Wh-headlines in German. What they communicate and whether they optimize relevance

This paper is about a particular wh-clause type in German that is restricted in its usage to headlines. This clause type, exemplified by the newspaper headline Wie Kassen an Kranken verdienen (‘How health insurance companies make money on sick people’), formally looks like an embedded interrogative wh-clause, but is used independently as a headline with a particular, non-questioning illocution. The main question raised in this paper is how the illocution of wh-headlines is to be specified, and how it can be accounted for. The paper suggests an analysis of wh-headlines as both backward- and forward-referring means that are very well-suited to fulfill the two main functions of headlines, namely, to arouse the reader’s interest and to direct the reader’s attention to the subsequent text. The complex illocution of wh-headlines is derived from an interaction between formal properties of the clause type and contextual restrictions. In the final section of the paper, the more general question is raised whether wh-headlines can be regarded as relevance optimizers, as has been suggested for other kinds of newspaper headlines. This question is discussed based on a comparison between wh-headlines, assertive headlines and click baits

Serielle Narration als Konstruktion.: Studien an Bilderbüchern für Vorschulkinder

This paper aims at examining in detail a specific narrative pattern that is often found in picturebook stories for preschool children, namely, serial narration, or narration with repeated sequences. It is argued that serial narration is a form of linguistic routinization at the level of an actual text exemplar, by which a recurrent textual pattern emerges sequentially. In the first part of the paper, I analyze a number of both traditional and contemporary picturebooks and show that a key feature is repetition with variation at the level of the episode. In the second part of the paper, I investigate potential implications of the systematic utilization of serial narration for language acquisition

Contextually enriched argument linking.

Klein U. Contextually enriched argument linking. In: Finkbeiner R, Meibauer J, Schumacher P, eds. What is a Context?. Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 196. Vol 196. Amsterdam : John Benjamins Pub. Co.; 2012: 199-228

Wh-Überschriften im Deutschen und Englischen: eine explorative kontrastive Studie zu ihrer Form und textstrukturierenden Funktion in Pressetexten

Ziel des Beitrags ist es, die Verwendung kanonischer und nicht-kanonischer Syntax von wh-Überschriften in der deutschen und britischen Presse im Rahmen einer explorativen kontrastiven Studie zu untersuchen und Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede hinsichtlich der textstrukturierenden Funktion dieser Überschriften zu diskutieren. Wir gehen von der Annahme aus, dass wh-Überschriften beider Realisierungsformen als Framesetter fungieren, die das Makrotopik des Textes indizieren, dass aber die verschiedenen Formen eine je unterschiedliche Erwartungshaltung in Bezug auf Struktur des folgenden Textes wecken. Diese Annahme überprüfen wir anhand einer quantitativen Untersuchung der Distribution beider syntaktischer wh-Varianten sowie der darin enthaltenen wh-Proformen und anhand von qualitativen Detailstudien zur Textstruktur ausgewählter deutscher und britischer Pressetexte. Der kontrastive Ansatz deckt globale Unterschiede zwischen kanonischen und nicht-kanonischen wh-Überschriften auf, die sich in beiden Pressediskursen zeigen, wobei sich insbesondere in Bezug auf Frequenz und Wahl von wh-Proformen gewisse sprachspezifische Unterschiede ergeben

Optical and Radio Properties of Extragalactic Sources Observed by the FIRST and SDSS Surveys

We discuss the optical and radio properties of 30,000 FIRST sources positionally associated with an SDSS source in 1230 deg$^2$ of sky. The majority (83%) of the FIRST sources identified with an SDSS source brighter than r=21 are optically resolved. We estimate an upper limit of 5% for the fraction of quasars with broad-band optical colors indistinguishable from those of stars. The distribution of quasars in the radio flux -- optical flux plane supports the existence of the "quasar radio-dichotomy"; 8% of all quasars with i<18.5 are radio-loud and this fraction seems independent of redshift and optical luminosity. The radio-loud quasars have a redder median color by 0.08 mag, and a 3 times larger fraction of objects with red colors. FIRST galaxies represent 5% of all SDSS galaxies with r<17.5, and 1% for r<20, and are dominated by red galaxies. Magnitude and redshift limited samples show that radio galaxies have a different optical luminosity distribution than non-radio galaxies selected by the same criteria; when galaxies are further separated by their colors, this result remains valid for both blue and red galaxies. The distributions of radio-to-optical flux ratio are similar for blue and red galaxies in redshift-limited samples; this similarity implies that the difference in their luminosity functions, and resulting selection effects, are the dominant cause for the preponderance of red radio galaxies in flux-limited samples. We confirm that the AGN-to-starburst galaxy number ratio increases with radio flux, and find that radio emission from AGNs is more concentrated than radio emission from starburst galaxies (abridged).Comment: submitted to AJ, color gif figures, PS figures available from [email protected]

The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version

IAFSS agenda 2030 for a fire safe world

The International Association of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) is comprised of members from some 40 countries. This paper presents the Association's thinking, developed by the Management Committee, concerning pressing research needs for the coming 10 years presented as the IAFSS Agenda 2030 for a Fire Safe World. The research needs are couched in terms of two broad Societal Grand Challenges: (1) climate change, resiliency and sustainability and (2) population growth, urbanization and globalization. The two Societal Grand Challenges include significant fire safety components, that lead both individually and collectively to the need for a number of fire safety and engineering research activities and actions. The IAFSS has identified a list of areas of research and actions in response to these challenges. The list is not exhaustive, and actions within actions could be defined, but this paper does not attempt to cover all future needs

Regulatory sites for splicing in human basal ganglia are enriched for disease-relevant information

Genome-wide association studies have generated an increasing number of common genetic variants associated with neurological and psychiatric disease risk. An improved understanding of the genetic control of gene expression in human brain is vital considering this is the likely modus operandum for many causal variants. However, human brain sampling complexities limit the explanatory power of brain-related expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and allele-specific expression (ASE) signals. We address this, using paired genomic and transcriptomic data from putamen and substantia nigra from 117 human brains, interrogating regulation at different RNA processing stages and uncovering novel transcripts. We identify disease-relevant regulatory loci, find that splicing eQTLs are enriched for regulatory information of neuron-specific genes, that ASEs provide cell-specific regulatory information with evidence for cellular specificity, and that incomplete annotation of the brain transcriptome limits interpretation of risk loci for neuropsychiatric disease. This resource of regulatory data is accessible through our web server, http://braineacv2.inf.um.es/

Genome-wide Analyses Identify KIF5A as a Novel ALS Gene

To identify novel genes associated with ALS, we undertook two lines of investigation. We carried out a genome-wide association study comparing 20,806 ALS cases and 59,804 controls. Independently, we performed a rare variant burden analysis comparing 1,138 index familial ALS cases and 19,494 controls. Through both approaches, we identified kinesin family member 5A (KIF5A) as a novel gene associated with ALS. Interestingly, mutations predominantly in the N-terminal motor domain of KIF5A are causative for two neurodegenerative diseases: hereditary spastic paraplegia (SPG10) and Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2 (CMT2). In contrast, ALS-associated mutations are primarily located at the C-terminal cargo-binding tail domain and patients harboring loss-of-function mutations displayed an extended survival relative to typical ALS cases. Taken together, these results broaden the phenotype spectrum resulting from mutations in KIF5A and strengthen the role of cytoskeletal defects in the pathogenesis of ALS.Peer reviewe