Graded representations in the acquisition of English and German transitive constructions

English and German children aged 2 years 4 months and 4 years heard both novel and familiar verbs in sentences whose form was grammatical, but which mismatched the event they were watching (e.g., ‘The frog is pushing the lion’, when the lion was actually the ‘agent’ or ‘doer’ of the pushing). These verbs were then elicited in new sentences. All children mostly corrected the familiar verb (i.e., they used the agent as the grammatical subject), but there were cross-linguistic differences among the two-year-olds concerning the novel verb. When English 2-year-olds used the novel verb they mostly corrected. However, their most frequent response was to avoid using the novel verb altogether. German 2-year-olds corrected the novel verb significantly more often than their English counterparts, demonstrating more robust verb-general representations of agent- and patient-marking. These findings provide support for a ‘graded representations’ view of development, which proposes that grammatical representations may be simultaneously abstract but ‘weak’.     

The American Luther

Abstract : This essay introduces important developments in recent Luther scholarship in America and argues for a specific retrieval of Luther for contemporary religious and theological issues, such as the problem of evil and the role of experience in theology. The essay describes how contemporary feminist and liberation theologies have recontextualized Luther in America. Also addressed is the current interest in historical investigations of Luther in relation to medieval thought that aligns with the American reception of Finnish scholarship on Luther. These developments show that the American Luther is moving beyond its fundamental shaping by German Protestantism.     

Lexicality, morphological structure, and semantic transparency in the processing of German ver-verbs: The complementarity of on-line and off-line evidence

Two types of experiments investigate the visual on-line and off-line processing of German ver-verbs (e.g., verbittern ‘to embitter'). In Experiments 1 and 2 (morphological priming), latency patterns revealed the existence of facilitation effects for the morphological conditions (BITTER-VERBITTERN and BITTERN-VERBITTERN) as compared to the neutral conditions (SAUBER-VERBITTERN and SÄUBERN-VERBITTERN). In Experiments 3 and 4 (rating tasks) participants had to judge whether the target (VERBITTERN) “comes from,” “contains a form of,” or “contains the meaning of” the root (BITTER) or the root+en substring (BITTERN). Taken together, these studies revealed the combined influence of the three factors of lexicality (real word status), morphological structure, and semantic transparency.     

Grammatical Processing of Spoken Language in Child and Adult Language Learners

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated auditory language processing in children and late second-language (L2) learners using online methods such as event-related potentials (ERPs), eye-movement monitoring, or the cross-modal priming paradigm. Two grammatical phenomena are examined in detail, children’s and adults’ processing of German plural inflections (Lück et al. Brain Res 1077:144–152, 2006; Hahne et al. J Cognitive Neurosci 18:121–134, 2006; Clahsen et al. J Child Language 34:601–622, 2007) and language learners’ processing of filler-gap dependencies in English (Felser C, Roberts L Second Language Res 23:9–36, 2007; Roberts et al. J Psycholinguist Res 36:175–188, 2007). The results from these studies reveal clear differences between native and nonnative processing in both domains of grammar, suggesting that nonnative listeners rely less on grammatical parsing routines during processing than either child or adult native listeners. We also argue that factors such as slower processing speed or cognitive resource limitations only provide a partial account of our findings.     

Style in Philosophy: Parts II and III

The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of "intersubjective"-communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as foreign and incorrigible by asserting a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity . The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals.     

Defending the bad against the worse: Education and democracy

Recent writings in philosophy of education have expressed pessimism about the possibility of educating students to think for themselves. Similarly, recent writings in political philosophy have expressed pessimism about the possibility of attaining democracy. In this paper, I suggest that such pessimism is premature and may be alleviated, if not removed, by interpreting both educational enlightenment and the democratic ideal as processes, rather than end states. They are, moreover, processes which exist in symbiotic relationship with one another. Thus educational practices may improve the prospects of attaining democracy, and political practices may strengthen education.     

The Revolutionary Luther: A Gramscian Analysis of Luther's Universal Priesthood

Abstract :  The purpose of this article is to present an image of Martin Luther viewed through the lens of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. The primary focus of the article will be on Luther's articulation of the universal priesthood as it was presented in the 1520 treatise "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation." We will discover that in this treatise Luther's attack on papal authority was, in Gramscian terms, a counter-hegemonic revolutionary act.     

Neural correlates of temporal auditory processing in developmental dyslexia during German vowel length discrimination: an fMRI study

This fMRI study investigated phonological vs. auditory temporal processing in developmental dyslexia by means of a German vowel length discrimination paradigm (Groth, Lachmann, Riecker, Muthmann, & Steinbrink, 2011). Behavioral and fMRI data were collected from dyslexics and controls while performing same-different judgments of vowel duration in two experimental conditions. In the temporal, but not in the phonological condition, hemodynamic brain activation was observed bilaterally within the anterior insular cortices in both groups and within the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in controls, indicating that the left IFG and the anterior insular cortices are part of a neural network involved in temporal auditory processing. Group subtraction analyses did not demonstrate significant effects. However, in a subgroup analysis, participants performing low in the temporal condition (all dyslexic) showed decreased activation of the insular cortices and the left IFG, suggesting that this processing network might form the neural basis of temporal auditory processing deficits in dyslexia.     

民国中医师考试制度的历史考察与时代启示

民国时期,中医师考试制度在考试权由地方收归中央后逐步走向现代化转型,考试机构正规化、考试资格规范化、考试内容专业化、考试程序科学化。由于未能处理好传统因素的继承与创新关系,科举制精神的延续使中医师考试制度呈现出传统与现代并存的演进特征,致使民国中医师考试的社会评价持续降低,抑制中医师考试制度供给效率的提升。当代中医师资格考试应充分借鉴民国中医师考试制度化的历史启示,处理好三对“破”与“立”的关系：破西化倾向,立中医思维;破因循守旧,立与时俱进;破临床能力下降难题,立中医岗位胜任力。