in a communication.

Fresh call: The initial or first call attempt. Any other call attempt after this is a reattempt.

Coefficient of call repetition β: The average number of repeated calls after the call intention.

Efficiency rate r: a ratio of the number of successful call attempts to the number of call attempts.

Rank of reattempt n: The subsequent number of the reattempt after the first attempt.

Analysis of reattempts
The theory of reattempts can be assessed in a global model which analyses the quality and composition of offered traffic as determined by failure probability and subscriber behavior. Below is an illustration of a traffic system with reattempts (Adapted from [2] p205)

Where λc is the carried traffic that results in a successful connection, p is the probability of call rejection, R is the probability of caller resilience or perseverance, λo is the fresh traffic that is offered to the system. λ1 is the total traffic taken by the system which is a sum of fresh offered traffic and reattempted traffic. We can derive a relationship of a general model between the efficiency rate r, the probability of call rejection p and the call repetition coefficient β. From the diagram above we can deduce that

‘λc =λ1(1-p)’………………………………………………………......... (1)

λ1 = λo + Rp λ1 …………………………………..………….….…..… (2)

λ1 = λo / (1-Rp) = β λo…………………………....….....…...............(3)

Hence β = 1/ [1-R (1-r)]………………….………..............…………. (4)

We need to determine the probability of failure of a call reattempt in the nth rank of attempt. Let us consider a switching system which has m outgoing directions (trunk groups) with failure rates of fi, i=1, 2, 3,……..,m. let λoi be the fresh offered traffic towards a direction i.

The rate of failure in the first attempt can be determined as:

The general rate of failure at a reattempt of rank k can be given as:

Since the probability of arrival of the first call attempt can be described as a following poissonian distribution and the failure of the first attempt as following a blocking probability derived from Erlang B calculations, more specific derivation for the probability of a call reattempt failure can be modeled ([2]209) as below where F (t) is a function representing time distribution between call attempts.

Overload condition.
When the utilization of traffic handling and processing resources such as processors, memories, circuit and trunks goes beyond nominal, an overload condition presents itself. Different operators set different nominal values to indicate the level of overload such as 70% or 80%. At these levels the traffic engineers are alerted of an impeding overload. They may then take appropriate action such as increasing signaling capabilities, adding more circuits, defining and creating alternative routes, or control incoming traffic. A situation occurs when an actual overload occurs on the system which is above the user defined threshold. The offered traffic grows immensely

If the maximum processing load the processor can handle is φmax to carry a maximum traffic of λmax then φmax must be less than 1 to allow for the background tasks of the processor which cannot be delayed indefinitely. If the amount of traffic offered exceeds λmax and overload occurs and the calls have to be queued beyond a subscriber’s patience. The subscriber will reattempt the call and lead to further congestion. This cyclic process will lead to a breakdown of the system and carried traffic will be zero while the offered traffic continues to grow indefinitely the graph below [adapted from [2] 215].

The unpleasant consequence of overload is that is takes a long time before its effect clears and returns to a state of equilibrium.

Overload control.
A brief mention of methods that can be applied to control overload is important to know how to deal with overload and guarantee an acceptable level of service to users. Two methods can be applied. The first is regulation in centralized systems and the second one regulation in distributed systems [2].

Regulation in centralized systems
This operates in the principle of passive filtering of incoming calls in a last in first out basis (LIFO). This ensures that impatient customers who renew calls every time they fail to get connection are rejected by the system. The subscribers are placed in a queue contained in a buffer of limited size. Patient customers have a higher likelihood of getting a connection. If they do not dial prematurely, they are placed in a queue to wait for the processor to be free. The digits are evaluated from the last digit to avoid callers who go on-hook mid-dial or dial prematurely [2].

Regulation in distributed systems
In a distributed system, the task of detecting and handling calls and overloads is delegated to other distributed processors. Congestion control is done by distributed systems such as subscriber line interface peripherals. Since these elements handle less traffic, their probability of failure is low. The output of such systems is dimensioned to be such that the total load from all distributed systems cannot overload the central processor. This system adopts the last in first served approach where recent calls have the least probability of failing [2].

Conclusion.
In the foregoing discussion, we have described the high-loss system, its causes, effects, determination of its descriptive parameters and also two methods applied in alleviation the effects of an overload system. Also brought out is the limitation of erlang equations in predicting circuit requirements in for re-entrant traffic [1]. This is not an exhaustive analysis but an integration of the main aspects of a high-loss system. The control of overload requires an independent detailed analysis that could not be done here and further reading is recommended.

Further reading suggestions
1.	Songhurst D. Subscriber Repeat Attempts, Congestion, and Quality of Service: A Study Based On Network Simulation. Proceedings of the 10th international teletraffic congress, Montréal, 1983, paper 5-2-4.

2.	Forys L., Performance Analysis Of A New Overload Strategy. Proceedings of the 10th international teletraffic congress, Montréal, 1983, paper 1-1-5.

Exercises
1.	What is a high loss system?

2.	What are the limitations of erlang loss calculations as far as a high loss systems concerned?

3.	define the following terms:

a)	Call demand

b)	Call attempt

c)	Rank of reattempt

d)	Efficiency rate

e)	Coefficient of repetition.

4.	A telecommunication system has carried traffic load of 0.583 erl. Find the total traffic including reattempt traffic. Determine also the blocked traffic if the probability call rejection is 0.36?

Solutions


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Ear training/Intervals

Introduction
Learning intervals is arguably the most fundamental and important part of ear training. Not just recognizing specific intervals but feeling where the melody goes next is crucial for dictation, triad and chord constuction, sight singing, and all that jazz.

An interval is simply the distance between two pitches. There are 12 unique pitches in Western music (not counting the octave), and therefore only 12 intervals (not counting invervals greater than an octave). The difficulty lies in that they each have several ways of being written, which seemingly creates many more. For example, a minor sixth is also an augmented fifth and so forth. But these are easy to do once the rules become apparent. For now (and in general) one only needs to focus on the main notation.

Recognizing By Ear
For recognizing Intervals, one can use a few different methods. Simply memorizing them (through drill and kill) may be effective for some, but for most of us, it is more useful to use association. You've probably heard these intervals all your life, and maybe you've attatched some innate feeling or emotion to some. Example - major 6ths sound sweet to some people, and minor 6ths may sound distraught, depressed, longing. Tritones (augmented 4th or diminished fifth) to some may remind some of the 8bit sound in video games when your ship crashed, to others it may sound horrible, especially when played simultaneously (in the middle ages tritones were connected with Satan for their dissonance), still others may recognize them as the note that leads into a perfect 5th, and remember the opening theme to "The Simpsons" or the song "Maria" from West Side Story ("THE - SIMP" and "MA - RI") are tritones. There are many examples in popular music both for intervals going up and going down.

Recognizing Written Intervals
Written intervals can be recognized in several ways. One method is to count how many half steps are between 2 notes (e.g 7 half steps is a perfect fifth, 1 half step is a minor second). Another method is to compare the interval to the location on the scale of the key note. For example, C and A form a major 6th, as A is the 6th note on C major scale. D and F would form a minor third, as F is a half step below F#, which is the third note of the D major scale.

Quizzes

 * ../Quiz/Major scale/
 * ../Quiz/Minor scale/

listening
GNU Solfege is a free music education program for learning intervals, chords, and scales by ear, among other things.

Musical Mind has free interval ear training exercises online, as well as other exercises for solfege, dictation and playing by ear.

written
http://musictheory.net/trainers/html/id84_en.html - Interval Trainer for recognizing written triads

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ear training/Intervals


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User:Raspberry

Hello World! I <3 Wikiverstiy! Learn and pass on what you know! I am learning mathematics and computer science, and teaching music, art and physics!

I'm a 20 year old college student, with an interest in everything. Goals include learning everything, every language, and solving the mysteries of the universe. Also proving the Reimann hypothesis, and getting a genius grant :D.

I am also an musician (saxophone) and an artist (of pencil and acrylics).

Projects I am currently working on & interested in:

[Ear Traning - Music Department - Humanities]

Project I really, really want to be working on, and as soon as I get some time, I will:

[Drawing - Visual Arts Department - Fine Arts]

[Ceramics - Visual Arts/Craft Arts Department - Fine Arts]

[High School/General Physics - Physics Department - Physical Sciences]

[Mathematics]

- A few things I am interested in:

Music Mathematics Physics Philisophy Psychology Eastern spiritual thought

-- My contributions (not to boast!)

 * March 2007 - Began the Ear Training - Intervals] topic, thank you to all who build upon it!
 * Some to the Physics High School Course in the Physical Sciences Portal
 * December 2007 - Added Color hearing technique to Ear Training - Perfect Pitch]

---

Courses I am enrolled in:

C++

Raspberry 23:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

title: User:Raspberry


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File:Seduced by the Dark Side-Deimos.pdf

Used with the WikiU Film School Lesson on how to format a movie script


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User:Alex beta~enwikiversity/Logic:Introduction

Logic is most often defined as the study of valid inference. Inference is simply the process of deriving a conclusion from a set of assumptions (premises). An argument is said to be valid if, by virtue of its form, true premises necessarily imply a true conclusion.

This is the starting point of many logic text books. It will not, however, be our starting point.

There is, of course, no real disagreement between their point of view and ours, as we shall see; just a different approach.

Consistency
"'And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?' 'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.' Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see that done on paper,' he said. Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out her memorandum-book, and worked the sum for him: 365 - 1 _____ 364 Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done right—' he began. 'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted. 'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right — though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now —'[...] (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)" Let's start with something obvious: we cannot believe something that we know for certain is not true. We can imagine that we are flies, for example, but we can't actually believe it (assuming that we are fairly sane). As a consequence, if two beliefs are incompatible, that is, if they cannot both be true at the same time, and we realise this, then we cannot hold both beliefs. Note that this is just a description of what we often do, an apparent fact of rationality, if you like, and that we are not asking the question of whether we ought to be logical or rational.

Consider the following exchange:

'I'm sure I saw you in Paris last week'

'That's impossible! I spent last week in London.'

We usually assume that people cannot be in two distant places at once, so we would probably suspect that whoever says 'I spent the whole week in London' and 'I spent the whole week in Paris' is lying if they mean the same week. Furthermore, we accept statements like 'I spent last week in London, therefore I was not in Paris last week'. One could doubt the truth of the previous statement, but could one genuinely doubt that the argument is correct? Could one say, as Humpty Dumpty might, 'you were in London, yes, that seems to prove that you were not in Paris, though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now.'? As a matter of fact, we don't.

When we think things through, we tend naturally to discard beliefs that are incompatible with others that we hold more dearly. This will be our starting point.

A set of beliefs is consistent if they can all be true simultaneously or, in other words, if there are no contradictions among them. In logic, we will consider consistency carefully.

Consistency should not be confused with common sense, although they are certainly related. If I believe that the aliens have filled my house with secret cameras with the help of the CIA, then perhaps I am being unreasonable, but I am not necessarily being inconsistent. As long as this belief does not contradict anything else that I believe in, I am doing fine from a logical point of view. However, consistency does impose some restrictions on what we may believe in. For example, if I think that all bears have brown fur, then I cannot also believe that the caged polar bear that I am looking at in the zoo is a bear. It would be quite natural to think 'I used to believe that all bears had brown fur, but this bear standing in front of me has white fur. Therefore, not all bears have brown fur'.

Inference
A new belief can be inferred from a set of beliefs when the negation of the former contradicts the latter. For example, "this bear has brown fur" can be inferred from "all bears have brown fur" because the belief that this particular bear does not have brown fur contradicts the belief about all bears having brown fur.

The above example also illustrates another point. The existence of the polar bear leads us to reject either the belief "all bears have brown fur" or the belief "this so called polar bear is a bear". Both options are equally valid from the point of view of consistency. There are some beliefs, though, that we would find very difficult to abandon.

Beliefs *
What is a belief? Some believe in ghosts, others believe that the person they call mother is their biological mother, others may believe in Saint Anthony, I might believe that it will rain tomorrow, and it is difficult to determine how I came to believe one thing or another and whether it contradicts any other of my former beliefs.

We inevitably construct our whole lives around our beliefs, and they are at the foundation of our logical thought. When we begin to think logically, we already have many beliefs, with their own implications. We might realise that some of them are inconsistent and may, indeed, need to change them for others.

Descartes tried to construct his whole system of beliefs starting from his famous "I think, therefore I am", but most of us do not start from such a radical position. Each person has his or her own beliefs, and it might be better to take them into account from the beginning.

Deductive and inductive inferences **
Something is consistent if it holds firmly together. If I believe that all bears are brown, consistency demands that I believe that this bear is brown. But, having seen a thousands black crows, may I infer that all crows are black?

We have seen that "this bear is white" contradicts "all bears are brown", so the latter belief must be false if the former is true. But how can one say that all bears are brown if one has not seen all bears that were, are and will be?

Logic studies inferences, but there are two different types of inference mentioned above. On the one hand, we find so-called inductive inferences (or induction), which proceed from particular cases to a general law, as when we infer that all crows are black from having seen so many black crows. Deductive inferences (or deduction), on the other hand, infer the negation of anything which is inconsistent with a given set of beliefs. It is usually understood that logic studies deductive inferences only.

But are these two types of inference incompatible? May it not be true that inductive inferences are just one kind of deductive inference? It is clear that there is no logical way to assure that the next crow we will come across will be black just because every other crow we have ever seen is black, so it is possible to believe that it might or might not be black. There is no way to deduce that all crows are black, then. It would be possible, of course, if I had actually seen each and every crow and verified that they were all black. In that case, induction and deduction lead to the same conclusion. In logic and mathematics it is sometimes possible to use this reference to all the relevant cases, even in situations where the number of cases is infinite! But without a reference to all the particular cases, induction is not valid from a logical point of view.

Although we cannot guarantee the validity of inductive inferences, scientific theories often state general laws based on a limited amount of particular experiences. This means that scientific theories are only consistent as long as no contrary evidence is discovered. This led Karl Popper to argue that science progresses not by inductive inferences from greater and greater quantities of empirical data, but by falsifying provisional theories.

It is important to note the following fact: given a system of beliefs, we are not allowed to infer anything that is consistent with it, but only the negation of that which is inconsistent with the system. From the sentence A) "No communist is a capitalist" we may infer that B) "Lenin (who was a communist) was not a capitalist", but not C)"1 + 1 = 2", even though A and C are perfectly consistent (it is possible to believe both without falling into contradiction).

The complicated question of truth
It is said that the Nobel Prize physicist Niels Bohr had a horseshoe nailed to his door. One day a physics student asked him indignantly if he thought that it would bring him good luck. 'Of course not,' answered Bohr, 'but I have been told it works even if you don't believe in it.' 1

We are often worried about the consistency of our beliefs. Why? Couldn't we just take apparent contradictions as a feature of our eccentric personalities and say, as Bohr did, that contraria non contradictoria, sed complementaria sunt (opposites are not contradictory, but complementary)? In arguments, however, we often try to make the other party realise that they are holding contradictory positions in order to prove that they must be wrong, because if two statements contradict each other they cannot both be true. That is the key: what we are really worried about is truth.

"The word 'true' indicates the aim of logic as does 'beautiful' that of aesthetics or 'good' that of ethics. All sciences have truth as their goal; but logic is concerned with it in a quite different way from this. It has much the same relation to truth as physics has to weight or heat. To discover truths is the task of all sciences; it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth. 2"

If physics searches for truths about physical objects and biology for truths about living organisms, logic searches for truths about truth. This does not mean that logicians believe that they posses the ultimate truth and that they must dictate this truth to other disciplines, or that they can decide what will count as true and what will not. Logic does not discern the laws of truth in that sense.

"The word 'law' is used in two senses. When we speak of laws of morals or the state we mean regulations which ought to be obeyed but with which actual happenings are not always in conformity. Laws of nature are the generalization of natural occurrences with which the occurrences are always in accordance. It is rather in this sense that I speak of laws of truth. This is, to be sure, not so much a matter of what happens so much as of what is. 3"

Some logicians may use categorical and seemingly intolerant statements, but logic takes a relatively humble point of view when it comes to examining truth, for it only seeks to determine which relations are consistent and which are not. Alfred Tarski wrote an influential article in which he proposed a definition of the term 'truth' that included it among semantic terms, but he included the following warning:

It is perhaps worthwhile saying that semantics as it is conceived in this paper (and in former papers of the author) is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflicts. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the Speaker and his friends are speaking nonsense. 4

The concept of truth and the law of contradiction
"True" and "false" are adjectives that are used to describe statements or sentences. Aristotle defined these words as follows.

"To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true. 5"

Once it has been deciphered, the previous definition turns out to be absolutely obvious. We might as well have said that a sentence is true when it describes things as they are, and false if it does not. This seems to imply that the different parts of our sentences correspond to objects or relations in the real world and that our sentences are therefore true in some situations (when the objects we refer to are arranged in a way that corresponds to the arrangement of words in our sentence) and false in others. Wittgenstein thought this intuition through to its ultimate consequences in his famous Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it. 4.011 At first sight a proposition--one set out on the printed page, for example--does not seem to be a picture of the reality with which it is concerned. But neither do written notes seem at first sight to be a picture of a piece of music, nor our phonetic notation (the alphabet) to be a picture of our speech. And yet these sign-languages prove to be pictures, even in the ordinary sense, of what they represent. 6

The preceding comments show that truth is not a property of things in themselves, but rather has to do with the correspondence between words and things (or thoughts and things).

"For falsity and truth are not in things —it is not as if the good were true, and the bad were in itself false— but in thought. 7"

Aristotle admitted that a statement might be true in one sense and false in another, but he denied the possibility of it being simultaneously true and false in the same sense. This basic fact is known as the law of contradiction. Aristotle argued that it was impossible to prove this law because it was necessary to presuppose it in any demonstration.

"Some indeed demand that even this [the law of contradiction] shall be demonstrated, but this they do through want of education, for not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education. For it is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything (there would be an infinite regress, so there would be no demonstration); but if there are things of which one should not demand demonstration, these persons could not say what principle they maintain to be more self-evident than the present one. We can, however, demonstrate negatively that this view [that something is so and not so] is impossible, if our opponent will only say something; and if he says nothing, it is absurd to seek to give an account of our views to one who cannot give an account of anything, in so far as he cannot do so. For such a man, as such, is from the start no better than a vegetable. Now negative demonstration I distinguish from demonstration proper, because in a demonstration one might be thought to be begging the question, but if another person is responsible for the assumption we shall have negative proof, not demonstration. 8"

It is enough to say something to have already presupposed the law of contradiction, as it would be impossible for words to mean anything if each of our expressions both said and didn't say something. This comment must not be understood as proof, but rather as an explanation, because it too is based on the law of contradiction.

If it is impossible to prove this law of contradiction, how can it be defended? According to Aristotle, it can be "demonstrated negatively" by showing that those who do not accept this principle contradict themselves (that much is obvious, as they accept contradiction from the beginning) and that, consequently, their arguments stop being meaningful.

"If, however, [meanings] were not limited but one were to say that the word has an infinite number of meanings, obviously reasoning would be impossible; for not to have one meaning is to have no meaning, and if words have no meaning, our reasoning with one another, and indeed with ourselves, has been annihilated; for it is impossible to think of anything if we do not think of one thing; but if this is possible, one name might be assigned to this thing. 9"

If Aristotle was right, it is necessary to be consistent (not to contradict oneself) for thought to be possible.

But just because a predicate is consistent with other beliefs, this does not automatically mean that it is true because its truth ultimately depends on the objective situation that it describes (except in the case of tautologies).

"It is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale, but because you are pale we who say this have the truth. 10"

Even if things in themselves are neither true nor false (because truth/falsehood are in the relation between things and words or thoughts), it is ultimately these things that determine what is true and what is not. 11 Truth could, therefore, also be understood in an primary and fundamental sense as this "discovery" of things. Although we have said that logic studies truth, it is important to emphasize that it does not deal with truth in this second sense.

Borderline cases and bizarre situations
Up until now we have assumed that a sentence either corresponds or does not correspond with reality, but there are many cases in which it is difficult to decide on this "correspondence". The difficulty might be caused by our incapacity to examine the reality which we are speaking about, as when we say that "Shakespeare took longer to write the second act in Romeo and Juliet than the first act in Hamlet". This sentence is obviously true or false, but it might be impossible for us to determine which.

In other cases, the problem is caused by the "incapacity" of an expression to correspond to reality. 12 Let us take, for example, the claim that "Clara is too thin". It is possible to imagine a controversy on the matter even if Clara were present for everyone to examine. Any dividing line between "too thin" and "not too thin" will be arbitrary in some way. If we imagined that Clara gained wait gradually, gram by gram, when would we be able to say that she had stopped being "too thin"? In borderline cases, the truth of a statement is a matter of opinion.

We sometimes encounter what we shall call bizarre situations, in which it is not even clear if our choice of words is appropriate. If I say that "there is a pen on top of the book", it is easy in everyday life to check the truth of my claim. But ordinary everyday life includes absolute notions of "up" and "down", and expressions like "under" and "on top of " are dependent on them. For astronauts in space these notions will loose their meaning, and they will not be able to determine whether "there is a pen on top of the book" or if "the constellation of Cignus is above the constellation of Draco".

The preceding reflections should give some idea of the limitations which we can encounter in philosophy when we deal with problems from a logical point of view.

Endnotes
* This section is a relatively free translation of a contribution written in Spanish by user MONIMINO

** This section is an adaptation of a contribution written in Spanish by users MONIMINO and Alex beta.

1 James S. Trefil: The Nature of Science: an A-Z guide to the laws and principles Governing our Universe, Houghton Mifflin Company (2003), p. 52.

2 Gottlob Frege: The Thought: a Logical Inquiry in Readings in the Philosophy of Language, MIT press (1997), p. 9. Frege was one of the founding fathers of the modern discipline of logic.

3 Ibid.

4 Alfred Tarski: The Semantic Conception of Truth

5 Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 7, 1011b. Translated by W.D. Ross.

6 Wittgenstein: Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 4.01-4.011. Wittgenstein eventually questioned this intuition and radically changed his conception of meaning.

7 Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book VI, Chapter 4, 1027b. Translated by W.D. Ross.

8 Ibid. Book IV, Chapter 4, 1006a.

9 Ibid. Book IV, Chapter 4, 1006b.

10 Ibid. Book IX, Chapter 10, 1051b.

11 There is an excellent study of the problem in Rodríguez, R.: Del sujeto y la verdad, Chapter 10, Aristóteles y la verdad antepredicativa.

12 This is clearly presented in Hodges, W.: ''Logic. An introduction to elementary logic.'', Penguin Books (1991), pp 31-36. The terms "borderline case" and "bizarre situations" are taken from this book.


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User talk:Raspberry

Great Page!
Great Page! Thanks :-) I may get round to recording some, is it against copyright to post?

You forgot to leave your name! But go ahead, add anything. If you make or write it yourself, it is not copyright. I was thinking of creating a few midis of intervals on finale or audacity, but I didnt really want to make 12 of them seperatly...I'm waiting for a better idea to pop up. I wonder if you'll look back here, because I dont have a way to talk back to you. Raspberry 06:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Hi Raspberry - the person who left you that message was Philipbembridge. You can see this in the page history. I really like your ear training page too! I have an idea...do you think you could upload 12 tones to Wikiversity? Maybe we can make something that will play the tones sequentially, so we don't have to record all the intervals. Also, I wonder if you have perfect pitch? Maybe we can write about that on Wikiversity too. --HappyCamper 03:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Raspberry


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Talk:Rhetoric

There is a wonderful Wikibook on Composition and Rhetoric! Take advantage of it! The Jade Knight 23:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:Rhetoric


text:
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Example for the Storyboard Artwork Project

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Paleontology/Introduction/Timescale of evolution

Evolution on the outside may be a progression of simple life to complex life, while that is the case for some species a great many have evolved to a suitable structure to allow their survival in multiple habitats and geologic eras. see Introduction to evolution

The pages below are based on personal research and observation of the author and are accepted scientific knoledge, they are designed for the person who has little knoledge of the subject. To get a better idea please also refer to Causes of Speciation, Berkeley University

Observed Instances of Speciation by Joseph Boxhorn

Introduction
Please read Introduction to evolution

By referring to the Geologic time scale you can get a basic understanding of the length evolution has taken, and what the world was like during each phase in the time line. This does not display individual species but the basic groups of related animals like tetrapods, Dinosaurs and other life, this is because different types of anatomically differentiated species are around for different time periods. A better understanding to the life process can be found here. You need to read this for a clearer understanding of the theories behind the concept. http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/foundation_life1.html

Reading material

 * Molecular Timescale of Evolution in the Proterozoic
 * Evolution 101 Examples of Microevolution from the Berkley University
 * Evolution of the limb on the evolutionary timescale

Related resources

 * Age of the Earth
 * Why cats present dead mice to their owners


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School talk:Computer Science/Wikibooks archive

The following discussion took place on Wikibooks before Wikiversity was made an independent project:

Seems to me that we need to organize this page differently, more along the lines of a university curriculum.
 * Agree. We have Wikipedia for unordered categories of topics. That said, even then there are multiple reasonable ways of organization. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't have time right now to whip out an entire course of study, but I will do what I can right now and come back to this tonight. (Hopefully other WikiVersitians will have dropped by and fleshed it out by them! ;)
 * Sorry, I'm just here to criticize you and generally be very annoying. OK, just kidding. There are some ideas of mine in here, too. I've kept the good ones, though. :-)
 * Sorry for messing up the nesting/numbering. I really wanted to do inline comments. Be careful, readers. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Prerequisites (topics required for computer science, such as logic, math, etc. which are covered in other "Schools").
 * Doesn't mean we shouldn't offer specialized versions where appropriate, of course. We should also take advantage of the wiki nature and offer easy linking and followups for people who want to know more about topic X even if X isn't relevant in full to CS. This sounds obvious, but it's easier to forget on Wikibooks than on Wikipedia. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Introductory material ("Comp Sci 1")
 * History of computing
 * This part is forbidden to start with "In ancient China...blablabla abacus..." :-)
 * I'd also make it a point to focus on the nature of algorithms, instead of just simple calculation. Calculating is but a special form of algorithm. (This is true even if it's actually all that real computers do.) JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Personal Free Workstations
 * I would recommend making an effort in this intro class to point students at appropriate seminars, classes, mailing lists, whatever ... to help them get their own computing environment setup to support their computing efforts. As an example, we (the engineering department) are going to have talented, highly educated, engineers coming in who need to get a home environment setup but who are basically idiot savants.  They will have been working with mainframes and desktop supermini's for years doing sophisticated analysis on machines designed, built, and maintained by Information Technology people or outside consultants or firms.  Likely to have similar problems with specialists interested in open computational research @ home in physiology, biology, etc. as well as small startup entrepreneurs from the 3rd and 4th world as the internet arrives locally to win hearts and minds away from terrorism and other forms of grumpiness and envy of the industrialized democracies worldwide. I look foward to working with some hackers, software engineers, or computer science people in helping set up such a series of tailored introductory seminars on building and supporting personal (hopefully free but that reflects my own bias) work stations when there is sufficient activity or need to justify it rather than participation in various classes valuable to me personally. Lazyquasar 03:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Boolean logic (vis a vis computing)
 * Base 2 arithmetic
 * I'd definitely save this until you get to hardware and demonstrate what it's good for. You don't want another generation of students thinking that computers are intrinsically binary, and that this is somehow very important to computing. They aren't, and it isn't. (Actually, the reason binary matters in computers is the same reason it's interesting for other purposes: it's the simplest positional numeral system. Most of this you don't need to know at that point in the curriculum, though.) JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Basics of computer systems (hardware, software, user)
 * Computer hardware: processor, memory, I/O system
 * A good reference for organization would be Tanenbaum's classic "Structured Computer Architecture". I do mean "reference", BTW -- I'm not proposing we copy the TOC wholesale. :-) JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Von Nuemann (spelling?) paradigm: sequence, loop, branch
 * Actually, the crucial innovation underlying the Von Neumann architecture is the realization that "code is data" -- or less hackish, that a program is but data to another program. This is one of computing's most powerful ideas; it's what compilers are based on, and ultimately establishes the computer as a truly universal machine. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Instructional computer language -- Basic instruction in a particular programming language. This language can subsequently be used to demonstrate fundemental algorithms and concepts of computer science such as sorting, recursion, etc. The choice of language is likely to start a holy war, which I don't have time to participate in right now.
 * It really doesn't matter. People who can't ever move beyond that language shouldn't be studying computer science anyway. Pascal is still a good choice for newbies, even if it's little used in practice. People are using Java too, but this immediately gets you into OO, which is a bit much for studying algorithms.
 * If you want to be really out there, pick a non-compilable language with just the basics (binary choice, pretest loop, integer, string, array, perhaps records). This will prevent people from a) welding themselves to their computers and running everything wihout understanding what's happening and b) give them a good basis for seeing the similarities (and differences!) in "real" languages.
 * Whatever choice you make, I wouldn't go with C or C++. Whatever their merits, using them to study concepts of algorithms is asking for trouble. (And I say this as someone who's first language was C, and who still uses it happily, so don't take me for a quiche eater with an axe to grind). JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Perhaps a generic Intro to Programming is required for this - discusses the different types of control structures, and how they're used, but give examples in multiple languages or simply link to examples in other books. If multiple languages are used, a discussion would probably be required to get a reasonably sized list that satisfies most people. Such a book would be centered on the usage of commands/structures and not the actual syntax. With some exceptions in advanced concepts, most languages are fundamentally the same on usage but with different syntax, and it's that basic usage that needs to be taught in an introductory course. After understanding these basics the reader can then apply these to the language of their choice or to whichever is used in a specific advanced course. If implemented, this should be a pre- or co-requisite to all "Intro to X" courses. Xerol 19:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem with something like that is that to really understand the concepts, you need to get your hands dirty. You can explain everything in pseudocode and talk about it until the ends of the earth-  until they write a program and see output on their computer screen, its too abstract for most people to understand.  Teach the ideas in their pure form, sure.  But you need to give them something to bite into as well.  Trying to teach it without actually programming is like trying to teach physics without labs-  an hour long nap between 1st period and lunch.  --Gabe Sechan 20:16, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, the point would be to "skim over" the basic concepts before getting your hands dirty. If/Then/Else structures can easily be explained in real text, and the application of those to programming would be language-dependent. Such a course would neither be extensive nor in-depth; the purpose would merely be to prepare the readers for any language they may come across in their studies. An alternative to this could be to make a short WikiBook on it, and assign it as preparatory reading for "Intro to X" courses. Xerol 21:02, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Assembly language (i.e. what computers actually understand)
 * I'd leave this to Tanenbaum (or equivalent material). Focus on the layered structure of computers, not on what's "actually" at the bottom. This is an ill-defined notion anyway -- for example, your shiny new Intel processor (or AMD, don't hit me :-) doesn't actually understand assembly, it's just converting that into RISC instructions (and is that really the end of it?) Of course, you don't need to bother with those unless you're actually designing such a chip -- and similarly, you don't need to bother with assembly unless you have a real need for assembly, and that's becoming rare these days. All you really need to know is that there's more than one level, and though the one you're working on almost always isn't at the bottom, you can be blissfully ignorant about it. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Other computer languages (not always for everyday use, but in case somebody runs across code in one of these languages)
 * FORTRAN (history of programming; optimized mathematical execution)
 * Pascal (procedural programming)
 * Ada (attempts to prevent errors by design)
 * Ruby (lambdas, easy-to-read syntax, gets the heck out of the way for quicker data structures courses)
 * Lisp (teaches functional programming, a possible alternative to Turing machines for teaching theory, an early programming language)
 * Haskell (teaches functional programming and automatic lazy evaluation)
 * Assembly (teaches more-basic units of computation)
 * others (please help flesh this list out)
 * A long list of languages is not on most curricula. Try a general course like "aspects of programming languages", where you focus on language design and basic paradigms (functional, imperative, logic, OO). How do languages implement repetition/recursion? Why do they do it the way they do? Could it be better? What criteria do you use to decide that? Why does COBOL suck so much? (Sorry about that last one, really :-)
 * This, with a basic outline of syntax, should be enough to let people educate themselves in a language when they need it. This is really the only sensible way to go, given the plethora of languages. Don't try to learn them one by one, learn them "all at once". Of course, some languages should be taught, but the 'language du jour' has a tendency of shifting quite often. A general curriculum (and the people taught by it) easily adapt to this. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't agree. The School of Informatics, which needs a lot of help (hint, hint, especially to those who want to focus on programming itself), is the school that emphasizes programming and lets people pick up languages when they need them for, say, job readiness.  I think we should stick to programming languages that either illustrate various ideas in theoretical computation or that get out of the student's way.  COBOL and BASIC do not fulfill these at all.  Bondage and discipline languages are right out unless they illustrate some concept particularly well. — 131.230.133.185 6 July 2005 04:11 (UTC)

 * Fundemental algorithms and data structures ("Comp Sci 101")
 * Sorting
 * This part should not be allowed to start with bubble sort. :-) JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Searching
 * Linked lists, trees, hashing, etc.
 * Recursion
 * This is a fundamental part of functional programming, and should probably be treated as such, even if you don't go all the way with functional programming. If you've seen it in FP, it's much easier to move to recursion in imperative languages. I've never seen a course on an imperative language (whatever one you like) that didn't treat recursion as something alien and difficult -- which of course it is, to imperative languages. No need for that. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Object-oriented programming
 * I think the curriculum needs to be revised at least somewhat. The First Level could perhaps require two programming courses - one introductory course (in C or another non-OO language), and one OO course (in C++, Java, etc). This section is getting a bit long though, should we start a new discussion on the organisation of the curriculum below? Xerol Oplan 00:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Software engineering
 * Parts of this should be spread out over the curriculum, to encourage people to do it right from the start (and to show them why we do it that way). Too many curricula I've seen first let students write godawful code for years, then suddenly throw software engineering at them in its full g(l)ory. There's no reason to let the curriculum match the history of software development. You can do it right from the beginning -- and I don't mean with boxes and arrows, I mean sound practical advice. (Centralize things so you only have to update once, automate decentralizing if you have to decentralize. Don't use assumptions you haven't been given, but if you can ask, don't go out of your way to be "fully general" either. Don't comment on how a program does things, and try making it simpler before even commenting what it does. Keep track of what you're doing, why you're doing it, and why you're not doing it differently. Etcetera, etcetera... I'm leaving out all the reasoning behind them now, of course. :-) JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree. IMO, we should start off the bat with CVS/monotone/whatever or maybe even RCS... something old but really good for beginners. (Only like, 2 commands you need to know?). I dunno about Windows or IDEs on Linux... --Dragontamer

 * File systems and data storage/retrievel (not databases!)
 * Sequential files
 * Relative files
 * Indexed files
 * other file structures
 * It'll be useful to correlate this with data structures. I would not go in-depth with this, though, because low-level storage structures are becoming less and less important in a general sense, and more and more part of the "things you use but don't see" section. (Point in case: databases. :-) Like assembly, you need to have a basic knowledge of this, but you're not expected to reconstruct the data from a hexdump, useful as this skill may be. (It is, really. :-) JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * System programming
 * emulation/simulation (write a simple computer simulator)
 * assembling (write a 2-pass assembler)
 * linking & loading (write a linker loader using the above components)
 * This is good, but remember that not everyone needs to know about systems programming. I'd say that knowing something about compilers is more useful -- i.e., take it up a level. It may seem counterintuitive to first do a high-level compiler and then the low-level stuff, but it's actually much friendlier on the students (for one thing, you already know one half of the process, which is writing a program in an HLL). JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Computer architecture
 * Operating system fundementals, i.e. "What does an O/S do" vs "How does Linux work?"
 * I hate to repeat myself, really I do hate to repeat myself, but again, Tanenbaum. I presume this would be the vertical part, though (going into how operating systems work, as opposed to knowing where operating systems fit in in the grand scheme of things). JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is a lot more to this, but I have to get going now... Jrv
 * Erm... Ditto. The sheer scale of it all is quite daunting. Oh, and also, we should keep in mind that there's more than one way to skin a cat; I'm a big fan of specialized curricula alongside the 'standard' one. This is a wiki, after all. How about curricula that offer topics for people with a certain background (functional programming for people who've only ever used imperative languages, that sort of thing) or curricula for crossovers with other disciplines (CS for linguists)? I'm saying this now because some people may be easier stirred for this sort of specialization than for the general curriculum, which will always be a battleground of consensus and will always do some things you don't like.
 * Niche topics like reverse engineering, that don't really fit in any curriculum (but prove me wrong!), despite using only fundamental knowledge, should probably not be on the 'versity (we have general Wikibooks for that). Specializations might include things like parallelism (beyond the basics that everybody should know), computer graphics, databases, and formal/mathematical construction of programs (I'm shamelessly stealing ideas from my university curriculum, here).
 * Erm... What Jrv said. We have a lot to do. JRM 15:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * To comment on the curriculum in general: It would be better organised to have a list of courses (possibly numbered) and then have a curriculum for Computer Science in general. This way not all courses have to be part of the curriculum (i.e. we can have Electives) and there's room to have alternate or different ones as well. For example, at the 100-level of the CS Curriculum, perhaps Intro C, Intro C++, and one other language(from a list of completed courses) would be required in addition to the other courses there. This probably isn't worded exactly how I intended it but you get the basic idea. Xerol Oplan 22:15, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


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User:JoachimGrzega

Joachim Grzega
www.grzega.de

born on 9 September 1971 in Weißenburg (Germany)

Associate Professor at the University of Eichstätt (Germany)

 * 1991-1998 studies at the universities of Eichstätt, Salt Lake City, Paris-Sorbonne, Graz
 * 2000 Dr.phil. (Ph.D.) in Romance, English and German Linguistics
 * 2004 habil.diss. in English and General Linguistics
 * interim professorships at the universities of Münster, Bayreuth, Erfurt, Freiburg (Germany)

Author of 10 books (including Hello World! for teaching English as a global language at primary schools; Tickets to Basic Global English - Englisch in 111 Tagen for self-teaching English; How to Become the Perfect Intercultural Professor: Tricks and Bricks for Intercultural Academic Teaching in English (or Other Languages)) and several dozen articles

Editor of the internet journals Onomasiology Online and Journal for EuroLinguistiX

Founder of the Academy for SocioEconomic Linguistics (ASEcoLi)

Internet Projects

 * EuroLinguistiX (ELiX) - platform with discussion forum, materials, academic journal and project wiki
 * Basic Global English (BGE), a concept for teaching English as a lingua franca to beginners, with school project
 * Onomasiology Online (OnOn)
 * Sprachwissenschaft für die Öffentlichkeit - collection og predominantly student papers for interested laypersons and teachers
 * the didactic model Lernen durch Lehren (LdL)

Research Interests

 * eurolinguistics
 * onomasiology
 * public-oriented linguistics/practical linguistics, linguistics for the public
 * intelligible linguistics
 * linguistic economics/socioeconomic linguistics, linguistics and knowledge society (basic article)
 * Austrian German
 * language contacts
 * intercultural communication
 * teaching English as an international language (Basic Global English)
 * didactic issues at university (especially Learning by teaching -- cf. my English article)

Current projects

 * article on Eurolinguistics
 * project in the German Wikiversity: European Sociolingistics
 * book project: Basic Linguistics – An Alternative Introduction to Language and Languages
 * course project: Introduction to Applied Historical English Linguistics
 * webpage Teaching English as a lingua franca

Working for Wikipedia
Cf. my Wikipedia user profile.

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User:JoachimGrzega/Eurolinguistics

Eurolinguistics is a comparatively young branch of linguistics which deals with questions on the languages of Europe. However, Europe is not defined in a unanimous way. There are three different definitions of Europe.
 * political (languages of the European Union) (this definition is often used by authors dealing with language policy, e.g. Ahrens 2003, Kraus 2004)
 * geographical (from the Atlantic to the Ural) (this seems the most current definition of Europe, e.g. in Haarmann 1975 and 1993, Görlach 2002, Heine/Kuteva 2006)
 * anthropological (languages of the nations characterized by a Greek and a Latin heritage (including the rules of law), the (West) Roman variant of Christian religion (and its developments during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation), the use of the Latin alphabet, the separation of spiritual and secular power, societal pluralism and individualism, a common history of the arts (in their broadest sense) as well as a common history of education and formation like the establishment of the universities) (this is the definition that is used, for instance, by Huntington [1996: 45ff.] and Schmidt [2000: 207ff.]; Haarmann uses this definition to define the western part of Europe in its geographical sense)

State of the art
The term Eurolinguistics was first used by Norbert Reiter in 1991 (German equivalent: Eurolinguistik), but Eurolinguistic works had already been published before that date (e.g. Lewy 1964, Décsy 1973). Apart from a series of works dealing with only a part of the European languages, the work of Harald Haarmann pursues a pan- or trans-European perspective. This goal is also pursued by Mario Wandruszka. In reality, however, Wandruszka like many others (including encyclopedias) only takes into account the big European languages: German, English, Italian, French, Spanish. In addition, German is only understood as German of Germany, French as French of France etc. The realization of national varieties has only begun to play a role in eurolinguistics. In recent years, typological questions have mainly been dealt with by the Eurolinguistischer Arbeitskreis Mannheim (ELAMA) and the EUROTYP projects. Important sources of linguistic data for Eurolinguistic studies are the Atlas Linguarum Europae (for vocabulary studies) and the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Haspelmath et al. 2005, for grammar studies). The internet platform EuroLinguistiX (ELiX) (edited by Joachim Grzega) offers a bibliography of Eurolinguistic publications as well as a wiki, a discussion forum, an academic internet journal in order to address also aspects of "linguistic and cultural history", "sociology of languages", "language politics" and "intercultural communication". In 2006, Joachim Grzega published a basic reader on common features of European languages.

Research results: Common features of European languages
The following findings are based on the cultural-anthropological definition of Europe.

History of the writing system
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1991, Grzega 2006)

The writing system used in Europe is based on the phonographic-alphabetic principle. It originates in North Semitic (2000-1700 BC), was introduced by the Greeks and from there also brought to the Romans (6th century BC). The Latin alphabet was developed into several scripts. In the early years of Europe, the Carolingian minuscules were the most important variety of the Latin script. From this two branches developed, the Gothic/Fracture/German tradition, which Germans used well into the 20th century, and the Italian/Italic/Antiqua/Latin tradition, still used. For some nations the integration into Europe meant giving up older scripts, e.g. the Germanic gave up the runes (futhark) (3rd--17th century), the Irish the Ogham script (4th--7th century).

Sound features
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1973, Asher 1994, Price 1998, Grzega 2006)

The sound systems of languages may differ considerably between languages. European languages can thus rather be characterized negatively, e.g. by the absence of click sounds. One could also think of specific prosodic features, such as tonal accents. But there are also tonal languages in Europe: Croatian (e.g. léta ‘he flies, is flying’ with long rising accent vs. lêta ‘years’ with long falling accent) and Slovenian (e.g. sûda ‘of the vessel’ with long falling accent vs. súda ‘of the court’ with long rising accent). In Slovenian the use of the musical accent is declining though (cf. Rehder 1998: 234)--but there are hardly any contexts where intelligibility is endangered. In Sweden Swedish (but not in Finland Swedish) there also is a pitch accent in some words, which can be meaningful, e.g. ´anden ‘the duck’ vs. ˇanden ‘the ghost, spirit’.

Typical grammatical features
(Sources and further information for this section: Asher 1994, Price 1998, Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006)

As a general introductory remark we can distinguish between three structural types of languages: European languages are seldom pure representatives of one type. For (a) Modern English is a good example (and in many way the code oral of French verbs); for (c) Old English and Modern High German are good examples (and in many ways the code écrit of French verb forms); classical representatives of type (b) are Finnish and Hungarian. If a language is not isolating, this does not necessarily mean that it has no word-order rules. Latin, Finnish and the Slavic languages have a relatively free word order, whereas many languages show more restricted rules. German and Dutch, e.g., show verb-second word-order in main clauses and verb-final order in subordinate clauses. English has subject-verb word-order, which is also preferred by the Romanic languages. Irish has a basic verb-initial word order.
 * isolating (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through analytic means and relatively strict word-order rules, e.g. the strict S-V order rule in English),
 * agglutinating (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through affixes, with one affix expressing exactly one function) and
 * inflecting (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through affixes, with one affix expressing several functions).

We can also distinguish between analytic constructions (with free grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical elements as separate words) and synthetic constructions (with bound grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical elements attached to or included in a word), e.g. the house of the man vs. the man's house.

Apart from the points already mentioned, the categories of aspect (not always easy to separate from the tense system) and gender are noteworthy. Under the category of aspect linguists basically understand the distinction between perfective actions (activity finished, has led to a result; single event) and imperfective actions (activity not yet finished, w/out information on termination; long duration, repetitive). The Slavic languages have a fine and rigid aspect system; in English there’s the distinction between progressive and non-progressive (simple) and a distinction between present perfect and past; in the Romanic languages the imperfect serves to denote background actions.

The most current gender systems in Europe are twofold (masculine vs. feminine, e.g. in the Romanic languages, or uter vs. neuter, e.g. in the Scandinavian languages); but there are also languages that are three-fold (e.g. German) or lack grammatical gender at all (e.g. English, Hungarian, Finnish). The problem of gender also concerns the system of personal pronouns. We normally distinguish between 3 persons singular and 3 persons plural, but there are also some languages that have specific words for the dual (e.g. Sorbic). In the 3rd person singular we often have a distinction according to grammatical gender; in English, though, the choice is determined by natural gender; in Hungarian and Finnish we have no differentiation at all, in the Scandinavian languages on the other hand we have a differentiation that incorporate both grammatical and natural gender. In some languages the grammatical gender is also relevant in the 3rd pl. (e.g. the Romance languages).

Whereas traditionally we group languages according to historical language families (e.g. Indo-European languages, Finno-Ugric languages), a more modern way is to look at grammatical features from a synchronic point of view. A certain number of common structural features would then characterize a sprachbund. For Europe, the most prominent sprachbund that we can determine is referred to as SAE (= Standard Average European) or Charlemagne sprachbund. Haspelmath (2001) illustrates that German, Dutch, French, Occitan and Northern Italian are the most central members of this sprachbund. Important features are (cf., e.g., Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006):
 * 1) the distinction between an indefinite and a definite article
 * 2) the formation of relative clauses, which are positioned after the (pro)noun concerned and are introduced by a variable relative pronoun
 * 3) a past tense construction with “to have”
 * 4) a passive voice construction that shows the object of the action in the syntactic position of the subject and that uses the past participle in connection with an auxiliary
 * 5) a specific suffix for the comparative

Typical vocabulary features
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Paczolay 1997, Panzer 2000, Görlach 2002)

Latin, French and English not only served or still serve as linguae francae (cf. below), but also influenced the vernacular/national languages due to their high prestige. Due to this prestige, there are not only “necessity loans”, but also “luxury loans” and pseudo-loans. Many loans from these three languages (esp. Neo-Latin with its Greek elements) can be considered internationalisms, although occasionally the meanings vary from one language to another, which might even lead to misunderstandings. Examples:
 * Lat. forma: e.g. Fr. forme, It. Sp. Cat. Cz. Slovak. Slovenian Hung. Pol. Croat. Latv. Lith. forma, Dan. Swed. E. Du. form, Romansh furma, G. Form, Ir. foirm),
 * Fr. restaurant, e.g. E. Du. Norw. Cat. Romansh restaurant, G. Restaurant, Swed. restaurang, Pg. restaurante, Sp. restaurante, It. ristorante, Cz. restaurace, Slovak reštaurácia, Slovenian restavracija, Latv. restorâns, Lith. restoranas, Estn. restoran, Pol. restauracja
 * E. manager, e.g. Du. Norw. Swed. Icel. Fr. Sp. Cat. It. Finn. Romansh manager, G. Manager, Pol. menadżer, Croat. menedžer, Lith. menedžeris, Hung. menedzser

Three minor source languages for European borrowings are Arabic (esp. in mathematics and science, foreign plants and fruits), Italian (esp. in arts, esp. from the 15th to the 17th c.), German (esp. in arts, education, mining, trading from the 12th to the 20th c. with alternating importance).

As far as the structuring or “wording” of the world is concerned changes occur relatively fast due to progresses in knowledge, sociopolitical changes etc. Lexical items that seem more conservative are proverbs and metaphorical idioms. Many European proverbs and idioms go back to Antiquity and the Bible, some originate in national stories and were spread over other languages via Latin. A typical European proverb to express that there is no profit without working can be paraphrased as “Roasted pigeons/larks/sparrows/geese/chickens/birds don’t fly into one’s mouth”, e.g. Cz. Pečeni ptáci nelítají do huby (birds!) = Dan. Stegte duer flyve ingen i munden (pigeon!) = ndl. De gebraden duiven vliegen je niet in de mond (pigeons!) = E. He thinks that larks will fall into his mouth roasted = Finn. Ei paistetut varpuset suuhun lennä (sparrows!) = Fr. Les alouettes ne vous tombent pas toutes rôties dans le bec (larks!) = G. Gebratene Tauben fliegen einem nicht ins Maul (pigeon!) = Hungar. Senkinek nem repül a szájába a sült galamb (pigeon!) = Lith. Keptas karvelis neatlėks pats i burną (pigeon!) = Latv. Cepts zvirbulis no jumta mutē nekrīt (sparrow!) = (Nynorsk) Norw. Det kjem ikkje steikte fuglar fljugande i munnen (bird!) = Pol. Pieczone gołąbki nie przydą same do gąbki (pigeons!) = Slovak Nech nik nečaká, že mu pečené holuby budú padať do úst (pigeons!) = Slovenian ''Pečeni golobje ne lete nobenemu v usta [pigeons!] = Swed. Stekta sparvar flyger inte in i munnen (sparrows!)''. Paczolay (1997) shows that many other proverbs and idioms, however, can also be found in North America and/or Latin America and/or the Slavic-Orthodox civilization, e.g. E. A prophet not without honor in his own country, Span. Nadie es profeta en su tierra.

Typical communicative strategies
(Sources and further information for this section: Axtell 1993, Collett 1993, Morrison et al. 1994, Hickey/Stewart 2005, Grzega 2006)

In Geert Hofstede’s terms Europe can, to a large extend, be considered an individualistic civilization (i.e. a rather direct and analytic style is preferred, important points are mentioned before an explanation or illustration in an argument, decisions are based on compromise or the majority’s vote); in contrast, the Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Arabic and Hindu (Indian) civilizations are collectivistic (i.e. a rather indirect and synthetic style is used, explanations and illustrations are mentioned before the essential point of an argument, decisions are reached through consent). We can further make Edward Hall’s distinction between “low context” communication (i.e. direct style, person-oriented, self-projection, loquacity) and “high context” communication (i.e. indirect style, status-oriented, reservation, silence). Most European nations use “low context” communication.

What are some specific features of European communication strategies?
 * 1) One of them is the mostly reciprocal use of address terms (this is different in the Slavic Orthodox and Asian civilizations). Status seems to play a less important role than in the Sinic and Japanese civilizations. Communication between the sexes is absolutely normal in Europe, whereas it is traditionally very rare in the Arabic civilization. As to pronouns, we can point out the pronominal dualism in the vast majority of European languages (which also exists in Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala [vos vs. usted], the Slavic Orthodox nations [e.g. Russ. ty vs. vy]; it has also been said that the American dialect form y'all is/was occasionally used as a formal address pronoun--cf. y'all). There are also tendencies in the nominal series of address terms, which distinguish Europe from other civilizations. In private, Europeans nowadays agree on addressing each other by the first name comparatively fast; in business communication, one should first use the correct title, even if a change toward less formal addressing may occur quite rapidly again. Title are definitely more important in the Hindu, Arabic, Sinic and Japanese civilizations; the Slavic Orthodox civilization can be characterized particularly by the frequency of nicknames in all kinds of private and informal conversation. Nicknames are sometimes used in informal and social situations among close friends and associates in the Americas (North and South/Latin).
 * 2) Concerning salutation terms in Europe (cf. especially Spillner 2001) we find that many of them include wishes for a good time of the day, for health (or the question whether somebody is in good health), for success or for luck. The common Arabic and Asiatic wish for peace, though, is absent in European civilization. It is also noteworthy that many European salutation phrases are frequently (at least in informal situations) very much reduced on a phonetic level, which is not so much the case in Arabic, Hindu (Indian), Sinic (Chinese) and Japanese civilizations.
 * 3) Frequent small talk topics are traveling, soccer (and other international sports disciplines), hobbies, American entertainment industry and the weather. In contrast, sexuality, death, religion, politics, money or class, personal issues and swearing are generally tabooed. Any racial, ethnic, sexist and cultural biased comments are shunned and morally opposed in Europe (and all developed countries) more than anywhere else. In Hindu, Arabic, Sinic and Japanese civilization people are frequently asked about their family (in Arabic civilization, however, this excludes the wife...even the word "wife" is compared to the "F" word in English-speaking countries). Due to their status-oriented nature, people from the Far East civilizations often ask for “administrative form” information, especially in Japan.
 * 4) Among Europeans (includes the Americas and Australia) and sometimes east Asians (esp. in Japan), the phrases for “thank you” are expected and welcomed in quite a number of situations (it's said the most in Great Britain and North America), whereas South Asian and Middle Eastern people use the phrase in a more economical way and often contend themselves with simple looks of thanks; on the other hand, other non-western civilizations (i.e. Polynesians of the south Pacific and Native American tribes) have rather extended formulae of thanks.
 * 5) With requests (cf. especially Trosborg 1995 and Cenoz/Valencia 1996), the bare imperative is normally avoided in favor of devices such as questions, modal auxiliaries, subjunctive, conditional, special adverbs. The exchange of verbal stems, which is found in Japanese and Sinic languages, is not a part of (Indo-)European languages.
 * 6) When somebody has to say no, this is normally accompanied by some form of apology or explanation. In the civilizations of the Far East and many Native American tribes in North America, the formal equivalents for “no” are unaccepted and/or basically tabooed in general.
 * 7) Apologies are necessary with face-threatening acts or after somebody has intruded somebody else’s private sphere--which is bigger and thus more easily violated in North America and Asia than in Europe and bigger in Europe (esp. the British Isles for etiquette reasons) than in Latin America and the Arab nations, and the concept of privacy and apology is universal, but varies from northern/western, eastern/Slavic and southern/Mediterranean countries. (Cf. especially Trosborg 1995).
 * 8) If the national descriptions by Axtell (1998) and Morris et al. (1979) are compared, then the following conclusions can be drawn with regard to compliments: in Europe one can safely make compliements on somebody’s clothes and appearance, meals and restaurants, voluntary offerings, a room’s equipment.

Linguae Francae — past and present
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)

Europe’s history is characterized by four linguae francae: Linguae francae that were less wide-spread, but still played a comparatively important role in European history are:
 * (Medieval and Neo-)Latin (from the beginning till 1867, with Hungary as the last country to give up Latin as an official language apart from the Vatican), with a gradual decline as lingua franca since the late Middle Ages, when the vernacular languages gained more and more importance (first language academy in Italy in 1582/83), in the 17th c. even at universities).
 * French (from the times of Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV, ca. 1648 (i.e. after the Thirty Years' War, which had hardly affected France, thus free to prosper), till the end of World War I, ca. 1918)
 * German(From the formation of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation to World War I)
 * English.
 * Provençal (= Occitan) (12th--14th century, due to the Troubadour poetry)
 * Middle Low German (14th--16th century, during the heyday of the Hanseatic League, particularly in Northern and Northeastern Europe.)

First dictionaries and grammars
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)

The first type of dictionaries are glossaries, i.e. more or less structured lists of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian) Abrogans is among the first. A new wave of lexicography can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press, with the growing interest for standardizing languages).

Language and identity, standardization processes
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)

In the Middle Ages the two most important definitory elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas. Thus language—at least the supranational language—played an elementary role. This changed with the spread of the national languages in official contexts and the rise of a national feeling. Among other things, this led to projects of standardizing national language and gave birth to a number of language academies (e.g. 1582 Accademia della Crusca in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, 1635 Académie française, 1713 Real Academia de la Lengua in Madrid). “Language” was then (and still is today) more connected with “nation” than with “civilization” (particularly in France). “Language” was also used to create a feeling of “religious/ethnic identity” (e.g. different Bible translations by Catholics and Protestants of the same language).

Among the first standardization discussions and processes are the ones for Italian (“questione della lingua”: Modern Tuscan/Florentine vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian > Modern Florentine + archaic Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (standard is based on Parisian), English (standard is based on the London dialect) and (High) German (based on: chancellery of Meißen/Saxony + Middle German + chancellery of Prague/Bohemia [“Common German”]). But also a number of other nations began to look for and develop a standard variety in the 16th century.

Treatment of linguistic minorities
(Sources and further information for this section: Stephens 1976, Price 1998, Ahrens 2003, Grzega 2006)

Despite the importance of English as an international lingua franca also in Europe, Europe can be associated with its linguistic diversity, which also includes the special protection of minority languages, e.g. by the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages founded in the 1990's. This underlines that the popular view of “one nation = one language” (cf. Wirrer 2003) is mostly false.

A minority language can be defined as a language used by a group that defines itself as an ethnic minority group, whereby the language of this group is typologically different and not a dialect of the standard language. For several years now, Jan Wirrer has been working on the status of minority languages in Europe (cf., e.g., Wirrer 2000 and 2003). In Europe--e.g. thanks to the European Charter of Regional and Minority Language--some languages are in quite a strong position, in the sense that they are given special status, such as Basque, Irish, Welsh/Cymraeg, Catalan, Rhaeto-Romance/Romansh and Romani, native language of the Roma/Gypsies in Eastern Europe), whereas others are in a rather weak position (e.g. Frisian, Scottish Gaelic, Turkish, Saami/Lappish, Sorbian/Wendish and Yiddish, the once common language of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe). Especially allochtonous minority languages are not given official status in the EU.

Some minor languages don’t even have a standard yet, i.e. they have not even reached the level of an ausbausprache yet, which could be changed, e.g., if these languages were given official status. (cf. also next section).

Issues in language politics
(Sources and further information for this section: Siguan 2002, Ahrens 2003, Grzega 2006)

France is the origin of two laws, or decrees, concerning language: the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1239), which says that every document in France should be written in French (i.e. not in Latin nor Occitan) and the French Loi Toubon, which aims at eliminating Anglicisms from official documents. But a characteristic feature of Europe is linguistic diversity and tolerance, which is not only shown by the European Charta of Regional and Minority Languages. An illustrative proof of the promotion of linguistic diversity in the Middle Ages is the translation school in Toledo, Spain, founded in the 12th century (in medieval Toledo the Christian, the Jewish and the Arab civilizations live together remarkably peacefully).

This tolerant linguistic attitude is also the reason why the EU’s general rule is that every official national language is also an official EU language. However, Letzebuergish/Luxemburgish is not an official EU language, because there are also other (stronger) official languages with “EU status” in that country. Several concepts for a EU language policy are being debated:
 * one official language (e.g. English, Interlingua, or Esperanto.
 * several official languages (e.g. English, French, German, Spanish + another topic-dependend language).
 * all national languages as official languages, but with a number of relais languages for translations (e.g. English or Esperanto as relais languages).
 * New immigrants in European countries are expected to learn the host nation's language, but are still speaking and reading their native languages (i.e. Arabic, Hindustani/Urdu, Mandarin Chinese, Swahili and Tahitian) in Europe's increasingly multiethnic/multicultural profile.

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Answer for Pop Quiz at WikiU Film School Lesson on storyboarding.

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Feng Shui

Feng Shui (which means “wind and water”) is the ancient art of placement. It is an Eastern philosophy that, among other things, determines how you can position and structure the items that make up your personal living space to achieve maximum benefits in terms of health, mental peace, financial success, job satisfaction and spiritual fulfillment.

But it was never the intention of the Chinese masters who developed the philosophy of Feng Shui thousands of years ago to suggest that all these wonderful benefits could be achieved by a simple rearrangement of the things of your physical world.

Rather, the ancients believed that equal attention should be paid to the inner person in terms of lifestyle factors, such as exercise and diet, channeling the natural energy forces, and working with the powerful influence of the stars.

This internalized approach to health is known as ‘inner Feng Shui’ incorporating inner and outer Feng Shui into your daily life may therefore be seen as a journey of enlightenment and one that also takes in other important spiritual approaches along the way. Feng Shui, like Indian Vaastu Shastra, believes that the directions play an important role in the luck of an individual. Each direction represents a certain aspiration. It also represents a certain element. This means that when the elements in each direction are in perfect balance, the place has the potential to produce the best luck for the persons staying there. In addition to the directions, Feng Shui also gives a special importance to the various positions in the house irrespective of the direction. This thought has given rise to the form school of Feng Shui. Here we can correct the house problems without considering the directions. But the fact remains that each direction has its own energies and we cannot ignore it. We have to give due importance to them. The form school is good for correcting the Feng Shui of things that have no specific direction, i.e. the moving things like cars or advertisement banners or hoardings etc. at other places the remedies applied just with form school are seen to show only temporary effect.

Then comes the compass school that gives due importance to both. Also we have personal Feng Shui that can help us get the best of all schools. Let us see more of Feng Shui in the later pages.

History of Feng Shui
Feng Shui was practiced in China for several years. We can trace the use of this science as back as the Tang dynasty. It was used mainly in the imperial court practice. Those days the Feng Shui masters were either highly honored or put to death in order to ensure that they do not give the benefit of their knowledge to others. Chinese folk tales are full of stories about the Feng Shui practitioners. It is believed that the first Ming emperor Chu Yuan Chaun could overthrow the last Mongol emperor with the help of an extremely auspicious Feng Shui of his father’s grave. But this ungrateful emperor ordered the killing of all the Feng Shui masters on gaining power. He was also instrumental in making and distributing fake Feng Shui literature in the public. The third Ming emperor suffered due to this fake literature as he had a new capital created in the place that is presently known as the Forbidden City in Beijing. This was created as per this fake Feng Shui and shortly after the palaces were built, they were burnt away. There were a number of mishaps during this time due to the wrong Feng Shui. Later when Manchus overthrew the Mings, they to succumbed to the effects of wrong Feng Shui. This continued till emperor Chien Lung took a personal interest in finding & introducing correct Feng Shui. His period was full of good luck and prosperity to his people. Later it was seen that even Mao Tse Tung and Deng Xioa Ping had benefited with the Feng Shui of the graves of their ancestors. Yet Mao Tse Tung did not allow the practice of Feng Shui during his rule as he was always having the fear to be overthrown. All this shows that Feng Shui was always away from the reach of common man in the ancient China. But today even a common man is able to use this science for making his life better. Feng Shui traveled to the other countries with the masters who left the motherland to settle in other countries. These countries include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

Schools of Feng Shui
Different practitioners follow Feng Shui in different ways. On the basis of its use, Feng Shui has different schools. The main schools are the form school, the compass school & the I Ching. The form school is the school that follows the concept that the areas in the premises with reference to the entrance determine different aspirations and can be corrected or enhanced just by placing the symbolic correcting of enhancing things. This symbolism has hardly anything to do with the elements. This can work well to things that have no fixed directions, but the total use of this school or houses is doubtful to produce accurate results. To begin with Feng Shui, form school is good as it is simpler, but in the long run it is always advisable to consider the compass school as well. This is because, there are times when the form school remedies may clash with the compass or personal Feng Shui remedies. This may cause problem in stead of help! The compass school is the school that considers the eight compass directions, the elements connected with these directions and the qualities of these elements. Here we generally consider the four main directions namely, East, West, North and South. The four sub-directions are, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest. The sub-directions are further divided into eight parts namely, North Northeast, East Northeast, North Northwest, West Northwest, South Southeast, East Southeast, South Southwest and West Southwest. This means, the compass school eventually considers twelve directions. These directions correspond to the twelve animals. But still as far as the consideration to the elements is concerned, we do have eight directions.

The I Ching is the technique of studying the changes of the movements of the aspiration with time. This means that the I Ching studies the time dimension of things. In this view, the changing nature of all things is totally accepted. This view also accepts that in each good fortune, there is a hidden bad fortune and in each bad fortune, there is a hidden good fortune. We have to learn to tap the good fortune in each case without labeling the fortune as good or bad. The I Ching school is mainly used when we deal with personal Feng Shui and Feng Shui astrology. The consideration to this can make the use of Feng Shui more perfect with the best possible results. Of course, we cannot rule out the presence of the heaven luck that differs from person to person. Actually it is the heaven luck that causes the difference in the intensity and quality of results even though the same remedies are applied for two persons with the same number staying in similar conditions.

Rules of successful Feng Shui
When we want to use Feng Shui in the best possible way, we have to consider the compass, the form as well as the astrology based on Feng Shui. It is advisable to follow certain rules before you actually start the Feng Shui consultation. This will ensure best results for the persons who receive advice. Since Feng Shui is essentially about you and your life, luck and health, it is important to clearly establish ‘who you are’. All of us have a unique constitutional make up from an astrological perspective, which provides important insights into potential & capacity. Some regard this as our fate or our destiny. The kua number, character number & energy number determine this. The kua number is found by calculating the total of all digits of the birth year & continuing to take the total of sums till we arrive at a single digit number. Then subtract this number from 11. This is the kua number. To get the character number we have to take the month of birth. Then take the group number of the kua number. Subtract the month number from the group number of kua number. This is the character number. On getting the character number, we have to see the trigram of that number and locate the position of kua number in it with reference to the regular lo shu with 5 in the center. This is the energy number. (for more details, refer to chapter on personal Feng Shui.) Then you have to determine where you are. This can be quite simply known when we begin to study our own unique nature and place or the premises ‘where we are’ within the cycles of time and space. It is always necessary to establish ‘who’ the client is and ‘where he or she is with reference to his or her astrology, when we study their problem and suggest a remedy to them. This can focus on their areas of vulnerability or success at the time. We also have to see what is placed in a certain area in the premises and see if it matches to relevant elements. If not, the area needs correction. This means we have to first study the whole plan of the premises where the client stays or works with all its interiors, its colour scheme and the materials used therein. This will give us the exact idea of the kind of energies present and the kind of energies actually required. Then we can make a comparative study and locate the problems faced by the residents. Before we go to suggest the remedies, it is always advisable to cross check our observations regarding the problems. If the client says that he has exactly the same or similar problems as we have noticed, then we can say that our observation is accurate. Then we can go ahead and suggest remedies, which can work successfully with good results.

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title: Feng Shui