Paradigmatic Uniformity: Evidence from Heritage Speakers of Spanish

Subject-verb agreement mismatches have been reported in the L2 and heritage literature, usually involving infinitives, analyzed as default morphological forms for fully specified T-heads. This article explores the mechanisms behind these mismatches, testing two hypotheses: the default form and the surface-similarity hypotheses. It compares non-finite and finite S-V mismatches with subjects with different persons, testing whether similarity with other paradigmatic forms makes them more acceptable, controlling for the role of verb frequency. Participants were asked to rate sentences on a Likert scale that included (a) infinitive forms with first, second and third person subjects, and (b) third person verbal forms with first, second and third person subjects. Two stem-stressed verbs (e.g., tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’) and two affix-stressed verbs (e.g., me.ti-o ‘introduced.3p.past’), varying in frequency were tested. Inflectional affixes of stem-stressed verbs are similar to other forms of the paradigm both phonologically and in being unstressed (tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’ vs. trai.g-o ‘bring.1 p.pres’), whereas affixes of affix-stressed verbs have dissimilar stress patterns (me.ti-o ´introduced.3p.past’ vs. me.t-o ‘introduce.1p.pres’). Results show significantly higher acceptability for finite vs. non-finite non-matching, and for 1st vs. 2nd person subjects. Stem-stressed verbs showed higher acceptability ratings than affix-stressed ones, suggesting a role for surface-form correspondence, partially confirming previous findings.

Erroneous Word-Stress Patterns Used by EFL Yemeni Learners

This experimental study aims at investigating the English word-stress patterns used by Yemenis, learning English as a foreign language, and the erroneous stress patterns used by them. Accent or stress is a feature of high significance in English speech. At the level of a word, one syllable gets accentuated with primary stress. To achieve the purpose of this study, and to find out to what extent word stress of Received Pronunciation English poses difficulty on Yemeni Arabic speakers using English as a foreign language, 120 subjects of various scientific disciplines, were chosen for data collection. They were recorded and their utterances went through deep analysis based on the auditory impression of the researcher and on the spectrographic evidence resulting from the speech analysis of the software program PRAAT. The most significant findings reached by the researcher were that word-stress in the four-syllable target words were the most problematic for the speakers in which 53.2% of them put the stress, randomly, on the wrong syllables in words. Three-syllable target words appeared to be less problematic as 44.4% of the participants placed the stress inaccurately in words. The least difficulties encountered by the speakers were with the two-syllable target words where 70.6% of the speakers managed to pronounce the words with correct stress placement. It is noteworthy to mention that there was a tendency among the speakers who produced wrong stress patterns, to accent either the first syllable or the one including a long vowel or a diphthong in the words.

Subsurface stresses in an elliptical Hertzian contact

The traditional solution for the stresses below an elliptical Hertzian contact expresses the results in terms of incomplete Legendre elliptic integrals, so are necessarily based on the length of the semi-major axis a and the axis ratio k. The result is to produce completely different equations for the stresses in the x and y directions; and although these equations are now well-known, their derivation from the fundamental, symmetric, integrals is far from simple. When instead Carlson elliptic integrals are used, they immediately match the fundamental integrals, allowing the equations for the stresses to treat the two semi-axes equally, and so providing a single equation where two were needed before. The numerical evaluation of the Carlson integrals is simple and rapid, so the result is that more convenient answers are obtained more conveniently. A bonus is that the temptation to record the depth of the critical stresses as a fraction of the length of the semi-major axis is removed. Thomas and Hoersch’s method of finding all the stresses along the axis of symmetry has been extended to determine the full set of stresses in a principal plane. The stress patterns are displayed, and a comparison between the answers for the planes of the major and minor semiaxes is made. The results are unchanged from those found from equations given by Sackfield and Hills, but not previously evaluated. The present equations are simpler, not only in the simpler elliptic integrals, but also for the “tail” of elementary functions.

Racial/ Ethnic and Gender Differences in Older Adults’ Chronic Stress Patterns

Chronic stress has been associated with several adverse psychological, physical, and cognitive outcomes. While there exists a baseline level of stress among all individuals, certain groups of people are at risk of developing chronic stress due to existing hardships and stressors. Black Indigenous and/or people of color (BIPOC) and women have historically experienced several inequities including higher rates of certain chronic illnesses, interpersonal discrimination, socioeconomic disparities, and several other adverse outcomes. In addition to stressors from racial/ethnic and gender identities, older adulthood is a major transitional period marked by changes in physical, emotional, and cognitive well-being, which have been shown to affect overall well-being and mental health. As such, this study aimed to examine the association between chronic stress and cognition among older adults, using the intersectionality of race and sex. Data from the 2016 Health and Retirement Study were used, resulting in a final sample of 6,015 adults aged 50 and older. Latent class analysis was used to determine chronic stress patterns by sex and race, and a three-step method was used to examine the effects of covariates on stress class memberships by race and sex subgroups. Results indicated that compared to White men, the high stress classes among White women, BIPOC men and BIPOC women contained more stressors. Interventions targeted towards the mitigation of chronic stress among older adults should consider how intersectional identities combine to create increased hardships and stressors.

Word Stress in Qassimi Arabic: A Constraint-Based Analysis

This study aimed to produce a formalism of word stress in Qassimi Arabic (QA), which is a sub-dialect of Najdi Arabic (NA), using a constraint-based approach. To this end, this paper investigated two main topics: The first topic explored word stress in QA. Word stress in QA, as well as in NA, is predictable; it can be determined by syllable weight and position. However, two cases do not conform to such straightforward stress rules. These cases are represented by the words: [ʔal.ʕa.sˤir] ‘afternoon’ and [ʔa.ʕa.rif] ‘I know’. Derivational analysis of these exceptions shows the importance of relating the surface structures of such forms to their underlying representations. The second topic aimed to make a formalism for stress patterns in QA using optimality theory (OT). Thus, QA word stress rules and their exceptions are translated into conflicting constraints that are ranked relative to one another by the use of constraint-relation tableaux. This ranking eventually produced the following constraint-relation hierarchy: Lx≈Pr, SYLLABLE-INTEGRITY, TROCHAIC, FAITH-PK >> NONFINAL >> *[ʔa. >> FTBIN-µ, WSP, ALL-FEET-RIGHT >> MAIN-RIGHT, PARSE-σ.

Adult Attachment Avoidance is Associated with Cortisol Awakening Response among Young Black Sexual Minority Men as Compared to Young White Sexual Minority Men

Research suggests that young sexual minority men (YSMM), particularly YSMM of color, are more likely to have dysregulated physiological stress responses as compared to their heterosexual counterparts. In addition, the quality of social relationships has been demonstrated to impact physiological stress patterns among young adults. One key indicator of social relationships is that of adult attachment, which refers to the types of socioemotional bonds that individuals form with peers, family, and romantic partners. However, the association between adult attachment and physiological stress functioning among diverse samples of YSMM has been underexplored. Thus, the current study sought to bridge this gap in the literature by exploring how race/ethnicity moderates the association between adult attachment and physiological stress patterns among Black versus White YSMM. N = 63 YSMM participated in a 5-day daily diary study in which they completed a baseline survey and provided saliva samples over the 5-day period in order to measure diurnal cortisol. Three-level hierarchical linear modeling was used in order to examine the association between race/ethnicity, adult attachment, and diurnal cortisol over the 5-day period. Results suggest that adult attachment avoidance was associated the cortisol awakening response (CAR) among YSMM. In addition, race/ethnicity moderated the association between adult attachment avoidance and the CAR such that YSMM who identified as Black had evidence of a more dysregulated physiological stress response as compared to YSMM who identified as White. Future research should focus on further unpacking the drivers of physiological stress patterns among White and Black YSMM.

Stress, gender, and declension class in Belarusian

Ongoing innovations in Standard Belarusian nominal declension indicate that speakers are aware of and actively using paradigmatic stress patterns for grammatical purposes. The adoption of new mobile stress patterns in paradigms which originally had fixed stress is now complementary in Declension Ia masculine nouns and in Declension II feminine nouns; most neuter nouns simply default to fixed stem stress. The highlighting of grammatical gender distinctions via changes in paradigmatic stress patterns has led to a reanalysis of stress, gender, and declension class in common gender and a-stem masculine nouns and their case exponents have now become stress-dependent, a situation markedly distinct from that found in the other closely related East Slavic languages, Russian, and Ukrainian. These developments pose a challenge for several theories of morphology, either because the theory takes paradigmatic stress to be dependent on declension class or because the theory does not have a provision for paradigmatic stress to determine inflectional exponents.