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In this paper, we discuss the results of two experiments, one off-line (acceptability judgment) and the other on-line (eye-tracking), targeting Object Cleft (OC) constructions. In both experiments, we used the same materials presenting a manipulation on person features: second person plural pronouns and plural definite determiners alternate in introducing a full NP ("it was [ DP1 the/you [ NP bankers]] i that [ DP2 the/you [ NP lawyers]] have avoided _ i at the party") in a language, Italian, with overt person (and number) subject-verb agreement. As results, we first observed that the advantage of the bare pronominal forms reported in previous experiments (Gordon et al., 2001; Warren and Gibson, 2005, a.o.) is lost when the full NP (the "lexical restriction" in Belletti and Rizzi, 2013) is present. Second, an advantage for the mismatch condition, Art 1 -Pro 2 derivations (Chesi, 2015). We conclude that most of these approaches fail in making predictions able to reconcile the competence and the performance perspective in a coherent way to the exception of the Pro 1 -Pro 2 condition, is observed, both off-line (higher acceptability and accuracy in answering comprehension questions after eyetracking) and on-line (e.g., smaller number of regressions from the subject region); third, we found a relevant difference between acceptability and accuracy in comprehension questions: despite similar numerical patterns in both off-line measures, the difference across conditions in accuracy is mostly not significant, while it is significant in acceptability. Moreover, while the matching condition Pro 1 -Pro 2 is perceived as nearly ungrammatical (far below the mean acceptability across-conditions), the accuracy in comprehension is still high (close to 80%). To account for these facts, we compare different formal competence and processing models that predict difficulties in OC constructions: similarity-based (Gordon et al., 2001, a.o.), memory load (Gibson, 1998), and intervention-based (Friedmann et al., 2009) accounts are compared to processing oriented ACT-R-based predictions (Lewis and Vasishth, 2005) and to top-down Minimalist derivations (Chesi, 2015). We conclude that most of these approaches fail in making predictions able to reconcile the competence and the performance perspective in a coherent way to the exception of the top-down model that is able to predict correctly both the on-line and the off-line main effects obtained., (Copyright © 2019 Chesi and Canal.)

A progressive speech/language disorder, such as the non fluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia and progressive apraxia of speech, can be due to neuropathologically verified Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). The prevalence of linguistic deficits and the linguistic profile in PSP patients who present primarily with a movement disorder is unknown. In the present study, we investigated speech and language performance in a sample of clinically diagnosed PSP patients using a comprehensive language battery, including, besides traditional language tests, a detailed analysis of connected speech (picture description task assessing 26 linguistic features). The aim was to identify the most affected linguistic levels in seventeen PSP with a movement disorder presentation, compared to 21 patients with Parkinson's disease and 27 healthy controls. Machine learning methods were used to detect the most relevant language tests and linguistic features characterizing the language profile of PSP patients. Our results indicate that even non-clinically aphasic PSP patients have subtle language deficits, in particular involving the lexical-semantic and discourse levels. Patients with the Richardson's syndrome showed a lower performance in the word comprehension task with respect to the other PSP phenotypes with predominant frontal presentation, parkinsonism and progressive gait freezing. The present findings support the usefulness of a detailed language assessment in all patients in the PSP spectrum., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In recent years, lignin valorization has gained upward momentum owing to advances in both plant bioengineering and catalytic processing of lignin. In this new horizon, catalysis is now applied to the 'pulping process' itself, creating efficient methods for lignocellulose fractionation or deconstruction (here referred to as Catalytic Upstream Biorefining or 'CUB'). These processes render, together with delignified pulps, lignin streams of low molecular weight (M w ) and low molecular diversity. Recently, we introduced a CUB process based on Early-stage Catalytic Conversion of Lignin (ECCL) through H-transfer reactions catalyzed by RANEY® Ni. This approach renders a lignin stream obtained as a viscous oil, comprising up to 60 wt% monophenolic compounds (M w < 250 Da). The remaining oil fraction (40 wt%) is mainly composed of lignin oligomers, and as minor products, holocellulose-derived polyols and lignin-derived species of high M w (0.25-2 kDa). Simultaneously, the process yields a holocellulose pulp with a low content of residual lignin (<5 wt%). Despite the efficiency of aqueous solutions of 2-propanol as a solvent for lignin fragments and an H-donor, there is scant information regarding the CUB process carried out in the presence of primary alcohols, which often inhibit the catalytic activity of RANEY® Ni, as revealed in model compound studies performed at low temperature. Considering the composition of the lignin oils obtained from CUB based on ECCL, the processes commonly render ortho-(di)methoxy-4-propylphenol derivatives with a varied degree of defunctionalization of the propyl side chain. In this contribution, we present the role of the alcohol solvent (methanol or 2-propanol) and Ni catalyst (Ni/C or RANEY® Ni) in control over selectivity of phenolic products. The current results indicate that solvent effects on the catalytic processes could hold the key for improving control over the degree of functionalization of the propyl side-chain in the lignin oil obtained from CUB, offering new avenues for lignin valorization at the extraction step.

Language assessment has a crucial role in the clinical diagnosis of several neurodegenerative diseases. The analysis of extended speech production is a precious source of information encompassing the phonetic, phonological, lexico-semantic, morpho-syntactic, and pragmatic levels of language organization. The knowledge about the distinctive linguistic variables identifying language deficits associated to different neurodegenerative diseases has progressively improved in the last years. However, the heterogeneity of such variables and of the way they are measured and classified limits any generalization and makes the comparison among studies difficult. Here we present an exhaustive review of the studies focusing on the linguistic variables derived from the analysis of connected speech samples, with the aim of characterizing the language disorders of the most prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, including primary progressive aphasia, Alzheimer's disease, movement disorders, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A total of 61 studies have been included, considering only those reporting group analysis and comparisons with a group of healthy persons. This review first analyzes the differences in the tasks used to elicit connected speech, namely picture description, story narration, and interview, considering the possible different contributions to the assessment of different linguistic domains. This is followed by an analysis of the terminologies and of the methods of measurements of the variables, indicating the need for harmonization and standardization. The final section reviews the linguistic domains affected by each different neurodegenerative disease, indicating the variables most consistently impaired at each level and suggesting the key variables helping in the differential diagnosis among diseases. While a large amount of valuable information is already available, the review highlights the need of further work, including the development of automated methods, to take advantage of the richness of connected speech analysis for both research and clinical purposes.

Minimalism in grammatical theorizing (Chomsky in The minimalist program. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995) led to simpler linguistic devices and a better focalization of the core properties of the structure building engine: a lexicon and a free (recursive) phrase formation operation, dubbed Merge, are the basic components that serve in building syntactic structures. Here I suggest that by looking at the elementary restrictions that apply to Merge (i.e., selection and licensing of functional features), we could conclude that a re-orientation of the syntactic derivation (from bottom-up/right-left to top-down/left-right) is necessary to make the theory simpler, especially for long-distance (filler-gap) dependencies, and is also empirically more adequate. If the structure building operations would assemble lexical items in the order they are pronounced (Phillips in Order and structure. PhD thesis, MIT, 1996; Chesi in Phases and cartography in linguistic computation: Toward a cognitively motivated computational model of linguistic competence. PhD thesis, Università di Siena, 2004; Chesi in Competence and computation: Toward a processing friendly minimalist grammar. Unipress, Padova, 2012), on-line performance data could better fit the grammatical model, without resorting to external "performance factors." The phase-based, top-down (and, as a consequence, left-right) Minimalist Grammar here discussed goes in this direction, ultimately showing how strong Islands (Huang in Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. PhD thesis, MIT, 1982) and intervention effects (Gordon et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 27:1411-1423, 2001, Gordon et al. in J Mem Lang 51:97-114, 2004) could be better explained in structural terms assuming this unconventional derivational direction.