Third Person References: Forms and Functions in Two Spoken Genres of Spanish

This volume, a case study on the grammar of third person references in two genres of spoken Ecuadorian Spanish, examines from a discourse-analytic perspective how genre affects linguistic patterns and how researchers can look for and interpret genre effects. This marks a timely contribution to corpus linguistics, as many linguists are choosing to work with empirical data. Corpus based approaches have many advantages and are useful in the comparison of different languages as well as varieties of the same language, but what is often overlooked in such comparisons is the genre of language under examination. As this case study shows, genre is an important factor in interpreting patterns and distributions of forms. The book also contributes toward theories of anaphora, referentiality and Preferred Argument Structure. It is relevant for scholars who work with referentiality, genre differences, third person references, and interactional linguistics, as well as those interested in Spanish morphosyntax. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1096/thumbnail.jp

Another Look at the Present Perfect in an Andean Variety of Spanish: Grammaticalization and Evidentiality in Quiteño Spanish

The existence of an extensive body of literature on the Present Perfect (PP), both Spanish-specific (cf. Alarcos Llorach 1947, Copple 2011, Escobar 1997, Gili Gaya 1972, Howe 2013, Rodríguez Louro 2009, Schwenter 1994, Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos 2008, inter alia) and cross-linguistic studies (cf. Bybee, Perkins, & Pagliuca, 1994, Comrie 1976 Harris, 1982, Squartini & Bertinetto 2000, inter alia), attests to the complexity of accurately describing the uses, meanings and functions of the PP. Among the studies of the PP in Spanish, two main approaches are employed. In one approach, the grammaticalization, analysis of temporal and aspectual uses of the PP are emphasized, and the PP is often examined in relation to the Preterit (Pret) (cf. Copple 2009, 2011, Hernández 2004, Howe & Schwenter 2003, Jara Yupanqui 2006, Rodríguez Louro & Howe 2010, Rodríguez Louro & Jara Yupanqui 2011, Schwenter 1994, Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos 2008, Serrano 1994, 1996, inter alia). Another approach focuses on non-temporal and non-aspectual uses of the PP, with particular attention to contact situations that appear to have produced innovative evidential uses of the PP (cf. Escobar 1997, Klee & Ocampo 1995, Mendoza 1991, Rojas-Sosa 2008, Stratford 1991, inter alia). The specific goals of this paper are to situate the grammaticalization of the Quiteño PP in relation to that of other varieties of Spanish, and to quantitatively test claims that the PP in this variety has acquired evidential meaning. [excerpt

Using the Variationist Comparative Method to Examine the Role of Language Contact in Synthetic and Periphrastic Verbs in Spanish

Language contact and linguistic change are thought to go hand in hand (e.g. Silva-Corvalán 1994), however there are methodological obstacles, such as collecting data at different points in time or the availability of monolingual data for comparison, that make claims about language change tenuous. The present study draws on two different corpora of spoken Spanish — bilingual New Mexican Spanish and monolingual Ecuadorian Spanish — in order to quantitatively assess the convergence hypothesis in which contact with English has produced a change to the Spanish verbal system, as reflected in an extension of the Present and Past Progressive forms at the expense of the synthetic Simple Present and Imperfect forms. The data do not show that the Spanish spoken by the bilinguals is changing to more closely resemble the analogous English progressive constructions, but instead suggest potential weakening of linguistic constraints on the conditioning of the variation between periphrastic and synthetic forms

NPS IN CONVERSATION AND NARRATIVES: THE EFFECTS OF GENRE, INFORMATION FLOW AND INTERACTION

This dissertation investigates the grammar of noun phrases as produced in two genres (spontaneous conversations and Pear Film narratives) of spoken Ecuadorian Spanish. As speakers converse and narrate, they make choices about what form (full NP, pronoun, unexpressed) to use for a noun in a particular context, how to best modify that noun (choice of article and other determiners) and what syntactic role to use; this is a study of the different factors that motivate those decisions. The patterns of use described here show that noun phrase grammar is shaped by the need to track referents and also by a variety of other dialogic interactional needs. On the one hand, speakers must manage the flow of information in a way that communicates what information is new or old, whether or not referents are presumed to be shared or not, and which NPs represent entities (referential NPs) and which perform other discourse functions (non-referential NPs). The grammar of a NP shows the routinized coding of these factors. On the other hand, during the course of a conversation, speakers are also navigating the interactional dimensions of communication, such as turn-taking, expressing stance and attitude, agreeing and disagreeing. The grammar of an NP is also influenced by these interactional factors. It is through the comparison of two genres that a fuller understanding of these different and sometimes competing motivations and their grammatical consequences is achieved

Surprisingly Strong K-band Emission Found in Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei

We examine the near-infrared (NIR) emission from low-luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs). Our galaxy sample includes 15 objects with detected 2-10 keV X-ray emission, dynamical black hole mass estimates from the literature, and available Gemini/NIFS integral field spectroscopy (IFU) data. We find evidence for red continuum components at the center of most galaxies, consistent with the hot dust emission seen in higher luminosity AGN. We decompose the spectral data cubes into a stellar and continuum component, assuming the continuum component comes from thermal emission from hot dust. We detect nuclear thermal emission in 14 out of 15 objects. This emission causes weaker CO absorption lines and redder continuum ($2.05-2.28\:\mu$m) in our $K$-band data, as expected from hot dust around an AGN. The NIR emission is clearly correlated with the 2-10 keV X-ray flux, with a Spearman coefficient of $r_{spearman}=0.69$ suggesting a $>99\%$ significance of correlation, providing further evidence of an AGN origin. Our sample has typical X-ray and NIR fluxes $3-4$ orders of magnitude less luminous than previous work studying the NIR emission from AGN. We find that the ratio of NIR to X-ray emission increases towards lower Eddington ratios. The NIR emission in our sample is often brighter than the X-ray emission, with our $K$-band AGN luminosities comparable to or greater than the 2-10 keV X-ray luminosities in all objects with Eddington ratios below $0.01\%$. The nature of this LLAGN NIR emission remains unclear, with one possibility being an increased contribution from jet emission at these low luminosities. These observations suggest JWST will be a useful tool for detecting the lowest luminosity AGN.Comment: Submitted to ApJ, manuscript after resubmissio

Legal and other institutional aspects of groundwater governance

This chapter defines the linked concepts of groundwater governance and groundwater management, explaining how they differ from each other. Then, it describes the prevailing legal instruments for, and the institutional aspects of, groundwater management and governance

IRIM at TRECVID2009: High Level Feature Extraction

International audienceThe IRIM group is a consortium of French teams working on Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval. This paper describes our participation to the TRECVID 2009 High Level Features detection task. We evaluated a large number of different descriptors (on TRECVID 2008 data) and tried different fusion strategies, in particular hierarchical fusion and genetic fusion. The best IRIM run has a Mean Inferred Average Precision of 0.1220, which is significantly above TRECVID 2009 HLF detection task median performance. We found that fusion of the classification scores from different classifier types improves the performance and that even with a quite low individual performance, audio descriptors can help

Identification of new genetic susceptibility loci for breast cancer through consideration of gene-environment interactions

Genes that alter disease risk only in combination with certain environmental exposures may not be detected in genetic association analysis. By using methods accounting for gene-environment (G × E) interaction, we aimed to identify novel genetic loci associated with breast cancer risk. Up to 34,475 cases and 34,786 controls of European ancestry from up to 23 studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium were included. Overall, 71,527 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), enriched for association with breast cancer, were tested for interaction with 10 environmental risk factors using three recently proposed hybrid methods and a joint test of association and interaction. Analyses were adjusted for age, study, population stratification, and confounding factors as applicable. Three SNPs in two independent loci showed statistically significant association: SNPs rs10483028 and rs2242714 in perfect linkage disequilibrium on chromosome 21 and rs12197388 in ARID1B on chromosome 6. While rs12197388 was identified using the joint test with parity and with age at menarche (P-values = 3 × 10(−07)), the variants on chromosome 21 q22.12, which showed interaction with adult body mass index (BMI) in 8,891 postmenopausal women, were identified by all methods applied. SNP rs10483028 was associated with breast cancer in women with a BMI below 25 kg/m(2) (OR = 1.26, 95% CI 1.15–1.38) but not in women with a BMI of 30 kg/m(2) or higher (OR = 0.89, 95% CI 0.72–1.11, P for interaction = 3.2 × 10(−05)). Our findings confirm comparable power of the recent methods for detecting G × E interaction and the utility of using G × E interaction analyses to identify new susceptibility loci

Genetic predisposition to in situ and invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast.

Invasive lobular breast cancer (ILC) accounts for 10-15% of all invasive breast carcinomas. It is generally ER positive (ER+) and often associated with lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS). Genome-wide association studies have identified more than 70 common polymorphisms that predispose to breast cancer, but these studies included predominantly ductal (IDC) carcinomas. To identify novel common polymorphisms that predispose to ILC and LCIS, we pooled data from 6,023 cases (5,622 ILC, 401 pure LCIS) and 34,271 controls from 36 studies genotyped using the iCOGS chip. Six novel SNPs most strongly associated with ILC/LCIS in the pooled analysis were genotyped in a further 516 lobular cases (482 ILC, 36 LCIS) and 1,467 controls. These analyses identified a lobular-specific SNP at 7q34 (rs11977670, OR (95%CI) for ILC = 1.13 (1.09-1.18), P = 6.0 × 10(-10); P-het for ILC vs IDC ER+ tumors = 1.8 × 10(-4)). Of the 75 known breast cancer polymorphisms that were genotyped, 56 were associated with ILC and 15 with LCIS at P<0.05. Two SNPs showed significantly stronger associations for ILC than LCIS (rs2981579/10q26/FGFR2, P-het = 0.04 and rs889312/5q11/MAP3K1, P-het = 0.03); and two showed stronger associations for LCIS than ILC (rs6678914/1q32/LGR6, P-het = 0.001 and rs1752911/6q14, P-het = 0.04). In addition, seven of the 75 known loci showed significant differences between ER+ tumors with IDC and ILC histology, three of these showing stronger associations for ILC (rs11249433/1p11, rs2981579/10q26/FGFR2 and rs10995190/10q21/ZNF365) and four associated only with IDC (5p12/rs10941679; rs2588809/14q24/RAD51L1, rs6472903/8q21 and rs1550623/2q31/CDCA7). In conclusion, we have identified one novel lobular breast cancer specific predisposition polymorphism at 7q34, and shown for the first time that common breast cancer polymorphisms predispose to LCIS. We have shown that many of the ER+ breast cancer predisposition loci also predispose to ILC, although there is some heterogeneity between ER+ lobular and ER+ IDC tumors. These data provide evidence for overlapping, but distinct etiological pathways within ER+ breast cancer between morphological subtypes