title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: The Staten Island FerryHawks are an American minor-league professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Staten Island. They are a member of the North Division of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, a "partner league" of Major League Baseball They play their home games at SIUH Community Park, the former home of the Staten Island Yankees, which is in the St. George neighborhood and overlooks the Manhattan skyline across New York Harbor.


title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: In 2021, Staten Islanders chose the name "FerryHawks" in a team-sponsored fan ballot. The name refers to the iconic Staten Island Ferry, which connects the borough to Manhattan across the Harbor, and to the red-tailed ("Buteo jamaicensis") and Cooper's hawks ("Accipiter cooperii") native to Staten Island. The team plans to use "DragonSlayers" and "HarborHeroes," the other two contestants in the ballot, for limited promotions. "DragonSlayers" refers to the St. George neighborhood, named for the ancient Cappadocian soldier Saint George whose legend involves slaying a dragon. The "HarborHeroes" name alludes to first responders (police, fire, and ambulance), especially those who patrol New York Harbor.


title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: The start of the 2020 season was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic before ultimately being cancelled on June 30. On November 7, 2020, the New York Yankees announced that they were withdrawing from Staten Island along with abandoning their affiliation with the Trenton Thunder and moving forward with the Somerset Patriots, but they would seek to place an Atlantic League team at Richmond County Bank Ballpark in 2021. On December 3, 2020, the Staten Island Yankees announced that the club would cease operations.


title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: In 2021, the New York Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) was in talks with the Atlantic League to have an expansion team play at the stadium in 2022. On June 5, 2021, Atlantic League President Rick White announced that Staten Island "is close" to getting a franchise for the 2022 season.


title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: On July 24, 2021, Staten Island Borough President James Oddo, announced that the new franchise would be owned by Staten Island Entertainment LLC, an investment group including John Catsimatidis, Dany Garcia, Eric Shuffler (a New Jersey politician), Colin Jost, Pete Davidson, and Michael Che. On August 2, 2021, the Atlantic League board of directors approved the ownership group's application to join the league. On August 17, 2021, it was reported that the ballpark's lease was transferred from the Staten Island Yankees to Staten Island Entertainment.


title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: On April 8, 2022, Kelsie Whitmore signed with the Staten Island FerryHawks. She debuted with them as a pinch runner on April 22 and while with them became the first woman to start an Atlantic League game on May 1, playing as a left fielder. She was hitless in three plate appearances but recorded two putouts in two chances in the field, catching fly balls hit by Gastonia Honey Hunters batters Reece Hampton and Johnny Davis. On May 4, Whitmore became the first woman to pitch in an Atlantic League game when she made her first pitching appearance for Staten Island; entering the game with the bases loaded and two outs, she retired Ryan Jackson, a former major leaguer, on a fly out to end the inning.


title: Staten Island FerryHawks

text: The Staten Island FerryHawks logo features a copper-colored hawk wearing a baseball uniform, a ballcap, and holding a bat. The "Staten Island FerryHawks" wordmark arches over the logo in navy blue and orange. The cap logo includes the interlocking letters "SI" in orange and sky blue outlined in navy blue.


title: Wolfgang Porsche

text: Wolfgang Heinz Porsche (born Stuttgart 10 May 1943) is a German-Austrian manager and a member of the Porsche family. He is a shareholder and chairman of the Supervisory Board of Porsche Automobil Holding SE as well as of Porsche AG. He is the youngest son of Ferdinand (Ferry) Porsche and Dorothea Reitz. His oldest brother is Ferdinand (Butzi) Porsche, designer of the Porsche 911.


title: Wolfgang Porsche

text: After school he trained as a metalworker and went on to obtain a degree in Business Administration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business. After qualifying, Porsche established his own business, importing Yamaha motorbikes to Austria. In 1976 he joined Daimler-Benz. Two years later he was appointed to the Supervisory Board of Porsche AG. In 2007 he became Chairman of both Porsche AG and Porsche Automobil Holding SE. In 2008 he also joined the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG.


title: Wolfgang Porsche

text: Porsche was married to the director and screenplay writer Susanne Bresser from 1988 until their divorce in 2008. They have two sons. Wolfgang Porsche lives in Zell am See in Austria.


title: Wolfgang Porsche

text: He is a member of board of directors of Porsche Automobil Holding along with Josef Michael Ahorner, Stefan Piëch, Peter Daniell Porsche, Hans Michel Piech, Ferdinand Oliver Porsche and Hans-Peter Porsche. He also sit on the supervisory board of separately listed Volkswagen AG.


title: Chipolata

text: A chipolata () is a type of fresh sausage, likely created in France. Sausages by that name appear in the 1903 edition of Escoffier's . Chipolatas are often prepared as a relatively thin and short sausage.


title: Chipolata

text: Chipolatas are typically made from coarse-ground pork seasoned with salt and pepper together with herbs and spices—according to the particular recipe—such as sage, thyme, pimento, or nutmeg.


title: Chipolata

text: Chipolatas are common in the United Kingdom. They frequently appear as part of a Christmas dinner wrapped in streaky bacon as pigs in blankets.


title: Chipolata

text: A consists of onions, chipolata sausages, chestnuts, salt pork, and sometimes carrots in a demiglace or Madeira sauce.


title: Chipolata

text: In Switzerland, the Italian spelling (plural: "cipollate") is more prevalent. The sausage also usually contains veal and milk, in addition to pork. are fried or grilled and often served to children. taste and look like a miniature version of the St. Galler Bratwurst.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: Primordial dwarfism (PD) is a form of dwarfism that results in a smaller body size in all stages of life beginning from before birth. More specifically, primordial dwarfism is a diagnostic category including specific types of profoundly proportionate dwarfism, in which individuals are extremely small for their age, even as a fetus. Most individuals with primordial dwarfism are not diagnosed until they are about 3–5 years of age.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: Medical professionals typically diagnose the fetus as being small for gestational age, or as showing intrauterine growth restriction when an ultrasound is conducted. Typically, people with primordial dwarfism are born with very low birth weights. After birth, growth continues at a much slower rate, leaving individuals with primordial dwarfism perpetually years behind their peers in stature and in weight.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: Most cases of short stature are caused by skeletal or endocrine disorders. The five subtypes of primordial dwarfism are among the most severe forms of the 200 types of dwarfism.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: There are as yet no effective treatments for primordial dwarfism. It is rare for individuals affected by primordial dwarfism to live past the age of 30. In the case of microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II (MOPDII), there can be increased risk of vascular problems, which may cause premature death.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: It is known that PD is caused by inheriting a mutant gene from each parent. The lack of normal growth in the disorder is not due to a deficiency of growth hormone, as in hypopituitary dwarfism. Administering growth hormone, therefore, has little or no effect on the growth of the individual with primordial dwarfism, except in the case of Russell–Silver syndrome (RSS). Individuals with RSS respond favorably to growth hormone treatment. Children with RSS that are treated with growth hormone before puberty may achieve several inches of additional height. In January 2008, it was published that mutations in the pericentrin gene (PCNT) were found to cause primordial dwarfism. Pericentrin has a role in cell division, proper chromosome segregation and cytokinesis.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: Another gene that has been implicated in this condition is DNA2. Mutations in this gene have been implicated in Seckel syndrome.


title: Primordial dwarfism

text: Since primordial dwarfism disorders are extremely rare, misdiagnosis is common. Because children with PD do not grow like other children, poor nutrition, a metabolic disorder, or a digestive disorder may be diagnosed initially. The correct diagnosis of PD may not be made until the child is 5 years old and it becomes apparent that the child has severe dwarfism.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: Gran Turismo 2 is a 1999 racing game developed by Polyphony Digital and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. It is the sequel to "Gran Turismo". It was well-received critically and financially, shipping 1.71 million copies in Japan, 0.02 million in Southeast Asia, 3.96 million in North America, and 3.68 million in Europe for a total of 9.37 million copies as of April 30, 2008, and eventually becoming a Sony Greatest Hits game. The title received an average of 93% in Metacritic's aggregate.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: "Gran Turismo 2" is a racing game. The player must maneuver an automobile to compete against artificially intelligent drivers on various race tracks. The game uses two different modes: Arcade Mode and Simulation Mode (Gran Turismo Mode in PAL and Japanese versions). In the arcade mode, the player can freely choose vehicles they wish to use, and can enable damage, while the simulation mode requires the player to earn driver's licenses, pay for vehicles, and earn trophies in order to unlock new and returning courses. "Gran Turismo 2" features nearly 650 automobiles and 27 racing tracks, including rally tracks.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: Compared with "Gran Turismo", the gameplay, physics and graphics are very similar: the only real noticeable difference in vehicle dynamics was the brakes, which became much less likely to lock up and cause the vehicle to oversteer. The major changes are the vastly expanded number of cars, tracks and races in simulation mode. Other differences include that the player can race events separately, if they do not want to enter the whole tournament. The player is no longer able to "qualify" for each race entered.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: After the unexpected success of "Gran Turismo", lead developer Kazunori Yamauchi planned to make "Gran Turismo 2" "an even better product". SCEA's marketing director (Ami Blaire) had high hopes, stating "the overwhelming and continuing popularity of "Gran Turismo" clearly positions "Gran Turismo 2" to be one of the hottest titles available for the holidays and beyond". Jack Tretton (sales vice president of SCEA) had similar enthusiasm, expecting "Gran Turismo 2" to "fly off the shelves faster than the original, continuing the momentum of this incredible franchise".


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: Upon the game's release, players shortly found various errors and glitches. SCEA did not ignore the outcry, and offered a replacement if any problems occurred. For example, in version 1.0 of the NTSC-U version of the game, the maximum attainable completion percentage was 98.2%. Another glitch was that no matter what, even if a player saves the game, cars can disappear from their garage. A third glitch was that certain cars would appear in the wrong races. This was most significant in the 30-lap Trial Mountain endurance race, where a 680 bhp Vector M12 LM edition may appear despite a 295-horsepower entry restriction, effectively making the race nearly impossible to win. The reason for the maximum completion percentage falling short is due to a planned drag racing mode that was never implemented.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: Upon release, "Gran Turismo 2" sold 815,430 units in Japan during its first week on sale. In the United Kingdom, it sold 130,000 copies and grossed or in its first weekend, surpassing "" to become the UK's fastest-selling title, and it sold about 250,000 copies in its first week. It was a bestseller for two months in Japan and the UK. In the United States, it sold more than units within six weeks, and had sold units by early 2001. In total, it has sold 9.37 million copies worldwide. "Official UK PlayStation Magazine" listed the game as the 4th best of all time. It received a "Double Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 600,000 copies in the United Kingdom.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: GameSpot rated it 8.5 out of 10, recommending it to any gamer, car enthusiast or not, while IGN rated the game a 9.8/10. In Japan, "Famitsu" gave it a score of 34 out of 40.


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: Dan Egger of "Next Generation" rated it four stars out of five, and stated that "The rushed production of this game botched what could have been a near perfect sequel. As it stands, "Gran Turismo 2" is still the best racer ever made. Imagine what it could have been if Sony hadn't bungled the release".


title: Gran Turismo 2

text: "Gran Turismo 2" was a finalist for the D.I.C.E. Awards for 1999's "Console Racing Game of the Year", which ultimately went to "" (for Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and Game Boy Color).


title: Mike Pettine

text: Michael Mark Pettine (born September 25, 1966) is an American football coach who currently is an assistant head coach for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. He was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns from 2014 to 2015, and has also served as the defensive coordinator for the Buffalo Bills, New York Jets, and Green Bay Packers.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine earned all-state honors as a quarterback and defensive back at Central Bucks High School West. The head coach was his father, Mike Pettine Sr., who is renowned in Pennsylvania for compiling a record of 326–42–4 in 33 seasons and winning four state championships.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine played free safety at the University of Virginia graduating in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in economics.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine coached high school football in Pennsylvania at North Penn and William Tennent high schools after working as a graduate assistant at the University of Pittsburgh (1993–1994). He also spent four years as an assistant coach under his father at Central Bucks West High School. In 1999, a New York Times TV crew documented the North Penn football season for ESPN in a film titled "The Season". The TV show consisted of two separate hours and followed the team behind the scenes during the 1999 season and highlighted the rivalry between North Penn and Central Bucks West.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine joined the Ravens in 2001 and was promoted to OLB's coach in 2005 when Rex Ryan became defensive coordinator.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine, as Rex Ryan's "right-hand man", reportedly received a three-year deal to lead the Jets defense. Pettine has been credited with contributing strongly to the Jets number one defense in the NFL in 2009. His tenure with the Jets ended after the 2012 season, with the expiration of his contract.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine was hired to be the head coach of the Cleveland Browns on January 23, 2014. Pettine started 7–4 in the 2014 season, but the Browns lost their final 5 games to finish at 7–9. The Browns were 3–13 the following season. On January 3, 2016, the same day the Browns lost their last game of the season to finish 3–13, Pettine was fired, along with general manager Ray Farmer. Pettine went 10–22 in his two seasons as Cleveland's head coach, losing 18 of his final 21 games.


title: Mike Pettine

text: On January 10, 2018, Pettine was hired as defensive coordinator by the Green Bay Packers by head coach Mike McCarthy. On December 2, 2018, the Packers fired McCarthy after a 20–17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals at home, and he was replaced by interim head coach Joe Philbin. On January 7, 2019, the Packers hired Matt LaFleur as their new head coach, who announced he would retain Pettine as defensive coordinator through the 2019 season.


title: Mike Pettine

text: During his time with the Packers, Pettine improved the Packers defense from the league's 29th ranked unit in 2018 to the 15th ranked unit in 2019 and 17th ranked in 2020. However, he was widely criticized for his calls in the playoffs, particularly in the Packers' losses in back-to-back NFC Championship games. In the 2019 NFC Championship Game, Pettine's defense gave up 285 rushing yards to the NFC champion San Francisco 49ers, on their way to a 37–20 loss. In the 2020 NFC Championship Game, the Packers defense picked off quarterback Tom Brady three times, but also gave up a late first-half touchdown when Pettine called for cornerback Kevin King to cover receiver Scotty Miller one-on-one. Pettine's call was widely criticized by many, including his own head coach.


title: Mike Pettine

text: On January 29, 2021, Pettine was let go by the Green Bay Packers as the defensive coordinator; his contract had expired and the Packers reportedly did not move to extend it.


title: Mike Pettine

text: On February 10, 2021, Pettine was hired by the Chicago Bears as a senior defensive assistant under head coach Matt Nagy. Pettine would not be retained under new head coach Matt Eberflus.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Following the firing of Matt Nagy, Pettine joined the Bears' and Packers' division rival Minnesota Vikings on February 13, 2022, as the senior defensive assistant under head coach Kevin O'Connell.


title: Mike Pettine

text: Pettine has 3 children-Megan, Ryan and Katie Pettine. His wife- Megan, also has 3 children- Paige, Max and McKenna Cuevas.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In contract theory, signalling (or signaling; see spelling differences) is the idea that one party (the agent) credibly conveys some information about itself to another party (the principal).


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Although signalling theory was initially developed by Michael Spence based on observed knowledge gaps between organisations and prospective employees, its intuitive nature led it to be adapted to many other domains, such as Human Resource Management, business, and financial markets.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In Spence's job-market signaling model, (potential) employees send a signal about their ability level to the employer by acquiring education credentials. The informational value of the credential comes from the fact that the employer believes the credential is positively correlated with having the greater ability and difficulty for low ability employees to obtain. Thus the credential enables the employer to reliably distinguish low ability workers from high ability workers. The concept of signaling is also applicable in competitive altruistic interaction, where the capacity of the receiving party is limited.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Signalling started with the idea of asymmetric information (a deviation from perfect information), which relates to the fact that, in some economic transactions, inequalities exist in the normal market for the exchange of goods and services. In his seminal 1973 article, Michael Spence proposed that two parties could get around the problem of asymmetric information by having one party send a signal that would reveal some piece of relevant information to the other party. That party would then interpret the signal and adjust his or her purchasing behaviour accordingly—usually by offering a higher price than if she had not received the signal.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In the job market, potential employees seek to sell their services to employers for some wage, or price. Generally, employers are willing to pay higher wages to employ better workers. While the individual may know his or her own level of ability, the hiring firm is not (usually) able to observe such an intangible trait—thus there is an asymmetry of information between the two parties. Education credentials can be used as a signal to the firm, indicating a certain level of ability that the individual may possess; thereby narrowing the informational gap. This is beneficial to both parties as long as the signal indicates a desirable attribute—a signal such as a criminal record may not be so desirable. Furthermore, signaling can sometimes be detrimental in the educational scenario, when heuristics of education get overvalued such as an academic degree, that is, despite having equivalent amounts of instruction, parties that own a degree get better outcomes—the sheepskin effect.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Michael Spence considers hiring as a type of investment under uncertainty analogous to buying a lottery ticket and refers to the attributes of an applicant which are observable to the employer as indices. Of these, attributes which the applicant can manipulate are termed signals. Applicant age is thus an index but is not a signal since it does not change at the discretion of the applicant. The employer is supposed to have conditional probability assessments of productive capacity, based on previous experience of the market, for each combination of indices and signals. The employer updates those assessments upon observing each employee's characteristics. The paper is concerned with a risk-neutral employer. The offered wage is the expected marginal product. Signals may be acquired by sustaining signalling costs (monetary and not). If everyone invests in the signal in the exactly the same way, then the signal can't be used as discriminatory, therefore a critical assumption is made: the costs of signalling are negatively correlated with productivity. This situation as described is a feedback loop: the employer updates his beliefs upon new market information and updates the wage schedule, applicants react by signalling, and recruitment takes place. Michael Spence studies the signalling equilibrium that may result from such a situation. He began his 1973 model with a hypothetical example: suppose that there are two types of employees—good and bad—and that employers are willing to pay a higher wage to the good type than the bad type. Spence assumes that for employers, there's no real way to tell in advance which employees will be of the good or bad type. Bad employees aren't upset about this, because they get a free ride from the hard work of the good employees. But good employees know that they deserve to be paid more for their higher productivity, so they desire to invest in the signal—in this case, some amount of education. But he does make one key assumption: "good-type employees pay less for one unit of education than bad-type employees". The cost he refers to is not necessarily the cost of tuition and living expenses, sometimes called out of pocket expenses, as one could make the argument that higher ability persons tend to enroll in "better" (i.e. more expensive) institutions. Rather, the cost Spence is referring to is the opportunity cost. This is a combination of 'costs', monetary and otherwise, including psychological, time, effort and so on. Of key importance to the value of the signal is the differing cost structure between "good" and "bad" workers. The cost of obtaining identical credentials is strictly lower for the "good" employee than it is for the "bad" employee. The differing cost structure need not preclude "bad" workers from obtaining the credential. All that is necessary for the signal to have value (informational or otherwise) is that the group with the signal is positively correlated with the previously unobservable group of "good" workers. In general, the degree to which a signal is thought to be correlated to unknown or unobservable attributes is directly related to its value.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Spence discovered that even if education did not contribute anything to an employee's productivity, it could still have value to both the employer and employee. If the appropriate cost/benefit structure exists (or is created), "good" employees will buy more education in order to signal their higher productivity.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: The increase in wages associated with obtaining a higher credential is sometimes referred to as the “sheepskin effect”, since “sheepskin” informally denotes a diploma. It is important to note that this is not the same as the returns from an additional year of education. The "sheepskin" effect is actually the wage increase above what would normally be attributed to the extra year of education. This can be observed empirically in the wage differences between 'drop-outs' vs. 'completers' with an equal number of years of education. It is also important that one does not equate the fact that higher wages are paid to more educated individuals entirely to signalling or the 'sheepskin' effects. In reality, education serves many different purposes for individuals and society as a whole. Only when all of these aspects, as well as all the many factors affecting wages, are controlled for, does the effect of the "sheepskin" approach its true value. Empirical studies of signalling indicate it as a statistically significant determinant of wages, however, it is one of a host of other attributes—age, sex, and geography are examples of other important factors.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: To illustrate his argument, Spence imagines, for simplicity, two productively distinct groups in a population facing one employer. The signal under consideration is education, measured by an index y and is subject to individual choice. Education costs are both monetary and psychic. The data can be summarized as:


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Suppose that the employer believes that there is a level of education y* below which productivity is 1 and above which productivity is 2. His offered wage schedule W(y) will be:


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In conclusion, even if education has no real contribution to the marginal product of the worker, the combination of the beliefs of the employer and the presence of signalling transforms the education level y* in a prerequisite for the higher paying job. It may appear to an external observer that education has raised the marginal product of labor, without this necessarily being true.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: For a signal to be effective, certain conditions must be true. In equilibrium, the cost of obtaining the credential must be lower for high productivity workers and act as a signal to the employer such that they will pay a higher wage.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In this model it is optimal for the higher ability person to obtain the credential (the observable signal) but not for the lower ability individual. The table shows the outcome of low ability person l and high ability person h with and without signal S:


title: Signalling (economics)

text: The premise for the model is that a person of high ability (h) has a lower cost for obtaining a given level of education than does a person of lower ability (l). Cost can be in terms of monetary, such as tuition, or psychological, stress incurred to obtain the credential.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Thus, if both individuals act rationally it is optimal for person h to obtain S but not for person l so long as the following conditions are satisfied.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Edit: note that this is incorrect with the example as graphed. Both 'l' and 'h' have lower costs than W* at the education level. Also, Person and Person are not clear.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Edit: note that this is ok as for low type "l": formula_3 , and thus low type will choose Do not obtain credential.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Edit: For there to be a separating equilibrium the high type 'h' must also check their outside option; do they want to choose the net pay in the separating equilibrium (calculated above) over the net pay in the pooling equilibrium. Thus we also need to test that: formula_4 Otherwise high type 'h' will choose Do not obtain credential of the pooling equilibrium.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In equilibrium, in order for the signalling model to hold, the employer must recognize the signal and pay the corresponding wage and this will result in the workers self-sorting into the two groups. One can see that the cost/benefit structure for a signal to be effective must fall within certain bounds or else the system will fail.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Leland and Pyle (1977) analyze the role of signals within the process of IPO. The authors show how companies with good future perspectives and higher possibilities of success ("good companies") should always send clear signals to the market when going public; the owner should keep control of a significant percentage of the company. To be reliable, the signal must be too costly to be imitated by "bad companies". If no signal is sent to the market, asymmetric information will result in adverse selection in the IPO market.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: The development of brand capital is an important strategy firms use to signal quality and reliability to consumers. Waldfogel and Chen (2006) studied the impact of retailers providing information on internet retail sites to the importance of branding as a signalling mechanism. Their study used web visits to branded vendors, unbranded vendors and third party sites which took data and collated it for consumers labelled information intermediaries. The paper did not directly measure the outcome on consumer spending because it did not include actual consumer expenditure on branded or unbranded products. It further acknowledged there is the potential consumer spending deviates from visiting behaviour. Nonetheless, it found using information intermediaries increases the number of consumer visits to unbranded vendors while it also depresses visits to branded vendors. The authors concluded by observing that while branding is a market concentrating mechanism, the internet has the potential to result in reducing market concentration as information provision undermines the effectiveness of brand spending. The extent of its effectiveness depends on the ease and cost effectiveness by which information can be provided.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Various studies and experiments have analysed signalling in the context of altruism. Historically, due to the nature of small communities, cooperation was particularly important to ensure human flourishing. Signalling altruism is critical in human societies because altruism is a method of signalling willingness to cooperate. Studies indicate that altruism boosts an individual’s reputation in the community, which in turn enables the individual to reap greater benefits from reputation including increased assistance if they are in need. There is often difficulty in distinguishing between pure altruists who do altruistic acts expecting no benefit to themselves whatsoever and impure altruists who do altruistic acts expecting some form of benefit. Pure altruists will be altruistic irrespective of whether there is anyone observing their conduct, whereas impure altruists will give where their altruism is observed and can be reciprocated.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Laboratory experiments conducted by behavioural economists has found that pure altruism is relatively rare. A study conducted by Dana, Weber and Xi Kuang found that in dictator games, the level of proposing 5:5 distributions were much higher when proposers could not excuse their choice by reference to moral considerations. In games where voters were provided by the testers with a mitigating reason they could cite to the other person to explain their decision, 6:1 splits were much more common than fair 50:50 split.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Empirical research in real world scenarios shows charitable giving diminishes with anonymity. Anonymous donations are much less common than non-anonymous donations. In respect to donations to a national park, researchers found participants were 25% less generous when their identities were not revealed relative to when they were. They also found donations were subject to reference effects. Participants on average gave less money where researchers told them the average donation was lower than in other instances where the researchers told participants the amount of the average donation was higher.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: A study on charity runs where donors could reveal only their name, only the amount, their name and amount or remain completely anonymous with no reference to donation amount had three main findings. First, donors that gave a significant amount of money revealed the amounts donated but were more likely to not reveal their names. Second, those who gave small donations were more likely to reveal their names but hide their donations. Third, average donors were most likely to reveal both name and amount information. The researchers noted small donor donations were consistent with free riding behaviour where participants would try and obtain reputation enhancement by noting their donation, without having to donate at levels that would otherwise be necessary to get the same boost if amount information was published. Average donors revealed name and amount to also gain reputation. With respect to high donors, the researchers thought two alternatives were possible. Either, donors did not reveal names because despite high donations signalling high cost altruism there were larger reputational drawbacks to what is perceived to be showboating, or large contributors were genuinely altruistic and wanted to signal the importance of the cause. Revealing amount values the authors thought is more consistent with the latter hypothesis.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Signalling has been studied and proposed as a means to address asymmetric information in markets for "lemons". Recently, signalling theory has been applied in used cars market such as eBay Motors. Lewis (2011) examines the role of information access and shows that the voluntary disclosure of private information increases the prices of used cars on eBay. Dimoka et al. (2012) analyzed data from eBay Motors on the role of signals to mitigate product uncertainty. Extending the information asymmetry literature in consumer behavior literature from the agent (seller) to the product, authors theorized and validated the nature and dimensions of product uncertainty, which is distinct from, yet shaped by, seller uncertainty. Authors also found information signals (diagnostic product descriptions and third-party product assurances) to reduce product uncertainty, which negatively affect price premiums (relative to the book values) of the used cars in online used cars markets.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In internet-based hospitality exchange networks such as BeWelcome and Warm Showers, hosts do not expect to receive payments from travelers. The relation between traveler and host is rather shaped by mutual altruism. Travelers send homestay requests to the hosts, which the hosts are not obligated to accept. Both networks as non-profit organizations grant trustworthy teams of scientists access to their anonymized data for publication of insights to the benefit of humanity. In 2015, datasets from BeWelcome and Warm Showers were analyzed. Analysis of 97,915 homestay requests from BeWelcome and 285,444 homestay requests from Warm Showers showed general regularity — the less time is spent on writing a homestay request, the less is the probability of being accepted by a host. Low-effort communication aka 'copy and paste requests' obviously sends the wrong signal.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Most signalling models are plagued by a multiplicity of possible equilibrium outcomes. In a study published in the "Journal of Economic Theory", a signalling model has been proposed that has a unique equilibrium outcome. In the principal-agent model it is argued that an agent will choose a large (observable) investment level when he has a strong outside option. Yet, an agent with a weak outside option might try to bluff by also choosing a large investment, in order to make the principal believe that the agent has a strong outside option (so that the principal will make a better contract offer to the agent). Hence, when an agent has private information about his outside option, signalling may mitigate the hold-up problem.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Due to the nature of international relations and foreign policy, signaling has long been a topic of interest when analyzing the actions of the agents involved. This study of signaling regarding foreign policy has further allowed economists and academics to understand the actions and reactions of foreign bodies when presented with varying information. Typically when interacting with one another, the actions of these foreign parties are heavily dependent on the proposed actions and reactions of each other. In many cases however, there is an asymmetry of information between the two parties with both looking to aid their own non-mutually beneficial interests.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In foreign policy, it is common to see game theory problems such as the prisoner’s dilemma and chicken game occur as the different parties both have a dominating strategy regardless of the actions of the other party. In order to signal to the other parties, and furthermore for the signal to be credible, strategies such as tying hands and sinking costs are often implemented. These are examples of costly signals which typically present some form of assurance and commitment in order to show that the signal is credible and the party receiving the signal should act on the information given. Despite this however, there is still much contention as to whether, in practice, costly signaling is effective. In studies by Quek (2016) it was suggested that decision makers such as politicians and leader don't seem to interpret and understand signals the way they that models suggest they should.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: A costly signal in which the cost of an action is incurred upfront ("ex ante") is a sunk cost. An example of this would be the mobilization of an army as this sends a clear signal of intentions and the costs are incurred immediately.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: When the cost of the action is incurred after the decision is made ("ex post") it is considered to be tying hands. A common example is an alliance which does not have a large initial monetary cost yet ties the hands of the parties, as they are now reliant on each other in a time of crisis.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: Theoretically both sinking costs and tying hands are valid forms of costly signaling however they have garnered much criticism due to differing beliefs regarding the overall effectiveness of the methods in altering the likelihood of war. Recent studies such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution suggest that sinking costs and tying hands are both effective in increasing credibility. This was done by finding how the change in the costs of costly signals vary their credibility. Prior to this research studies conducted were binary and static by nature, limiting the capability of the model. This increased the validity of the use of these signaling mechanisms in foreign diplomacy.


title: Signalling (economics)

text: The initial research into signaling suggested that it was an effective tool in order to manage foreign economic and military affairs however, with time and more thorough analysis problems began to present themselves, these being:


title: Signalling (economics)

text: In Fearon’s original models (Bargaining model of war) the model was simple in that a party would display their intentions, their intended audience would then interpret the signals and act upon them. Thus, creating a perfect scenario which validates the use of signaling. Later in works by Slantchev (2005), it was suggested that due to the nature of using military mobilization as a signal, despite having intentions to avoid war can increase tensions and thus both be a sunk cost and can tie the party’s hands. Furthermore Yarhi-Milo, Kertzer and Renshon (2017) were able to use a more dynamic model to assess the effectiveness of these signals given varying cost levels and reaction levels.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: Tota Roy Chowdhury is an Indian actor and martial artist based in Kolkata. He predominantly appears in Bengali and Hindi cinema. His notable roles include Feluda in the web TV series Feluda Pherot based on Satyajit Ray's Feluda series.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: He made his film debut with Prabhat Roy's National Award winning Bengali film "Lathi" (1996). His breakthrough role came with Rituparno Ghosh's National Award winning Bengali film "Chokher Bali" (2003).


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: During his second year in college, he made up his mind to join the Indian Army and was preparing for the CDS exams when fate intervened and he was asked by the director Prabhat Roy to play a small role in his film. That one film brought other offers and soon he decided to become a professional actor. After starring in a few commercially successful films, he was spotted by director Rituparno Ghosh and cast opposite Nandita Das in his film Shubho Mahurat.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: Chowdhury was cast again opposite Aishwarya Rai in Rituparno's Tagore adaptation, "Chokher Bali". He won several awards, including the BFJA Award for the Best Actor.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: After Chokher Bali he did several films both commercial and mainstream like Aborto, Biye Not Out,Choukaath, Benche Thakaar Gaan, Bolo Na Tumi Amaar, Paglu-2,Villain, Shapath which cemented his position in the Bengali Film Industry as a dependable actor and a solid performer, one of the very few actors loved by both the class and mass.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: He did an extended cameo in the AR Murugadoss directed "Kaththi" which introduced him into Tamil film industry. He also starred in the Sujoy Ghosh directed short film "Ahalya" alongside Soumitra Chatterjee and Radhika Apte. This short film went viral and he was noticed for his powerful presence as the police inspector He played the role of Arun in the film ""; directed by Sujoy Ghosh opposite Vidya Balan, which got him noticed by the Hindi film industry. His second Hindi film "Indu Sarkar" directed by Madhur Bhandarkar was released in 2017. He was cast opposite Kirti Kulhari and his portrayal of the troubled government servant Navin fetched him recognition and praises. Industry veteran Anupam Kher tweeted 'Tota in Indu Sarkar is a brilliant piece of casting ‘ and Asutosh Gowariker tweeted 'Superb performance by Tota Roy Choudhury ‘. His next film was Helicopter Eela where he was cast opposite Kajol. The film was directed by Pradeep Sarkar. His portrayal of the psychologically disturbed Arun fetched him good reviews. He was again sought after by the southern film industry and was cast as SSP Praveen Kumar in the Kannada film Ranchi.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: He then did a cameo in "The Girl on the Train", a Hindi remake of English film of the same name. The film co-starring Parineeti Chopra, Aditi Rao Hydari and Kirti Kulhari was produced by Reliance Entertainment.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: He also plays the iconic Bengali detective Feluda created by Satyajit Ray, in a web series directed by the multiple national award winner Srijit Mukherji.


title: Tota Roy Chowdhury

text: Currently he is a part of Karan Johar's directorial comeback Rocky aur Rani ki prem kahaani; along with Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt.


Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (; born 1983) is the sister of Qatar's ruling Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and daughter of the country's Father Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his second wife Moza bint Nasser Al-Missned. Al-Mayassa was declared the most influential person in art on Art+Auction's top-10 list and ArtReview's Power 100, and prominently appears on the Time 100, and Forbes' The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. She was listed in the 'Top 100 most powerful Arabs' from 2014 to 2017 and 2021 by "Gulf Business". Al-Mayassa serves as Chairperson of Qatar Museums, and it was reported by Bloomberg that her annual acquisition budget on behalf of the organization is estimated at $1 billion.


title: Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani

text: Al-Mayassa reportedly bought Paul Gauguin's "When Will You Marry?" in 2015 for $300 million, a record price for a painting. In March 2016, she opened the exhibition "What About the Art?" A New Exhibition curated by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang at Al Riwaq Gallery. Qatar has bought Cezanne's "The Card Players" in 2012 for $250 million, as well as Mark Rothko's "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" in 2007 for $70 million, a Damien Hirst pill cabinet for $20 million and works by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Francis Bacon. She has staged major exhibitions in Qatar with Takashi Murakami, Richard Serra and Damien Hirst.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa graduated with a B.A. degree in political science and literature from Duke University (Durham, North Carolina, USA) in 2005.


text: During the 2003–2004 school year, she studied at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (known as Sciences Po).


text: Upon graduation, Sheikha al-Mayassa established the NGO Reach Out To Asia. This organization is a philanthropic effort inspired by the desire to help the victims of recent natural disasters in Asia by providing quality education; it also celebrated the occasion of the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa is the chairperson of Qatar Museums, whose former CEO Edward Dolman had previously served as Chairman of Christie's International, and responsible for cultivating significant cultural events in the region. She has been profiled extensively in "The New York Times".


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa is chairperson of the Doha Film Institute (DFI), which she founded in 2010. The institute partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival to produce several annual iterations of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. In February 2013, they announced a $100 million feature film fund with Participant Media, a production company founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, who was the first employee and first president of internet auction firm eBay.


text: Fashion Trust Arabia (FTA) launched in September 2018 under the patronage of HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser as honorary chair and co-chaired by HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani and Tania Fares (Founder of Fashion Trust). FTA is the only initiative of its kind operating in the Arab world, dedicated to finding and nurturing talented designers. She is a member of the board of trustees at Qatar Foundation. In 2018, she was named to a three-year term on the Rhode Island School of Design board of trustees.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa's wealth and role as Chairperson of Qatar Museums make her influential among art collectors. Bloomberg reported her acquisition budget on behalf of Qatar Museums is estimated at $1 billion annually.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa is said to have purchased the most expensive painting in the world, Paul Gauguin's When Will You Marry? in 2015 for $300 million, Cezanne's The Card Players in 2012 for $250 million, as well as Mark Rothko's White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) in 2007 for $70 million, a Damien Hirst pill cabinet for $20 million and works by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Francis Bacon. She has staged major exhibitions in Qatar with Takashi Murakami, Richard Serra and Damien Hirst (underwriting his exhibit first at the Tate Modern prior to opening in Doha). The Sheikha oversees a vast array of museums including the I. M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, which opened in November 2008, and the Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar, which opened in March 2019. The Orientalist Museum by Herzog & de Meuron is slated to open in the coming year.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa participated in a TED Talk in February 2012, where she highlighted the importance of the social impact of art. She affirmed that her goal was to create a local collection of art to contribute in shaping the Qatari national identity.


text: Sheikha Mayassa is the sister of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Her father Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani is the former Emir, and mother Sheikha Moza bint Nasser Al-Missned, the former First Lady.


text: Sheikha Mayassa's mother Sheikha Moza is responsible for opening campuses of several world-class academic institutions in Doha, including Virginia Commonwealth University, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, Northwestern University, Texas A&M University and Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of Calgary in Qatar.


text: Her brother Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani is the Chairman of Qatar's winning bid to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Doha.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa's father former Emir of Qatar from 1995 to 2013, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, established the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund to manage the country's oil and natural gas surpluses. The Qatar Investment Authority and its subsidiaries have acquired many businesses abroad, including London's iconic department store Harrods from entrepreneur Mohammed Al-Fayed, Paris based department store Printemps, a 75% stake in film studio Miramax, a 2% stake in media conglomerate and Universal Music Group parent company Vivendi, a 1% stake in luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy and several other major companies.


text: Sheikha Al-Mayassa married (as his first wife) Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz Al Thani at Al-Wajbah Palace, Doha, on 6 January 2006. Sheikh Jassim is an elder son of Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, making them second cousins. Together they have four sons and one daughter.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In semantics, semiotics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metasemantics, meaning "is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they intend, express, or signify".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The evaluation of meaning according to each one of the five major substantive theories of meaning and truth is presented below. The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered to truthfully denote meaning, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five most prevalent substantive theories listed below. Each theory of meaning as evaluated by these respective theories of truth are each further researched by the individual scholars supporting each one of the respective theories of truth and meaning.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Both hybrid theories of meaning and alternative theories of meaning and truth have also been researched, and are subject to further assessment according to their respective and relative merits.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Correspondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements of meaning correspond to the actual state of affairs and that associated meanings must be in agreement with these beliefs and statements. This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things". An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the thirteenth-century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas: "Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus" ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of things and intellect"), a statement which Aquinas attributed to the ninth-century neoplatonist Isaac Israeli. Aquinas also restated the theory as: "A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Correspondence theory centres heavily around the assumption that truth and meaning are a matter of accurately copying what is known as "objective reality" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols. Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors. For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages. The German word "Zeitgeist" is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). Thus, some words add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: For coherence theories in general, the assessment of meaning and truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system. A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to describe the essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics. However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole, coherence theories have been rejected for lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Spinoza, Leibniz, and G.W.F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F.H. Bradley. Other alternatives may be found among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Social constructivism holds that meaning and truth are constructed by social processes, are historically and culturally specific, and are in part shaped through power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed", because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender, are socially constructed.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture, along with their meaning, are human products. Vico's epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom"verum ipsum factum""truth itself is constructed". Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx, scientific and true knowledge is "in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history" and ideological knowledge is "an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Consensus theory holds that meaning and truth are whatever is agreed uponor, in some versions, might come to be agreed uponby some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of "truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation. Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The three most influential forms of the "pragmatic theory of truth" and meaning were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that meaning and truth are verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Peirce defines truth as follows: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth." This statement stresses Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as "fallibilism" and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper conception of meaning and truth. Although Peirce uses words like "concordance" and "correspondence" to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than "nominal" definitions, which he accords a lower status than "real" definitions.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: William James's version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving". By this, James meant that truth is a "quality", the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to practice (thus, "pragmatic").


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time "if" openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed meanings and truths.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: A later variation of the pragmatic theory was William Ernest Hocking's "negative pragmatism": what works may or may not be true, but what fails cannot be true, because the truth and its meaning always works. James's and Dewey's ideas also ascribe meaning and truth to repeated testing, which is "self-corrective" over time.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Pragmatism and negative pragmatism are also closely aligned with the coherence theory of truth in that any testing should not be isolated but rather incorporate knowledge from all human endeavors and experience. The universe is a whole and integrated system, and testing should acknowledge and account for its diversity. As physicist Richard Feynman said: "if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Some have asserted that meaning is nothing substantially more or less than the truth conditions they involve. For such theories, an emphasis is placed upon reference to actual things in the world to account for meaning, with the caveat that reference more or less explains the greater part (or all) of meaning itself.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In his paper "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (now usually translated as "On Sense and Reference"), Gottlob Frege argued that proper names present at least two problems in explaining meaning.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Frege can be interpreted as arguing that it was therefore a mistake to think that the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Instead, the meaning must be something else—the "sense" of the word. Two names for the same person, then, can have different senses (or meanings): one referent might be picked out by more than one sense. This sort of theory is called a mediated reference theory. Frege argued that, ultimately, the same bifurcation of meaning must apply to most or all linguistic categories, such as to quantificational expressions like "All boats float".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Logical analysis was further advanced by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their groundbreaking "Principia Mathematica", which attempted to produce a formal language with which the truth of all mathematical statements could be demonstrated from first principles.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Russell differed from Frege greatly on many points, however. He rejected Frege's sense-reference distinction. He also disagreed that language was of fundamental significance to philosophy, and saw the project of developing formal logic as a way of eliminating all of the confusions caused by ordinary language, and hence at creating a perfectly transparent medium in which to conduct traditional philosophical argument. He hoped, ultimately, to extend the proofs of the "Principia" to all possible true statements, a scheme he called logical atomism. For a while it appeared that his pupil Wittgenstein had succeeded in this plan with his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Russell's work, and that of his colleague G. E. Moore, developed in response to what they perceived as the nonsense dominating British philosophy departments at the turn of the 20th century, which was a kind of British Idealism most of which was derived (albeit very distantly) from the work of Hegel. In response Moore developed an approach ("Common Sense Philosophy") which sought to examine philosophical difficulties by a close analysis of the language used in order to determine its meaning. In this way Moore sought to expunge philosophical absurdities such as "time is unreal". Moore's work would have significant, if oblique, influence (largely mediated by Wittgenstein) on Ordinary language philosophy.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The Vienna Circle, a famous group of logical positivists from the early 20th century (closely allied with Russell and Frege), adopted the verificationist theory of meaning, a type of truth theory of meaning. The verificationist theory of meaning (in at least one of its forms) states that to say that an expression is meaningful is to say that there are some conditions of experience that could exist to show that the expression is true. As noted, Frege and Russell were two proponents of this way of thinking.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: A semantic theory of truth was produced by Alfred Tarski for formal semantics. According to Tarski's account, meaning consists of a recursive set of rules that end up yielding an infinite set of sentences, "'p' is true if and only if p", covering the whole language. His innovation produced the notion of propositional functions discussed on the section on universals (which he called "sentential functions"), and a model-theoretic approach to semantics (as opposed to a proof-theoretic one). Finally, some links were forged to the correspondence theory of truth (Tarski, 1944).


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Perhaps the most influential current approach in the contemporary theory of meaning is that sketched by Donald Davidson in his introduction to the collection of essays "Truth and Meaning" in 1967. There he argued for the following two theses:


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Davidson's account, though brief, constitutes the first systematic presentation of truth-conditional semantics. He proposed simply translating natural languages into first-order predicate calculus in order to reduce meaning to a function of truth.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Saul Kripke examined the relation between sense and reference in dealing with possible and actual situations. He showed that one consequence of his interpretation of certain systems of modal logic was that the reference of a proper name is "necessarily" linked to its referent, but that the sense is not. So for instance "Hesperus" necessarily refers to Hesperus, even in those imaginary cases and worlds in which perhaps Hesperus is not the evening star. That is, Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, but only contingently the morning star.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: This results in the curious situation that part of the meaning of a name — that it refers to some particular thing — is a necessary fact about that name, but another part — that it is used in some particular way or situation — is not.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Kripke also drew the distinction between speaker's meaning and semantic meaning, elaborating on the work of ordinary language philosophers Paul Grice and Keith Donnellan. The speaker's meaning is what the speaker intends to refer to by saying something; the semantic meaning is what the words uttered by the speaker mean according to the language.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In some cases, people do not say what they mean; in other cases, they say something that is in error. In both these cases, the speaker's meaning and the semantic meaning seem to be different. Sometimes words do not actually express what the speaker wants them to express; so words will mean one thing, and what people intend to convey by them might mean another. The meaning of the expression, in such cases, is ambiguous.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: W. V. O. Quine attacked both verificationism and the very notion of meaning in his famous essay, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". In it, he suggested that meaning was nothing more than a vague and dispensable notion. Instead, he asserted, what was more interesting to study was the synonymy between signs. He also pointed out that verificationism was tied to the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and asserted that such a divide was defended ambiguously. He also suggested that the unit of analysis for any potential investigation into the world (and, perhaps, meaning) would be the entire body of statements taken as a collective, not just individual statements on their own.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Other criticisms can be raised on the basis of the limitations that truth-conditional theorists themselves admit to. Tarski, for instance, recognized that truth-conditional theories of meaning only make sense of statements, but fail to explain the meanings of the lexical parts that make up statements. Rather, the meaning of the parts of statements is presupposed by an understanding of the truth-conditions of a whole statement, and explained in terms of what he called "satisfaction conditions".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Still another objection (noted by Frege and others) was that some kinds of statements don't seem to have any truth-conditions at all. For instance, "Hello!" has no truth-conditions, because it doesn't even attempt to tell the listener anything about the state of affairs in the world. In other words, different propositions have different grammatical moods.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Deflationist accounts of truth, sometimes called 'irrealist' accounts, are the staunchest source of criticism of truth-conditional theories of meaning. According to them, "truth" is a word with no serious meaning or function in discourse. For instance, for the deflationist, the sentences "It's true that Tiny Tim is trouble" and "Tiny Tim is trouble" are equivalent. In consequence, for the deflationist, any appeal to truth as an account of meaning has little explanatory power.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The sort of truth theories presented here can also be attacked for their formalism both in practice and principle. The principle of formalism is challenged by the informalists, who suggest that language is largely a construction of the speaker, and so, not compatible with formalization. The practice of formalism is challenged by those who observe that formal languages (such as present-day quantificational logic) fail to capture the expressive power of natural languages (as is arguably demonstrated in the awkward character of the quantificational explanation of definite description statements, as laid out by Bertrand Russell).


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Finally, over the past century, forms of logic have been developed that are not dependent exclusively on the notions of truth and falsity. Some of these types of logic have been called modal logics. They explain how certain logical connectives such as "if-then" work in terms of necessity and possibility. Indeed, modal logic was the basis of one of the most popular and rigorous formulations in modern semantics called the Montague grammar. The successes of such systems naturally give rise to the argument that these systems have captured the natural meaning of connectives like if-then far better than an ordinary, truth-functional logic ever could.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Throughout the 20th century, English philosophy focused closely on analysis of language. This style of analytic philosophy became very influential and led to the development of a wide range of philosophical tools.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was originally an ideal language philosopher, following the influence of Russell and Frege. In his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" he had supported the idea of an ideal language built up from atomic statements using logical connectives (see picture theory of meaning and logical atomism). However, as he matured, he came to appreciate more and more the phenomenon of natural language. "Philosophical Investigations", published after his death, signalled a sharp departure from his earlier work with its focus upon ordinary language use (see use theory of meaning and ordinary language philosophy). His approach is often summarised by the aphorism "the meaning of a word is its use in a language". However, following in Frege's footsteps, in the "Tractatus", Wittgenstein declares: "... Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning."


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: His work would come to inspire future generations and spur forward a whole new discipline, which explained meaning in a new way. Meaning in a natural language was seen as primarily a question of how the speaker uses words within the language to express intention.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: This close examination of natural language proved to be a powerful philosophical technique. Practitioners who were influenced by Wittgenstein's approach have included an entire tradition of thinkers, featuring P. F. Strawson, Paul Grice, R. M. Hare, R. S. Peters, and Jürgen Habermas.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: At around the same time Ludwig Wittgenstein was re-thinking his approach to language, reflections on the complexity of language led to a more expansive approach to meaning. Following the lead of George Edward Moore, J. L. Austin examined the use of words in great detail. He argued against fixating on the meaning of words. He showed that dictionary definitions are of limited philosophical use, since there is no simple "appendage" to a word that can be called its meaning. Instead, he showed how to focus on the way in which words are used in order to do things. He analysed the structure of utterances into three distinct parts: locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. His pupil John Searle developed the idea under the label "speech acts". Their work greatly influenced pragmatics.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Past philosophers had understood reference to be tied to words themselves. However, Peter Strawson disagreed in his seminal essay, "On Referring", where he argued that there is nothing true about statements on their own; rather, only the uses of statements could be considered to be true or false.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the ordinary use perspective is its insistence upon the distinctions between meaning and use. ""Meanings"", for ordinary language philosophers, are the "instructions" for usage of words — the common and conventional definitions of words. "Usage", on the other hand, is the actual meanings that individual speakers have — the things that an individual speaker in a particular context wants to refer to. The word "dog" is an example of a meaning, but pointing at a nearby dog and shouting "This dog smells foul!" is an example of usage. From this distinction between usage and meaning arose the divide between the fields of pragmatics and semantics.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Yet another distinction is of some utility in discussing language: "mentioning". "Mention" is when an expression refers to itself as a linguistic item, usually surrounded by quotation marks. For instance, in the expression "'Opopanax' is hard to spell", what is referred to is the word itself ("opopanax") and not what it means (an obscure gum resin). Frege had referred to instances of mentioning as "opaque contexts".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In his essay, "Reference and Definite Descriptions", Keith Donnellan sought to improve upon Strawson's distinction. He pointed out that there are two uses of definite descriptions: "attributive" and "referential". Attributive uses provide a description of whoever is being referred to, while referential uses point out the actual referent. Attributive uses are like mediated references, while referential uses are more directly referential.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The philosopher Paul Grice, working within the ordinary language tradition, understood "meaning" — in his 1957 article — to have two kinds: "natural" and "non-natural". "Natural meaning" had to do with cause and effect, for example with the expression "these spots mean measles". "Non-natural" meaning, on the other hand, had to do with the intentions of the speaker in communicating something to the listener.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In his essay, "Logic and Conversation", Grice went on to explain and defend an explanation of how conversations work. His guiding maxim was called the "cooperative principle", which claimed that the speaker and the listener will have mutual expectations of the kind of information that will be shared. The principle is broken down into four maxims: "Quality" (which demands truthfulness and honesty), "Quantity" (demand for just enough information as is required), "Relation" (relevance of things brought up), and "Manner" (lucidity). This principle, if and when followed, lets the speaker and listener figure out the meaning of certain implications by way of inference.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The works of Grice led to an avalanche of research and interest in the field, both supportive and critical. One spinoff was called Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson during the mid-1980s, whose goal was to make the notion of "relevance" more clear. Similarly, in his work, "Universal pragmatics", Jürgen Habermas began a program that sought to improve upon the work of the ordinary language tradition. In it, he laid out the goal of a valid conversation as a pursuit of mutual understanding.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Although he has focused on the structure and functioning of human syntax, in many works Noam Chomsky has discussed many philosophical problems too, including the problem of meaning and reference in human language. Chomsky has formulated a strong criticism against both the externalist notion of reference (reference consists in a direct or causal relation among words and objects) and the internalist one (reference is a mind-mediated relation holding among words and reality). According to Chomsky, both these notions (and many others widely used in philosophy, such as that of truth) are basically inadequate for the naturalistic (= scientific) inquiry on human mind: they are common sense notions, not scientific notions, which cannot, as such, enter in the scientific discussion. Chomsky argues that the notion of reference can be used only when we deal with scientific languages, whose symbols refers to specific things or entities; but when we consider human language expressions, we immediately understand that their reference is vague, in the sense that they can be used to denote many things. For example, the word “book” can be used to denote an abstract object (e.g., “he is reading the book”) or a concrete one (e.g., “the book is on the chair”); the name “London” can denote at the same time a set of buildings, the air of a place and the character of a population (think to the sentence “London is so gray, polluted and sad”). These and other cases induce Chomsky to argue that the only plausible (although not scientific) notion of reference is that of act of reference, a complex phenomenon of language use (performance) which includes many factors (linguistic and not: i.e. beliefs, desires, assumptions about the world, premises, etc.). As Chomsky himself has pointed out, this conception of meaning is very close to that adopted by John Austin, Peter Strawson and the late Wittgenstein.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Michael Dummett argued against the kind of truth-conditional semantics presented by Davidson. Instead, he argued that basing semantics on "assertion conditions" avoids a number of difficulties with truth-conditional semantics, such as the transcendental nature of certain kinds of truth condition. He leverages work done in proof-theoretic semantics to provide a kind of inferential role semantics, where:


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: A semantics based upon assertion conditions is called a verificationist semantics: cf. the verificationism of the Vienna Circle.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: This work is closely related, though not identical, to one-factor theories of conceptual role semantics.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Sometimes between the 1950-1990s, cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor said that use theories of meaning (of the Wittgensteinian kind) seem to assume that language is solely a public phenomenon, that there is no such thing as a "private language". Fodor thinks it is necessary to create or describe the "language of thought", which would seemingly require the existence of a "private language".


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In the 1960s, David Kellogg Lewis described meaning as use, a feature of a social convention and conventions as regularities of a specific sort. Lewis' work was an application of game theory in philosophical topics. Conventions, he argued, are a species of coordination equilibria.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The idea theory of meaning (also ideational theory of meaning), most commonly associated with the British empiricist John Locke, claims that meanings are mental representations provoked by signs.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: The term "ideas" is used to refer to either mental representations, or to mental activity in general. Those who seek an explanation for meaning in the former sort of account endorse a stronger sort of idea theory of mind than the latter.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Each idea is understood to be necessarily "about" something external and/or internal, real or imaginary. For example, in contrast to the abstract meaning of the universal "dog", the referent "this dog" may mean a particular real life chihuahua. In both cases, the word is about something, but in the former it is about the class of dogs as generally understood, while in the latter it is about a very real and particular dog in the real world.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: John Locke considered all ideas to be both imaginable objects of sensation and the very "un"imaginable objects of reflection. He said in his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" that words are used both as signs for ideas and also to signify a lack of certain ideas. David Hume held that thoughts were kinds of imaginable entities: his "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", section 2. He argued that any words that could not call upon any past experience were without meaning.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: In contrast to Locke and Hume, George Berkeley and Ludwig Wittgenstein held that ideas alone are unable to account for the different variations within a general meaning. For example, any hypothetical image of the meaning of "dog" has to include such varied images as a chihuahua, a pug, and a black Labrador; and this seems impossible to imagine, since all of those particular breeds look very different from one another. Another way to see this point is to question why it is that, if we have an image of a specific type of dog (say of a chihuahua), it should be entitled to represent the entire concept.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Another criticism is that some meaningful words, known as non-lexical items, don't have any meaningfully associated image. For example, the word "the" has a meaning, but one would be hard-pressed to find a mental representation that fits it. Still another objection lies in the observation that certain linguistic items name something in the real world, and are meaningful, yet which we have no mental representations to deal with. For instance, it is not known what Newton's father looked like, yet the phrase ""Newton's father"" still has meaning.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Another problem is that of compositionthat it is difficult to explain how words and phrases combine into sentences if only ideas are involved in meaning.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff have advanced a theory of "prototypes" which suggests that many lexical categories, at least on the face of things, have "radial structures". That is to say, there are some ideal member(s) in the category that seem to represent the category better than other members. For example, the category of "birds" may feature the "robin" as the prototype, or the ideal kind of bird. With experience, subjects might come to evaluate membership in the category of "bird" by comparing candidate members to the prototype and evaluating for similarities. So, for example, a penguin or an ostrich would sit at the fringe of the meaning of "bird", because a penguin is unlike a robin.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Intimately related to these researches is the notion of a "psychologically basic level", which is both the first level named and understood by children, and "the highest level at which a single mental image can reflect the entire category" (Lakoff 1987:46). The "basic level" of cognition is understood by Lakoff as crucially drawing upon "image-schemas" along with various other cognitive processes.


title: Meaning (philosophy)

text: Philosophers Ned Block, Gilbert Harman and Hartry Field, and cognitive scientists G. Miller and P. Johnson-Laird say that the meaning of a term can be found by investigating its role in relation to other concepts and mental states. They endorse a "conceptual role semantics". Those proponents of this view who understand meanings to be exhausted by the content of mental states can be said to endorse "one-factor" accounts of conceptual role semantics and thus to fit within the tradition of idea theories.


title: 2011 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election

text: The Fourteenth Legislative Assembly Election was held on 13 April 2011 to elect members from 234 constituencies in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Results were released on 13 May 2011. Two major parties Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) faced the election as coalitions of multiple political parties: DMK front consisted of 8 parties and the AIADMK of 11 parties. Vijayakanth's Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), which had contested the previous elections independently, allied with the AIADMK coalition. Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam boycotted the election following a disagreement with Jayalalithaa over seat-sharing.


text: The outgoing Karunanidhi government was noted for the construction of new assembly building in Chennai, execution of various developmental projects, and implementation of programmes including free health care for the poor and issuance of a range of freebies such as color television to all. However, these were heavily overshadowed by other major issues such as incessant power cuts in households and industries, excessive sand mining, increasing prices of essential items, 2G spectrum case and undue influence of Karunanidhi's extended family in various aspects of Tamil politics and business and even media.


text: The election commission enforced stringent measures to curb the widespread abuse of power to bribe voters that were common in previous elections; it also imposed strict campaign discipline by imposing the 10 PM curfew. The commission headed by the chief election officer Praveen Kumar was commended for conducting the election strictly and fairly. The election recorded the highest polling ever in the state - 77.8% of the total electorate voted in the election surpassing 76.57% polled in 1967 election.


text: AIADMK front won the election-winning in 203 constituencies; the AIADMK party alone secured a massive majority in a landslide by carrying 150 seats and became eligible to form the government without requiring the support of its coalition partners. DMDK won 29 seats, more than the 23 seats won by DMK, and opted to serve as the official opposition party. Political analysts concluded that the election was a referendum on the outgoing DMK government and the powerful anti-incumbency sentiment helped the AIADMK coalition. J. Jayalalithaa along with 33 ministers was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for the fourth time on 16 May 2011 by the governor Surjit Singh Barnala.


text: The Karunanidhi administration was noted for various developmental projects and generous spending of the tax money for the implementation of various free schemes and issuance of freebies: The government provided 1 kg rice for 1 rupee, free health insurance for poor, free colour television and gas stove for all. It also provided job for over 500,000 people in various departments of the government and introduced free concrete house scheme for the poor. It also implemented various road, bridge and drinking water projects in Chennai and all over Tamil Nadu. However, the election was dominated by four major issues, increase in price of essential commodities, 2G spectrum case, Power outage and nepotism. Inflation was high during late 2010 to early 2011; The price of food and other essential commodities had increased exponentially affecting middle class and poor people: Onions were sold for Rs. 100, tomatoes for Rs. 80 and Jasmine flower for Rs. 1200 per kilo gram. This historical rise in price of essential food items was believed to be due to increased rainfall in North Indian states. The key issue that affected the people was electricity shortage in the State. The 2G spectrum case involved the issue of 122 licenses of the 2G spectrum to 85 companies including many new telecom companies with little or no experience in the telecom sector at a price set in the year 2001. The case was alleged to have costed 677.19 billion (US$15.03 billion) to the Indian exchequer. A. Raja, Union telecommunications minister from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was arrested by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in relation to the case. Kanimozhi, Rajya Sabha member from DMK and Chief minister's daughter and Sharad Kumar of Kalaignar TV were also included in the chargesheet filed by CBI. The five years of Karunanidhi's rule also saw an undue influence of his extended family members in various aspects of Tamil business and politics


text: Electoral alliances began to take shape in late 2010. J. Jayalalithaa, the leader of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) characterised the election as a turning point in Tamil Nadu history similar to 1967 election. She was alluding to the major political changes that took place in Tamil Nadu after 1967 election in which Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam defeated Indian National Congress for the first time and subsequently, Congress has then never won an election in the state until date.


text: Manithaneya Makkal Katchi, political wing of Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) constituted a five-member committee to hold consultations with All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) for seat sharing. The party had decided to support AIADMK in a resolution adopted at a high-level meeting citing deteriorating law and order and corruption. Naam Tamilar Iyakkam coordinator Seeman also expressed his support for AIADMK on 10 January and said his decision is based on his opposition to INC which he claimed works against the interests of Sri Lankan Tamils. Cho Ramaswamy, founder of "Thuglak" magazine, was actively involved in the formation of alliances. He supported AIADMK and encouraged other parties to do so as well. On the 41st anniversary of the founding of "Thuglak" on 14 January, he delivered an address that strongly opposed ruling DMK party. He encouraged Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) to forge an alliance with AIADMK. Communist Party of India Tamil Nadu state secretary D. Pandian also called for DMDK to join the AIADMK coalition to defeat DMK and officially announced the continuation of CPI's coalition with AIADMK on 29 January. Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) announced its decision to contest the election with AIADMK on 25 January.


text: Despite the strained relationship between Indian National Congress (INC) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa ruled out coalition with INC on 19 January. Tamil actor Karthik announced his party's (Ahila India Naadalum Makkal Katchi) support to AIADMK after meeting Jayalalithaa on 19 January. Hindu Munnani leader Rama Gopalan ruled out support to AIADMK coalition on 20 January citing the participation of anti-Hindu forces in the fold.


text: DMDK officially announced their alliance with AIADMK and started their negotiations. This brought to an end the possibilities of third front and DMDK contesting the elections on their own.


text: Vijay's Makkal Iyakkam supported AIADMK Front. He delivered a speech in a rally attended by an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people in Nagapattinam on 22 February condemning the actions of Sri Lankan military against Tamil Nadu fishermen. S. A. Chandrasekhar, noted film director and father of actor Vijay met with Jayalalithaa three times during the run-up to the election and announced Makkal Iyakkam's decision to support the AIADMK front in Tiruchirappalli on 27 March.


text: In the middle of March, amidst discussion to finalise the allocation of constituencies, AIADMK surprised its allies by unilaterally deciding the 160 constituencies in which it will field candidates. The list included constituencies won by the CPI, CPM, Forward Bloc and Pudhiya Thamizhagam in the previous election. Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) was not allotted any constituency. After the coalition partners threatened to form a third front under DMDK, AIADMK gave in to their demands. Most of the seats AIADMK took from its alliance partners were given back bringing the standoff to an end. However MDMK was not given the number of seats it asked for and hence Vaiko left AIADMK led alliance and boycotted the elections.


text: Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K. V. Thankabalu confirmed the continuation of his party's alliance with DMK on 21 January. DMK pulled out of the ruling coalition at the centre on 5 March amid disagreements with Congress over seat sharing. After three days, the parties struck a deal in which DMK gave in to the demand and allowed Congress to contest in 63 seats. Abdul Rahman, Member of Parliament from Vellore constituency announced the continuation of Indian Union Muslim League's coalition with DMK on 24 January 2011. After meeting Karunanidhi at his home on 16 January, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader Thol. Thirumavalavan said his party will work for the victory of DMK coalition. In a speech given during the wedding of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister Periyakaruppan's son in Chennai, Karunanidhi expressed his desire to step down from Chiefministership and continue as the leader of the party. Karunanidhi, during his trip to New Delhi for attending Chief Ministers meeting on 30 January, said that Indian National Congress, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal, Muslim League and Pattali Makkal Katchi are in the DMK coalition. But Ramadoss, the leader of PMK denied that and said no final decision has been taken on coalition. However PMK later joined the DMK alliance and was allotted 31 seats. It was later reduced to 30 to accommodate Congress which was firm on contesting 63 seats. Mylapore MLA and actor-turned politician S. V. Shekhar, joined Congress on 6 February 2011 after being expelled from AIADMK in 2009. Although Mylapore constituency was allotted to congress party, it did not give the chance to S.V. Shekhar. Instead the party allotted it to Jayanthi Thangabalu, the wife of TN Congress president K.V. Thangabalu. However her nomination was rejected by election commission citing incomplete submission of relevant documents. The nomination of K.V. Thangabalu, who was the replacement candidate was accepted making him the official congress candidate.


text: Upset over the tough posture adopted by the Congress during the seat-sharing negotiations, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on 5 March decided to pull out its Ministers from the Union government and provide only issue-based support. A resolution to this effect was adopted at a meeting of the high-level committee of the party at Anna Arivalayam, the party headquarters.


text: But after days of intense bargaining, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Congress on 9 March struck a deal, under which the Congress would contest 63 seats.


text: Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) boycotted the election following its withdrawal from the AIADMK alliance as AIADMK did not award the party any coalition constituency. Makkal Sakthi Katchi (Lok Satta Party), the party founded by Jayaprakash Narayan contested in 35 constituencies in 18 districts. Some of the candidates of the party were members/coordinators from the non-government organisation 5th Pillar who were famous for issuing zero rupees notes to fight corruption. The party was headed in Tamil Nadu by a steering committee composed of six people including Vijay Anand of 5th Pilar.


text: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) although a major force in North India had struggled to make a foothold in Tamil Nadu . BJP leader L.Ganesan declared on 13 January that BJP will go alone in the elections . BJP announced its Candidate list on 18 March. Subramanian swamy leader of Janata Party announced JP will face the elections in alliance with BJP and will contest in 10 seats. JD(U) has announced it will contest 8 seats in alliance with BJP.


text: Tamil film actor Karthik's Ahila India Naadalum Makkal Katchi entered the election as a member of AIADMK coalition. When no seat was allocated to his party by AIADMK, he decided to contest the election alone in 25 to 40 seats. His party with sizeable Thevar votes in southern Tamil Nadu is believed to eat into the AIADMK votebank. In 2006, former AIADMK minister Nainar Nagendran lost by 2,000 votes in Tirunelveli, where Karthik's party polled more than the margin. Two weeks later his split from AIADMK, he announced his party will contest independently in 19 constituencies and support DMK in 213 constituencies.


text: Educationist-turned-politician T. R.Pachamuthu's Indiya Jananayaka Katchi (IJK) leads the third front. It comprises Tamizhaga Munnetra Kazhagam of John Pandian, Samooka Samathuva Padai of retired IAS officer, P Sivakami, Tamil Nadu Vanigar Peravai and VOC Peravai. The front is fielding candidates in more than 150 constituencies .


text: Political observers feel that the IJK could poll 3,000 to 5,000 votes in many constituencies in Cuddalore, Villupuram, Perambalur, Ariyalur and Salem districts where Pachamuthu's Udayar community has sizeable presence. The Samooka Samathuva Padai will mobilise significant dalit votes in constituencies like Tindivanam, Krishnarayapuram, Haroor and Gangavalli. Sivakami herself is contesting from Gangavalli . John Pandian has some influence in Virudhunagar, Ramanathapuram, Thoothukudi, Dindigul and Tirunelveli districts.