The dialect of North Hail, a variety of Najdi Arabic, has a set of sentence-initial particles marking topics of various kinds that correspond to those argued by Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007) to be characteristic of Italian and German: Shift-Topic, Contrastive Topic, and Familiar Topic. In their work, as in much other work in the cartographic tradition, a hierarchy of abstract topic heads is postulated in the C-domain, which host the topical phrases as specifiers. In North Hail Arabic, the topic heads are overt, realized as particles. Some of the topic heads mark topics by attraction to the C-domain; other particles mark topics by ϕ-feature agreement. The particles in the C-domain agree in ϕ-features with a TP-internal DP, subject or object. Analyzed in terms of Agree (Chomsky 2001, 2008), arguments and adverbials are assigned particular topic values either by agreement or by movement. The particles thus provide evidence that topicality can be a syntactic feature, inherent in lexical items (the particles) and assigned to constituents by operations familiar from standard syntactic relations like subject agreement and case. The theory articulated observes the Inclusiveness Condition, known to be a problem for the cartographic theory of topic and focus.

Estonian declarative main clauses display a relatively strict verb-second (V2) order, resembling Germanic V2. However, two prosody-conditioned exceptions distinguish Estonian from Germanic: verb-third occurs with weak proforms in the ‘EPP-position’ and with nuclear-stressed finite verbs. We claim that the derivation of Estonian V2 differs from Germanic. The Estonian left periphery resembles Finnish, a closely related but non-V2 language. In both languages, finite verbs move to the highest T-domain head and a phrasal category moves to the specifier of this head, the EPP-position. Estonian V2 with its exceptions results from “Weak Start,” a prosodic constraint blocking spell-out of the highest copy of the chain derived by movement to the EPP-position when another phrasal constituent occupies the C-domain.

Three issues are taken up: (a) Why do some people never use self-talk? (b) Self-talk is not describing but expressing one's feelings, a distinct type of speech act, which is part of the explanation why use of "you" is restricted in self-talk. (c) The use of "we" in self-talk.

Summary It has previously been demonstrated that the polybisphosphonate osteodex (ODX) inhibits bone resorption in organ-cultured mouse calvarial bone. In this study, we further investigate the effects by ODX on osteoclast differentiation, formation, and function in several different bone organ and cell cultures. Zoledronic acid (ZOL) was used for comparison. In retinoid-stimulated mouse calvarial organ cultures, ODX and ZOL significantly reduced the numbers of periosteal osteoclasts without affecting Tnfsf11 or Tnfrsf11b mRNA expression. ODX and ZOL also drastically reduced the numbers of osteoclasts in cell cultures isolated from the calvarial bone and in vitamin D3–stimulated mouse crude bone marrow cell cultures. These data suggest that ODX can inhibit osteoclast formation by inhibiting the differentiation of osteoclast progenitor cells or by directly targeting mature osteoclasts. We therefore assessed if osteoclast formation in purified bone marrow macrophage cultures stimulated by RANKL was inhibited by ODX and ZOL and found that the initial formation of mature osteoclasts was not affected, but that the bisphosphonates enhanced cell death of mature osteoclasts. In agreement with these findings, ODX and ZOL did not affect the mRNA expression of the osteoclastic genes Acp5 and Ctsk and the osteoclastogenic transcription factor Nfatc1 . When bone marrow macrophages were incubated on bone slices, ODX and ZOL inhibited RANKL-stimulated bone resorption. In conclusion, ODX does not inhibit osteoclast formation but inhibits osteoclastic bone resorption by decreasing osteoclast numbers through enhanced cell death of mature osteoclasts.

Summary Medulloblastoma (MB) is the most common pediatric brain tumor. The therapy frequently causes serious side effects, and new selective therapies are needed. MB expresses hyper sialylation, a possible target for selective therapy. The cytotoxic efficacy of a poly guanidine conjugate (GuaDex) incubated with medulloblastoma cell cultures (DAOY and MB-LU-181) was investigated. The cells were incubated with 0.05–8 µM GuaDex from 15 min to 72 h. A fluorometric cytotoxicity assay (FMCA) measured the cytotoxicity. Labeled GuaDex was used to study tumor cell interaction. FITC-label Sambucus nigra confirmed high expression of sialic acid (Sia). Immunofluorescence microscopy was used to visualize the cell F-actin and microtubules. The cell interactions were studied by confocal and fluorescence microscopy. Annexin-V assay was used to detect apoptosis. Cell cycle analysis was done by DNA content determination. A wound-healing migration assay determined the effects on the migratory ability of DAOY cells after GuaDex treatment. IC 50 for GuaDex was 223.4 -281.1 nM. FMCA showed potent growth inhibition on DAOY and MB-LU-181 cells at 5 uM GuaDex after 4 h of incubation. GuaDex treatment induced G2/M phase cell cycle arrest. S. nigra FITC-label lectin confirmed high expression of Sia on DAOY medulloblastoma cells. The GuaDex treatment polymerized the cytoskeleton (actin filaments and microtubules) and bound to DNA, inducing condensation. The Annexin V assay results were negative. Cell migration was inhibited at 0.5 µM GuaDex concentration after 24 h of incubation. GuaDex showed potent cytotoxicity and invasion-inhibitory effects on medulloblastoma cells at low micromolar concentrations. GuaDex efficacy was significant and warrants further studies.

AbstractA characteristic feature of the left periphery in Mainland Scandinavian is the particle så occurring optionally between certain fronted constituents and the finite verb in root clauses. Following Kristin Melum Eide, the particle will be analyzed as the spell-out of a head encoding declarative Force (D-Force) in the C-domain, which attracts a constituent in spec-FinP. The D-Force head includes an unvalued feature [uF]. When the attracted constituent is a nominal category, [uF] copies its nominal features; this is how so-called Copy Left Dislocation is derived. When the attracted constituent is an adjunct, the head can be, and when it is an ,adverb or other nonreferential category must be, spelled out as the invariant så, the default spell-out of [F]. Exceptions include wh-adjuncts, the fronted negation, and certain other focused constituents. The particle så in Fenno-Swedish has a freer distribution: it can spell out the D-Force head regardless of the features of the attracted constituent, with the exception of pure operators, including non-D-linked wh-phrases and focused polarity items.

This paper concerns the morpho-syntax of Chinese personal names, including given names, family names, and full names. The two varieties of Chinese discussed are Mandarin and Xining Chinese. Given names are subject to a condition ruling out monosyllabic given names occurring as free words. Family names are not subject to such a condition. A corpus study and a judgment experiment have been conducted to verify this difference between given names and family names. The condition is satisfied by either combining two or more monosyllabic given names to form compound given names, or by combining a given name with a family name, or by reduplication. Given names and family names, like other content words, are composed of a root and a categorizer. The reduplication that applies to given names in Chinese is the same operation that applies to monosyllabic nouns in Xining Chinese: reduplication occurs, with no semantic effect, when the categorizer copies the phonological matrix of the root. Family names in Chinese need not, and cannot undergo reduplication, being combinations of a root and a distinct family name categorizer that does not allow reduplication. While compounds made up of two given names are symmetric and non-compositional, with two coordinated names, full names made up of a family name and a given name (single or compound) are asymmetric endocentric compounds in which the given name is the head and the family name is an attributive modifier. A full name is thereby formally a given name. Pet names and so called generation names are discussed as well.

Estonian is a verb-second (V2) language: in certain types of sentences, the finite verb tends to be the second constituent. The V2 feature of Estonian is most likely to have developed under Germanic influence. However, there are differences between Germanic and Estonian V2 order. The word order of Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives is one of the major exceptions to the V2 order. Main-clause wh-interrogatives are always V2 in Germanic but predominantly verb-final in Estonian. The paper describes two corpus studies – a synchronic and a diachronic one – that aimed to clarify the proportion, nature and development of the V2 order in Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives. The synchronic study showed that the proportion of the V2 order in present-day Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives is approximately 22%. The V2 order is thus considerably less frequent in wh-interrogatives than in declaratives, but it is subject to similar prosodic exceptions in both. The V2 order is nevertheless more frequent in main-clause wh-interrogatives than in embedded wh-interrogatives and relative clauses, giving evidence of a Germanic-like asymmetry between main and embedded clauses. The results of the diachronic study suggest that the V2 order has never been borrowed as the predominant order of Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives. To explain why the V2 feature was borrowed to a different extent into declaratives and wh-interrogatives, we hypothesise that their word order had already diverged before the V2 order was borrowed. According to the hypothesis, wh-interrogatives had retained the historical verb-final order, which remained unaffected by the V2 order, while declaratives had already lost the verb-final order.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a malignant CNS tumor with a poor prognosis. GBM shows aberrant glycosylation with hypersialylation. This property is a potential target for therapy. This study investigates the growth inhibitory efficacy of poly-guanidine (GuaDex), with an affinity for sialic acid (Sia). Glioma cell cultures and patient-derived glioma cell lines (PDGCLs) expressing Prominin-1 (CD133) were used. Human fibroblasts and astrocyte-derived cells were used as controls. Temozolomide (standard GBM drug, TMZ) and DMSO were used as a comparison. GuaDex at 1–10 µM concentrations, were incubated for 3.5–72 h and with PDGCLs cells for 6–24 h. The cytotoxicity was estimated with a fluorometric cytotoxicity assay (FMCA). Fluorescence-labelled GuaDex was used to study the cell interactions. Sia expression was confirmed with a fluorescence labelled Sia binding lectin. Expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein was determined. GuaDex induction of growth inhibition was fast, showing after less than 5 min incubation while the control cells were not affected even after 50 min incubation. The growth inhibitory effect on PDGCLs spheroids was persistent still showing after 4 weeks post-treatment. The growth inhibition of GuaDex was induced at low µM concentrations while TMZ induced only a slight inhibition at mM concentrations. GuaDex efficacy appears significant and warrants further studies.

This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters develop novel insights into a number of core syntactic phenomena, such as the structure of and variation in diathesis, alignment types, case and agreement splits, and the syntax of null elements. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and they provide varied perspectives on current research in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax. This book is complemented by volume I available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/275 and volume II available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/276.

According to the bottleneck hypothesis V2 order is the effect of (a) a feature which attracts the finite verb or auxiliary to Fin, and (b) an EPP-feature which requires a maximal constituent to merge with FinP. There is a strong and a weak version of the bottleneck hypothesis. According to the strong version, the EPP of Fin can only be checked by movement, i.e. internal merge of a constituent with FinP. According to the weak version external merge of a constituent with FinP will do. The strong version cannot be strictly upheld: it can be violated by as-for phrases and adjunct clauses, but the weak version can be. All adverbs and particles in the C-domain that check V2 can alternatively be realized within IP, while no adverbs and particles in the C-domain that do not check V2 can be, which is consistent with the strong bottleneck hypothesis, if the V2-checking adverbs and particles all move initially to spec of Fin. The analysis of the pronoun in copy-dislocation and the particle så as heads in the high C-domain, following Eide (2011), is an important component of the theory articulated.

In Xining Chinese, especially as used by older people, free nouns are always reduplicated, as a purely formal condition without any semantic effects. We argue that the reduplication takes place when an acategorial root is merged with a null nominal categorizer which copies the phonological matrix of the root, as an effect of a condition ruling out free monosyllabic nouns. When the condition is not independently satisfied, as in a compound or derived noun, reduplication is how the condition is met. Reduplication also occurs optionally in compounds or derived nouns. In conjunction with a minimalist theory of word formation, this will be shown to predict the distribution of reduplication in various contexts. For instance, the head of a compound can be reduplicated, but not the modifier, some affixes but not others permit reduplication of the base, non-compositional compounds do not allow reduplication, and so-called ‘bound roots’ (really, bound words) are not reduplicated. The phenomenon provides very strong evidence that simple content words are made up of an acategorial root and a categorizer which is often null, but can be overt in some languages, including Xining Chinese, where it is overt in nouns by virtue of reduplication.

In line with Cheshire’s (2005a, see also Cheshire, Edwards and Whittle 1989; Cheshire and Milroy 1993) work on the geographical patterns of syntactic variation, this chapter focusses on regional and grammatical effects on the English particle verb alternation.1 We illustrate this variation in (1), which shows that, with a class of transitive verb + particle combinations, the particle may appear either immediately to the left of the verb or further to the right, following a direct object. We refer to these word orders as the VPO (verb-particle-object) and VOP (verbobject-particle) orders respectively.

This paper examines regional and grammatical effects on the English particle verb alternation. We report on an acceptability judgment experiment and a Twitter corpus study designed to address Hughes et al.'s claim that the VPO order (She turned off the light) is favoured in Scotland while the VOP (She turned the light off) order is favoured in Southern England. The results from both the judgment study and the Twitter corpus revealed no support for a North-South difference across UK dialects, but instead show a trans-Atlantic difference: respondents from the UK and Ireland favoured VOP orders, while US participants favoured VPO orders, and Canadians were intermediate between the two. Evidence from the Brown corpus and the Corpus of Historical American English suggests that this difference reflects change toward an innovative VOP order that has proceeded more quickly in Old World dialects than in North America. The results contrast with previous findings that changes toward more "colloquial" word orders across English varieties are being led by American dialects, and support scepticism toward such a process as a general principle governing divergence of global Englishes.

The paper is based on a set of observations about the prenominal possessive construction in English, Swedish, Finnish, and Hungarian. These include the fact that coordination of possessive pronouns is degraded in English (??your and my home), but not in the other languages and that the adnominal pronoun construction (APC) we children cannot have a genitive pronoun in English or Swedish (*our children home) but can do in Finnish. On the other hand Finnish and Hungarian do not show possessive agreement when the possessor is an APC. These observations can be explained if the possessive construction has the structure [Poss [NP DP N]], where Poss hosts a set of unvalued φ-features valued by the possessor DP. In English and Swedish, Poss is spelled out as a genitive pronoun (my, her, our, etc.). In Finnish and Hungarian it is spelled out as a possessive agreement suffix. In all the languages this is the case only when the possessor DP is a bare pronoun: Poss does not agree with a lexical DP. This is couched in a version of the theory of agreement and incorporation in Roberts (2010a,b).

A movement asymmetry arises in some languages that are otherwise symmetrical for both A- and Ā-movement in the double object construction, including Norwegian, North-West British English, and a range of Bantu languages including Zulu and Lubukusu: a Theme object can be Ā-moved out of a Recipient (Goal) passive, but not vice versa. Our explanation of this asymmetry is based on phase theory— more specifically, a stricter version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition proposed by Chomsky (2001). The effect is that, in a Theme passive, a Recipient object destined for the C-domain gets trapped within the lower V-related phase by movement of the Theme. The same effect is observed in Italian, a language in which only Theme passives are possible. A similar effect is also found in some Bantu languages in connection with object marking/agreement: object agreement with the Theme in a Recipient passive is possible, but not vice versa. We show that this, too, can be understood within the theory that we articulate.

In Xining Chinese, especially as used by older people, free nouns are always reduplicated, as a purely formal condition without any semantic effects. We argue that the reduplication takes place when an acategorial root is merged with a null nominal categorizer which copies the phonological matrix of the root. There is a condition on word formation, maybe universal but certainly applying to Chinese, that a content word must consist of at least two constituents. A root merged with a categorizer satisfies this condition. In Xining Chinese the condition on nouns is that they have to consist of minimally two pronounced constituents. When the condition is not independently satisfied, as in a compound or affixed noun, reduplication is how the condition is met. In conjunction with a minimalist theory of word formation, this will be shown to predict the distribution of reduplication in various contexts. For instance, the head of a compound can be reduplicated, but not the modifier, some affixes but not others permit reduplication of the base, non-compositional compounds do not allow any reduplication, and so called "bound roots" (really, bound words) are not reduplicated. The phenomenon provides very strong evidence that simple content words are made up of an acategorial root and a categorizer which is often null, but can be overt in some languages, including Xining Chinese.