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The Acceptability and Complexity evaluation task for Italian (AcCompl-it) was aimed at developing and evaluating methods to classify Italian sentences according to Acceptability and Complexity. It consists of two independent tasks asking participants to predict either the acceptability or the complexity rate (or both) of a given set of sentences previously scored by native speakers on a 1-to-7 points Likert scale. In this paper, we introduce the datasets distributed to the participants, we describe the different approaches of the participating systems and provide a first analysis of the obtained results.

In Italian, nominal infinitives (“infinito sostantivato”, e.g. Il partire, rendered in English as gerunds: ‘the leaving’) are commonly used as verb arguments alongside deverbal nouns (formed by means of suffixes such as -ione, -mento, -aggio, -nza, e.g. la partenza ‘the departure’). Both nominalization strategies seem to denote eventualities, and in some cases both are widely used, raising the question of how their meanings differ or whether there could be semantic competition among them. The paper uses corpus-based methods to study the distribution of these forms, with the aim of understanding the rationale behind the choice of one morphological process rather than the other. We found out that when both derivatives are built from the same base they frequently bring out distinct verb meanings, often one more concrete, the other more abstract, as it emerges from the different types of complements the two forms tend to select.

We propose a novel approach to the study of how artificial neural network perceive the distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, a crucial task in the growing field of synthetic linguistics. The method is based on performance measures of language models trained on corpora and fine-tuned with either grammatical or ungrammatical sentences, then applied to (different types of) grammatical or ungrammatical sentences. The results show that both in the difficult and highly symmetrical task of detecting subject islands and in the more open CoLA dataset, grammatical sentences give rise to better scores than ungrammatical ones, possibly because they can be better integrated within the body of linguistic structural knowledge that the language model has accumulated.

This paper is an extended description of SemEval-2014 Task 1, the task on the evaluation of Compositional Distributional Semantics Models on full sentences. Systems participating in the task were presented with pairs of sentences and were evaluated on their ability to predict human judgments on (1) semantic relatedness and (2) entailment. Training and testing data were subsets of the SICK (Sentences Involving Compositional Knowledge) data set. SICK was developed with the aim of providing a proper benchmark to evaluate compositional semantic systems, though task participation was open to systems based on any approach. Taking advantage of the SemEval experience, in this paper we analyze the SICK data set, in order to evaluate the extent to which it meets its design goal and to shed light on the linguistic phenomena that are still challenging for state-of-the-art computational semantic systems. Qualitative and quantitative error analyses show that many systems are quite sensitive to changes in the proportion of sentence pair types, and degrade in the presence of additional lexico-syntactic complexities which do not affect human judgements. More compositional systems seem to perform better when the task proportions are changed, but the effect needs further confirmation. We thank the creators of the ImageFlickr, MSR-Video, and SemEval-2012 STS data sets for granting us permission to use their data for the task. The University of Trento authors were supported by ERC 2011 Starting Independent Research Grant No. 283554 (COMPOSES).

Early tracheostomy may increase the risk of mediastinitis after median sternotomy. Patients who had postoperative tracheostomy after cardiac surgery in the period 2000-2005 were retrospectively analyzed (total: 5095 patients) to evaluate the incidence of mediastinitis and sternal wound infections. Fifty-seven cases (1.1% of all operated patients) had postoperative tracheostomy at an average 5.6 +/- 0.7 days postoperatively. None of these patients had mediastinitis. Eleven cases of aseptic sternal instability and ten cases of mild-to-moderate infection limited to subcutaneous planes were observed. There was no correlation between the time to performance of tracheostomy and the isolation of bacteria from the thoracic wounds (p = 0.61). The bacterial strains isolated from subcutaneous infection were qualitatively and quantitatively different from those isolated from bronchial secretions. We conclude that in this study there is no demonstrable link between early tracheostomy after sternotomy and mediastinitis. Early tracheostomy should not be denied due to concerns of increasing the risk of mediastinitis.

Starting from an analysis for the crosslinguistic variation in the grammaticality of DP-internal conjunctions such as This [man and woman] are in love, this article develops a theory of the syntax/semantics interface within the DP and a novel proposal for the interpretation of conjunction. The main claims are that plural/mass denotations are built in stages within the DP, by the combined effect of number features and semantic operators associated with functional heads; that languages differ in whether the denotation of nouns is filtered for singular or plural number; and that the word and crosslinguistically denotes Set Product, an operation which, in different contexts, can mimic the behavior of intersection and union.

The article is a commentary on a few general themes in the contributions for the Lingua Special Issue on Definiteness and Indefiniteness. Various empirical and methodological aspects of the research on the syntax/semantics interface within DPs are discussed, with particular focus on the problem of bare nouns, specificity and the possibility of a property denotation for arguments.

BackgroundAlthough some data suggest that the individual genetic predisposition for developing major or minor degrees of postoperative systemic inflammatory reaction may influence postoperative morbidity, this hypothesis has not been clinically tested to date.Methods and resultsThe −174 G/C polymorphism of the promoter of the interleukin 6 gene was determined preoperatively in 111 consecutive patients submitted to primary isolated coronary artery bypass. The results of the genetic analysis were then correlated with the postoperative interleukin 6 levels and the development of postoperative renal and pulmonary complications. G homozygotes had significantly higher interleukin 6 levels postoperatively (P < .0001 for the difference between areas under the curve). These patients also had worse postoperative pulmonary and renal function. The mean perioperative difference in serum creatinine, potassium, and nitrogen was 0.82 ± 0.34, 0.99 ± 0.44, and 10.1 ± 7.8 mg/dL versus 0.18 ± 0.14, 0.15 ± 0.48, and 2.6 ± 4.1 mg/dL for GG versus non-GG carriers (P < .0001), respectively. The mean respiratory index at 6 and 12 hours was 2.9 ± 0.8 and 2.8 ± 0.3 versus 2.1 ± 0.5 and 1.3 ± 0.1, respectively (P < .0001). The mean duration of mechanical ventilation was 22.5 ± 2.1 versus 12.7 ± 6.7 hours (P < .01). A correlation was found between postoperative interleukin 6 levels and renal and pulmonary complications.ConclusionThe interleukin 6 −174 G/C polymorphism modulates postoperative interleukin 6 levels and is associated with the degree of postoperative renal and pulmonary dysfunction and in-hospital stay after coronary surgery.

Recent work on the syntax and semantics of functional projections within the noun phrase has had as one goal an explanation for the crosslinguistic distribution of “bare” (determinerless) noun phrases. This article provides an account for an apparent anomaly: the relatively free occurrence of bare noun phrases under coordination. We argue that this construction involves coordination of projections below the DP level, with the coordinated structure subsequently raising to Spec, DP.Our analysis accounts for the fact that these nominals are endowed with uniqueness conditions, but only in some cases, and for a number of other hitherto undocumented facts, including complex constraints on modification.

Semantic transparency (ST) is a measure quantifying the strength of meaning association between a compound word (buttercup) and its constituents (butter, cup). Borrowing ideas from computational semantics, we characterize ST in terms of the degree to which a compound and its constituents tend to share the same contexts in everyday usage, and we collect separate measures for different orthographic realizations (solid vs. open) of the same compound. We can thus compare the effects of semantic association in cases in which direct semantic access is likely to take place (buttercup), vis-á-vis forms that encourage combinatorial procedures (butter cup). ST effects are investigated in an analysis of lexical decision latencies. The results indicate that distributionally based ST variables are most predictive of response times when extracted from contexts presenting the compounds as open forms, suggesting that compound processing involves a conceptual combination procedure focusing on the merger of the constituent meanings.

Interleukin (IL)-6 plasma levels are predictive of major cardiovascular events. The -174 G/C promoter polymorphism of the IL-6 gene affects basal levels in vivo and transcription rates in vitro, but its association with IL-6 acute phase levels among patients with coronary artery disease has not been investigated. In 111 patients with multivessel coronary artery disease undergoing elective coronary artery bypass graft surgery, we prospectively assessed genotype at position -174 and serial blood levels of IL-6 and other inflammatory indexes. Clinical and surgical characteristics did not differ among genotypic groups. IL-6 levels--measured daily up to 72 hours before surgery, after surgery, and at discharge--showed a mean 17-fold increase, peaking at 24 hours (p0.0001). IL-6 levels (but not fibrinogen, white-blood cell count, and C-reactive protein values) differed significantly according to the -174 genotype (p = 0.042 for difference between areas under the curve), the 62 GG homozygotes exhibiting higher concentrations than the 49 carriers of the C allele (widest difference at 48 hours, p = 0.015 in multivariate analysis). GG homozygosity was associated with longer stays in the intensive care unit (2.5 +/- 3.4 vs 1.4 +/- 0.9 days, p = 0.02) and in the hospital (6.7 +/- 4.0 vs 5.3 +/- 1.4 days, p = 0.02) than C carriership. Rates of postoperative death, myocardial infarction, and stroke were 8% in GG homozygotes and 2% in C-carriers (p = 0.16). The IL-6-174 GG genotype is associated with higher acute phase levels of IL-6 and with longer stays in the hospital and in the intensive care unit than C allele carriership after surgical coronary revascularization.

This paper presents the task on the evaluation of Compositional Distributional Semantics Models on full sentences organized for the first time within SemEval2014. Participation was open to systems based on any approach. Systems were presented with pairs of sentences and were evaluated on their ability to predict human judgments on (i) semantic relatedness and (ii) entailment. The task attracted 21 teams, most of which participated in both subtasks. We received 17 submissions in the relatedness subtask (for a total of 66 runs) and 18 in the entailment subtask (65 runs).

The lexicon of any natural language encodes a huge number of distinct word meanings. Just to understand this article, you will need to know what thousands of words mean. The space of possible sentential meanings is infinite: In this article alone, you will encounter many sentences that express ideas you have never heard before, we hope. Statistical semantics has addressed the issue of the vastness of word meaning by proposing methods to harvest meaning automatically from large collections of text (corpora). Formal semantics in the Fregean tradition has developed methods to account for the infinity of sentential meaning based on the crucial insight of compositionality, the idea that meaning of sentences is built incrementally by combining the meanings of their constituents. This article sketches a new approach to semantics that brings together ideas from statistical and formal semantics to account, in parallel, for the richness of lexical meaning and the combinatorial power of sentential semantics. We adopt, in particular, the idea that word meaning can be approximated by the patterns of co-occurrence of words in corpora from statistical semantics, and the idea that compositionality can be captured in terms of a syntax-driven calculus of function application from formal semantics.

Objectives: To examine pump-prime aprotinin action on coagulation and fibrinolysis in patients undergoing primary coronary revascularization. Design: A prospective randomized study. Setting: A university hospital. Participants: Forty-three patients were randomly assigned to either group A, 21 patients treated with 2 × 106 kallikrein inhibitor units (KIU) of aprotinin in the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) prime, or group B, 22 patients, untreated. Interventions: Patients, scheduled for elective coronary surgery, were treated with 2 × 106 KIU of aprotinin in the CPB prime. Markers of coagulation and fibrinolysis were evaluated. Measurements and Main Results: Surgical times, number of reopenings, and allogeneic blood requirements were collected for each patient. Blood samples were obtained before and after surgery for assessing coagulation (prothrombin time [PT], activated partial thromboplastin time [aPTT], ethanol test, factor VII, antithrombin III [AT III], thrombinantithrombin III complex [TAT], fragment 1.2 of prothrombin [F1.2]) and fibrinolysis (fibrin degradation products [FDP], plasmin-antiplasmin complexes [PAP], D-dimers) markers variations. In group A surgical times were faster, there were fewer reopenings (0 v 3), and fewer blood transfusions (1 patient v 4 patients). The two groups did not differ for PT, aPTT, and fibrinogen measurements. Postoperative FDP (measurable in more patients of group B at the end of the operation), PAP, and D-dimers postoperatory levels (less increased in aprotinin group) show the antifibrinolytic properties of the drug. Regarding the coagulation markers, factor VII decreased, whereas TAT and F1.2 increased, all to a lesser extent in the aprotinin group compared with the untreated patients, at the end of operation. Conclusion: Pump-prime aprotinin minimized, even if not completely inhibited, the activation of coagulation and fibrinolysis during CPB, possibly ensuring a less complicated and safer postoperative recovery. It seemed to allow the maintenance of a correct balance of hemostatic systems, avoiding the risk of thrombotic phenomena.

The management of cardiac surgery patients with latex allergy can be challenging. We describe successful mitral valve replacement in a latex-allergic patient using an integrated multidisciplinary approach. We also provide a list of some available latex-free products or latex-free alternatives.

In the present study we analyze how the cognitive system deals on-line with number agreement mismatches and whether this on-line process influences the off-line interpretation of the sentence. In two ERP experiments we monitored the on-line processing consequences of subject-verb agreement mismatches, focusing on the integration of a following number- marked related constituent. In Experiment 1, after initial detection of a mismatch between a plural noun phrase (The siblings) and its singular verb, indexed by LAN + P600, ERP correlates of agreement processing difficulties were recorded on a following modifier when it was plural. In Experiment 2, after detection of the mismatch between two conjoined singular noun phrases in subject position (The brother and the sister) and the verb, indexed by a short-lived P600, only the singular modifier showed indexes of agreement processing difficulties. These findings support the hypothesis that when processing a morphosyntactic mismatch, the cognitive system constructs on-line a well-formed internal representation of the sentence fragment. This on-line regularization allows comprehenders to easily integrate additional incoming constituents and also influences off-line interpretation of the message (Experiment 3).

Postoperative ischemia may complicate cardiac surgery, despite myocardial protection and recent technical developments. Its medical management in the intensive cardiac care unit is usually efficient, although sometimes it requires the revision of the surgical site. In other cases, urgent coronary angiography and subsequent coronary stenting may resolve the situation. Ostial stenosis of coronary anastomoses is a well-known uncommon but dramatic complication after aortic surgery causing myocardial ischemia. Cases of effort angina have been described several months after surgery, but in some cases, acute myocardial infarction may occur days or weeks after intervention. We here describe an anteroseptal ST-elevation myocardial infarction soon after a Bentall aortic root replacement due to compression of the left main ostium by surgical glue, which has been effectively treated by emergency coronary stenting. This case highlights the importance of a joint management of acute myocardial ischemia after cardiac surgery by the cardiac surgeon and the interventional cardiologist.

The Deverbal Nominal Construction of modern Italian belongs to a class of phenomena that present interesting theoretical challenges given their ambiguousstatus between morphologicalcompoundingand syntax. In this paper, we combine evidence from corpora and a systematic elicitation experimenttoproposethatDeverbalNominalConstructionsareactuallyaspurious class, including both true compounds and constructions that belong to the impoverished syntax of telegraphic language, signs and headlines. Besides providing results that allow us to maintain a stronger view of the separation of morpho-lexical and syntactic phenomena, the study also serves as a general illustration of how empirical methods from corpus analysis and psycholinguistics can be brought to bear on issues of interest to the general theory of language.