Contrastive prosody and the subsequent mention of alternatives during discourse processing

Linguistic research has long viewed prosody as an important indicator of information structure in intonationally rich languages like English. Correspondingly, numerous psycholinguistic studies have shown significant effects of prosody, particularly with respect to the immediate processing of a prosodically prominent phrase. Although co-reference resolution is known to be influenced by information structure, it has been less clear whether prosodic prominence can affect decisions about next mention in a discourse, and if so, how. We present results from an open-ended story continuation task, conducted as part of a series of experiments that examine how prosody influences the anticipation and resolution of co-reference. Overall results from the project suggest that prosodic prominence can increase or decrease reference to a saliently pitch-accented phrase, depending on additional circumstances of the referential decision. We argue that an adequate account of prosody’s role in co-reference requires consideration of how the processing system interfaces with multiple levels of linguistic representation

Hepatitis B virus infection in HIV-positive individuals in the UK collaborative HIV cohort (UK CHIC) study.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an increasingly important cause of morbidity and mortality in HIV-infected adults. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and incidence of HBV in the UK CHIC Study, a multicentre observational cohort

A Scheme to Coordinate Monetary and Fiscal Policies in the Euro Area

Il saggio esamina l'organizzazione del coordinamento tra le politiche fiscali e monetarie nell'area dell'euro, criticandone i contenuti attuali e proponendone una modifica sia ai meccanismi istituzionali, attraverso la creazione di un'Agenzia Fiscale Europea, dotata di un'indipendenza simile a quella della Banca Centrale Europea, sia di suoi strumenti operativi, come il Patto di Stabilità, i cui contenuti attuali appaiono contraddittori rispetto ai dati ufficiali riportati dalla BCE e relativi alle potenzialialità di crescita e al tasso di inflazione obiettivo dell'area dell'euro, e ai vincoli imposti dal Patto stesso ai rapporti deficit-PIl e debito pubblico-PIL