bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Typology of Tupi-Guarani as Reflected in the Grammars of Four Jesuit Missionaries: Anchieta (1595), Aragona (c.1625), Montoya (1640) and Restivo (1729)
Authors: Bossong Georg
Published: February 2014

Some fundamental typological peculiarities of Guarani, namely the inclusive-exclusive distinction, transnumerality, the nominal tense, the (non)-distinction of subjects and objects, and duality (active-stative alignment) are presented and analyzed from both a modern and a historical perspective: first, to better understand the features of Guarani; second, to illuminate the difficulties missionaries faced when trying to cope with language structures that drastically differed from their training in Latin grammar. Using the missionaries’ grammars as first-hand testimony, the conclusion is reached that we have not significantly advanced beyond these works from the 17th and 18th centuries. Although none of the Jesuit padres arrived at a clear understanding of all the peculiarities of Tupi-Guarani that are dealt with in this paper, they made substantial contributions to describing the unusual features of this language family adequately, and thus went deliberately beyond the framework of Latin school grammar.
Translating Non-Denominational Concepts in Describing a Religious System: A semantic analysis of colonial dictionaries in Nahuatl and Yucatec
Authors: Pharo Lars Kirkhusmo
Published: February 2014

In an earlier article (Pharo 2007), the author investigated how Spanish ethnographer-missionaries and missionary-linguists of the Colonial period translated the concept of ‘religion’ into various indigenous Mesoamerican languages. In the present article, he concedes that “assorted Mesoamerican notions may well together, as a family of concepts, be subordinated to the abstract superior concept of ‘religion’. Other relevant modern Spanish concepts like ‘sagrado’, ‘creencia’, ‘ritual’ and ‘costumbre’ etc. can thus be studied in the dictionaries.” In particular ‘costumbre’ (“custom”, “habit”) proves to be a central word among present-day Mesoamericans, not only to circumscribe their own religious practice, but also to designate ‘religion’ as well. As a result, the author, this time, analyses Spanish concepts associated with religion — but not exclusively with Christianity, i.e., neutral religious notions are the object of the analysis — translated into Nahuatl and Yucatec as recorded in colonial period dictionaries. The general hypothesis is that the dictionaries, in particular the Vocabulario (1555 and 1571) by the Franciscan Alonso de Molina (1514–1585), constituted a pedagogical strategy of transculturation at this early stage of the mission, not a radical linguistic attempt at acculturation, in order to transmit the unfamiliar Christian notions (such as conversion) to the natives of Mesoamerica.
Portuguese and Other European Missionaries in Africa: A look at their linguistic production and attitudes (1415–1885)
Authors: Levi Joseph Abraham
Published: February 2014

This study looks at some of the works produced by Catholic missionaries in Africa from the pre-dawn of the Modern Era (Fall of Constantinople, 1453), in particular the Fall of Ceuta (1415), to the Berlin Conference (1884–1885). Particular emphasis will be placed on the linguistic production of a few Franciscan, Augustinian, Capuchin, Dominican, and/or Jesuit clerics, working under the aegis of the Portuguese Crown, who — with the invaluable help of native assistants, usually members of the clergy or closely affiliated with the Church — compiled the first grammars, word lists, glossaries, and dictionaries of the indigenous languages with which they worked and interacted on a daily basis. Their endeavour, though meritorious and not always free from preconceived ideas of the ‘other’, paved the way for future studies in the field.
Justus Georgius Schottelius (1612–1676) and European Linguistic Thought
Authors: McLelland Nicola
Published: February 2014

This article re-evaluates the significance of the 17th-century grammarian Justus Georgius Schottelius (1612–1676) not just for German linguistic thought (where the importance of his cultural-patrioticSpracharbeitand his contribution to grammatography and lexicography is undisputed), but also in Europe more widely. Contributing to the complex story of the rootword in European linguistic thought, it also demonstrates how the notion of grammatical analogy which Schottelius took from Vossius was applied, through his influence, in grammars of Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Russian, and how his development of the humanist cultural-patriotic concept of the rootword influenced debates on the origin of language, and European studies of the Semitic and even Sanskrit languages.
Semantic prosody revisited
Authors: Hunston Susan
Published: February 2014

This paper considers the contentious term ‘semantic prosody’ and discusses a number of aspects of the concept described by the term. It is
pointed out that although many writers use it to refer to the implied attitudinal meaning of a word, Sinclair uses the term to refer to the
discourse function of a unit of meaning. Problems of apparent counter-examples, when a word or unit does not have the semantic prosody that
is typical of it, are discussed. The second point made is that the phenomena described as ‘semantic prosody’ can be regarded as
observational data, but that they are often used to explain subjective reactions to a given text or to predict such reactions. The issues
raised by these different uses are discussed. Finally, the pitfalls of using concordance lines to observe attitudinal language in highly
opinionated texts are discussed.
Equivalence and Non-equivalence in Parallel Corpora
Authors: Váradi Tamás , Kiss Gábor
Published: February 2014

The present paper shows how an aligned parallel corpus can be used to investigate the consistency of translation equivalence across the two languages in a parallel corpus. The particular issues addressed are the bidirectionality of translation equivalence, the coverage of multiword units, and the amount of implicit knowledge presupposed on the part of the user in interpreting the data. Three lexical items belonging to different word classes were chosen for analysis: the noun head, the verb give, and the preposition with. George Orwell’s novel 1984 was used as source material as it available in English-Hungarian sentence-aligned form. It is argued that the analysis of translation equivalents displayed in sets of concordances with aligned sentences in the target language holds important implications for bilingual lexicography and automatic word alignment methodology.
Interpersonal communication at a turning point
Authors: Chang Hui-Ching
Published: February 2014

Macro sociopolitical milieu and micro interpersonal interaction are intimately connected, since transformation of one’s cultural identity is realized in the ways in which one interacts with others through words. This paper outlines the modern Taiwanese cultural landscape — engendered through political, social, linguistic changes, as well as modern technological advances — which gives rise to new forms of talk. Political openness and rising local consciousness, changing social values to prioritize the self, emphasis on multiculturalism and multilingualism, revolution in modern technology and communication devices, and so on, have contributed to ways of language use diverging from traditional Chinese cultural values. No longer a subdued, other-oriented, reserved society subscribing to traditional cultural norms, Taiwan has embraced new forms of talk as it stands at a turning point. In light of the need for a contextualized and updated understanding of Chinese communication, as in the case of Taiwan, it is argued that many taken-for-granted assumptions endorsed through lens of “collectivism,” must be scrutinized and re-examined.
Vietnamese immigrants’ shifting patterns of status display at work
Authors: Kleifgen Jo Anne , Le Trang Thi Huynh
Published: February 2014

This study compared language choices made by Vietnamese speakers in a circuit-board manufacturing company in California with utterances constructed for similar situations by Vietnamese speakers in Hanoi, Vietnam. Particular attention was paid to how both groups of speakers signaled social relationships during talk at work, primarily through their selection or omission of Vietnamese address forms and other honorific markers. The California supervisor and assistant, during high-pressure problem-solving events, bypassed the use of kinship terms and, instead, chose non-honorific terms and other markers of informality, thus invoking a normative frame of teamwork and open debate about courses of action that pervade the contemporary American workplace. Excerpts of videotaped interactions between these California workers were shown to the Hanoi participants, after which they were asked to imagine a context in Hanoi similar to the one that they observed. Their constructed utterances were found to contain a variety of address forms — mostly personal names and kinship terms — along with other honorific and politeness forms. The Hanoi participants tended to incorporate these forms even within the economy of talk found in high-pressure moments. In including these forms, they highlighted the hierarchical relationship between the interlocutors as elder and younger, superior and subordinate. Their inclusion of these expressions reflects a cultural norm: the salience of maintaining interpersonal relationships in the workplace, which are managed elegantly through the Vietnamese person-reference system. The findings in this study suggest evidence of a shift in the norms of language use by Vietnamese immigrants living and working in the United States.
Language as Ideology
Authors: Kuo Sai-hua
Published: February 2014

Adopting the analytic method of critical discourse analysis, this study explores, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the quotation patterns in two ideologically opposed newspapers in Taiwan, namely the pro-unification United Daily News and the pro-independence Liberty Times. It is found that in reporting Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian’s “one country on each side” statement, both newspapers prefer to use indirect quotations. However, there are significant differences in their selections of quotation contents and quoted speakers. The same speaker is quoted as saying completely different things by the two newspapers, which are also more likely to quote those who voice their positions on the controversial news event. As a result, this study has demonstrated that the choice of quotation patterns is by no means objective or neutral and presentations of speech in the news tend to be loaded with ideological bias.
The Influence of Social Status on Communication Predispositions
Authors: Kim Min-Sun , Tasaki Katsuya , Kim In-Duk , Lee Hye-ryeon
Published: February 2014

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social status of the communicator on communication predispositions of people with different cultural orientations. Based upon independent and interdependent self-construals as individual-level cultural dimensions, people’s degrees of two distinct communication orientations (communication apprehension as an avoidance orientation and argumentativeness as an approach orientation) were assessed in a dyad with different status of communicators (professor as high status and classmate as low status). Participants were a total of 702 undergraduates studying in Japan, Hawaii, and the mainland U.S. After reading two hypothetical conversational situations with different status communicators (professor and classmate), participants were asked to rate items measuring two communication constructs (communication apprehension and argumentativeness). The data indicated that individuals showed greater level of argumentativeness in the conversation with a low status communicator (classmate or roommate) than in the conversation with a high status communicator (professor). On the other hand, individuals showed greater level of communication apprehension in the conversation with high status communicator (professor) than in the conversation with low status communicator (classmate or roommate). We also found that, among people of high interdependence, the level of CA was greater in the conversation with the high status communicator than in the conversation with the low status communicator. On the other hand, among people of high interdependence, the level of argumentativeness did not differ in the conversation with the high status communicator as compared with the conversation with the low status communicator.
The pragmatics of and-conjunctives in Middle English medical recipes
Authors: Alonso Almeida Francisco
Published: February 2014

The present paper seeks to explore the multiple meanings of the conjunction and in Middle English medical recipes. The corpus used contains a total number of 6,300 words, mainly from the Middle English Medical Texts compiled by Taavitsainen, Pahta and Mäkinen (2005). The framework of analysis is Relevance Theory as in Sperber and Wilson (1995). Jucker (1993), Blakemore and Carston (1999), and Carston (2002) have proved that this theory can neatly describe the various functions and meanings of discourse markers, such as and, but and well. As I show in the conclusion, and constructions must be studied in detail so that we may identify their particular meaning, which is mostly context-dependent rather than semantically constrained. By doing so, we will have a better understanding of texts and this will benefit the comprehension of medieval English. Whether the meanings of and occur similarly in other genres is left for a future, contrastive analysis.
The interlocking paths of development to emphasizer adjective pure
Authors: Vandewinkel Sigi , Davidse Kristin
Published: February 2014

This study deals with the emphasizing use of adjective pure, as in pure heaven, pure unbridled hell, which heightens the semantic specifications of the following nominal description. On the basis of close analysis of synchronic and diachronic data, it is argued that the peculiarities of Present-day emphasizer pure are the result of two distinct but mutually reinforcing paths of development. Emphasizing pure first appeared as a subjective heightener of emotion nouns in the syntactic environment pure + noun, in which it subsequently spread to other collocational sets. The contextual emphasizing use, e.g. in pure spirit, seems to have been a facilitating factor in this process. In the pattern pure and adjective + noun, the emphasizing use cropped up only at the end of Late Modern English as the result of leftward movement and subjectification (Adamson 2000), enabled by contextual modulation of pure by the other adjective. These two paths were linked by shared collocational sets such as the emotion nouns.
Adverbes figés en contraste
Authors: De Gioia Michele
Published: February 2014

Summary

A comparison of frozen adverbs : PDETC forms in French and in Italian

A contrastive analysis is made of some frozen adverbs in French and Italian having the following structure :

[N0 V] Prep Det C =:

[Max agit] dans la coulisse

([Max agisce] dietro le quinte)

The syntactically classified samples were taken from three corpora : the lexicon-grammar of French frozen adverbs (M. Gross 1990a), the lexicon-grammar of Italian frozen adverbs (De Gioia 2001), and the comparative lexicon-grammar of French and Italian frozen adverbs (De Gioia 1995).

The analysis focuses on the syntactic functioning of the PDETC adverbs and on their constituent structure in the two languages. Furthermore, since comparative lexicon-grammar enables comparison at a number of levels, the French PDETC adverbs were contrasted with their semantic equivalents in Italian, which are not only PDETC. This allowed a discussion of various types of correspondence.

The results of the analysis constitute a useful basis for further contrastive studies and for translation.
Verbes de sentiment « figurés » de la classe N0 V N1sujet_intentionnel
Authors: Kailuweit Rolf
Published: February 2014

Summary

This paper accounts for French and Italian figurative verbs of emotion. These verbs are ambiguous in so far as they have a “physical » and a “psychological » meaning. French verbs are extracted from LG Table 4. I will consider the idea put forward by Lamiroy that the psychological use a of given verb can be determined by a reduction of syntactical flexibility in comparison to the physical use. Evidence will be given that at least as far as Table 4 verbs are concerned this is not the case. The approaches of Bouchard and Van Voorst who propose general semantic rules concerning the relation of physical and psychological meaning also fail to account for the data. This will be illustrated by a closer look on French and Italian verbs of anger. Although the devices of metaphorical interpretation can be explained, these devices are not general rules that permit the derivation of a psychological use from a physical use in a given context. Lexicalization seems to be idiosynchratic. Hence, LG has to provide separate lexical entries for the two constructions of any existing ambiguous verb.
Informativeness and explicit linking in the translation of the English V-ing free adjuncts into Catalan
Authors: Espunya Anna
Published: February 2014

This paper reports on a study designed to assess the influence of the pragmatic Principle of Informativeness on the translatorial strategy of explicitation. It replicates a previous study on the occurrence of conjunctional augmentation of English present participle free adjuncts in a monolingual corpus (Kortmann 1991), with a database of translation instances from English into Catalan. The study aims at testing the validity of Kortmann’s scale of informativeness of semantic / discourse relations (e.g. Condition, Cause, Simultaneity, etc.) as a (partial) account of explicitation by means of sentence and discourse connectives. The methodology is text-based and involves collecting a database of pairs of sequences (English source text, Catalan translation), identifying the most plausible interpretation between free adjunct and matrix clause, and classifying them into instances that have undergone explicitation vs. non-explicitation. The data are analysed quantitatively (by finding the percentages of explicitation per relationship) as well as qualitatively (by analysing the kinds of semantic shifts that occur between source texts and translations).
Connectors in a cross-linguistic perspective
Authors: Nølke Henning
Published: February 2014

This article addresses two main questions: Can connectors be properly translated and can ‘contrastive network analysis’ be used both as a heuristic tool and for language-specific analyses? My key example being the French connector donc, I first propose a description of this connector within the framework of ‘connector grammar’. Based on a study of professional translations of donc into a number of languages, I then show that it is bound by instructions to a particular ‘function domain’ which is probably used intuitively by translators, and I proceed to discuss how function domains may be circumscribed. Network analysis may be used to this end, and I show the results of a recent experiment involving this method. These results turn out to raise a new series of problems, and I consider the possibility of resolving some of these by a combination of network analysis and Dyvik’s (1998 a and b) ‘semantic mirrors’ analysis.
Language Choice, Linguistic Capital and Symbolic Domination in the European Union
Authors: Loos Eugène
Published: February 2014

The current linguistic regime in the institutions of the European Union is highly complex. The EU considers that equal status for its official languages goes to the heart of what the Union is all about. Actually, the member states are not willing to grant another language recognition. Bourdieu’s publication Language and Symbolic Power (1992) helps explain this unwillingness: an official language can be considered as “linguistic capital” which affords its holders “symbolic power”. On the other hand, when new countries join the European Union it is not inconceivable that, for reasons of a utilitarian and financial-economic nature, there will be a shift in favour of the exclusively institutional use of English in the long term. Bourdieu’s analysis of the mechanisms which underlie the process of linguistic unification during the construction of the French nation state in the nineteenth century answers the question whether the mechanisms which led to the use of French as common language for France also apply to the language choice in the EU.
Changing Language Attitudes
Authors: Cluver August D. de V.
Published: February 2014

Language attitudes are long-term phenomena that tend to become more specific over generations. The stigmatization of Khoekhoegowap in Namibia shows how negative images of minority languages are generated by external forces, but also how these forces may also be reinforced by corresponding internal forces. The case of Khoekhoegowap is examined on three levels: (1) the external level (how political doctrine may influence the observations of language planners), (2) the theoretical level (how language stigmatization and similar problems result from a wide variety of factors), and (3) the empirical level (how members of a speech community can intentionally create negative stereotypes of another language to destabilize the development of that language and reduce the status of its speakers in society, and how this, in turn, can become internalized and lead to language decline).
Review article:L’espérantologie en revue (2)
Authors: Duc Goninaz Michel
Published: February 2014

Un nouveau recuil d’articles présente une grande variété de sujets et d’approches.
From linguistic liberalism to legal regulation
Authors: Karyolemou Marilena
Published: February 2014

One of the main difficulties in describing state language policies and planning has to do with the fact that very often one has to decide whether changes observed in state attitude vis-à-vis specific languages indicate the adoption of a new policy or reflect activation processes which tend to unveil previously covert or de facto policies. The interpretation of apparent changes in policy often becomes more difficult because of the existence of divergent, even conflicting, linguistic practices within the same polity. The introduction of legislation aiming to protect the Greek language in Cyprus in the mid 80s can be interpreted as an activation of the Cypriot state de facto policy in favor of the Greek language, a policy that marks the history of the Greek Cypriot community even before the creation of the Cypriot state. The shift from a laissez faire attitude that prevailed in the years after Independence (1960) toward legal intervention in favor of the Greek language in the mid 1980s cannot be understood without reference to a set of interrelated factors that distinguish this period from previous periods of the history of the Cypriot state.
The promotion of linguistic diversity in multilingual settings
Authors: Reagan Timothy
Published: February 2014

The South African case raises a number of important issues of concern for those interested in language policy and language planning: issues of multilingualism, linguistic diversity, linguistic integration, linguistic equity, and language rights. South Africa is fascinating for those interested in matters of language because it is characterized by elements of both the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ worlds, and thus, to some extent, provides us with a microcosm of the broader international issues related to language. In the years since the 1994 election, South Africa has begun seriously and thoughtfully to address many of the challenges related to language and language policy that will face virtually all societies in the next century. Its experiences in this regard are both telling and significant, and have far broader implications for other societies. This article provides a brief discussion of the historical use of language policy and language planning in the South African context, and explores recent developments in South Africa with respect to language policy. Finally, it identifies and discusses possible lessons for efforts to promote linguistic diversity in multilingual settings.
Language policy spread
Authors: Kaplan Robert B. , Baldauf Richard B.
Published: February 2014

Except for a few large scale projects, language planners have tended to talk and argue among themselves rather than to see language policy development as an inherently political process. A comparison with a social policy example, taken from the United States, suggests that it is important to understand the problem and to develop solutions in the context of the political process, as this is where decisions will ultimately be made.
Interlinguistics and Esperanto studies in the social context of modern Japan
Authors: Usui Hiroyuki
Published: February 2014

This paper is an effort to situate interlinguistics and Esperanto studies in the social context of modern Japan. The origin of interlinguistic ideas in Japan was distinct from developments in Europe, in that English functioned as the bridge language to learn Western civilization from the very beginning of Japan’s modernization, while it was the lack of a suitable regional lingua franca that motivated the Europeans to search for a planned language. After the examination of some Japanese pioneers in interlinguistics, the main focus will be upon diverse traditions of Esperanto studies in Japan. These include the endogenous (inward-looking) tradition, socially engaged interlinguistics, the post-war ambivalence of the Esperanto movement toward scientific theorizing, and the gradual rise of macro-sociolinguistic approaches from the 1990s.
Slipping on superlemmas
Authors: Kuiper Koenraad , Egmond Marie-Elaine van , Kempen Gerard , Sprenger Simone
Published: February 2014

Only relatively recently have theories of speech production concerned themselves with the part idioms and other multi-word lexical items (MLIs) play in the processes of speech production. Two theories of speech production which attempt to account for the accessing of idioms in speech production are those of Cutting and Bock (1997) and superlemma theory (Sprenger, 2003; Sprenger, Levelt, & Kempen, 2006). Much of the data supporting theories of speech production comes either from time course experiments or from slips of the tongue (Bock & Levelt, 1994). The latter are of two kinds: experimentally induced (Baars, 1992) or naturally observed (Fromkin, 1980). Cutting and Bock use experimentally induced speech errors while Sprenger et al. use time course experiments. The missing data type that has a bearing on speech production involving MLIs is that of naturally occurring slips. In this study the impact of data taken from naturally observed slips involving English and Dutch MLIs are brought to bear on these theories. The data are taken initially from a corpus of just over 1000 naturally observed English slips involving MLIs (the Tuggy corpus). Our argument proceeds as follows. First we show that slips occur independent of whether or not there are MLIs involved. In other words, speech production proceeds in certain of its aspects as though there were no MLI present. We illustrate these slips from the Tuggy data. Second we investigate the predictions of superlemma theory. Superlemma theory (Sprenger et al., 2006) accounts for the selection of MLIs and how their properties enter processes of speech production. It predicts certain activation patterns dependent on a MLI being selected. Each such pattern might give rise to slips of the tongue. This set of predictions is tested against the Tuggy data. Each of the predicted activation patterns yields a significant number of slips. These findings are therefore compatible with a view of MLIs as single units in so far as their activation by lexical concepts goes. However, the theory also predicts that some slips are likely not to occur. We confirm that such slips are not present in the data. These findings are further corroborated by reference a second smaller dataset of slips involving Dutch MLIs (the Kempen corpus). We then use slips involving irreversible binomials to distinguish between the predictions of superlemma theory which are supported by slips involving irreversible binomials and the Cutting and Bock model’s predictions for slips involving these MLIs which are not.
Extirpation and Tribal Reintroduction of Coho Salmon to the Interior Columbia River Basin
Authors: Galbreath Peter F , Bisbee Michael A , Dompier Douglas W , Kamphaus Cory M , Newsome Todd H
Published: February 2014

Harvest of anadromous salmonids in the Columbia River basin has been fundamental to the nutrition, economy, and cultural and religious beliefs of the regional Native American tribes. Agricultural development, dam construction, urbanization, and overharvest following colonization by European-origin settlers, however, resulted in dramatic reductions in salmon runs and negative impacts to the well-being of tribal peoples. Federal and state fishery agencies attempted to mitigate for the loss and to rebuild some salmonid populations but deemed Coho Salmon of lesser importance for upriver fisheries and allowed them to go functionally extinct. In the mid-1990s, fishery agencies of the Columbia River Treaty tribes spearheaded efforts to reestablish the extirpated Coho Salmon, beginning in the Yakima, Wenatchee, Methow, and Clearwater rivers. The programs were initiated with juveniles from composite lower Columbia River hatchery stocks, acclimated or direct released near potential spawning habitat, then were transitioned to producing juveniles with broodstock collected in-basin. Increasing numbers of fish are now returning to these rivers, a portion of which is the product of natural spawning. Results suggest that the Coho Salmon are adapting to their new environments and founding local naturalized populations.

RESUMEN

la captura de salmónidos anádromos en la cuenca del Río Columbia ha sido fundamental para la nutrición, economía, cultura y creencias religiosas de las tribus nativas de Norte América. El desarrollo de la agricultura, la construcción de presas, urbanización y sobre pesca que siguieron a la llegada de los colonizadores europeos, dieron como resultado reducciones dramáticas de las corridas de salmón y causaron un impacto negativo en el bienestar de la gente tribal. Las agencias pesqueras federales y estatales trataron de mitigar estas pérdidas y de reconstruir algunas poblaciones de salmónidos, sin embargo clasificaron al salmón plateado como de menor importancia para las pesquerías, permitiendo así que llegara a la extinción funcional. A mediados de la década de 1990, tanto las agencias pesqueras como las tribus oriundas del Río Columbia encabezaron esfuerzos para restablecer el extirpado salmón plateado, comenzando con los ríos Yakima, Wenatchee, Methow y Clearwater. Los programas se iniciaron utilizando individuos juveniles de los stocks cultivados en la parte baja del Río Columbia, mismos que se aclimataban o se liberaban directamente cerca de hábitats potenciales para el desove. Posteriormente, en una etapa transitoria, se produjeron juveniles a partir de reproductores recolectados en las cuencas. En la actualidad, cada vez más peces están regresando a estos ríos, una parte de los cuales es el producto de desoves naturales. Los resultados sugieren que el salmón plateado se está adaptando a sus nuevos ambientes y está creando poblaciones locales naturales.
The Glacier, the Rock, the Image: Emotional Experience and Semiotic Diversity at the Quyllurit’i Pilgrimage (Cuzco, Peru)
Authors: Carreño Guillermo Salas
Published: February 2014

The Quyllurit’i (Shining Snow) pilgrimage is the most important of the Southern Peruvian Andes. The shrine is located at the bottom of a glacier and currently attracts all the sociocultural diversity present in the regional society of Cuzco. During the main days of the pilgrimage this usually quiet place is inundated by innumerable groups of musicians and dancers and by tens of thousands of pilgrims. These particularities also attract foreign New Age pilgrims, as well as researchers and film crews. I claim, discussing Durkheim’s elaboration on “collective effervescence,” that the strong emotional experiences of the pilgrimage are functional to the reproduction of coexisting heterogeneous ways to experience and understand the pilgrimage. Most pilgrims are vocal in expressing their experience of transcendence in Quyllurit’i, though they have different ideas about who the transcendent agents addressed by the rituals are, what their relation to the materiality of the shrine is, and how to recognize their agency. The article analyzes the different ways in which New Age pilgrims, Catholic priests, and pilgrims of a highland Quechua community frame and experience the pilgrimage through different assumptions about the nature of society and how signs function in the world.
Cherubim: (Re)presenting Transcendence
Authors: Volli Ugo
Published: February 2014

There is a very general problem of representing transcendence in different culture: how to make present what is by definition beyond human experience. Many cultures forbid it, other as the Christian one allow representations of some divine presence in the world. Jewish tradition is in general strongly anti-iconic and especially forbids any representation of divinity. But in the most sacred place of Judaism, the Holy of Holies, the book of Exodus prescribes the presence of two statues of “cherubim,” which are identified with a class of angels. This article follows the motif of cherubim in the biblical and postbiblical literature, showing that they are not representations of transcendence, but rather indirect representatives of the Jewish people as they provide a device for realizing the state of the people and its relation with the divinity, a metapragmatic sign for the paradoxical presence of the transcendence in the midst of it.
Representing Transcendence: The Semiosis of Real Presence
Authors: Leone Massimo , Parmentier Richard J.
Published: February 2014

The double function of representation as “standing for” and “making present again” is explored in two case studies of ancient Egyptian cult statues and medieval Christian eucharistic transubstantiation. The experience of the “real presence” of the transcendent accomplished by ritual action is, in both cases, mediated by regimenting metasemiotic texts that proclaim and justify sacramental ontologies of transcendent realities that provide, in turn, models for their very representability in perceptible semiotic mediators. The concept of the “circle of semiosis” is proposed as a counter to scholarly efforts to anchor the variability of solutions to the paradox of representing the nonrepresentable in terms of their positioning relative to an “axial breakthrough” or to analyze metasemiotic texts as being primarily post hoc interpretations of universal psychological tendencies to see beyond the here and now.
Transition between Life and Afterlife: Analyzing The Triumph of Death in the Camposanto of Pisa
Authors: Carletti Lorenzo , Polacci Francesca
Published: February 2014

What is more vivid and earthly than death? A dead body does not involve problems of representation of transcendence. If death is meant not as an ending point but as a transition between life and afterlife, the theoretical problem is more complex. The Triumph of Death (1336–41), frescoed by Buffalmacco inside the Camposanto of Pisa, shows a personification of Death, half human and half devil, that connects two different semantic fields: /life/ and /nondeath/. Its terrible figure acts as an agent of transformation from the earthly life to the new life, hellish or heavenly. Several scrolls, mostly along the frame, underline this interpretation: words and images establish a new level of communication, acting as a guide to the beholder to look inside himself and get ready for the consequences of dying.
Composite finite elements for elliptic interface problems
Authors: Peterseim Daniel
Published: February 2014

A Composite Finite Element method approximates linear elliptic boundary value problems with discontinuous diffusion coefficient at possibly high contrast. The discontinuity appears at some interface that is not necessarily resolved by the underlying finite element mesh. The method is non-conforming in the sense that shape functions preserve continuity across the interface in only an approximate way. However, the method allows balancing this non-conformity error and the error of the best approximation in such a way that the total discretization error (in energy norm) decreases linear with regard to the mesh size and independent of contrast.
Classification of two types of weak solutions to the Casimir equation for the Ito system
Authors: Haussermann John , Van Gorder Robert
Published: February 2014

The existence and non-uniqueness of two classes of weak solutions to the Casimir equation for the Ito system is discussed. In particular, for (i) all possible travelling wave solutions and (ii) one vital class of self-similar solutions, all possible families of local power series solutions are found. We are then able to extend both types of solutions to the entire real line, obtaining separate classes of weak solutions to the Casimir equation. Such results constitute rare globally valid analytic solutions to a class of nonlinear wave equations. Closed-form asymptotic approximations are also given in each case, and these agree nicely with the numerical solutions available in the literature.
Atmospheric gas plasma–induced ROS production activates TNF-ASK1 pathway for the induction of melanoma cancer cell apoptosis
Authors: Ishaq Musarat , Kumar Shailesh , Varinli Hilal , Han Zhao Jun , Rider Amanda E. , Evans Margaret D. M. , Murphy Anthony B. , Ostrikov Kostya
Published: February 2014

Atmospheric gas plasmas (AGPs) are able to selectively induce apoptosis in cancer cells, offering a promising alternative to conventional therapies that have unwanted side effects such as drug resistance and toxicity. However, the mechanism of AGP-induced cancer cell death is unknown. In this study, AGP is shown to up-regulate intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and induce apoptosis in melanoma but not normal melanocyte cells. By screening genes involved in apoptosis, we identify tumor necrosis factor (TNF)–family members as the most differentially expressed cellular genes upon AGP treatment of melanoma cells. TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1) antagonist–neutralizing antibody specifically inhibits AGP-induced apoptosis signal, regulating apoptosis signal–regulating kinase 1 (ASK1) activity and subsequent ASK1-dependent apoptosis. Treatment of cells with intracellular ROS scavenger N-acetyl-l-cysteine also inhibits AGP-induced activation of ASK1, as well as apoptosis. Moreover, depletion of intracellular ASK1 reduces the level of AGP-induced oxidative stress and apoptosis. The evidence for TNF-signaling dependence of ASK1-mediated apoptosis suggests possible mechanisms for AGP activation and regulation of apoptosis-signaling pathways in tumor cells.
Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements
Authors: Hong Fuhai , Zhao Xiaojian
Published: February 2014

It appears that news media and some pro‐environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.
Programmed death in a unicellular organism has species-specific fitness effects
Authors: Durand Pierre M. , Choudhury Rajdeep , Rashidi Armin , Michod Richard E.
Published: February 2014

Programmed cell death (PCD) is an ancient phenomenon and its origin and maintenance in unicellular life is unclear. We report that programmed death provides differential fitness effects that are species specific in the model organism
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
. Remarkably, PCD in this organism not only benefits others of the same species, but also has an inhibitory effect on the growth of other species. These data reveal that the fitness effects of PCD can depend upon genetic relatedness.
Simultaneous reconstruction of evolutionary history and epidemiological dynamics from viral sequences with the birth–death SIR model
Authors: Kühnert Denise , Stadler Tanja , Vaughan Timothy G. , Drummond Alexei J.
Published: February 2014

The evolution of RNA viruses, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C virus and influenza virus, occurs so rapidly that the viruses' genomes contain information on past ecological dynamics. Hence, we develop a phylodynamic method that enables the joint estimation of epidemiological parameters and phylogenetic history. Based on a compartmental susceptible–infected–removed (SIR) model, this method provides separate information on incidence and prevalence of infections. Detailed information on the interaction of host population dynamics and evolutionary history can inform decisions on how to contain or entirely avoid disease outbreaks. We apply our birth–death SIR method to two viral datasets. First, five HIV type 1 clusters sampled in the UK between 1999 and 2003 are analysed. The estimated basic reproduction ratios range from 1.9 to 3.2 among the clusters. All clusters show a decline in the growth rate of the local epidemic in the middle or end of the 1990s. The analysis of a hepatitis C virus genotype 2c dataset shows that the local epidemic in the Córdoban city Cruz del Eje originated around 1906 (median), coinciding with an immigration wave from Europe to central Argentina that dates from 1880 to 1920. The estimated time of epidemic peak is around 1970.
Integrating scientific guidance into marine spatial planning
Authors: Rassweiler Andrew , Costello Christopher , Hilborn Ray , Siegel David A.
Published: February 2014

Marine spatial planning (MSP), whereby areas of the ocean are zoned for different uses, has great potential to reduce or eliminate conflicts between competing management goals, but only if strategically applied. The recent literature overwhelmingly agrees that including stakeholders in these planning processes is critical to success; but, given the countless alternative ways even simple spatial regulations can be configured, how likely is it that a stakeholder-driven process will generate plans that deliver on the promise of MSP? Here, we use a spatially explicit, dynamic bioeconomic model to show that stakeholder-generated plans are doomed to fail in the absence of strong scientific guidance. While strategically placed spatial regulations can improve outcomes remarkably, the vast majority of possible plans fail to achieve this potential. Surprisingly, existing scientific rules of thumb do little to improve outcomes. Here, we develop an alternative approach in which models are used to identify efficient plans, which are then modified by stakeholders. Even if stakeholders alter these initial proposals considerably, results hugely outperform plans guided by scientific rules of thumb. Our results underscore the importance of spatially explicit dynamic models for the management of marine resources and illustrate how such models can be harmoniously integrated into a stakeholder-driven MSP process.
Positional specification in the segmental growth pattern of an early arthropod
Authors: Fusco Giuseppe , Hong Paul S. , Hughes Nigel C.
Published: February 2014

In many arthropods, there is a change in relative segment size during post-embryonic development, but how segment differential growth is produced is little known. A new dataset of the highest quality specimens of the 429 Myr old trilobiteAulacopleura koninckiiprovides an unparalleled opportunity to investigate segment growth dynamics and its control in an early arthropod. Morphometric analysis across nine post-embryonic stages revealed a growth gradient in the trunk ofA. koninckii. We contrastively tested different growth models referable to two distinct hypotheses of growth control for the developing trunk: (i) a segment-specific control, with individual segments having differential autonomous growth progression, and (ii) a regional control, with segment growth depending on their relative position along the main axis. We show that the trunk growth pattern ofA. koninckiiwas consistent with a regional growth control producing a continuous growth gradient that was stable across all developmental stages investigated. The specific posterior-to-anterior decaying shape of the growth gradient suggests it deriving from the linear transduction of a graded signal, similar to those commonly provided by morphogens. A growth control depending on a form of positional specification, possibly realized through the linear interpretation of a graded signal, may represent the primitive condition for arthropod differential growth along the main body axis, from which the diverse and generally more complex forms of growth control in subsequent arthropods have evolved.
Fifty million years of herbivory on coral reefs: fossils, fish and functional innovations
Authors: Bellwood D. R. , Goatley C. H. R. , Brandl S. J. , Bellwood O.
Published: February 2014

The evolution of ecological processes on coral reefs was examined based on Eocene fossil fishes from Monte Bolca, Italy and extant species from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Using ecologically relevant morphological metrics, we investigated the evolution of herbivory in surgeonfishes (Acanthuridae) and rabbitfishes (Siganidae). Eocene and Recent surgeonfishes showed remarkable similarities, with grazers, browsers and even specialized, long-snouted forms having Eocene analogues. These long-snouted Eocene species were probably pair-forming, crevice-feeding forms like their Recent counterparts. Although Eocene surgeonfishes likely played a critical role as herbivores during the origins of modern coral reefs, they lacked the novel morphologies seen in modernAcanthurusandSiganus(including eyes positioned high above their low-set mouths). Today, these forms dominate coral reefs in both abundance and species richness and are associated with feeding on shallow, exposed algal turfs. The radiation of these new forms, and their expansion into new habitats in the Oligocene–Miocene, reflects the second phase in the development of fish herbivory on coral reefs that is closely associated with the exploitation of highly productive short algal turfs.
Detection of potential microbial antigens by immuno-PCR (PCR-amplified immunoassay)
Authors: Mehta Promod K. , Raj Ankush , Singh Netra Pal , Khuller Gopal K.
Published: February 2014

Immuno-PCR (PCR-amplified immunoassay; I-PCR) is a novel ultrasensitive method combining the versatility of ELISA with the sensitivity of nucleic acid amplification of PCR. The enormous exponential amplification power of PCR in an I-PCR assay leads to at least a 102–104-fold increase in sensitivity compared with an analogous ELISA. I-PCR has been used to detect many biological molecules such as proto-oncogenes, toxins, cytokines, hormones, and biomarkers for autoimmune and Alzheimer’s diseases, as well as microbial antigens and antibodies, and it can be adapted as a novel diagnostic tool for various infectious and non-infectious diseases. Quantitative real-time I-PCR has the potential to become the most analytically sensitive method for the detection of proteins. The sensitivity and specificity of a real-time I-PCR assay can be enhanced further with the use of magnetic beads and nanoparticles. This review is primarily focused on the detection of potential viral, bacterial and parasitic antigens by I-PCR assay, thus enabling their application for immunological research and for early diagnosis of infectious diseases.