The child the apple eats: processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences.

Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world's languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue.

Native and non-native parsing of adjective placement - An ERP study of Mandarin and English sentence processing.

Adjectives in English and Mandarin are typically prenominal, but the corresponding grammatical rules vary in subtle ways. Our event-related potential (ERP) study shows that native speakers of both languages rely on similar processing mechanisms when reading sentences with anomalous noun-adjective order (e.g.

Phrase parsing in a second language as indexed by the closure positive shift: The impact of language experience and acoustic cue salience.

Despite the importance of prosodic processing in utterance parsing, a majority of studies investigating boundary localization in a second language focus on word segmentation. The goal of the present study was to investigate the parsing of phrase boundaries in first and second languages from different prosodic typologies (stress-timed vs. syllable-timed).

Spoken Word Segmentation in First and Second Language: When ERP and Behavioral Measures Diverge.

Previous studies of word segmentation in a second language have yielded equivocal results. This is not surprising given the differences in the bilingual experience and proficiency of the participants and the varied experimental designs that have been used. The present study tried to account for a number of relevant variables to determine if bilingual listeners are able to use native-like word segmentation strategies.

Who are you talking to? The role of addressee identity in utterance comprehension.

Experimental evidence suggests that speaker and addressee quickly adapt to each other from the earliest moments of sentence processing, and that interlocutor-related information is rapidly integrated with other sources of nonpragmatic information (e.g., semantic, morphosyntactic, etc.

Adaptive and selective production of syllable duration and fundamental frequency as word segmentation cues by French-English bilinguals.

Despite the significant impact of prosody on L2 speakers' intelligibility, few studies have examined the production of prosodic cues associated with word segmentation in non-native or non-dominant languages. Here, 62 French-English bilingual adults, who varied in L1 (French or English) and language dominance, produced sentences built around syllable strings that can be produced either as one bisyllabic word or two monosyllabic words. Each participant produced both English and French utterances, providing both native productions (used as reference) and L2 productions.

Addressee Identity and Morphosyntactic Processing in Basque Allocutive Agreement.

Information about interlocutor identity is pragmatic in nature and has traditionally been distinguished from explicitly coded linguistic information, including mophosyntax. Study of speaker identity in language processing has questioned this distinction, but addressee identity has been less considered. We used Basque to explore how addressee identity is processed during morphosyntactic analysis.

A sterol-binding protein integrates endosomal lipid metabolism with TOR signaling and nitrogen sensing.

Kes1, and other oxysterol-binding protein superfamily members, are involved in membrane and lipid trafficking through trans-Golgi network (TGN) and endosomal systems. We demonstrate that Kes1 represents a sterol-regulated antagonist of TGN/endosomal phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate signaling. This regulation modulates TOR activation by amino acids and dampens gene expression driven by Gcn4, the primary transcriptional activator of the general amino acid control regulon.