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Semantics with Assignment Variables

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2021)

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  1. The Grammar of English Nominalizations.Robert B. Lees - 1962 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 27 (2):212-213.
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  • The double life of names.Gail Leckie - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (3):1139-1160.
    This paper is a counter to the view that names are always predicates with the same extension as a metalinguistic predicate with the form “is a thing called “N”” (the Predicate View). The Predicate View is in opposition to the Referential View of names. In this paper, I undermine one argument for the Predicate View. The Predicate View’s adherents take examples of uses of names that have the surface appearance of a predicate and generalise from these to treat uses of (...)
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  • Temporal Adjectives and the Structure of Possessive DPs.Richard Larson & Sungeun Cho - 2003 - Natural Language Semantics 11 (3):217-247.
    The presence of temporal adjectives in possessive nominals like John's former car creates two interpretations. On one reading, the temporal adjective modifies the common noun (N-modifying reading). On the other, it modifies the possession relation (POSS-modifying reading). An explanation for this behavior is offered that appeals to what occurs in possessive sentences like John has a former car (N-modifying reading) and John formerly had a car (POSS-modifying reading). In the sentential cases, the source of two readings is two distinct, modifiable (...)
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  • Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.
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  • What 'must' and 'can' must and can mean.Angelika Kratzer - 1977 - Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (3):337--355.
    In this paper I offer an account of the meaning of must and can within the framework of possible worlds semantics. The paper consists of two parts: the first argues for a relative concept of modality underlying modal words like must and can in natural language. I give preliminary definitions of the meaning of these words which are formulated in terms of logical consequence and compatibility, respectively. The second part discusses one kind of insufficiency in the meaning definitions given in (...)
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  • Ifs and Oughts.Niko Kolodny & John MacFarlane - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (3):115-143.
    We consider a paradox involving indicative conditionals (‘ifs’) and deontic modals (‘oughts’). After considering and rejecting several standard options for resolv- ing the paradox—including rejecting various premises, positing an ambiguity or hidden contextual sensitivity, and positing a non-obvious logical form—we offer a semantics for deontic modals and indicative conditionals that resolves the paradox by making modus ponens invalid. We argue that this is a result to be welcomed on independent grounds, and we show that rejecting the general validity of modus (...)
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  • Inverse linking via function composition.Gregory M. Kobele - 2010 - Natural Language Semantics 18 (2):183-196.
    The phenomenon of inverse linking, where a noun phrase embedded within another behaves with respect to binding as though it were structurally independent, has proven challenging for theories of the syntax–semantics interface. In this paper I show that, using an LF-movement style approach to the syntax–semantics interface, we can derive all and only the appropriate meanings for such constructions using no semantic operations other than function application and composition. The solution relies neither on a proliferation of lexical ambiguity nor on (...)
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  • Context Dependent Quantifiers and Donkey Anaphora.Jeffrey C. King - 2004 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (sup1):97-127.
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  • Anaphora and operators.Jeffrey C. King - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8:221-250.
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  • Vagueness and grammar: The semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives.Christopher Kennedy - 2007 - Linguistics and Philosophy 30 (1):1 - 45.
    This paper investigates the way that linguistic expressions influence vagueness, focusing on the interpretation of the positive (unmarked) form of gradable adjectives. I begin by developing a semantic analysis of the positive form of ‘relative’ gradable adjectives, expanding on previous proposals by further motivating a semantic basis for vagueness and by precisely identifying and characterizing the division of labor between the compositional and contextual aspects of its interpretation. I then introduce a challenge to the analysis from the class of ‘absolute’ (...)
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  • The Definiteness Effect: Semantics or Pragmatics? [REVIEW]Ed Keenan - 2003 - Natural Language Semantics 11 (2):187-216.
    In this paper I propose and defend a semantically based account of the distribution of DPs in existential there-sentences in English in opposition to the pragmatic account proposed in Zucchi (1995). The two analyses share many features, making it possible to study variation along the semantics/pragmatics dimension while holding the rest constant.
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  • Some properties of natural language quantifiers: Generalized quantifier theory. [REVIEW]Edward Keenan - 2002 - Linguistics and Philosophy 25 (5-6):627-654.
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  • Syntax and semantics of questions.Lauri Karttunen - 1977 - Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1):3--44.
    W. Labov's & T. Labov's findings concerning their child grammar acquisition ("Learning the Syntax of Questions" in Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, Campbell, R. & Smith, P. Eds, New York: Plenum Press, 1978) are interpreted in terms of different semantics of why & other wh-questions. Z. Dubiel.
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  • Weak vs. strong Readings of donkey sentences and monotonicity inference in a dynamic setting.Makoto Kanazawa - 1994 - Linguistics and Philosophy 17 (2):109 - 158.
    In this paper, I show that the availability of what some authors have called the weak reading and the strong reading of donkey sentences with relative clauses is systematically related to monotonicity properties of the determiner. The correlation is different from what has been observed in the literature in that it concerns not only right monotonicity, but also left monotonicity (persistence/antipersistence). I claim that the reading selected by a donkey sentence with a double monotone determiner is in fact the one (...)
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  • Formal Properties of 'Now'.Hans Kamp - 1971 - Theoria 37 (3):227-273.
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  • Towards a variable-free semantics.Pauline Jacobson - 1999 - Linguistics and Philosophy 22 (2):117-185.
    The Montagovian hypothesis of direct model-theoretic interpretation of syntactic surface structures is supported by an account of the semantics of binding that makes no use of variables, syntactic indices, or assignment functions & shows that the interpretation of a large portion of so-called variable-binding phenomena can dispense with the level of logical form without incurring equivalent complexity elsewhere in the system. Variable-free semantics hypothesizes local interpretation of each surface constituent; binding is formalized as a type-shifting operation on expressions that denote (...)
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  • Paycheck Pronouns, Bach-Peters Sentences, and Variable-Free Semantics.Pauline Jacobson - 2000 - Natural Language Semantics 8 (2):77-155.
    This paper argues for the hypothesis of direct compositionality (as in, e.g., Montague 1974), according to which the combinatory syntactic rules specify a set of well-formed expressions while the semantic combinatory rules work in tandem to directly supply a model-theoretic interpretation to each expression as it is "built" in the syntax. (This thus obviates the need for any level like LF and, concomitantly, for any rules mapping surface structures to such a level.) I focus here on one related group of (...)
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  • On the contribution of conditionalthen.Sabine Iatridou - 1993 - Natural Language Semantics 2 (3):171-199.
    This paper addresses the question of whether the appearance ofthen in a conditional construction has any effect on the meaning of the sentence as a whole. It will be suggested thatthen does make a contribution by way of a particular presupposition associated with it. This also results inthen sometimes conflicting with the intended meaning of the sentence; in such cases its appearance is precluded. Certain aspects of the syntax ofthen will be discussed in parallel.
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  • Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics.Henry M. Hoenigswald & John Lyons - 1971 - Journal of the American Oriental Society 91 (4):564.
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  • E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora.Irene Heim - 1990 - Linguistics and Philosophy 13 (2):137--77.
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  • On the event relativity of modal auxiliaries.Valentine Hacquard - 2010 - Natural Language Semantics 18 (1):79-114.
    Crosslinguistically, the same modal words can be used to express a wide range of interpretations. This crosslinguistic trend supports a Kratzerian analysis, where each modal has a core lexical entry and where the difference between an epistemic and a root interpretation is contextually determined. A long-standing problem for such a unified account is the equally robust crosslinguistic correlation between a modal’s interpretation and its syntactic behavior: epistemics scope high (in particular higher than tense and aspect) and roots low, a fact (...)
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  • On the interaction of aspect and modal auxiliaries.Valentine Hacquard - 2009 - Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (3):279-315.
    This paper discusses the interaction of aspect and modality, and focuses on the puzzling implicative effect that arises when perfective aspect appears on certain modals: perfective somehow seems to force the proposition expressed by the complement of the modal to hold in the actual world, and not merely in some possible world. I show that this puzzling behavior, originally discussed in Bhatt (1999, Covert modality in non-finite contexts) for the ability modal, extends to all modal auxiliaries with a circumstantial modal (...)
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  • Strange Relatives of the Third Kind.Alexander Grosu & Fred Landman - 1998 - Natural Language Semantics 6 (2):125-170.
    In this paper, we argue that there are more kinds of relative clause constructions between the linguistic heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the classical lore, which distinguishes just restrictive relative clauses and appositives. We start with degree relatives. Degree, or amount, relatives show restrictions in the relativizers they allow, in the determiners that can combine with them, and in their stacking possibilities. To account for these facts, we propose an analysis with two central, and novel, features: First, (...)
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  • Semantic analysis of wh-complements.Jeroen Groenendijk & Martin Stokhof - 1982 - Linguistics and Philosophy 5 (2):175 - 233.
    This paper presents an analysis of wh-complements in Montague Grammar. We will be concerned primarily with semantics, though some remarks on syntax are made in Section 4. Questions and wh-comple ments in Montague Grammar have been studied in Hamblin (1976), Bennett (1979), Karttunen (1977) and Hauser (1978) among others. These proposals will not be discussed explicitly, but some differences with Karttunen's analysis will be pointed out along the way.
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  • Existentials, predication, and modification.Itamar Francez - 2009 - Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (1):1-50.
    This paper offers a new semantic theory of existentials (sentences of the form There be NP pivot XP coda ) in which pivots are (second order) predicates and codas are modifiers. The theory retains the analysis of pivots as denoting generalized quantifiers (Barwise and Cooper 1981; Keenan 1987), but departs from previous analyses in analyzing codas as contextual modifiers on a par with temporal/locative frame adverbials. Existing analyses universally assume that pivots are arguments of some predicate, and that codas are (...)
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  • Context dependence and implicit arguments in existentials.Itamar Francez - 2010 - Linguistics and Philosophy 33 (1):11-30.
    This paper discusses the semantics of bare existentials , i.e. existentials in which nothing follows the post copular NP (e.g. There are four sections ). While it has sometimes been recognized that the interpretation of such sentences depends in some way on context, the exact nature of the context dependence involved has not been properly understood. It is shown that the meaning of bare existentials involves a set-denoting implicit argument, and that the range of interpretations found with bare existentials is (...)
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  • Frege's Puzzle. [REVIEW]Graeme Forbes - 1987 - Philosophical Review 96 (3):455.
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  • Referential and quantificational indefinites.Janet Dean Fodor & Ivan A. Sag - 1982 - Linguistics and Philosophy 5 (3):355 - 398.
    The formal semantics that we have proposed for definite and indefinite descriptions analyzes them both as variable-binding operators and as referring terms. It is the referential analysis which makes it possible to account for the facts outlined in Section 2, e.g. for the purely ‘instrumental’ role of the descriptive content; for the appearance of unusually wide scope readings relative to other quantifiers, higher predicates, and island boundaries; for the fact that the island-escaping readings are always equivalent to maximally wide scope (...)
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  • Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.Ann S. Ferebee - 1965 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 35 (1):167.
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  • You can call me 'stupid', ... just don't call me stupid.Delia Graff Fara - 2011 - Analysis 71 (3):492-501.
    In this paper I argue that names are predicates when they occur in the appellation position of 'called'-predications. This includes not only proper names, but all names -- including quote-names of proper names and quote-names of other words or phrases. Thus in "You can call me Al", the proper name 'Al' is a predicate. And in "You can call me 'Al'," the quote-name of 'Al' -- namely ' 'Al' ' -- is also a predicate.
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  • Names Are Predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2015 - Philosophical Review 124 (1):59-117.
    One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates (...)
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  • E-Type Anaphora as NP-Deletion.Paul Elbourne - 2001 - Natural Language Semantics 9 (3):241-288.
    This paper argues that donkey pronouns should be construed as definite articles, followed by an NP sister which has undergone deletion in the phonology. So Every man who owns a donkey beats it is claimed to share a Logical Form with Every man who owns a donkey beats the donkey, which means the same. There is independent evidence for assimilating pronouns to determiners, and for NP-deletion; so this theory explains E-type anaphora without postulating any special entity (`E-type pronoun') for the (...)
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  • Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language. [REVIEW]Hidé Ishiguro - 1974 - Philosophy 49 (190):438-442.
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  • Variabilism.Samuel Cumming - 2008 - Philosophical Review 117 (4):525-554.
    Variabilism is the view that proper names (like pronouns) are semantically represented as variables. Referential names, like referential pronouns, are assigned their referents by a contextual variable assignment (Kaplan 1989). The reference parameter (like the world of evaluation) may also be shifted by operators in the representation language. Indeed verbs that create hyperintensional contexts, like ‘think’, are treated as operators that simultaneously shift the world and assignment parameters. By contrast, metaphysical modal operators shift the world of assessment only. Names, being (...)
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  • A force-theoretic framework for event structure.Bridget Copley & Heidi Harley - 2015 - Linguistics and Philosophy 38 (2):103-158.
    We propose an account of dynamic predicates which draws on the notion of force, eliminating reference to events in the linguistic semantics. We treat dynamic predicates as predicates of forces, represented as functions from an initial situation to a final situation that occurs ceteris paribus, that is, if nothing external intervenes. The possibility that opposing forces might intervene to prevent the transition to a given final situation leads us to a novel analysis of non-culminating accomplishment predicates in a variety of (...)
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  • Lectures on Government and Binding. The Pisa Lectures.Noam Chomsky - 1986 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 51 (1):238-240.
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  • Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.Noam Chomsky - 1965 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
    Chomsky proposes a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes recent developments in the descriptive analysis of particular ...
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  • Reference to Kinds across Language.Gennaro Chierchia - 1998 - Natural Language Semantics 6 (4):339-405.
    This paper is devoted to the study of bare nominal arguments (i.e., determinerless NPs occurring in canonical argumental positions) from a crosslinguistic point of view. It is proposed that languages may vary in what they let their NPs denote. In some languages (like Chinese), NPs are argumental (names of kinds) and can thus occur freely without determiner in argument position; in others they are predicates (Romance), and this prevents NPs from occurring as arguments, unless the category D(eterminer) is projected. Finally, (...)
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  • Questions with quantifiers.Gennaro Chierchia - 1992 - Natural Language Semantics 1 (2):181-234.
    This paper studies the distribution of ‘list readings’ in questions like who does everyone like? vs. who likes everyone?. More generally, it focuses on the interaction between wh-words and quantified NPs. It is argued that, contrary to widespread belief, the pattern of available readings of constituent questions can be explained as a consequence of Weak Crossover, a well-known property of grammar. In particular, list readings are claimed to be a special case of ‘functional readings’, rather than arising from quantifying into (...)
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  • Intensionality and context change.Gennaro Chierchia - 1994 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 3 (2):141-168.
    It is arguably desirable to have a theory of meaning that (i) does not identify propositions with sets of worlds, (ii) enables to capture the dynamic character of semantic interpretation and (iii) provides the basis for a semantic program that incorporates and extends the achievements of Montague semantics. A theory of properties and propositions that meets these desiderata is developed and several applications to the semantic analysis of natural languages are explored.
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  • Anaphora and dynamic binding.Gennaro Chierchia - 1992 - Linguistics and Philosophy 15 (2):111--183.
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  • What we know and what to do.Nate Charlow - 2013 - Synthese 190 (12):2291-2323.
    This paper discusses an important puzzle about the semantics of indicative conditionals and deontic necessity modals (should, ought, etc.): the Miner Puzzle (Parfit, ms; Kolodny and MacFarlane, J Philos 107:115–143, 2010). Rejecting modus ponens for the indicative conditional, as others have proposed, seems to solve a version of the puzzle, but is actually orthogonal to the puzzle itself. In fact, I prove that the puzzle arises for a variety of sophisticated analyses of the truth-conditions of indicative conditionals. A comprehensive solution (...)
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  • Conditional preferences and practical conditionals.Nate Charlow - 2013 - Linguistics and Philosophy 36 (6):463-511.
    I argue that taking the Practical Conditionals Thesis seriously demands a new understanding of the semantics of such conditionals. Practical Conditionals Thesis: A practical conditional [if A][ought] expresses B’s conditional preferability given A Paul Weirich has argued that the conditional utility of a state of affairs B on A is to be identified as the degree to which it is desired under indicative supposition that A. Similarly, exploiting the PCT, I will argue that the proper analysis of indicative practical conditionals (...)
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  • Explaining the locality conditions of QR: Consequences for the theory of phases. [REVIEW]Carlo Cecchetto - 2004 - Natural Language Semantics 12 (4):345-397.
    In this paper I offer an explanation for the fact that QR tends to be more local than other types of A-bar movement (i.e., in typical cases, QR cannot take place out of a finite clause). My explanation assumes (and offers evidence for) the Phase Impenetrability Condition (cf. Chomsky 2001a, b) and an Economy Condition that requires that each step of (possibly successive cyclic) QR be motivated (cf. Fox 1999). After showing why QR is local in typical cases, I consider (...)
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  • Deliberative modality under epistemic uncertainty.Fabrizio Cariani, Magdalena Kaufmann & Stefan Kaufmann - 2013 - Linguistics and Philosophy 36 (3):225-259.
    We discuss the semantic significance of a puzzle concerning ‘ought’ and conditionals recently discussed by Kolodny and MacFarlane. We argue that the puzzle is problematic for the standard Kratzer-style analysis of modality. In Kratzer’s semantics, modals are evaluated relative to a pair of conversational backgrounds. We show that there is no sensible way of assigning values to these conversational backgrounds so as to derive all of the intuitions in Kolodny and MacFarlane’s case. We show that the appropriate verdicts can be (...)
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  • Reference and proper names.Tyler Burge - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (14):425-439.
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  • Crossover Situations.Daniel Büring - 2004 - Natural Language Semantics 12 (1):23-62.
    Situation semantics as conceived in Kratzer (1989) has been shown to be a valuable companion to the e-type pronoun analysis of donkey sentences (Heim 1990, and recently refined in Elbourne 2001b), and more generally binding out of DP (BOOD; Tomioka 1999; Büring 2001). The present paper proposes a fully compositional version of such a theory, which is designed to capture instances of crossover in BOOD.
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  • Aspect, quantification and when-clauses in italian.Andrea Bonomi - 1997 - Linguistics and Philosophy 20 (5):469-514.
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  • The Raising Analysis of Relative Clauses: Evidence from Adjectival Modification. [REVIEW]Rajesh Bhatt - 2002 - Natural Language Semantics 10 (1):43-90.
    This paper provides a new argument for the raising analysis of relative clauses. This argument is based on the observation that certain adjectival modifiers on the head of a relative clause can be interpreted in positions internal to the relative clause. It is shown that the raising analysis of relative clauses is able to generate the readings corresponding to the relative clause internal interpretation of adjectival modifiers and that two competing analyses of relative clauses, the matching analysis and the head (...)
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  • The dynamics of vagueness.Chris Barker - 2002 - Linguistics and Philosophy 25 (1):1-36.
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