bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Two potato (Solanum tuberosum) varieties differ in drought tolerance due to differences in root growth at depth
Authors: Puértolas Jaime , Ballester Carlos , Elphinstone E. David , Dodd Ian C.
Published: August 2014

To test the hypothesis that root growth at depth is a key trait explaining some genotypic differences in drought tolerance in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), two varieties (Horizon and Maris Piper) differing in drought tolerance were subjected to different irrigation regimes in pots in a glasshouse and in the field under a polytunnel. In the glasshouse, both cultivars showed similar gas exchange, leaf water potential, leaf xylem ABA concentration and shoot biomass independently of whether plants were grown under well watered or water deficit conditions. Under well watered conditions, root growth was three-fold higher in Horizon compared with Maris Piper, 3 weeks after emergence. Water deficit reduced this difference. In the polytunnel, applying 60% or less irrigation volume compared with full irrigation significantly decreased tuber yield in Maris Piper but not in Horizon. This was coincident with the higher root density of Horizon in deep soil layers (>40 cm), where water content was stable. The results suggest that early vigorous root proliferation may be a useful selection trait for maintaining yield of potato under restricted irrigation or rainfall, because it rapidly secures access to water stored in deep soil layers. Although selecting for vigorous root growth may assist phenotyping screening for drought tolerance, these varieties may require particular environmental or cultural conditions to express root vigour, such as sufficiently deep soils or sufficient water shortly after emergence.
Impaired selectin-dependent leukocyte recruitment induces T-cell exhaustion and prevents chronic allograft vasculopathy and rejection
Authors: Sarraj Bara , Ye Junsheng , Akl Ahmed Ibrahim , Chen Guodong , Wang Jiao-Jing , Zhang Zheng , Abadja Farida , Abecassis Michael , Miller Stephen D. , Kansas Geoffrey S. , Ansari M. Javeed
Published: August 2014

Significance

T-cell exhaustion limits the immune response against chronic infections and tumors. Reinvigorating exhausted T cells promotes clearance of infections and tumors. There are several ongoing clinical trials to harness the potential of reinvigorated T cells for the treatment of chronic infections and tumors by reversing T-cell exhaustion. However, the mechanisms leading to T-cell exhaustion are unknown. Further, the role of T-cell exhaustion in transplantation or autoimmunity is not defined. Here we show that impaired leukocyte recruitment leads to CD4 T-cell exhaustion as a novel mechanism of transplant tolerance. Strategies targeting leukocyte recruitment may prevent allograft rejection and promote tolerance. On the other hand, promoting leukocyte recruitment may prevent T-cell exhaustion and enhance tumor/microbe immunity.
Short sequences can efficiently recruit histone H3 lysine 27 trimethylation in the absence of enhancer activity and DNA methylation
Authors: Jermann Philip , Hoerner Leslie , Burger Lukas , Schübeler Dirk
Published: August 2014

Significance

Polycomb repressive complex 2 functions in gene repression and acts by methylating histone H3 at lysine 27 (H3K27me3). Despite its relevance, it remains elusive how this complex is recruited to its target sites in the genome. Here, we used repeated genomic targeting in embryonic stem cells to identify DNA sequence determinants that autonomously confer H3K27me3 recruitment. We show that surprisingly small CG-rich DNA sequences are sufficient to recruit H3K27me3, but only if they are devoid of DNA methylation and transcriptional activity. This study provides new insights into the mechanisms recruiting H3K27me3 and the cross-talk between diverse chromatin modifications.
Robust efficiency and actuator saturation explain healthy heart rate control and variability
Authors: Li Na , Cruz Jerry , Chien Chenghao Simon , Sojoudi Somayeh , Recht Benjamin , Stone David , Csete Marie , Bahmiller Daniel , Doyle John C.
Published: August 2014

Significance

Reduction in human heart rate variability (HRV) is recognized in both clinical and athletic domains as a marker for stress or disease, but previous mathematical and clinical analyses have not fully explained the physiological mechanisms of the variability. Our analysis of HRV using the tools of control mathematics reveals that the occurrence and magnitude of observed HRV is an inevitable outcome of a controlled system with known physiological constraints. In addition to a deeper understanding of physiology, control analysis may lead to the development of timelier monitors that detect control system dysfunction, and more informative monitors that can associate HRV with specific underlying physiological causes.
Scalable NMR spectroscopy with semiconductor chips
Authors: Ha Dongwan , Paulsen Jeffrey , Sun Nan , Song Yi-Qiao , Ham Donhee
Published: August 2014

Significance

The strong application-driven need for portable NMR spectrometers has led to development of spectroscopy-grade permanent magnets. In contrast, NMR spectrometer electronics capable of modern multidimensional spectroscopy remain bulky. Here, we report on 4-mm
2
silicon spectrometer electronics chips, and perform various multidimensional NMR spectroscopies by using these chips with a permanent magnet. This combination of semiconductor technology and advanced permanent magnet technology is a step toward portable NMR spectrometers, which can enable in-field, on-demand, or online applications and facilitate co-use of NMR with other analytical methods. Besides the portable application, the spectrometer electronics chips with their cost/size economy can improve other NMR technologies—whether with permanent or superconducting magnet—such as multi-channel spectroscopy, phased-array imaging, microfluidic microscopy, and parallel, high-throughput spectroscopy.
Functional B-1 progenitor cells are present in the hematopoietic stem cell-deficient embryo and depend onCbfβfor their development
Authors: Kobayashi Michihiro , Shelley W. Christopher , Seo Wooseok , Vemula Sasidhar , Lin Yang , Liu Yan , Kapur Reuben , Taniuchi Ichiro , Yoshimoto Momoko
Published: August 2014

Significance

All lymphoid cells are considered to be products of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs); however, it has been suggested, but not proven, that innate immune B-1 progenitor cells develop independently of HSCs in the fetal liver. B-1 cells, especially B-1a cells, are not replaced by adult bone marrow transplantation. Thus, it is critical to understand the origin and mechanisms required to sustain these cells in vivo because B-1 cells play important roles in the first line of defense against microbial infection and in preventing organ damage in autoimmune patients and infections in some patients after bone-marrow transplantation. We demonstrate that B-1 progenitor cells can develop independently of HSCs in the fetal liver and that their development relies critically on the expression of core-binding factor beta.
Rare events in earth history include the LB1 human skeleton from Flores, Indonesia, as a developmental singularity, not a unique taxon
Authors: Eckhardt Robert B. , Henneberg Maciej , Weller Alex S. , Hsü Kenneth J.
Published: August 2014

Significance

The taxon “
Homo floresiensis
” was termed “the most important find in human evolution for 100 years.” The name was invented for several fragmentary skeletons found on one Indonesian island, all less than 100,000 y old (some as recent as 12,000 y), all coeval with only
Homo sapiens
existing everywhere else in the world. Defining taxonomic features appear in just a single specimen, LB1, which has the only known skull and femora. Key features of 380 mL and 1.06 m are shown here to be underestimates, supportable as species-defining only by overlooking asymmetry and disproportion that are general signs of abnormal development. Logically, patent isolated individual abnormality obviates new species status even without diagnosis of a particular syndrome.
Nonliteral understanding of number words
Authors: Kao Justine T. , Wu Jean Y. , Bergen Leon , Goodman Noah D.
Published: August 2014

Significance

Human communication is rife with nonliteral language, ranging from metaphor to irony to hyperbole. How do people go so far beyond the literal meaning of an utterance to infer the speaker’s intended meaning? We present a computational model that understands hyperbolic and other nonliteral uses of number words (e.g., “That watch costs 10,000 dollars”). Our model integrates empirically measured background knowledge, principles of communication, and reasoning about communicative goals to explain the computational basis of nonliteral language understanding. This framework sheds light on the nature of communication, marking a significant advancement in the flexibility and richness of formal models of language understanding.
Structural basis for the recognition–evasion arms race between
Tomato mosaic virus
and the resistance gene
Tm-1
Authors: Ishibashi Kazuhiro , Kezuka Yuichiro , Kobayashi Chihoko , Kato Masahiko , Inoue Tsuyoshi , Nonaka Takamasa , Ishikawa Masayuki , Matsumura Hiroyoshi , Katoh Etsuko
Published: August 2014

Significance

The Red Queen hypothesis proposes that host defense genes evolve to counter the adverse effects of rapidly evolving invasive viruses. Although 3D structures of host–viral protein complexes have provided great insights into the molecular conflicts between them, a single structure represents only an evolutionary snapshot. Here we present the atomic details of the step-by-step arms race between tomato mosaic virus replication protein and the host inhibitor protein Tm-1, in which host recognition of a viral molecule, viral adaptive evasion of the recognition, host counteradaptation, and viral counter-counteradaptation are depicted by determination of the complex structures of Tm-1 variants and the viral protein and by biochemical analyses and molecular dynamics simulations of the interactions between these proteins.
Robust excitons inhabit soft supramolecular nanotubes
Authors: Eisele Dörthe M. , Arias Dylan H. , Fu Xiaofeng , Bloemsma Erik A. , Steiner Colby P. , Jensen Russell A. , Rebentrost Patrick , Eisele Holger , Tokmakoff Andrei , Lloyd Seth , Nelson Keith A. , Nicastro Daniela , Knoester Jasper , Bawendi Moungi G.
Published: August 2014

Significance

The scientific community has been broadly inspired by tiny deep-sea bacteria, the green sulfur bacteria, that are able to harvest minute amounts of incoming sunlight with exquisite efficiency. Nature’s masterpiece consists of soft, cylindrical-shaped, supramolecular structures that are densely packed in superstructures. Only little is known about the fundamental processes that govern nature’s efficiency. Here we unravel, for the first time to our knowledge, the impact of structural complexity through the use of a model system akin to that found in nature, focusing on the properties that are prerequisite for nature’s efficient light harvesting. Our work suggests that the cylindrical geometry presents a rational design that may be key for protecting the system’s quantum properties upon dense packing.
The effects of time in the development of complexity and accuracy during study abroad
Authors: Jensen Julia , Howard Martin
Published: August 2014

Reflecting the current age of mammoth globalisation and the desirability of having a second language in today’s world, study abroad (SA) is becoming increasingly popular amongst university students across many disciplines. Moreover, with the EU identifying a target of 20% participation in SA in 2010, the value of this activity is also being recognised on an intergovernmental level. Participants in SA programmes stand to gain not only invaluable experiences, in terms of expanding their social and cultural knowledge, but also in developing their second language (L2). While there now exists a multitude of SLA studies situated within this unique learning context, such studies vary enormously in the duration of their learner-participants’ stay in the target language community. Indeed, a review of the current literature indicates that the duration of SA in the existing research ranges from a couple of weeks to a full year. Given such diversity, it is difficult to draw substantive conclusions on the effect of duration of SA on L2 development, although a limited number of important studies have explored the issue (e.g. Davidson, 2010; Dwyer, 2004; Llanes & Muñoz, 2009; Serrano et al., 2012). Against this background, the current paper reports on a longitudinal study of French and Chinese learners of English over a nine month SA period. Initial, medial and final interview data were analysed in terms of Complexity and Accuracy which are considered two important, and often rivalrous, features of language performance (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005). The results of the study point to considerable individual variation, both within individuals (variation across observations) and between individuals (variation across participants) in scope of development, making it difficult to capture language gains in terms of a neat, linear pattern over time.
Adjectival modification in L2 Spanish Noun Phrases
Authors: Guijarro-Fuentes Pedro
Published: August 2014

The present paper investigates the grammar systems of Chinese learners of Spanish as a second language with the aim of contributing to current debates within contemporary generative second language (L2) acquisition theory: the extent to which adult learners are (un)able to acquire new functional features that result in a L2 grammar that is mentally structured like the native target language has led to recent accounts such as the Interpretability Hypothesis (Hawkins & Hattori 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou 2007) excluding L2A of non-L1 uninterpretable features, and more recently the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere 2009) claiming that L2 readjustment is an arduous acquisition task for [+/–] interpretable features. In evaluating both hypotheses, this study further explores L2A of uninterpretable and interpretable features by examining the development of certain Spanish features within the DP (i.e., [uGender]; [uNumber] and an interpretable Focus/Contrast feature) by L2 Chinese learners. Results of our two experimental tasks show that parametrically different uninterpretable and interpretable features are not totally accessible to adult L2 learners, but that proficiency level and individual differences figure largely in the implementation of them, causing competence target deviant patterns. Contrary to the IH, our results thus show initial underspecification of the [+/–] interpretable features in IL grammars and a gradual process which would first mimic L1-consistency before becoming native-like.
Word order and case in the comprehension of L2 German by L1 English speakers
Authors: Rankin Tom
Published: August 2014

This paper replicates and extends experiments by Grüter (2006) and Grüter & Conradie (2006) to explore some of the learnability implications of Full Transfer at the initial state of L2A. L1 English-speaking learners’ comprehension of L2 German questions and relative clauses is tested on the basis of a picture interpretation task. Patterns of (mis)interpretation of the German clauses suggest that lower-intermediate proficiency learners still access the L1 syntax in order to parse L2 input. This is taken to indicate that learners are influenced by L1 word order patterns in assigning thematic roles in L2 clauses. This is discussed in light of approaches to L2 parsing and processing which attribute different roles to L1 influence.
When Germans begin to learn Swedish
Authors: Lindqvist Christina , Falk Ylva
Published: August 2014

This paper explores the role of the L1 and the L2 in L3 oral production, both as regards lexicon and syntax. Previous research has shown that both L1 and L2 are used in L3 oral production, and different explanatory factors have been put forward, e.g. (psycho)typology and L2 status. However, these factors do not explain why function words tend to come from L2 while content words seem to be transferred from both L1 and L2 to a larger extent. In order to explain transfer patterns in L3, we use the declarative/procedural model (Paradis 2009), and hypothesize that syntactic transfer will come from L2; transfer of function words from L2; and transfer of content words from both L1 and L2. We analyze lexical and syntactic transfer in eleven native German speakers’ retellings of an episode from a mute video film. The results largely seem to support Paradis’ model.
Arguing the case against coercion
Authors: Ziegeler Debra
Published: August 2014

Recent work in cognitive linguistics has hired the term coercion which was formerly associated with computational linguistics to apply to a number of instances in the study of natural language in which there is an incongruity between the semantics of a syntactic frame and the semantics of lexical items found in it. Some of these instances illustrate areas which could well be described as extensions of aspectual boundaries in which the harmony between lexical and grammatical aspect has been penetrated; others illustrate mismatch in nominal phrases, in which the usual parameters that apply have been violated. The purpose of the present chapter is to analyse three individual cases as they have been presented in recent accounts, and to investigate whether such cases could be explained either by pragmatic factors such as metonymic inferencing, or by considering them in the light of their diachronic development. It will then be questioned whether or not a unique phenomenon of coercion can be justified in the context of natural language at all.
The construction of vagueness
Authors: Mihatsch Wiltrud
Published: August 2014

The aim of this contribution is to study the stages involved in the emergence of Romance (and some Germanic) approximators such as French espèce de or genre de based on taxonomic nouns such as French genre ‘genus’ and espèce ‘species’ and to demonstrate which implicatures trigger the emergence of the discursive function which consists in signalling loose talk. Particularly the first steps leading from taxonomic nouns to approximators are still unknown, while the emergence of further pragmatic functions such as mitigation, quotation or focus marking on the basis of approximative functions are relatively well-studied. Corpus data complemented by lexicographical data will help to reveal the implicatures arising and becoming entrenched in specific communicative tasks where expressions containing taxonomic nouns are used in order to achieve certain communicative goals related to loose meaning construction.
Russian 'blues': Controversies of basicness
Authors: Paramei Galina V.
Published: August 2014

Sinij and goluboj, the two Russian confounders for ‘blue’, are considered. The question addressed is whether solely sinij or both have status of basic color terms. Results along various lines of experimental research are analyzed. Developmental studies in preschoolers show that with regards to sinij, acquisition of goluboj is overdue, but comparable to that of ‘orange’ and ‘purple’. Psycholinguistic studies indicate that both Russian ‘blues’ are named with high consensus and have circumscribed, though adjoining areas when mapped into a color space. Psychometric studies relate data of Russian and English speakers on color categorization and discrimination within the blue region. Results are indecisive on whether Russian speakers possess a sinij-goluboj category boundary. However, choices of stimuli and/or experimental design were suboptimal. Further controlled psychometric investigation is required. Nevertheless, linguistic (developmental, metonymic, metaphoric) and psycholinguistic analyses provide converging evidence that both Russian ‘blues’ have status of the basic color terms.
Colour term research of Hugo Magnus
Authors: Schöntag Roger , Schäfer-Prieß Barbara
Published: August 2014

In the second part of the 19th century, there was an international scientific controversy on the development, recognition and denomination of color terms, in which participated famous scholars like William E. Gladstone, Lazarus Geiger, Grant Allen, Ernst Krause or Charles Darwin. Among the proponents of the theory that human color perception had developed gradually during the evolution of the human species was the German ophthalmologist Hugo Magnus, who formulated crucial suggestions concerning the relationship between the human capacity of perceiving different colors and the existing color terms in the languages of the world. Revising his original point of view in further publications in consequence of the results of his ethnological inquiry, Magnus brought to light much information still relevant for current debates. Comparing some of his results like e.g. the evolutionary color term sequence to a modern scientific concept such as Berlin and Kay’s, there appear to be astonishing similarities, suggesting that the contributions of Hugo Magnus to the color-term discussion have unjustly fallen into oblivion.
Japanese color terms, from 400 C.E. to the present: Literature, orthography, and language contact in light of current cognitive theory
Authors: Stanlaw James
Published: August 2014

The aim of this chapter is to describe the history of Japanese color naming and relate it to current models in color nomenclature research. Though Japanese was among the twenty languages most carefully examined in the original Berlin and Kay (1969) investigations thirty years ago, the complexity and history of its color-term nomenclature system have yet to be fully explored. I will analyze evidence fromthe first classical texts that reveals how this vocabulary might have operated 1500 years ago, and present a possible evolutionary sequence of Japanese color terminology from circa 400 CE to the present. I will examine this sequence in light of the Berlin and Kay standard model, and show how it fails to account for certain data. Other explanations, such as those offered by MacLaury (2001), give more robust accounts, and elucidate much in a very succinct fashion. Nonetheless, there appear to be aspects of the Japanese color sequence that defy formalmodeling.
Exemplification in learner writing: A cross-linguistic perspective
Authors: Paquot Magali
Published: August 2014

The aim of the case study reported in this chapter is to examine the potential influence of the mother tongue on learners’ production of both correct and incorrect multi-word units that are typically used to fulfil an important rhetorical function, namely exemplification, in academic writing. The phraseological patterns of five exemplifying lexical items are analyzed in five sub-corpora of the International Corpus of Learner English. These patterns are extracted from Paquot’s (2007) productively-oriented academic word list and include the two fixed conjuncts for example and for instance, the noun example and the verbs illustrateand exemplify. The analysis aims to distinguish between aspects of phraseological use characteristic of learners from one mother tongue background (and therefore probably L1-dependent) from phraseological patterns shared by most learner populations (and hence more likely to be developmental or teaching- induced). Results suggest that there are two different types of transfer of L1 multi-word units: the first type applies to word-like units and the second to less salient multi-word units. The study also indicates that transfer of form often seems to go together with transfer of frequency and register.
17. Contrastive idiom analysis: The case of Japanese and English idioms of anger
Authors: Ishida Priscilla
Published: August 2014

Past approaches to contrastive idiom analysis have often focused on shared characteristics of groups of idioms or taken for granted correspondences between the meanings of individual L1/L2 idioms. This chapter presents a method for the contrastive analysis of idioms that focuses on the L1/L2 semantic networks, as well as on the way that idioms are actually used in text and discourse. The target of analysis is Japanese and English verb phrase idioms of anger, including hara ga tatsu ‘one’s belly rises up’, blow one’s stack/top, etc. Corpus data and co-occurrence tests are used to identify a number of semantic features that function to distinguish the meanings of idioms in the respective L1/L2 lexical fields (e.g. , , , , ). Results of analysis show that, while many Japanese and English anger idioms overlap partially in meaning, only a few have full semantic correspondence. This chapter also points out some non-semantic factors relevant to the question of idiom translation in real contexts, including register and frequency of occurrence.
20. Computational phraseology: An overview
Authors: Heid Ulrich
Published: August 2014

This chapter describes computational linguistic work which deals with phraseological units. This includes both computational support for human-use tools and resources in the field of phraseology, such as electronic learners’ dictionaries, and work in natural language processing aimed at the automatic treatment of phraseological units, for example in the analysis of texts, or in machine translation. It points to a number of issues which have received attention from computational linguists, but space prevents a detailed account of them. The issues are grouped around the phenomena targeted (Section 2), questions of how to represent phraseological units in lexicons and corpora (Section 3), as well as methods for automatically identifying and/or classifying phraseological units in texts (Section 4). The chapter gives an overview of the current approaches in these fields and points to relevant literature.
22. Extracting specialized collocations using lexical functions
Authors: Orliac Brigitte
Published: August 2014

This chapter presents a method for extracting specialized verb + noun collocations based on lexical functions, the formal device developed within the framework of theMeaning-Text theory to represent collocations. Although based on a linguistic analysis of collocations, our program (Colex) uses statistical measures to distinguish true collocations from free combinations.We argue that log-likelihood is a better measure of precision in this domain than mutual information.We are now developing the semantic encoding of the combinations extracted by Colex. We believe that a filter based on measuring a combination’s ability to be encoded as a lexical function would achieve higher precision than a purely statistical filter.
2. Planned development of culturally sensitive health promotion programs: An Intervention Mapping approach
Authors: Bertens Madelief G.B.C. , Schaalma Herman , Bartholomew Kay , Borne Bart van den
Published: August 2014

Health promotion attempts to enhance our ability to maintain or improve quality of life by means of education and by creating conditions that are beneficial for our health and that of our social environment. In this chapter we present a framework for the design of theory- and evidence-informed health promotion programs. The framework, entitled Intervention Mapping (IM), provides guidelines and tools for the development of health promotion programs that are based on (1) needs assessments among priority populations and communities, (2) analyses of theory-informed options for corrective action, and (3) collaborative planning. IM and its application to the design of culturally sensitive health promotion programs is illustrated with an example of the development of an STI/HIV prevention program for minority women with a Dutch Caribbean background in the Netherlands.
6. Promoting VCT among South African students: Are we missing the message?
Authors: Swanepoel Piet , Burger Marije , Loohuis Anne , Jansen Carel
Published: August 2014

Mass media campaigns promoting VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing) form a cornerstone of the efforts to curb the spread of HIV in South Africa. In this chapter the focus falls on determinants of South African students’ VCT uptake and on the efficacy of a brochure that aims to persuade them to go for VCT. Empirical support was found for the predicted role of some of the theory-derived determinants of students’ intentions to go for VCT. Significant differences appeared to exist between various groups of students with regard to their intention to go for VCT and the determinants of this intention. Questionnaire data indicate that students fear that if they were to test HIV positive, they would not be able to cope with the negative emotional, physical and social consequences. In as much as the tested brochure does not adequately address the determinants of students’ VCT uptake nor the available measures to cope with the negative consequences of testing HIV positive, the brochure had, as could be predicted, no impact on students’ intentions to go for VCT. The experimental data suggest that message designers should differentiate between segments of student audiences when designing messages to persuade them to go for VCT.
8. The effect of language style in message-based HIV preventions
Authors: Saal Elvis
Published: August 2014

A significant challenge for message-based HIV prevention and intervention campaigns is not only to determine what messages should be included but alsohow to deliver or design these messages (Yzer this volume). In this chapter the effect of language style (standard vs. the non-standard varieties) on source factors such as the source’s social attractiveness and expertise is examined in the context of document-mediated communication. The study was prompted by claims made by the loveLife campaign in South Africa that it speaks in a “language that young people relate to and understand” (loveLife 2003: 3). An authentic English text from loveLife was translated into Standard English and then translated by teenagers themselves into their teenager language. These three language varieties (the loveLife, Standard English and authentic teenager variety) were then examined in terms of their effect on source-receiver-similarity and liking of the language style, text enjoyment, social identity, the source’s social attractiveness and competence. The findings indicate that although participants tend to enjoy the text written in the authentic teenager variety more than the loveLife text and the Standard English text, they, surprisingly, show a greater dislike for the authentic teenager variety compared to Standard English.
A dental anthropological hypothesis relating to the ethnogenesis, origin, and antiquity of the Afro-Asiatic language family: Peopling of the Eurafrican-South Asian triangle IV
Authors: Turner II Christy G.
Published: August 2014

Diachronic comparisons of dental morphology in North and East African groups shows a marked difference through time in North Africa after the end of the Pleistocene. Further comparisons with archaeologically-derived Near Eastern dental samples suggest that the temporal changes in the North African teeth were due to population replacement or admixture from the north. On this basis, it is further suggested that Afro-Asiatic was introduced into Africa along with the migrating immigrant farmers and herdsmen from the Near East 10,000 to 7,000 years ago.
Current topics in human evolutionary genetics
Authors: Zegura Steven L.
Published: August 2014

Primate genomic data have become essential for the understanding of a number of topics related to our evolutionary history. For instance, they have provided new models for the actual speciation process that led to the divergence of the chimpanzee clade from our own evolutionary branch, a process that may have required millions of years and entailed extensive hybridization. New nuclear genetic data have also raised the possibility that some gene flow actually occurred between our species and other hominin groups as our ancestors colonized Eurasia. Hundreds of regions of our genome show the effects of natural selection over the last 50,000 years as people adapted to new environments during their global trek. Finally, genetic studies of the biological basis of language are accumulating rapidly and hold promise for identifying the ensemble of genetic changes responsible for what many linguists consider to be our chief behavioral apomorphy as a species … spoken language.
Some speculations on the evolution of language, and the language of evolution
Authors: Whitehouse Paul
Published: August 2014

The need for languages to be complete systems suggests that language evolution will be episodic rather than gradual, with periods of stability punctuated by periods of innovation. The example of nicaraguan sign language suggests that such developmental phases can be very rapid. Rapid evolution can create genetic bottlenecks. The differentiation between Homo sapiens and H. erectus was probably the result of a genetic bottleneck arising from the invention of language by part of the H. erectus population. This occurred in Africa, probably between 200 and 100 kyrs BP. The possession of fully complex language by every living human community suggests that it had already been developed by our H. Sapiens ancestors before they left Africa. The possession of complex language has allowed humans to participate in their own evolution in ways impossible for other animals.
Genetic and linguistic diversity in Central Asia
Authors: Heyer Evelyne , Mennecier Philippe
Published: August 2014

In this study, we used genetic and linguistic data that we collected in Central Asia, to better understand how genetic and linguistic diversity correlates in a contact zone. We assessed the levels of genetic differentiation with mitochondrial, Y-chromosomal and autosomal data from 26 populations (1300 individuals) from the two major linguistic groups in Central Asia: Indo-European and Altaic. We computed the linguistic distance between populations with lexical data from several individuals per population.Our results show that the genetic diversity in the area clearly clusters in two groups explained by the linguistic, one that includes the Indo-Iranian populations and the other one the Turkic populations except for Uzbek populations. Also, for two populations we have detected a shift in language that occurred likely through elite-dominance effect. Furthermore computing linguistic distances based on lexical data (Levenstein distance) we find a strong correlation between genetic distances and linguistic distances but no correlation between genetic and geographical distances.In conclusion, Central Asia is an area where linguistic but not geography correlates with genetic diversity, highlighting the importance of a cultural trait in shaping genetic diversity in our species.
The equivocation of form and notation in generative grammar
Authors: Beedham Christopher
Published: August 2014

Generative grammar is a misguided approach which makes two interrelated errors. Firstly, the generativists seem to believe that you can do science by assumption or postulation alone; the assumptions are never tested, because that is not the point. Secondly, the generativists seem to believe that notations are forms. They ‘formalize’ their assumptions in a notation, in the belief that by doing so they are producing formal theories which are scientific and explanatory. In fact, all they are doing is expressing the figments of their imagination in their own ad hoc notation, thus engaging in a process which is pseudo-scientific and trivial. The above critique is illustrated by the passive in English. It is shown that various problems raised by a voice analysis of the passive – deriving passives from an underlying active – are explained by analysing the passive as an aspect. Both these descriptive accounts of the passive are shown to be formal and explanatory, with notation and generative style assumptions playing no role in them whatsoever. Three generative accounts of the passive are then presented, all of which formalise the voice analysis, each with its own idiosyncratic assumptions, each with its own ad hoc notation, a notation consisting of symbols borrowed from mathematics, computer science, and logic, combined with a mixture of abbreviations, mnemonics, and drawings. It is argued that the generative accounts are notational variants of the voice analysis, an analysis which has been shown to be incorrect. It is further argued that the way to correct the voice analysis is not to construct ‘formal models’, but to seek a solution within descriptive linguistics, of which the aspect analysis is an example. The paper concludes with a brief mention of ‘the method of lexical exceptions’ as an example of a reinvigorated data oriented, descriptive and Saussurean linguistics.
Adequacy in documentation
Authors: Berge Anna
Published: August 2014

As more and more languages are becoming endangered, our notions of what it means to adequately document a language are changing. Further, while some languages remain undocumented, dictionaries, grammars, and texts are available for more and more languages, enabling researchers to broaden the scope of their documentation efforts. This article examines the question of adequacy in language documentation from a number of perspectives and proposes some general guiding principles for documentation efforts. Points of discussion include the interplay between documentation and description; the potential for diversity in all aspects of documentation, such as diversity of linguistic data, consultants, fieldworkers, and products; and the interaction of the different participants in documentation efforts.
Necessary and sufficient data collection
Authors: Buszard-Welcher Laura
Published: August 2014

In documenting an endangered language, one hopes to create a record that gives a good overall picture of the language in use, can serve as the basis for a well-rounded linguistic description, and that can be used for language revitalization, should that be desired. This paper presents an example from historical documentation of the Potawatomi Language, and illustrates a common choice by linguists to collect narrative text as the basis for grammatical and lexical description. Given limited time to be in the field, this practice is understandable. In this case, however, it created a gap in our knowledge that is difficult to fill today given the size of the extant speech community, and biases even the most basic grammatical description.
Using the E-MELD School of Best Practices to create lasting digital documentation
Authors: Boynton Jessica , Moran Steven , Aristar-Dry Helen , Aristar Anthony Rodrigues
Published: August 2014

The School of Best Practices is an online resource that describes how to create lasting digital documentation according to the standards developed by a community of linguists, archivists, and computer scientists. The School was developed as part of the NSF-sponsored E-MELD (Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data) project, an initiative undertaken to develop digital infrastructure for the documentation of endangered languages. Users of the School can access recommendations of digital best practices and simple instructions for using the technologies recommended. The School also offers case studies of exemplary digitization processes, and searchable databases of tools and bibliographic resources. This paper describes how to use the School in creating digital language documentation, emphasizing its role among existing documentation and archiving initiatives.
Illusions of colour and shadow
Authors: Kingdom Frederick A.A.
Published: August 2014

Colour (chromatic) vision not only tells us about the colour of surfaces but about the structure of the visual world. One way that colour vision informs us about scene structure is by helping decompose the scene into its material and illumination layers ability. This is underpinned by the visual system’s in-built knowledge that colour variations, and those luminance variations that are aligned with them, tend to be material in origin, whereas ‘pure’ luminance variations tend to arise from illumination. Evidence for such in-built knowledge is that shadows appear to be material in origin when strongly coloured, and colour variations enhance or suppress perceived shape-from-shading in luminance variations depending on their spatial relationships. These findings remind us that many of the benefits of colour vision only emerge when studying the interactions between colour and luminance rather than colour vision in isolation.
Universal trends and specific deviations
Authors: Bimler David
Published: August 2014

Some trends are well-established across the 110 languages surveyed in the World Color Survey (WCS): colour terms are not distributed arbitrarily through ‘colour space’, and, of all possible combinations of terms within a single language, only a few are encountered. WCS data were analyzed to examine departures from these overall trends. To this end, colour terms were represented as locations in a geometrical ‘colour-naming space’ by calculating the ‘co-extension’ or degree of overlap between each pair of terms and applying multidimensional scaling (MDS) to the resulting pattern of relationships. The three-dimensional MDS solution shows departures from the consensus colour-term boundaries as fine structure in the clustering of points. These departures are not completely random, but show some association with language affiliation within language families. The MDS solution also focuses attention on ‘wildcard’ terms, highlighting the role of such terms as transitional stages in models of colour-lexicon development.
Red herrings in a sea of data
Authors: Anderson Wendy
Published: August 2014

The Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech (SCOTS) is a multimedia corpus of Scottish texts, containing a wide range of written and spoken genres from 1945 to the present day. One application of the resource is the study of the use in context of lexical items. This paper explores ways of exploiting SCOTS to investigate the literal, metaphorical and idiomatic uses of colour terms in contemporary Scots. This involves using the integrated analysis tools to consider the collocational patterning of these terms. Other complementary online resources, such as the Dictionary of the Scots Language, are drawn on where appropriate to aid in the interrogation of the complex body of material in the corpus. The paper also outlines the issues involved in using a minority-language corpus for linguistic research.
Preliminary research on Turkish basic colour terms with an emphasis on blue
Authors: Rätsep Kaidi
Published: August 2014

This paper describes and discusses list and naming experiments designed to ascertain whether Turkish lacivert “dark blue” is a Basic Colour Term (BCT). In addition to the standard sixty-five Color-aid tiles selected by Davies and Corbett (1995), seventeen additional tiles from the purple-blue region of colour space were used for these tasks. Measured against Urmas Sutrop’s cognitive salience index (Sutrop 2001), lacivert attained high salience in the list task. However, the combined results suggest eleven Turkish BCTs (excluding lacivert): yeşil “green”, sarı “yellow”, siyah “black”, kırmızı “red”, mavi “blue”, beyaz “white”, mor “purple”, kahverengi “brown”, pembe “pink”, turuncu “orange” and gri “grey”. Lacivert remains a BCT candidate due to the additional tile used in the naming task, which emerged as dominant.
Colours in the community
Authors: Bramwell Ellen
Published: August 2014

The hundred most common surnames in Scotland include seven colour terms. Surnames developed from bynames, as extra names given to individuals to distinguish them from others of the same name. Bynames are still in use within some communities, including in some areas of Scotland. By investigating how colours are used in bynaming in a present-day community and comparing this diachronically with the colour bynames from which some surnames originated, it is possible to gain an insight into how people use colours in naming more generally. Interviews were used to investigate bynames synchronically in a close-knit community in the Western Isles of Scotland. This is a bilingual community where both Scottish Gaelic and English are spoken. Gaining examples from interviews, rather than written records, allows for a firmer understanding of why these names were bestowed. This can contribute towards explaining why and how colours were assigned to people in the past.
Investigating the underlying mechanisms of categorical perception of colour using the event-related potential technique
Authors: Clifford Alexandra , Franklin Anna , Holmes Amanda , Davies Ian R.L.
Published: August 2014

Categorical perception (CP) of colour is demonstrated by faster and more accurate discrimination of colours that cross a category boundary than equivalently spaced colours from the same colour category. Despite a plethora of behavioural research investigating the origin and nature of colour CP, the underlying mechanisms involved in the effect are still unresolved. A recent body of work has made use of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique, which involves the measurement of event-related brain potentials at the scalp, enabling exploration of the time course of neural processes that are involved in colour CP. The merits of the ERP technique are presented and five studies that have used this approach to investigate colour CP and colour categorization are reviewed. Each is discussed in relation to the debate about the origin and nature of colour category effects.
Perceiving “grue”
Authors: Walter Sebastian
Published: August 2014

Many languages have only one term for “green” and “blue”, generally called “grue”. Since they are especially spoken near the equator, Lindsay and Brown (2002) suggested that “grue” categories are caused by lens-brunescence, resulting from chronic exposure to high amounts of UV radiation. Due to increased lens aging bluish colours should appear greenish. Monitor-simulation experiments supported this hypothesis. However, the distribution of “grue” foci (Regier & Kay 2004) and the adaptation to lens yellowing in older observers (Hardy, Frederick, Kay & Werner 2005) contradicted the lens-brunescence hypothesis.This study reinvestigated the possible influence of aged, brunescent lenses on colour categorization, simulating aged lenses by means of filters. The filter simulation shows important differences to previous monitor simulations, and defuses arguments that were put forward against the lens-brunescence hypothesis.
Effects of lightness and saturation on color associations in the Mexican population
Authors: Prado-León Lilia R. , Rosales-Cinco Rosa Amelia
Published: August 2014

Fehrman and Ferhman (2001), mention that blue is associated with tranquility, security, comfort, depression, melancholy, relaxation, isolation, infinitude and cold. However, these data do not indicate specifications for saturation and lightness of the hue in question. Is it a dark blue of low saturation or a very saturated light blue? Which type of blue actually evokes the stated meanings? Basing itself on such questions, a cross-sectional paper and pencil survey (of nine colors in three different intensities and lightnesses) was conducted with 622 subjects. The results showed different meanings associated with the same hue when there were variations in lightness and saturation. All of the foregoing results indicate the importance of continued research into the attributes that cause a color’s associated meanings to vary. Knowing how (and perhaps why) these meanings vary with saturation and lightness should enable color to be used more effectively in all kinds of design applications.