French and Spanish wh-interrogatives with and without wh

This article describes the usage of partial interrogatives without wh such as And you went…? in French and Spanish, and analyses the variation between such in-situ-Ø and in-situ-wh-interrogatives such as And you went where? On the basis of an analysis of in-situ-Ø-interrogatives in a corpus of spoken French and Spanish, these interrogatives are described as a particularly efficient means of realizing an information request. Due to the fact that their use is bound to contexts in which the information request is highly expected by the hearer, they can be produced using a minimal syntactic format and simultaneously ensure that the addressee produces the desired response. In comparison, the use of in-situ-wh is less context-sensitive. The analysis also investigates the possibility of differences between French and Spanish as regards the productivity of these interrogatives. An acceptability study of these interrogatives finds no significant difference in terms of the productivity and acceptability of in-situ-Ø in French and Spanish, whereas in-situ-wh reaches a higher acceptability in French than in Spanish. I interpret these results as evidence for a description of in-situ-Ø as an ad-hoc interactional resource whose use does not depend on conventionalization processes, whereas information-requesting in-situ-wh has become conventional in French

The lumbosacral segment as a vulnerable region in various postures

The lumbosacral region in man is exposed to special static and dynamic load. In a supine position, the disc size increases because of the absence of axial load. In a standing position, with physiological posture of the spine, strain discomfort occurs which is increased even more in the sitting position due to the curvature of the lumbar region of the spine and the irregular distribution of pressure in the discs as a result of this. This special problem of sitting posture can be confirmed by examinations

Staircases as contextual cues that help minimize energetic costs

Staircase climbs are habitually avoided, and staircase steepness is overestimated. Visual impressions of staircase slant reliably precede each taxing climb and may act as salient, visual cues, prompting behaviour that supports an ‘economy of action’ (Proffitt, 2006). The thesis adapted the contextual cueing paradigm with natural scenes (cf. Brockmole & Henderson, 2006b) to test for search and learning biases by scene content with staircases. For this, target letters, L and T, were placed near and far from staircases, and in scenes without staircases (three stimulus categories). Eighteen scenes were repeated across blocks, six of each stimulus category. Response latencies and eye movements were recorded. Chapter three investigated search biases in initial eye movements in response to the first presentation of novel, natural scenes of the three stimulus categories. Findings support the notion that early eye movements were biased towards the incidental scene content of staircases in 36 novel real-world scenes (N = 118); this bias was magnified for staircases with more steps, independent of target locations. Chapter two investigated contextual cueing by content of 18 natural scenes, six of each category, repeated across eight blocks (N = 64); for 27 of these participants, target locations were changed relative to staircase location in the ninth block. Steeper learning slopes across the eight repetitions were observed for targets located near staircases compared to the other stimulus categories. Interruptions to learning, due to changes in target locations in the ninth block, were a function of the distance to staircase location pre and post changes, consistent with the observed differential learning. Interruptions were equally strong within and between two nine-block learning sessions (N = 40) that were separated by a 24-hour break. This additional finding is obtained from a subsequent contextual cueing study, presented in chapter four, and speaks to a major involvement of episodic memory in the learning reported in this thesis. In sum, the findings highlight a capacity of staircase percepts to bias initial visual search, and to facilitate short- and longer-term associative learning near staircases. Overall, the results suggest staircases may be salient stimuli for cognitive processes that manage energetic resources

Radiospektren und rotationsspektroskopische Charakterisierung von Tricyanobenzolen

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