SN 1997bs in M66: Another Extragalactic Eta Carinae Analog?

We report on SN 1997bs in NGC 3627 (M66), the first supernova discovered by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search using the 0.75-m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT). Based on its early-time optical spectrum, SN 1997bs was classified as Type IIn. However, from the BVRI light curves obtained by KAIT early in the supernova's evolution, and F555W and F814W light curves obtained from Hubble Space Telescope archival WFPC2 images at late times, we question the identification of SN 1997bs as a bona fide supernova. We believe that it is more likely a super-outburst of a very massive luminous blue variable star, analogous to Eta Carinae, and similar to SN 1961V in NGC 1058 (Filippenko et al. 1995 [AJ, 110, 2261]) and SN 1954J (``Variable 12'') in NGC 2403 (Humphreys & Davidson 1994 [PASP, 106, 1025]). The progenitor may have survived the outburst, since the SN is seen in early 1998 at m_F555W=23.4, about 0.5 mag fainter than the progenitor identified by Van Dyk et al. (1999, [AJ, 118, 2331]) in a pre-discovery image. Based on analysis of its environment in the Hubble Space Telescope images, the progenitor was not in an H II region or association of massive stars. The recent discovery of additional objects with properties similar to those of SN 1997bs suggests that the heterogeneous class of Type IIn supernovae consists in part of ``impostors.''Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, to appear in the PASP (2000 Dec issue

L1 transfer in the acquisition of manner and path in Spanish by native speakers of English

In this article the authors argue that L1 transfer from English is not only important in the early stages of L2 acquisition of Spanish, but remains influential in later stages if there is not enough positive evidence for the learners to progress in their development (Lefebvre, White, & Jourdan, 2006). The findings are based on analyses of path and manner of movement in stories told by British students of Spanish (N = 68) of three different proficiency levels. Verbs that conflate motion and path, on the one hand, are mastered early, possibly because the existence of Latinate path verbs, such as enter and ascend in English, facilitate their early acquisition by British learners of Spanish. Contrary to the findings of Cadierno (2004) and Cadierno and Ruiz (2006), the encoding of manner, in particular in boundary crossing contexts, seems to pose enormous difficulties, even among students who had been abroad on a placement in a Spanish-speaking country prior to the data collection. An analysis of the frequency of manner verbs in Spanish corpora shows that one of the key reasons why students struggle with manner is that manner verbs are so infrequent in Spanish. The authors claim that scarce positive evidence in the language exposed to and little or no negative evidence are responsible for the long-lasting effect of transfer on the expression of manner

Operationalising and measuring language dominance

The paper offers a new way to measure language ability in bilinguals, based on measures of lexical richness. The validity of proposed approach is tested in a variety of ways

Assumptions behind grammatical approaches to code-switching: when the blueprint is a red herring

Many of the so-called ‘grammars’ of code-switching are based on various underlying assumptions, e.g. that informal speech can be adequately or appropriately described in terms of ‘‘grammar’’; that deep, rather than surface, structures are involved in code-switching; that one ‘language’ is the ‘base’ or ‘matrix’; and that constraints derived from existing data are universal and predictive. We question these assumptions on several grounds. First, ‘grammar’ is arguably distinct from the processes driving speech production. Second, the role of grammar is mediated by the variable, poly-idiolectal repertoires of bilingual speakers. Third, in many instances of CS the notion of a ‘base’ system is either irrelevant, or fails to explain the facts. Fourth, sociolinguistic factors frequently override ‘grammatical’ factors, as evidence from the same language pairs in different settings has shown. No principles proposed to date account for all the facts, and it seems unlikely that ‘grammar’, as conventionally conceived, can provide definitive answers. We conclude that rather than seeking universal, predictive grammatical rules, research on CS should focus on the variability of bilingual grammars

The Type Ia Aupernova 1997br in ESO 576-G40

The peculiar type Ia supernova SN 1997br in ESO576-G40 was extensively observed at Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) and Lick Observatory. In this paper, we present and discuss the BV RI photometry and the spectra collected over three months, starting from 9 days before maximum brightness. The light curves of SN 1997br are similar to those of SN 1991T, with slow decline rates after the B maximum. Well sampled data before the B maximum show unambiguously that SN 1997br rises more slowly and has a wider peak than normal type Ia supernovae. The optical color evolution of SN 1997br is also similar to that of SN 1991T. We estimate the extinction of SN 1997br to be E(B −V )=0.35±0.10 by comparing its BV RI light curves to those of SN 1991T and by measuring the equivalent width of interstellar Na I D absorption lines. We have conducted a thorough comparison of the spectroscopic evolution of SN 1997br, SN 1991T, and SN 1994D. Although SN 1997br is generally very similar to SN 1991T, it shows some interesting differences at various epochs. Spectra of SN 1997br seem to indicate an earlier transition to the dominant phase of Fe peak elements after the B maximum. Si II lines in SN 1997br show a very short duration after the B maximum. We discuss the implications of our observations of SN 1997br for models of type Ia supernovae. Specifically, we suggest that some SNe Ia may result from decelerated detonations of white dwarfs. (Refer to PDF file for exact formulas)

The role of statistical learning in the acquisition of motion event construal in a second language

Learning to talk about motion in a second language is very difficult because it involves restructuring deeply entrenched patterns from the first language (Slobin 1996). In this paper we argue that statistical learning (Saffran et al. 1997) can explain why L2 learners are only partially successful in restructuring their second language grammars. We explore to what extent L2 learners make use of two mechanisms of statistical learning, entrenchment and pre-emption (Boyd and Goldberg 2011) to acquire target-like expressions of motion and retreat from overgeneralisation in this domain. Paying attention to the frequency of existing patterns in the input can help learners to adjust the frequency with which they use path and manner verbs in French but is insufficient to acquire the boundary crossing constraint (Slobin and Hoiting 1994) and learn what not to say. We also look at the role of language proficiency and exposure to French in explaining the findings