Asia Institute - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 89
-
ItemGrammar notes on Siraya, an extinct Formosan language(University of Hawaii Press, 1997-12-01)This is an attempt to unravel the grammar of a gospel text in Siraya, an extinct West Formosan language. It includes a discussion of the historical setting, the spelling, phonological features, function words, relation markers, morphosyntax of the verb, and the use of deictic verbs as prepositions. Regarding verbal morphosyntax, special attention is given to case marking suffixes, verbal classifiers, compound verbs, and anticipating sequences. Verbal classifiers are lexical elements prefixed to a root (a verb, adverb, or noun) with which they constitute the overall meaning of the resulting verb (mattäy- ‘talking, saying’ + vli ‘reciprocating, doing in return’ mattäy-vli ‘to answer’; mattäy- + rĭx ‘mind’ mattäy- rĭx ‘talk to oneself’). Compound verb constructions are constructions in which auxiliaries assume the functions of adverbs in English. These auxiliaries form an open class and are in fact the head of the verb phrase, as they carry most of the marking. An anticipating sequence is an element of a verb that is prefixed to the preceding auxiliary.
-
ItemSiraya reduplication (West Formosa, roots, lexical properties of wordbases, disyllabic reduplication)(University of Hawaii Press, 2000-06-01)The main patterns of reduplication in Siraya (West Formosa) include monosyllabic root reduplication, an inherent lexical property of certain wordbases, and disyllabic reduplication, which adds the notion of diffuseness (including plurality, variety, similarity) to nominal wordbases, and the notion of diffusenes (repetition of action, plurality of actants) or continuity (including state, process) to verbal wordbases. The same meanings are conveyed by rightward reduplication, which applies when the last three or four segments of a root are copied at the end (losing the final consonant if there is one). First-syllable reduplication basically forms cardinal numbers with nonhuman referents. Ca- reduplication is part of verbal morphosyntax indicating progressive aspect, generic aspect, or a state, but it also forms deverbal nouns; it is, moreover, used with ordinal numerals, and with cardinal numerals and other count words having a human referent. Contrary to the general pattern found in other Austronesian languages (Blust 1998), the meaning of Siraya nouns derived through Ca- reduplication is not restricted to that of instrument but also includes that of agent, abstract noun, undergoer, and (in combination with the suffix -an) location. Finally, pa- reduplication is a morphosyntactic device forming causative verbs.
-
ItemThe Fragmented Self: Cross-cultural Difference, Conflict and the Lessons of Ethnographic Experience(Frobenius Institute, 2006)
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableACE1 polymorphism and progression of SARS.(Elsevier BV, 2004-10-22)We have hypothesized that genetic predisposition influences the progression of SARS. Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE1) insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism was previously reported to show association with the adult respiratory distress syndrome, which is also thought to play a key role in damaging the lung tissues in SARS cases. This time, the polymorphism was genotyped in 44 Vietnamese SARS cases, with 103 healthy controls who had had a contact with the SARS patients and 50 controls without any contact history. SARS cases were divided into either non-hypoxemic or hypoxemic groups. Despite the small sample size, the frequency of the D allele was significantly higher in the hypoxemic group than in the non-hypoxemic group (p=0.013), whereas there was no significant difference between the SARS cases and controls, irrespective of a contact history. ACE1 might be one of the candidate genes that influence the progression of pneumonia in SARS.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailablePolymorphisms of human leucocyte antigen genes in Maonan people in China.(Wiley, 2007-02)We examined human leucocyte antigen (HLA) gene polymorphisms in the Maonan people from southern China. HLA-A, -B and -DRB1 alleles were determined in 108 healthy unrelated Maonan individuals by the polymerase chain reaction-Luminex method, and haplotype frequencies for HLA-A, -B and -DRB1 loci were estimated. The most frequent HLA-A alleles were A*1101 (35.2%), A*0203 (17.6%), A*0207 (13.4%) and A*2402 (13.4%); HLA-B alleles were B*1301(19.9%), B*1502 (14.8%), B*4601 (13.4%) and B*4001 (13.4%); HLA-DRB1 alleles were DRB1*1202 (17.1%), DRB1*1602 (13.0%) and DRB1*1401 (10.7%). The most common haplotypes were A*0207-B*4601 (10.6%), A*1101-B*1301 (10.0%), A*1101-B*4001 (8.4%), B*1502-DRB1*1202 (12.0%), B*4601-DRB1*1401 (5.8%), A*1101-B*1502-DRB1*1202 (7.1%) and A*0207-B*4601-DRB1*1401 (5.3%), profiles that are also found in populations from the southern region of East Asia. Phylogenetic and principal component analyses revealed that the Maonan people belong to the southeastern Asian group and are most closely related to the Buyi people.
-
ItemRole of STAT4 polymorphisms in systemic lupus erythematosus in a Japanese population: a case-control association study of the STAT1-STAT4 region.(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2008)INTRODUCTION: Recent studies identified STAT4 (signal transducers and activators of transcription-4) as a susceptibility gene for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). STAT1 is encoded adjacently to STAT4 on 2q32.2-q32.3, upregulated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from SLE patients, and functionally relevant to SLE. This study was conducted to test whether STAT4 is associated with SLE in a Japanese population also, to identify the risk haplotype, and to examine the potential genetic contribution of STAT1. To accomplish these aims, we carried out a comprehensive association analysis of 52 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) encompassing the STAT1-STAT4 region. METHODS: In the first screening, 52 tag SNPs were selected based on HapMap Phase II JPT (Japanese in Tokyo, Japan) data, and case-control association analysis was carried out on 105 Japanese female patients with SLE and 102 female controls. For associated SNPs, additional cases and controls were genotyped and association was analyzed using 308 SLE patients and 306 controls. Estimation of haplotype frequencies and an association study using the permutation test were performed with Haploview version 4.0 software. Population attributable risk percentage was estimated to compare the epidemiological significance of the risk genotype among populations. RESULTS: In the first screening, rs7574865, rs11889341, and rs10168266 in STAT4 were most significantly associated (P < 0.01). Significant association was not observed for STAT1. Subsequent association studies of the three SNPs using 308 SLE patients and 306 controls confirmed a strong association of the rs7574865T allele (SLE patients: 46.3%, controls: 33.5%, P = 4.9 x 10(-6), odds ratio 1.71) as well as TTT haplotype (rs10168266/rs11889341/rs7574865) (P = 1.5 x 10(-6)). The association was stronger in subgroups of SLE with nephritis and anti-double-stranded DNA antibodies. Population attributable risk percentage was estimated to be higher in the Japanese population (40.2%) than in Americans of European descent (19.5%). CONCLUSIONS: The same STAT4 risk allele is associated with SLE in Caucasian and Japanese populations. Evidence for a role of STAT1 in genetic susceptibility to SLE was not detected. The contribution of STAT4 for the genetic background of SLE may be greater in the Japanese population than in Americans of European descent.
-
ItemA practical genome scan for population-specific strong selective sweeps that have reached fixation.(Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2007-03-14)Phenotypic divergences between modern human populations have developed as a result of genetic adaptation to local environments over the past 100,000 years. To identify genes involved in population-specific phenotypes, it is necessary to detect signatures of recent positive selection in the human genome. Although detection of elongated linkage disequilibrium (LD) has been a powerful tool in the field of evolutionary genetics, current LD-based approaches are not applicable to already fixed loci. Here, we report a method of scanning for population-specific strong selective sweeps that have reached fixation. In this method, genome-wide SNP data is used to analyze differences in the haplotype frequency, nucleotide diversity, and LD between populations, using the ratio of haplotype homozygosity between populations. To estimate the detection power of the statistics used in this study, we performed computer simulations and found that these tests are relatively robust against the density of typed SNPs and demographic parameters if the advantageous allele has reached fixation. Therefore, we could determine the threshold for maintaining high detection power, regardless of SNP density and demographic history. When this method was applied to the HapMap data, it was able to identify the candidates of population-specific strong selective sweeps more efficiently than the outlier approach that depends on the empirical distribution. This study, confirming strong positive selection on genes previously reported to be associated with specific phenotypes, also identifies other candidates that are likely to contribute to phenotypic differences between human populations.
-
ItemPacific: Japan, Australia, New Zealand(Harvard University Press, 2007)
-
ItemRewriting Trauma ― The 228 Incident and Li Ang’s “Rouged Sacrifice”(Chinese Literary Society, 2008-03)
-
ItemTaiwan’s 228 Incident and the Politics of Placing Blame(University of Alberta, 2008)