It has been argued by LaPolla (1993, 1995) and Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) -among others -that word order in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth MC) is (almost) exclusively determined by informational/communicative considerations. Though it cannot be denied that word order does encode informative/communicative considerations such as identifiability, foregrounding, and focalization, it is argued here ...

The current paper discusses first investigations aimed to lay the groundwork for the development of computer-aided pronunciation training for teaching Mandarin to Germans. We conducted a contrastive analysis of the two languages leading to a set of tokens for a production and perception experiment involving German first-year students of Mandarin. Their data were perceptually evaluated by a teac...

Previous studies have shown that directing learners’ attention during perceptual training facilitates detection and learning of unfamiliar consonant categories [1, 2]. The current study asks whether this attentional directing can also facilitate other types of phonetic learning. Monolingual Mandarin speakers were divided into two groups directed to learn either 1) the consonants or 2) the tones...

INTRODUCTION Placenta accreta significantly contributes to maternal morbidity and mortality. We evaluated whether planned delivery and experienced, team-managed surgical intervention results in improved outcomes. We also examined whether risk factors differed for accreta, increta, and percreta and evaluated whether excess lower segment uterine vascularity correlates with disease severity. MET...

Ischiopagus parasites are fetal defects attached to a relatively normal twin by pelvis. This is the first reported case of parasitic ischiopagus twins without prenatal diagnosis successfully managed in Mozambique. A multidisciplinary team was involved in the supernumerary limbs excision. After 7 months, the infant has a normal development.

In young women, differentiated thyroid cancer is the second most common malignancy diagnosed around the time of pregnancy. Management of thyroid cancer during pregnancy poses distinct challenges due to concerns regarding maternal and fetal well-being. In most cases surgery can be safely delayed until after delivery and with adequate management and outcome of pregnancy in women with thyroid canc...

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) very rarely present simultaneously and pose a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma to the critical care team. Prompt diagnosis and management with plasma exchange and immunosuppression is life-saving. A patient critically ill with TTP and SLE, successfully managed in the acute period of illness with plasma exchange, ...

Many research teams and individuals have computed endgame databases for the game of chess which use the distance-to-mate metric, enabling their software to forecast the number of moves remaining until the game is over. This is not the case for the game of checkers. Only one programming team has generated a checkers database capable of announcing the distance to the terminal position. This paper...

This study compared sentence intonation of L1 Mandarin by native speakers and L2 Mandarin by Cantonese learners, with both acoustic analysis and perceptual experiment. Three types of sentences (i.e., statement, intonation question, and particle question) ending with different tones and in different lengths were investigated. The perceptual experiment showed that declarative intonation in L2 spe...