bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Enhancing s, p–d exchange interactions at room temperature by carrier doping in single crystalline Co0.4Zn0.6O epitaxial films
Authors: Cao Qiang , Fu Maoxiang , Zhu Dapeng , Cai Li , Zhang Kun , Liu Guolei , Chen Yanxue , Kang Shishou , Yan Shishen , Mei Liangmo , Wang Xiaolin
Published: February 2017

Magnetic doping of semiconductors has been actively pursued because of their potential applications in the spintronic devices. Central to these efforts is a drive to control the mutual interactions between their magnetic properties (supported by d electrons of the magnetic ions) and their semiconductor properties (supported by s and/or p electrons) at room temperature (RT). Despite the long, intensive efforts, the experimental evidence of thermally robust s, p–d coupling in a semiconductor remains scarce and controversial. Here, we report the enhancement of RT ferromagnetic s, p–d exchange interaction by means of carrier doping in single crystalline Co0.4Zn0.6O epitaxial films with a high Co concentration. Magneto-transport measurements reveal that spin-polarized conducting carriers are produced at RT and are increased with the carrier density through Ga3+ doping, owing to the s, p–d coupling between Ga (4s), O (2p), and Co (3d) orbitals. With the ability to individually control carrier density and magnetic doping, single crystalline Ga(Co, Zn)O films can lay a solid foundation for the development of practical semiconductor spintronic devices operable at RT.
The nutrition of grazing ewes during pregnancy and lactation: relationships between herbage, supplement and milk intakes, and ewe and lamb liveweight and body composition
Authors: Dove H. , Freer M. , Foot J. Z.
Published: February 2017

This paper reports results from a study of ewes in pregnancy and lactation, during which times they grazed at a high versus medium stocking rate and either received or did not receive a pelleted supplement. We measured ewe liveweight, condition score and body composition; intakes by ewes of pasture and supplementary feed; milk production by ewes, and; birthweight, milk intake, liveweight gain and body composition of single and twin lambs. Ewes grazing at the medium stocking rate consumed more pasture in late pregnancy and the intake of supplement significantly reduced pasture intake. Nevertheless, total intakes of organic matter or digestible organic matter were unaffected by supplementation and were significantly higher at the medium stocking rate. Effects of stocking rate on intake persisted into early and mid-lactation, but supplement intake did not affect pasture intake in lactation. Pasture intakes in pregnancy were not markedly different between twin-bearing and single-bearing ewes, nor were pasture intakes in lactation affected by the number of lambs suckled. Ewes suckling twins produced much more milk. There were significant effects of birth type, ewe stocking rate and supplementation on lamb milk intake and liveweight gain. The data were reanalysed by regression, to explore the effects of actual herbage masses and ewe intakes, and the possible effects of non-treatment terms such as ewe age, condition score and dentition score at allocation. These analyses confirmed the above effects of treatment, but also demonstrated that ewes in better condition at the start of the experiment ate less pasture in both pregnancy and lactation, and produced significantly less milk. Ewe organic matter intakes in pregnancy were not related to dentition score at allocation, but in early and mid-lactation were reduced by ~170 g organic matter/day and 280–380 g organic matter/day, respectively, per unit increase in dentition score. There was no significant effect of ewe dentition score on lamb milk intake, but there was a significant penalty of ~19 g lamb liveweight gain/unit increase in ewe dentition score at allocation. Future studies of this kind thus need to include estimates of the condition score and dentition score of ewes when they commence the experiment.
The role of ion disequilibrium in induction of root cell death and autophagy by environmental stresses
Authors: Demidchik Vadim , Tyutereva Elena V. , Voitsekhovskaja Olga V.
Published: February 2017

Environmental stresses such as salinity, drought, oxidants, heavy metals, hypoxia, extreme temperatures and others can induce autophagy and necrosis-type programmed cell death (PCD) in plant roots. These reactions are accompanied by the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and ion disequilibrium, which is induced by electrolyte/K+ leakage through ROS-activated ion channels, such as the outwardly-rectifying K+ channel GORK and non-selective cation channels. Here, we discuss mechanisms of the stress-induced ion disequilibrium and relate it with ROS generation and onset of morphological, biochemical and genetic symptoms of autophagy and PCD in roots. Based on our own data and that in the literature, we propose a hypothesis on the induction of autophagy and PCD in roots by loss of cytosolic K+. To support this, we present data showing that in conditions of salt stress-induced autophagy, gork1–1 plants lacking root K+ efflux channel have fewer autophagosomes compared with the wild type. Overall, literature analyses and presented data strongly suggest that stress-induced root autophagy and PCD are controlled by the level of cytosolic potassium and ROS.
From little things big things grow: karrikins and new directions in plant development
Authors: Waters Mark T.
Published: February 2017

Karrikins are a family of compounds generated via the incomplete combustion of plant matter. Since their discovery as seed germination stimulants in 2004, a great deal has been learned about the chemistry and the biological mode of action of karrikins. Much interest and progress have stemmed from the structural similarity of karrikins to that of strigolactones – the shoot branching hormone. This review will provide a historical account of some of the more significant discoveries in this area of plant biology. It will discuss how the study of these abiotic signalling molecules, combined with advances in our understanding of strigolactones, has led us towards the discovery of new mechanisms that regulate plant growth and development.
Spatial patterns and edge effects on soil organic matter and nutrients in a forest fragment of southern Brazil
Authors: Schröder Thomas , Fleig Frederico D.
Published: February 2017

The discrimination between edge effects and spatial patterns of the availability of soil nutrients exerts a great influence on measures of forest productivity and the global carbon pool. We sampled a regular grid with infill points of topsoil in a 13-ha Atlantic forest fragment and surrounding grassland in southern Brazil, and tested the influence of the underlying spatial nutrient availability and edge effects on this pattern using Generalised Additive Models. Soil phosphorus was controlled by vegetation type. Magnesium and potassium were controlled by parent material and pedogenesis, whereas calcium and soil organic matter were influenced by both processes. The depth of edge influence was estimated at 50m inside the forest and at 25m distance from the forest edge in the grassland. These continuous estimates of forest–grassland edge effects in soil nutrient availability may play a major role in determining global ecosystem functioning, as forests and landscapes become even more fragmented.
Co-occurrence of extremes in surface ozone, particulate matter, and temperature over eastern North America
Authors: Schnell Jordan L. , Prather Michael J.
Published: February 2017

Significance

Exposure to extreme temperatures and high levels of the pollutants ozone and particulate matter poses a major threat to human health. Heat waves and pollution episodes share common underlying meteorological drivers and thus often coincide, which can synergistically worsen their health impacts beyond the sum of their individual effects. Furthermore, there is evidence that pollution episodes and heat waves will worsen under future climate change, making it imperative to understand the nature of their co-occurrence. In this paper, using 15 years of surface observations over the eastern United States and Canada, we show that the extremes cluster together in often overlapping large-scale episodes, and that the largest episodes have the hottest temperatures and highest levels of pollution.
A neural model of valuation and information virality
Authors: Scholz Christin , Baek Elisa C. , O’Donnell Matthew Brook , Kim Hyun Suk , Cappella Joseph N. , Falk Emily B.
Published: February 2017

Significance

Why do humans share information with others? Large-scale sharing is one of the most prominent social phenomena of the 21st century, with roots in the oldest forms of communication. We argue that expectations of self-related and social consequences of sharing are integrated into a domain-general value signal, representing the value of information sharing, which translates into population-level virality. We analyzed brain responses toNew York Timesarticles in two separate groups of people to predict objectively logged sharing of those same articles around the world (virality). Converging evidence from the two studies supports a unifying, parsimonious neurocognitive framework of mechanisms underlying health news virality; these results may help advance theory, improve predictive models, and inform new approaches to effective intervention.
Tolerance to structural disorder and tunable mechanical behavior in self-assembled superlattices of polymer-grafted nanocrystals
Authors: Gu X. Wendy , Ye Xingchen , Koshy David M. , Vachhani Shraddha , Hosemann Peter , Alivisatos A. Paul
Published: February 2017

Significance

Polymer nanocomposites containing nanoparticle fillers often have enhanced strength, stiffness, and toughness that are highly dependent on nanoparticle spatial distribution, which can be challenging to control in the limit of high nanoparticle loading. Solid superlattices formed from close-packed, ligand-coated inorganic nanocrystals can have high stiffness and large elastic recovery, although nanocrystals interact solely through van der Waals forces. We use polymer-grafted nanocrystals to make superlattices with versatile structural architecture and dimensions to investigate the effects of structural defects, film thickness, and polymer length on mechanical behavior. We find that the elastic response of the superlattice is large even when the arrangement of nanocrystals within the superlattice is perturbed, and that polymer conformation plays a large role in determining mechanical properties.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis replicates within necrotic human macrophages
Authors: Lerner Thomas R. , Borel Sophie , Greenwood Daniel J. , Repnik Urska , Russell Matthew R.G. , Herbst Susanne , Jones Martin L. , Collinson Lucy M. , Griffiths Gareth , Gutierrez Maximiliano G.
Published: February 2017

Mycobacterium tuberculosis modulation of macrophage cell death is a well-documented phenomenon, but its role during bacterial replication is less characterized. In this study, we investigate the impact of plasma membrane (PM) integrity on bacterial replication in different functional populations of human primary macrophages. We discovered that IFN-γ enhanced bacterial replication in macrophage colony-stimulating factor–differentiated macrophages more than in granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor–differentiated macrophages. We show that permissiveness in the different populations of macrophages to bacterial growth is the result of a differential ability to preserve PM integrity. By combining live-cell imaging, correlative light electron microscopy, and single-cell analysis, we found that after infection, a population of macrophages became necrotic, providing a niche for M. tuberculosis replication before escaping into the extracellular milieu. Thus, in addition to bacterial dissemination, necrotic cells provide first a niche for bacterial replication. Our results are relevant to understanding the environment of M. tuberculosis replication in the host.
ZMPSTE24 defends against influenza and other pathogenic viruses
Authors: Fu Bishi , Wang Lingyan , Li Shitao , Dorf Martin E.
Published: February 2017

Zinc metallopeptidase STE24 (ZMPSTE24) is a transmembrane metalloprotease whose catalytic activity is critical for processing lamin A on the inner nuclear membrane and clearing clogged translocons on the endoplasmic reticulum. We now report ZMPSTE24 is a virus-specific effector that restricts enveloped RNA and DNA viruses, including influenza A, Zika, Ebola, Sindbis, vesicular stomatitis, cowpox, and vaccinia, but not murine leukemia or adenovirus. ZMPSTE24-mediated antiviral action is independent of protease activity. Coimmunoprecipitation studies indicate ZMPSTE24 can complex with proteins of the interferon-induced transmembrane protein (IFITM) family. IFITM proteins impede viral entry, and ZMPSTE24 expression is necessary for IFITM antiviral activity. In vivo studies demonstrate ZMPSTE24-deficient mice display higher viral burdens, enhanced cytokine production, and increased mortality after influenza infection. Collectively, these findings identify ZMPSTE24 as an intrinsic broad-spectrum antiviral protein and provide insights into antiviral defense mechanisms.
Understanding the conformational motions of RCK gating rings
Authors: Giraldez Teresa , Rothberg Brad S.
Published: February 2017

Regulator of conduction of K+ (RCK) domains are ubiquitous regulators of channel and transporter activity in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In humans, RCK domains form an integral component of large-conductance calcium-activated K channels (BK channels), key modulators of nerve, muscle, and endocrine cell function. In this review, we explore how the study of RCK domains in bacterial and human channels has contributed to our understanding of the structural basis of channel function. This knowledge will be critical in identifying mechanisms that underlie BK channelopathies that lead to epilepsy and other diseases, as well as regions of the channel that might be successfully targeted to treat such diseases.
Climate Fiction in English
Authors: Irr Caren
Published: February 2017

In the 21st century, a new genre of Anglophone fiction has emerged—the climate change novel, often abbreviated as “cli-fi.” Many successful authors of literary fiction, such as Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, T. C. Boyle, Michael Crichton, Ian McEwan, Amitav Ghosh, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula Le Guin, Lydia Millet, David Mitchell, Ruth Ozeki, Nathaniel Rich, Kim Stanley Robinson, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Marcel Theroux, have contributed to this new genre’s efforts to imagine the causes, effects, and feeling of global warming. Together, their work pulls the issue-oriented and didactic approach of activist fiction into contact with the intensive description and site specificity of Romantic nature writing. Cli-fi knits these tendencies together into a description of the effects of a dramatic change in the Earth’s climate on a particular location and a vision of the options available to a population seeking to adapt to or mitigate those effects.

Although cli-fi is resolutely contemporary and dedicated to creating new narratives adequate to current conditions, criticism devoted to the genre has carefully documented the persistence of national, masculinist, and anthropocentric tendencies in some of its major works. The dependence of cli-fi (and the environmental activism that inspires it) on capitalist visions of social progress has also received scrutiny. Some of these habits of representation have been inherited from literary predecessors such as Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Ernest Callenbach, and J. G. Ballard. Ballard’s Drowned World has proved an especially complicated source of inspiration for this new genre of the novel. In their efforts to update the motifs of these predecessors to the needs of the present, 21st-century cli-fi writers have experimented with the temporality, central figures, and mood of their fiction. These efforts have brought distinctive types of speculative and science fiction, as well as satires of climate change activism and new hybrid realisms, under the cli-fi umbrella. Although the genre still wrestles with inherited limitations, in every permutation, cli-fi novelists have prized innovation, experimentation, and creativity. Finally, all of their varied efforts involving cli-fi unite around an expectation that humanity and the planet can survive the changes associated with the Anthropocene.
Labor Politics in the Neoliberal Global Economy
Authors: Pal Mahuya
Published: February 2017

Labor in the global neoliberal economy is configured by overlapping networks of power in a manner that sustains imperial patterns between nations and the profitability of transnational corporations (TNCs) in many ways. New forms of institutional controls enabled by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund usher in new categories of workers—part-time, temporary, flexible—and precarious forms of work. The advancement of technology is increasingly interdependent on the exploitation of labor. This article critically explores the implications of neoliberalism in transnational labor involving women employees and the employees in the offshoring industry in general in the global South—the two workforce categories boosting profits for TNCs but remaining invisible for the most part and suffering precarity while driving global capitalism.
Military Defection and the Arab Spring
Authors: Brooks Risa A.
Published: February 2017

The protests that began in Tunisia in December 2010, and quickly spread across the Arab world, have drawn significant attention to the impact of militaries and coercive institutions on protests and revolutionary movements. The actions of the militaries were a central determinant of the outcomes of the uprisings of 2010–2011. In Tunisia and Egypt the decision by military leaders to abstain from using force on mass protests to suppress them led to the downfall of the countries’ autocrats. In Syria and Bahrain, militaries defended political leaders with brutal force. In Yemen and Libya, militaries fractured, with some units remaining allied to the leader and using force on his behalf and others defecting. In still other states, leaders and militaries were able to forestall the emergence of large, regime-threatening protests.

To explain these divergent outcomes, scholars and analysts have looked to a variety of explanatory factors. These focus on the attributes of the militaries involved, their civil-military relations, the size and social composition of the protests, the nature of the regime’s institutions, and the impact of monarchical traditions. These explanations offer many useful insights, but several issues remain under-studied. These include the impact of authoritarian learning and diffusion on protest trajectory. They also include the endogeneity of the protests to the nature of a country’s civil-military relations (i.e., how preexisting patterns of civil-military relations affected the possibility that incipient demonstrations would escalate to mass protests). Scholars also have been understandably captivated by the aforementioned pattern of military defection-loyalty, focusing on explaining that observed difference at the expense of studying other dependent variables. The next generation of scholarship on the uprisings therefore would benefit from efforts to conceptualize and investigate different aspects of variation in military behavior.

Overall, the first-generation literature has proved enormously useful and laid the foundation for a much richer understanding of military behavior and reactions to popular uprisings in the Arab world and beyond.
The First Wave of Foreign Policy Analysis
Authors: Hudson Valerie
Published: February 2017

The first wave of the International Relations subfield of Foreign Policy Analysis occurred from 1954 to 1994, encompassing a founding period (the 1950s and 1960s) and a period of first consolidation (the 1970s to the end of the Cold War). The early years of the 1950s and 1960s produced some of the defining works that would indelibly shape the character of the field. The work of Richard Snyder, James Rosenau, and Harold and Margaret Sprout molded the field with their focus on decision-making processes, political psychology, cross-national analysis, and actor-specific theory. The subsequent first-wave work, which dealt with small-group dynamics, organizational process, bureaucratic politics, leader personality, cognition and heuristics, culture, domestic political contestation, and national attributes, blended with an understanding of international and regional systemic effects, became FPA classics.
History of Organizational Psychology
Authors: Carpintero Helio
Published: February 2017

Organizational psychology represents an important theoretical and practical field of contemporary psychological science that studies mental and behavioral phenomena that take place in individuals and groups belonging to social organizations.

From a historical point of view, the roots of this specialty can be traced to the psychological approaches to the world of industry and work that began to appear in the beginning of the 20th century. The discovery of the relevance of individual differences in both mental and behavioral processes paved the way to the creation of a scientific and technical knowledge that could maximize an adaptation of humans at work that would benefit industrial activities, would increase worker satisfaction, and bring progress and peace to all of society.

Such specialized knowledge has evolved during the past century through a series of stages that permitted a growing theoretical complexity and more efficient technological interventions. This evolution of basic topics includes the study of the human operator; humankind’s capacities and abilities; the influence of social factors upon people in the workplace; and the structures of all sorts of organizations created to obtain desired and needed goals. The relevance of social powers influencing the world of labor have made possible the creation of a rigorous and complex body of scientific knowledge that continuously provides information, advice, and help to modern society in its economic, social, and political structures.
Mañjuśrī
Authors: Harrington Laura
Published: February 2017

Mañjuśrī (“Gentle Glory”) is one of the oldest and most significant bodhisattvas of the Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist pantheon. Mañjuśrī is the personification of the Mahāyāna notion of prajñā (wisdom): discriminating insight into the nature of reality, and the hallmark philosophical insight that distinguished the Mahāyāna movement from earlier Buddhist schools (Nikāya) of thought. Like discriminating insight, Mañjuśrī is ever new. He is typically portrayed as a golden-complexioned, sixteen-year-old crown prince holding in one hand a flaming sword that cuts through ignorance, and a Perfection of Prajñā book (Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) in the other.

In Mahāyāna sutras, Mañjuśrī is often cast as the interlocutor whose pointed questions to the buddha elicit the teachings their audience needs to finally understand the subtlest points of doctrine. His earliest known appearance is in the corpus of early Mahāyāna works translated into Chinese by the Indo-Scythian monk Lokakṣema (b. 147 ce). In these, the vivid contrast between Mañjuśrī as wonder-working bodhisattva and the slower-witted Nikāya monks implicitly legitimates the early emerging Mahāyāna movement; clearly, Mañjuśrī’s insight into reality is superior even to that of the disciples who sat at Śākyamuni Buddha’s feet and heard him teach.

This rhetorical strategy was developed in subsequent Indian Buddhist sūtras and commentaries, especially those that promulgated new or controversial teachings. Scholars from all of its schools claimed direct visions of the bodhisattva of wisdom; “to see Mañjuśrī” denoted the subject’s unmistaken insight into the buddha’s teaching. Mañjuśrī worship entered esoteric Buddhism (Tantra) in the 7th-century Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa—one of the earliest extant Indian Tantras—and reached its zenith in the early 8th-century Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti, a liturgical text praising Mañjuśrī in all his forms. Its close association with the 10th-century Kālacakra Tantra, perhaps the last Tantric text to be composed in India, underscores how thoroughly Mañjuśrī pervaded esoteric Buddhism in South Asia.

As a figure of cult worship, Mañjuśrī was most prominent outside of India. By the 5th century, the Chinese Wutai shan (“Five Terrace Mountain”) was understood to be his earthly residence, and a magnet for pilgrims who sought a vision of the crown prince. Mañjuśrī became identified as the patron deity of China during the Tang dynasty, thereby setting a pattern for subsequent rulers of China, who often linked their own legitimacy to Mañjuśrī, and visibly promoted his worship at Wutai shan. This practice crystallized during the long reign of the Manchus (1611–1912), who not only portrayed their rulers as emanations of the crown prince, but fostered the folk etymology of their ethnonym as deriving from Mañjuśrī. Tibetan Buddhism was at its apex there, and Mañjuśrī and his mountain home become important to Tibetans, Nepalese, Khotanese, and Mongols.
The Extraordinary Career of Juana C. Romero, Cacica of Tehuantepec
Authors: Chassen-López Francie
Published: February 2017

In the 1850s, Juana Catarina Romero, known popularly as Juana Cata, peddled her cigarettes on the streets of Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, an activity that enabled her to serve as a spy for the liberals under the command of Captain Porfirio Díaz during the War of the Reform (1858–1860). By 1890, Romero (1837–1915) had emerged as an international merchant, sugar cane producer and refiner, philanthropist, and “modernizing” cacica of the city of Tehuantepec. As powerful women rarely receive credit for their achievements, popular myth attributes her success to the men in her life, a supposed youthful love affair with Díaz or a later lover, Colonel Remigio Toledo. In contrast, a study of her career helps to shed light on how women could attain and exercise power in the 19th century and the ways in which they participated in the construction of the nation-state and a capitalist economy. Her trajectory shows that when allied with these forces of modernization, women could take on a more public role in society. It also reveals that it is through the lens of local and regional history that women’s contributions and accomplishments, so often erased in national histories, can be made visible.
Scope Marking at the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Authors: Dayal Veneeta , Alok Deepak
Published: February 2017

Natural language allows questioning into embedded clauses. One strategy for doing so involves structures like the following: [CP-1 whi [TP DP V [CP-2 … ti …]]], where a wh-phrase that thematically belongs to the embedded clause appears in the matrix scope position. A possible answer to such a question must specify values for the fronted wh-phrase. This is the extraction strategy seen in languages like English. An alternative strategy involves a structure in which there is a distinct wh-phrase in the matrix clause. It is manifested in two types of structures. One is a close analog of extraction, but for the extra wh-phrase: [CP-1 whi [TP DP V [CP-2 whj [TP…t­j­…]]]]. The other simply juxtaposes two questions, rather than syntactically subordinating the second one: [CP-3 [CP-1 whi [TP…]] [CP-2 whj [TP…]]]. In both versions of the second strategy, the wh-phrase in CP-1 is invariant, typically corresponding to the wh-phrase used to question propositional arguments. There is no restriction on the type or number of wh-phrases in CP-2. Possible answers must specify values for all the wh-phrases in CP-2. This strategy is variously known as scope marking, partial wh movement or expletive wh questions. Both strategies can occur in the same language. German, for example, instantiates all three possibilities: extraction, subordinated, as well as sequential scope marking. The scope marking strategy is also manifested in in-situ languages. Scope marking has been subjected to 30 years of research and much is known at this time about its syntactic and semantic properties. Its pragmatics properties, however, are relatively under-studied. The acquisition of scope marking, in relation to extraction, is another area of ongoing research. One of the reasons why scope marking has intrigued linguists is because it seems to defy central tenets about the nature of wh scope taking. For example, it presents an apparent mismatch between the number of wh expressions in the question and the number of expressions whose values are specified in the answer. It poses a challenge for our understanding of how syntactic structure feeds semantic interpretation and how alternative strategies with similar functions relate to each other.
African (Urban) Youth Languages
Authors: Hurst Ellen
Published: February 2017

A growing phenomena in urban centers on the African continent in the latter half of the 20th century and start of the 21st century has been what have been described as Urban Youth Languages,’ although the ‘urban’ moniker is increasingly being dropped as these phenomena spread out from cities to rural areas. The term tends to refer to language phenomena such as Sheng or Engsh in Kenya, Tsotsitaal in South Africa, Nouchi in Ivory Coast, Camfranglais in Cameroon, and many more, both named and unnamed. These language styles are used and innovated predominantly by young people, and in this way they are distinguished from the large urban vernaculars present in African urban centers such as urban Wolof.

African (Urban) Youth Languages usually utilize a dominant urban language as the grammatical base, such as Swahili in Nairobi Sheng and Zulu or Sotho in Johannesburg Tsotsitaal, and they feature a great deal of lexical borrowing from other languages present in Africa’s highly multilingual urban contexts, such as the colonial languages and the local African languages common to a particular urban center. They also may utilize the dominant European language as the grammatical base, such as French in the case of Camfranglais, with borrowings from English and African languages. They strikingly draw on metaphor and pop culture in the innovation of new terms. These varieties are ‘languages relexicalised,’ in Halliday’s terms, and are used by young people for creativity and entertainment, to have fun with peers, to affirm in-group relations, and to indicate status.
Participial Relative Clauses
Authors: Sleeman Petra
Published: February 2017

Relative clauses of which the predicate contains a present, past, or passive participle can be used in a reduced form. Although it has been shown that participial relative clauses cannot always be considered to be non-complete variants of full relative clauses, they are generally called reduced relative clauses in the literature. Since they differ from full relative clauses in containing a non-finite predicate, they are also called non-finite relative clauses. Another type of non-finite relative clause is the infinitival relative clause. In English, in participial relative clauses, the antecedent noun is interpreted as the subject of the predicate of the relative clause. Because of this restriction, the status of relative clause has been put into doubt for participial adnominal modifiers, especially, because in a language such as English, they can occur in pre-nominal position, whereas a full relative clause cannot. While some linguists analyze both pre-nominal and post-nominal participles as verbal, others have argued that participles are essentially adjectival categories. In a third type of analysis, participles are divided into verbal and adjectival ones. This also holds for adnominal participles. Besides the relation to full relative clauses and the category of the participle, participial relative clauses raise a number of other interesting questions, which have been discussed in the literature. These questions concern the similarity or difference in interpretation of the pre-nominal and the post-nominal participial clause, restrictions on the type of verb used in past participial relative clauses, and similarities and differences between the syntax and semantics of participial clauses in English and other languages. Besides syntactic and semantic issues, participial relative clauses have raised other questions, such as their use in texts. Participial relative clauses have been studied from a diachronic and a stylistic point of view. It has been shown that the use of reduced forms such as participial relative clauses has increased over time and that, because of their condensed form, they are used more in academic styles than in colloquial speech. Nonetheless, they have proven to be used already by very young children, although in second language acquisition they are used late, because their condensed form is associated with an academic style of writing. Since passive or past participles often have the same form as the past tense, it has been shown that sentences containing a subject noun modified by a post-nominal past or passive participle are difficult to process, although certain factors may facilitate the processing of the sentence.
Syntax of Ditransitives
Authors: Harley Heidi , Miyagawa Shigeru
Published: February 2017

Ditransitive predicates select for two internal arguments, and hence minimally entail the participation of three entities in the event described by the verb. Canonical ditransitive verbs include give, show, and teach; in each case, the verb requires an agent (a giver, shower, or teacher, respectively), a theme (the thing given, shown, or taught), and a goal (the recipient, viewer, or student). The property of requiring two internal arguments makes ditransitive verbs syntactically unique. Selection in generative grammar is often modeled as syntactic sisterhood, so ditransitive verbs immediately raise the question of whether a verb may have two sisters, requiring a ternary-branching structure, or whether one of the two internal arguments is not in a sisterhood relation with the verb.

Another important property of English ditransitive constructions is the two syntactic structures associated with them. In the so-called “double object construction,” or DOC, the goal and theme both are simple NPs and appear following the verb in the order V-goal-theme. In the “dative construction,” the goal is a PP rather than an NP and follows the theme in the order V-theme-to goal. Many ditransitive verbs allow both structures (e.g., give John a book/give a book to John). Some verbs are restricted to appear only in one or the other (e.g. demonstrate a technique to the class/*demonstrate the class a technique; cost John $20/*cost $20 to John). For verbs which allow both structures, there can be slightly different interpretations available for each. Crosslinguistic results reveal that the underlying structural distinctions and their interpretive correlates are pervasive, even in the face of significant surface differences between languages. The detailed analysis of these questions has led to considerable progress in generative syntax. For example, the discovery of the hierarchical relationship between the first and second arguments of a ditransitive has been key in motivating the adoption of binary branching and the vP hypothesis. Many outstanding questions remain, however, and the syntactic encoding of ditransitivity continues to inform the development of grammatical theory.
Game Theory in Pragmatics: Evolution, Rationality, and Reasoning
Authors: Franke Michael
Published: February 2017

Game theory provides formal means of representing and explaining action choices in social decision situations where the choices of one participant depend on the choices of another. Game theoretic pragmatics approaches language production and interpretation as a game in this sense. Patterns in language use are explained as optimal, rational, or at least nearly optimal or rational solutions to a communication problem. Three intimately related perspectives on game theoretic pragmatics are sketched here: (i) the evolutionary perspective explains language use as the outcome of some optimization process, (ii) the rationalistic perspective pictures language use as a form of rational decision-making, and (iii) the probabilistic reasoning perspective considers specifically speakers’ and listeners’ beliefs about each other. There are clear commonalities behind these three perspectives, and they may in practice blend into each other.

At the heart of game theoretic pragmatics lies the idea that speaker and listener behavior, when it comes to using a language with a given semantic meaning, are attuned to each other. By focusing on the evolutionary or rationalistic perspective, we can then give a functional account of general patterns in our pragmatic language use. The probabilistic reasoning perspective invites modeling actual speaker and listener behavior, for example, as it shows in quantitative aspects of experimental data.
Textual Inference
Authors: Zaenen Annie
Published: February 2017

Hearers and readers make inferences on the basis of what they hear or read. These inferences are partly determined by the linguistic form that the writer or speaker chooses to give to her utterance. The inferences can be about the state of the world that the speaker or writer wants the hearer or reader to conclude are pertinent, or they can be about the attitude of the speaker or writer vis-à-vis this state of affairs. The attention here goes to the inferences of the first type. Research in semantics and pragmatics has isolated a number of linguistic phenomena that make specific contributions to the process of inference. Broadly, entailments of asserted material, presuppositions (e.g., factive constructions), and invited inferences (especially scalar implicatures) can be distinguished.

While we make these inferences all the time, they have been studied piecemeal only in theoretical linguistics. When attempts are made to build natural language understanding systems, the need for a more systematic and wholesale approach to the problem is felt. Some of the approaches developed in Natural Language Processing are based on linguistic insights, whereas others use methods that do not require (full) semantic analysis.

In this article, I give an overview of the main linguistic issues and of a variety of computational approaches, especially those stimulated by the RTE challenges first proposed in 2004.
Case
Authors: Malchukov Andrej L.
Published: February 2017

Morphological case is conventionally defined as a system of marking of a dependent nominal for the type of relationship they bear to their heads. While most linguists would agree with this definition, in practice it is often a matter of controversy whether a certain marker X counts as case in language L, or how many case values language L features. First, the distinction between morphological cases and case particles/adpositions is fuzzy in a cross-linguistic perspective. Second, the distinctions between cases can be obscured by patterns of case syncretism, leading to different analyses of the underlying system. On the functional side, it is important to distinguish between syntactic (structural), semantic, and “pragmatic” cases, yet these distinctions are not clear-cut either, as syntactic cases historically arise from the two latter sources. Moreover, case paradigms of individual languages usually show a conflation between syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cases (see the phenomenon of “focal ergativity,” where ergative case is used when the A argument is in focus). The composition of case paradigms can be shown to follow a certain typological pattern, which is captured by case hierarchy, as proposed by Greenberg and Blake, among others. Case hierarchy constrains the way how case systems evolve (or are reduced) across languages and derives from relative markedness and, ultimately, from frequencies of individual cases. The (one-dimensional) case hierarchy is, however, incapable of capturing all recurrent polysemies of individual case markers; rather, such polysemies can be represented through a more complex two-dimensional hierarchy (semantic map), which can also be given a diachronic interpretation.
Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
Authors: Harbour Daniel
Published: February 2017

The Kiowa-Tanoan family is a small group of Native American languages of the Plains and pueblo Southwest. It comprises Kiowa, of the eponymous Plains tribe, and the pueblo-based Tanoan languages, Jemez (Towa), Tewa, and Northern and Southern Tiwa. These free-word-order languages display a number of typologically unusual characteristics that have rightly attracted attention within a range of subdisciplines and theories.

One word of Taos (my construction based on Kontak and Kunkel’s work) illustrates. In tóm-múlu-wia ‘I gave him/her a drum,’ the verb wia ‘gave’ obligatorily incorporates its object, múlu ‘drum.’ The agreement prefix tóm encodes not only object number, but identities of agent and recipient as first and third singular, respectively, and this all in a single syllable. Moreover, the object number here is not singular, but “inverse”: singular for some nouns, plural for others (tóm-músi-wia only has the plural object reading ‘I gave him/her cats’).

This article presents a comparative overview of the three areas just illustrated: from morphosemantics, inverse marking and noun class; from morphosyntax, super-rich fusional agreement; and from syntax, incorporation. The second of these also touches on aspects of morphophonology, the family’s three-tone system and its unusually heavy grammatical burden, and on further syntax, obligatory passives. Together, these provide a wide window on the grammatical wealth of this fascinating family.
Argument Realization and Case in Japanese
Authors: Kishimoto Hideki
Published: February 2017

Japanese is a language where the grammatical status of arguments and adjuncts is marked exclusively by postnominal case markers, and various argument realization patterns can be assessed by their case marking. Since Japanese is categorized as a language of the nominative-accusative type typologically, the unmarked case-marking frame obtained for transitive predicates of the non-stative (or eventive) type is ‘nominative-accusative’. Nevertheless, transitive predicates falling into the stative class often have other case-marking alignments, such as ‘nominative-nominative’ and ‘dative-nominative’. Consequently, Japanese provides much more varying argument realization patterns than those expected from its typological character as a nominative-accusative language.

In point of fact, argument marking can actually be much more elastic and variable, the variations being motivated by several linguistic factors. Arguments often have the option of receiving either syntactic or semantic case, with no difference in the logical or cognitive meaning (as in plural agent and source agent alternations) or depending on the meanings their predicate carry (as in locative alternation). The type of case marking that is not normally available in main clauses can sometimes be obtained in embedded contexts (i.e., in exceptional case marking and small-clause constructions). In complex predicates, including causative and indirect passive predicates, arguments are case-marked differently from their base clauses by virtue of suffixation, and their case patterns follow the mono-clausal case array, despite the fact that they have multi-clausal structures.

Various case marking options are also made available for arguments by grammatical operations. Some processes instantiate a change on the grammatical relations and case marking of arguments with no affixation or embedding. Japanese has the grammatical process of subjectivization, creating extra (non-thematic) major subjects, many of which are identified as instances of ‘possessor raising’ (or argument ascension). There is another type of grammatical process, which reduces the number of arguments by virtue of incorporating a noun into the predicate, as found in the light verb constructions with suru ‘do’ and the complex adjective constructions formed on the negative adjective nai ‘non-existent.’
Meanings of Constructions
Authors: Michaelis Laura A.
Published: February 2017

Meanings are assembled in various ways in a construction-based grammar, and this array can be represented as a continuum of idiomaticity, a gradient of lexical fixity. Constructional meanings are the meanings to be discovered at every point along the idiomaticity continuum. At the leftmost, or ‘fixed,’ extreme of this continuum are frozen idioms, like the salt of the earth and in the know. The set of frozen idioms includes those with idiosyncratic syntactic properties, like the fixed expression by and large (an exceptional pattern of coordination in which a preposition and adjective are conjoined). Other frozen idioms, like the unexceptionable modified noun red herring, feature syntax found elsewhere. At the rightmost, or ‘open’ end of this continuum are fully productive patterns, including the rule that licenses the string Kim blinked, known as the Subject-Predicate construction. Between these two poles are (a) lexically fixed idiomatic expressions, verb-headed and otherwise, with regular inflection, such as chew/chews/chewed the fat; (b) flexible expressions with invariant lexical fillers, including phrasal idioms like spill the beans and the Correlative Conditional, such as the more, the merrier; and (c) specialized syntactic patterns without lexical fillers, like the Conjunctive Conditional (e.g., One more remark like that and you’re out of here). Construction Grammar represents this range of expressions in a uniform way: whether phrasal or lexical, all are modeled as feature structures that specify phonological and morphological structure, meaning, use conditions, and relevant syntactic information (including syntactic category and combinatoric potential).
Coordination in Syntax
Authors: Goodall Grant
Published: February 2017

The term coordination refers to the juxtaposition of two or more conjuncts often linked by a conjunction such as and or or. The conjuncts (e.g., our friend and your teacher in Our friend and your teacher sent greetings) may be words or phrases of any type. They are a defining property of coordination, while the presence or absence of a conjunction depends on the specifics of the particular language. As a general phenomenon, coordination differs from subordination in that the conjuncts are typically symmetric in many ways: they often belong to like syntactic categories, and if nominal, each carries the same case. Additionally, if there is extraction, this must typically be out of all conjuncts in parallel, a phenomenon known as Across-the-Board extraction. Extraction of a single conjunct, or out of a single conjunct, is prohibited by the Coordinate Structure Constraint. Despite this overall symmetry, coordination does sometimes behave in an asymmetric fashion. Under certain circumstances, the conjuncts may be of unlike categories or extraction may occur out of one conjunct, but not another, thus yielding apparent violations of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. In addition, case and agreement show a wide range of complex and sometimes asymmetric behavior cross-linguistically. This tension between the symmetric and asymmetric properties of coordination is one of the reasons that coordination has remained an interesting analytical puzzle for many decades.

Within the general area of coordination, a number of specific sentence types have generated much interest. One is Gapping, in which two sentences are conjoined, but material (often the verb) is missing from the middle of the second conjunct, as in Mary ate beans and John _ potatoes. Another is Right Node Raising, in which shared material from the right edge of sentential conjuncts is placed in the right periphery of the entire sentence, as in The chefs prepared __ and the customers ate __ [a very elaborately constructed dessert]. Finally, some languages have a phenomenon known as comitative coordination, in which a verb has two arguments, one morphologically plural and the other comitative (e.g., with the preposition with), but the plural argument may be understood as singular. English does not have this phenomenon, but if it did, a sentence like We went to the movies with John could be understood as John and I went to the movies.