Modelling lexical borrowability

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Insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization, corpus-based approaches to bilingual speech

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Linguistic characteristics of SLI in Afrikaans

No abstract available

Contemporary women prisoners health experiences, unique prison health care needs and health care outcomes in Sub Saharan Africa: A scoping review of extant literature.

Background Sub Saharan African (SSA) prisons have seen a substantial increase in women prisoners in recent years. Despite this increase, women prisoners constitute a minority in male dominated prison environments, and their special health needs are often neglected. Research activity on prison health remains scant in SSA, with gathering of strategic information generally restricted to infectious diseases (human immunodeficiency virus infection HIV/tuberculosis TB), and particularly focused on male prisoners. Health care provisions for women (and pregnant women) in SSA prisons are anecdotally reported to fall far short of the equivalence care standards mandated by human rights and international recommendations, and the recent agreements set out in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Minimum Standards for HIV in Prisons. Methods A scoping review mapped what is currently known about women prisoners’ health experiences, unique prison health care needs and health care outcomes in SSA. A systematic search collected and reviewed all available and relevant published and grey literature (2000–2017). Following removal of duplicates and application of exclusion measures, 46 records remained, which represented 18 of the 49 SSA countries. These records were subsequently charted and thematically analysed. Results Three themes were generated; ‘The Prison Regime’; ‘Navigating inside the Prison Health Infrastructure’ and ‘Accessing the outside Community and Primary Care Health Services’. Women in SSA prisons experience the same substandard nutrition, overcrowding and unhygienic conditions which exacerbate poor health and infectious disease transmission as males. Human rights abuses, substandard prison conditions and poor access to prison based and community clinical care, along with the invisible nature of women and that of their unique health needs are deplorable. Conclusions The review has highlighted the dearth of gender specific strategic information on women prisoners in the region, appalling environmental conditions and prison health care provision, and violation of human rights for those incarcerated. Enhanced donor support, resource allocation, prison health and population health policy reform, health systems surveillance and gender sensitive prison health service provision is warranted. This will help address women prisoners’ conditions and their specific health needs in SSA prisons, and ultimately bridge the gap between prison and population health in the region

“Bursting the Lyrica bubble”: experiences of pregabalin use in individuals accessing opioid substitution treatment in Dublin.

Background: Pregabalin, also known by a brand name of Lyrica, is a prescription only gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) analogue and licensed for a range of medical conditions, e.g. chronic pain, generalised anxiety and epilepsy. In recent years, pregabalin has attracted clinical and research attention due to an increase in its association with overdose fatalities. Individuals with opiate use and those in opioid agonist treatment are an identified at risk group for problematic pregabalin use and overdose. As such, research focusing on pregabalin use in individuals accessing opioid agonist treatment is highly relevant. Aim: This study aims to add to the evidence base on diverted pregabalin use in the OAT cohort in Ireland. Methods: Fifteen semi structured interviews were conducted and analytically coded using thematic analysis with software programme NVivo12. Results: Individuals on OAT may use Lyrica to self-regulate negative emotions; Lyrica use in this population is embedded in a polydrug use culture of “tablet taking”; participants illustrated concerning reports of inappropriate prescribing and described psychiatric symptoms occurring during withdrawal. Conclusions: We report here on the first study in Ireland investigating the experiences of individuals who access opioid agonist treatment (OAT) and reported current or recent pregabalin use. Increased pharmaco-vigilance amongst medical practitioners is warranted when prescribing Lyrica to individuals with vulnerabilities such as a history of problematic drug use. Trauma informed interventions in addition to pragmatic harm reduction information for poly drug users to prevent cross tolerance, dependence and overdose deaths should be part of the healthcare and policy response

Cross-linguistic constraints and lineage-specific developments in the semantics of cutting and breaking in Japonic and Germanic

Semantic variation in the cutting and breaking domain has been shown to be constrained across languages in a previous typological study, but it was unclear whether Japanese was an outlier in this domain. Here we revisit cutting and breaking in the Japonic language area by collecting new naming data for 40 videoclips depicting cutting and breaking events in Standard Japanese, the highly divergent Tohoku dialects, as well as four related Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama). We find that the Japonic languages recapitulate the same semantic dimensions attested in the previous typological study, confirming that semantic variation in the domain of cutting and breaking is indeed cross-linguistically constrained. We then compare our new Japonic data to previously collected Germanic data and find that, in general, related languages resemble each other more than unrelated languages, and that the Japonic languages resemble each other more than the Germanic languages do. Nevertheless, English resembles all of the Japonic languages more than it resembles Swedish. Together, these findings show that the rate and extent of semantic change can differ between language families, indicating the existence of lineage-specific developments on top of universal cross-linguistic constraints