Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis

A number of languages have impersonal passives, a phenome-non illustrated by the following sentences of Dutch: (1) Er wordt door de kinderen op het ijs geschaatst. 'It is skated by the children on the ice.' (2) a. Door de kinderen wordt (er) op het ijs geschaatst. 'By the children it is skated on the ice.' b. Op het ijs wordt (er) door de kinderen geschaatst. 'On the ice it is skated by the children' These sentences have passive morphology- that is, the verb is in the past participial form, accompanied by the auxiliary verb worden, and the initial 1 is marked with the preposition door, which ~arks Passive chomeurs in Dutch. (1) also features the dummy er, where it shields the verb from clause-initial posi-tion. Different varieties of Dutch differ with respect to whether or not er appears in sentences such as those in (2), where some other element of the clause shields the verb from initial position. The distribution of er in such sentences has been studied for two varieties of Dutch by Maling and Zaenen (to appear). Although the universal characterization of impersonal pas-sives in §3 is claimed to be valid for all kinds of impersonal passives, this paper will be concerned exclusively with imper-sonal passives of:Lntransi ti ve clauses, ignoring the impersonal passives of transitive clauses that exist in many languages. 2. The Theoretical Issues Some linguists have recently based some rather far-reaching claims about syntax on impersonal passives. For example, Keena

Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis

In this paper I give one argument in favor of the advancement analysis of impersonal passives over the demotion analysis. The argument is based on the interaction of this phenomenon with an independently motivated hypothesis about linguistic structure, the Unaccusative Hypothesis

Working 1s and Inversion in Italian, Japanese, and Quechua

Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1979), pp. 277-32

Toward a Universal Characterization of Passivization

Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1977), pp. 394-41

Precise Mass Determination of SPT-CL J2106-5844, the Most Massive Cluster at z \u3e 1

We present a detailed high-resolution weak-lensing study of SPT-CL J2106-5844 at z = 1.132, claimed to be the most massive system discovered at z \u3e 1 in the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev–Zel\u27dovich survey. Based on the deep imaging data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope, we find that the cluster mass distribution is asymmetric, composed of a main clump and a subclump ~640 kpc west thereof. The central clump is further resolved into two smaller northwestern and southeastern substructures separated by ~150 kpc. We show that this rather complex mass distribution is more consistent with the cluster galaxy distribution than a unimodal distribution as previously presented. The northwestern substructure coincides with the brightest cluster galaxy and the X-ray peak while the southeastern one agrees with the location of the peak in number density. These morphological features and the comparison with the X-ray emission suggest that the cluster might be a merging system. We estimate the virial mass of the cluster to be , where the second error bar is the systematic uncertainty. Our result confirms that the cluster SPT-CL J2106-5844 is indeed the most massive cluster at z \u3e 1 known to date. We demonstrate the robustness of this mass estimate by performing a number of tests with different assumptions on the centroids, mass–concentration relations, and sample variance

Identification of PKD1L1 Gene Variants in Children with the Biliary Atresia Splenic Malformation Syndrome

Biliary atresia (BA) is the most common cause of end‐stage liver disease in children and the primary indication for pediatric liver transplantation, yet underlying etiologies remain unknown. Approximately 10% of infants affected by BA exhibit various laterality defects (heterotaxy) including splenic abnormalities and complex cardiac malformations — a distinctive subgroup commonly referred to as the biliary atresia splenic malformation (BASM) syndrome. We hypothesized that genetic factors linking laterality features with the etiopathogenesis of BA in BASM patients could be identified through whole exome sequencing (WES) of an affected cohort. DNA specimens from 67 BASM subjects, including 58 patient‐parent trios, from the NIDDK‐supported Childhood Liver Disease Research Network (ChiLDReN) underwent WES. Candidate gene variants derived from a pre‐specified set of 2,016 genes associated with ciliary dysgenesis and/or dysfunction or cholestasis were prioritized according to pathogenicity, population frequency, and mode of inheritance. Five BASM subjects harbored rare and potentially deleterious bi‐allelic variants in polycystin 1‐like 1, PKD1L1, a gene associated with ciliary calcium signaling and embryonic laterality determination in fish, mice and humans. Heterozygous PKD1L1 variants were found in 3 additional subjects. Immunohistochemical analysis of liver from the one BASM subject available revealed decreased PKD1L1 expression in bile duct epithelium when compared to normal livers and livers affected by other non‐cholestatic diseases. Conclusion WES identified bi‐allelic and heterozygous PKD1L1 variants of interest in 8 BASM subjects from the ChiLDReN dataset. The dual roles for PKD1L1 in laterality determination and ciliary function suggest that PKD1L1 is a new, biologically plausible, cholangiocyte‐expressed candidate gene for the BASM syndrome

Improving Highway Work Zone Safety

Highway work zones disrupt normal traffic flow and can create severe safety problems. Due to the rising needs in highway maintenance and construction in the United States, the number of work zones is increasing nationwide. With a total of 1,010 fatalities and more than 40,000 injuries occurring in 2006, improvements in work zone safety are necessary. The three primary objectives of this research project included: 1) to determine the effectiveness of a Portable Changeable Message Sign (PCMS) in reducing vehicle speeds on two-lane, rural highway work zones; 2) to determine the effectiveness of a Temporary Traffic Sign (TTS), (W20-1, “Road Work Ahead”); and 3) to determine motorists’ responses to the signage. To accomplish these objectives, field experiments were conducted at US-36 and US-73 in Seneca and Hiawatha, Kansas, respectively. During the field experiments, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the PCMS was conducted under three different conditions: 1) PCMS on; 2) PCMS off, but still visible; and 3) PCMS removed from the road and out of sight. The researchers also divided the vehicles into three classes (passenger car, truck, and semitrailer) and compared the mean speed change of these classes based on three different sign setups: PCMS on, PCMS off, and the use of the TTS (W20-1, “Road Work Ahead”). A survey was also conducted at the experimental work zones to obtain a general understanding of the motorists’ attitudes as they traveled through the construction areas. Based on the data analysis results, researchers concluded that the presence of the PCMS effectively reduced vehicle speeds on two-lane highway work zones. A slow speed is more likely to reduce the probability of a crash or the severity of a crash. In addition, researchers performed a univariate analysis of the variance test to determine if a significant interaction existed between motorists’ responses and the sign conditions. The results showed a significant interaction between the signs and passenger car vehicles