Gorka Elordieta

Pilar Prieto

Based on the Workshop on Prosody and Meaning in Barcelona on September 17-18, 2009, this volume brings together researchers working on issues of the prosodic encoding and expression of sentence-level meaning. The contributions to the book result from a vivid exchange of research ideas and research methodologies on issues related to the relationship between prosody and meaning and from stimulating discussions and collaborative work between researchers coming from different perspectives.

Prosody and Meaning

The ability to exploit the potential of wild relatives carrying beneficial traits is a major goal in breeding programs. However, it relies on the possibility of the chromosomes from the crop and wild species in interspecific crosses to recognize, associate, and undergo crossover formation during meiosis, the cellular process responsible for producing gametes with half the genetic content of their parent cells. Unfortunately, in most cases, a barrier exists preventing successful hybridization between the wild and crop chromosomes. Understanding the mechanisms controlling chromosome associations during meiosis are of great interest in plant breeding and will allow chromosome manipulation to introduce genetic variability from related species into a crop. In addition to interspecific hybrids, other materials, such as natural and synthetic polyploids and introgression lines derived from allopolyploids, among others, are powerful tools in the framework of plant breeding. For example, an extra pair of alien chromosomes in the full genome complement of a crop species has been frequently used as a first step to access genetic variation from the secondary gene pool in breeding programs. In addition, such introgression lines are also pivotal in the study of interspecific genetic interactions, in the chromosomal location of genetic markers, and in the study of chromosome structure and behavior in somatic and meiotic cells. Contained in this Special Issue are accounts of original research, including new tools to identify chromosome introgressions and the development and characterization of introgression lines and interspecific hybrids carrying desirable agronomic traits for plant breeding purposes. Also included are reviews about the chromosome engineering of tropical cash crops and the effect of chromosome structure on chromosome associations and recombination during meiosis to allow chromosome manipulation in the framework of plant breeding.

Chromosome Manipulation for Plant Breeding Purposes

Maria-Josep Solé

Pilar Prieto i Vives

Joan Mascaró

This volume is a collection of cutting-edge research papers written by well-known researchers in the field of Romance phonetics and phonology. An important goal of this book is to bridge the gap between traditional Romance linguistics  with its long and rich tradition in data collection, cross-language comparison, and phonetic variation  and laboratory phonology work. The book is organized around three main themes: segmental processes, prosody, and the acquisition of segments and prosody. The various articles provide new empirical data on production, perception, sound change, first and second language learning, rhythm and intonation, presenting a state-of-the-art overview of research in laboratory phonology centred on Romance languages. The Romance data are used to test the predictions of a number of theoretical frameworks such as gestural phonology, exemplar models, generative phonology and optimality theory. The book will constitute a useful companion volume for phoneticians, phonologists and researchers investigating sound structure in Romance languages, and will serve to generate further interest in laboratory phonology.

Segmental and Prosodic Issues in Romance Phonology

Sónia Frota

Located at the intersection of phonology, psycholinguistics and phonetics, this volume offers the latest research findings in key areas of prosodic theory, including: •The relationship between intonation and pragmatics in speech production •Sentence modality prosody characterization •The role of pitch in quantity-based sound systems •Consonant-conditioned tone depression phonology across languages •The encoding of intonational contrasts in both intonational and tonal languages Featuring new data and ground-breaking results, the papers draw on empirical approaches that analyze production, perception and comprehension experiments such as the prepared speech paradigm and semantic scaling tasks. These are discussed in a variety of languages, some underrepresented in the literature (such as French and Estonian) while others, such as Shekgalagari, are examined in this way for the first time. This collection of cutting-edge material will be of interest to a broad range of language researchers.

Pilar Prieto

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