‘Dinosaur-bird’ macroevolution, locomotor modules and the origins of flight

The dinosaurian origin of birds is one of the best documented events that palaeontology has contributed to the understanding of deep time evolution. This transition has been studied on multiple fossils using numerous multidisciplinary resources, including systematics, taxonomic, anatomical, morphological, biomechanical and molecular approaches. However, whereas deep time origins and phylogenetic relationships are robust, important nuances of this transition’s dynamics remain controversial. In particular, the fossil record of several maniraptoran groups clearly shows that aerial locomotion was developed before an ‘avialization’ (i.e., before the first divergence towards avialans), thus earlier than presumed. Although aspects as important as miniaturization and the acquisition of several anatomical and morphological modifications are key factors determining such evolutionary transition, understanding this macroevolutionary trend also involves to seize the evolution of developmental systems, which requires assessing the morphological expression of integration and modularity of the locomotor apparatus throughout time. This is so because, as it happened in other flying vertebrate taxa such as pterosaurs and bats, the transformation of the maniraptoran forelimbs into flying locomotor modules must not only have involved a gradual anatomical transformation, but also a complete developmental re-patterning of the integration scheme between them and the hindlimbs. Here, we review the most relevant aspects of limb morphological transformation during the so-called ‘dinosaur-bird’ transition to stress the importance of assessing the role of modularity and morphological integration in such macroevolutionary transition, which ultimately involves the origins of flight in dinosaurs.

SUBORDINATION IN THE SYSTEM OF SYNTACTIC RELATIONS BETWEEN THE COMPONENTS OF VERBAL COLLOCATIONS IN UKRAINIAN AND GERMAN LANGUAGES

The article studies the typology of linguistic views on the government in the system of syntactic relations, the classification offormal cases of government by the morphological expression of the supporting and the controlled part of the sentence, also in the article is noted the contribution of linguists to the problem of strong and weak verb government. The large majority of verbs in both Ukrainian and German govern nouns in a certain case and require the use of specific prepositions, while the cases of governed nouns and prepositions used in conjunction with verbs of similar meaning are not identical in Ukrainian and German languages. During the process of the verb governing, often the direct lexical meaning of the preposition is not realized. That’s why the use of this preposition with this particular verb may seem illogical to non-native speakers. And this illogicality often prevents the correct use of verb governing. Clause relationship between components of a phrase is a syntactic relationship that indicates the grammatical dependence of one component on another in a sentence or phrase. As we can see, the clausal relationship between the components of the phrase is word forms. Coordination, management, adherence - these are typical forms of clausal communication - management of coordination and adherence. These last two forms can be a prospect for further research.

Finite Verb Morphology in the Romance Languages

The term finite morphology corresponds to the morphological expression of person and number and of tense, mood, and aspect in the verb. In Romance languages, these features are typically expressed “synthetically,” that is, in single word forms. These latter generally comprise a ‘root’, usually leftmost in the word, which conveys the lexical meaning of the verb, and material to the right of the root which conveys most of the grammatical meaning. But lexical and grammatical information is also characteristically ‘compressed’, or ‘conflated’ within the word, in that it can be impossible to tease apart exponents of the grammatical meanings or to extricate the expression of lexical meaning from that of grammatical meaning. The range of grammatical meanings encoded in Romance finite verb forms can vary considerably cross-linguistically. At the extremes, there are languages that have three tenses of the subjunctive, and others that have no synthetic future-tense form, and others that have two future-tense forms or no (synthetic) past-tense forms. There can also be extreme mismatches between meanings and the forms that express them: again, at the extremes, meanings may be present without formal expression, or forms may appear which correspond to no coherent meaning. Both for desinences and for patterns of root allomorphy, variation is observed with respect to the features expressed and their morphological exponence. While some categories of Latin finite synthetic verb morphology have been entirely lost, many forms are continued, with or without functional continuity. An innovation of many Romance varieties is the emergence of a new synthetic future and conditional from a periphrasis originally expressing deontic modality.

The morphological expression of approximation: the emerging simil- construction in Italian

This paper contributes to the study of evaluative morphology by investigating an emerging morphological construction in Italian within the framework of Construction Morphology. The schema in question, which contains the string simil- (related to the adjective simile ‘similar’) plus a nominal or adjectival base, is analyzed as a newly-created construction that conveys a number of closely-related senses (i.e., fakeness, imitation, resemblance, vagueness, and kin-categorization) revolving around the functional domain of approximation, which has received much less attention than other domains within evaluative morphology. Beside discussing the formal, semantic and usage properties of simil- expressions on the basis of corpus data, we propose a constructional network that accounts for their behavior. Finally, we discuss the nature of simil- as an affixoid and explore its relationship with other competing (morphological and, more marginally, analytic) strategies in Italian.

Left Ventricular Noncompaction: New Insights into a Poorly Understood Disease.

: Left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC) is a congenital pathology that directly affects the lining walls of myocardial tissue, causing trabeculations with blood filling in the inner wall of the heart, concomitantly with the development of a mesocardial thinning. Although LVNC was described for the first time as long ago as 1984, our understanding of the disease with regard to its genetic pattern, diagnosis, clinical presentation and treatment is still scanty. LVNC can present as an isolated condition or associated with congenital heart disease, genetic syndromes or neuromuscular disease. This suggests that LVNC is not a distinct form of cardiomyopathy, but rather a morphological expression of different diseases. Recognition of the disease is of fundamental importance because its clinical manifestations are variable, ranging from the absence of any symptom to congestive heart failure, lethal arrhythmias and thromboembolic events. The study of this disease has emphasized its genetic aspects, as it may be of sporadic origin or hereditary, in which case it most commonly has an autosomal dominant inheritance or one linked to the X chromosome. Echocardiography is the gold standard for diagnosis, and magnetic resonance imaging may refine the identification of the disease, especially in those patients with non-conclusive echocardiography. This article sets out to review the main characteristics of the LVNC and present updates, especially in the genetic pattern, diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

СЕМАНТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ КОНСТРУКЦИЙ С ГЛАГОЛАМИ ДВОЙНОЙ КАУЗАЦИИ В БУРЯТСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

Каузативность – функционально-семантическая категория, находящая реализацию на разных уровнях языковой системы. Каузативация является здесь одной из самых продуктивных дериваций. Каузативные маркеры могут присоединяться как к непроизводным основам, так и к производным. В статье показано, что довольно часто в бурятском языке встречается двойное маркирование каузативных глаголов – двойная каузация, которая свойственна агглютинативным языкам. Основной целью данной статьи является исследование семантических особенностей явления двойной каузации в бурятском языке. В задачи входит рассмотрение формальных признаков глаголов с двойной каузацией, анализ их семантических и функциональных особенностей. Так, исследование показало, что в образовании глаголов двойной каузации в бурятском языке участвуют продуктивные суффиксы -уул и -лга. Другие аффиксы в образовании второй степени каузации не участвуют. Также выявлено, что большее распространение здесь имеет порядок присоединения аффиксов, при котором не дублируются одни и те же аффиксы, а присоединяются новые, при этом непродуктивные суффиксы всегда предшествуют продуктивным. В семантическом плане двойная каузация в бурятском языке указывает на многочисленность отдельных участников каузативной ситуации, которая предполагает выражение значения дистантной каузации. Также двойная каузация служит для выражения значения пермиссивной каузации. Двойное каузирование способно выражать значение интенсивности или многократности каузативного действия, а также значение поэтапного каузирования. Двойная каузация в бурятском языке может быть также признаком избыточного маркирования, простого дублирования. В бурятском языке каузативные суффиксы могут выступать в страдательном значении и утрачивать значение каузативности, но нами отмечен факт того, что такие неканонические случаи использования каузативных аффиксов также допускают двойную каузацию, которая представляется избыточной. В работе также уделяется внимание вопросу о двойной каузации лексических каузативов, при которой каузативации подвергаются немаркированные каузативные глаголы. Двойная каузация в этом случае может служить средством выражения дистантной каузации.Causativity is a functional-semantic category, which is implemented at different levels of the language system. Causative verbs in the Buryat language have morphological expression. Causation is one of the most productive derivations here. Causative markers can be attached to both non-derived bases and derivatives. Quite often in the Buryat language there is a double marking of causative verbs-double causation, which is characteristic of agglutinative languages. The main purpose of this article is to study the phenomenon of double causation in the Buryat language. The tasks include consideration of formal features of verbs with double causation, analysis of their semantic and functional features. Thus, it is show that productive suffixes -uul, -lga participate in the formation of double causation in the Buryat language. Other affixes do not participate in the formation of the second degree of causation. It is also revealed that the order of affixes addition is more widespread here, in which the same affixes are not duplicated, but new ones are added, while unproductive suffixes always precede productive ones. Double causation in the Buryat language indicates the large number of individual participants in the causative situation, which involves the expression of the value of distant causation, the expression of the value of permissive causation. Also, double causation is able to Express the value of intensity or multiplicity of causative action, the value of step-by-step causation. Double and even triple causation can also be a sign of excessive marking, simple duplication. In the Buryat language, causative suffixes can appear in the passive sense and lose the value of causation, but we note the fact that such examples also allow for double causation, which is also excessive. The paper also draws attention to the question of double causation of lexical causatives, in which the causative are not marked causative verbs.

Semantics of Ironical Negation in Structure Semi-Phraseologized Sentences: Through the Prism of Psycholinguistic Peculiarities of Speech Activity

Objective. In the article the subject of the analysis is semi-phraseologized sentences with the value of an ironic negation. The purpose of the article is to characterize the specificity of semantic subtypes of semi-phraseologized sentences with the meaning of ironic negation as psycholinguistic units, to define their functions in the system of hierarchical relations «holistic act of speech activity – speech actions». Materials & Methods. In the article such methods are used as: descriptive method were used to characterize the components in the phras-scheme of semi-praseologized sentences, the modeling method – to create models of semi-praseologized sentences of ironically negation type. The associative experiment method has made it possible to find out the semantic characteristics of subtypes of ironically negation semi-phraseologized sentences in speech, to determine their expressive potential in different communicative situations. Results. The basis of semi-phraseologized sentences of the modern Ukrainian language is the phraseologized structural scheme, on which the fixed meaning does not depend on the specific lexical filling of structural components, since this value is idiomatic. The means of explicit manifestation of ironic negation in semi-phraseologized sentences are described. The mechanism of structuring such sentences is disclosed, one of their qualification features – stability has been analyzed and the effect on this feature of the morphological expression of the constant and variable components of the phrase-schemes is investigated. Interpretation of the semantics of semi-phraseologized sentences may be accompanied by some difficulties. In artistic text, this question compensates for the context, then dialogic speech does not always have enough questions and answers of the participants in the dialogue to perceive the idea adequately. Therefore, the meaning of a semi-phraseologized sentence is based on the speakers' background knowledge, associative parallels that the speaker can use. The author suggests to consider semi-phraseologized sentences as psycholinguistic units. The ordering of different semantic types and subtypes of semi-phraseologized sentences contributes to the optimality of speech, in particular, the dialogic conversational, adequate expression of thought, with the support on the thinking processes of the speaker, realizing it as the active subject of the communication process. Conclusions. The connotative shades in semantics of the ironic negation of semi-phraseologized sentences are traced. The means of expression of semi-phraseologized sentences with ironic negation, in particular the emphasis of the anaphoric modal component, are found. The implicit means of the ironic negation are determined: exclamation intonation, fixed sequence of components and the presence of the phraseologized connectivite complex.

Two types of morphologically expressed non-verbal predication

The morphological expression of non-verbal predication is a geographically widespread, although not very frequent, typological feature. This paper highlights the existence of two radically contrasting types of non-verbal predicative inflection. Construction A has already been described in the literature. It consists of attaching person-sensitive inflection markers to non-verbal predicates, possibly extending this treatment to adverbs and adverbial phrases (locational and temporal), pronouns and quantifiers. This type is well attested in Uralic, Turkic, and Paleosiberian, as well as in some Amazonian language families (most notably Chicham), but it has also been pointed out for some sparse languages of Oceania and Africa. Such non-verbal person inflections diachronically stem from incorporation of conjugated copula elements. Construction B, by contrast, is much rarer and is described here for the first time. It also consists of a dedicated morphological form of the non-verbal predicate (limited, however, to nouns and adjectives), but such form stands out as morphologically lighter than any other form to be found in nouns or adjectives in argument or attribute position. While the latter forms carry some kind of case marker, the noun/adjective predicate merely consists (or historically did) of the word’s root. This type of construction can be found in the small Zamucoan family and still survives in some Tupí-Guaraní languages. Diachronic inspection of Semitic indicates, however, that this predicative strategy was possibly adopted in some ancient varieties, although at later stages it intertwined with the expression of referential specificity. The paper compares the two construction types, highlighting similarities and differences.