“Gods second maister peece. The woman”. Medical terminology addressing women in Early Modern English.

The expansion of the medical science that took place in the Early Modern period (16th and 17th century) was accompanied and promoted by the proliferation of medical writing materials, enhanced, in turn, by two synergic factors. On the one hand, the spread of the printing press that facilitated the divulgation of the medical prose until then restricted to high learned contexts; and on the other the increasing demand of vernacular texts whose principal sources were Latin or French treatises (Pahta 2001; Siraisi 1990; Siraisi 2007). The vernacularization of medical writing entailed for its part the introduction into English of an important amount of morpho-syntactic, lexical and discursive elements from the continental languages, particularly the aforementioned Latin and French (Taavitsainen et al. 2011, 24; Gotti 2001). Furthermore, these texts were largely still based on the classical medicine and supported by a scholastic though-style. This knowledge clashed with the emergence of the empiric paradigm fostered by new discoveries in the fields of anatomy and physiology. In this context, some authors and practitioners began to modify the classical perspective by slightly introducing a modern approach. Thus, while the humoral theory still served to explain the physiological changes of the body, the Galenic one-sex model started to be questioned (Churchill 2005, 3). Along this line, a pioneering treatise devoted to the diseases of women was written by the French physician Jean Liébault at the end of the 16th century, and anonymously translated into English during the following century by hand. This valuable manuscript belonging to the Hunterian Collection and housed at the Glasgow University Library is the object of this study. The volume contains the English version of the compendium of the three books written by Liébault, amounting about nine hundred pages and more than two hundred fifty thousand words. The prose includes theoretical and practical information exclusively dedicated to the diseases and conditions affecting women. Therefore, according to Taavitsainen and Pahta it can be classified as a specialized theoretical treatise (2011). This unique text offers an excellent material to investigate the medical terminology associated with women precisely at the moment of that radical changes in the scientific world. Although much has been researched on the topic of early medical writing (Taavitsainen and Pahta 2011; Moskowich 2008; Norri 2004; Pahta and Nevanlinna 1997; Gotti 2001;Taavitsainen 2012; Calle-Martín and Romero-Barranco 2015, to cite but a few), the lexical and discursive treatment that women have received in those texts remains hitherto unaddressed. Thus, this study aims at analysing the linguistic features that were employed in a medical academic text purposely centred on women, with two main objectives: first, to identify specific words or constructions related to women, considering their lexical, semantic and discourse features, and secondly; to analyse whether these constructions were directly adopted from the French source, or instead adapted to the vernacular language.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

SentiTur: Building Linguistic Resources for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis in the Tourism Sector

The use of linguistic resources beyond the scope of language studies, i.e. commercial purposes, has become commonplace since the availability of massive amounts of data and the development of tools to process them. An interesting focus on these materials is provided by Sentiment Analysis (SA) tools and methodologies, which attempt to identify the polarity or semantic orientation of a text, i.e., its positive, negative, or neutral value. Two main approaches have been made in this sense, one based on complex machine-learning algorithms and the other relying principally on lexical knowledge (Taboada et al., 2011). Lingmotif is an example of lexicon-based SA tool offering polarity classification and other related metrics, together with an analysis of the target segments evaluated (Moreno-Ortiz, 2017). Sentiment has been shown to be domain-specific to a large extent (Choi & Cardie, 2008) and it is therefore necessary to study and describe how sentiment is expressed not only in general language, but also in specialized domains. The availability of annotated, domain-specific corpora could greatly enhance the capacity of SA tools. Furthermore, the demand for a more fine-grained approach requires the identification of specific domain terminology, allowing the recognition of target terms associated with the polarity (Liu, 2012). Most available SA corpora are annotated at the document level, which allows systems to be trained to return the overall orientation of the text. However, more detail is necessary: what aspects exactly are being praised or criticized? This type SA is known as Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA), and attempts to extract more fined-grained knowledge. ABSA has attracted the attention of recent SemEval shared-tasks (Pontiki et al., 2015)

Synchronic Analysis of the Progressive Aspect in Three Varieties of Asian Englishes

The purpose of this study is to analyse the frequency of use of the progressive aspect in three varieties of Asian Englishes, namely Hong Kong, India and Singapore, considering British English as a point of departure. The use of the progressive will be researched in comparable corpora (International Corpus of English) considering its distribution in the English verbal paradigm and subject person, both in the written and spoken components. Main results indicate that IndE has the highest frequency of the progressive, and Hong Kong English the lowest, when non-native varieties are compared. In all cases, the progressive is more frequent in the spoken than in the written section, and it preferably occurs in the present simple tense. English varieties present significant differences regarding the distribution of the progressive by tense and subject person. Several factors are discussed as possible reasons for such variation

A diachronic study of the conative alternation construction in english

The conative alternation is a subtype of transitivity alternation in which there is a transitive variant and an intransitive one represented with an at-construction. From a syntactic point of view, it occurs with transitive verbs and is therefore referred to as a case of preposition insertion (the preposition at is inserted before the direct object). From a semantic perspective, it can be described as a “detransitivizing” construction, since there is a contrast between conative uses of transitive verbs and their transitive counterparts (Perek 2015: 90). Accordingly, the argument can be direct (subject, direct object or indirect object) or oblique. (1) a. Kim cut the pie. b. Kim cut at the pie (drunkenly) (Beavers 2006: 6). The patient (“the pie”) can have two realizations: as the direct object (1a) or as an oblique signalled by the preposition at (1b). Here we find a semantic contrast: in the transitive variant the patient is known to have been affected in some way, whereas in the one with the at-construction this is not necessarily the case; thus, the action denoted by the verb may or may not have been completed and the alternation may convey “a reduced a degree of effectiveness” (Riemer 2010: 354), as seen in example (2b) below, which implies that the action was not completely successful: (2) a. The zombies slashed my face. b. The zombies slashed at my face. Although the construction has been studied before (van der Leek [1996], Broccias [2001, 2003], Beavers [2010], Perek and Lemmens [2010], Guerrero-Medina [2011], Perek [2015]), it remains scarcely investigated from a diachronic point of view. Therefore, our main objective is to research on the origin and development of the conative construction in English by looking at its occurrence in several historical corpora. For the purpose, we have first made a comprehensive list of verbs which allow the construction and then selected the verbs under study. A collostructional analysis, which “investigates which lexemes are strongly attracted or repelled by a particular slot in the construction (i.e. occur more frequently or less frequently than expected)” (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003: 214), has been carried out as it can help to establish which verbs favour the construction over others in the different corpora. Some of our preliminary results show that the construction was already present in Old English and that in most instances the subject is agentive or animate.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Design and validation of annotation schemas for aspect‑based sentiment analysis in the tourism sector.

The use of linguistic resources beyond the scope of language studies, e.g., commercial purposes, has become commonplace since the availability of massive amounts of data and the development of software tools to process them. An interesting perspective on these data is provided by Sentiment Analysis, which attempts to identify the polarity of a text, but can also pursue further, more challenging aims, such as the automatic identification of the specific entities and aspects being discussed in the evaluative speech act, along with the polarity associated with them. This approach, known as aspect-based sentiment analysis, seeks to offer fine-grained information from raw text, but its success depends largely on the existence of pre-annotated domain-specific corpora, which in turn calls for the design and validation of an annotation schema. This paper examines the methodological aspects involved in the creation of such annotation schema and is motivated by the scarcity of information found in the literature. We describe the insights we obtained from the annotation schema generation and validation process within our project, whose objectives include the development of advanced sentiment analysis software of user reviews in the tourism sector. We focus on the identification of the relevant entities and attributes in the domain, which we extract from a corpus of user reviews, and go on to describe the schema creation and validation process. We begin by describing the corpus annotation process and its further iterative refinement by means of several inter-annotator agreement measurements, which we believe is key to a successful annotation schema.Esta obra es resultado de investigación del proyecto "Lingmotif2: Plataforma Universal de Análisis de Sentimiento" (FFI2016-78141-P), financiado con 48.800€ por el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitivida

Characterization of the plankton community composition in Málaga Bay (NW Alboran Sea) by means of integrative taxonomy.

The Alboran Sea is highly dynamic from a hydrographical point of view. Depending on the strength of the currents and the direction of the wind the surface coastal water masses can be either of Atlantic or Mediterranean origin. This variability affects both the phytoplankton and zooplankton components of the community inhabiting the Bay of Málaga. In addition, fish larvae distribution varies with the diel cycle, affecting zooplankton distribution in shallow waters. In order to provide a first insight into the variability of the planktonic community composition in the area during a 24 hour cycle, we applied an integrative approach combining morphological and molecular tools

Impacts of the volcanic eruption in La Palma (Canary Islands) on the nearby marine bacterioplankton communities

Trabajo presentado en ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting 2023, celebrado en Palma de Mallorca (España), entre el 4 y el 9 de mayo de 2023.The volcanic eruption that occurred in La Palma Island (Canary Islands, Spain) in 2021 resulted in molten lava flowing into the ocean and forming a delta in the coastline, besides the emission of large amounts of ashes being deposited in a vast area around the Canary Islands. In order to assess the effects of the eruption on seawater, two oceanographic cruises were carried out, one at the beginning of the eruption and a second one a month later. We used an oceanographic CTD rosette sampler for collecting seawater in different areas of La Palma coastline together with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a sampling device to collect surface samples near the delta newly formed on the coastal fringe. We sequenced the 16S rRNA gene in order to assess the response of bacterioplankton to such natural disturbance. The results show that the abundance of Thiomicrospirales, Gammaproteobacteria capable of oxidizing poly-metal sulfides, increased significantly in UAV samples collected near the lava delta. Moreover, in stations where the largest physical-chemical anomalies were recorded with the CTD, sequence data showed drastic changes in the prokaryotic community structure; cyanobacterial abundance decreased while the ammonia-oxidizing archeon Nitrosopelagicus and the bacterial SAR324 clade, with potential sulfur-based chemolithoautotrophic lifestyle, dominated the communities. The combined used of shipboard operations and UAVs provided a unique opportunity to study the prokaryotic response to a massive lava input, an event that is rarely observed and sampled in real time

Zooplankton Biomass Depletion Event Reveals the Importance of Small Pelagic Fish Top-Down Control in the Western Mediterranean Coastal Waters

The influence of hydrochemistry and trophic conditions on the coastal zooplankton community’s biomass and metabolic activities was investigated along the Spanish Mediterranean coastal waters, from Algeciras Bay to Barcelona, from autumn 2011 to autumn 2012. Two hydrographic regions were differentiated: NW Alboran (ALB) and W Mediterranean (MED). Zooplankton metabolism was assessed from measurements of the electron transport system (ETS) and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (AARS) activities, as proxies for potential respiration and somatic growth, respectively. Zooplankton showed three to fivefold higher biomass in ALB than in MED during autumn 2011 and spring 2012. However, in autumn 2012, a drastic decrease in biomass standing stock was observed in ALB, with no significant differences between the two regions. This biomass depletion event was not associated with environmental variables, food availability or zooplankton metabolic rates, but coincided with a twofold peak of Sardina pilchardus landings in ALB. A reduced standing stock coupled with high zooplankton growth rates suggests mortality by predation as the main cause for the low zooplankton biomass typically observed in MED, and in ALB during autumn 2012.Versión del edito

Molecular characterization of the diet of the planktonic community in Málaga Bay (NW Alboran Sea)

The seasonal changes in structure and functioning of the pelagic trophic web in Málaga Bay (NW Alboran Sea) are related to the annual hydrological cycle. However, time series analyses have shown that the relationship between interannual hydrological variability and the plankton community composition is weak. This might be due to different human-induced pressures (nutrient pollution, coastal fisheries) acting on different compartments of the trophic web. The net effect of all these factors would depend on how the ecosystem channels changes in the composition and abundance of each trophic level. Interactions of phytoplankton-ciliates-zooplankton might have a central role in the regulation of the trophic web in Málaga Bay, although the trophic relations of the dominant groups remain still undefined. In order to identify the dominant trophic relationships we aimed to characterise the diet of key ichthyo- and mesozooplankton species in the field. Given that gut content preys (phyto- and microplankton) are fragile and not easy to identify visually, we developed species-specific molecular markers to detect their presence/absence within the predators gut

Controls of picophytoplankton abundance and composition in a highly dynamic marine system, the Northern Alboran Sea (Western Mediterranean)

The Alboran Sea is a highly dynamic basin which exhibits a high spatio-temporal variability of hydrographic structures (e.g. fronts, gyres, coastal upwellings). This work compares the abundance and composition of picophytoplankton observed across the northern Alboran Sea among eleven cruises between 2008 and 2012 using flow cytometry. We evaluate the seasonal and longitudinal variability of picophytoplankton on the basis of the circulation regimes at a regional scale and explore the presence of cyanobacteria ecotypes in the basin. The maximal abundances obtained for Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus and picoeukaryotes (12.7 × 104, 13.9 × 104 and 8.6 × 104 cells mL− 1 respectively) were consistent with those reported for other adjacent marine areas. Seasonal changes in the abundance of the three picophytoplankton groups were highly significant although they did not match the patterns described for other coastal waters. Higher abundances of Prochlorococcus were obtained in autumn-winter while Synechococcus and picoeukaryotes exhibited a different seasonal abundance pattern depending on the sector (e.g. Synechococcus showed higher abundance in summer in the west sector and during winter in the eastern study area). Additionally, conspicuous longitudinal gradients were observed for Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, with Prochlorococcus decreasing from west to east and Synechococcus following the opposite pattern. The analysis of environmental variables (i.e. temperature, salinity and inorganic nutrients) and cell abundances indicates that Prochlorococcus preferred high salinity and nitrate to phosphate ratio. On the contrary, temperature did not seem to play a role in Prochlorococcus distribution as it was numerically important during the whole seasonal cycle. Variability in Synechococcus abundance could not be explained by changes in any environmental variable suggesting that different ecotypes were sampled during the surveys. In particular, our data would indicate the presence of at least two ecotypes of Synechococcus: a summer ecotype widely distributed in the whole Alboran Sea and a winter ecotype adapted to lower temperature and higher nutrient concentration whose growth is favoured in the eastern sector.Versión del editor2,444