Patterns Of Temporal Stability Research Articles

Consequences of High Vowel Deletion for Syllabification in Japanese

High vowels in Japanese devoice between two voiceless consonants; recent work has shown that devoiced /u/ in this environment is also variably deleted. This paper investigates the syllabification of consonant clusters resulting from vowel deletion. We consider two competing hypotheses from the literature: (H1) that consonant clusters are parsed tautosyllabically into a complex syllable onset and (H2) that consonant clusters are parsed heterosyllabically, with the consonant preceding the deleted vowel becoming a syllabic consonant. We bring both phonological and phonetic evidence bear on evaluating these hypotheses. The phonological evidence draws on patterns sensitive to syllable structure including pitch accent placement, loanword truncation, hypocoristic formation, and mimetics. The phonetic evidence comes from patterns of temporal stability in articulatory data collected with ElectroMagnetic Articulography. Both types of evidence provide converging support for H2.

Variation of a polychaete community in nearshore soft bottoms of Admiralty Bay, Antarctica, along austral winter (1999) and summer (2000–2001)

Studies on community structure of Antarctic benthos are mostly conducted on summer samplings, when ice-impacts and productivity blooms are intense. Few surveys performed during winter demonstrated that, despite temperatures and productivity stability, community structure is variable. In order to assess how polychaete community is influenced by seasonality and depth along a discontinuous year, six replicate samples were taken in nine surveys during winter and four in summer at two depths (12 and 25 m) in Admiralty Bay, King George Island. Spatial patchiness was more intense at 12 m presupposing ice-mediated and wave-induced disturbances, whereas 25-m patchiness among replicates was restricted to summer surveys. A pattern of temporal stability was partially confirmed in 12-m site. Deeper site was characterized by seasonality with dominant-species replacement reflecting shifts in organic matter availability. Diversity was higher in early and midwinter following both summer productivity blooms and macroalgal decomposition that extend the energy budget into the winter, analogous to microbial biomass supply of “food banks” that sustains the benthic ecosystem functions over winter in Antarctic Peninsula shelf deeper areas. Despite the opportunistic status of several nearshore polychaetes, it was possible to distinguish those that responded to organic enrichment (i.e., Capitella perarmata and Ophryotrocha notialis), from those associated with physical disturbances (i.e., Aphelochaeta cincinnatus and Levinsenia gracilis). Awareness of such patterns and their spatial and temporal variations will facilitate future studies on community assessment, especially those based on indicator species of benthic communities.

Syllabification in Moroccan Arabic: evidence from patterns of temporal stability in articulation

AbstractCompeting proposals on the syllabification of initial consonants in Moroccan Arabic are evaluated using a combination of experimental and modelling techniques. The proposed model interprets an input syllable structure as a set of articulatory landmarks coordinated in time. This enables the simulation of temporal patterns associated with the input syllable structure under different noise conditions. Patterns of stability between landmarks simulated by the model are matched to patterns in data collected with Electromagnetic Articulometry experiments. The results implicate a heterosyllabic parse of initial clusters so that strings like /sbu/ comprise two syllables, [s.bu]. Beyond this specific result for Moroccan Arabic, the model reveals the range of validity of certain stability-based indexes of syllable structure and generates predictions that allow evaluation of a syllabic parse even when stability-based heuristics break down. Overall, the paper provides support for the broad hypothesis that syllable structure is reflected in patterns of temporal stability and contributes analytical tools to evaluate competing theories on the basis of these patterns.

Screening item effects in estimating the prevalence of nascent entrepreneurs

The use of human population surveys to estimate the prevalence of nascent entrepreneurs has become a major feature of both longitudinal studies of the firm creation process, such as the US Panel Studies of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) research program, as well as cross-national comparisons, as reflected in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) initiative. The basic procedure has been to use interview screening items to locate individuals that may be considered candidate nascent entrepreneurs; other criteria are then used to identify those considered active nascent entrepreneurs. In these human population surveys, little attention has been paid to the potential impact of variations in wording in the initial screening items, either across time in the same language or in different languages, on the final prevalence rates. Analysis of 134 independent samples in the US over the 1993–2006 period, where different screening items were employed, indicates a major impact of item wording. Once adjustments to account for item variation were made, there was no statistically significant change in the prevalence of active nascent entrepreneurs, from 5 to 6 per 100 over the 1998–2006 period. This pattern of temporal stability is consistent with three other national programs measuring U.S. new firm creation activity.