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This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: כי אם. The combination of the two particles כי and אם produces a construction that is notoriously difficult to describe, analyze syntactically, and translate. Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew offer a dizzying variety of translations for this construction, including “that if,” “except,” “unless,” “but,” “but only,” and “surely,” among other possibilities. In this book, Grace J. Park provides a new approach that strives for greater precision and consistency in translation. Park argues that כי אם is used in three patterns: the “full focus” pattern, the “reduced focus” pattern, and the less common “non-focus” pattern. Her syntactic analysis of all 156 occurrences of the כי אם construction in the Bible lends greater clarity to the contested passages. Drawing on recent linguistic research into the typology of clausal nominalization as well as previous work on contrastive focus, this innovative project provides important new insight into the syntax of Biblical Hebrew. It will be especially valuable for scholars seeking to translate כי אם more consistently and accurately.

Recent studies have shown that shì ‘be’… (de) focus sentences in Mandarin Chinese are not structurally uniform. One of the criteria to make distinctions among them is the Adjacency Condition, that is, only the right adjacent element of shì can be focused. The debate has been centered on the question of why this restriction only holds in certain types of sentences involving focus but not in all of them. We argue that the so-called Adjacency Condition is not a primary condition that regulates the distribution of different types of foci; instead, the presence or the absence of adjacency-like restriction precisely indicates the existence of two different syntactic structures involving foci: one gives rise to the adjacency effects, whereas the other one does not. Importantly, our central proposal is that any constituent that falls under the c-command domain of shì will have a chance to get a focus reading if prosodically prominent, which naturally holds for the constituents that are not adjacent to shì. Along this line, shì is analyzed as a focus domain indicator rather than the focus marker itself.

This paper investigates the interpretive and formal properties of the so-called focus construction in Akan. It argues that Akan has only one true morphological focus marker, namely na, whereas the marker de(ε) that has been analysed in the linguistic literature on Akan as a focus marker (Boadi 1974; Saah 1988; Boadi 1990; Saah 1994; Marfo and Bodomo 2005) is in fact a marker of contrastive topic. The proposed analysis relies on the idea that the Akan morphological markers na and de(ε) carry out exactly the same interpretive function as the falling and rising prosodic markers, respectively, found in intonation languages. It is shown that a number of controversies associated with Akan information-structural marking can be accounted for by assuming a certain parallelism with intonation languages. It is demonstrated that particular types of information-structural partitioning are cross-linguistically encoded via a marked strategy, with the parametric variation resulting from the difference in the choice of the linguistic tool – syntactic, morphological or prosodic – used to create a marked representation.

The paper examines the semantics and distribution of the polyfunctional Hill Mari focus particle =ok. We describe two interpretations of =ok ­possible on a wide range of hosts: the exhaustive use and the counteradditive use; besides, we consider several uses that are only possible with a lexically or semantically conditioned set of entities. We argue that =ok falls into a class of devices with not-at-issue exhaustive inferences, along with the English it-cleft and some other cross-linguistic counterparts. We discuss the implications that the Hill Mari data have for the typology of this class of constructions: Hill Mari =ok suggests that discourse givenness of the denotation of the focus constituent is an important dimension along which such elements vary across languages. Besides, in this paper we draw an areal comparison of the Hill Mari =ok with its counterparts in the Volga-Kama languages: Meadow Mari, Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, and Udmurt. Although the origin and the general set of readings are the same, the ­syntactic behavior of =ok’s counterparts varies significantly.

Two groups of Chinese sentences involve LF wh-movement in the same fashion but contrast sharply in grammaticality. We demonstrate in this article that this systematic contrast constitutes a significant puzzle for the well-known claim that LF movement of adjuncts is constrained by the applicable locality conditions whereas that of arguments need not obey those conditions in the wh-in-situ languages like Chinese. We argue that this contrast can be accounted for naturally by appealing to a general condition on the positioning of the Chinese focus marker shi, which has nothing to do with the locality conditions on movement in any form. Furthermore, a reasonable solution of the problem argues for a Pied-Piping approach to deal with the language facts that have been under consideration by many authors but have not received a satisfactory treatment. That is, what is being LF-extracted in those superficially island-violating sentences in fact is the whole island that contains the questioned or focused element rather than the questioned or focused element alone. The LF movement of arguments is subject to the locality conditions very much in the very same fashion as that of adjuncts in the Chinese language.

Despite the importance of intonation in spoken languages, deeper linguistic information encoded in prosody is rarely taken into account in speech-to-speech machine translation systems. This paper concerns the translation of spoken English into Mandarin Chinese, paying particular attention to the emphatic/contrastive focus in questions which is realised by means of phonological stress in spoken English but by lexical and syntactic devices in Mandarin. There are two main reasons to translate phonologically marked emphatic/contrastive focus with other linguistic devices: firstly, different languages tend to use different devices to express emphatic/contrastive focus; secondly, the production of prosody in text-to-speech systems is far from perfect. In this paper, a translation framework which is capable of treating emphatic/contrastive focus is outlined and focus rules are developed. The framework has been tested on a corpus of 207 utterances in the domain of asthma, although the focus rules are not domain-specific.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: free word order in Spanish The SVO order and information structure Topic and focus structures: a descriptive overview Topicalizing and focus structures: formal accounts Concluding remarks References

PurposeThe objective of this research is to investigate the capabilities of the ChatGPT GPT-4 model, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), in comparison to human experts in the context of construction project risk management.Design/methodology/approachEmploying a mixed-methods approach, the study draws a qualitative and quantitative comparison between 16 human risk management experts from Finnish construction companies and the ChatGPT AI model utilizing anonymous peer reviews. It focuses primarily on the areas of risk identification, analysis, and control.FindingsChatGPT has demonstrated a superior ability to generate comprehensive risk management plans, with its quantitative scores significantly surpassing the human average. Nonetheless, the AI model's strategies are found to lack practicality and specificity, areas where human expertise excels.Originality/valueThis study marks a significant advancement in construction project risk management research by conducting a pioneering blind-review study that assesses the capabilities of the advanced AI model, GPT-4, against those of human experts. Emphasizing the evolution from earlier GPT models, this research not only underscores the innovative application of ChatGPT-4 but also the critical role of anonymized peer evaluations in enhancing the objectivity of findings. It illuminates the synergistic potential of AI and human expertise, advocating for a collaborative model where AI serves as an augmentative tool, thereby optimizing human performance in identifying and managing risks.

A commonly held view is that nanocarriers conjugated to polyethylene glycol (PEG) are non-immunogenic. However, many studies have reported that unexpected immune responses have occurred against PEG-conjugated nanocarriers. One unanticipated response is the rapid clearance of PEGylated nanocarriers upon repeat administration, called the accelerated blood clearance (ABC) phenomenon. ABC involves the production of antibodies toward nanocarrier components, including PEG, which reduces the safety and effectiveness of encapsulated therapeutic agents. Another immune response is the hypersensitivity or infusion reaction referred to as complement (C) activation-related pseudoallergy (CARPA). Such immunogenicity and adverse reactivities of PEGylated nanocarriers may be of potential concern for the clinical use of PEGylated therapeutics. Accordingly, screening of the immunogenicity and CARPA reactogenicity of nanocarrier-based therapeutics should be a prerequisite before they can proceed into clinical studies. This review presents PEGylated liposomes, immunogenicity of PEG, the ABC phenomenon, C activation and lipid-induced CARPA from a toxicological point of view, and also addresses the factors that influence these adverse interactions with the immune system.