It is wellknown that young children may omit referential subjects regardless of whether they are acquiring a pro-drop language such as Italian or a non-pro-drop language such as English. The classic proposal of Hyams (1986) according to which these early null subjects instantiate pro in both types of languages has recently come under attack from various sides. Bloom (1990, 1993) and Valian (1991) argue that missing subjects in early child English are a non-syntactic performance phenomenon that is due to a production bottleneck which severely limits the utterance length of young children, a view which they support with an inverse correlation between subject-length (i.e. full NP, pronoun, null) and VP-length. Rizzi (1994a,b) and Hyams (1994) maintain that empty subjects in early child English are a syntactic phenomenon but relate them to adult English Diary Drop and German-style Topic Drop instead of Italian-style pro-drop. In particular, they argue that like adult Diary /Topic Drop and unlike adult pro-drop, these missing subjects in early child language are restricted to the first position of non-Wh root clauses. In this paper 1 , we present new evidence from Adam (CHILDES, Brown 1973 and MacWhinney in press) that suggests that not all missing subjects in early child English can be reduced to performance limitations or Diary/Topic Drop. Between age 2;3 and age 2;11 (files 1-18), Adam produces numerous Wh-questions without an overt subject (e.g. "Where go?") and the VP-length of these examples is not greater than the VP-length in Whquestions with an overt subject pronoun. Adam's data moreover display a clear-cut distinction between finite (i.e. agreeing) and non-finite (i.e. non-agreeing) Wh-questions. Whereas the number of empty subjects in finite Wh-questions is negligible, there are almost 1 Portions of this paper where presented at the Workshop on the L1-and L2-Acquisition of Clause-Internal Rules at the University of Berne, the Conference on Generative Studies of the Acquisition of Case and Agreement at Essex University, at the Language Acquisition Group at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at the Computational Linguistics Feedback Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. We thank those audiences, Hagit Borer, Peggy Speas, Anne Vainikka, Ken Wexler and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and criticism. Naturally, all errors are ours. One of us (Rohrbacher) was supported by NSF grant SBR-8920230.

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Background: After acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) or transient ischaemic attack (TIA), the detection of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) as a marker of generalized atherosclerosis may improve the risk stratification and prevention of future atherothrombotic events. We aimed to determine the prevalence of PAD indicated by an ankle-brachial index (ABI) of ≤0.9 in a large cohort of patients with AIS/TIA. Methods: In this prospective, multicentre, Austrian, cross-sectional study (OECROSS), 759 patients with AIS or TIA were recruited for a systematic assessment of cardiovascular risk profiles and Doppler ultrasound at the ankle and brachial artery to calculate the ABI from systolic blood pressure readings. Results: 739 patients (97.4%) had a complete ABI assessment. The mean age was 69.5 (± 12.1) years, and 55.8% of the patients were men. 81.6% of the patients had AIS and 18.4% had TIA. Only 6.2% of the patients had a history of PAD, but an abnormal ABI of ≤0.9 was found in 44.9%. Patients with an ABI of ≤0.9 were more likely (p < 0.05) to be older and have a history of PAD, hypertension, diabetes and congestive heart failure. An ABI of ≤0.9 was significantly associated (p < 0.0005) with a presence of carotid stenosis of >50% and an Essen Stroke Risk Score of >2, indicating a risk of ≧4% per year of stroke recurrence. Discussion: A high proportion of patients with AIS/TIA have subclinical PAD, a cross-risk stroke physicians should be aware of. Large longitudinal studies are needed to elucidate whether the ABI can improve our estimation of the risk of future atherothrombotic events and help in optimizing secondary prevention.

The aim of this paper is to determine whether there is an equivalent Root Infinitive stage for children acquiring a language which does not have an infinitive construction, namely Modern Greek. We find that in the typical Root Infinitive contexts Greek children use a verb form involving the suffix -i, which corresponds to the 3rd person singular suffix, as well as to a participial form. We argue that the data are best explained by treating the -iform as the participle, thus suggesting that the putative congener of the Root Infinitive need not be an infinitive. Under Rizzi's (1994) approach, we would in fact expect various non-finite verb forms to be attested in the main clauses of the youngest speakers of various languages.

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