Disjuncts

This review shows a close biogeographic connection between eastern Asia and western North America from the late Cretaceous to the late Neogene in major lineages of vascular plants (flowering plants, gymnosperms, ferns and lycophytes). Of the eastern Asian–North American disjuncts, conifers exhibit a high proportion of disjuncts
between eastern Asia and western North America. Several lineages of ferns also show a recent disjunct pattern in the two areas. In flowering plants, the pattern is commonly shown in temperate elements between northeastern Asia and northwestern North America, as well as elements of the relict boreotropical and Neogene mesophytic and coniferous floras. The many cases of intercontinental biogeographic disjunctions between eastern Asia and western North America in plants supported by recent phylogenetic analyses highlight the importance of the Bering land
bridge and/or the plant migrations across the Beringian region from the late Cretaceous to the late Neogene, especially during the Miocene. The Beringian region has permitted the filtering and migration of certain plant taxa since the Pliocene after the opening of the Bering Strait, as many conspecific taxa or closely related species occur on both sides of Beringia.

The usage of modifiers – defined here in a broad sense, as adverbial and adjectival categories that modify other discourse units (verb, adjective, adverb, noun, sentence) – is tightly connected to " cultural " aspects, such as descriptive norms (or " usage-based norms "), prescriptive norms (related to the ways modifiers ought to be used; for instance, in the standard varieties of Spanish,-mente-derived adverbs are often considered more appropriate then adverbialized adjective: so, Sp. ir directamente 'to go directly' is used instead of ir directo 'to go direct') and ideal norms (related to style). On these grounds, specific cultural preferences in the use of modifiers have developed over time and in different geographic locations, both within the Spanish-speaking world and in the broader context including all the Romance speaking-areas. Specifically, while in Europe Spanish-mente-derived adverbs are generally considered to belong to the standard varieties, in America these forms have kept the connotation they had in the Europe of the Siglo de Oro, and henceforth are still considered to belong to prestige language varieties (Arjona Iglesias 1991). On the other hand, adverbialized adjectives are used – at least in oral communication – as the default expressions in America, while the same forms are considered to belong to substandard language varieties in Europe. In light of these observations, the goal of the section is to uncover the cultural aspects explaining the use, form and function of modifiers in Spanish language varieties and in Spanish in a contrastive perspective with other Romance languages. To this end, comparative and contrastive studies represent a particularly well-suited method. The section welcomes contributions dealing with one or more of the following lines of research:  a comparison of modifiers in different text types and genres  a comparison of modifiers in different language varieties and registers: written vs oral, formal vs informal, from speakers/writers having different educational backgrounds etc.  the usage of idiosyncratic forms of modifiers (e.g., Spanish adverbials with prepositions: a secas, a la ligera, a las buenas, a ciegas, de fijo, a la fija)  teaching the use of modifiers at school (at different educational levels), in particular by paying attention to the prescriptive norms attached to them