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Encara que les obres acadèmiques insisteixen que el valor de la puntuació és principalment organitzatiu i només marginalment una codificació d’aspectes fonètics, en l’àmbit de l’estructura informativa trobem un exemple paradigmàtic de l’ús de la puntuació per codificar l’entonació. No obstant això, a diferència de les marques de la modalitat interrogativa, imperativa o exclamativa, la codificació del tema o el focus no té un signe específic, sinó que fa servir la coma, cosa que provoca confusions. En aquest article repasso les principals funcions informatives del català i les construccions que les codifiquen com a pas previ per entendre el paper de la puntuació en el seu marcatge ortogràfic. A partir d’aquesta descripció, avanço una proposta d’organització dels continguts a l’aula que faci més eficient no només la puntuació, sinó la comprensió global dels fenòmens implicats.

Objectives: We sought to test the sensitivity and feasibility of a Schistosoma infection screening process consisting of a scored patient consultation questionnaire and a serological diagnostic test. Study design: Prospective cross-sectional study. Methods: We collected from Schistosoma-exposed individuals a 14-point check list of clinical and laboratory data related to Schistosoma infection, alongside a serological test to detect Schistosoma spp infection. A check list score was created and compared with the risk of infection and clinical recovery through an agreement analysis. Results: Two-hundred and fifty individuals were enrolled, of whom 220 (88%) were male and 30 (12%) female. The median age was 39 (range 18–78). One hundred-fifty (60%, 95% CI 54.9%–65.1%) had a check-list score ≥2. Serology test results were positive for 142 (56.8%, 95% CI 51.6%–62%). Chronic complications compatible with long-term Schistosoma infection were detected in 29 out of these 142 (20.4%, 95% CI 13.8%–27%).,. The median score value was 3, the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve against serology results was 0.85 and the estimated intercept check-list questionnaire score value was 1.72 (95%, CI: 1.3–2.2). Participants with a positive serological test had a substantially higher check-list score (Cohen's kappa coefficient: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.54–0.70). Ninety four percent patients empirically treated showed a subsequent improvement in clinical and laboratory parameters. Conclusions: A two-component process consisting of a scored patient consultation questionnaire followed by serological assay can be a suitable strategy for screening populations at high risk of schistosomiasis infection.

Casa Batlló is a building focus of worldwide recognition due to its status as a work of the architect Antoni Gaudi. The Conservation Plan for Casa Batlló establishes this fact as fundamental to all the decisions that must be taken in order to establish the intervention criteria. The study not only of the actual building, but also of the documents led to define the criteria for the intervention of the restoration project. Thearticle shows the analysis of the building and its architectural spaces, that allowes to establish the clear limit between the previous building and the modifications, done after Gaudí’s project.

The modifications over time to the piano nobile, brought about both by the uses and the inhabitants between the 1950s and 1990s, created a substantial reduction in the value of the whole of the space as a composition. Thus, the stuccoes, the wainscoting, the carpentry, had an individual value, that had been blurred with the significant alterations of the original project by Antoni Gaudí. The restoration of this main floor has tried to find a way to develop the original unifying power of each fragment that contained it, evaluating in a way proportional to how well each has survived.

In accordance with Casa Batlló’s Conservation Plan, the initial project contemplated a minimal intervention of maintenance and conservation. Prior to the start of the intervention, studies and tests were carried out, to find out, check and determine the different methodologies and materials to be used. However, a careful inspection of the façade revealed pathological processes and undocumented findings about the construction techniques. These studies and the results of the tests allowed to agree upon the procedures and materials to be used.

En este artículo proponemos analizar los elementos que encabezan las relativas preposicionales de infinitivo (libros por/para leer) como complementantes preposicionales que se generan en el núcleo de SFinitud. Ello nos permite trazar claras diferencias con las construcciones preposicionales finales y causales y ofrecer al mismo tiempo un análisis uniforme para todas las relativas, sean finitas o no. También sugerimos que la lectura modal asociada a las relativas preposicionales se expresa mediante una categoría funcional específica ligada a la modalidad radical, lo que nos permite explicar parte de las restricciones combinatorias de estas relativas. Por último, proponemos extender este análisis a las relativas de infinitivo introducidas por que (libros que leer).

Este artículo analiza la relación que existe entre el proyecto autorreferencial de Fernando Vallejo y la representación de su persona pública. A través del análisis de su narrativa y su discurso crítico se plantea que su proyecto presenta dos rasgos que no han sido estudiados: una narrativa autobiográfica sostenida sobre un narrador-personaje poco fiable y la identificación ambigua con este personaje en sus apariciones y registros públicos. Se sugiere que esta estrategia creativa opera como una crítica de los efectos de verdad que produce el escritor sobre su recepción en los medios de comunicación.

Editorial note.

Background. Immunotherapy has shown efficacy in small cell lung cancer (SCLC), but only a subset of patients benefits. Surrogate biomarkers are urgently needed. Our aim was to evaluate serum Th1, Th2, and proinflammatory cytokines in two cohorts of SCLC patients before and during treatment with chemotherapy with or without ipilimumab and to correlate them with survival. Patients and methods. Two cohorts of SCLC patients were studied: patients treated with chemotherapy (n = 47), and patients treated with chemotherapy plus ipilimumab (n = 37). Baseline, on-treatment and after-treatment serum samples were evaluated for the presence of IL-1beta, IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IFN-gamma, TNF-alpha, GM-CSF, and Mip-1alpha using a Luminex assay. Differential changes in cytokines between cohorts were analyzed. Associations between cytokine levels and their changes with overall survival were evaluated. Results. Patients treated with ipilimumab showed a global increase of all cytokines after treatment initiation. A high level of IL-8 at baseline was associated with worse prognosis regardless of treatment. Baseline increased IL-2 levels predicted sensitivity to ipilimumab, while high IL-6 and TNF-alpha predicted resistance. An on-treatment increase in IL-4 levels in patients treated with immune-chemotherapy was associated with a better overall survival. Conclusions. The addition of ipilimumab to standard chemotherapy in SCLC modulates the serum levels of cytokines. Baseline levels and their change over time relate to overall survival. Blood-based biomarkers are convenient for patients, and our results support prospective validation of cytokines as predictive biomarkers for ipilimumab in SCLC.

This article investigates the use of right-dislocation in Catalan and Spanish. We have measured the productivity of right-dislocation in a corpus of an original Catalan text and its Spanish translation regarding four variables: category, grammatical function, discourse function, and distance with respect to the antecedent. The analysis shows that right-dislocation is a marginal phenomenon in Spanish, not only from a quantitative (10 occurrences vs. 232 occurrences in the Catalan text), but from a qualitative point of view: right-dislocation in Catalan affects all the categories, grammatical functions, discourse functions, and distances with respect to the antecedent, whereas in Spanish it is restricted to nominals (SD and DEM) and sentences (SC), to subject and object functions, mainly to a the (re)introduction of a topic in the discourse, and to extreme distances (1 and 4). So then, in order to fulfill the tasks covered by right-dislocation in Catalan, Spanish must resort to other mechanisms — the placement of the dislocate in situ, its omission, or left-dislocation—, which suggests that the difference between these languages has to do with the different discourse management of the same collection of syntactic resources.

En este trabajo se desarrolla y estima un modelo de ecuaciones simultáneas que explica la criminalidad en Chile por regiones en el periodo 1988-2000 para varias categorías de delitos. El modelo desarrollado innova al abordar diversos problemas de endogeneidad presentes en la determinación del crimen. Los resultados obtenidos indican que: i) los diversos tipos de delitos analizados tienen determinantes socioeconómicos heterogéneos; ii) las fuentes y oportunidades de ingreso legal e ilegal, incluido el desempleo, afectan la comisión de varios delitos; iii) existe una doble causalidad separable entre la eficiencia policial y la criminalidad, congruente con la hipótesis de congestión del esfuerzo policial; iv) aumentos en la dotación policial presentan dos efectos contrapuestos en la tasa de criminalidad, por medio de la disuasión de crimen y la mayor propensión a denunciar delitos por parte de los afectados, y v) la asignación local de recursos policiales es endógena a la criminalidad observada en periodos previos. Estos resultados sugieren que el adecuado estudio de los determinantes de la criminalidad y la elaboración de políticas públicas para combatirla requieren forzosamente un enfoque que permita abordar y separar los diversos y complejos efectos que forman parte en la determinación del crimen, como los examinados en este trabajo.

S’ha destacat en la bibliografia que les oracions interrogatives del castellà i del català es comporten de manera ben diferent respecte a la inversió subjecte-verb: mentre aquelles permeten la inversió VS ‘clàssica’ i, en especial, l’ordre VSO, aquestes recorren sistemàticament a la dislocació a la dreta en tots els casos (V(O)#S). En aquest article revisem aquesta observació a partir d’un estudi de corpus i afegim a la descripció els trets prosòdics i pragmàtics de les interrogatives. Mostrem que les interrogatives del català afavoreixen la dislocació a la dreta, en clar contrast amb el castellà, que prefereix la realizació in situ del material del rerefons. Aquesta última opció té conseqüències importants per als contorns prosòdics de les interrogatives castellanes, que marquen els constituents focals finals amb un to ascendent i el material del rerefons amb una lleugera caiguda.

In this paper the behavior of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish is studied regarding the presence of an eventuality reading. It is shown that whereas abstract nominalizations (la belleza del libro ‘the beauty of the book’) clearly encode an eventuality according to standard tests, neuter nominalizations (lo bello del libro ‘the beautiful part of the book’) lack any eventuality reading altogether. It is argued that the difference lies in the different kind of nominalization process involved. As for abstract nominalizations, after the nominalizer is merged, the nominal functional head Classifier will encode the stative eventuality derived from the adjective root. In the case of neuter nominalizations, we lack any nominal functional structure, but rather the AP is directly selected by the neuter determiner, which, following a suggestion by McNally & de Swart (2012), is the syntactic realization of Chierchia’s (1982) Ç (‘cap’) operator, which shifts a property into its entity correlate. Moreover, a slight modification of this semantic operation allows a simple and principled analysis of the difference between the two main neuter deadjectival nominalizations.

The HISPACAT database of syntactic constructions in Catalan and Spanish is a dynamic comparative grammar of two closely related languages, which, from a theoretical point of view, offers us a alternative viewpoint to advance in our understanding of the ``atoms'' of linguistic microvariation, and to offer a snapshot of microparametric (in)variance, which will help us to predict less stable parts of the grammar, and hence more sensitive to syntactic change or interference phenomena. Moreover, this tool, which is conceived as a major empirical source for testing syntactic microvariation, may also prove helpful for researchers in bilingualism and language contact studies, and for teachers and students of Catalan or Spanish as L2.

In this paper a snapshot is offered of the state of the art in the research on exclamatives, reviewing our current understanding of “classic’’ issues, like factivity, high degree, or the relationship between exclamatives and interrogatives, and highlighting new theoretical and empirical challenges, such as the contribution of exclamative sentences to a dynamic model of discourse or the placement of exclamative phrases in the left-periphery.

The goal of this article is to show that, unlike recent analyses of the qualitative binominal NP construction (QBNP) that idiot of a doctor/el idiota del médico, Spanish QBNPs require an analysis with the following features: (i) the definite article preceding the subject nominal is a fully-fledged determiner, (ii) the predicate-subject final word order is the consequence of predicate focus fronting, (iii) the subject receives background interpretation, and (iv) as a consequence of its interpretation as background, the subject of the construction must be specific, which explains the apparently syntactic restrictions on the size of the nominals occurring in this position. This proposal is shown to extend straightforwardly to a kindred Spanish nominalizing construction, yielding a better understanding of the role of focus in DP structure.