L1 ACQUISITION OF JAPANESE VERB ARGUMENT STRUCTURE: HOW DO CHILDREN ACQUIRE GRAMMAR IN THE ABSENCE OF CLEAR EVIDENCE?

The Japanese language allows flexible word order (Shibatani, 1990) and allows missing noun constituents (Shibatani, 1990). The case-marking is realized with postpositional particles, e.g. the subject marker —ga and the direct object marker -o. However, these case markers are often omitted (Aida, 1993; Miyata, 2008; Rispoli, 1989). While Bates and MacWhinney (1989) and Sasaki and MacWhinney (2006) view case marking as the strongest cue in Japanese and animacy contrast as the second reliable cue, Ito, Tahara, and Park (1993) and Rispoli (1987) claim that Japanese children produce case markers with errors because they do not process them. It has not been clear how Japanese children acquire verb argument structure when there is little structural information in their input. The current study aims to account for first language acquisition of Japanese verb argument structure by means of corpus analysis. We hypothesize that, while case markers are often omitted, both mothers' production and children's production initially follow the canonical pattern where the word order cue and the animacy contrast cue form a coalition (Bates & MacWhinney, 1989; Sasaki & MacWhinney, 2006), which aids children to identify the grammatical relations of the verb arguments. The results indicated that the coalition we proposed is reliable information when the two nouns were realized. While both mothers and children produced the non-canonical form frequently even at the earliest age contrary to our prediction, children start from the canonical vs. non-canonical ratio that is similar to the maternal speech and then develop their own distribution as they get older. Moreover, we suggest that animacy contrast cue in Japanese is more important for children than it has been suggested in the past. The animacy contrast is almost always present in the utterances and it is the information the speakers and the listeners use to specify the grammatical relations of the noun arguments when the sentence involves the reordering of the constituents or includes only one noun. On the other hand, the case-marking cue only appeared in a redundant context, which makes it hard for Japanese children to acquire case-marking

Examining Main Clause Similarity and Frequency Effects in the Production of Tagalog Relative Clauses

This study investigates two possible factors in the well-known subject preference in the acquisition and processing of relative clauses (RCs): (i) an effect of similarity between declarative and relative clauses and (ii) an effect of frequency of certain RC types. Two production experiments were conducted with adult and child speakers of Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a Philippine-type voice system. One experiment elicited declarative clauses and the other elicited relative clauses; both had two animacy conditions: animate-animate (animate agent and patient) and animate-inanimate (animate agent, inanimate patient). Experiment 1’s results show a preference for patient voice in the animate-animate condition only. Experiment 2’s results show a preference for the relativization of the agent in the animate-inanimate condition only. We suggest that the interplay of a patient voice preference in Tagalog with a general preference for the relativization of agents – the source of which remains undetermined – may explain these results

Autofluorescence-based high-throughput isolation of nonbleaching Cyanidioschyzon merolae strains under nitrogen-depletion

Photosynthetic organisms maintain optimum levels of photosynthetic pigments in response to environmental changes to adapt to the conditions. The identification of cyanobacteria strains that alleviate bleaching has revealed genes that regulate levels of phycobilisome, the main light-harvesting complex. In contrast, the mechanisms of pigment degradation in algae remain unclear, as no nonbleaching strains have previously been isolated. To address this issue, this study attempted to isolate nonbleaching strains of the unicellular red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae after exposure to nitrogen (N)-depletion based on autofluorescence information. After four weeks under N-depletion, 13 cells from 500,000 cells with almost identical pre- and post-depletion chlorophyll a (Chl a) and/or phycocyanin autofluorescence intensities were identified. These nonbleaching candidate strains were sorted via a cell sorter, isolated on solid medium, and their post-N-depletion Chl a and phycocyanin levels were analyzed. Chl a levels of these nonbleaching candidate strains were lower at 1–4 weeks of N-depletion similar to the control strains, however, their phycocyanin levels were unchanged. Thus, we successfully isolated nonbleaching C. merolae strains in which phycocyanin was not degraded under N-depletion, via autofluorescence spectroscopy and cell sorting. This versatile method will help to elucidate the mechanisms regulating pigments in microalgae

NT1-002

These PowerPoint files help you conduct an elicited production task (picture description task) of subject and object relative clauses. The experiment uses the same set of pictures as NT1-001.pdf, but it additionally includes timed animation and audio files. You are allowed to modify the audio prompts and pictures to match your needs (e.g., cultural appropriateness). However, if you use this material, please cite the following reference: Tanaka, Nozomi, William O’Grady, Kamil Deen, Chae-Eun Kim, Ryoko Hattori, Ivan Paul M. Bondoc, and Jennifer U. Soriano. (2016). “Relative clause elicited production task.” Nozomi Tanaka Collection. Kaipuleohone: http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/4250. Type: language description. Media: image, audio. Access: public. Resource ID: NT1-002. (Accessed Date). If you have any question/request, please feel free to contact Nozomi Tanaka at [email protected]

The clinical features of pulmonary artery involvement in Takayasu arteritis and its relationship with ischemic heart diseases and infection

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary artery involvement (PAI) in Takayasu arteritis (TAK) can lead to severe complications, but the relationship between the two has not been fully clarified. METHODS: We retrospectively investigated 166 consecutive patients with TAK who attended Kyoto University Hospital from 1997 to 2018. The demographic data, clinical symptoms and signs, comorbidities, treatments, and imaging findings were compared between patients with and without PAI. TAK was diagnosed based on the American College of Rheumatology Classification Criteria (1990) or the Japanese Clinical Diagnostic Criteria (2008). PAI was identified using enhanced computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, or lung scintigraphy. RESULTS: PAI was detected in 14.6% (n = 24) of total TAK patients. Dyspnea (25.0% vs. 8.6%; p = 0.043), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) (16.7% vs. 0.0%; p < 0.001), ischemic heart disease (IHD) (29% vs. 9.3%; p = 0.018), respiratory infection (25.0% vs. 6.0%; p = 0.009), and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infection (20.8% vs. 0.8%; p < 0.001) were significantly more frequent, and renal artery stenosis (0% vs. 17%; p = 0.007) was significantly less frequent in TAK patients with PAI than in those without PAI. PAI and biologics were risk factors for NTM. CONCLUSIONS: TAK patients with PAI more frequently have dyspnea, PAH, IHD, and respiratory infection, including NTM, than TAK patients without PAI

Association between induction of the self-management system for preventing readmission and disease severity and length of readmission in patients with heart failure

[Objective] We recently developed the self-management system using the HF points and instructions to visit hospitals or clinics when the points exceed the pre-specified levels. We found that the self-management system decreased the hospitalization for HF with an increase in unplanned visits and early intervention in the outpatient department. However, it is unclear whether we managed severe HF outpatients who should have been hospitalized. In this study, we aimed to compare HF severity in rehospitalized patients with regard to self-management system use. [Results] We retrospectively enrolled 306 patients (153 patients each in the system user and non-user groups) using propensity scores (PS). We compared HF severity and length of readmission in rehospitalized patients in both groups. During the 1-year follow-up period, 24 system users and 43 non-system users in the PS-matched cohort were hospitalized. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of brain natriuretic peptide levels at readmission, maximum daily intravenous furosemide dose, percentage of patients requiring intravenous inotropes, duration of hospital stay and in-hospital mortality. These results suggest that the HF severity in rehospitalized patients was not different between the two groups

Association of IL28B gene polymorphism with development of hepatocellular carcinoma in Japanese patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection

IL28B single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are associated with spontaneous and treatment-induced elimination of hepatitis C virus (HCV). To assess whether the IL28B rs8099917 SNP also affects the progression of chronic HCV infection, we genotyped 511 Japanese HCV patients, including 69 with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The T/T genotype of rs8099917 was not associated with the development of HCC (p = 0.623), although stepwise logistic regression analysis showed that liver cirrhosis, age greater than 68 years, and serum albumin <4.2 mg/dl were associated with HCC onset. It appears that the IL28B SNP does not directly influence hepatocarcinogenesis in chronic HCV infection.ArticleHUMAN IMMUNOLOGY. 73(3):298-300 (2012)journal articl