New objective measurements of semen wave motion are associated with fertility in sheep

In sheep, wave motion in semen is currently used by AI centres to select ejaculates for insemination. Despite its low cost, convenience and established ability to predict fertility, the subjectivity of this assessment is a limiting factor for its applicability. The aims of the present study were to establish an objective method for the analysis of wave motion and to assess the associations of objective parameters with fertility after cervical insemination. Collective sperm motion in undiluted semen was observed by phase contrast microscopy at low magnification in a 100-µm deep glass chamber. Images of moving dark waves over a grey background were recorded and analysed by the optic flow method, producing several velocity-related parameters. Turbulence was assessed from the motion of fluorescent polystyrene beads. Among objective parameters, optical flow entropy and the average speed of beads were both able to discriminate ejaculates suitable for insemination. Two synthetic variables of optic flow and bead motion and a global objective variable were computed from linear combinations of individual parameters and compared with the subjective motion score for their predictive value. These were as efficient as the wave motion score for assessing fertility and can be proposed for the assessment of ram semen in routine AI procedures.

The expression of object location with perlative preposition PER in Lithuanian

It is not unusual for a language to have one or several prepositions of originally perlative meaning that in certain pragmatic and syntactic contexts can designate location of some object (the trajector) on the other side of another, typically topographical, object (the landmark). In English such prepositions are across, through and over. In Lithuanian their sole counterpart is the preposition per. In Cognitive Grammar the cases when motion verbs or prepositions that presuppose motion are applied to designate static spatial relations between two objects are accounted for by using the notion of ‘subjective motion’ which, in its turn, is based on the notion of ‘subjectification’ (Langacker 2000, 2002, 2006). In other words, the subjective motion is defined as a cognitive operation in the course of which the conceptualizer mentally scans through the route that is presupposed by applying a motion verb or a perlative preposition. Thus the use of the lexemes of originally dynamic meaning is motivated for the designation of static spatial situations. The cases of the semantic extension mentioned above until now pose no problems for Lithuanian linguists, either lexicographers or grammarians. Thus the phenomenon of ‘locative’ use of the perlative preposition per in Lithuanian remains unidentified in dictionaries, and undescribed in grammars. No surprise, such uses of the preposition per are unattested in the Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian, though in spoken everyday language and in the internet sources they are well attested. One may adduce structural and semantic arguments that the locative meaning ‘on the other side of’ of the perlative preposition under discussion is represented in the mental lexicon of the Lithuanian speaker and, thus, must be discerned as separate sense in dictionaries. To say more, without this sense unbridged semantic gap remains between the primary sense ‘through’ of the preposition per, representing ‘proto-scene’, and its derived senses of ‘distance’, ‘span of the time’, ‘more than’ and others − the fact of most relevance for the one who attempts to reconstruct the motivated semantic network (Tyler & Evans 2003) of this preposition. The main concern of the article, though, is not lexicography, but similarities and differences between locative usage of originally perlative construction [per + NPacc] and inherently locative constructions [kitapus + NPgen] and [anapus + NPgen]. On the first look these constructions seem synonymous: they have the same meaning ‘on the other side of’ and are mainly used in locative vs. existential sentences. But the deeper insight into the data collected from the internet sources shows that what distinguishes the first construction from the other two is the additional functional component of the ‘trajector control’ in its meaning: the construction [per + NPacc] is predominantly selected in the situations when it is relevant to the speaker not only to say that the object pointed at is on the other side of some topographical object and exactly in front of the viewer but it is within potential reach of this viewer as well. On the other hand, the construction [kitapus + NPgen] and [anapus + NPgen] is selected in the situations when the proximity of the dislocated object is not relevant to the speaker. Thus, in terms of distribution, the construction [per + NPacc], in its locative usage, with respect to its inherently locative counterparts represents the (functionally) marked case in Lithuanian.

Reference point constructions in the meaning construal of Hungarian folksongs

The present paper aims at showing that ‘cognitive reference points’ (CRPs, see Rosch [1975] and Langacker [1999]) have a crucial role in construing the meaning of a significant group of Hungarian folksongs. In line with the dynamic view on construal, according to which conceptualization unfolds through processing time, the paper argues that building up conceptions via CRPs and their larger configurations outline a mental path, representing a metaphorical emotional approach. The development of the physical route as mental route evolves in a gradual transfer from Perceptual space to Non-actual space, where a salient entity has a ‘gate’ function between mental spaces. Some notions such as ‘mental simulation’ (Langacker 1999), ‘abstract motion’ (Matlock 2010), ‘fictive motion’ (Talmy 2000), or ‘subjective motion’ (Langacker 1987; Matsumoto 1996; Brandt 2009) apply to this specific pattern of construal, namely, motion or change experienced by the conceptualizer along his attention path, which manifests here in different forms of subjectivity. The ordering and directionality of CRPs, along with the metaphorical implications of each entity serving as reference points, thus have important semantic relevance and forms an essential component of meaning construal in this lyrical text type.

The expression of non-actual motion in Swedish, French and Thai

Dynamic descriptions of static spatial situations, such as the road goes through the forest have attracted a lot of attention across different semantic theories. Analyses in terms of fictive motion and subjective motion have proposed that such expressions are strongly motivated by universal cognitive and conceptual factors. I present theoretical arguments for the conflation of several different motivations in the literature. Instead of a single general motivation, three distinct experiential motivations are presented under the term non-actual motion. These experiential motivations are used to design an elicitation tool for investigating non-actual motion cross-linguistically. Elicited descriptions from speakers of Swedish, French and Thai suggest that such descriptions are conventionalized in all three languages, which supports the universal character of non-actual motion across languages. However, in expressing non-actual motion, the language-specific resources for expressing actual motion are used.

Bipositions and motion events: How verb semantics motivates prepositional vs. postpositional uses of Finnish path adpositions

Finnish is one of the relatively few languages that have bipositions - adpositions that can be used both prepositionally and postpositionally. From a typological point of view, the class of bipositions is quite rare (Hagège 2010: 124). Prepositional and postpositional usages of Finnish bipositions may show remarkable differences, which are not only of stylistic but also of semantic nature. Semantic differences, for instance, may pertain to the opposition between actual and subjective motion. In this article, I discuss constructions containing the Finnish path adpositions (P-ADPs) läpi ‘through’ and yli ‘over, across’ and investigate the semantics of the verbs used in these constructions. I show that semantically more schematic motion verbs prefer postpositions, whereas more specific or contentful ones (such as those that elaborate the motion by emphasizing its incrementality or lack of directionality) prefer prepositions