The functional basis of case systems and declension classes: From latin to old french

The development of the Old French (OF) system of one or two cases and three declensions from the Classical Latin system of six cases and five declensions, via Vulgar Latin (VL), cannot be accounted for without reference to the syntax and semantics / pragmatics of the central grammatical relations of subject, object, attribute. It is argued in this paper that many VL/OF ‘analogical’ inflectional changes and re-distributions of nouns among existing or newly formed declension classes, changes that seem arbitrary from a purely morphological or phonological perspective, are determined by a general functional principle: overt relational distinctions are made (created or not abandoned) only if necessary in order to distinguish co-occurring term phrases and to identify their grammatical relation / semantic role, in so far as this is not possible on account of the pragmatic and semantic properties of these terms. This investigation also has implications with regard to the relationship between functionally based and grammaticalized relational encoding. Although the inflectional coding of each noun may be strictly grammaticalized rather than functionally variable, languages with declension classes do not a priori fall outside the scope of the functional principle; rather, it is this kind of nominal classification itself which has a functional rationale

Morphometric analyses of the visual pathways in macular degeneration

Introduction. Macular degeneration (MD) causes central visual field loss. When field defects occur in both eyes and overlap, parts of the visual pathways are no longer stimulated. Previous reports have shown that this affects the grey matter of the primary visual cortex, but possible effects on the preceding visual pathway structures have not been fully established. Method. In this multicentre study, we used high-resolution anatomical magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry to investigate the visual pathway structures up to the primary visual cortex of patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and juvenile macular degeneration (JMD). Results. Compared to age-matched healthy controls, in patients with JMD we found volumetric reductions in the optic nerves, the chiasm, the lateral geniculate bodies, the optic radiations and the visual cortex. In patients with AMD we found volumetric reductions in the lateral geniculate bodies, the optic radiations and the visual cortex. An unexpected finding was that AMD, but not JMD, was associated with a reduction in frontal white matter volume. Conclusion. MD is associated with degeneration of structures along the visual pathways. A reduction in frontal white matter volume only present in the AMD patients may constitute a neural correlate of previously reported association between AMD and mild cognitive impairment. Keywords: macular degeneration - visual pathway - visual field - voxel-based morphometryComment: appears in Cortex (2013

How Subjective Is the Subject?

This article re-examines the issue of grammatical relations in Mandarin Chinese in light of the results of recent large-scale typological research on grammatical relations (henceforth GRs) worldwide. Specifically, it discusses three syntactic operations and constructions that are cross-linguistically relevant to the definition of grammatical relations, namely relativisation, reflexivisation, and quantifier float. The study adopts a strictly language-internal typological approach and avails itself of natural linguistic data or sentences sanity-checked by native speakers. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, it explores the hypothesis that, in line with various other languages, GRs in Mandarin Chinese are construction-specific. Second, it proposes an alternative approach capable of explaining the conflicting evidence often pointed out in the literature on GRs and subjecthood in Mandarin Chinese

Surface-Based Analyses of Anatomical Properties of the Visual Cortex in Macular Degeneration

INTRODUCTION: Macular degeneration (MD) can cause a central visual field defect. In a previous study, we found volumetric reductions along the entire visual pathways of MD patients, possibly indicating degeneration of inactive neuronal tissue. This may have important implications. In particular, new therapeutic strategies to restore retinal function rely on intact visual pathways and cortex to reestablish visual function. Here we reanalyze the data of our previous study using surface-based morphometry (SBM) rather than voxel-based morphometry (VBM). This can help determine the robustness of the findings and will lead to a better understanding of the nature of neuroanatomical changes associated with MD. METHODS: The metrics of interest were acquired by performing SBM analysis on T1-weighted MRI data acquired from 113 subjects: patients with juvenile MD (JMD; n = 34), patients with age-related MD (AMD; n = 24) and healthy age-matched controls (HC; n = 55). RESULTS: Relative to age-matched controls, JMD patients showed a thinner cortex, a smaller cortical surface area and a lower grey matter volume in V1 and V2, while AMD patients showed thinning of the cortex in V2. Neither patient group showed a significant difference in mean curvature of the visual cortex. DISCUSSION: The thinner cortex, smaller surface area and lower grey matter volume in the visual cortex of JMD patients are consistent with our previous results showing a volumetric reduction in their visual cortex. Finding comparable results using two rather different analysis techniques suggests the presence of marked cortical degeneration in the JMD patients. In the AMD patients, we found a thinner cortex in V2 but not in V1. In contrast to our previous VBM analysis, SBM revealed no volumetric reductions of the visual cortex. This suggests that the cortical changes in AMD patients are relatively subtle, as they apparently can be missed by one of the methods

On Tesnière on the dual

Duals come and go almost everywhere, or have done so some time or other, but it is rare for such events to be chronicled so circumstantially as Lucien Tesnière did for Slovenian in his well-known chef-d'oeuvre of 1925. Tesniere's chief interest was to collect enough information to be able to chart comprehensively the dual's demise and partial renaissance in the varietie of Slovenian, dialectal as well as literary, and to identify the changes concerned as phonological, morphological (in particular analogical), or syntactic. Although he would sometimes compare Slovenian patterns and developments to others, especially Slavonic and Indo-European ones, he was reluctant to draw general conclusions from the particulars so amply at his disposal other than implicitly, occasionally hinting at "tendences" or "causes profondes" supposedly giving direction to the vagaries of phonetics and morphology