Contrastive focus and emphasis

The paper puts forward a discourse-semantic account of the notoriously evasive phenomena of contrastivity and emphasis. Based on new evidence from Chadic, it is argued that occurrences of focus that are treated in terms of ‘contrastive focus’, ‘kontrast’ (Vallduví-Vilkuna 1998) or ‘identificational focus’ (É. Kiss 1998) in the literature should not be analyzed in familiar semantic terms as involving the introduction and subsequent exclusion of alternatives. Rather, an adequate analysis must take into account discourse-semantic notions like ‘hearer expectation’ or ‘discourse expectability’ of the focused content in a given discourse situation. The less expected the focus content is judged to be for the hearer, relative to the Common Ground, the more likely a speaker is to mark the focus constituent by means of special grammatical devices, thus giving rise to emphasis

In need of mediation: The relation between syntax and information structure

This paper defends the view that syntax does not directly interact with information structure. Rather, information structure affects prosody, and only the latter has an interface with syntax. We illustrate this point by discussing scrambling, focus preposing, and topicalization. The position entertained here implies that syntax is not very informative when one wants to narrow down the interpretation of terms such as “focus”, “topic”, etc

Aldosterone Antagonists in Monotherapy Are Protective against Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Nephropathy in Rats

Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB) are the standard clinical therapy of diabetic nephropathy (DN), while aldosterone antagonists are only used as adjuncts. Previously in experimental DN we showed that Na/K ATPase (NKA) is mislocated and angiotensin II leads to superimposed renal progression. Here we investigated the monotherapeutic effect of aldosterone blockers on the progression of DN and renal NKA alteration in comparison to ACEi and ARBs. Streptozotocin-diabetic rats developing DN were treated with aldosterone antagonists; ACEi and ARB. Renal function, morphology, protein level and tubular localization of NKA were analyzed. To evaluate the effect of high glucose per se; HK-2 proximal tubular cells were cultured in normal or high concentration of glucose and treated with the same agents. Aldosterone antagonists were the most effective in ameliorating functional and structural kidney damage and they normalized diabetes induced bradycardia and weight loss. Aldosterone blockers also prevented hyperglycemia and diabetes induced increase in NKA protein level and enzyme mislocation. A monotherapy with aldosterone antagonists might be as, or more effective than ACEi or ARBs in the prevention of STZ-induced DN. Furthermore the alteration of the NKA could represent a novel pathophysiological feature of DN and might serve as an additional target of aldosterone blockers