Simplification or complexification : auxiliary selection and anti-agreement effect in Brazilian Venetan

In this paper we discuss a change in the auxiliary selectional pattern of Brazilian Venetan, a heritage Italo-Romance variety spoken in southern Brazil. Venetan varieties display a default form of the past participle in constructions with postverbal subjects and a fully agreeing form in constructions with preverbal subjects: this is true both for the homeland varieties of the language, spoken in northern Italy, as well as for the heritage variety under analysis in this paper, spoken in southern Brazil. A crucial difference emerges in unaccusative constructions: while Italian Venetan uses the same form of the auxiliary BE in presence of preverbal and postverbal subjects, Brazilian Venetan uses a specialized form of the auxiliary in the constructions with default agreement on the past participle, when postverbal subjects are present. We argue that the specialized auxiliary form emerges as a necessary resumption in the case of lack of agreement. The heritage variety becomes, therefore, morphosyntactically more complex than the non-heritage counterpart.En aquest article analitzem un canvi en el patró de selecció de l'auxiliar del vènet brasiler, una varietat d'herència italo-romànica parlada al sud del Brasil. Les varietats vènetes mostren una forma predeterminada del participi passat en construccions amb subjectes postverbals i una forma totalment concordada en construccions amb subjectes preverbals: això és cert tant per a les varietats de la llengua nativa, parlades al nord d'Itàlia, com per a la varietat d'herència parlada al sud del Brasil que s'analitza en aquest article. En les construccions inacusatives es produeix una diferència crucial: mentre que el vènet italià fa servir la mateixa forma de l'auxiliar 'ser' en presència de subjectes preverbals i postverbals, el vènet brasiler fa servir una forma especialitzada de l'auxiliar en les construccions amb concordança per defecte del participi passat, amb subjectes postverbals. Argumentem que la forma auxiliar especialitzada sorgeix com una represa necessària en cas de manca de concordança La varietat d'herència esdevé, doncs, morfosintàcticament més complexa que la variant nativa

Brazilian Venetan is going leísta

This paper discusses language variation in heritage languages, focussing on a peculiar use of the dative clitic ghe in Brazilian Venetan, a heritage northern Italo-Romance variety. Corpus data and grammaticality judgments by native speakers showed that, unlike homeland varieties of Venetan, the clitic is used in doubling constructions with both indirect and direct objects. Conversely, accusative clitics do not appear in doubling constructions in Brazilian Venetan, but are limited to cases of resumption of dislocated constituents. This phenomenon is compared to a parallel use of dative clitics with direct objects in some previously described leísta varieties of Spanish. I will show that the type of variation attested in Brazilian Venetan accusative and dative clitics depends on different conditions on cliticisation of the two elements. Specifically, while accusative clitics are pronouns that undergo a morphological process of incorporation, dative clitics are merged as agreement markers on the finite verb. The analysis also captures a diachronic change in the distribution of dative clitics in the diachrony of Venetan

Subject Clitics in Microcontact: A Case Study from Heritage Friulian in Argentina and Brazil

In this paper we present data from first generation immigrants (G1) and second and third generation heritage speakers of Friulian, a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in North-Eastern Italy and also found in Argentina and Brazil. The target phenomenon is subject clitics (SCL s). We show that SCL s in heritage Friulian are in a process of being reanalyzed from being agreement markers to pronouns. While SCL s are obligatory in Friulian as spoken in Italy, they are often dropped in heritage Friulian in Argentina and Brazil; this phenomenon, we argue, needs to be interpreted as the drop of pronominal subjects, and not of agreement-like SCL s. We also demonstrate that the use of SCL s (reanalyzed as pronominal subjects) is conditioned both by grammatical factors (it happens more in some grammatical persons than in others) and by discourse factors (they are used more in the case of a continuation topic than in other topicalization contexts). This means that in heritage Friulian, discourse constraints on the expression of subjects are not being lost or weakened; in fact, against the general grammaticalization trend of pronominal forms, new discourse constraints are introduced

Documenting Italo-Romance minority languages in the Americas: Problems and tentative solutions

This article describes the process of preparation and implementation of a data collection enterprise targeting Italo-Romance emigrant languages in North and South America. This data collection is part of the ERC Microcontact project, which aims to understand language change in contact by examining the language of Italian communities in the Americas

Effects of ischemic preconditioning and cilostazol on muscle ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats

PURPOSE: To evaluate effects of ischemic preconditioning and Cilostazol on muscle ischemia-reperfusion injury.METHODS: Male Wistar rats were submitted to muscle ischemic and reperfusion injury (4h of the left common iliac artery occlusion followed by 1h of reperfusion). Five experimental groups were constituted: Control group (n=4); Ischemia-Reperfusion (IR, n=5); Ischemic preconditioning group (IP, n=6); Ischemia-Reperfusion group treated with cilostazol (IRCi, n=6) and Ischemic preconditioning group treated with cilostazol (IPCi, n=6). At the end, left gracile muscle was removed and embedded in paraffin. Histopathology, neutrophil infiltration, myocyte necrosis and edema were analyzed.RESULTS: When compared with the control group, IR group showed increased neutrophil infiltration, severe necrosis and edema. There was significant difference between myocytes necrosis of IR group and IP group. There was no difference between the histopathological changes between IP, IRCi and IPCi groups.CONCLUSIONS: the model of IR caused severe muscle injury in the rat hind limb and ischemic preconditioning has a protective effect, reducing myocyte necrosis, however, treatment with cilostazol and also the association between cilostazol and preconditioning has no protective effect on the skeletal muscle subjected to ischemia and reperfusion injury.Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Surg, Surg Tech Lab, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Surg, Surg Tech Lab, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Tratamento Cirúrgico Conservador do Câncer de Mama

Nos últimos 15 anos o tratamento cirúrgico do câncer de mama foi revolucionado por alguns novos conceitos na história natural destes tumores. A impossibilidade de controlar a doença com uma cirurgia alargada, a identificação de tumores cada vez menores com o uso da mamografia, a possibilidade da "paciente atual" participar da escolha do tratamento, criaram as condições para um tratamento conservador. Os resultados retrospectivos e, especialmente, prospectivos, dos estudos sobre o tratamento conservador têm demonstrado que a terapia de combinação pode fornecer um adequado controle local do tumor. O Trial 1 de Milão, comparando a mastectomia de Halsted versus a QUART(quadrantectomia, dissecção axilare radioterapia), forneceu uma importante contribuição mostrando não existir diferenças na sobrevida global, período livre de doença e recidivas locais entre os dois tipos de tratamento

Predictors of stigma in a sample of mental health professionals: Network and moderator analysis on gender, years of experience, personality traits, and levels of burnout

Abstract Background. Stigma is one of the most important barriers to help-seeking and to personal recovery for people suffering from mental disorders. Stigmatizing attitudes are present among mental health professionals with negative effects on the quality of health care. Methods. Network and moderator analysis were used to identify what path determines stigma, considering demographic and professional variables, personality traits, and burnout dimensions in a sample of mental health professionals (n = 318) from six Community Mental Health Services. The survey included the Attribution Questionnaire-9, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory. Results. The personality trait of openness to new experiences resulted to determine lower levels of stigma. Burnout (personal accomplishment) interacted with emotional stability in predicting stigma, and specifically, for subjects with lower emotional stability lower levels of personal accomplishment were associated with higher levels of stigma. Conclusions. Some personality traits may be accompanied by better empathic and communication skills, and may have a protective role against stigma. Moreover, burnout can increase stigma, in particular in subjects with specific personality traits. Assessing personality and burnout levels could help in identifying mental health professionals at higher risk of developing stigma. Future studies should determine whether targeted interventions in mental health professionals at risk of developing stigma may be effective in stigma prevention

Enteric methane emission from Sheep fed with rhodes grass hay (Chloris gayana) alone or supplemented with dried distillers’ grains with solubles

Livestock systems based on subtropical and tropical pastures are characterized by the low productivity of livestock due to the poor nutritional value of the forage (low nitrogen concentration and digestibility, and high fiber and lignin concentrations). These conditions lead to low productivity and, consequently, high absolute emissions of methane (CH4) per unit of product. Dry distilled grains with solubles (DDGS) are the main by-product resulting from ethanol production, and they are characterized by their high-energy fibrous and protein content, thus becoming an option for the supplementation of low-quality forage. This research investigated the effects of dietary DDGS inclusion on dry matter digestibility (DMD) and enteric CH4 emission. Eight adult sheep of 64 ± 8 kg live weight were used. The duration of the study was 54 days, divided into two periods (changeover design), which comprised a 17-day pre-experimental period and 10 days for experimental data collection. Animals were allocated to one of two treatments used: hay (H) as a control treatment, where animals were fed with Rhodes grass hay alone; and H + DDGS, where animals were fed with H supplemented with DDGS. CH4 emissions were estimated using the sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) tracer technique. Diets containing DDGS increased DMI by 22% (p < 0.05) and reduced daily CH4 emissions by 24% (g/d), the CH4 yield by 35% (g/kg DMI), and the average value of CH4 energy per gross energy intake (Ym) by 44%, compared to the control treatment (p < 0.05). The experiment demonstrated that supplementation with DDGS in low-quality roughage reduced daily CH4 emissions, yields, and Ym. View Full-TextInstituto de PatobiologíaFil: Gere, José. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. División Investigación y Desarrollo de Ingenierías; ArgentinaFil: Gere, José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Feksa Frasson, Mónica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Producción Animal; ArgentinaFil: Wawrzkiewicz, Marisa. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Producción Animal; ArgentinaFil: Fernández Pepi, María Gabriela. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Producción Animal; ArgentinaFil: Ramos, María Laura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Producción Animal; ArgentinaFil: Bualo, Ricardo Alberto. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Patobiología; ArgentinaFil: Ceron Cucchi, Maria Esperanza. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Patobiología; ArgentinaFil: Jaurena, Gustavo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Producción Animal; Argentin

Adding the microdimension to the study of language change in contact. Three case studies

Syntactic change in contact is generally explained as a result of cognitive, structural/typological, or sociolinguistic factors. However, the relative weight of these factors in shaping the outputs of contact is yet to be assessed. In this paper, we propose a microcontact approach to the study of change in contact, focusing on microsyntactic points of variation across multiple language pairs that are structurally very close. We show that this approach makes it possible to more accurately identify some of the factors that are involved in change. By considering three case studies centered on the syntax of subjects, objects, and indexicals, we show that the outputs of syntactic change in microcontact diverge from what is expected under otherwise solid generalizations (avoidance of indeterminacy, avoidance of silence, the Interface Hypothesis, a tendency towards simplification, and the general stability of the indexical domain) regarding change in contact. Microcontact offers a finer-grained point of observation, allowing us to go beyond broader typological assumptions and to focus on the link between structure and cognition. The results of our case studies demonstrate that the outputs of change in contact are an interplay between cognitive and structural factors (see also Muysken 2013 for additional processing considerations), and that the micro-variational dimension is crucial in drawing a precise picture of heritage language syntax