Lexical stress constrains English-learning infants' segmentation in a non-native language.

Infants' ability to segment words in fluent speech is affected by their language experience. In this study we investigated the conditions under which infants can segment words in a non-native language. Using the Head-turn Preference Procedure, we found that monolingual English-learning 8-month-olds can segment bisyllabic words in Spanish (trochees and iambs) but not French (iambs). Our results are incompatible with accounts that rely on distributional learning, language rhythm similarity, or target word prosodic shape alone. Instead, we show that monolingual English-learning infants are able to segment words in a non-native language as long as words have stress, as is the case in English. More specifically, we show that even in a rhythmically different non-native language, English-learning infants can find words by detecting stressed syllables and treating them as word onsets or offsets

On the acquisition of Spanish psych predicates : when intervention makes extraction of a nominative wh-phrase harder

Spanish psych verbs like gustar ('like'/'please') have a non-agreeing dative experiencer that asymmetrically c-commands the agreeing nominative theme (e.g., Cuervo 2003). Intervention accounts (Friedmann et al. 2009) thus predict children will experience difficulties with constructions that involve movement of the nominative-bearing argument past the dative DP. In this study we evaluate this prediction with a corpus study and an experimental study. Results from the corpus study show that children under the age of 7 underuse the DPnom-V-DPdat order (Theme-Verb-Experiencer) with gustar compared to adults, in line with our predictions. In a picture-matching task we tested 4-6-year-olds on d-linked wh-questions with actional and psych verbs. Results reveal that while children display the expected Nom > Dat wh-phrase extraction asymmetry with actional verbs, they show a Dat > Nom asymmetry with psych verbs. Moreover, children perform worse when the two arguments match in number features (i.e., sg-sg) compared to when they mismatch (i.e., sg-pl), but crucially, only in wh-questions that involve intervention. Our results cannot be fully explained under input-based accounts and are most in line with a structural account such as featural Relativized Minimality (Rizzi 2004)

Learning unaccusativity: Evidence for split intransitivity in child Spanish

We examine four features of unaccusativity in child-directed and child Spanish to determine what cues children might use to distinguish unaccusative and unergative verbs. Two are cross-linguistic lexico-semantic features: Subjects of unaccusatives are patients so we expect more inanimate subjects with unaccusatives; and unaccusatives tend to have an endpoint, hence may occur more frequently with perfective aspect. The other two are language-specific morphosyntactic features: VS order is grammatical with unaccusatives but not unergatives, and many unaccusative verbs allow/require the anticausative se clitic. We find all four features robustly in children's input and that even 1-2-year-olds show discriminate use of them

The clitic binding restriction revisited: Evidence for antilogophoricity

In some Romance languages, including French and Spanish, there is an interesting asymmetry concerning the behavior of isolated clitics and clitic clusters with respect to coreference. In the French example Anne croit qu’on va la lui recommander pour la promotion ‘Anna thinks that they will recommend her to him for the promotion’, the accusative clitic la ‘her’ in the embedded clause cannot corefer with ‘Anne’ when a dative clitic, lui ‘to him’, co-occurs in the cluster. The only previous account of this constraint (Bhatt and Šimík 2009) attributes this to a binding restriction. Based on new data disentangling binding and logophoricity, we show that the generalization capturing the distribution of clitics clusters in French and Spanish is the following: an accusative clitic cannot be clustered with a dative clitic if the accusative clitic refers to a logophoric center and is read de se. We derive this antilogophoricity effect from perspective conflicts, which we represent as intervention effects in the presence of a single logophoric operator in the relevant domain. This analysis furthermore provides a semantic motivation for intervention effects that have been postulated for the Person-Case Constraint (PCC), which we hypothesize also derives from perspective conflicts.Linguistic

Accumulating evidences of callose priming by indole- 3- carboxylic acid in response to Plectospharella cucumerina

Indole-3-carboxylic acid (I3CA) is an indolic compound that induces resistance in Arabidopsis adult plants against the necrotrophic fungus Plectosphaerella cucumerina through primed callose accumulation. In this study, we confirm the relevance of ATL31 and SYP121 genes involved in vesicular trafficking in I3CA priming of defenses and we discard camalexin as a mediator of I3CA-induced resistance (IR) in adult plants. In addition, we observed that an intact I3CA biosynthetic pathway is necessary for I3CA-IR functionality

Estudio morfométrico a lo largo del año del aparato genital del macho y de la hembra del jabalí en diferentes edades.

En el presente estudio se analizan diferentes aspectos reproductivos de hembras de jabalí abatidas a lo largo de las temporadas 2011 a 2015 en la Comunidad Valenciana. Se contó para el estudio con el aparato genital completo de hembras gestantes y hembras no gestantes. Mediante el estudio laboratorial se pretende relacionar el tamaño genital con la edad y con la estacionalidad reproductiva, para así realizar un estudio descriptivo y estadístico del mismo. Es interesante relacionar el estado fisiológico del aparato genital con la estacionalidad reproductiva, dado que esta última se encuentra relacionada con el fotoperiodo; aspecto tenido en cuenta en la estadística realizada. De esta manera, en el caso de las hembras gestantes, se ha podido establecer una relación entre la tasa de ovulación y el número de fetos. Así como, comparar la actividad reproductiva durante el año en busca de diferencias reproductivas a lo largo del fotoperiodo; encontrando la relación existente entre ambos parámetros

Integrated responses of mycorrhizas to nutritional and biotic stresses

Resumen de la ponencia presentada en el Annual Meeting on Crop-arthropod-microorganism interactions (CAMo), celabrado en Ljubljana, January 31st to February 2nd, 201

Sugar shipping in arbuscular mycorrhiza protects tomato plants against Botrytis cinerea

Resumen de la ponencia presentada en el Annual Meeting on Crop-arthropod-microorganism interactions (CAMo), celabrado en Ljubljana, January 31st to February 2nd, 201

Drivers of variation in seagrass-associated amphipods across biogeographical areas

Amphipods are one of the dominant epifaunal groups in seagrass meadows. However, our understanding of the biogeographical patterns in the distribution of these small crustaceans is limited. In this study, we investigated such patterns and the potential drivers in twelve Cymodocea nodosa meadows within four distinctive biogeographical areas across 2000 Km and 13° of latitude in two ocean basins (Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean). We found that species abundances in the assemblage of seagrass-associated amphipods differed among areas following a pattern largely explained by seagrass leaf area and epiphyte biomass, while the variation pattern in species presence/absence was determined by seagrass density and epiphyte biomass. Seagrass leaf area was also the most important determinant of greater amphipod total density and species richness, while amphipod density also increased with algal cover. Overall, our results evidenced that biogeographical patterns of variation in amphipod assemblages are mainly influenced by components of the habitat structure, which covary with environmental conditions, finding that structurally more complex meadows harboring higher abundance and richness of amphipods associated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Drivers of variation in seagrass-associated amphipods across biogeographical areas

Amphipods are one of the dominant epifaunal groups in seagrass meadows. However, our understanding of the biogeographical patterns in the distribution of these small crustaceans is limited. In this study, we investigated such patterns and the potential drivers in twelve Cymodocea nodosa meadows within four distinctive biogeographical areas across 2000 Km and 13° of latitude in two ocean basins (Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean). We found that species abundances in the assemblage of seagrass-associated amphipods differed among areas following a pattern largely explained by seagrass leaf area and epiphyte biomass, while the variation pattern in species presence/absence was determined by seagrass density and epiphyte biomass. Seagrass leaf area was also the most important determinant of greater amphipod total density and species richness, while amphipod density also increased with algal cover. Overall, our results evidenced that biogeographical patterns of variation in amphipod assemblages are mainly influenced by components of the habitat structure, which covary with environmental conditions, finding that structurally more complex meadows harboring higher abundance and richness of amphipods associated.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the contract program DL57/2016/CP1361/CT0004 and CCMAR through the projects UIDB/04326/2020, UIDP/04326/2020 and LA/P/0101/2020