Syntactic and semantic contributions of pitch accents during sentence comprehension

Syntactic, semantic, and prosodic cues all establish expectations that guide sentence comprehension. In the prosodic domain, pitch accents can assign contrastive focus and resolve a syntactically ambiguous phrase. However, can prosodic focus marking (by pitch accenting) influence the interpretation of a sentence in the presence of syntactic and semantic cues? Our auditory experiment revolved around the sentence (in German) “Yesterday the policeman arrested the thief, not the murderer”. A pitch accent on either POLICEMAN or THIEF placed one of those arguments in contrastive focus with the ellipsis structure ("the murderer”). The two contrasted arguments could contain violations: in the syntax condition, the grammatical case of the article in the ellipsis structure mismatched the focused constituent in the main clause (nominative vs. accusative). In the semantic condition, the thematic roles of the contrasted words were incongruent (typical agent vs. patient roles of “arrest”). Visual comprehension questions probed the agent/patient role of the arguments in the sentence (subject or object), followed by a button-press response. Reaction times showed that if the pitch accent marked syntactic information that mismatched the syntactic information in the ellipsis structure, responses were delayed. The direction of the semantic effect depended on the focused noun. The response patterns showed that participants were led by the syntactic information to make their syntactic judgements, despite a conflicting expectation established by prosody. The experiment shows that pitch accents establish a syntactic expectation during sentence comprehension. However, these expectations are overwritten by incoming syntactic information to yield an interpretation of the sentence

Hierarchical syntactic processing is beyond mere associating: Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence from a novel artificial grammar

Grammar is central to any natural language. In the past decades, the artificial grammar of the An Bn type in which a pair of associated elements can be nested in the other pair was considered as a desirable model to mimic human language syntax without semantic interference. However, such a grammar relies on mere associating mechanisms, thus insufficient to reflect the hierarchical nature of human syntax. Here, we test how the brain imposes syntactic hierarchies according to the category relations on linearized sequences by designing a novel artificial "Hierarchical syntactic structure-building Grammar" (HG), and compare this to the An Bn grammar as a "Nested associating Grammar" (NG) based on multilevel associations. Thirty-six healthy German native speakers were randomly assigned to one of the two grammars. Both groups performed a grammaticality judgment task on auditorily presented word sequences generated by the corresponding grammar in the scanner after a successful explicit behavioral learning session. Compared to the NG group, we found that the HG group showed a (a) significantly higher involvement of Brodmann area (BA) 44 in Broca's area and the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG); and (b) qualitatively distinct connectivity between the two regions. Thus, the present study demonstrates that the build-up process of syntactic hierarchies on the basis of category relations critically relies on a distinctive left-hemispheric syntactic network involving BA 44 and pSTG. This indicates that our novel artificial grammar can constitute a suitable experimental tool to investigate syntax-specific processes in the human brain

Pitch accents create dissociable syntactic and semantic expectations during sentence processing

The language system uses syntactic, semantic, as well as prosodic cues to efficiently guide auditory sentence comprehension. Prosodic cues, such as pitch accents, can build expectations about upcoming sentence elements. This study investigates to what extent syntactic and semantic expectations generated by pitch accents can be dissociated and if so, which cues take precedence when contradictory information is present. We used sentences in which one out of two nominal constituents was placed in contrastive focus with a third one. All noun phrases carried overt syntactic information (case-marking of the determiner) and semantic information (typicality of the thematic role of the noun). Two experiments (a sentence comprehension and a sentence completion task) show that focus, marked by pitch accents, established expectations in both syntactic and semantic domains. However, only the syntactic expectations, when violated, were strong enough to interfere with sentence comprehension. Furthermore, when contradictory cues occurred in the same sentence, the local syntactic cue (case-marking) took precedence over the semantic cue (thematic role), and overwrote previous information cued by prosody. The findings indicate that during auditory sentence comprehension the processing system integrates different sources of information for argument role assignment, yet primarily relies on syntactic information

Children's syntax is supported by the maturation of BA44 at 4 years, but of the posterior STS at 3 years of age

Within the first years of life, children learn major aspects of their native language. However, the ability to process complex sentence structures, a core faculty in human language called syntax, emerges only slowly. A milestone in syntax acquisition is reached around the age of 4 years, when children learn a variety of syntactic concepts. Here, we ask which maturational changes in the child's brain underlie the emergence of syntactically complex sentence processing around this critical age. We relate markers of cortical brain maturation to 3- and 4-year-olds' sentence processing in contrast to other language abilities. Our results show that distinct cortical brain areas support sentence processing in the two age groups. Sentence production abilities at 3 years were associated with increased surface area in the most posterior part of the left superior temporal sulcus, whereas 4-year-olds showed an association with cortical thickness in the left posterior part of Broca's area, i.e. BA44. The present findings suggest that sentence processing abilities rely on the maturation of distinct cortical regions in 3- compared to 4-year-olds. The observed shift to more mature regions involved in processing syntactically complex sentences may underlie behavioral milestones in syntax acquisition at around 4 years

The Pattern of Histologically-Proven Acute Post-infectious Glomerulonephritis in Tunisian Adults Seen in 1976 - 2004

Introduction: Acute post-infectious glomerulonephritis (APIGN) is uncommon in adults. It is widely recognized that the prognosis of APIGN is good in children. There is however little information about its long-term prognosis in adults.Methods: Between December 1976 and October 2004, 148 adult cases of APIGN were managed in our center. We retrospectively reviewed these patients’ records and evaluated their clinical course and outcome.Results: The mean age of studied patients was 36±15 years, and the male to female ratio was 2.3. The most common site of preceding infection was the respiratory tract (68.8%). At presentation, 89.2% had nephritic syndrome and 9.4% had rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis.Proteinuria was observed in 99.3%, hematuria in 95.3%, peripheral edema in 89.2% and hypertension in 81.8%. Most patients (60.7%) had acute kidney injury and four patients (2.7%) required dialysis. Renal biopsy showed diffuse endocapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis in 88.8% of patients, associated with extracapillary proliferation in 12%. After a median follow-up of 2.5 year, only two patients died and 16.12% of patients hadpersistent clinical and/or biological abnormality. Chronic kidney disease was noted in 10 patients (6.75%) including four patients (2.7%) who progressed to end-stage renal disease. Poor prognostic factors included nephrotic range proteinuria, extracapillary proliferation in renal biopsy,acute kidney injury and the need for dialysis.Conclusion: In this cohort of patients, APIGN progressed to chronic kidney disease in less than 10% of patients

Primary thyroid lymphoma: Case report and review of the literature

AbstractPrimary thyroid lymphoma (PTL) is defined as a lymphoma involving only the thyroid gland or both thyroid gland and neck lymph nodes, without contiguous spread or distant metastases from other areas of involvement at diagnosis. Despite its rarity, PTL should be promptly recognized because its management is quite different from the treatment of other neoplasms of the thyroid gland.In the present study, we report a case of PTL treated by surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy. Otherwise, literature review allowed us to define main characteristics of this located lymphoma