'Kriptenstein's' Skeptical Paradox and Chomsky's Reply

Chomsky's KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE addresses certain conceptual questions about the foundations of generative linguistics that center on a 'skeptical paradox' that Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein. Chomsky's discussion offers an extended defense of his psychological conception of grammar against this challenge. This essay argues that Chomsky's response to the skeptical paradox is inadequate, but instructively so. The inadequacies of Chomsky's reply surface as a destructive dilemma for the psycholinguist conceptually committed to the generative paradigm in such a way as to reveal a conceptual incoherence in that paradigm. Specifically, the essay exhibits the dilemma as it arises for the performance theory of Berwick and Weinberg (1986). While modification of the philosophical foundations of generative linguistics may show the working psycholinguist the way out of the dilemma, this essay leaves the dispute unresolved, making only the negative point

Früherkennung diabetischer Kardiomyopathie durch MRT-basierte Ausdehnungsanalyse

Früherkennung diabetischer Kardiomyopathie in einer bevölkerungsbasierten Fall-Kohorten-Studie (N=347) mittels MR gestützter multiparametrischer Strainanalyse. Dabei konnten bereits im prädiabetischen Stadium Veränderungen der kardialen Strain gezeigt werden

Recursion and the infinitude claim

We address certain recent suggestions that the existence of infinitely many grammatical expressions in human languages (the infinitude claim) is a universal of human language. We examine the arguments given for the infinitude claim, and show that they tacitly depend on the unwarranted assumption that the only way to represent the structural properties of a language is by means of a generative grammar with a recursive rule system. We explore some of the reasons why linguists have been so willing to accept language infinitude despite its inadequate support and its paucity of linguistic consequences. We suggest that the infinitude claim is motivated chiefly by an inadvisable adherence to the notion that languages are sets. It is not motivated by considerations of the creative aspect of language use, or opposition to associationist psychology, or the putative universality of iterable linguistic structure such as recursive embedding or unbounded coordination (which are in any case probably not universal). 1 Infinitude as a linguistic universal In a number of recent works, linguists have portrayed the infinitude of sentences in human languages as an established linguistic universal. Lasnik (2000) asserts, in the opening chapter of a textbook based on transcriptions of a series of introductory syntax lectures

Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6(th) Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague.

Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of the disease plague, has been implicated in three historical pandemics. These include the third pandemic of the 19(th) and 20(th) centuries, during which plague was spread around the world, and the second pandemic of the 14(th)-17(th) centuries, which included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death. Previous studies have confirmed that Y. pestis caused these two more recent pandemics. However, a highly spirited debate still continues as to whether Y. pestis caused the so-called Justinianic Plague of the 6(th)-8(th) centuries AD. By analyzing ancient DNA in two independent ancient DNA laboratories, we confirmed unambiguously the presence of Y. pestis DNA in human skeletal remains from an Early Medieval cemetery. In addition, we narrowed the phylogenetic position of the responsible strain down to major branch 0 on the Y. pestis phylogeny, specifically between nodes N03 and N05. Our findings confirm that Y. pestis was responsible for the Justinianic Plague, which should end the controversy regarding the etiology of this pandemic. The first genotype of a Y. pestis strain that caused the Late Antique plague provides important information about the history of the plague bacillus and suggests that the first pandemic also originated in Asia, similar to the other two plague pandemics

Knowledge integration in One Health policy formulation, implementation and evaluation

The One Health concept covers the interrelationship between human, animal and environmental health and requires multistakeholder collaboration across many cultural, disciplinary, institutional and sectoral boundaries. Yet, the implementation of the One Health approach appears hampered by shortcomings in the global framework for health governance. Knowledge integration approaches, at all stages of policy development, could help to address these shortcomings. The identification of key objectives, the resolving of trade-offs and the creation of a common vision and a common direction can be supported by multicriteria analyses. Evidence-based decision-making and transformation of observations into narratives detailing how situations emerge and might unfold in the future can be achieved by systems thinking. Finally, transdisciplinary approaches can be used both to improve the effectiveness of existing systems and to develop novel networks for collective action. To strengthen One Health governance, we propose that knowledge integration becomes a key feature of all stages in the development of related policies. We suggest several ways in which such integration could be promoted

Anaphoric <em>one </em>and its implications

The nominal anaphoric element one has figured prominently in discussions of linguistic nativism because of an important argument advanced by C. L. Baker (1978). His argument has been frequently cited within the cognitive and linguistic sciences, and has provided the topic for a chain of experimental and computational psycholinguistics papers. Baker’s crucial grammaticality facts, though much repeated in the literature, have not been critically investigated. A corpus investigation shows that his claims are not true: one does not take only phrasal antecedents, but can also take nouns on their own, including semantically relational nouns, and can take various of-PP dependents of its own. We give a semantic analysis of anaphoric one that allows it to exhibit this kind of freedom, and exhibit frequency evidence that goes a long way to explaining why linguists have been inclined to regard phrases like the one of physics or three ones as ungrammatical when in fact (as corpus evidence shows) they are merely dispreferred relative to available grammatical alternatives. The main implication for the acquisition literature is that one of the most celebrated arguments from poverty of the stimulus is shown to be without force. 1. INTRODUCTION. Suppos