Crossword clues for discontinuity
discontinuity
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Discontinuity \Dis*con`ti*nu"i*ty\, n.
Want of continuity or cohesion; disunion of parts.
``Discontinuity of surface.''
--Boyle.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A lack of continuity, regularity or sequence; a break or gap. (from 16th c.) 2 (context mathematics English) A point in the range of a function at which it is undefined or discontinuous. (from 19th c.) 3 (context geology English) a subterranean interface at which seismic velocities change
WordNet
n. lack of connection of continuity [ant: continuity]
Wikipedia
Discontinuity may refer to:
- Discontinuity (casting), an interruption in the normal physical structure or configuration of an article
- Discontinuity (geotechnical engineering), a plane or surface marking a change in physical or chemical properties in a soil or rock mass
- Discontinuity (mathematics), a property of a mathematical function
- Discontinuity (linguistics), a property of tree structures in theoretical linguistics
- Discontinuity (Postmodernism), a conception of history as espoused by the philosopher Michel Foucault.
- A break in continuity (fiction), in literature
- Fracture (geology), discontinuity in rocks
- Discontinuity (transmission lines), a step in impedance causing reflections
For Michel Foucault (1926–84), discontinuity and continuity reflect the flow of history and the fact that some "things are no longer perceived, described, expressed, characterised, classified, and known in the same way" from one era to the next. (1994).
A discontinuity in geotechnical engineering (in geotechnical literature often denoted by joint) is a plane or surface that marks a change in physical or chemical characteristics in a soil or rock mass. A discontinuity can be, for example, a bedding, schistosity, foliation, joint, cleavage, fracture, fissure, crack, or fault plane. A division is made between mechanical and integral discontinuities. Discontinuities may occur multiple times with broadly the same mechanical characteristics in a discontinuity set, or may be a single discontinuity. A discontinuity makes a soil or rock mass anisotropic.
In linguistics, a discontinuity occurs when a given word or phrase is separated from another word or phrase that it modifies in such a manner that a direct connection cannot be established between the two without incurring crossing lines in the tree structure. The terminology that is employed to denote discontinuities varies depending on the theory of syntax at hand. The terms discontinuous constituent, displacement, long distance dependency, unbounded dependency, and projectivity violation are largely synonymous with the term discontinuity. There are various types of discontinuities, the most prominent and widely studied of these being topicalization, wh-fronting, scrambling, and extraposition.
Discontinuities should be distinguished from inversion and shifting, two mechanisms that result in non-canonical word order but that do not necessarily incur discontinuities depending on the theory of sentence structure one assumes (e.g. dependency- or constituency-based). Natural languages vary with respect to the types of discontinuities that they permit. The fixed word order of English allows for relatively few discontinuities compared to, for instance, the Slavic languages, which are much more permissive. Even compared to a closely related language such as German, English is rigid, allowing few discontinuities.
Usage examples of "discontinuity".
And, of course, to await the arrival of what I like to call the Holocene Discontinuity.
As a geophysical oceanographer Suzanne was well aware that the Mohorovicic discontinuity was the name given to a specific layer within the earth that marked an abrupt change in the velocity of sound or seismic waves.
The Mohorovicic discontinuity definitely exists, and no one ever has been able to explain it.
It would be quite possible to drill there, into the top of the mantle, penetrating the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, however.
They were drilling a hole through the Mohorovicic discontinuity to the mantle beneath, a near part of the Earth that the creatures who inhabited its surface had never seen, never touched by drill, whose only evidence came through reflected waves of sound.
As the robot trolls back and forth, we use its videocam to hunt for a small and subtle discontinuity in the artificial surface: the sensor.
It seemed to Kirk that two of the faces might be human, though true detail was hard to perceive at this distance, especially through faceplates that reflected the blue and red plasma fires of the Goldin Discontinuity.
There had to be secure cutouts, discontinuities in the command structure, or the entire apparatus would have fallen in the first hours.
Thus ultimate discontinuity of personal selfdom reaches along linkages of S'eye connectives, repatterns all entities encountered.
Foucault himself abandoned the extreme relativism of this "archaeological" endeavor and subsumed it in a more balanced approach (that would include continuities as well as abrupt discontinuities.
In all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling.
They were unaware of the two discontinuities, had lost sight of them toward the end, and remembered them only in myth.
The only way to study the situation is to look at as many of the discontinuities as I can find.
We're out here to find out what makes the temporal discontinuities operate.
The real-world processes that they model, however, invariably lead to discontinuities when taken far enough, and the models turn out to be merely approximations that are close enough to be useful over limited ranges.