Persian Preposition Classes

In this paper I present the prepositional system in Persian. I show that Persian prepositions can be divided into three classes (Class 1, Class 2a and Class 2b) which exhibit distinct syntactic behavior. Then I examine the question of the categorial status of Class 2 prepositions and demonstrate that they are not to be regarded as nouns. Finally I present the extended PP projection of Persian spatial prepositions and argue for a feature-based analysis of the properties they manifest

Persian Preposition Classes

In this paper I present the prepositional system in Persian. I show that Persian prepositions can be divided into three classes (Class 1, Class 2a and Class 2b) which exhibit distinct syntactic behavior. Then I examine the question of the categorial status of Class 2 prepositions and demonstrate that they are not to be regarded as nouns. Finally I present the extended PP projection of Persian spatial prepositions and argue for a feature-based analysis of the properties they manifest

Directional expressions cross-linguistically: Nanosyntax and lexicalization

In this paper, I investigate the syntactic structure underlying expressions of the three main types of Paths: Goal Path, Source Path and Route Path. I suggest that they are structurally different and propose a fine-grained syntactic structure for each of them, which is able to account for their morphological make-up. I explore how this structure is spelled out in various languages and show that a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization captures the facts in an elegant way. In discussing the spell-out of the structure by prepositions and case affixes, I reach the conclusion that sometimes the verb has to ‘reach down’ and lexicalize heads which belong to the spatial domain (cf. Svenonius and Son 2008). I provide evidence from languages where I argue that this is the case

First Phase Syntax of Persian Complex Predicates: Argument Structure and Telicity

In this paper, I propose an analysis of Persian complex predicates, based on the First Phase Verbal syntax developed by Ramchand (2008). I suggest that the light verbs lexicalize the subevent heads into which the verbal phrase is decomposed, while the preverbal element occupies the RHEME position and semantically unifies with the light verb to build one joint predication. Further, I propose a feature specification for some of the most productive light verbs. I argue that the light verb is responsible for the argument structure of the entire predicate (in line with Megerdoomian 2002b, and Folli et al 2005), while the aspectual properties of the complex predicate depend on the interaction between the preverb and the light verb.     

First Phase Syntax of Persian Complex Predicates: Argument Structure and Telicity

In this paper, I propose an analysis of Persian complex predicates, based on the First Phase Verbal syntax developed by Ramchand (2008). I suggest that the light verbs lexicalize the subevent heads into which the verbal phrase is decomposed, while the preverbal element occupies the Rheme position and semantically unifies with the light verb to build one joint predication. Further, I propose a feature specification for some of the most productive light verbs. I argue that the light verb is responsible for the argument structure of the entire predicate (in line with Megerdoomian 2002b, Folli et al. 2005), while the aspectual properties of the complex predicate depend on the interaction between the preverb and the light verb

Bulgarian Spatial Prefixes and Event Structure

In this paper, I explore the combination possibilities of Bulgarian directional prefixes with various motion verbs. Adopting Ramchand’s (in press) event decomposition, Zwarts’ (2005) vector space semantics for directional prepositions, and drawing on various discussions regarding the manner component in the verbal meaning, I propose an analysis that captures the distribution of Goal and Source prefixes. I show how this proposal accounts for the change in the syntactic behavior of prefixed motion verbs compared to their unprefixed counterparts. The proposal also explains the syntactic properties exhibited by verbs when prefixed by different prefixes. I offer a unified treatment of path structure and event structure and suggest that directional prepositions and directional prefixes are semantically identical and originate in the extended PP. The differences between them are due to the syntactic structure in which they participate

The Saint as Food, the Torture as Medicine: Some Aspects of Christopher of Mytilene’s Imagery in his Dodecasyllabic Calendar and its South Slavonic Translations

Christopher of Mytilene, a secular poet of the early 11th century, had embarked on a difficult task when creating his dodecasyllabic Christian Calendar, that is two-verse storytelling about saints and, mainly, about the tortures they died of. He accomplished it more than successfully, besides in quite a vivid and spectacular way, by means of various poetic and rhetorical techniques. Food and medicine imagery was just a minute aspect of his mastery, yet a powerful one, acquiring not only artistic and rhetorical, but also mnemonic functions. the poet used such images – just as he used e.g. Biblical allusions – as a way to convey a variety of details in succinct messages; the information thus compressed is unfolded by means of associations in the mind of the perceiver. These associations are related not only to Christianity, but also to many other aspects of the Byzantine cultured life, including certain elements from Antiquity. I will try to reveal this mechanism and to show the attempts of the 14th-century South Slavonic translators to render it as well as their decisions in cases of realia unknown to their audience. For this purpose, I have selected certain Greek verse memories (as given in the editions of Eustratiadis and Cresci & Skomorochova Venturini) from the Verse Synaxarion for the summer half of the year together with their two South-Slavonic correspondences of the 14th century (according to the two respective early manuscripts of the Slavonic Verse Prolog), again only for the months from March to August

Circular Dichroism is Sensitive to Monovalent Cation Binding in Monensin Complexes

We present a lock-free version of the light-weight userlevel task management library called Wool, in an aim to show that even extremely well tuned, in terms of synchronization,applications can benefit from lock-free programming.Explicit multi-threading is an efficient way to exploit the offered parallelism of multi-core and multi-processor based systems. However, it can sometimes be hard to expressthe inherited parallelism in programs using a limited number of long lived threads. Often it can be more straightforwardto dynamically create a large number of small tasks that in turn automatically execute on the available threads.Wool is a promising and efficient library and framework that allows the programmer to create user tasks in C with a very low overhead. The library automatically executestasks and balances the load evenly on a given number of threads by utilizing work stealing techniques. However, thesynchronization for stealing tasks is based on mutual exclusion which is known to limit parallelism and efficiency. We have designed and implemented a new lock-free algorithmfor synchronization of stealing tasks in Wool. Experiments show similar or significantly improved performance on a setof benchmarks executed on a multi-core platform

Circular Dichroism Spectroscopic Studies on Solution Chemistry of M(II)-Monensinates in Their Competition Reactions

The chirality of the polyether ionophore monensic acid A can be successfully used to study its coordination ability in solution. A complementary approach to gain new insights into the complexation chemistry of the antibiotic (studied previously by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy in the ultraviolet range (UV-CD)) is presented. (1) Methods: The CD spectroscopy in the visible (VIS-CD) and near-infrared (NIR-CD) range is applied to evaluate the affinity of deprotonated monensic acid A (monensinate A) towards Ni(II) or Co(II) cations in methanolic solution. Competition experiments between a variety of colorless divalent metal ions for binding the ligand anion were also performed. (2) Results: The stability constants of the species observed in binary Ni(II)/Co(II)-monensinate systems and their distribution were reevaluated with the VIS- and NIR-CD techniques. The data confirmed the formation of mono and bis complexes depending on the metal-to-ligand molar ratio. The studies on the systems containing two competing divalent metal cations exclude the formation of ternary complex species but provide an opportunity to also calculate the stability constants of Zn(II), Mg(II), and Ca(II) monensinates. (3) Conclusions: The advantages of CD spectroscopy in the VIS-NIR range (“invisible” ligand and metal salts, “visible” chiral complex species) simplify the experimental dataset evaluation and increase the reliability of computed results