DISCOURSE MARKERS IN THE LEXICAL CONSTRUCTIONAL MODEL: THE CASE OF THE 'SO WHAT X' CONSTRUCTION

Artículo publicado erróneamente. Se publicó originalmente en http://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/10662[EN] This article argues for an alternative analysis of discourse markers to that proposed within relevance-theoretic approaches, which attribute procedural (as opposed to conceptual) meaning to these words. This study provides a new perspective that brings together the main contributions of Relevance Theory (RT) and those that arise from the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM), thus shedding light on the role of discourse markers within sentence meaning. Rather than offering procedural information, discourse markers activate high-level conceptual mechanisms that help the hearer in his/her choice of the most appropriate interpretation of utterances. Furthermore, the present paper provides a fully-fledged analysis of discourse markers and their contribution to implicated meaning, filling the gaps observable in relevance-theoretic views. Specifically, So and and have been found to be determinant elements in the creation of a new construction, the So Wh- X? construction, which explains the uncompromising importance of discourse markers in utterance interpretation.This paper is associated with Project No. HUM2007-65755, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain.Galera Masegosa, A. (2011). DISCOURSE MARKERS IN THE LEXICAL CONSTRUCTIONAL MODEL: THE CASE OF THE 'SO WHAT X' CONSTRUCTION. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas. 6:151-164. https://doi.org/10.4995/rlyla.2011.900SWORD151164

Association of longitudinal alcohol consumption trajectories with coronary heart disease: a meta-analysis of six cohort studies using individual participant data.

BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that alcohol intake trajectories differ in their associations with biomarkers of cardiovascular functioning, but it remains unclear if they also differ in their relationship to actual coronary heart disease (CHD) incidence. Using multiple longitudinal cohort studies, we evaluated the association between long-term alcohol consumption trajectories and CHD. METHODS: Data were drawn from six cohorts (five British and one French). The combined analytic sample comprised 35,132 individuals (62.1% male; individual cohorts ranging from 869 to 14,247 participants) of whom 4.9% experienced an incident (fatal or non-fatal) CHD event. Alcohol intake across three assessment periods of each cohort was used to determine participants' intake trajectories over approximately 10 years. Time to onset for (i) incident CHD and (ii) fatal CHD was established using surveys and linked medical record data. A meta-analysis of individual participant data was employed to estimate the intake trajectories' association with CHD onset, adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics. RESULTS: Compared to consistently moderate drinkers (males: 1-168 g ethanol/week; females: 1-112 g ethanol/week), inconsistently moderate drinkers had a significantly greater risk of incident CHD [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.18, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02-1.37]. An elevated risk of incident CHD was also found for former drinkers (HR = 1.31, 95% CI = 1.13-1.52) and consistent non-drinkers (HR = 1.47, 95% CI = 1.21-1.78), although, after sex stratification, the latter effect was only evident for females. When examining fatal CHD outcomes alone, only former drinkers had a significantly elevated risk, though hazard ratios for consistent non-drinkers were near identical. No evidence of elevated CHD risk was found for consistently heavy drinkers, and a weak association with fatal CHD for inconsistently heavy drinkers was attenuated following adjustment for confounding factors. CONCLUSIONS: Using prospectively recorded alcohol data, this study has shown how instability in drinking behaviours over time is associated with risk of CHD. As well as individuals who abstain from drinking (long term or more recently), those who are inconsistently moderate in their alcohol intake have a higher risk of experiencing CHD. This finding suggests that policies and interventions specifically encouraging consistency in adherence to lower-risk drinking guidelines could have public health benefits in reducing the population burden of CHD. The absence of an effect amongst heavy drinkers should be interpreted with caution given the known wider health risks associated with such intake. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03133689

Profound Context-Dependent Plasticity of Mitral Cell Responses in Olfactory Bulb

On the basis of its primary circuit it has been postulated that the olfactory bulb (OB) is analogous to the retina in mammals. In retina, repeated exposure to the same visual stimulus results in a neural representation that remains relatively stable over time, even as the meaning of that stimulus to the animal changes. Stability of stimulus representation at early stages of processing allows for unbiased interpretation of incoming stimuli by higher order cortical centers. The alternative is that early stimulus representation is shaped by previously derived meaning, which could allow more efficient sampling of odor space providing a simplified yet biased interpretation of incoming stimuli. This study helps place the olfactory system on this continuum of subjective versus objective early sensory representation. Here we show that odor responses of the output cells of the OB, mitral cells, change transiently during a go–no-go odor discrimination task. The response changes occur in a manner that increases the ability of the circuit to convey information necessary to discriminate among closely related odors. Remarkably, a switch between which of the two odors is rewarded causes mitral cells to switch the polarity of their divergent responses. Taken together these results redefine the function of the OB as a transiently modifiable (active) filter, shaping early odor representations in behaviorally meaningful ways

Avoiding dative overgeneralisation errors: semantics, statistics or both?

Item does not contain fulltextHow do children eventually come to avoid the production of overgeneralisation errors, in particular, those involving the dative (e.g., *I said her "no")? The present study addressed this question by obtaining from adults and children (5-6, 9-10 years) judgements of well-formed and over-general datives with 301 different verbs (44 for children). A significant effect of pre-emption - whereby the use of a verb in the prepositional-object (PO)-dative construction constitutes evidence that double-object (DO)-dative uses are not permitted - was observed for every age group. A significant effect of entrenchment - whereby the use of a verb in any construction constitutes evidence that unattested dative uses are not permitted - was also observed for every age group, with both predictors also accounting for developmental change between ages 5-6 and 9-10 years. Adults demonstrated knowledge of a morphophonological constraint that prohibits Latinate verbs from appearing in the DO-dative construction (e.g., *I suggested her the trip). Verbs' semantic properties (supplied by independent adult raters) explained additional variance for all groups and developmentally, with the relative influence of narrow- vs broad-range semantic properties increasing with age. We conclude by outlining an account of the formation and restriction of argument-structure generalisations designed to accommodate these findings.26 p

Personality predicts the vibrancy of colour imagery: The case of synaesthesia

In this study we show that personality traits predict the physical qualities of mentally generated colours, using the case of synaesthesia. Developmental grapheme-colour synaesthetes have the automatic lifelong association of colours paired to letters or digits. Although these colours are internal mental constructs, they can be measured along physical dimensions such as saturation and luminance. The personality of synaesthetes can also be quantified using self-report questionnaires relating, for example, to the five major traits of Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to experience. In this paper, we bring together both types of quality by examining whether the personality of individual synaesthetes predicts their synaesthetic colours. Twenty grapheme-colour synaesthetes were tested with the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality questionnaire. Their synaesthesia was also tested in terms of consistency and average colour saturation and luminance. Two major results were found: although personality did not influence the overall robustness (i.e., consistency) of synaesthesia, it predicted the nature of synaesthetes’ colours: the trait of Openness was positively correlated with the saturation of synaesthetic colours. Our study provides evidence that personality and internal perception are intertwined, and suggests future avenues of research for investigating the associations between the two

Developmental profile of localized spontaneous Ca2+ release events in the dendrites of rat hippocampal pyramidal neurons

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Cell Calcium 52 (2012): 422-432, doi:10.1016/j.ceca.2012.08.001.Recent experiments demonstrate that localized spontaneous Ca2+ release events can be detected in the dendrites of pyramidal cells in the hippocampus and other neurons (J. Neurosci. 29:7833-7845, 2009). These events have some properties that resemble ryanodine receptor mediated “sparks” in myocytes, and some that resemble IP3 receptor mediated “puffs” in oocytes. They can be detected in the dendrites of rats of all tested ages between P3 and P80 (with sparser sampling in older rats), suggesting that they serve a general signaling function and are not just important in development. However, in younger rats the amplitudes of the events are larger than the amplitudes in older animals and almost as large as the amplitudes of Ca2+ signals from backpropagating action potentials (bAPs). The rise time of the event signal is fast at all ages and is comparable to the rise time of the bAP fluorescence signal at the same dendritic location. The decay time is slower in younger animals, primarily because of weaker Ca2+ extrusion mechanisms at that age. Diffusion away from a brief localized source is the major determinant of decay at all ages. A simple computational model closely simulates these events with extrusion rate the only age dependent variable.Supported in part by NIH grant NS-016295