Browsing by Author "Ma, Ling"

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    Multidecadal, continent-level analysis indicates agricultural practices impact wheat aphid loads more than climate change
    (Springer Nature, 2022) Sun, Xiao; Sun, Yumei; Ma, Ling; Liu, Zhen; Wang, Qiyun; Wang, Dingli; Zhang, Chujun; Yu, Hongwei; Xu, Ming; Ding, Jianqing; Siemann, Evan
    Temperature has a large influence on insect abundances, thus under climate change, identifying major drivers affecting pest insect populations is critical to world food security and agricultural ecosystem health. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis with data obtained from 120 studies across China and Europe from 1970 to 2017 to reveal how climate and agricultural practices affect populations of wheat aphids. Here we showed that aphid loads on wheat had distinct patterns between these two regions, with a significant increase in China but a decrease in Europe over this time period. Although temperature increased over this period in both regions, we found no evidence showing climate warming affected aphid loads. Rather, differences in pesticide use, fertilization, land use, and natural enemies between China and Europe may be key factors accounting for differences in aphid pest populations. These long-term data suggest that agricultural practices impact wheat aphid loads more than climate warming.
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    Palatalization in Mandarin Loanwords: An Optimality-Theoretic Approach
    (2014-12-01) Ma, Ling; Niedzielski, Nancy; Englebretson, Robert; Achard, Michel
    This study conducts an Optimality-Theoretic analysis on palatalization phenomenon in Mandarin loanwords borrowed from American English based on transliterated American state and city names. Because of the differences between Mandarin and American English in sound inventories and syllable structures, words introduced to Mandarin from American English may need to undergo some feature change. The present study focuses on the palatalization phenomenon of velar consonants, and the constraint-based theoretical framework provides an explanation. The constraints and their ranking accounting in this study are: 1) *COMPLEX, *VELAR-V(+front), MAX, IDENT(dorsal) >> IDENT(place), 2) *[PALATALIZATION-V(+low, +front)-n]SYLL, DEP >> *VELAR-V(+front) >> IDENT(place). However, some other factors besides phonological ones, such as character choosing, and translation conventions, may lead to some counterexamples, and thus may need to be further studied.