Syntactic Change and the Rise of Transitivity

This paper analyzes the historical divergence of predicates marked with old passive neuter -no/-to in Polish and Ukrainian. It is argued that the locus of change leading to the rise of the transitivity property involved a rearrangement of morphologically-eroded voice morphology. Despite the surface similarity of the Polish and Ukrainian constructions, their divergent distribution in the modern languages indicates that grammaticalization of the old passive morpheme proceeded along different pathways, implicating the internal structure of vP, and creating new accusative case-assigning possibilities. Artykuł przedstawia analizę różnic w rozwoju form predykatów z wykładnikami strony biernej w rodzaju nijakim -no/-to w języku polskim i ukraińskim. Przybranie cech tranzytywnych przez te formy czasownikowe łączy się tu ze zmianami w obrębie morfologii strony gramatycznej w obu językach. Pomimo powierzchniowych podobieństw różnice w dystrybucji konstrukcji z czasownikami zakończonymi na -no/-to we współczesnym języku polskim i ukraińskim wskazują, że gramatykalizacja morfemu strony biernej przebiegła według różnych scenariuszy w obu językach, implikujących zróżnicowanie w strukturze frazy czasownikowej vP, a także powstanie nowych możliwości przypisania cechy biernika

Syntactic change and the rise of transitivity : the case of the Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to construction

Artykuł przedstawia analizę różnic w rozwoju form predykatów z wykładnikami strony biernej w rodzaju nijakim -no/-to w języku polskim i ukraińskim. Przybranie cech tranzytywnych przez te formy czasownikowe łączy się tu ze zmianami w obrębie morfologii strony gramatycznej w obu językach. Pomimo powierzchniowych podobieństw różnice w dystrybucji konstrukcji z czasownikami zakończonymi na -no/-to we współczesnym języku polskim i ukraińskim wskazują, że gramatykalizacja morfemu strony biernej przebiegła według różnych scenariuszy w obu językach, implikujących zróżnicowanie w strukturze frazy czasownikowej vP, a także powstanie nowych możliwości przypisania cechy biernika.This paper analyzes the historical divergence of predicates marked with old passive neuter -no/-to in Polish and Ukrainian. It is argued that the locus of change leading to the rise of the transitivity property involved a rearrangement of morphologically-eroded voice morphology. Despite the surface similarity of the Polish and Ukrainian constructions, their divergent distribution in the modern languages indicates that grammaticalization of the old passive morpheme proceeded along different pathways, implicating the internal structure of vP, and creating new accusative case-assigning possibilities

Modalities of case assignment: The view from Lithuanian

This paper assesses two competing modalities for the assignment of morphological case. Arguments are provided from Lithuanian against the configurational strategy of Dependent Case (Marantz 1991, Baker 2015) and in favor of case assignment by functional heads (Chomsky 2000, 2001). The first argument comes from a series of Transitive Impersonal constructions in which accusative appears independently, in the absence of a higher, nominative-marked argument, so long as the predicate is two-place and caused, implicating v-Cause as the source of accusative. Further evidence for this analysis comes from the Inferential Evidential, an oblique-subject construction. While the Dependent Case strategy states that nominative automatically shifts to the object if not assigned to the subject, nominative objects are exceedingly rare in the Inferential Evidential, a fact that is entirely consistent with the local, feature-based theory of case advanced in this paper, which relates the appearance of nominative to the Agree relation with Tense

Time development of a driven three-level lambda system: A case study

A system with three energy levels is investigated when one leg is excited by a laser. The time development of the occupation probabilities of the three levels is followed through the numerical solution of the Liouville-von Neumann Equations for the density operator matrix elements. This permits the study of the short-time behavior and the achievement of the steady-state. Relaxation is included and the magnitude of the laser's electric field is varied to see how it affects the approach to the steady-state. A bottleneck in the system's decay to the ground state is found to depend on a relaxation parameter for an excited state to ground state transition. In addition, the eigenvalues of the Liouville-von Neumann Equations are developed, since these are useful for interpreting the behavior of the numerical solutions.Comment: 28 pages double-spaced, 16 figures, and one table. Aimed at interpreting the numerical result

A New Argument for the Lexical Underspecification of Causers

This article shows how a systematic impersonalization alternation in Russian provides additional evidence for underspecification in argument structure. In the case of a large class of lexically causative verbs, the causer is realized either as a volitional Agent in the nominative case or as an oblique-marked, nonvolitional causer, depending on how the event is construed. A causative theory of accusative is advanced, according to which the mere presence of external causation is a sufficient condition for accusative licensing, including those cases that lack an external argument altogether. The analysis is extended to explain accusative preservation in the Icelandic “fate accusative” construction

What Should Presidential Candidates Tell Us About Themselves? Proposals for Improving Transparency in Presidential Campaigns

Elections are at the foundation of our democracy, but voters sometimes cast their ballots without critical information about presidential candidates. This report calls for requirements that candidates release more personal financial information, including five years of tax returns, and undergo criminal and intelligence background checks. The report also advocates for a system allowing candidates to submit to voluntary medical exams with some results released to the public. This report was researched and written during the 2018-2019 academic year by students in Fordham Law School’s Democracy and the Constitution Clinic, which is focused on developing non-partisan recommendations to strengthen the nation’s institutions and its democracy. The clinic\u27s reports are available at law.fordham.edu/democracyreports

Insights into the Development and Evolution of Exaggerated Traits Using \u3ci\u3e De Novo \u3c/i\u3e Transcriptomes of Two Species of Horned Scarab Beetles

Scarab beetles exhibit an astonishing variety of rigid exo-skeletal outgrowths, known as ‘‘horns’’. These traits are often sexually dimorphic and vary dramatically across species in size, shape, location, and allometry with body size. In many species, the horn exhibits disproportionate growth resulting in an exaggerated allometric relationship with body size, as compared to other traits, such as wings, that grow proportionately with body size. Depending on the species, the smallest males either do not produce a horn at all, or they produce a disproportionately small horn for their body size. While the diversity of horn shapes and their behavioural ecology have been reasonably well studied, we know far less about the proximate mechanisms that regulate horn growth. Thus, using 454 pyrosequencing, we generated transcriptome profiles, during horn growth and development, in two different scarab beetle species: the Asian rhinoceros beetle, Trypoxylus dichotomus, and the dung beetle, Onthophagus nigriventris. We obtained over half a million reads for each species that were assembled into over 6,000 and 16,000 contigs respectively. We combined these data with previously published studies to look for signatures of molecular evolution. We found a small subset of genes with horn-biased expression showing evidence for recent positive selection, as is expected with sexual selection on horn size. We also found evidence of relaxed selection present in genes that demonstrated biased expression between horned and horn-less morphs, consistent with the theory of developmental decoupling of phenotypically plastic traits

SARS-CoV-2 infects human engineered heart tissues and models COVID-19 myocarditis

There is ongoing debate as to whether cardiac complications of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) result from myocardial viral infection or are secondary to systemic inflammation and/or thrombosis. We provide evidence that cardiomyocytes are infected in patients with COVID-19 myocarditis and are susceptible to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. We establish an engineered heart tissue model of COVID-19 myocardial pathology, define mechanisms of viral pathogenesis, and demonstrate that cardiomyocyte severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection results in contractile deficits, cytokine production, sarcomere disassembly, and cell death. These findings implicate direct infection of cardiomyocytes in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 myocardial pathology and provides a model system to study this emerging disease