Harmonious Process Research Articles

Event-related brain activity changes to consonant and dissonant chords in musicans and non-musicans

The present study assessed brain activity changes related to perception of consonant and dissonant chords by musicians and non-musicians. Perception of dissonant chords in non-musicians was accompanied by increase of lower theta activity over right anterior regions, while consonant chords induced greater theta activity over left anterior regions; this pattern of asymmetrical activation was not observed in musicians. ERP analysis revealed that musicians had greater amplitude of early components (P100, N200) than non-musicians irrespective of chord type. The obtained results reflect more efficient musical harmony processing and, possibly, less emotional perception of chords in musicians.

Coastal Erosion and Management in the People’s Republic of China

China has a coastline of 32,000 km, third of which is occupied by sandy coast. According to the latest report of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA, PRC), 3,255 km soft coast is suffering from severe coastal erosion, 76% of which is sandy coast, the rest contributed by muddy coast. Coastal erosion results in heavy land loss and aggravates financial burden, which is unacceptable. Coastal erosion management of China, aiming at facilitating the sustainable relationship between socioeconomic development and protection of coastal environment, is a systematic process of using scientific technology, administrative and economic policy to realize a socialized, scientific and informative coastal erosion management system in order to minimize the adverse impacts of coastal erosion hazard. Since 1990's, the implementation of coastal erosion management in China has began, the theory and practice of which were depicted by lots of literatures. The causes and effects of coastal erosion, coastal erosion assessment and management, natural disaster risk assessment, geological characteristics of coastal disaster and coastal erosion mitigation measures were all involved in these literatures. The Chinese Offshore Investigation and Assessment (COIA) project launched in 2007 has accomplished the assessment of coastal erosion hazard and provided mitigation measures of hard and soft structures for controlling coastal erosion. The project of Sandy Coast Nourishment and Restoration in China (SCNR) will be finished in 2012, its main objective is to develop and test beach nourishment as a measure for reducing erosion along the sandy coast of China, based on the available scientific knowledge and practical experiences. These works did provide large amounts of fundamental data and successful experience, which guide the managers and researchers to find a more harmonious process for risk reduction of coastal erosion. Presently, the available mitigation measures for coastal erosion in China are threefold: 1) managed realignment, the most preferred measure, containing construction of SBL (setback line), transformation of LUCC (land use/cover change) and establishment of the coastal natural reserves; 2) advance the line, building new defenses on the seaward side of the original defenses such as reclamation; 3) hold the line, the most popular measure, including soft nourishment and hard engineered structures. Two thirds of Chinese mainland coastline is protected by seawall; soft nourished coastline in China amounts to 10,400 m, nourished volume more than 2 million m 3 by the end of 2009 and 20 mangrove or coral reef natural reserves has been established along the subtropical coastal areas. These mitigation measures hold the existing shoreline and keep the safety of habitants and constructions from destroying. The successful implementation of coastal erosion management in China does not imply that all problems have been solved. Issues such as climate change, development in societal pressure on the coast and increasing knowledge on coastal system, constantly challenge the existing approaches. I hope to share the coastal erosion and management status in China with people interested and welcome advice and cooperation from researchers and managers.

Morpho-phonological levels and grammaticalization in Karimojong: A review of the evidence

An analysis of the affixation processes and the phonological rules governing [ATR] harmony in Karimojong verbs permits the organization of derivational processes into three levels. On each level specific groups of morphemes are affixed and the resultant derived words undergo defined sets of phonological processes. On Level 1 a feature filling [±ATR] harmony rule applies, in which the [ATR] feature spreads bi-directionally from the principal root vowel across the root and all Level 1 affixes. However, there are also localized disharmonic domains created by phonologized co-articulation effects of consonants and dissimilation rules for vowels. On Level 2, suffixation of Tense-Mood-Aspect (TMA) markers at the right edge of the verbal complex triggers [+ATR] feature spreading leftward across the derived word. On Level 3 affixation does not trigger [ATR] harmony processes, and both affix vowels and the derivational complexes to which they are added retain their [ATR] features. Some Karimojong affixes exhibit behaviors characteristic of two different levels, depending on context; these affixes are proposed to be in transition between levels. The three levels are proposed to result from diachronic evolution, and their relative chronological development can be established by (1) correspondences to landmarks within the cross-linguistically attested agreement system grammaticalization cline, which groups affixes according to ordering universals, and (2) the existence of successive evolutionary cycles of frequentive morphology. A model of the morphology-phonology interface is proposed in which linguistic structure internal to the morpheme channels the spread of [ATR] features. The model provides an explanation for surface irregularities that originated at the time of areal vowel mergers in Nilotic languages (Dimmendaal, 2002).

Expertise in folk music alters the brain processing of Western harmony

In various paradigms of modern neurosciences of music, experts of Western classical music have displayed superior brain architecture when compared with individuals without explicit training in music. In this paper, we show that chord violations embedded in musical cadences were neurally processed in a facilitated manner also by musicians trained in Finnish folk music. This result, obtained by using early right anterior negativity (ERAN) as an index of harmony processing, suggests that tonal processing is advanced in folk musicians by their long-term exposure to both Western and non-Western music.

Harmony is Myopic: Reply to Walker 2010

Harmony is Myopic: Reply to Walker 2010

The conservation journey

Most of us recognize that conservation is not a practice, a program, a technical standard, or a plan. Neither is conservation another name for a government financial incentive. As Aldo Leopold so eloquently reminded us, conservation is a precarious, never-ending process of seeking harmony between land and people (Leopold 1966). Conservation is a journey.

Contrast and the evaluation of similarity: Evidence from consonant harmony

This paper argues that phonological similarity is evaluated over contrastive, phonological features. Evidence for this position is provided through analyses of consonant harmony processes. Typological studies of consonant harmony ( Hansson, 2001, 2010; Rose and Walker, 2004) have shown that similarity plays a role in consonant harmony patterning with only highly similar segments interacting as targets and triggers. In this paper, two types of cases provide evidence that the relevant properties determining interacting segments are contrastive phonological representations. In one type of case (e.g. Bumo Izon), segments that appear to share a phonetic class with participating segments fail to participate in harmony. In the second type of case (e.g. Dholuo and Anywa), consonant harmony patterns differ between languages with similar phonetic inventories. A pair of segments in one language participates in harmony, and is thus evaluated as similar by the grammar. In another language, a phonetically identical pair fails to participate in harmony. In these cases, neither phonetic properties nor the model of phonological similarity proposed in Frisch et al. (2004) can account for the differences between languages. I propose that the underlying, phonological specifications differ from language to language accounting for the differences in the similarity evaluation.

Development of Circular Economy Is A Fundamental Way to Achieve Agriculture Sustainable Development in China

Modem agriculture rapidly improves productivity, meanwhile it pays heavy prices such as over consumption of resources and energy and damages to the agricultural environment. The eco-environmental deterioration of agricultural development and improper mode of agricultural development make more fragile eco-environment also severely restrict sustainable development of agriculture. Circular economy has become the effective path about the sustainable development of every country as the model according with the sustainable development principle. Ecoagriculture has a long history in our country. The agriculture connects closely with the natural ecosystem, which puts agricultural economic system to the harmonious process of the mat erial circulation in the natural ecosystem. It provides the way of development of circular economy in agriculture. Circular economy is the road to achieve the harmonious development between economy and environment. The recycled usage of agricultural resources must be incredible. The core of circular agriculture is to promote the circular utilization of agricultural resources. Ecoagricultural development makes the agriculture achieve the circular flow between material and energy.

Exceptions in vowel harmony are local

This paper argues that while the domain of regular vowel harmony processes applies over the entire lexical item, exceptions to vowel harmony apply to a domain that is locally bound to the exceptional morpheme. This has important consequences for distinguishing between two competing theories of lexical exceptions in Optimality Theory ( Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004): lexically indexed constraints (e.g., Pater, 2000) and lexically indexed rankings (e.g., Anttila, 2002). Lexically indexed constraints are subject to a locality requirement in their locus of violation, forcing exceptions in harmony to have a local domain of application. Lexically indexed rankings do not naturally apply in a local fashion, and fail to account for locality of exceptions in vowel harmony.

ATR] vowel harmony in Gaahmg – a six-vowel syst

The little-described language, commonly known as Ingessana, has a vowel system that consists of the [–ATR] vowels [ε, ɔ, a] and the [+ATR] vowels [i, u, ə]. The [ATR] vowel harmony functions in roots and spreads across morpheme boundaries. There are several occurrences of vowel harmony spreading both rightward and leftward, as well as [+ATR] quality as a distinctive feature of one morpheme. The vowel harmony process commonly occurs in both noun and verb morphology, spreading from root to suffix and from suffix to root. The [+ATR] quality is always dominant regardless of the direction of spreading.

Negotiating Hinduism in East Africa, 1860-1960

This paper describes how Hindus in East Africa developed from ‘South Asians in Africa’ to ‘Asian Africans’ between 1880-1960. It shows how the Hindu community in East Africa realised their own geographical spaces and areas of interaction. The various cultural encounters of Hindus traders and businessmen with African, Arab and European communities may have been economically profitable, but they harmed cultural pillars of Hindu identity, like notions of caste, purity, food habits and marriage patterns. Obviously, this was not a harmonious process, but one with conflicts in which painful decisions had to be made and legitimised. For others, however, it was an opportunity to free themselves from the burden of religious patronage. The research is based on the history of more than twenty Hindu Lohana families who have lived in East Africa for three generations or more.

A grammar of Jingulu: An Aboriginal language of the Northern Territory (review)

Reviewed by: A grammar of Jingulu: An Aboriginal language of the Northern Territory Jane Simpson A grammar of Jingulu: An Aboriginal language of the Northern Territory. By Robert Pensalfini. (Pacific linguistics 536.) Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003 Pp. xix, 262. ISBN 0858835584. $51.54. This grammar, published by the major publisher of Australian and Pacific language materials, is of an endangered and typologically interesting language. Jingili people live in the Northern Territory of Australia. Their country is on the border of Pama-Nyungan languages (normally suffixing) and non-Pama-Nyungan languages (often prefixing), and their language, Jingulu, shows features of both types. It is part of the proposed Mirndi family, a geographically discontinuous group whose genetic unity is still debated (Green & Nordlinger 2004). Pensalfini builds on an earlier descriptive study done when there were more speakers (Chadwick 1975). Chadwick presents Jingulu as a language with fiendishly complex morphology that interacts with an interesting regressive vowel harmony process (van der Hulst & Smith 1985). Since Chadwick’s study, the language ecology of the area has changed, and Jingili people mostly speak Kriol, code-switching to Jingulu and Mudburra. The bar has been raised as to what a reference grammar of a small language should contain (Himmelmann 1998). The grammarian is torn between the demands of the grammar-reading public (You mean there’s nothing on weak crossover!), the likelihood that this grammar will be the main source of information on the language (Where’s the stuff on gesture/kinship/speech events/information structure?), and the fact that most publishers don’t sell texts and dictionaries of small languages. P’s grammar is characterized by bold analyses. He carried out fieldwork in the context of preparing an MIT Ph.D. dissertation, informed by minimalism, well aware of Rachel Nordlinger’s work on a neighboring and genetically related language, Wambaya, informed by lexical functional grammar (Nordlinger 1998). So, naturally, he asks questions relevant to the theoretical concerns of the time. He carefully tries to gather data on multiple wh-questions; looks for ways to translate sentences with quantifiers and modals, with definiteness, and with indefiniteness; and looks at coordinate and reflexive constructions and complex constructions. These are hard questions and P is open about the difficulties that can arise, especially in a situation of language death. He is careful to note the absence of confirming or disconfirming data. The result is a richer understanding of what is happening in the language—for instance, the presence of a kind of indefinite suffix, quite unusual in Australian languages (203–5). How does P face the challenge of language documentation? His field tapes and transcripts are held in a public archive (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies), and a separate collection of texts and a dictionary has been submitted for publication. He appends eleven texts (Ch. 7, 241–58), including some that show code-switching into Kriol, and occasionally he gives illuminating Kriol glosses from his informants. This grammar comprises analysis of what his teachers said; he does not draw together the earlier records of the language. It is rich in example sentences, mostly from texts, but he follows too many Australian grammars in omitting the source for each example sentence. This is especially unfortunate in language-loss situations, since which speaker said which sentence is important for understanding the variation that P notes (although he is generally good about commenting on rarity). [End Page 425] Ch. 1 (1–19) has a good discussion of the present-day complex language situation and a section on kinship, but little on the ethnography (no reference to the early-twentieth-century investigations (Spencer & Gillen 1904) or the late-twentieth-century work on the Murranji land claim). No more than fifteen people spoke Jingulu fluently when P learned it, and it was not used much in everyday conversation. So the Jingulu language systems of individuals are no longer constrained by the need to understand and be understood. They may have to dredge their memories (what do I call my mother’s brother?). When a speech community erodes and speakers shift to using other languages, the language systems of the last few speakers may diverge more widely than the language...

Evaluation of the Harmony Soundprocessor in Combination With the Speech Coding Strategy HiRes 120

The Advanced Bionics Harmony BTE processor was developed to support the new speech coding strategy HiRes 120 with a resolution of 120 channels based on "current steering." Compared with the previous Auria, the front end has been re-designed and power consumption reduced. HiRes 120 as well as the impact of the improved Harmony processing concerning a better speech understanding were evaluated. Subject's performance was evaluated using a test battery of the Hochmair-Schulz-Moser (HSM) sentence test and questionnaires regarding general sound quality, music perception, battery life time and processor handling. In the first study group, 11 postlingually deafened adult subjects participated with a minimum of 9 months experience. The second study group consisted of 14 postlingually deafened adult subjects with a minimum of 2 years experience. Tested were the 2 speech coding strategies HiRes and HiRes 120 on the Harmony and the clinical system, respectively. Speech perception tests in quiet, in CCITT noise, as well as with a competing talker, questionnaires regarding sound quality and handling and perceptual channel tests. A total of 84% showed a clear preference for the Harmony processor compared with their previous processor with HiRes. The speech test results showed a 7.7% average increase in the HSM sentence test with 5 dB SNR competing talker. The majority of the subjects wanted to change to the new Harmony processor because of a better understanding in everyday life, handling, and improved battery-life time.

Computing Long-Distance Dependencies in Vowel Harmony

This article develops an explicit procedural model of vowel harmony, and takes steps toward finding a lower bound on the computational power of phonological rules. The focus on formalization and procedural computation allows for simplification in models of representation and the discovery of interesting interactions involving the conditions in rules. It is shown that locality principles are derivable, which motivates the elimination of iterative rule application advocated here. Along the way, a novel analysis of neutral vowels in harmony processes is also provided.

Nasal and oral consonant similarity in speech errors: Exploring parallels with nasal consonant harmony

Previous research has found that ‘similar’ sounds interact in phonological nasal consonant harmony, wherein certain consonants become nasals when the word contains a nasal (e.g., Kikongo: /-kun-idi/ → [-kun-ini] ‘planted’). Across languages, stops and approximants are chiefly affected, especially voiced consonants and ones that match in place of articulation with the nasal. Three experiments investigated whether a parallel occurs in consonants showing greater likelihood to interact in speech errors with nasals. The experiments, which elicited errors using the SLIPS technique with English speakers, revealed the following asymmetries in consonants’ participation in errors with nasals: (i) voiced stops (b, d) > voiceless stops (p, t), (ii) voiced stops with same place > voiced stops with different place, and (iii) approximants (r, l) > voiceless stops (p, t). These correlate with preferentially affected segments in nasal consonant harmony. The data support a uniform phonological similarity scaling for nasal-oral consonants across phonological harmony processes and speech errors. Further, they are consistent with theoretical proposals that consonant harmony has functional origins in facilitating language production.

P1391 The HARMONY antibiotic policy and process tools and SWAB collaboration

P1391 The HARMONY antibiotic policy and process tools and SWAB collaboration

A Bottom-Up Approach to Vowel Systems: The Case of Yadu Qiang*

Examining vowel harmony processes at work in Yadu Qiang reveals the smallest set of features needed to account for vowel oppositions, hence vowel structure. Arguments are evaluated for binarity/unarity of features, and the roles of marginal and disappearing contrasts. A minimal set of features that accounts for vowel processes predicts the existence of abstract vowels, which are shown to be active in the vowel system. The required binary features are Front, A TR, and Low, while Round and Rhotic are unary features. The study draws paralleis with Hyman's (2003) analysis of Kalong, in which all vowel features are shown to be unary.

UM MARCO CONCEITUAL PARA O CUIDADO AO FAMILIAR DA CRIANÇA COM CARDIOPATIA CONGÊNITA À LUZ DA TEORIA DE ROY

Este artigo busca delinear um marco conceitual para o cuidado ao familiar da criança com cardiopatia congênita, subsidiado pela teoria de Roy, a qual oferece concepções que se fundamentam no processo de adaptação e permite compreender o ser como pessoa afetada em sua totalidade. Descreve os conceitos que permeiam este marco conceitual e sua aplicação em área específica de cuidado ao familiar da criança com cardiopatia congênita. Explicita que o cuidado transicional favorece a passagem do familiar pela transição de saúde-doença do filho, pois envolve comportamentos que possibilitam o cuidado personalizado, particularizado, que auxiliam o ser a um devir harmonioso, com desenvolvimento de suas potencialidades para alcançar o equilíbrio perdido.

Stochastic phonological knowledge: the case of Hungarian vowel harmony

In Hungarian, stems ending in a back vowel plus one or more neutral vowels show unusual behaviour: for such stems, the otherwise general process of vowel harmony is lexically idiosyncratic. Particular stems can take front suffixes, take back suffixes or vacillate. Yet at a statistical level, the patterning among these stems is lawful: in the aggregate, they obey principles that relate the propensity to take back or front harmony to the height of the rightmost vowel and to the number of neutral vowels. We argue that this patterned statistical variation in the Hungarian lexicon is internalised by native speakers. Our evidence is that they replicate the pattern when they are asked to apply harmony to novel stems in a ‘wug’ test (Berko 1958). Our test results match quantitative data about the Hungarian lexicon, gathered with an automated Web search. We model the speakers' knowledge and intuitions with a grammar based on the dual listing/generation model of Zuraw (2000), then show how the constraint rankings of this grammar can be learned by algorithm.

An ultrasonic investigation of retracted consonants in St’at’imcets (Lillooet Salish)

Tongue retraction is rare in native languages of North America. Previous literature on St’at’imcets (also known as Lillooet) has left unanswered the question of how retracted consonants (uvulars, a pharyngeal, and a subset of retracted coronals) are articulated, and whether they in fact involve tongue retraction. Based on perceptual and acoustic data, previous descriptions differ with respect to the involvement of the tongue dorsum and tongue root in the articulation of St’at’imcets retracted consonants, particularly with the orthographic ‘‘g,’’ disputed to be either a uvular or pharyngeal approximant [Shahin, 1997; van Eijk, 1997]. Articulatory data of retracted and nonretracted consonants were collected from 4 St’at’imcets speakers via a portable ultrasound machine. Results indicate a significant difference in tongue root, dorsum, and body position for retracted versus nonretracted consonants, with the former possessing more tongue root and dorsum backing and tongue body lowering than the latter. Furthermore, results show ‘‘g’’ to be articulated similarly to the uvular consonant, with the tongue dorsum moving towards the posterior uvula/upper pharyngeal region of the vocal tract. These results provide direct evidence for the articulatory makeup of St’at’imcets retracted consonants and shed light on St’at’imcets retraction effects and phonological harmony processes. [Work supported by SSHRC.]