Processing Grammatical Functions of Mandarin Locative Structures

Pienemann (1989) argues that transfer of information from a Verb to its Subject, is more demanding than transfer within Nominal phrases because the former combines information from separate ‘iterations’ of conceptual structure, and the latter does not. I use data from a longitudinal study of Mandarin SLA to argue that, in fact GF assignment is a more significant contributor to processing demands than any conceptual separation of the Subject and verb. The evidence comes from possessive, locative and relative clause structures. Under Pienemann's account, the first two, which are purely nominal structures, should emerge earlier than RCs, where a GF must be transferred across a VP boundary. In fact, de-marked possessives and intransitive RCs are among the first nominal structures to emerge whereas de-marked locatives and transitive RCs emerge much later, even given intensive instruction (Zhang, 2002). If Pienemann’s basic premise is correct, and emergence times reflect processing demands, then the purely nominal locatives involve processing demands comparable to those of transitive RCs. I argue that the relevant factor is argument structure, and the information transfer involved in the assignment of GFs, not lexical category or conceptual divisions

Lipids as carriers of anthropogenic signals from prehistory

Studies performed during the last two decades have shown that lipids are preserved in association with a wide range of artefacts and ecofacts recovered from archaeological sites, e.g. pottery vessels and skeletal remains. The majority of work in this area has focused on the use of molecular structures ('biomarkers') and distributions ('fingerprints') to assess the nature and origin of commodities associated with past cultural, economic and agricultural practices. However, since lipids, like all other classes of biomolecule, are affected by degradation (both pre- and post-burial), emphasis is now being placed on the complementary use of diagenetically robust, compound-specific stable isotope measurements to enhance the scope and reliability of archaeological interpretations. A feature of the δ(13)C values of individual lipids, rather than bulk measurements of biochemically more heterogeneous materials, lies in their capacity to reflect differences in both the isotopic composition of the carbon sources used in their biosynthesis and the routing of dietary lipids and their metabolites in consumer organisms. This isotopic information, accessible by gas chromatography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry, has opened up new avenues of investigation concerning human activity in prehistory