Syntactic Priming As a Test of Argument Structure: A Self-paced Reading Experiment.

Using data from a behavioral structural priming experiment, we test two competing theoretical approaches to argument structure, which attribute different configurations to (in)transitive structures. These approaches make different claims about the relationship between unergatives and transitive structures selecting either a DP complement or a small clause complement in structurally unambiguous sentences, thus making different predictions about priming relations between them. Using statistical tools that combine a factorial 6 × 6 within subjects ANOVA, a mixed effects ANCOVA and a linear mixed effects regression model, we report syntactic priming effects in comprehension, which suggest a stronger predictive contribution of a model that supports an interpretive semantics view of syntax, whereby syntactic structures do not necessarily reflect argument/event structure in semantically unambiguous configurations.

Laryngeal Features Are Phonetically Abstract: Mismatch Negativity Evidence from Arabic, English, and Russian.

Many theories of phonology assume that the sound structure of language is made up of , but there is considerable debate about how much articulatory detail distinctive features encode in long-term memory. Laryngeal features such as provide a unique window into this question: while many languages have two-way contrasts that can be given a simple binary feature account [±VOICE], the precise articulatory details underlying these contrasts can vary significantly across languages. Here, we investigate a series of two-way voicing contrasts in English, Arabic, and Russian, three languages that implement their voicing contrasts very differently at the articulatory-phonetic level.

LINE Insertion Polymorphisms are Abundant but at Low Frequencies across Populations of .

Vertebrate genomes differ considerably in size and structure. Among the features that show the most variation is the abundance of Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements (LINEs). Mammalian genomes contain 100,000s LINEs that belong to a single clade, L1, and in most species a single family is usually active at a time.

Comparative Epigenomic Profiling of the DNA Methylome in Mouse and Zebrafish Uncovers High Interspecies Divergence.

The DNA methylation landscape is dynamically patterned during development and distinct methylation patterns distinguish healthy from diseased cells. However, whether tissue-specific methylation patterns are conserved across species is not known. We used comparative methylome analysis of base-resolution DNA methylation profiles from the liver and brain of mouse and zebrafish generated by reduced representation bisulfite sequencing to identify the conserved and divergent aspects of the methylome in these commonly used vertebrate model organisms.