bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
HYDROLOGICAL GRADIENT AND SPECIES TRAITS EXPLAIN GASTROPOD DIVERSITY IN FLOODPLAIN GRASSLANDS
Authors: Ilg C. , Foeckler F. , Deichner O. , Henle K.
Published: July 2011

Floodplains are characterized by high spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Despite low active mobility, Central European floodplain gastropod communities show a high species diversity. They are supposed to have developed a large range of resistance and/or resilience strategies to survive in the highly variable and frequently disturbed floodplain habitats.

Relating gastropod diversity and species traits to hydrological conditions, we tested how different groundwater and flood regimes affect gastropod diversity and identified the main species traits favouring their survival in highly dynamic floodplain grasslands.

Species richness, species diversity and functional diversity peaked at intermediate flood disturbance and moisture levels. Harsher environmental conditions in either dryer or frequently flooded habitats restricted the gastropod communities to a few specialized species.

Morphological and life‐history traits showed significant variations along the hydrological gradient. Shell character and mode of reproduction proved to be important functional determinants for gastropod community composition. Species with strongly calcified shells, which limit the risk of injuries in case of dislodgment, were more often found in flood prone sites. Uniparental reproduction dominated in the driest as well as in highly flood‐disturbed habitats, providing reproductive assurance where harsh environmental conditions may reduce the number of potential mates.

Intermediate disturbance and moisture levels favoured local gastropod diversity whereas dryer or highly flood‐disturbed habitats sheltered specialized species. Therefore, the maintenance of areas with different disturbance and moisture levels is of major importance in favouring taxonomical and functional mollusc diversity across the whole floodplain. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Study of Boronizing Mechanism of High‐Alumina Slag
Authors: Chenglin Qi , Jianliang Zhang , Jiugang Shao , Weijia Lu , Zhixing Zhao , Xuesong Zhang
Published: July 2011

As the Al2O3 content of the iron‐making raw materials increasing, the Al2O3 content in the slag increases as well, which is the certain result in the development of the iron‐making process. Based on the slag which was from the 2# blast furnace in Hebei Qianan of China, 7 different kinds of B compositions were added. The viscosity values of the CaO ‐MgO‐Al2O3‐SiO2‐B2O3 system were measured by using the torque. The SEM and EDS apparatus were used to observe the variation characteristics of the boronizing slag of the blast furnace. Viscosity mechanism model of the boronazing high‐alumina slag was got from the analysis of the EDS compositions. These detailed analysis including the influence on the slag forming components result from different B contents which shows the conclusion that the suitable B content makes good to the viscosity, melting temperature and stability of high‐alumina slag.
Genetic analysis of tolerance to infections using random regressions: a simulation study
Authors: KAUSE ANTTI
Published: July 2011

Tolerance to infections is the ability of a host to limit the impact of a given pathogen burden on host performance. This simulation study demonstrated the merit of using random regressions to estimate unbiased genetic variances for tolerance slope and its genetic correlations with other traits, which could not be obtained using the previously implemented statistical methods. Genetic variance in tolerance was estimated as genetic variance in regression slopes of host performance along an increasing pathogen burden level. Random regressions combined with covariance functions allowed genetic variance for host performance to be estimated at any point along the pathogen burden trajectory, providing a novel means to analyse infection-induced changes in genetic variation of host performance. Yet, the results implied that decreasing family size as well as a non-zero environmental or genetic correlation between initial host performance before infection and pathogen burden led to biased estimates for tolerance genetic variance. In both cases, genetic correlation between tolerance slope and host performance in a pathogen-free environment became artificially negative, implying a genetic trade-off when it did not exist. Moreover, recording a normally distributed pathogen burden as a threshold trait is not a realistic way of obtaining unbiased estimates for tolerance genetic variance. The results show that random regressions are suitable for the genetic analysis of tolerance, given suitable data structure collected either under field or experimental conditions.
Consultant-based otolaryngology emergency service: a five-year experience
Authors: Barnes M L , Hussain S S M
Published: July 2011

Objective:

To present our experience of running a consultant-based otolaryngology emergency care service for more than five years.

Materials and methods:

In 2003, we developed a system of consultant-based emergency service: consultants spent a week on-call providing a dedicated emergency service, with routine commitments cancelled.

Results:

Our new system had advantages over traditional working practices in terms of consultant involvement, trainee education, continuity and efficiency. It also reduced disruption to elective commitments for both consultants and registrars. This system was fundamental to the successful review of all urgent (and in future elective) cases within target periods. Only 31 per cent of new referrals to the consultant emergency clinics required a further appointment. Good teamwork and flexibility in working arrangements have been essential to the success of this service.

Conclusion:

Given that health service changes have reduced junior trainee working hours and numbers, and that patients increasingly expect to be treated by trained doctors, our new consultant-based emergency service has merit. Although implementation in other units may differ, we recommend this new service, for the above reasons.
Interactive effects of protein nutrition, genetic growth potential andHeligmosomoides bakeriinfection pressure on resilience and resistance in mice
Authors: COLTHERD JENNIFER C. , BABAYAN SIMON A. , BÜNGER LUTZ , KYRIAZAKIS ILIAS , ALLEN JUDITH E. , HOUDIJK JOS G. M.
Published: July 2011

The ability of animals to cope with an increasing parasite load, in terms of resilience and resistance, may be affected by both nutrient supply and demand. Here, we hypothesized that host nutrition and growth potential interact and influence the ability of mice to cope with different parasite doses. Mice selected for high (ROH) or low (ROL) body weight were fed a low (40 g/kg; LP) or high (230 g/kg; HP) protein diet and infected with 0, 50, 100, 150, 200 or 250 L3infectiveHeligmosomoides bakerilarvae. ROH-LP mice grew less at doses of 150 L3and above, whilst growth of ROH-HP and of ROL mice was not affected by infection pressure. Total worm burdens reached a plateau at doses of 150L3, whilst ROH mice excreted fewer worm eggs than ROL mice. Serum antibodies increased with infection dose and ROH mice were found to have higher parasite-specific IgG1 titres than ROL mice. In contrast, ROL had higher total IgE titres than ROH mice, only on HP diets. The interaction between host nutrition and growth potential appears to differentially affect resilience and resistance in mice. However, the results support the view that parasitism penalises performance in animals selected for higher growth.
The kernel of the Magnus representation of the automorphism group of a free group is not finitely generated
Authors: SATOH TAKAO
Published: July 2011

We show that the abelianization of the kernel of the Magnus representation of the automorphism group of a free group is not finitely generated.
On the cohomology of uniform arithmetically defined subgroups in SU*(2n)
Authors: SCHWERMER JOACHIM , WALDNER CHRISTOPH
Published: July 2011

We study the cohomology of compact locally symmetric spaces attached to arithmetically defined subgroups of the real Lie group G = SU*(2n). Our focus is on constructing totally geodesic cycles which originate with reductive subgroups in G. We prove that these cycles, also called geometric cycles, are non-bounding. Thus this geometric construction yields non-vanishing (co)homology classes.

In view of the interpretation of these cohomology groups in terms of automorphic forms, the existence of non-vanishing geometric cycles implies the existence of certain automorphic forms. In the case at hand, we substantiate this close relation between geometry and automorphic theory by discussing the classification of irreducible unitary representations of G with non-zero cohomology in some detail. This permits a comparison between geometric constructions and automorphic forms.
Concordance of Bing Doubles and Boundary Genus
Authors: LIVINGSTON CHARLES , VAN COTT CORNELIA A.
Published: July 2011

Cha and Kim proved that if a knot K is not algebraically slice, then no iterated Bing double of K is concordant to the unlink. We prove that if K has nontrivial signature σ, then the n–iterated Bing double of K is not concordant to any boundary link with boundary surfaces of genus less than 2n−1σ. The same result holds with σ replaced by 2τ, twice the Ozsváth–Szabó knot concordance invariant.
Spectra ofL1-convolution operators acting onLp-spaces of commutative hypergroups
Authors: PERREITER EVA
Published: July 2011

We show that, for commutative hypergroups, the spectrum of allL1-convolution operators onLpis independent ofp∈ [1, ∞] exactly when the Plancherel measure is supported on the whole character space χb(K), i.e., exactly whenL1(K) is symmetric and for every α ∈Reiter's conditionP2holds true. Furthermore, we explicitly determine the spectra σp(Tϵ1) for the family of Karlin–McGregor polynomial hypergroups, which demonstrate that in general the spectra might even be different for eachp.
Julia sets of uniformly quasiregular mappings are uniformly perfect
Authors: FLETCHER ALASTAIR N. , NICKS DANIEL A.
Published: July 2011

It is well known that the Julia set J(f) of a rational map f: ℂ → ℂ is uniformly perfect; that is, every ring domain which separates J(f) has bounded modulus, with the bound depending only on f. In this paper we prove that an analogous result is true in higher dimensions; namely, that the Julia set J(f) of a uniformly quasiregular mapping f: ℝn → ℝn is uniformly perfect. In particular, this implies that the Julia set of a uniformly quasiregular mapping has positive Hausdorff dimension.
Cross-language phonological activation of meaning: evidence from category verification
Authors: FRIESEN DEANNA C. , JARED DEBRA
Published: July 2011

The study investigated phonological processing in bilingual reading for meaning. English–French and French–English bilinguals performed a category verification task in either their first or second language. Interlingual homophones (words that share phonology across languages but not orthography or meaning) and single language control words served as critical stimuli. The interlingual homophones and their control words were not members of the categories, but their interlingual homophone mates were category members (e.g., A vegetable: shoe, where chou in French means “cabbage”). The bilinguals made more errors and had longer decision latencies on homophones than on their control words, providing evidence for cross-language phonological activation of meaning. Results are discussed with respect to the Bilingual Interactive Activation Model (BIA+).
REGULARITY OF SOLUTIONS TO A TIME-FRACTIONAL DIFFUSION EQUATION
Authors: MCLEAN WILLIAM
Published: July 2011

We prove estimates for the partial derivatives of the solution to a time-fractional diffusion equation posed over a bounded spatial domain. Such estimates are needed for the analysis of effective numerical methods, particularly since the solution is typically less regular than in the familiar case of classical diffusion.
Summertime cooling of the shallow continental shelf
Authors: Fewings Melanie R. , Lentz Steven J.
Published: July 2011

In summer on the shallow New England continental shelf, near the coast the water temperature is much cooler than the observed surface heat flux suggests. Using depth‐integrated heat budgets in 12 and 27 m water depth calculated from observed surface heat flux, water temperature, and velocity, we demonstrate that on time scales of weeks to months the water is persistently cooled due to a mean upwelling circulation. Because the mean wind is weak, that mean circulation is likely not wind driven; it is partly a tidal residual circulation. A feedback exists between the cross‐shelf and surface heat fluxes: the two fluxes remain nearly in balance for months, so the water temperature is nearly constant in spite of strong surface heating (the heat budget is two‐dimensional). A conceptual model explains the feedback mechanism: the short flushing time of the shallow shelf produces a near steady state heat balance, regardless of the exact form of the circulation, and the feedback is via the influence of surface heating on temperature stratification. Along‐shelf heat flux divergence is apparently small compared to the surface and cross‐shelf heat flux divergences on time scales of weeks to months. Heat transport due to Stokes drift from surface gravity waves is substantial, warms the shallow shelf in summer, and was previously ignored. In winter, the surface heat flux dominates and the observed water temperature is close to the temperature predicted from surface cooling (the heat budget is one‐dimensional); weak winter stratification makes the cross‐shelf heat flux small even during strong cross‐shelf circulation.
Black shale deposition, atmospheric CO2 drawdown, and cooling during the Cenomanian‐Turonian Oceanic Anoxic Event
Authors: Jarvis Ian , Lignum John S. , Gröcke Darren R. , Jenkyns Hugh C. , Pearce Martin A.
Published: July 2011

Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2), spanning the Cenomanian‐Turonian boundary (CTB), represents one of the largest perturbations in the global carbon cycle in the last 100 Myr. The δ13Ccarb, δ13Corg, and δ18O chemostratigraphy of a black shale–bearing CTB succession in the Vocontian Basin of France is described and correlated at high resolution to the European CTB reference section at Eastbourne, England, and to successions in Germany, the equatorial and midlatitude proto‐North Atlantic, and the U.S. Western Interior Seaway (WIS). Δ13C (offset between δ13Ccarb and δ13Corg) is shown to be a good pCO2 proxy that is consistent with pCO2 records obtained using biomarker δ13C data from Atlantic black shales and leaf stomata data from WIS sections. Boreal chalk δ18O records show sea surface temperature (SST) changes that closely follow the Δ13C pCO2 proxy and confirm TEX86 results from deep ocean sites. Rising pCO2 and SST during the Late Cenomanian is attributed to volcanic degassing; pCO2 and SST maxima occurred at the onset of black shale deposition, followed by falling pCO2 and cooling due to carbon sequestration by marine organic productivity and preservation, and increased silicate weathering. A marked pCO2 minimum (∼25% fall) occurred with a SST minimum (Plenus Cold Event) showing >4°C of cooling in ∼40 kyr. Renewed increases in pCO2, SST, and δ13C during latest Cenomanian black shale deposition suggest that a continuing volcanogenic CO2 flux overrode further drawdown effects. Maximum pCO2 and SST followed the end of OAE2, associated with a falling nutrient supply during the Early Turonian eustatic highstand.
A 2‐D numerical simulation study on longitudinal solute transport and longitudinal dispersion coefficient
Authors: Zhang Wei
Published: July 2011

The longitudinal dispersion coefficient, DL, is a fundamental parameter of longitudinal solute transport models: the advection‐dispersion (AD) model and various deadzone models. Since DL cannot be measured directly, and since its calibration using tracer test data is quite expensive and not always available, researchers have developed various methods, theoretical or empirical, for estimating DL by easier available cross‐sectional hydraulic measurements (i.e., the transverse velocity profile, etc.). However, for known and unknown reasons, DL cannot be satisfactorily predicted using these theoretical/empirical formulae. Either there is very large prediction error for theoretical methods, or there is a lack of generality for the empirical formulae. Here, numerical experiments using Mike21, a software package that implements one of the most rigorous two‐dimensional hydrodynamic and solute transport equations, for longitudinal solute transport in hypothetical streams, are presented. An analysis of the evolution of simulated solute clouds indicates that the two fundamental assumptions in Fischer's longitudinal transport analysis may be not reasonable. The transverse solute concentration distribution, and hence the longitudinal transport appears to be controlled by a dimensionless number , where Q is the average volumetric flowrate, Dt is a cross‐sectional average transverse dispersion coefficient, and W is channel flow width. A simple empirical relationship may be established. Analysis and a revision of Fischer's theoretical formula suggest that ɛ influences the efficiency of transverse mixing and hence has restraining effect on longitudinal spreading. The findings presented here would improve and expand our understanding of longitudinal solute transport in open channel flow.
2011 AGU medalists and awardees
Authors: McPhaden Michael J.
Published: July 2011

The Honors and Recognition Committee is pleased to announce AGU's 2011 medalists and awardees. The scientists listed below will be recognized at the annual honors ceremony, which this year will be held on 7 December at the Fall Meeting in San Francisco. Through these honors, AGU is proud to celebrate their outstanding achievements in the advancement of geophysical sciences and service to the community.
Georneys joins AGU's blog network
Authors: Viñas Maria‐José
Published: July 2011

A blog on geological musings, wanderings, and adventures, called Georneys, has joined AGU's network of Earth and space science blogs. With the addition of Georneys, on 11 July, the AGU Blogosphere (http://blogs.agu.org), as the network is known, has grown to showcase eight independent blogs since its launch last fall. “One reason I write this blog is to maintain my sanity as I finish up my Ph.D. In the midst of much stress, long days in lab, and long nights writing thesis chapters, I write to remind myself of why I love geology,” says Georneys blogger Evelyn Mervine. “I also write to document some of my geological adventures and to share my love of geology with others.”
Satellite measures hydrogen sulfide in a volcanic plume
Authors: Balcerak Ernie
Published: July 2011

For the first time, satellite measurements have been made of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in a volcanic plume. Volcanoes release H2S in large quantities—yearly global estimates range from 1 to 37 teragrams. Along with sulfur dioxide (SO2), which is estimated to be emitted from volcanoes at about 15–21 teragrams per year, H2S is a major portion of the volcanic sulfur released into the atmosphere. The ratio of H2S to SO2 emissions is useful for studying source conditions, sulfur chemistry, and magma‐water interactions. However, unlike SO2, H2S has been challenging to measure in the atmosphere. Clarisse et al. used infrared satellite observations to characterize H2S from the 7–8 August 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in the Aleutian Islands. The eruption consisted of five explosive events; the observations indicated that the H2S plume was likely associated with the earlier events. The study shows that volcanoes are significant sources of H2S in the atmosphere and demonstrates for the first time that satellites can observe H2S plumes. (Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2011GL047402, 2011)
The effect of electrode tilt angle on the characteristics of coplanar dielectric barrier discharges with Xe-Ne mixtures
Authors: Shim Seung Bo , Song In Cheol , Lee Ho-Jun , Lee Hae June
Published: July 2011

The results of a two-dimensional fluid simulation of a plasma display panel (PDP) cell show that the discharge characteristics of a coplanar dielectric barrier discharge can be controlled by the electrode tilt angle rather than by the gas mixture ratio or gap distance. The change in the tilt angle results in a significant change in the wall charge distribution and the discharge duration for each pulse. Therefore, the breakdown voltage, plasma density, light brightness, and luminous efficacy can be controlled by the tilt angle. A concave electrode structure allows large wall charge accumulation near the outer edge of two coplanar electrodes, and it results in a long-duration discharge, high luminance, and high luminous efficacy. On the other hand, a convex electrode structure allows high wall charge accumulation near the gap between two coplanar electrodes, and it results in a short-duration discharge with a decreased breakdown voltage.
Optimized energy landscape exploration using the ab initio based activation-relaxation technique
Authors: Machado-Charry Eduardo , Béland Laurent Karim , Caliste Damien , Genovese Luigi , Deutsch Thierry , Mousseau Normand , Pochet Pascal
Published: July 2011

Unbiased open-ended methods for finding transition states are powerful tools to understand diffusion and relaxation mechanisms associated with defect diffusion, growth processes, and catalysis. They have been little used, however, in conjunction with ab initio packages as these algorithms demanded large computational effort to generate even a single event. Here, we revisit the activation-relaxation technique (ART nouveau) and introduce a two-step convergence to the saddle point, combining the previously used Lanczós algorithm with the direct inversion in interactive subspace scheme. This combination makes it possible to generate events (from an initial minimum through a saddle point up to a final minimum) in a systematic fashion with a net 300–700 force evaluations per successful event. ART nouveau is coupled with BigDFT, a Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT) electronic structure code using a wavelet basis set with excellent efficiency on parallel computation, and applied to study the potential energy surface of C20 clusters, vacancy diffusion in bulk silicon, and reconstruction of the 4H-SiC surface.
Improved initial drop in operational lifetime of blue phosphorescent organic light emitting device fabricated under ultra high vacuum condition
Authors: Yamamoto H. , Brooks J. , Weaver M. S. , Brown J. J. , Murakami T. , Murata H.
Published: July 2011

A blue phosphorescent organic light emitting device fabricated under the ultra high vacuum (UHV) condition of 6.5 × 10−7 Pa decreases the initial luminance drop upon lifetesting under a constant dc current of 15 mA/cm2 by 3 times compared to a device fabricated under a high vacuum (HV) condition of 7.6 × 10−6 Pa resulting in a 23% increase in half lifetime. We calculate a water content of 10−4 mol. % in the UHV device emissive layer (EML) and 10−2 mol. % in the HV device EML. We discuss the effects of water on luminance loss and voltage rise for the devices.
Stochastic dynamics of phase singularities under ventricular fibrillation in 2D Beeler-Reuter model
Authors: Suzuki Akio , Konno Hidetoshi
Published: July 2011

The dynamics of ventricular fibrillation (VF) has been studied extensively, and the initiation mechanism of VF has been elucidated to some extent. However, the stochastic dynamical nature of sustained VF remains unclear so far due to the complexity of high dimensional chaos in a heterogeneous system. In this paper, various statistical mechanical properties of sustained VF are studied numerically in 2D Beeler-Reuter-Drouhard-Roberge (BRDR) model with normal and modified ionic current conductance. The nature of sustained VF is analyzed by measuring various fluctuations of spatial phase singularity (PS) such as velocity, lifetime, the rates of birth and death. It is found that the probability density function (pdf) for lifetime of PSs is independent of system size. It is also found that the hyper-Gamma distribution serves as a universal pdf for the counting number of PSs for various system sizes and various parameters of our model tissue under VF. Further, it is demonstrated that the nonlinear Langevin equation associated with a hyper-Gamma process can mimic the pdf and temporal variation of the number of PSs in the 2D BRDR model.
Connecting frames and constructions
Authors: Croft William A.
Published: July 2011

Constructional analysis of corpus data can contribute to the analysis of a semantic frame, as demonstrated by a small corpus study of eat and feed. The EAT/FEED frame forms part of a taxonomy of frames including the superordinate CONSUME frame and subordinate frames of human vs. animal eating; constructional and metaphor data in the corpus shows that English covertly distinguishes human and animal eating. The EAT frame includes three phases (intake, process, and ingest), differentiated lexicogrammatically. The EAT frame also includes three domains in its domain matrix: physical, biological (nutritional) and social, all clearly differentiated by distinct constructions in the corpus. An examination of metaphors with eat and feed in the corpus demonstrate that the target domain contributes image-schematic structure to the metaphorical mapping, contrary to the Invariance Hypothesis.
The semantic range of the Dutch double object construction
Authors: Colleman Timothy
Published: July 2011

Just like its English counterpart (cf. Goldberg 1995), the Dutch double object construction is a prime example of a highly polysemous argument structure construction, with a basic ‘X causes Y to receive Z’ sense and several extended meanings which depart from the prototype in various respects and to varying degrees. This paper provides a corpus-based overview of the semantic structure of this construction, following the multidimensional approach to constructional semantics advocated in Geeraerts (1998). On the basis of Stefanowitsch & Gries’s (2003) “collexeme analysis” method, we will identify the verbs which most typically realize the investigated construction in a one-million-word newspaper corpus. These verbs will be shown to instantiate extensions along various dimensions of semantic variation. Several of these semantic extensions are paralleled in English, while others are not.
Beyond the sentence
Authors: Fischer Kerstin
Published: July 2011

Construction grammarians are still quite reluctant to extend their descriptions to units beyond the sentence. However, the theoretical premises of construction grammar and frame semantics are particularly suited to cover spoken interaction from a cognitive perspective. Furthermore, as construction grammar is anchored in the cognitive linguistics paradigm and as such subscribes to meaning being grounded in experience, it needs to consider interaction since grammatical structures may be grounded not only in sensory-motor, but also in social-interactive experience. The example of grounded language learning experiments demonstrates the anchoring of grammatical mood in interaction. Finally, phenomena peculiar to spoken dialogue, such as pragmatic markers, may be best accounted for as constructions, drawing on frame semantics. The two cognitive linguistic notions, frames and constructions, are therefore particularly useful to account for generalisation in spoken interaction.
Parts of speech as constructions
Authors: Nir Bracha , Berman Ruth A.
Published: July 2011

The paper re-appraises accepted classifications of linguistic elements into word-level constructions on the one hand and in terms of Parts-of-Speech systems on the other from the point of view of Construction Grammar (CxG). We focus on a particular adverbial construction in Hebrew, with the surface form PrepOC, where “Prep” is one of the four basic prepositions in the language and OC stands for fixed forms of a lexically restricted group of Nouns, Verbs, or Adjectives. We analyze these constructions as having an “intermediate” status, in terms of elements lying between those that express concrete conceptual content and those that activate an abstract grammatical schema. The special nature of these and other intermediate word-level constructions in Hebrew is demonstrated experimentally in sentential contexts, and their functional, structural, and distributional properties are analyzed in the discursive context of a large corpus of authentic texts, both oral and written. Evidence from on-line processing strategies and speaker judgments combines with discourse based usage to confirm the special status of Hebrew PrepOC expressions as word-level constructions occupying neither the atomic-substantive nor the complex-schematic end of the syntax-lexicon continuum. Furthermore, we propose that these constructions analyzed here as “pragmatically/discoursally motivated”, along with other “intermediate” constructions, function as textually motivated Parts-of-Discourse rather than as semantically autonomous or structurally dependent Parts-of-Speech.
From positivity to possibility, propriety and necessity
Authors: Jing-Schmidt Zhuo
Published: July 2011

This paper addresses the development of construction-specific modal uses of hao ‘good’ in Mandarin discourse. My focus is the cultural relevancy of the pathway of change: an expression of value judgment gives rise to deontic modality in recurring discourse contexts. Mandarin is contrasted with Germanic languages with regard to lexical sources of change towards deontic modals. It is suggested that social interdependence of individuals and the cultural preference of collective agency are the driving forces behind the change of the Mandarin hao constructions as opposed to personal agency and autonomy which underlies the semantic development in Germanic.
Language and society in Macao
Authors: Xi Yan  , Moody Andrew
Published: July 2011

The present study attempts to comprehensively review the sociolinguistic literature on Macao from the past three decades by focusing on four key research themes found in previous studies: (1) languages, dialects and specialized languages, (2) language contact, (3) language attitudes and identity construction and (4) language planning and language policy. By presenting a fuller picture of previous studies of language and society in Macao it is argued that the sociolinguistic situation of Macao should not be overlooked in the study of Chinese sociolinguistics.
Disciplinary voices
Authors: Hyland Ken
Published: July 2011

The concept of voice has become central to studies of discourse, composition, and literature, but in this paper I want to shift its meaning a little to explore an area where voice is thought to play only a minor role: that of academic writing. I intend here to explore the idea of ‘disciplinary voice’ by focusing on the interpersonal features of academic writing and elaborating how writers position themselves and their readers. Essentially, I believe the idea of voice can shed light on aspects of disciplinary argument and am interested to see what these features tell us about writers’ notions of appropriate relationships and what this means for writing in the disciplines. I will begin by looking briefly at the notion of voice, and go on to sketch an interactional model based on the ideas of stance, or how writers convey their attitudes and credibility, and engagement, or the ways they bring their readers into the discourse. I will then show how the choices writers make from these systems construct authorial voice, academic arguments, and the disciplines themselves.
Listening to the mute voices of prose in recent American short stories
Authors: Desblaches Claudia
Published: July 2011

This article aims at investigating the indeterminate voices in the short prose of Flannery O’Connor, Patricia Eakins and Barry Hannah. Thus, it focuses on the ‘acousmatic voice’ of O’Connor’s prose: all the hidden sounds, noises and silences that reveal more than the overt narrative voice and trigger a hermeneutic response from the reader. In relation to Patricia Eakins’s short stories, the article analyses how the voice of her prose compensates for the indeterminacy of her surrealist universe. It investigates, in this respect, the musical quality of her prose as well as the poetic rhythms which help to sustain the reader’s interest and generate meaning. The voices in Barry Hannah’s post-modern prose, finally, are shown to compensate for the renowned complexity of his writing style. By analysing the specificity of each writer’s voice, this article aims to recover the unheard lost ‘voices of prose’, the mythic space of vocality which gives a vocal but mute joy to the reader.
English middles with mental and verbal predicates
Authors: Davidse Kristin , Olivier Nele
Published: July 2011

In this article we investigate whether verbs of perception, affection, cognition and verbalization can be construed in the English middle voice against (at least partial) claims to the contrary such as Fellbaum (1986), Keyser and Roeper (1984), Quirk et al. (1985). We view the middle as a modal statement about the conduciveness of the subject entity to action on or with it by the implied agent in the way specified by the predication (Heyvaert 2003, Davidse and Heyvaert 2007). Examples with mental and verbal predicates that correspond to this definition were found in data extracted from the COBUILD corpus as well as from the Internet.

We then propose that, on the basis of Halliday’s (1994) description of process types and their participant roles, mental and verbal middles can be classified into five subtypes, containing respectively: (1) verbal predicates, e.g. The stories narrate easily, (2) please-type mental predicates, e.g. You astonish easily, (3) like-type mental predicates, e.g. Two-line display sees easily, (4) perception predicates used in attributive mode, e.g. That cheese smells nice, and (5) verbal predicates used in identifying mode, e.g. Xitaqua pronounces chi-ta-qua. We also investigate to what extent these subtypes instantiate the characteristics of core middles, viz. letting modality, conducive subject and specification by the predication of the way the process is carried out
Past and present interacting
Authors: Gruic-Grmusa Lovorka
Published: July 2011

Past and present merge in the phenomenon that we call memory. Memory is a mode of re-presentation and belongs to the present — the act of remembering always being in and of the present, while its referent is of the past and thus absent.

Robert Coover’s Gerald’s Party is a perfect example of how every act of memory carries with it a dimension of betrayal, forgetting, and absence. The dynamics by which the protagonists’ brains work — shifting, modeling, connecting, changing — identify memory as process-dependent, sustaining its qualities to store data but also modifying it while some fragments of experience disappear from consciousness totally, demonstrating that both memory and forgetting are uneven, discontinuous temporalities
‘I wouldn’t think you might agree’
Authors: Degani Marta , Belladelli Anna
Published: July 2011

This study concerns objectivity, subjectivity and intersubjectivity in relation to the English central modal verbs. In order to refine the (inter)subjective status of modals from a synchronic perspective, it focuses on their possible uses within a specific communicative context where the SP/W needs to ‘modulate’ his/her own and/or other people’s point of view. A qualitative and quantitative corpus-based analysis has been carried out on the syntactic pattern Subject + Modal Verb + Mental Verb, to check whether and to what extent (inter)subjectivity occurs in the written medium. By means of a semantic-pragmatic analysis of the central modals within the selected pattern, a wide range of communicative strategies has been observed. Four main aims have been identified that the SP/W may have in mind when choosing to resort to (inter)subjectivity: namely, the expression of the SP/W’s point of view (EPV), the shaping of the AD/R’s line of reasoning (SLR), the imposition of the SP/W’s power on the AD/R (IP), and the communication of information (CI).
Re-membering the Clichés
Authors: Gabrielle Cindy
Published: July 2011

These days authors who use stereotypical characters such as the African woman warrior or the old field slave smoking his pipe and humming blues songs would probably be considered as intellectually biased or mentally colonized. Yet, for some African American writers like Amiri Baraka, Charles Fuller and Lorraine Hansberry, these characters represent a link between Black people and their past or, to use Pierre Nora’s term, they are lieux de mémoire. This is why these authors oppose the more or less general attitude which consists in dismissing these clichéd-figures from the field of representation, for this would amount to erasing an entire segment of African American history. Going against the trend of the time, these playwrights thus give a voice to those silenced by normative history and, to decolonize symbols which after all belong to the past of Black people, Baraka in The Slave (1964), Fuller in A Soldier’s Play (1981) and Hansberry in Les Blancs (1966) also invest these characters with a new significance.
Evaluation in the course development process
Authors: Van de Poel Kris , Gasiorek Jessica
Published: July 2011

Evaluation is a critical but frequently underutilized part of the (language) course development process. Instructors’ reasons for avoiding it vary, but often include the concern that conducting evaluations will draw time and attention away from course content. Using All Write, a first-year writing course at the University of Antwerp, as a case study, this article shows how mechanisms for feedback and evaluation can be incorporated into course materials with minimal impact, as well as demonstrates the benefits of evaluation as both a validation process and a guide for course revision. Moreover, it will show how the stakeholders, primarily learners, but also teachers, may be drawn into the process and potentially benefit from it.
The enduring stuff of narrative
Authors: Staes Toon
Published: July 2011

The reevaluation of the past in Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Cosmopolis can be seen as a valuable counterargument to Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalistic claim that contemporary society heralds the end of history. The sublime multiplicity of history in both novels illustrates how time eventually collapses in the eternal present of capital and technology. Consequently, it appears that postindustrial society draws in the individual to create a system with no outside. DeLillo’s historiographic metafiction nonetheless shows how rewriting the past can prevent history from being conclusive and teleological. Narrative therefore provides an alternative to established History — in which all events connect in light of the inevitable — but it also resists the solipsistic void of speculation and hearsay.
Adaptation in transition
Authors: Collard Christophe
Published: July 2011

Adaptations, currently the best-known example of intersemiotic translation, more often than not are addressed in the disingenuous terms of ‘fidelity,’ ‘parasitism,’ or ‘solipsism.’ Although it seems a truism that adaptations adapt a ‘text’ from one discursive field to another, such a straightforward causality conflicts with the notion of ‘discursive field’ in which it is wont to occur. Moreover, the adaptation presented as adaptation loses its referential effect when the receiver is unacquainted with the material transposed. Together both issues — i.e. linearity and referentiality — in fact account for most of the misconceptions about the paradoxical phenomenon that is adaptation. This essay therefore proposes a semiological argument aimed at providing a better understanding of the discursive mechanisms at work in adaptational practice.
Doing gender and leadership
Authors: Sung Chit Cheung Matthew
Published: July 2011

This article examines the media representations of gender and leadership discourse in the debut season of the American reality TV show The Apprentice. By drawing upon the method of discourse analysis, I analyse the leadership styles that two male and two female project managers employ in ‘doing leadership’. The analysis shows that two of the managers display discourse styles of leadership which largely conform to traditional gendered expectations, and that two other managers employ a ‘mixed’ leadership style by making use of some discourse features that are indirectly indexed for the other gender. It is revealed that a masculine discourse style is still represented as the preferred, default way of doing leadership, and that the combination of discourse strategies which are stereotypically coded as masculine and feminine in ‘doing leadership’ is represented most favourably in the reality TV show. Based on the data analysis, it is also argued that female managers may be under more constraints in using ‘mixed’ gendered strategies and in violating stereotypically gendered speech norms when enacting leadership at work.
Asymmetries in overt marking and directionality in semantic change
Authors: Urban Matthias
Published: July 2011

This article is a contribution to the long standing issue of identifying directionality in semantic change. Drawing on evidence from a sample of morphologically complex terms in basic vocabulary for 149 globally distributed languages, it is argued that cross-linguistically preferred synchronic relationships of word-formation provide clues to likely directions of diachronic semantic developments. The hypothesis is tested against diachronic data from Indo-Aryan languages, and, in spite of a number of counterexamples, a correlation is found. In addition, it is shown how these data can be applied to semantic reconstruction, and a scenario of semantic change which involves morphological complexity in an early stage of semantic development is sketched.
Frequency effects and lexical split in the use of [t] and [s] and [d] and [z] in the Syrian Arabic of Christian rural migrants
Authors: Habib Rania
Published: July 2011

The change of the Standard Arabic interdentals, [θ] > [t] and [s], and [ð] > [d] and [z], in some Egyptian and Levantine Arabic dialects was traditionally explained in terms of two historical changes. The first change was a complete merger of [θ] with [t] and [ð] with [d]. The second change, i.e. [θ] > [s] and [ð] > [z], began with borrowing words with [θ] and [ð] from Standard Arabic, replacing them with similar sounds from speakers’ native phonology — [s] and [z] respectively. The data set used in this study comprises of naturally occurring speech of fifty-two Christian rural migrants to the city of Hims in Syria. The findings suggest that there is no variation in the use of [t] and [s] instead of [θ]. There is rather a synchronic puzzling STABLE LEXICAL SPLIT PHENOMENON: some words are specifically used with [t] and others are specifically used with [s]. The same applies to [d] and [z]. The study shows that although the two historical changes play a role, they are not the sole explanation of this stable lexical split phenomenon. Hence, the role of frequency is examined. Quantitative analyses reveal that highly frequent words are produced with the stops, whereas less frequent words are produced with the fricatives. This phenomenon is explained in terms of usage-based theory and two opposing frequency effects. The first frequency effect led to the merger with the stops. The second frequency effect made highly frequent words produced with the stops resistant to the second change that introduced words with the fricatives.
Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism
Authors: Sorace Antonella
Published: July 2011

The Interface Hypothesis (IH) was put forward by Sorace and colleagues as an attempt to account for patterns of non-convergence and residual optionality found at very advanced stages of adult second (L2)acquisition. The IH originally proposed that language structures involving an interface between syntax and other cognitive domains are less likely to be acquired completely than structures that do not involve this interface. At the same time, the IH was extended to bilingual first language (L1) acquisition and to the very early stages of L1 attrition, which exhibit optionality in precisely the same structures: this provides a unifying framework for the study of bilingual language development. This paper selectively reviews the research on the IH, addressing some common misinter-pretations and outlining the most recent interdisciplinary developments.
Dialogicality and ethics
Authors: Sell Roger D.
Published: July 2011

Now that linguists are beginning to see an element of dialogicality in all language use, there is more scope for a humanized dialogue analysis with ameliorative goals. This can divide its labour between a communicational criticism dealing with the ethics of address, and a mediating criticism dealing with the ethics of response. In the present article, I outline the distinctive features of such an approach, and by sketching a communicational theory of literature (cf. Sell 2000) draw particular attention to the dialogicality arising between literary writers and their audience. From this starting-point, I then examine instances of four different literary genres for the light they can throw on the general ethics of address. Key terms here are “genuine communication”, by which I mean any manner of communication which respects the autonomy of the human other, and “negative capability”, defined by Keats (1954 [1817]: 53) as the capability of “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.
Language use and the lexicon
Authors: Feller Sebastian
Published: July 2011

In this article I critically discuss two state-of-the-art theories of meaning in Cognitive Semantics: Evans’ (2006, 2009) LCCM-Theory and Jackendoff’s (2010a, 2010b) Parallel Architecture. The main focus will be on how these theories define meaning and how they represent it. This will serve as a starting point for the introduction of what I have called ‘meaning-in-use’, i.e. an action-theoretical notion of meaning embedded in language use (Feller 2010). Meaning is here construed as something that speakers do in communication, which is closely related to Weigand’s (cf., e.g., 2000, 2010) view of language as language action.
School system as axiological medium
Authors: Graham Philip , Gunders Lisa
Published: July 2011

This paper analyses the Australian Values Education Program (VEP) within the framework of late-classical political economy. Using analytical methods from systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis, we demonstrate that the VEP is an unwitting restatement of the principles of ideology as developed by the likes of Destutt de Tracy and the Young Hegelians. We conclude that the sudden shock of globalisation and the post-national cultures this has entailed is in many ways similar to the shock of formal nationalism that emerged in the late-Seventeenth and early-Eighteenth centuries. The overall result of the VEP for the Australian school system is a massive procedural burden that is unlikely to produce the results at which the program is aimed.