Language support for parallel and distributed computing

Programmers of sequential and parallel computers share the objective of developing fast, reliable programs as efficiently as possible. Already, considerable effort has been made to develop tools and techniques for sequential computers. Several approaches have been devised to meet the parallel programming challenge. Sequential languages have been adapted for parallel computers; new parallel languages designed; and tools developed which aid the programmer in detecting parallel code. A parallel programming assistant can aid the user in several ways: it can carry out tasks that are simple but mundane to the user, it can make comprehension easier for the user by summarizing program information; and it can cooperate with the user in doing a complex task, thus combining its own knowledge with that of the user's.

This dissertation focuses on the debates concerning the relationship between locative, existential and possessive constructions in the languages of the world, paying special attention to the particular case of the Bantu languages, for which a more complete understanding of the relationship between those constructions can only happen if the conceptual domain of comitative is taken into account. The dissertation is developed according to three major questions, which constitute three parts of the work. The first part deals with issues related to field work or the field of the research, the description of African languages in Brazil, in this case, an African linguistics in the Diaspora. The main grammatical aspects of the languages of this study are presented, with emphasis to the Angolan languages, Bantu languages of zones H, K and R. The second part deals with theoretical issues, presenting the various proposals that have wished to analyze possessive constructions and related ones. Those proposals are classified into two types: (i) localist proposals, for which the domain of possessive and existential are ultimately locative; and (ii) Non localist proposals, which tried to identify other factors in the relations of possessive to other constructions. The epistemological questions are also presented, following a reflection of an epistemological anarchism standpoint in linguistics. Based on the assumptions of Cognitive Grammar, the conceptual domains of locative, existential, comitative and possessive are analyzed under the construct of the Reference Point Analysis, considered as the conceptual common basis to those four grammatical constructions. The third and last part is devoted to issues relating to the description of locative, existential, comitative and possessive constructions in Bantu languages. For each construction we considered sub-constructions that should receive a greater attention from scholars, for those who wish a more complete study on predicative possession. For example, for discussion locative constructions one should pay attention to issues related to locative inversion, for existential constructions, the question of the definiteness effect in Bantu languages also should be considered; for comitative constructions, one should relate this construction to that of comitative coordination between NPs, and finally, for possessive constructions, the relation of it with different grammaticalization processes responsible for the great diversity of predicative possession constructions, such as the process of transitivization or "Have-drift". For a joint analysis of these constructions concerned with typological characteristic of Bantu languages, it is proposed that it is necessary to refine theoretically the semantic-grammatical category of Control, regarded as the factor that differentiates locative, existential and comitative from possessives.

Manycore accelerators offer the potential of significantly improving the performance of scientific applications when offloading compute intensive portions of programs to the accelerators. Directive-based programming models such as OpenACC and OpenMP are high-level programming model for users to create applications for accelerators by annotating region of code for offloading with directives. In these programming models, most of the offloaded kernels are data parallel loops processing one or multiple multi-dimensional arrays, and it is often that scalar variables are used in the parallel loop body for reduction operations. Since reduction operation itself has loop-carried dependency preventing the parallelization of the loops, this could have a significant impact on the performance if not handled properly.In this paper, we present the design and parallelization of reduction operations in parallel loops for GPGPU accelerators. Using OpenACC as the high-level directive-based programing model, we discuss how reduction operations are parallelized when appearing in each level of the loop nest and thread hierarchy. We present how we handle the mapping of the loops and parallelized reduction to single- or multiple-level parallelism of GPGPU architectures. These algorithms have been implemented in the open source OpenACC compiler OpenUH. We compare our implementation with two other commercial OpenACC compilers using test cases and applications, and demonstrate better robustness and competitive performance than others.

This is the 23rd Self-Assessment Procedure. 1 The purpose of this procedure is to let its readers test their knowledge of some of the more important features of significant programming languages. The features of imperative languages like Fortran, Algol 60, PL/I, Pascal, Modula-2, C, and Ada considered are data types, data structures, control structures, program units, scope of names, and parameter passing. Some of the corresponding features of functional languages like Lisp, logic programming languages like Prolog, and ohject-oriented programming languages like C++ and Smalltalk, are reviewed. Finally brief consideration is given to syntax and semantics, chiefly by reference to the Backus-Naur form, BNF. The features of programming languages affect all aspects of programming, including the ease of writing and maintaining programs, the reliahility of software, and the efficiency and portability of programs. Knowledge of programming language concepts and constructs is of importance to software developers, programmers, and designers of programming languages and compilers. The topic of this procedure should be of interest to any computer science student or practitioner who wishes to test his or her knowledge and learn more about one of the most important and broad areas in the computer field. The language used most often in the questions is Pascal, with Ada, Lisp, and Prolog also featured prominently. A glossary is included which defines some of the terms used in the procedure. The questions are either multiple-choice or short answer. Some of the multiple-choice questions allow for more than one correct answer.

Various parallel Fortran languages have been developed over the years. The research work in creating this Parallel Fortran Family has made significant contributions to parallel programming language design and implementation. In this paper, various parallel Fortran languages are studied based on a uniform co-ordination approach towards parallel programming. That is, new language constructs in parallel Fortran systems are regarded as providing a co-ordination mechanism organising a set of single-threaded computations, coded in standard Fortran, into a parallel ensemble. Features of different parallel Fortran languages are studied by investigating their corresponding co-ordination models. A new perspective on designing a structured parallel Fortran system is proposed by using a generic structured co-ordination language, SCL, as the uniform means to organise parallel Fortran computation.

This paper presents a performance estimator, a prototype of which is implemented within the parallel programming environment PCASE. The estimation is based on static performance prediction, using not only the design information of target machines but also benchmarking results. Additionally, communication costs are estimated based on a hierarchical memory machine model, which enables users to understand all the underlying communication costs on distributed memory machines for each parallel loop. With this performance suggestion, it is possible to interactively optimize data distribution and appropriately select vectorized or parallelized loops. Moreover, the skeleton profiling method is presented. It makes high speed trace (execution count of each statement) generation possible by deleting statements which do not affect the execution path of a program.KeywordsExecution PathExecution CostTarget MachineMemory MachineVector InstructionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Foreword Cyril Weir 1. Assessing Chinese learners of English - the language constructs, consequences and conundrums: An Introduction Guoxing Yu and Yan JIN 2. Implementing a learning-oriented approach within English Language assessment in Hong Kong schools: practices, issues and complexities Liz Hamp-Lyons 3. Contriving authentic interaction: Task implementation and engagement in school-based peer group speaking assessment in Hong Kong Daniel M. K. Lam 4. The impact of test mode on the use of communication strategies in the paired discussion task Yan Jin and Lin Zhang 5. Fact-to-face interaction in a speaking test: A corpus-based study of Chinese learners' basic spoken vocabulary Shasha Xu 6. Features of formulaic language used by Chinese EFL learners in their performance in a story-retelling assessment task Lei Wang and Chan Chen 7. Assessing incidental vocabulary learning by Chinese EFL learners Chanchan Tang and Jeanine Treffers-Daller 8. Chinese users' reactions to automated scoring of speech and validity implications Xiaoming Xi, Jonathan Schmidgall and Yuan Wang 9. Project-based group assessment in the second language classroom: Understanding university students' perceptions David Qian 10. The Chinese students' response to an assessment policy change: A case study Qiuxian Chen and Lyn May 11. Students' voices: What factors influence their English learning and test performance? Ying Zheng 12. Standard English or Chinese English? Native and non-native English teachers' perceptions Ying Zhang 13. The power of the General English Proficiency Test on the Taiwanese society and its tertiary English education Shwu-wen Lin 14. Twenty years of Cambridge English in China: Investigating the impact Xiangdong Gu and Nick Saville

This study explores gendered communication patterns through the analysis of language features used by male and female characters in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie. Employing Jennifer Coates’s (2015) framework, seven language features—minimal responses, hedges, tag questions, questions, commands and directives, swearing and taboo language, and compliments—were examined to identify distinctions in male and female speech. The study adopted a qualitative method with a case study design. A total of 143 male and 85 female utterances were analyzed. Findings indicate that male characters predominantly used questions (52.54%) and commands/directives (17.48%), reflecting a more assertive and directive communication style. In contrast, female characters employed more hedges (25.88%) and compliments (5.88%), suggesting a more cooperative and supportive style of interaction. These findings support Coates’s claim that male speech often emphasizes control and competitiveness, while female language tends to prioritize relational maintenance. This analysis not only illustrates how gendered language reinforces traditional gender ideologies but also demonstrates how dystopian media narratives can mirror broader societal power structures. By adopting a consistent theoretical lens, this research provides analytical rigor and enhances comparability between male and female speech. The study contributes to sociolinguistic scholarship by offering insights into the representation of gender in cinematic discourse and may inform future investigations into language, media, and identity construction.

In this paper we study the problem of scheduling parallel loops at compile-time for a heterogeneous network of machines. We consider heterogeneity in three aspects of parallel programming: program, processor and network. A heterogeneous program has parallel loops with different amount of work in each iteration; heterogeneous processors have different speeds; and a heterogeneous network has different cost of communication between processors. We propose a simple yet comprehensive model for use in compiling for a network of processors, and develop compiler algorithms for generating optimal and sub-optimal schedules of loops for load balancing, communication optimizations and network contention. Experiments show that a significant improvement of performance is achieved using our techniques.

This paper presents 3MT, a framework for modular mechanized meta-theory of languages with effects. Using 3MT, individual language features and their corresponding definitions -- semantic functions, theorem statements and proofs-- can be built separately and then reused to create different languages with fully mechanized meta-theory. 3MT combines modular datatypes and monads to define denotational semantics with effects on a per-feature basis, without fixing the particular set of effects or language constructs. One well-established problem with type soundness proofs for denotational semantics is that they are notoriously brittle with respect to the addition of new effects. The statement of type soundness for a language depends intimately on the effects it uses, making it particularly challenging to achieve modularity. 3MT solves this long-standing problem by splitting these theorems into two separate and reusable parts: a feature theorem that captures the well-typing of denotations produced by the semantic function of an individual feature with respect to only the effects used, and an effect theorem that adapts well-typings of denotations to a fixed superset of effects. The proof of type soundness for a particular language simply combines these theorems for its features and the combination of their effects. To establish both theorems, 3MT uses two key reasoning techniques: modular induction and algebraic laws about effects. Several effectful language features, including references and errors, illustrate the capabilities of 3MT. A case study reuses these features to build fully mechanized definitions and proofs for 28 languages, including several versions of mini-ML with effects.

This article focuses on some lexical and stylistic peculiarities in the headlines of the military articles in English. At the beginning of the article it describes the main functions of the headlines of newspaper articles and their aims in modern printed and electronic publications. The author mentions nominative and informative, evaluative, advertising and esthetic functions which are not isolated, but interconnected in the newspaper headline as a media text. Further the text of the article deals with stylistic analysis, the author considers scientific and technical functional style together with official and business one, at the crossroads of which the style of writing the headlines is. Characteristic features of both styles are given. Official and business style gives military texts and headlines corresponding language character, logic, exactness, clarity, objectivity, concreteness, austerity. At the same time scientific and technical style is united with headlines by the usage of terminology, connected with warfare. In this research the morphological, syntactic, lexical, grammatical features of building headlines in the military articles in English are analyzed using the examples of headlines taken from The Guardian, The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, The Times. The article also explains the attraction of military headlines by the usage of such unusual language structures as stylistic devices. Some stylistic devices are mentioned and defined, such as alliteration, speech and language epithets, metaphor, allusion. Examples of them are given. These are language constructions which help to make the headline interesting and memorable.

Virtual classes are class-valued attributes of objects.<br />Like virtual methods, virtual classes are defined in<br />an object’s class and may be redefined within subclasses.<br />They resemble inner classes, which are also<br />defined within a class, but virtual classes are accessed<br />through object instances, not as static components<br />of a class. When used as types, virtual classes depend<br />upon object identity – each object instance introduces<br />a new family of virtual class types. Virtual classes support large-scale program composition techniques,<br />including higher-order hierarchies and family<br />polymorphism. The original definition of virtual<br />classes in Beta left open the question of static type<br />safety, since some type errors were not caught until<br />runtime. Later the languages Caesar and gbeta have<br />used a more strict static analysis in order to ensure<br />static type safety. However, the existence of a sound,<br />statically typed model for virtual classes has been a<br />long-standing open question. This technical report<br />presents a virtual class calculus, vc, that captures<br />the essence of virtual classes in these full-fledged programming languages. The key contributions of the<br />paper are a formalization of the dynamic and static<br />semantics of vc and a proof of the soundness of vc.<br />Categories: D.3.3 [Language Constructs and Features]:<br />Classes and objects, inheritance, polymorphism.<br />F.3.3 [Studies of Program Constructs]:<br />Object-oriented constructs, type structure. F.3.2<br />[Semantics of Programming Languages]: Operational<br />semantics.

Usability is an important feature for programming languages, and user evaluations can provide invaluable feedback on language design. However, user studies which compare programming languages or systems are often very expensive and typically inconclusive. In this paper, we posit that discount usability methods can be successfully applied to programming languages concepts such as language features. We give examples of useful feedback received from applying heuristic evaluation to two language features targeted at parallel programming.

This study explores women’s language features in a patriarchal context by analyzing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper through the lens of Robin Lakoff’s (1975) framework. Focusing exclusively on the female narrator, the study examines narrative passages, sentences, and expressions to identify linguistic patterns that reflect social and ideological constraints. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, nine women’s language features were identified: lexical hedges, tag questions, rising intonation, intensifiers, hypercorrect grammar, super‑polite forms, avoidance of strong swear words, precise color terms, and empty adjectives. The findings show that these features serve to convey tentativeness, politeness, emotional expression, and psychological sensitivity, highlighting the narrator’s constrained agency under patriarchal and institutional control, particularly within the context of the rest cure. From a feminist literary perspective, the language simultaneously provides subtle means for resistance and self-expression, revealing how linguistic strategies negotiate power, uncertainty, and emotion. The study underscores the value of combining Lakoff’s sociolinguistic framework with feminist literary theory to examine how language reflects and contests gendered authority in literature. Limitations include the focus on a single narrator and one literary work, suggesting the need for comparative and corpus-based studies across genres and historical contexts. Future research could explore the relationship between women’s language features, narrative perspective, and character agency to further understand how literary language constructs female subjectivity and ideological critique.

The previous schemes of key establishment in the wireless sensor networks may not be employed for the mission-critical application due to several limitations: lightweightness and scalability from the point of performance, vulnerabilities against node compromise and various existing attacks from the point of security. In this paper, after identifying security requirements of mission-critical applications over sensor networks, we propose a scalable and robust hierarchical key establishment scheme which enhances resilience against node capture, traffic analysis attack and acknowledgment spoofing attack. In addition, our scheme provides periodic key updates without communication costs for key transport. We verified that our scheme requires less storage, computation and communication cost compared with the previous scheme in the open literature. When AES-256 is used for symmetric encryption and one cluster consists of 50 sensor nodes, we can reduce 93.4% storage requirement and 17.2%~51.3% communication cost of the authentication request for the cluster. Since the reduced communication and computation costs enable the time of authentication process to be short, our scheme can support relatively fast initialization and fault recovery. Moreover, our scheme prolongs the lifetime of the wireless sensor networks.