bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Narrating Community: The Creation of Social Structure in Alcoholics Anonymous Through the Performance of Autobiography
Authors: Swora Maria G.
Published: September 2007

The sharing of life stories is the most important social practice among members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Close attention to autobiographic story-telling in AA provides clues as to how AA works to heal alcoholism by creating a community of recovering alcoholics. This paper examines three major ways that AA stories create community. First, in the course of the performance of autobiographic narratives, expert AA speakers allow create social structure between themselves and their audience. Second, proper AA stories are the means by which AA members acquire and maintain their identities as recovering alcoholics. In this manner, story-listening is just as important as story-telling. Third, through the invocation of strong feeling, both tragic and humorous, AA story-tellers create a kind of intimacy based on shared emotion.
Negotiating meaning in narratives
Authors: Kjaerbeck Susanne , Asmuß Birte
Published: September 2007

In this article we focus on the negotiation of meaning in narratives. One crucial place for the negotiation of meaning in narratives is its punchline and the sequence it precedes, the post punchline sequence. We will study in detail the interactional construction of the punchline and of the post punchline in institutional talk and private everyday conversation. In our material these activities are systematically examined in a two-step procedure: Firstly, the participants address the modality of the story in their construction of the punchline. Here, the recipient claims a preliminary understanding of the story, and the teller of the story can acknowledge this claim. Secondly, the participants evaluate the story by explicitly negotiating the understanding of the reported experience and by relating the story to a wider context. The first step of this procedure seems to have conditional relevance for step two; therefore we consider the post punchline sequence as part of the narrative. We regard the participants' joint construction of meaning as a central activity, and we approach this topic by investigating how the aspects of modality and negotiation of understanding are constructed and how they contribute to the display of alignment or disalignment in talk.
The dark side of tellability
Authors: Norrick Neal R.
Published: September 2007

This article propounds a revised, two-sided notion of tellability – one which encompasses both the familiar lower-bounding side of tellability as sufficient to warrant listener interest and the generally ignored upper-bounding side where tellability merges into the no longer tellable of impropriety. It demonstrates how tellers and recipients of stories orient to the upper boundary of tellability in various ways, signalling discomfort as they approach the threshold of impropriety, but also conspiring to breech and go beyond the boundary of impropriety in the pursuit of greater intimacy and entertainment. It is within the framework of the lower boundary and upper boundary of tellability that narrators are free to construct their individual identities. (Tellability, Identity construction, Transgressive narratives, Conversational storytelling)
Participant transposition in Senegalese oral narrative
Authors: Perrino Sabina M.
Published: September 2007

This article examines a Senegalese narrative practice in which speakers make co-present individuals into denoted characters in their stories, a process I refer to as “participant transposition.” I analyze participant transposition in illness narratives recorded in Dakar, Senegal, during phases of which I am even recruited to play the part of the narrator's past self. I demonstrate how this narrative practice allows speakers to calibrate the realm of the story (the denotational text) with the storytelling event (the interactional text). (Illness narrative, Transposition, Textuality, Interaction, Senegal)
Interjections, language, and the ‘showing/saying’ continuum
Authors: Wharton Tim
Published: September 2007

Historically, interjections have been treated in two different ways: as part of language, or as non-words signifying feelings or states of mind. In this paper, I assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of two contemporary approaches that reflect the historical dichotomy, and suggest a new analysis which preserves the insights of both. Interjections have a natural and a coded element, and are better analysed as falling at various points along a continuum between ‘showing’ and ‘saying’. These two notions are characterised in theoretical terms, and some implications of the proposed approach are considered.
Is cognition plus technology an unbounded system?
Authors: Griffith Niall J.L.
Published: September 2007

The relationship between cognition and culture is discussed in terms of technology and representation. The computational metaphor is discussed in relation to its providing an account of cognitive and technical development: the role of representation and self-modification through environmental manipulation and the development of open learning from stigmery. A rationalisation for the transformational effects of information and representation is sought in the physical and biological theories of Autokatakinetics and Autopoiesis. The conclusion drawn is that culture, rather than being an intrinsic property of our human phenotype was learned and that cultural cognition is an information transforming system that is inadequately characterised by notions of parameterised deep-structure and that it is an open and potentially unbounded informational system.
Radical Empiricism, Empirical Modelling and the nature of knowing
Authors: Beynon Meurig
Published: September 2007

This paper explores connections between Radical Empiricism (RE), a philosophic attitude developed by William James at the beginning of the 20th century, and Empirical Modelling (EM), an approach to computer-based modelling that has been developed by the author and his collaborators over a number of years. It focuses in particular on how both RE and EM promote a perspective on the nature of knowing that is radically different from that typically invoked in contemporary approaches to knowledge representation in computing. This is illustrated in detail with reference to the modelling of several scenarios of lift use. Some potential implications for knowledge management are briefly reviewed.
Collaborative tagging as distributed cognition
Authors: Steels Luc
Published: September 2007

The paper discusses recent developments in web technologies based on collaborative tagging. This approach is seen as a tremendously powerful way to coordinate the ontologies and views of a large number of individuals, thus constituting the most successful tool for distributed cognition so far.
A large view of linguistic content
Authors: Asher Nicholas
Published: September 2007

This essay lays out a view of linguistic content in which discourse context plays an essential role. It provides a role for sentential content by using underspecification but argues that discourse level phenomena are essential not only to determining content but even grammaticality judgments in certain cases. It is thus argued that the traditional view which separates very strictly the areas of semantics — a context insensitive notion of meaning — and pragmatics — a non linguistic notion of speaker meaning — is inaccurate. In this line of thought, the paper pays a particular attention to hidden indexicals, anaphora and tense. The necessity of taking into account discursive parameters in order to solve semantic indeterminacy in such cases is argued for.
Toward a neuro-cognitive interpretation of ‘context’
Authors: Givón T.
Published: September 2007

This paper undertakes to begin to perform the overdue task of de-objectivizing the key pragmatic notion of ‘context’. This notion will be re-interpreted in terms of mental models, which correspond to that portion of ‘reality’ that is relevant for information processing. For this purpose, a variety of examples of the role of ‘context’ in pragmatics will be re-interpreted in terms of notions and findings of neuro-cognitive psychology.
Deep tautologies
Authors: Bulhof Johannes , Gimbel Steven
Published: September 2007

The standard understanding of tautologies is that they are semantically vacuous. Yet tautological utterances occur frequently in conversational discourse. One approach contends that apparent tautological statements are either genuinely tautologous and thereby semantically vacuous or are what we term “pseudo-tautologies”, i.e., sentences that only bear a formal syntactic resemblance to tautologies but are not in fact tautologous. Another approach follows Grice and asserts that the meaning of a tautological utterance derives from an inference made by the listener from the utterance via universal rules of conversation to a non-tautological proposition. We deny both accounts for a subset of tautological utterances that are both content-bearing and truly tautological. Such “deep tautologies” acquire meaning not by shedding their tautological status, but by drawing attention to it. Since only non-vague noun phrases will support tautological statements of the form N is N, the use of a tautology of this form in conversational context will, by its use as a tautology, indicate the speaker’s intention that the noun phrase be considered non-vague.
Comunicación afectiva en el discurso político venezolano
Authors: Nieto y Otero María Jesús
Published: September 2007

ResumenPlanteo que el discurso político del presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, recurre a estrategias de comunicación afectiva con particulares fines. El artículo contextualiza el discurso en la situación política actual de Venezuela. Emplea como marco teórico el análisis crítico del discurso (Fairclough 2001; Bolívar y Khon 1999) y la comunicación afectiva (Janney y Arndt 1992; Nieto y Otero 2002). Los pronombres personales constituyen el objeto de estudio (Alvar 2000; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1997; Haverkate 1994). La metodología consistió en identificar los pronombres de primera persona del plural y clasificarlos en inclusivos o pseudoinclusivos al analizar su uso en el contexto. El corpus consiste en 12 horas de grabación de discursos del presidente, transmitidos por televisión. Los resultados indican que el presidente Hugo Chávez emplea el pronombre pseudoinclusivo como estrategia de comunicación afectiva, porque el presidente involucra a todos los venezolanos en sus discursos, mientras que el contexto revela la exclusión que aplica a ciertos grupos sociales.
The acquisition of requests by second language learners of Spanish
Authors: Pinto Derrin
Published: September 2007

This cross-sectional study in interlanguage pragmatics analyzes the requests employed by English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish, using data collected from university students at four different levels of language learning. The most common request strategies are first identified in a cross-linguistic analysis of Spanish and English and are then compared to the interlanguage data. The requests of lower-level students are found to be more idiosyncratic and pragmatically ambiguous than those of advanced learners, although not necessarily more direct. Advanced learners show signs of improvement, but still rely largely on L1 request behavior. Learners at all levels display more difficulties in areas in which there is cross-linguistic variation between the L1 and L2.
Frecuencia de uso y contacto lingüístico en sintaxis
Authors: Company Company Concepción
Published: September 2007

Este trabajo examina los problemas teóricos y metodológicos con que se enfrenta cualquier análisis que intente comprobar contacto o interferencia lingüística en el nivel sintáctico de la lengua, y plantea que el examen minucioso de las frecuencias relativas de uso de las construcciones en contextos específicos es una herramienta metodológica básica para valorar adecuadamente esos problemas. El problema teórico específico es cómo valorar formas que ofrecen conflicto entre teoría y lengua en uso a la hora de analizar una determinada construcción como una posible activación por contacto. La evidencia empírica para el análisis son las frases nominales introducidas por artículo indefinido + posesivo, un mi amigo, una su tacita, en dos cortes cronológicos, español medieval y español actual centroamericano hablado por bilingües de maya-español o monolingües de español en contacto intenso con bilingües. Se hace un análisis cuantitativo diacrónico de dos corpus y cualitativo-cuantitativo diacrónico de tres variables en esos corpus y se muestra que los datos cuantitativos invitan a una explicación por contacto, mientras que los cualitativos sugieren una evolución interna, como una gramaticalización progresiva de nuevos valores. El análisis pone en evidencia que para el estudio de contacto en sintaxis es necesario distinguir, siguiendo a Otheguy (1995), entre convergencia comunicativa y convergencia lingüística. En el mantenimiento y actual empleo centroamericano de los sintagmas un mi amigo, una su comadre debió producirse convergencia cultural y comunicativa, pero no es posible probar cabalmente que se haya dado convergencia lingüística.
Towards a history of register in Spanish
Authors: Pountain Christopher J.
Published: September 2007

Although the significance of many other dimensions of variation in the data of Spanish historical linguistics is well recognised, the importance of studying variation in register has been underestimated and its feasibility questioned. This is in striking contrast to English historical linguistics, in which the study of register on the basis of electronic corpora is comparatively far advanced. This paper is a small-scale investigation of a 15th-century Spanish text, Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho (hereinafter referred to as Corbacho), whose author is clearly making an attempt to represent, perhaps stereotypically, different contemporary registers. It shows how, through a combination of statistical analysis and philological sensitivity, register-based linguistic variables can be recovered from a relatively short, multi-register text.
Lento deslizamiento del género gramatical femenino al centro del discurso
Authors: Bengoechea Mercedes
Published: September 2007

Una investigación del lenguaje utilizado para representar e identificar a las mujeres en las secciones de política en cuatro de los diarios españoles de mayor difusión y calidad demuestra que existen usos innovadores del español que podrían presagiar una posición discursiva más central para el género gramatical femenino español: referencias cada vez más simétricas entre los sexos; uso frecuente de la feminización de cargos, y de descriptores y profesiones de mujeres individuales, incluyendo el uso del sustantivo o pronombre femeninos para denotar grupos mixtos. El género masculino resulta inadecuado como genérico; por esta razón los periodistas prefieren el uso de sustantivos en masculino y femenino, o de sustantivos no sexuados o metonímicos, o incluso de la arroba @ para denotar grupos mixtos.
Afro-Yungueño speech
Authors: Lipski John M.
Published: September 2007

The pidginized Spanish learned by millions of Africans in Latin America had a profound but as yet underexplored impact on the formation of Spanish American dialects. Literary imitations from previous centuries are questionable, and few vestiges of actual Afro-Hispanic language remain. This paper reports on a unique Afro-American speech community in highland Bolivia, possibly the oldest surviving Afro-American variety of any language. The Afro-Yungueño dialect, now spoken in contact with regional Andean Spanish, differs systematically from any other Spanish dialect, and provides empirical evidence of the earliest stages of Afro-Hispanic language in the Americas. It also provides key evidence in the debate surrounding the possible creolization of Spanish and Portuguese in other Afro-American contexts.
A typology of contour tone restrictions
Authors: Gordon Matthew
Published: September 2007

This paper presents results of a survey of contour tones in 105 languages with lexical tone. Results indicate an implicational hierarchy of tone bearing ability, whereby long vowels are most likely to carry contour tones, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus a sonorant coda, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus an obstruent coda, followed by open syllables containing a short vowel. It is claimed that this tonal hierarchy is phonetically motivated: syllable types which are phonetically better suited to carrying tonal information are more likely to support contour tones. Languages whose tone distributions superficially appear to fall outside the range of variation predicted on phonetic grounds are demonstrated, upon closer examination, to be unexceptional in their behavior.
The semantics of auxiliary selection in Old Spanish
Authors: Aranovich Raúl
Published: September 2007

Old Spanish had a split auxiliary system in the perfect tense, reminiscent of what is found in Modern French and Modern Italian. In this paper, I trace the progress of the displacement of ser ‘be’ by haber ‘have’ with intransitive and reflexive verbs in the history of Spanish. The data support the hypothesis that predicates that have a more patient-like subject are the last ones to lose their ability to select ser, regardless of their syntactic or morphological make-up. This analysis, I argue, adds to the mounting evidence in favor of a universal semantic account of split intransitivity.
From UG to Universals
Authors: Kirby Simon , Smith Kenny , Brighton Henry
Published: September 2007

What constitutes linguistic evidence for Universal Grammar (UG)? The principal approach to this question equates UG on the one hand with language universals on the other. Parsimonious and general characterizations of linguistic variation are assumed to uncover features of UG. This paper reviews a recently developed evolutionary approach to language that casts doubt on this assumption: the Iterated Learning Model (ILM). We treat UG as a model of our prior learning bias, and consider how languages may adapt in response to this bias. By dealing directly with populations of linguistic agents, the ILM allows us to study the adaptive landscape that particular learning biases result in. The key result from this work is that the relationship between UG and language structure is non-trivial.
Why assume UG?
Authors: Wunderlich Dieter
Published: September 2007

This paper deliberates for a number of linguistic features whether they are part of UG, i.e., specific to human language, or whether they are adapted from other cognitive capacities which were evolutionarily prior to language. Among others, it is argued that the distinction between predication and reference already belongs to the conceptual system, whereas the distinction between verb and noun (which is not identical with the former one) is one of the innovations of UG. It is furthermore argued that syntax in the sense that it deals with displacement (‘movement’) is a property of human language that lies outside of UG.

The paper then discusses whether linguistic typology can contribute to our knowledge of UG, and whether aiming at this is a reasonable goal for typological research. It stands against Newmeyer’s position (this special issue) that typological evidence is essentially irrelevant for the construction of UG, as well as against Haspelmath’s position (this special issue), who argues that typological research can do without a concept of UG.
Narrative functions of clause linkage in Garrwa
Authors: Mushin Ilana
Published: September 2007

Clause linkage has long been associated with the cohesive narrative functions of temporal organisation and participant tracking (eg. Givon 1983a, Myhill & Hibiya 1988). In this paper I use data from Garrwa, a language of Northern Australia, to show that in addition to these functions, clause linkage also contributes to the interpretation of narrative perspective. The results of this investigation illustrate the range of functions that can be associated with clause linkage, contributing to the analysis of clause linkage cross-linguistically, as well as demonstrating the utility of narrative perspective as a discourse-pragmatic phenomenon motivating choices in linguistic form, and coherence in narrative structure.
Writing grammars for the community
Authors: Kadanya James Lokuuda
Published: September 2007

A language is a living soul to a community, a source of dignity and prestige for all people. Once it dies, the whole community dies. A written grammar can support a community by encouraging the use of a community language. Sometimes, however, grammars are ways that outsiders "mine" a local community for the outsiders' benefit, leaving the community of speakers with nothing. This paper discusses the need for linguistic grammars from the perspective of the community in which the language is used. Arguments for including local concerns in grammar writing are presented. One approach to writing a grammar that will serve the needs of linguists and the community is partnership. University professors, field linguists, retired field workers and others can work with local linguists to write grammars that will truly meet the needs of all.
Thoughts on growing a grammar
Authors: Weber David J.
Published: September 2007

Grammars take time; they require data development; they must be planned; and their writing may span many years. Linguists should “grow” a grammar through the course of their involvement with the language. This paper gives practical advice about this process, such as the creation and management of a data corpus, the acquisition of useful intellectual tools, the choice of an effective authoring environment, the formation of habits and disciplines that contribute to successful grammar writing.
The linguistic example
Authors: Weber David J.
Published: September 2007

Good language descriptions liberally illustrate their claims with examples. The author must select and order examples, and provide accompanying information. The example may include a reference number, the example in multiple forms (phonetic, phonemic, morphemic or morphophonemic, written), brackets and categories, glosses, translation, punctuation, functional annotations, grammatical judgements, subscripts, empty categories, ellipses marking, information about the author and language variety, attention-directing mechanisms, and so forth. Formatting these diverse sorts of information is a non-trivial task; suggestions are given for “best practice.” The delivery of documents on screens (rather than on paper) makes possible some dynamic enhancements such as inspecting an example’s textual context, toggling on/off various types of information, controlling highlighting and conflation.
Mechanisms of semantic change in Chinese
Authors: Xing Janet Zhiqun
Published: September 2007

This paper aims to investigate the mechanism of semantic change in the grammaticalization of Chinese verbs. It demonstrates with diachronic and synchronic evidence that subjectification affects every stage of semantic change in the grammaticalization of Chinese verbs, a somewhat different pattern from that found in Indo-European languages. It argues that this difference is derived from the typological difference between the structure of Chinese and that of some Indo-European languages, such as Old English.
Two kinds of productive signs in Swedish Sign Language
Authors: Wallin Lars
Published: September 2007

Productive signs in Swedish Sign Language come in many kinds. This paper concentrates on two groups. The first group describes entities in motion, expressing location and movement, like a bird is sitting on a telephone line or the boy jumps off a ledge. I call these signs polysynthetic. The second group describes the size and shape of entities, like a piece of A4 sized paper. I call these signs size and shape specifying.
In polysynthetic signs, which denote entities in movement situations, the manual articulation of the movement denotes the motion itself (e.g. movement or location) and the handshape denotes the entity as a classifier. This paper argues that there are two main types of classifiers used in polysynthetic signs to denote motion situations: agentive and non-agentive. In contrast to polysynthetic signs, in signs that specify size and shape of an object, the manual articulation (movement) denotes the extent of the largest dimension of the entity whereas the handshape denotes the extent of the smallest dimension of the entity being described.
This description of classifiers, particularly agentive classifiers, in Swedish Sign Language polysynthetic signs differs from those offered for other sign languages because it is based on the salient properties of the part of the entity that is to be handled. Other descriptions are based on the entitys appearance. Another difference is that I offer my own description of the dimensionality of entities (inspired by Bierwisch 1967). I will show how a handshape with different orientation denotes different dimensions. I will demonstrate that the agentive classifier handshapes in polysynthetic signs and the handshapes in size and shape specifying signs are chosen according to the same dimensions.
Code mixing in mother–child interaction in deaf families
Authors: van den Bogaerde Beppie , Baker Anne
Published: September 2007

In this paper we discuss the mixed language input of four deaf mothers and the mixed output of their three deaf and three hearing children. Taking a strict definition of code-mixing (as defined by Muysken 2000) we find that the deaf mothers mainly use a form of code-mixing, or mixed code-blending, called congruent lexicalization, which results in a mixed form between NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands) and Dutch in a structure which is compatible with both NGT and Dutch. The deaf children (up to 3 years), who are only just beginning to become bilingual, hardly produce any code-mixed utterances. The hearing children, however, are clearly bilingual in NGT and Dutch, and use code-blending of the mixed type in more or less the same form as their mother does.
Translation processes in time
Authors: Breedveld Hella
Published: September 2007

In think-aloud protocol studies of cognitive processes in translation, the analysis of TAPs very often results in the description of overall characteristics of the processes of individual translators or proficiency groups of translators. The problem with this approach is that it does not allow the researcher to draw conclusions about the actual organisation of the cognitive processes and its effects on text quality. In writing research, functional dependency of cognitive processes—the fact that the context, function and effect of different cognitive processes vary according to the moment in the process on which they occur—was demonstrated byRijlaarsdam and Van den Bergh (1996). In the present paper the idea is developed that in translation process research, the inclusion of time as a variable may prove to be useful in improving understanding of the effect of process characteristics on process outcome. A dynamic approach, in which a translation process is viewed and analysed as belonging to a changing task situation, is proposed.
Investigating explanations of translational phenomena
Authors: Brownlie Siobhan
Published: September 2007

The article investigates the issue of providing explanations for translational phenomena through discussion of data provided by a case study of the English translations of works by French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. In the study four major sources of explanation are proposed: individual situations (the context of production of a particular translation and different translators’ attitudes); textuality (the conditions governing textuality implied in translation); translators’ norms; and intersecting fields (academic translation is envisaged as being situated at the intersection of three fields: academia, publishing, and professional translation). The paper makes a case for multiple causality in translation, and also considers the issue of relations between the different sources of explanation.
Revision from translators’ point of view
Authors: Shih Claire Yi-yi
Published: September 2007

Although generally agreed to be an essential part of translation, revision receives little attention in translation studies with only a few exceptions such as Breedveld (2002) and Englund Dimitrova (2005). This study aims to establish what revision means to practicing translators, and their views as to what revision involves, in terms of the numbers of revisions they do, the length of their drawer-time (how long they put their draft away) and the aspects they check for in revision. Data show that translators typically claim to revise their draft translation once or twice. They do not normally have extended drawer-time. If they do, it would be overnight at most. They also describe themselves as having certain specific aspects in mind when they revise.
Language development and scientific development
Authors: Zarnikhi Abolfazl
Published: September 2007

The article deals with the role of terminology activities in scientific progress. It seems language development is the first step to achieving development. One way of developing a language is to understand subtleties of developed languages. As physics in Iran is an established course, its terminologies have been studied diachronically, over a period of 150 years, to know whether its language is well developed. To measure language evolution some criteria are suggested: terminologization, increasing of precision, standardization, reducing of loan-words and increasing of scientific concepts in native language. The criteria are applied to the data compiled from three distinct periods of the history of the language of physics in Iran. Today’s terminologies represent an improvement in the language of physics, compared with old word-formations. This means that physics has satisfied the precondition of development.
Still errors after all those years ...
Authors: Sandra Dominiek , Frisson Steven , Daems Frans
Published: September 2007

We review some of our research findings on verb spelling errors in Dutch. The spelling of Dutch regularly inflected verb forms is governed by rules of the simple concatenative type (stem + suffix). The spelling of a subset of these verb forms is determined by morpheme-based analogy, both at the level of the stem-final letter and at the level of the inaudible (i.e., silent) suffix. This subset of verb forms causes many spelling problems, both in the learning stage and in the spelling process of experienced spellers. Our research identifies two sources of these errors. First, the error risk results from the time-consuming nature of the cognitive operations needed for spelling the silent suffix. Second, the errors follow a particular pattern: the typical error is a homophonic verb spelling form which has a higher frequency of occurrence in the Dutch written language than the target form. This homophone frequency effect shows that regularly inflected verb forms with silent suffixes have their own orthographic representation in the mental lexicon, even though they are fully predictable by rule.
Implications of alphabetic instruction in the conscious and unconscious manipulations of phonological representations in Portuguese-Japanese bilinguals
Authors: Navas Ana Luiza G. P.
Published: September 2007

In the present study, I compared implicit and explicit speech manipulation tasks for individuals who were exposed to an alphabetic system (Portuguese) to individuals exposed to a non-alphabetic system (Japanese). In Experiment I, performance on metaphonological tasks was measured for Japanese-Portuguese bilinguals with different levels of reading and writing skills. Results indicated that bilingual speakers who were not literate in Portuguese did not have phonemic awareness. In Experiment II, Japanese-Portuguese bilinguals, with varying levels of contact with the alphabet, were induced to produce speech errors. Although performance on a phoneme deletion task replicated the previous results, there were no differences between groups in the production of speech errors.

The present study supports the proposal that only exposure to explicit alphabetic instruction contributes to the development of phonemic awareness. However, level of alphabetic exposure did not affect implicit knowledge of phonemes as revealed by induced speech errors.
A comparison of the cognitive processes underlying reading comprehension in native English and ESL speakers
Authors: Low Pauline B. , Siegel Linda S.
Published: September 2007

The present study examined the relative role played by three cognitive processes — phonological processing, verbal working memory, syntactic awareness — in understanding the reading comprehension performance among 884 native English (L1) speakers and 284 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speakers in sixth-grade (mean age: 11.43 years). The performance of both groups of speakers were comparable on measures of word reading, word reading fluency, phonological awareness, phonological decoding fluency and verbal working memory. However, the ESL speakers lagged behind L1 speakers in terms of syntactic awareness. This study also emphasizes the importance of the three cognitive processes in establishing a common model of reading comprehension across English L1 and ESL reading.
Brahmi-derived scripts, script layout, and segmental awareness
Authors: Sproat Richard
Published: September 2007

In earlier work (Sproat 2000), I characterized the layout of symbols in a script in terms of a calculus involving two dimensional catenation operators: I claimed that leftwards, rightwards, upwards, downwards and surrounding catenation are sufficient to describe the layout of any script. In the first half of this paper I analyze four Indic alphasyllabaries — Devanagari, Oriya, Kannada and Tamil — in terms of this model. A crucial claim is that despite the complexities of layout in alphasyllabic scripts, they are essentially no different in nature than alphabetic scripts, such as Latin. The second part of the paper explores implications of this view for theories of phonology and human processing of orthography. Apparently problematic is evidence that “phonemic awareness” — the ability for literate speakers to manipulate sounds consciously at the phoneme level — is much stronger with alphabetic scripts, than with alphasyllabaries. But phonemic awareness is not categorically absent for readers of Indic scripts; in general, how aware a reader is of a particular phoneme is related to how that phoneme is rendered in the script. Relevant factors appear to include whether the symbol is written inline, whether it is a diacritic, and whether it is ligatured with another symbol.
Phoneme awareness is not a prerequisite for learning to read
Authors: Penney Catherine G. , Drover James R. , Dyck Carrie , Squires Amanda
Published: September 2007

Three lines of evidence suggest that phoneme awareness (as measured by phoneme deletion) is not a prerequisite for learning to read and spell. 1. A boy with a serious reading problem could provide letters to represent onsets and codas better than he could delete onsets and codas. 2. A contingent analysis of reading and spelling achievement and deletion of onsets or codas or deletion of one phoneme from a complex onset was undertaken in a sample of poor readers. Onset and coda deletion developed before the students’ decoding skills reached a third-grade level, but deletion of a phoneme from an onset developed along with reading achievement. 3. When phoneme deletion was tested by a recognition method, good eighth-grade readers erroneously accepted items with the entire onset deleted as being correct responses, and had longer response times on these items. Onset and coda deletion develop after onsets and codas are represented alphabetically and before children read at about a third-grade level. However deletion of one phoneme from an onset cluster develops slowly as literacy develops and is a difficult task even for good readers.
Interactive reading
Authors: Makdissi Hélène , Boisclair Andrée
Published: September 2007

This qualitative and descriptive study partly explores a crucial aspect of child development, that is, story comprehension seen from the perspective of children’s elaboration of causal relations among story elements. The researcher met with 12 francophone preschool-aged girls (3;6 to 6;0 years old) from Québec City. At key points in the causal chain of story events, the researcher stopped reading to listen to what the children had to say about the construction of the relations they had elaborated until then. After reading, the same children answered four inference questions. Based on analyses which showed that children make causal relations more explicit during reading rather than after reading, it is reasonable to believe that dialogue during reading fosters the complexification of the expression of causal relations by preschoolers.
Control of nuclear centration in the C. elegans zygote by receptor-independent Gα signaling and myosin II
Authors: Goulding Morgan B. , Canman Julie C. , Senning Eric N. , Marcus Andrew H. , Bowerman Bruce
Published: September 2007

Mitotic spindle positioning in the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote involves microtubule-dependent pulling forces applied to centrosomes. In this study, we investigate the role of actomyosin in centration, the movement of the nucleus–centrosome complex (NCC) to the cell center. We find that the rate of wild-type centration depends equally on the nonmuscle myosin II NMY-2 and the Gα proteins GOA-1/GPA-16. In centration- defective let-99(−) mutant zygotes, GOA-1/GPA-16 and NMY-2 act abnormally to oppose centration. This suggests that LET-99 determines the direction of a force on the NCC that is promoted by Gα signaling and actomyosin. During wild-type centration, NMY-2–GFP aggregates anterior to the NCC tend to move further anterior, suggesting that actomyosin contraction could pull the NCC. In GOA-1/GPA-16–depleted zygotes, NMY-2 aggregate displacement is reduced and largely randomized, whereas in a let-99(−) mutant, NMY-2 aggregates tend to make large posterior displacements. These results suggest that Gα signaling and LET-99 control centration by regulating polarized actomyosin contraction.
Global chromatin compaction limits the strength of the DNA damage response
Authors: Murga Matilde , Jaco Isabel , Fan Yuhong , Soria Rebeca , Martinez-Pastor Barbara , Cuadrado Myriam , Yang Seung-Min , Blasco Maria A. , Skoultchi Arthur I. , Fernandez-Capetillo Oscar
Published: September 2007

In response to DNA damage, chromatin undergoes a global decondensation process that has been proposed to facilitate genome surveillance. However, the impact that chromatin compaction has on the DNA damage response (DDR) has not directly been tested and thus remains speculative. We apply two independent approaches (one based on murine embryonic stem cells with reduced amounts of the linker histone H1 and the second making use of histone deacetylase inhibitors) to show that the strength of the DDR is amplified in the context of “open” chromatin. H1-depleted cells are hyperresistant to DNA damage and present hypersensitive checkpoints, phenotypes that we show are explained by an increase in the amount of signaling generated at each DNA break. Furthermore, the decrease in H1 leads to a general increase in telomere length, an as of yet unrecognized role for H1 in the regulation of chromosome structure. We propose that slight differences in the epigenetic configuration might account for the cell-to-cell variation in the strength of the DDR observed when groups of cells are challenged with DNA breaks.
The protein tyrosine phosphatase Pez regulates TGFβ, epithelial–mesenchymal transition, and organ development
Authors: Wyatt Leila , Wadham Carol , Crocker Lesley A. , Lardelli Michael , Khew-Goodall Yeesim
Published: September 2007

Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), crucial during embryogenesis for new tissue and organ formation, is also considered to be a prerequisite to cancer metastasis. We report here that the protein tyrosine phosphatase Pez is expressed transiently in discrete locations in developing brain, heart, pharyngeal arches, and somites in zebrafish embryos. We also find that Pez knock-down results in defects in these organs, indicating a crucial role in organogenesis. Overexpression of Pez in epithelial MDCK cells causes EMT, with a drastic change in cell morphology and function that is accompanied by changes in gene expression typical of EMT. Transfection of Pez induced TGFβ signaling, critical in developmental EMT with a likely role also in oncogenic EMT. In zebrafish, TGFβ3 is co- expressed with Pez in a number of tissues and its expression was lost from these tissues when Pez expression was knocked down. Together, our data suggest Pez plays a crucial role in organogenesis by inducing TGFβ and EMT.
Actin–myosin network reorganization breaks symmetry at the cell rear to spontaneously initiate polarized cell motility
Authors: Yam Patricia T. , Wilson Cyrus A. , Ji Lin , Hebert Benedict , Barnhart Erin L. , Dye Natalie A. , Wiseman Paul W. , Danuser Gaudenz , Theriot Julie A.
Published: September 2007

We have analyzed the spontaneous symmetry breaking and initiation of actin-based motility in keratocytes (fish epithelial cells). In stationary keratocytes, the actin network flow was inwards and radially symmetric. Immediately before motility initiation, the actin network flow increased at the prospective cell rear and reoriented in the perinuclear region, aligning with the prospective axis of movement. Changes in actin network flow at the cell front were detectable only after cell polarization. Inhibition of myosin II or Rho kinase disrupted actin network organization and flow in the perinuclear region and decreased the motility initiation frequency, whereas increasing myosin II activity with calyculin A increased the motility initiation frequency. Local stimulation of myosin activity in stationary cells by the local application of calyculin A induced directed motility initiation away from the site of stimulation. Together, these results indicate that large-scale actin–myosin network reorganization and contractility at the cell rear initiate spontaneous symmetry breaking and polarized motility of keratocytes.
Tim54p connects inner membrane assembly and proteolytic pathways in the mitochondrion
Authors: Hwang David K. , Claypool Steven M. , Leuenberger Danielle , Tienson Heather L. , Koehler Carla M.
Published: September 2007

Tim54p, a component of the inner membrane TIM22 complex, does not directly mediate the import of inner membrane substrates but is required for assembly/stability of the 300-kD TIM22 complex. In addition, Δtim54 yeast exhibit a petite-negative phenotype (also observed in yeast harboring mutations in the F1Fo ATPase, the ADP/ATP carrier, mitochondrial morphology components, or the i–AAA protease, Yme1p). Interestingly, other import mutants in our strain background are not petite-negative. We report that Tim54p is not involved in maintenance of mitochondrial DNA or mitochondrial morphology. Rather, Tim54p mediates assembly of an active Yme1p complex, after Yme1p is imported via the TIM23 pathway. Defective Yme1p assembly is likely the major contributing factor for the petite-negativity in strains lacking functional Tim54p. Thus, Tim54p has two independent functions: scaffolding/stability for the TIM22 membrane complex and assembly of Yme1p into a proteolytically active complex. As such, Tim54p links protein import, assembly, and turnover pathways in the mitochondrion.
Myo4p is a monomeric myosin with motility uniquely adapted to transport mRNA
Authors: Dunn Brian D. , Sakamoto Takeshi , Hong Myoung-Soon S. , Sellers James R. , Takizawa Peter A.
Published: September 2007

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae uses two class V myosins to transport cellular material into the bud: Myo2p moves secretory vesicles and organelles, whereas Myo4p transports mRNA. To understand how Myo2p and Myo4p are adapted to transport physically distinct cargos, we characterize Myo2p and Myo4p in yeast extracts, purify active Myo2p and Myo4p from yeast lysates, and analyze their motility. We find several striking differences between Myo2p and Myo4p. First, Myo2p forms a dimer, whereas Myo4p is a monomer. Second, Myo4p generates higher actin filament velocity at lower motor density. Third, single molecules of Myo2p are weakly processive, whereas individual Myo4p motors are nonprocessive. Finally, Myo4p self-assembles into multi-motor complexes capable of processive motility. We show that the unique motility of Myo4p is not due to its motor domain and that the motor domain of Myo2p can transport ASH1 mRNA in vivo. Our results suggest that the oligomeric state of Myo4p is important for its motility and ability to transport mRNA.
Molecular Determinant for Specific Ca/Ba Selectivity Profiles of Low and High Threshold Ca2+ Channels
Authors: Cens Thierry , Rousset Matthieu , Kajava Andrey , Charnet Pierre
Published: September 2007

Voltage-gated Ca2+ channels (VGCC) play a key role in many physiological functions by their high selectivity for Ca2+ over other divalent and monovalent cations in physiological situations. Divalent/monovalent selection is shared by all VGCC and is satisfactorily explained by the existence, within the pore, of a set of four conserved glutamate/aspartate residues (EEEE locus) coordinating Ca2+ ions. This locus however does not explain either the choice of Ca2+ among other divalent cations or the specific conductances encountered in the different VGCC. Our systematic analysis of high- and low-threshold VGCC currents in the presence of Ca2+ and Ba2+ reveals highly specific selectivity profiles. Sequence analysis, molecular modeling, and mutational studies identify a set of nonconserved charged residues responsible for these profiles. In HVA (high voltage activated) channels, mutations of this set modify divalent cation selectivity and channel conductance without change in divalent/monovalent selection, activation, inactivation, and kinetics properties. The CaV2.1 selectivity profile is transferred to CaV2.3 when exchanging their residues at this location. Numerical simulations suggest modification in an external Ca2+ binding site in the channel pore directly involved in the choice of Ca2+, among other divalent physiological cations, as the main permeant cation for VGCC. In LVA (low voltage activated) channels, this locus (called DCS for divalent cation selectivity) also influences divalent cation selection, but our results suggest the existence of additional determinants to fully recapitulate all the differences encountered among LVA channels. These data therefore attribute to the DCS a unique role in the specific shaping of the Ca2+ influx between the different HVA channels.
Oxygen-induced Regulation of Na/K ATPase in Cerebellar Granule Cells
Authors: Petrushanko Irina Yu. , Bogdanov Nikolai B. , Lapina N. , Boldyrev Alexander A. , Gassmann Max , Bogdanova Anna Yu.
Published: September 2007

Adjustment of the Na/K ATPase activity to changes in oxygen availability is a matter of survival for neuronal cells. We have used freshly isolated rat cerebellar granule cells to study oxygen sensitivity of the Na/K ATPase function. Along with transport and hydrolytic activity of the enzyme we have monitored alterations in free radical production, cellular reduced glutathione, and ATP levels. Both active K+ influx and ouabain-sensitive inorganic phosphate production were maximal within the physiological pO2 range of 3–5 kPa. Transport and hydrolytic activity of the Na/K ATPase was equally suppressed under hypoxic and hyperoxic conditions. The ATPase response to changes in oxygenation was isoform specific and limited to the α1-containing isozyme whereas α2/3-containing isozymes were oxygen insensitive. Rapid activation of the enzyme within a narrow window of oxygen concentrations did not correlate with alterations in the cellular ATP content or substantial shifts in redox potential but was completely abolished when NO production by the cells was blocked by l-NAME. Taken together our observations suggest that NO and its derivatives are involved in maintenance of high Na/K ATPase activity under physiological conditions.