From mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA Fri Apr 4 01:39:25 1997 From: mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA (MARK DE VOS) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:39:25 PST Subject: Hi and a question Message-ID: Hi I'm new to the list but it seems like everyone's pretty quiet. I've been wondering about the etymology of the word "BYE" -egs: Goodbye...bye-bye etc My dictionaries (may they live forever) can't tell me where the word originated other than that it is colloquial, which is really rather vague. Any ideas out there? I've wondered it the word isn't a borrowing from Hindi or a dialect of it. I'm still trying to find samples, but I'm sure that I've heard it somewhere before.... mark South Africa ........................................................ This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontide! Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra From dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA Fri Apr 4 19:22:11 1997 From: dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA (DGR) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 19:22:11 +2HRS Subject: Hi and a question Message-ID: Mark wrote: > Hi > > I'm new to the list but it seems like everyone's pretty quiet. > > I've been wondering about the etymology of the word "BYE" > -egs: Goodbye...bye-bye etc > > My dictionaries (may they live forever) can't tell me where the word > originated other than that it is colloquial, which is really rather vague. > Any ideas out there? > > I've wondered it the word isn't a borrowing from Hindi or a dialect of it. > I'm still trying to find samples, but I'm sure that I've heard it > somewhere before.... > Bye is short for goodbye which seems to orginate from the phrase "God be with you". The adj "good" was substituted for "God" by analogy with good morning, good afternoon etc. I am also new on this list and yours is the first message I have received. Regards David Gerard From colinh at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Fri Apr 4 20:00:24 1997 From: colinh at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Colin Harrison) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:00:24 -0700 Subject: Hi and a question Message-ID: >Hi > >I'm new to the list but it seems like everyone's pretty quiet. > >I've been wondering about the etymology of the word "BYE" >-egs: Goodbye...bye-bye etc > >My dictionaries (may they live forever) can't tell me where the word >originated other than that it is colloquial, which is really rather vague. >Any ideas out there? > >I've wondered it the word isn't a borrowing from Hindi or a dialect of it. >I'm still trying to find samples, but I'm sure that I've heard it >somewhere before.... > >mark >South Africa I don't know if this is attested, but I have heard that "bye" is a contraction of "goodbye" (probably due to the persistent analysability of the "good"; and that "goodbye" is itself a contraction of "God be with ye!" At least it's a nice story! Colin Harrison Rice University From shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU Fri Apr 4 22:40:28 1997 From: shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU (Michele Feist) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:40:28 -0600 Subject: Sapir-Whorf summary Message-ID: Greetings. A few weeks ago, I posted the query to these lists: I'm a graduate student at Northwestern University doing work in psycholinguistics. I would like to find out about the current status of the Sapir-Whorf 'hypothesis'. Specifically, what has been done recently in connection with this idea ('Neo-Whorfianism'), and what is the status of that research? I'm sorry to have taken so long on the summary - as you'll see, my query generated quite a few responses. Many thanks to all those who responded: Tom Givon TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Alan C.L. Yu charon at uclink4.berkeley.edu David Kronenfeld KFELD at ucrac1.ucr.edu Phyllis Wilcox pwilcox at unm.edu Morton Ann Gernsbacher MAGernsb at facstaff.wisc.edu Herb Stahlke hstahlke at wp.bsu.edu Richard Scherl scherl at homer.njit.edu Bill Turkel bill at hivnet.ubc.ca Dan I. SLOBIN slobin at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Paul Peranteau paul at benjamins.com Irene Pepperberg imp at biosci.arizona.edu Douglas S. Oliver DOUGLASO at ucrac1.ucr.edu Catherine Harris charris at bu.edu Lawrence W. Barsalou L-Barsalou at uchicago.edu George Lakoff lakoff at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Jeri L. Moxley jmoxley at garnet.berkeley.edu Art Glenberg glenberg at facstaff.wisc.edu Don Peterkin dpeterkin at ucsd.edu Maria D. Sera Maria.D.Sera-1 at tc.umn.edu Jiansheng Guo Jiansheng.Guo at vuw.ac.nz Paul R. Hays hays at lit.sugiyama-u.ac.jp Gary B. Palmer gbp at nevada.edu H Stephen Straight sstraigh at binghamton.edu Michael Hall s_mjhall at eduserv.its.unimelb.EDU.AU Matthias Huening matthias.huenin at univie.ac.at Carsten Hansen carhan at coco.ihi.ku.dk Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen eep at cphling.dk Joseph Hilferty hilferty at lingua.fil.ub.es Steen Wackerhausen FILSW at hum.aau.dk Dick Hudson dick at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk Michelina Bonanno bonannom at gusun.acc.georgetown.edu Jane A. Edwards edwards at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Caitlin Hines chines at autobahn.org Patricia Kilroe kilroe at csd.uwm.edu John Lucy John.Lucy at mpi.nl Christopher Sinha psykcgs at aau.dk In addition to the references that I list below, I received the following suggestions: Consult work by Dan Slobin, Eric Pederson, Stephen Levinson, Suzette Elgin, and Melissa Bowerman, in addition to Piaget's work on child language development and work on Systemic Functional Linguistics, which was founded by Michael Halliday. The first Bohmian Science Dialogue Between Indigenous and Western Scientists involved Native American (academic and traditional) leaders and selected physicists, linguists, psychologists and others -- all of whom took Benjamin Whorf seriously. For a transcript, write to Carol Hegedus, Fetzer Institute, 9292 West KL Ave, Kalamazoo MI 49009. Caitlin Hines is chairing a panel on Whorf in Amsterdam this summer. There has been discussion of Whorf on the Linguist List, which can be accessed at http://linguistlist.org/; there will also be a 'topic page' on this subject at the Linguist-site soon: http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/topics/sapir-whorf/ Finally, I was given the following references (I have lots of reading ahead of me now!): Alford, Dan Moonhawk, "Stealing the Fire, A Linguistic Overview of This Century's Advances in Physics", given AAA/SAC March 25, 1996. Alford, Dan Moonhawk. "The Demise of Whorf Hypothesis". Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Feb. 1978: 485-499. Alford, Dan Moonhawk, "Is Whorf's Relativity Einstein's Relativity?", Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society Feb. 1981, 13-26. Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay. Basic Color Terms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991[1969]. Black, Max. Models and Metaphor. New York: Cornell University Press, 1962. Black, Max. "Some Troubles with Whorfianism" in Language and Philosophy. Ed. Sidney Hook. New York: New York University Press, 1969: 30-35. Bloom, Alfred H. The linguistic shaping of thought: A study in the impact of language on thinking in China and the west. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981. Brown, C. H. "Folk Zoological Life-forms: Their Universality and Growth." American Anthropologist 81 (1979): 791-817. Brown, C.H. "Folk Botanical Life-forms: Their Universality and Growth" American Anthropologist 79 (1977): 317-342. Brown, Roger. Words and Things. Glencoe: Free Press, 1958. Brown, R. and E. H. Lenneberg. "A Study in Language and Cognition." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49 (1954): 454-462. Carroll, John B. & Joseph B. Casagrande. "The function of language classifications in behavior", in E.E. Maccoby, T.M. Newcomb, & E.L.Hartley, eds., Readings in social psychology, 3rd edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 18-31, 1958. Casell, Eric J. 1976. Dease as an "it": concepts of dease revealed by patients' presentation of symptoms. Society Science and Medicine, 10, 143-146. (Journal title may not be completely accurate) Chawla, Saroj, 1991. Linguistic and philosophical roots of our environmental crisis. Environmental Ethids, 13, 253-262. R.L.Cooper and B.Spolsky (eds) The influence of language on culture and thought: essays in honor of Joshua A.Fishman's 65th birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. Croft, William A. A noun is a noun is a noun - or is it? Some reflections on the universality of semantics. Berkely Linguistics Soeciety 19, 1993, 369-380. Culler, Jonathan. Saussure. London: Fontana Press, 1976. Davidson, Donald, 'On the very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' in Inquiries into Truth & Interpretation , Oxford University Press, 1984. Devitt, Michael & Kim Sterelny, Language and Reality, Blackwell, 1987. Ekkehardt Malotki , Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal concepts in the Hopi Language Mouton, 1983. Fasold, Ralph. The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984. Garro, Linda. 1986. Language, memory, and focality: A reexamination. _American Anthropologist_ 88:128-136. Guiora, Alexander Z., B. Beit-Hallahmi, R. Fried, & C. Yoder. "Language environment and gender identity attainment", in Language Learning, 32:2, 289-304, 1982. Gumperz, J. and Levinson, S. (eds.) (1996). Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayward, William G. and Michael J. Tarr. "Spatial Language and Spatial Representation." Cognition 55 (1995): 39-84. Hill, Jane H. and Bruce Mannheim: Language and World View in: Annual Review of Anthropology, 1992, 21:381-406. Hill, Jane H. 1988. "Language, culture, and world-view." In Frederick J. Newmeyer, ed., Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, Volume IV: Language: The socio-cultural context, pp. 14-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Language and Culture, ed. Harry Hoijer, University of Chicago, circa 1955. Sidney Hook (ed.), Language and Philosophy , New York University Press, 1971. Hunt, Earl and Franca Agnoli. (1991). "The Whorfian Hypothesis: A Cognitive Psychology Perspective." Psychological Review. 98 (3), 377-389. Hymes, Dell and John Fought. American Structuralism. The Hague: Mouton, 1981. Kay, Paul and Willett Kempton. "What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?", American Anthropologist 86:1, 65-79, 1984. Kempton, Willett. The Folk Classification of Ceramics: A Study of Cognitive Prototypes. New York: Academic Press, 1981. Kess, J. F. Psycholinguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1992. Khosroshahi, Fatemeh. "Penguins don't care, but women do: A social identity analysis of a Whorfian problem", Language in Society 18:4, 505-525, 1989. Kronenfeld, David B. 1969 (1970) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KINSHIP CATEGORIES AND BEHAVIOR AMONG THE FANTI. Ph. D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University. Ann Arbor, University Microfilms. Kronenfeld, David B. 1975 Kroeber vs. Radcliffe-Brown on Kinship Behavior: The Fanti Test Case. MAN 10:257-284. Kronenfeld, David B. 1973 Fanti Kinship: The Structure of Terminology and Behavior. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 75:1577-1595. Kronenfeld, David B. 1996 PLASTIC DRINKING GLASSES AND CHURCH FATHERS: SEMANTIC EXTENSION FROM THE ETHNOSCIENCE TRADITION. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics Series, Oxford University Press (New York). Kronenfeld, David B., James D. Armstrong and Stan Wilmoth. 1985 Exploring the Internal Structure of Linguistic Categories: An Extensionist Semantic View. In DIRECTIONS IN COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY, edited by Janet W.D. Dougherty. Urbana and Chicago: University. of Illinois Press. pp. 21-110. Kuki, Shuuzou. "Iki" no Kouzou (The Structure of "Iki"). Tokyo: Iwanami, 1979[1930]. Kuno, Susumu. The Structure of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1973. Lakoff, George. "Classifiers as a Reflection of Mind." Typological Studies in Language, Vol. 7, Noun Classes and Categorization. Ed. Craig, C. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1986, 13-51. Lakoff, George. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphor We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lee, Dorothy, Freedom and Culture. Lee, Dorothy, Valuing the Self. Lee, Penny "New work on the linguistic relativity question", in Historiographia Linguistica , 1994, 20,1. Lee, Penny "The Whorf theory complex: A critical reconstruction", John Benjamins Publishing Company. 1996. Leisi, Ernst. Der Wortinhalt: Seine Struktur im Deuttschen und Englischen. 1952. Levi-Strauss, Claude. The savage mind. Trans. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966[1962]. Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Linn, M. and Miller-Cleary, Linda, "Applied Linguistics for Teachers", 1994. Longacre, Robert E. "Review of Language and Reality, by Wilbur M. Urban and Four Articles on Metalinguistics, by Benjamin Lee Whorf." Language 32, (1956): 298-308. Lucy, J. A.: Language diversity and thought - A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Lucy, J. A.. Grammatical Categories and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Lucy, J. A. and Richard A. Shweder. "Whorf and His Critics: Linguistics and Nonlinguistic Influence on Color Memory." American Anthropologist 81 (1979): 581-615. Lucy, John and Richard Schweder. "The effect of incidental conversation on memory for focal colors", American Anthropologist 90, 923-931, 1988. Macnamara, John. "Linguistic Relativity Revisited." in The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought. Ed. Cooper, Robert L. and Bernard Spolsky. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. 45-60. Malmkjaer, Kirsten, The Linguistics Encyclopedia. Martin, Laura. 1986. "Eskimo Words for Snow: A case study in the genesis and decay of an antropological example. American Anthropologist, 88, 418-422. McNeil, N. B. "Color and color terminology." Journal of Linguistics 8 (1972), 21-33. McNeil, N.B. Psycholinguistics: A New Approach. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987. Meiland, Jack W. and Michael Krausz., eds. Relativism. University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. Newmeyer, Frederick J. The politics of linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Palmer, Gary. Toward a Theory of Culture Change (U.T. Press. 1996) Penn, Julia M. Linguistic Relativity versus Innate Ideas. The Hague: Mouton & Co, N. V., Publishers, 1972. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind creates Language, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1994. Rosch, Eleanor. "Linguistic relativity", in A. Silverstein, ed., Human communication: Theoretical explorations, Lawrence Erlbaum, 95-121, 1974. Rumsey, A. "Wording, Meaning, and Linguistic Ideology." American Anthropologist , 92 , (1990): 346-361. Sampson, Geoffrey. Schools of Linguistics. London: Hutchinson, 1980. (In particluar, Chapter 4) Sapir, E. Language. New York: Harcourt Brace, circa 1949. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course de linguistique generale. Trans. Kobayashi Hideo. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1940. Schlesinger, I. M. "The Wax and Wane of Whorfian Views." in The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought, Eds. Cooper, Robert L. and Bernard Spolsky. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. 7-44. Sera, Maria D. (1992). To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 408-427. Sera, Maria D., Bales, Diane W., and del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (in press). Ser helps Spanish speakers identify "real" properties. Child Development. Sera, Maria D., Berge, Christian A.H., and del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (1994). Grammatical and conceptual forces in the attribution of gender by English and Spanish speakers. Cognitive Development, 9, 261-292. Sera, Maria D., Reittinger, Eric L., and del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (1991). Developing definitions of objects and events in English and Spanish speakers. Cognitive Development, 6, 119-142. Shultz, Emily. Dialogue at the Margins: Whorf, Bakhtin, and Linguistic Relativity (UW press). 1990. Slobin, D. I. Psycholinguistics. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1971. Steinberg, Danny D. Psycholinguistics: Language, Mind and Word. New York: Longman, 1982. Tailor, John R. Linguistic Categorization. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1989. Taylor, Talbot J. Mutual Misunderstanding. London: Duke University Press, 1992. R.L. Trask. Language: The Basics. Routledge, 1995. Ullmann, Stephen. Semantics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. Vygotsky, "Thought and language" . Werner, Heinz and Bernard Kaplan. Symbol formation. Trans. Kakizaki et al. Tokyo: Minerva Shobo Ltd, 1974. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, Mind and Reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. J. B. Carroll. New York: MIT Press, 1956. Wierzbicka, Anna. Lingua Mentalis. New York: Academic press, 1980. -, CURRENT TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS, Vol. 13, Part 2 (1975) Thanks again to all who replied! Michele Feist m-feist at nwu.edu From l.stassen at LET.KUN.NL Fri Apr 4 23:25:01 1997 From: l.stassen at LET.KUN.NL (l.m.h. stassen) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 01:25:01 +0200 Subject: Call for judgements Message-ID: Hi, mind if I ask you a question? I need native English speakers for this. Suppose you heard the following story: "I never could figure out the programming instructions for my VCR. Luckily, I know Gerald, and a) he showed me how to do it b) he showed me how it's done " Would you discern a difference in 'meaning' (whatever that is; please be liberal) between a) and b)? Or, alternatively: could you imagine situations in which you would say a) but not b), or the other way around? And if so, could you expand a little on what that difference might be? (Note: the verb 'show' is not essential; if you wish, replace it by 'wrote' or 'told', etc.) It's probably better if you mail me privately. I'll post a summary if/when appropiate. Many thanks in adcvance, Leon. Leon Stassen Dept.of Linguistics (ATD), KU Nijmegen Erasmusplein 1 6525 GG Nijmegen fax : +31-24-3615939 The Netherlands e-mail: l.stassen at let.kun.nl From mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA Sat Apr 5 06:51:04 1997 From: mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA (MARK DE VOS) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:51:04 PST Subject: Hi, a question and me Message-ID: Hi again I'm wondering how I can hide my utter humiliation....yes, I'm the oke that dared to wonder if "bye" was a Hindi borrowing....*blush* My other claim to fame is that my question somehow made FUNKNET erupt. As it turns out no less than 13 people to date have told me that "bye" is the remnants of "God be with you". On this point, I'm going to go with the flow and disappear into welcome obscurity. The question remains: how did I come to link Hindi and BYE at all? I was reading...(folly of follies)...and the word "bai" kept popping up in a Hindi context. Thinking ohmygoshIjustcantbelieveit I made a (rather too obvious link) with English. As it turns out, "bai" more or less means "brother", or so I am informed. Now I'm off to write a thousand lines?: I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY CONCLUSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGES WHICH I DO NOT SPEAK, I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY CONCLUSIONS... bye all Mark-bai ........................................................ This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontide! Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra From simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Sat Apr 5 15:50:55 1997 From: simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU (Beth Simon) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 10:50:55 EST Subject: Hi, a question and me Message-ID: Dear Mark, It's bhai, not bai. A bai is a land sale--and (probably) is borrowed, i.e. a "buy". beth simon From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sat Apr 5 17:08:28 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:08:28 -0500 Subject: Hi, a question and me In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Now I'm off to write a thousand lines?: I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY > CONCLUSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGES WHICH I DO NOT SPEAK, > I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY CONCLUSIONS... Mark, Do not worry too much about this. Your line of penitence above sounds like the normal way of doing research for many authors. -- DLE From dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA Sat Apr 5 23:49:05 1997 From: dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA (DGR) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 23:49:05 +2HRS Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: Hi, I came across the following problem on another list. The poster asked whether it is possible to order something/ someone to exist as in the following phrase: "Be my love". In my opinion the form "be" in the above phrase is a subjunctive and expresses a wish rather than a command and not a command or imperative. The phrase is not structurally different from a command like "Be quiet" or "Be seated" What is the function of "be" in this phrase? Regards David Gerard. From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sat Apr 5 23:15:51 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:15:51 -0500 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: It sure sounds like a command to me. Definitely not a wish :) It is true that some languages do not allow sentences with BE to be coded as imperatives and must use some kind of desiderative phrase coded with some kind of irrealis/subjunctive verb form (eg Polish, I believe). But from a functional perspective these things are commands. What else could they be? Let us not confuse functional categories (such as 'command') with form-functional ones (such as 'imperative'). To the extent that the addressee can have volitional control over a state, commands with stative verbs are just fine. Under most circumstances, however, things like "be tall" sound odd, for exactly that reason. Me thinks. Jon ---------------------------------------- Jon Aske jaske at abacus.bates.edu http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/ -----Original Message----- From: DGR [SMTP:dgr at megaweb.co.za] Sent: Saturday, April 05, 1997 4:49 PM To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: Imperative/subjunctive. Hi, I came across the following problem on another list. The poster asked whether it is possible to order something/ someone to exist as in the following phrase: "Be my love". In my opinion the form "be" in the above phrase is a subjunctive and expresses a wish rather than a command and not a command or imperative. The phrase is not structurally different from a command like "Be quiet" or "Be seated" What is the function of "be" in this phrase? Regards David Gerard. From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sun Apr 6 02:57:49 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:57:49 -0800 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > Hi, > > I came across the following problem on another list. The poster asked > whether it is possible to order something/ someone to exist as in the > following phrase: > > "Be my love". > > In my opinion the form "be" in the above phrase is a subjunctive and > expresses a wish rather than a command and not a command or > imperative. The phrase is not structurally different > from a command like "Be quiet" or "Be seated" What is the > function of "be" in this phrase? > > Regards > > David Gerard. First, I don't think "Be my love" is commanding someone/something to "exist." It is a command for someone to take on a certain role. I see this as quite analogous to "be quiet" or "be seated." Second, there is an interesting "misuse" of "be" that I have heard, that makes sense at some level. Here is an example: "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." IOW, he just acts crazy. This is an actual example that went totally unnoticed by the non-linguists in the conversation. I think I've heard others like this. Anyone else? If it has the validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive. I'd be interested in other opinions on this. _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Sun Apr 6 05:14:38 1997 From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 00:14:38 -0500 Subject: bees Message-ID: Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like "act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular verb "be". Has this phenomenon been discussed in the literature at all? Matthew Dryer From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 6 05:24:54 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 08:24:54 +0300 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: Tom Payne wrote: > >Second, there is an interesting "misuse" of "be" that I have heard, that >makes sense at some level. Here is an example: > >"He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." > >IOW, he just acts crazy. This is an actual example that went totally >unnoticed by the non-linguists in the conversation. > >I think I've heard others like this. Anyone else? If it has the >validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might >be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive. > What you heard is a perfectly normal usage in Black English, where invariant BE is used with habitual meaning (`he just acts crazy'). The -s inflection here, at least in Black English, is a bit of a mystery--it doesn't indicate agreement, because this occurs just as easily with non-3rd person or plural subjects. Did the speaker stress the word `be(e)'? This is how I can imagine this being said. I personally think that the -s has some sort of emphatic function, but of course this is completely vague and an empirical study would be needed to confirm this. If the usage Tom heard was by someone who was not likely to speak Black English (e.g. a white person), I would guess that this is still likely to be directly or indirectly the influence of Black English--this is such a completely normal usage in Black English, in terms of both structure and meaning, that it's unlikely to be a complete coincidence. John Myhill From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sun Apr 6 19:08:51 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 12:08:51 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: Yes, I agree with Matthew. There is a distinct, regular verb "be" that has a slightly different meaning than the one we think of as the standard "be." I think the example "He just bees crazy . . . " and others indicates that it is more volitional than standard "be," and that it might have the connotation that the resulting state is "less actual" than analogous expressions with standard "be." I don't know where this might have been discussed in the literature either. _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU Mon Apr 7 00:58:19 1997 From: alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU (Alan Dench) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:58:19 +0800 Subject: Bees Message-ID: 'Bees' is a feature of my children's speech (6 ranging in age from 6 to 13) and does appear to me to be 'more volitional' - but I will keep listening. Eg. I don't like X, he always bees silly. We live in Western Australia and apart from occasional American television have had no exposure to BEV. I don't believe this can be put down to interference. Nor would I suggest it is a regular feature of Australian English. Mind you, we also have a regular transitive verb 'to verse' in the houshold ... as in "Joe versus the volcano", where this form shows 3sgS agreement. So we also regularly hear things like: I'm versing Michael in the next game! We versed the boys in Crash Bandicoot and really kicked! Who needs exotic field locations? Alan Dench Centre for Linguistics University of Western Australia From lenell at UCSU.COLORADO.EDU Mon Apr 7 04:08:07 1997 From: lenell at UCSU.COLORADO.EDU (LENELL ELIZABETH ANN) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 22:08:07 -0600 Subject: bees In-Reply-To: <3347F4C3.1708@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: AAVE "be" verbs pattern nicely with SAE. For a concise intro, and a specific reference to "bees", see Finegan 1994, pg 425. He claims it is an inflected variant used to indicate continuous, repeated, or habitual action. One unconnected AAVE usage I have collected is I beens gonna (do it). I beens wanting one bad. Presumably this is similar to SAE "have been", and may have been idiolect. Elizabeth Lenell Univerisity of Colorado-Boulder Graduate student From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Mon Apr 7 05:24:03 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:24:03 +0300 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: The particular example Tom mentioned is a completely normal usage in Black English--the form is typical, the habitual meaning is typical. For African Americans, such a usage is not only not unusual, it is the only way to say this (the -s inflection can come or go, regardless of the person/number of the subject, but the invariant BE is always there).Sociolinguists (e.g. Labov) have been talking about this a lot for the last 30 years. I don't know the personal background of the speaker Tom heard, but my first guess at least would be that this is either Black English or a borrowing from Black English. John Myhill From mbuijs at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Mon Apr 7 11:55:28 1997 From: mbuijs at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Michel Buijs) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:55:28 +0100 Subject: bees Message-ID: John Myhill wrote: >Did the speaker stress the word `be(e)'? This is how I can imagine this >being said. >I personally think that the -s has some sort of emphatic function, but of >course this is completely vague and an empirical study would be needed to >confirm this. If the speaker did actually stress the word 'be' in the sentence "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls" this can be accounted for by considering the fact that this is a case of replacing focus: Concerning topic 'he', not x but y is the case. The speaker replaces the wrong assumption he thinks his addressee has with the correct one. In this case, the wrong assumption is a general state of 'being cazy', which is replaced with a temporary/recurring/habitual one, as is precisely indicated by the temporal modifier 'when he's around girls'. The sentence structure 'not' ... 'just' confirms the replacing focus analysis. For the speaker, the proposition 'he is crazy' only holds true if the subordinated proposition holds true. The fact that the verbal constituent _bees_ is a focal element would sufficiently explain its being stressed (I have some doubts as to whether the -s has 'some sort of emphatic function'). And maybe the fact that the verbal constituent has focus function itself may have been a reason for adopting the irregular verb form...(?) Best, Michel |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Drs Michel Buijs Classics Department Leiden University P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands Phone: +31 (0)71 - 527 2774 Fax: +31 (0)71 - 527 2615 E-mail: mbuijs at rullet.leidenuniv.nl |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Mon Apr 7 11:50:52 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 07:50:52 -0400 Subject: FW: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: This was meant for the list. It's got a great example. Jon -----Original Message----- From: Rictus Hep [SMTP:rictus at best.com] Sent: Sunday, April 06, 1997 12:13 AM To: Jon Aske Subject: Re: Imperative/subjunctive. > To the extent that the addressee can have volitional control over a state, > commands with stative verbs are just fine. Under most circumstances, > however, things like "be tall" sound odd, for exactly that reason. Funny you should mention that particular phrase. My wife often says things like, "Be tall for me and get that vase off the top shelf, will you?" nj From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Apr 7 13:07:01 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 06:07:01 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: The regularized inflected "be" may also exist in AAVE, but this is not the source of the example I cited or the ones cited by Alan Dench. I believe there is something about the regular inflection of this verb, and perhaps others, that is particularly suited to the "volitional" connotation. Tell me, is it my imagination or does a clause like "he knowed the answer" sound more like something someone might *do to* an answer than a state the subject is in? (I don't like "speculative linguistics" either, but what the heck, there hasn't been much traffic on Funknet recently . . .) _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Apr 7 16:02:15 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 09:02:15 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: The regularized inflected "be" may also exist in AAVE, but this is not the source of the example I cited or the ones cited by Alan Dench. I believe there is something about the regular inflection of this verb, and perhaps others, that is particularly suited to the "volitional" connotation. Tell me, is it my imagination or does a clause like "he knowed the answer" sound more like something someone might *do to* an answer than a state the subject is in? (Or would such a reading be an extension from "he mowed the lawn"? I don't like "speculative linguistics" either, but what the heck, there hasn't been much traffic on Funknet recently. (. .) -- _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Mon Apr 7 17:23:43 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:23:43 CDT Subject: bees Message-ID: Michel Buijs wrote: > If the speaker did actually stress the word 'be' in the sentence > "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls" > this can be accounted for by considering the fact that this is a case of > replacing focus: Concerning topic 'he', not x but y is the case. > The speaker replaces the wrong assumption he thinks his addressee has with > the correct one. Alan Dench wrote: > 'Bees' is a feature of my children's speech (6 ranging in age > from 6 to 13) and does appear to me to be 'more volitional' - but I > will keep listening. Eg. > I don't like X, he always bees silly. I have heard this in children's speech here in the US, too. I was once told by a boy (in reference to another student) something like: "If he bees bad, you should punish him." This really got me to thinking, and I could certainly agree with him that: "If he is bad, you should punish him." doesn't mean the same thing. I think this is not a focus issue, but an active/stative verb distinction. In these cases, "be" is a synonym for "behave". The semantic difference between this and the stative verb "be" makes it clear to children that they've got a totally new verb on their hands, and lacking any evidence that they should do otherwise, they apply regular processes of grammatical morphology to this new "be". --Tony Wright From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Apr 7 18:03:29 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:03:29 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: Has anyone ever made lists of "regular" vs. "irregular" (or "strong") verbs in English and compared them for semantic features? Might it be the case that "regular" verbs (those that inflect with -s and -ed) tend to describe changes in state, whereas "irregular" verbs tend to describe states or activities? If so, this might explain why children, and other speakers I'm sure, have this tendency to regularize "be" to express a more "volitional" or "active" meaning. Do any other irregular verbs have a more volitional/active meaning when regularized? I'm really interested in this. dove/dived? sank/sinked? Is "They sinked the ship" somehow more logical than "The ship sinked"? _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Mon Apr 7 20:42:43 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:42:43 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: If you've only heard a form once from a speaker (or rarely, if you have a large corpus) you might just have heard a slip of the tongue. They tend overwhemingly to be regularizations of regulars... Lise Menn Lise Menn Professor and Chair Department of Linguistics University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0295 (303) 492-8042 - Chair's Office (303) 492-1609 - Faculty Office (303) 492-4416 - Fax E-MAIL: Lise.Menn at colorado.edu From griffith at KULA.USP.AC.FJ Mon Apr 7 21:18:47 1997 From: griffith at KULA.USP.AC.FJ (Patrick Griffiths) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:18:47 +1200 Subject: irregular verb list In-Reply-To: <334936F1.1CBE@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Tom Payne wrote: > Has anyone ever made lists of "regular" vs. "irregular" (or "strong") > verbs in English.... I don't know about the semantic side of the query (= .... in the quotation above), but Bernard Bloch did a very detailed allomorphic taxononmy of English verb classes in LANGUAGE, 1947, 23: 399-418 (reprinted in M Joos (ed) Readings in linguistics I, U Chicago Press, 1966, 243-254). The article is called "English verb inflection". Looking through Bloch's lists might offer an answer to the semantic question. Best wishes Patrick ======================================================================= Dr Patrick Griffiths Senior Lecturer in Linguistics Department of Literature & Language University of the South Pacific P O Box 1168 Suva Fiji Telephone: (+679) 212314 Fax: (+679) 305053 (must bear my name to be sure of reaching me) _______________________________________________________________________ The University of the South Pacific is the university of twelve island countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Western Samoa. The main campus is located in Suva, the capital of Fiji (on Vitilevu, the largest of Fiji's 300+ islands), but there are regional centres in all but one of the countries served. There are on-campus students as well as large numbers enrolled for distance learning. From apawley at COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU Mon Apr 7 23:37:43 1997 From: apawley at COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU (Andy Pawley) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:37:43 +1000 Subject: bees Message-ID: A propos of Tony Wright's remarks on acquiring English verb morphology: >I think this is not a focus issue, but an active/stative verb distinction. >In these cases, "be" is a synonym for "behave". The semantic difference >between this and the stative verb "be" makes it clear to children that >they've got a totally new verb on their hands, and lacking any evidence >that they should do otherwise, they apply regular processes of grammatical >morphology to this new "be".> -- As toddlers in Tasmania, according to my elders, my cousin Max and I were told: 'Now you two behave!" and I protested indignantly "We ARE being have [heyv]!". On the analogy of 'be good', 'be careful' etc., I had concluded there is a predicate adjective 'heyv' meaning something like 'behaving well'. Andy Pawley From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Tue Apr 8 00:05:16 1997 From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:05:16 -0400 Subject: bees Message-ID: I think neither Lise's suggestion regarding a slip of the tongue or John's suggestion re the influence of Black English are plausible. As I reported in my response to Tom's query a couple of days ago, I have heard the phenomenon sufficiently often, and only with volitional predicates (like "crazy" and "quiet"), and by Canadians with little or no exposure to Black English, and neither of these hypotheses would account for these observations. Matthew Dryer From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Apr 8 00:53:06 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:53:06 EDT Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: i'm a little stunned by the readiness to discount aave as the source for this form, given that (a)it's a very well entrenched high frequency form in aave from the atlantic to the pacific, (b)it has *precisely* the aspectual meaning in aave that was attributed to the original token, (c)it certainly has never been a well-known feature of any white dialect, to my knowledge, and (d)i've never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations. in fact, the original token, as i recall, suggests strongly that we are NOT dealing with children's regularization since the first clause had the copula in all its irregular glory, n'est-ce pas? (i no longer have the msg so i may be misremembering it, but i thought the two copulas contrasted aspectually, i.e. what john myhill was talking about as 'focus'.) the argument that the speaker has no contact with aave is pretty strange, considering the number of aave lexical items that have entered the language at large, from _jazz_ to _cool_ and zillions of others. more striking to me is that one now sees the sort of logo graffiti born in the black ghettos of this country all over the world, where the local graffiti artists -- apparently young working-class or poverty-class males -- certainly never saw the 'real thing'. (not your junior-year-abroad types, to be sure.) but they see it in movies and tv shows -- where they also hear (some version of) aave. and it's high-prestige, folks. so if young german kids in some rural area near poland and young ethnic turks in a suburb of stockholm can borrow the graffiti style of bed-stuy and watts, then surely a child in oregon can borrow a lexical item from them. no? From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Tue Apr 8 03:02:13 1997 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne E Kemmer) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 22:02:13 -0500 Subject: 'bees' in child lg. Message-ID: I have also noticed small children (nephews/nieces) saying 'bees', in cases where they were too young for daycare and unlikely to pick up any AAVE forms. I don't find it at all surprising, given that kids are trying to map meanings to gramm. and lexical forms, that a child might create a formal distinction between temporary vs. permanent state, or more agentive vs. less agentive predicate, or whatever the actual distinction turns out to be, via overregularizing the copula for one of the semantic categories and not the other. Especially if the distinction in question were one that many grammars encode formally (e.g. AAVE). The lack of a parallel in the surrounding speech of the family isn't problematic, since kids do come up with their own distinctions before learning the conventional ones in their language. Perhaps the CHILDES database will provide more examples, with some context. The suggestion of a connection with the strong/weak classes is intriguing. I recall Colin Harrison's suggestion on this list a while back that strong verbs are typically associated with motor actions (he was pointing out that this was not controlled for in the Language paper on brain imaging and the strong/weak contrast). That's a somewhat different basis from the pure aktionsart one suggested; both would bear looking into. It would be interesting to look at the question of lexical semantic classes of the verbs and the contribution of the regular inflections more generally (i.e. outside the predicate adjective construction). For example, why shouldn't kids learn to associate an inflectional ending on the verb with agentivity/change, given that these properties are prototypical in verbs? If so, we might predict that such inflections would appear first on verbs with these properties, and only later spread to other kinds of verbs (we'd have to control for frequency). A related idea: Maybe when kids first start overgeneralizing the past tense -ed, they do it first or most often with agentive/change of state verbs, because they think the -ed means "carried out an action". In other words, they'd be more likely to say "She goed" than "she sleeped". Child language people, does this fit with your observations? --Suzanne From nrude at UCINET.COM Tue Apr 8 02:57:28 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 18:57:28 -0800 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Hi folks, Ellen F. Prince says she's "never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations." My kids sure were. My son, for example, had a regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with -en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and then also, "He fixed my airplane". Noel From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Tue Apr 8 15:13:05 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 11:13:05 -0400 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <3349B417.1A21@ucinet.com> Message-ID: > My son, for example, had a > regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with > -en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and > then also, "He fixed my airplane". > How do you know that the ending was really the adult -en, as opposed to what I would have expected in this environment, namely -ing [-In] (in my dialect, So. Calif. English)? DLE From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Apr 8 15:45:47 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 11:45:47 EDT Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 07 Apr 1997 18:57:28 -0800." <3349B417.1A21@ucinet.com> Message-ID: >Hi folks, > > Ellen F. Prince says she's "never heard that children's regularizations >of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic >differentiations." My kids sure were. My son, for example, had a >regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with >-en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and >then also, "He fixed my airplane". > > Noel i would call that morphological or syntactic but definitely not semantic. From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Tue Apr 8 15:50:05 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:50:05 -0500 Subject: irregular verb list In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Patrick Griffiths wrote: > On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Tom Payne wrote: > > > Has anyone ever made lists of "regular" vs. "irregular" (or "strong") > > verbs in English.... > > I don't know about the semantic side of the query (= .... in the quotation > above), but Bernard Bloch did a very detailed allomorphic taxononmy of > English verb classes in LANGUAGE, 1947, 23: 399-418 (reprinted in M Joos > (ed) Readings in linguistics I, U Chicago Press, 1966, 243-254). The > article is called "English verb inflection". > Also, H.A. Gleason Jr. presents a complete list, with categorization, of the irregular (strong) verbs of English in the chapter on English Morphology in his Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics (1961). (Of course, the regular ones could never be completely listed.) --- Syd Lamb From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 8 20:47:42 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 14:47:42 -0600 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Same here! Just told him privately! But then, perhaps the child clearly differenciated -n from -ng..., which in no way excludes a strong association! Max On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > My son, for example, had a > > regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with > > -en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and > > then also, "He fixed my airplane". > > > > How do you know that the ending was really the adult -en, as opposed to > what I would have expected in this environment, namely -ing [-In] (in my > dialect, So. Calif. English)? > > DLE > From jtang at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Apr 8 22:50:58 1997 From: jtang at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Joyce Tang Boyland) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 15:50:58 -0700 Subject: bees , undergenlzn Message-ID: I think that children's regularization of "be" is more profitably thought of as a case of *under*generalization, where pieces of the paradigm are being split off to serve particular different functions. That is, there's the "be" that means "act in such a way" (which is consistent with the input to children: be good, be nice, etc.), and then there's the copula (which, in the input, is often just a clitic 'm, 're, or 's). It's pretty reasonable for kids to undergeneralize "be" to mean just the "act thus" sense. It's comparable, say, to the splitting off of "haf to" from the rest of "have". My husband, for example, says things like "They were hafing to shout all day" where "haf to" is just the "must" meaning. Children undergeneralize all the time, and adults do it too. It makes sense to me to see this as a specific case of a general phenomenon. Incidentally, this isn't a case of grammaticization (the opposite, really), but i don't think it's far-fetched to say that processes like this often contribute to grammaticization. (for further discussion of general cognitive processes in grammaticization, ask for my dissertation). Joyce Tang Boyland From nrude at UCINET.COM Tue Apr 8 11:19:15 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 03:19:15 -0800 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Hi again, Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs fixing" would also be good English. All that I can say is that I collected (wrote down) many examples of my son's -en versus -ed: his -en was restricted to passive constructions ("It is fixen" = "It is fixed", etc.) and his -ed to the past tense. Also I suspect that Ellen Prince ("never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations") meant semantic differentiation that was not already there in the child's input, and in this sense then mine was no counterexample. As to where structure leaves off and semantics begins, who am I to know? One would think though that since semantic distinctions are continually being leveled by language change (e.g. OE beon and waesan merging in the single "be" paradigm of modern English) then surely new semantic distinctions must be arising or else our languages would become semantically impoverished. And one imagines not all enrichment comes by borrowing. Surely the kids are responsible for some. Noel From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Wed Apr 9 02:09:11 1997 From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 22:09:11 -0400 Subject: Reply to Ellen Prince on "bees" Message-ID: Ellen says "i've never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations." But the explanation I proposed was that children who do this are unaware that the "be" is "Be quiet" is the same verb as the verb "is, are, etc." Hence what I was suggesting would not really involve regularization of an irregular verb. Ellen says that aave "has *precisely* the aspectual meaning in aave that was attributed to the original token". ("He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls.") Perhaps. But does aave have the property I reported regarding the instances of this phenomenon that I have observed, that it is restricted to predicates over which the subject has some volitional control? I have observed examples of the form "She beed crazy", "I beed a good boy", "He bees quiet", but never examples of the form "He beed hungry", "She bees asleep", or "I bees a tall boy". Is aave like this? Ellen says "the argument that the speaker has no contact with aave is pretty strange". But I was not attempting to explain the particular token that Tom reported but the more general instances of this phenomenon including both the one observed by Tom and those that I have observed, including productive instances by my son, who had limited contact with speakers of English other than his mother, myself, and a babysitter who was an Italian immigrant to Canada. In particular he did not play with other children until he was four years old, and thus had virtually no exposure to aave, direct or indirect. At most he might have been exposed to it on television, but it is my impression that this feature of aave is rarely used on television, or wasn't prior to 1987 (the year that my son turned 4). Furthermore, he was producing such forms in his earliest utterances involving "be" plus volitional stative predicates. It is quite possible that the particular token reported by Tom did reflect influence of aave, but that is another matter. I append my original message about this. Matthew Dryer Original message: Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like "act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular verb "be". From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Apr 9 02:42:34 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 20:42:34 -0600 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <334A29B5.437E@ucinet.com> Message-ID: Guess you're right, pal! Max On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Noel Rude wrote: > Hi again, > > Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs > fixing" would also be good English. All that I can say is that I > collected (wrote down) many examples of my son's -en versus -ed: his > -en was restricted to passive constructions ("It is fixen" = "It is > fixed", etc.) and his -ed to the past tense. Also I suspect that Ellen > Prince ("never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs > were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations") meant semantic > differentiation that was not already there in the child's input, and in > this sense then mine was no counterexample. As to where structure > leaves off and semantics begins, who am I to know? One would think > though that since semantic distinctions are continually being leveled by > language change (e.g. OE beon and waesan merging in the single "be" > paradigm of modern English) then surely new semantic distinctions must > be arising or else our languages would become semantically > impoverished. And one imagines not all enrichment comes by borrowing. > Surely the kids are responsible for some. > > Noel > From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Apr 9 04:32:22 1997 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne E Kemmer) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 23:32:22 -0500 Subject: is it undergeneralization? Message-ID: If we're looking for terminology to describe this sort of phenomenon, I think it's exactly parallel to the "repartition" that Breal described for lexical splits in diachrony--differentiations in the history of etymologically the same word. An example going on right now is a pronunciation difference in _virtually_ depending on whether it means 'practically', vs. 'pertaining to virtual, electronic connections' (as in "She laughed, virtually"). The older meaning allows more phonological elision. With _bees_ this differentiation happens to be at the constructional level, and it is in the ontogenetic development of the grammar rather than the larger-scale change of the lg. in a population over time. It's like the case of _gots_ for 'has' which is endemic in child language (and bigger and bigger kids seem to use it). I'm uncomfortable with 'undergeneralization' for this kind of differentiation, since that term sounds like restricting the usage of a morpheme to a range smaller than what it has in the adult lg. There are plenty of examples of the latter in child language, but it seems different from what is going on here. (E.g. using a word for a type to designate an instance: _kuh_ to mean only the child's juice cup.) 'Overgeneralization' is appropriate or not depending on the perspective you take. >>From the point of view of the occurrence of -s, it's putting regular inflection in a place it doesn't belong, on the strength of the entrenched regular pattern. The child's schema for -s is then more general than in the adult language. Yet at the same time, because of the child's different understanding of the predicate _be_ (compared to the adult language) in these 'act' contexts, it's not just a matter of replacing an irregular verb with its regular correlate, like saying _goed_ for _went_. Actually, this whole question makes me wonder what kids are actually doing when 'replacing' irregulars with regulars (which I understand they do only a portion of the time--they do keep producing irregulars the whole period of overgeneralization). We don't know what kinds of semantic distinctions they might be making until we look, and my assumptions about language learning leave the possibility open for such distinctions, rather than precluding them. --Suzanne From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Wed Apr 9 05:38:51 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:38:51 +0300 Subject: Reply to Ellen Prince on "bees" Message-ID: My original point about possible influence from AAVE regarded Tom's observation, which made not statement at all about the personal background of the person involved (escept I have concluded from the preceding discussed that s/he was not black and not a young child). Even if this person was not literally (or figuratively) black, this does not mean that this usage is not ultimately due to contact with AAVE--as Ellen points out, there are innumerable cases like this (how many fellow children of the 60's know that in the 1940's 'groovy' was restricted to black people? In the late 1970's my brother consistently said 'let's book' meaning 'let's go/boogie/split'--'book' in this usage is indisputably a black invention (popular among blacks maybe 5 years before) but my brother had zero black friends at the time and was completely unaware that it had been a 'black' word. To check the case Tom heard, it would be necessary to investigate the personal background of the person who said it, where s/he heard it from, where THAT person heard it from, etc. I would guess that this is likely to lead to AAVE eventually because the usage sounds so much like AAVE. The cases Matt is talking about seem to me different. Firstly, some of them are about young children, where I would suppose some general cognitive/developmental account would be most likely (although it would of course be a good idea to check if the babysitter from Italy gave some second-language errors in this regard). The cases among adults where these are limited to volitional predicates sound different from the AAVE 'be/s', and unlike anything I am aware of in North American sociolinguistics (which by no means suggests that I don't believe Matt, just that this hasn't been reported, although sociolinguistics have been searching North America for white people who have invariant BE for 30 years without finding anything more that a few very old rural southerners (Guy Bailey's work). You ought to tell dialectologists about this, Matt. But first, maybe make sure this isn't really the same phenonemon (or a variant) of the invariant AAVE usage. However, Matt's observation and Tom's do not necessary have to have the same explanation. Before rushing to speculate on universalist accounts of this, it would be a good idea to consider accounts which are more down-to-earth and testable, like dialect contact. John >Ellen says "i've never heard that children's regularizations of irregular >verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations." But the >explanation I proposed was that children who do this are unaware that the >"be" is "Be quiet" is the same verb as the verb "is, are, etc." Hence >what I was suggesting would not really involve regularization of an >irregular verb. > >Ellen says that aave "has *precisely* the aspectual meaning in aave that >was attributed to the original token". ("He's not crazy, he just _bees_ >crazy when he's around girls.") Perhaps. But does aave have the property >I reported regarding the instances of this phenomenon that I have >observed, that it is restricted to predicates over which the subject has >some volitional control? I have observed examples of the form "She beed >crazy", "I beed a good boy", "He bees quiet", but never examples of the >form "He beed hungry", "She bees asleep", or "I bees a tall boy". Is aave >like this? > >Ellen says "the argument that the speaker has no contact with aave is >pretty strange". But I was not attempting to explain the particular token >that Tom reported but the more general instances of this phenomenon >including both the one observed by Tom and those that I have observed, >including productive instances by my son, who had limited contact with >speakers of English other than his mother, myself, and a babysitter who >was an Italian immigrant to Canada. In particular he did not play with >other children until he was four years old, and thus had virtually no >exposure to aave, direct or indirect. At most he might have been exposed >to it on television, but it is my impression that this feature of aave is >rarely used on television, or wasn't prior to 1987 (the year that my son >turned 4). Furthermore, he was producing such forms in his earliest >utterances involving "be" plus volitional stative predicates. It is quite >possible that the particular token reported by Tom did reflect influence >of aave, but that is another matter. > >I append my original message about this. > >Matthew Dryer > > >Original message: > >Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in > >"He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." > >My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she >bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates >like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I >have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), >do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his >first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts >sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the >verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in >imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good >boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with >such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a >volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like >"act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if >such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect >that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. > >For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the >validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might >be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, >for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular >verb "be". From elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Wed Apr 9 15:11:37 1997 From: elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Ellen L. Contini-Morava) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 11:11:37 -0400 Subject: bees , undergenlzn In-Reply-To: <9704082250.AA25659@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: I agree with Joyce Tang Boyland that the most obvious source of _bees_ in "he just bees crazy when he's around girls" is the 'act in such a way' send commonly found in 'be good', 'be nice' etc. (and not just in imperatives: "Don't mind him, he's just being silly"). But I'm surprised that this doesn't lead her (or anyone in this discussion so far) to question the assumed unity of "the paradigm" in which is/are/was/were (copula) are suppletive alternants of _be_ (infinitive, subjunctive etc.). In many languages the copula is a distinct form from an apparently synonymous infinitive and they have different historical sources. For example, in Swahili the copula _ni_ is distinct both grammatically and historically from the infinitive _ku-wa_, the source of the latter being a verb meaning 'become'. It's true that 'be' and is/are/was/were are in complementary distribution, and that symmetry with other verbs makes them look like a paradigm, but they also have different ranges of meaning, as pointed out in this discussion (is/are/was/were don't have the "volitional" sense whereas 'be' allows it) and, most obviously, differ in form. Rather than positing two different _be_s in English, a volitional one and a non-volitional one, it seems more reasonable to attribute the volitionality to context (such as the imperative, which has the same effect in e.g. "smell the coffee" vs. "I smell coffee"), and the resistance of is/are/was/were to a volitional reading suggests that they are not entirely synonymous with _be_, however neatly they might be squeezed into a paradigm. As Dwight Bolinger liked to point out, differences in form are likely loci of differences in meaning. Ellen Contini-Morava On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Joyce Tang Boyland wrote: > I think that children's regularization of "be" is more profitably > thought of as a case of *under*generalization, where pieces of the > paradigm are being split off to serve particular different functions. > > That is, there's the "be" that means "act in such a way" > (which is consistent with the input to children: be good, be nice, etc.), > and then there's the copula (which, in the input, is often just a clitic > 'm, 're, or 's). It's pretty reasonable for kids to undergeneralize "be" > to mean just the "act thus" sense. > > It's comparable, say, to the splitting off of "haf to" from the rest of "have". > My husband, for example, says things like "They were hafing to shout all day" > where "haf to" is just the "must" meaning. > > Children undergeneralize all the time, and adults do it too. > It makes sense to me to see this as a specific case of a general phenomenon. > > Incidentally, this isn't a case of grammaticization (the opposite, really), > but i don't think it's far-fetched to say that processes like this > often contribute to grammaticization. (for further discussion of general > cognitive processes in grammaticization, ask for my dissertation). > > Joyce Tang Boyland > From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed Apr 9 15:35:57 1997 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:35:57 -0700 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <334A29B5.437E@ucinet.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Noel Rude wrote: > Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs > fixing" would also be good English. And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the _needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. The verb form is, of course, a participle, not a past ("Do those eggs need beaten?"). This not only makes your interpretation more plausible (kids--and adults, at least in rural western Oregon, would be much more likely to say "NP needs fixed" than "NP needs fixing"), it also suggests the stimulus for the reinterpretation. Scott DeLancey From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Wed Apr 9 17:18:43 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 13:18:43 -0400 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The "needs x-ed" construction is also extremely well-entrenched in Pittsburgh. In fact, this is the main reason I asked the question - to see if there were reasons for not interpreting -en as -ing. Such reasons *do* exist, as Scott points out, if "needs fixed" would be more expected than "needs fixing". (Alternatively, one could follow my own personal prejudices and say that such expressions are not English. But I suppose I must admit that there is English spoken natively outside of San Diego.) -- DLE ****************************** ****************************** Dan Everett Department of Linguistics University of Pittsburgh 2816 CL Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130 http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu/~dever On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Scott Delancey wrote: > On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Noel Rude wrote: > > > Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs > > fixing" would also be good English. > > And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't > thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the > _needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. The verb form > is, of course, a participle, not a past ("Do those eggs need beaten?"). > This not only makes your interpretation more plausible (kids--and adults, > at least in rural western Oregon, would be much more likely to say > "NP needs fixed" than "NP needs fixing"), it also suggests the stimulus > for the reinterpretation. > > Scott DeLancey > From clements at INDIANA.EDU Wed Apr 9 20:42:30 1997 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:42:30 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: >And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't >thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the >_needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP needs fixed" construction found? Clancy Clements J. Clancy Clements Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese Ballantine Hall 844 Bloomington, IN 47405 Ph: (812) 855-6141 Fax: (812) 855-4526 From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Wed Apr 9 20:09:18 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:09:18 -0500 Subject: Things that need fixed Message-ID: On the _needs fixed_ etc. construction >>And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't >>thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the >>_needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. >Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south >central Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, >although I'm not sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. >Where else is the "NP needs fixed" construction found? To add a bit to the previous posts, as many Oregon dialectologists have noted, early census data for the Willamette Valley show Missouri and (I believe) Illinois as previous states of residence for the largest percentages of folks residing in the Valley in 1850 and 1860, although the numbers for Missouri are questionable for reasons that we don't need to get into. So the "south Midwest" provenance for the construction is a good bet. In addition, Peter Trudgill has at times talked about similar constructions from Norwich. If we substitute _want_ for _need_ we get things like Your hair wants cut. and so on. So "needs fixed" or "needs fixen" or whatever _need Past Part_ constructions have a good English pedigree, I think. Carl Mills From simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Wed Apr 9 20:37:42 1997 From: simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU (Beth Simon) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:37:42 EST Subject: need + past participle Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Tom Murray, Tim Frazer, and I have an articple specifically discussing the construction, usage, and regionality of need + past particple forthcoming in (the next?) _American Speech_. Stay tuned, beth simon From fletcher at HKUSUA.HKU.HK Thu Apr 10 03:32:21 1997 From: fletcher at HKUSUA.HKU.HK (Paul Fletcher) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:32:21 +0800 Subject: needs + PP Message-ID: Just a footnote to Carl Mills posting: I don't think constructions such as 'my hair needs washed' will be found in Norwich or other English English dialects, but they are well-attested in Scottish English. The only source I have to hand is Trudgill & Hannah, 'International English', 3rd ed. 1994, p.98, where examples are given for ScotEng and the comparison explicitly made with 'some regional US dialects'. Paul Fletcher From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Thu Apr 10 05:02:52 1997 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 22:02:52 -0700 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970409204230.006df4e4@hamlet.ucs.indiana.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, J. Clancy Clements (Kapil) wrote: > Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central > Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not > sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP > needs fixed" construction found? Lowland Scotland, for one. (At least Glasgow, for sure; I'm not sure how pervasive it is). All along both banks of the Ohio, I believe. There was a thread on this on LINGUIST a couple of years ago, should still be in the archives. Scott DeLancey delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From nakayama at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU Thu Apr 10 05:34:32 1997 From: nakayama at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Toshihide Nakayama) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 22:34:32 -0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: Dear all, I am going to teach some courses for the first time and I would like to get your help. The courses are (1) a graduate seminar on Language & Culture and (2) a intro-level undergrad course titled Languages of the World. I would like to have ideas concerning: - textbooks (in addition to ref., it would be really helpful if you could tell me your experience with them) - what kind of things you would put in such courses - possible ways of organizing such courses (if you don't mind sharing your syllabi and/or reading lists, they would be greatly appreciated) Thank you very much in advance. I will post a summary. (This message will also be posted to the LINGUIST.) **************************** Toshihide NAKAYAMA Dept. of Linguistics U of California Santa Barbara, CA 93117 **************************** From yui at IPIED.TU.AC.TH Thu Apr 10 09:04:19 1997 From: yui at IPIED.TU.AC.TH (Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:04:19 +0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: <199704100528.WAA18421@humanitas> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Toshihide Nakayama wrote: > - textbooks > (in addition to ref., it would be really helpful if you could tell > me your > experience with them) For Lgs of the World's textbook: Bernard Comrie's "The world's major languages. Ethnologue database also is interesting (located at www.sil.org) > - what kind of things you would put in such courses For language and culture: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and later studies on that. (including Lakoff's book: Women Fire and Dangerous things.).Perhaps some cross cultural communication thing too. A friend of mine taught an undergrad course in Cross cultural Comm. She has on on-line course at: http://www.siu.edu/~ekachai/301.html. You might find some interesting link from there. > - possible ways of organizing such courses > (if you don't mind sharing your syllabi and/or reading lists, they > would be > greatly appreciated) From csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Thu Apr 10 09:50:03 1997 From: csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Chris Johns) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:50:03 +0100 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970409204230.006df4e4@hamlet.ucs.indiana.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, J. Clancy Clements (Kapil) wrote: > Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central > Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not > sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP > needs fixed" construction found? Never heard it in the UK. Regards Chris Johns From csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Thu Apr 10 10:00:17 1997 From: csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Chris Johns) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:00:17 +0100 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Chris Johns wrote: > > Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central > > Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not > > sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP > > needs fixed" construction found? > Never heard it in the UK. Having read som more recent postings, perhaps I should add that I've never been to Scotland! Regards Chris Johns From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Thu Apr 10 14:42:16 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:42:16 -0500 Subject: 'bees' in child lg. In-Reply-To: <199704080302.WAA00586@ruf.rice.edu> Message-ID: Suzanne -- Just a small point about your generally very cogent remarks of the other day. I noticed an interesting hidden assumption in your statement > I don't find it at all surprising, given that kids are > trying to map meanings to gramm. and lexical forms, that > a child might create a formal distinction between > temporary vs. permanent state, or more agentive vs. > less agentive predicate, or whatever the actual distinction turns > out to be, . . . --- the assumption that the "actual distinction" exists somewhere (out there?) apart from what is in the minds of individual speakers. But if it doesn't, then whatever each kid decides to make of the possibilities, given what he/she has been hearing, provides what that kid does; and different kids doubtless make the distinction betw two kinds of "be" on slightly different semantic/functional bases. (I too have heard kids doing it, incl my own -- and there is no need at all for an influence from AAVE or anthing else to give them the opportunity, motivation, and mental wherewithal to go ahead and do it.) You seem to be accepting this point yourself when you write > the surrounding speech of the family isn't problematic, > since kids do come up with their own distinctions > --- Syd From nrude at UCINET.COM Thu Apr 10 03:30:19 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 19:30:19 -0800 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: Greetings, A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific facts too. The course was organized according to three criteria: 1) Typology (tone lgs., obstruent typologies, the Schleicherian typologies, areal phenomena like serialization, etc.), 2) Genetic relationships (students ought to know about Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Bantu, Sumerian, the diversity in the Americas and New Guinea, etc.), and 3) Geography (divide the world into regions and learn something specific about each). There was a packet of handouts and an article or two, and we used the two books edited by Timothy Shopen (Languages and their Status, forget the name of the other) to gave students the opportunity to look at some "exotic" languages. I feel the course was a success. But alas it's a struggle. Many students resist knowing specific facts about the world. They want to rap about urban situations, languages in contact, language planning problems--they don't want to know about Dravidian or where Gilyak is spoken or the spread of Bantu. I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is worthwhile. Noel From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Thu Apr 10 15:59:40 1997 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne E Kemmer) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:59:40 -0500 Subject: where are the distinctions Message-ID: Syd, What I meant by "actually turns out to be" is "whatever turns out to be the correct analys(es) for what they're doing". The kids may in fact be doing different things, and certainly what they are doing in their linguistic behavior is a result of whatever categorization they have managed to abstract in their minds. I don't believe in "actual distinctions" in the sense of people's categorizations lying "out there" in the data, they are mental phenomena. So "actual distinction" is the "cognitive distinction(s) the kids are IN FACT making". Here's an example of how words suggest different things, guided by what we believe and what we believe others to believe. It's probably the main source of misunderstandings among linguists!! --Suzanne From DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU Thu Apr 10 18:44:31 1997 From: DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU (DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 13:44:31 -0500 Subject: Things that need fixed Message-ID: I've just joined in this discussion and saw the message asking the question as to where else this construction is found. Most of my students from the Pittsburgh area use constructions of this type. "The baby needs changed", for example. Our former departartmental secretary, who was from West Virginia also had this speech pattern. Our university is located about 10 minutes from Erie, PA and about 90 min north of Pittsburgh. I am told by locals that this construction is not typical of the Erie area although you here it from peoploe who've relocated from Pittsburgh. I cannot recall hearing this form at all in Chatauqua or Erie County, NY, or the Buffalo area, which is also about 90 min from Erie. Deborah DuBartell Deborah DuBartell, Ph.D. Linguistics Program Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Edinboro, PA 16444 USA 814-732-2736 From jpd13 at CORNELL.EDU Fri Apr 11 01:58:29 1997 From: jpd13 at CORNELL.EDU (Jenna Dalious) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:58:29 -0400 Subject: Things that need fixed In-Reply-To: <01IHJJ5HB9T28WXDA7@edinboro.edu> Message-ID: At 1:44 PM -0500 on 04/10/97, DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU wrote: > I've just joined in this discussion and saw the message asking the > question as to where else this construction is found. Most of my students > from the Pittsburgh area use constructions of this type. "The baby needs > changed", for example. Our former departartmental secretary, who was from > West Virginia also had this speech pattern. Our university is located > about 10 minutes from Erie, PA and about 90 min north of Pittsburgh. I am > told by locals that this construction is not typical of the Erie area > although you here it from peoploe who've relocated from Pittsburgh. I > cannot recall hearing this form at all in Chatauqua or Erie County, NY, or > the Buffalo area, which is also about 90 min from Erie. I think this construction is used by speakers in most of Western Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate at Penn State University, I heard this construction used by people from the middle of the state (where PSU is located) and westward. As someone who grew up in Eastern PA, I was very surprised to hear this being used by students not only in speech, but also in a term paper I proofread! As in Deborah's example above, the construction was always needs + participle, such as the lightbulb needs changed, etc., not just 'needs fixed.' (Unfortunately, I can't think of any good examples now. My former roommate from Western PA used to say this construction often, to which I would always reply jokingly "to be!") Jenna -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -- Jenna Dalious -- Grad Student Romance Studies Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- From nrude at UCINET.COM Fri Apr 11 02:35:08 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 18:35:08 -0800 Subject: 'bees' in child lg. Message-ID: Greetings, Your comment on _the assumption that the "actual distinction" exists somewhere (out there?) apart from what is in the minds of individual speakers_ suggests another assumption--that there's nothing "out there". Whereas we linguists seem to gravitate between the extremes of biological hardwiring and Whorfism, how many of us know that there are real live Platonists still out there in mathematics and physics. I bring this up because your "out there" remark reminds me of Roger Penrose's books and I was just wondering if perhaps his heresy needs answered by us. Noel From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Apr 11 12:51:06 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 07:51:06 -0500 Subject: Things that need fixed Message-ID: I stand corrected (sort of). When I mentioned that Peter Trudgill had remarked that the American _need + past participle_ construction had a counterpart in the UK, _want + past participle_, I assumed that because Peter had done much of his early research in Norwich that was where he had heard it. As I recall, the discussion of such matters had been prefaced with a lot of good Norwegian beer. A Scots origin for the construction would fit better with American dialect and settlement patterns. Yesterday, I asked our local TESL director, a native of Britain (sorry, I don't know exactly where) for "native speaker intuitions" on both the _need + past participle_ and _want + past participle_ constructions, and she replied immediately "western Pennsylvania," going on to add that she had never heard such constructions until she had started her Ph.D. work at Penn State. So Jenna Dalious and others who Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc., as places where _needs fixed_ etc. can be found are probably correct. As quite a few dialectologists, most notably Michael Montgomery, have pointed out, Scots, Irish, and, especially, Ulster-Scots exerted a great deal of influence on the English of the American highlands (the Alleghanies, the Appalachians, and surrounding regions) since the mid-to-late 18th century. The resulting south midland dialects spread to large areas of the country, including my own native western Oregon, where the construction has long been established. Carl From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Fri Apr 11 21:49:15 1997 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 16:49:15 -0500 Subject: no subject (file transmission) Message-ID: The second meeting of the ASSOCIATION FOR LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY (ALT) - the first to be held in the USA - will take place on SEPTEMBER 11-14 1997 (Thursday through Sunday) on the campus of the UNIVERSITY OF OREGON in Eugene, OR. The conference is open to all: membership in ALT is not required for attendance. Talks will begin on Thursday at 9:00am and end Sunday early afternoon. *** FROM THE PROGRAM: - JOSEPH H. GREENBERG /Stanford University/: "THE RELATION OF HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS TO TYPOLOGY" - a workshop on the native languages of Oregon - a workshop on parts of speech in typology - papers on phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical typology *** FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE PROGRAM, registration, and local accommodations, contact SCOTT DELANCEY - postal address: Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97405 - office telephone: (541) 346-3906 - fax: (541) 346-3917 - e-mail: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu FOR INFORMATION ON ALT and its journal LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY, contact ALT's President Bernard Comrie (comrie at bcf.usc.edu), Secretary-Treasurer Johan van der Auwera (auwera at uia.ua.ac.be), or Editor Frans Plank (linfp at hum.aau.dk). The ALT meeting will immediately follow a CONFERENCE ON EXTERNAL POSSESSORS and related noun incorporation phenomena, held September 7-10 (Sunday through Wednesday) at the same location. For further detail, contact Doris Payne (dlpayne at oregon.uoregon.edu). From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 14 17:40:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 12:40:00 -0500 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is worthwhile.' Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific facts is a much-needed antidote. --David Tuggy From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 15 21:02:38 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 15:02:38 -0600 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: <01IHQH6OZP2M006814@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the "theory" imposed upon him... Best regards! Max On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > worthwhile.' > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > --David Tuggy > From nostler at CHIBCHA.DEMON.CO.UK Tue Apr 15 22:07:48 1997 From: nostler at CHIBCHA.DEMON.CO.UK (Nicholas Ostler) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 17:07:48 -0500 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: I have just come across Anatole V. Lyovin - An Introduction to the Languages of the World, published this year by Oxford University Press in Nrew York (ISBN 0-19-508115-3, and 0-19-508116-1 Paperback). This seems an excellent compilation in one volume of all the information that the originator of this thread seemed to be looking for, with genetic classifications and typological evocations of languages all round the world, and an appendix of language maps drawn from W. Bright's Encyclopaedia of Linguistics. In terms of space, the Americas are rather over-represented, but hey, it's an American book. (Europe too is grossly over-represented of course, but we're used to that.) So there is a text book now, for that survey of the world's languages. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Nicholas Ostler Managing Director President Linguacubun Ltd Foundation for Endangered Languages http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Philosophy/CTLL/FEL/ Batheaston Villa, 172 Bailbrook Lane Bath BA1 7AA England +44-1225-85-2865 fax +44-1225-85-9258 nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Tue Apr 15 23:30:46 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 16:30:46 -0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) below.. Pamela Price Klebaum On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking > linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, > useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that > mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and > apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, > without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a > different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the > "theory" imposed upon him... > > Best regards! Max > > On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > > > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > > worthwhile.' > > > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > > > --David Tuggy > > > From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Wed Apr 16 16:47:37 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:47:37 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > below.. [ref to message from Enrique Figueroa E.] An interesting assumption -- that modeling languages entails "esoteric and highly formalized rules". Why do some people make this assumption? Is there any evidence for it? (I don't think so.) (We do have evidence that "highly formalized rules" provide ONE means of describing OUTPUTS of linguistic systems.) Cheers, --- Syd From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Apr 16 20:43:33 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:43:33 -0600 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: No argument about THAT, if you reread me! Problem is: haven't the students the right (and isn't it convenient for them as students) to be given information as to a) other possible approaches, beside the one preferred by the teacher, and b) the proper historical and scientific frame to which refer the selected (imposed?) *modeling model*...? Max E. Figueroa On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > below.. > > Pamela Price Klebaum > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > > > Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking > > linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, > > useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that > > mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and > > apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, > > without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a > > different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the > > "theory" imposed upon him... > > > > Best regards! Max > > > > On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > > > > > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > > > > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > > > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > > > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > > > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > > > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > > > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > > > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > > > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > > > worthwhile.' > > > > > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > > > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > > > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > > > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > > > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > > > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > > > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > > > > > --David Tuggy > > > > > > From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Tue Apr 15 08:24:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 03:24:00 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an ice-cream cone. "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. Anybody concur? --David Tuggy From geoffn at SIU.EDU Thu Apr 17 15:15:31 1997 From: geoffn at SIU.EDU (Geoffrey S. Nathan) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:15:31 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? I concur with Dave's judgment. Furthermore, I seem to remember a paper back in the glory days of generative semantics about DO as an abstract underlying verb encoding volition, or agenthood (of the subject) or some such. I think it was written by Haj. It seems to me that uses such as 'be good' are non-stative (which is why they can occur with the imperative and/or progressive--another Generative Semantics argument), and hence heading towards more prototypical verb-hood. Prototypical verbs, of course, encode actions rather than states. I think this ties in, somehow, with the regularization of the inflection (bee-s), and relates also to the issue that Kiparsky and others have written about on the relation between derived meanings and regular morphology (the Toronto Maple Leafs debate). Geoff Geoffrey S. Nathan Department of Linguistics Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527 +618 549-0106 (Home) From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 15:38:17 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:38:17 -0500 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <01IHT0IVKWVQ006DSE@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? Sorry, I find this good, in my midwestern (great lakes) dialect, if that's what you're getting at. I'm ignorant of AAVE. Actually, I find "DO" wrong, not even pedantic Dave From elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:01:23 1997 From: elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Ellen L. Contini-Morava) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:01:23 -0400 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <01IHT0IVKWVQ006DSE@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: Yup. Ellen C-M On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? > > --David Tuggy > From bfox at SPOT.COLORADO.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:06:16 1997 From: bfox at SPOT.COLORADO.EDU (Fox Barbara) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 13:06:16 -0600 Subject: Forwarded mail.... Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 14:22:28 -0700 (MST) From: "Laura A. Michaelis" To: ling-dept at lists.Colorado.EDU ***TENTATIVE SCHEDULE*** THE THIRD MEETING OF THE CONFERENCE ON CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE,DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE C S D L 3 MAY 24-26, 1997 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER Department of Linguistics and the Institute of Cognitive Science GENERAL INFORMATION. The conference will be in held in the historic Hale Science Building on the west (mountain) side of the Boulder campus. We strongly advise you to book hotel accommodations now; we have reserved 3 blocks of rooms at locations close to the conference site. We also encourage you to preregister by mail for the conference, although on-site registration will be available. For information about registration, transportation, and lodging in Boulder, see the CSDL'97 website: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~linguist/CSDL.html TENTATIVE SCHEDULE. All talks and panel sessions to be held in Hale 270. Saturday, May 24 9:00 Herbert CLARK (Stanford) Title TBA 9:50 BREAK 10:10 Liang TAO (Ohio U), Barbara FOX and Jule GOMEZ DE GARCIA (CU-Bldr), "Recycling, Restructuring and Replacement in Repair: Slips of the Tone and Other Phenomena" 10:35 Robert ENGLEBRETSON (UCSB), "Why don't all the Adjectives Go there? Semantic Classification of Adverbs in Conversational English" 11:00 Christine BARTELS (U-OR), "The Pragmatics of WH-Question Intonation in English" 11:25 Steven FINCKE (UCSB), "The Syntactic Organization of Repair in Bikol" 11:50 LUNCH 1:00 Susanna CUMMING (UCSB) Title TBA 2:00 RECEPTION (Koenig Alumni Center) 3:30 Dominiek SANDRA and Hubert CUYCKENS (U-Antwerp, Belgium), "Fuzziness in Dutch Prepositional Categories" 3:55 Elaine JONES (U-Chicago), "Some Reasons why Iconicity between Lexical Categories and their Discourse Functions isn't Perfect" 4:20 Grace SONG (NW-U), "A Typology of Motion Events and their Expression" 4:45 William THOMPSON and Beth LEVIN (NW-U), "The Semantics of English Deadjectival Verbs" 5:10 Ljuba VESELINOVA (Eastern MI-U/U-Stockholm), "Suppletion in Verb Inflection" 5:35 Meichun LIU (Nat'l Taiwan U), "Lexical Meaning and Discourse Patterning: The Three Cases of Mandarin 'build'" 6:00 DINNER 8:00 PANEL: "Historical Semantics". Participants: William CROFT (Manchester), Ronald LANGACKER (UCSD), Elizabeth O'DOWD (St. Michael's College), Eve SWEESTER (UCB), Elizabeth TRAUGOTT (Stanford). Sunday, May 25 9:00 Walter KINTSCH (CU-Bldr), Title TBA 9:50 BREAK 10:10 Lourdes DE LEON (Reed), "Why Verbs aren't Learnt before Nouns in Tzotzil (Mayan): The Role of Caregiver Input and of Verb-specific Semantics" 11:35 Chikako SAKURAI (Harvard/Japan Women's U), "A Cross-linguistic Study of Early Acquisition of Nouns and Verbs in English and Japanese" 11:00 Michael TOMASELLO and Patricia J. BROOKS (Emory), "Two- and Three-year-olds Learn to Produce Passives with Novel Verbs" 11:25 Virginia C. MUELLER-GATHERCOLE (U-Wales, Bangor),"Cue Coordination: An Alternative to Word Meaning Biases" 11:50 LUNCH 1:00 Dan I. SLOBIN (UCB), Title TBA 1:50 Jean-Pierre KOENIG (SUNY-Buffalo), "On a tue' le pre'sident! The Nature of Passives and Ultra-indefinites" 2:15 David BECK (U-Toronto), "Partial Identification in the Bella Coola Transitivizing Middle" 2:40 Masuhiro NOMURA (Japan Women's U), "A Cognitive Grammar Approach to the Japanese Internally Headed Relative Clause Construction" 3:05 BREAK 3:20 Maria POLINSKY, Mary HARE and Dan JACKSON (UCSD), "Historical Change in a Performance-based Model: From Latin Gender to Gender in French" 3:45 Kaoru HORIE (Tohoku U), "From Core to Periphery: A Study on the Directionality of Syntactic Change in Japanese" 4:10 Ryoko SUZUKI (Nat'l U-Singapore/UCSB), "Multifunctionality: The Developmental Path of the Quotative TTE in Japanese" 4:35 PANEL: "Text". Participants: Susanna CUMMING (UCSB) Gilles FAUCONNIER (UCSD) Barbara FOX (CU-Bldr) Arthur GLENBERG (UW-Madison) Walter KINTSCH (CU-Bldr) 6:35 PARTY. Dinner reception at Mesa Lab Facility of National Center for Atmospheric Research. Busses leave from north side of Hale Building at 6:35. Return to Hale at 10:30. Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day) 9:00 PANEL: "Space and Language" Participants: Annette HERSKOVITZ (UCB) Lise MENN (CU-Bldr) Dan I. SLOBIN (UCB) Leonard TALMY (SUNY-Buffalo) 11:00 BREAK 11:20 Elizabeth TRAUGOTT, Title TBA 12:10 LUNCH 1:30 Seana COULSON and Gilles FAUCONNIER (UCSD), "Fake Guns and False Eyelashes: Conceptual Blending and Privative Adjectives" 1:55 Eve SWEETSER (UCB), "Coherent Structures in Metaphorical Gesture Use" 2:20 Yo MATSUMOTO (Meiji Gakuin U), "On the Extension of Body-part Terms to Object Nouns and Spatial Prepositions: Shape and Location in the Grammar and the Lexicon" 2:45 BREAK 3:00 George LAKOFF (UCB), Title TBA From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:01:03 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:01:03 -1000 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: At 05:15 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: >At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >I concur with Dave's judgment. C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative correctly using the simple form of a main verb. Since the verb is a main verb, not a helping verb, 'do' is the correct choice here. That is, the correct helping verb for main verb 'be' (i.e. not the helping verb) is 'do' as it is for any main verb, e.g. ... you eat everything for grandma and if you do, I'll... you work hard for grandma and if you do, I'll... This, of course, would be true for any of the main verb synonyms of the helping verbs. you have a good time, and if you do you do a good job, and if you do I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the choice of 'do.' Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From l-heilenman at UIOWA.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:29:54 1997 From: l-heilenman at UIOWA.EDU (Kathy Heilenman) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:29:54 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Hate to add to the confusion, but "You be good for Grandma, now, and if you are..." is exactly what *I* would say (grew up in Kentucky). The "do" sounds really, really odd. Kathy At 3:01 PM 4/17/97, Ellen L. Contini-Morava wrote: >Yup. >Ellen C-M > > >On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > >> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >> >> --David Tuggy >> L. Kathy Heilenman French & Italian U. of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 (319) 335-2253 L-HEILENMAN at UIOWA.EDU From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Thu Apr 17 20:02:38 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 16:02:38 EDT Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:01:03 -1000." <2.2.16.19970417090308.34772ec4@pop-server.hawaii.edu> Message-ID: >At 05:15 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: >>At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >>> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >>> >>> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >>> ice-cream cone. >>> >>> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >>> Anybody concur? >>I concur with Dave's judgment. > > >C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative >correctly using the simple form of a main verb. Since the verb is a main >verb, not a helping verb, 'do' is the correct choice here. That is, the >correct helping verb for main verb 'be' (i.e. not the helping verb) is >'do' as it is for any main verb, e.g. ... > >you eat everything for grandma and if you do, I'll... >you work hard for grandma and if you do, I'll... > >This, of course, would be true for any of the main verb synonyms of the >helping verbs. > >you have a good time, and if you do >you do a good job, and if you do > >I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the >choice of 'do.' > >Phil Bralich > >Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. >President and CEO >Ergo Linguistic Technologies >2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 >Honolulu, HI 96822 so i take it, philip bralich phd, that you find the following equally fine?: i am a linguist. if you do too... harry is sick and i do too. mary is at home but we don't. there's room in the margin, doesn't there? i'm more fond of liver than most people do. this isn't how your parser works, does it? extraordinary, how language varies... From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Thu Apr 17 20:17:06 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:17:06 CDT Subject: 2 bees Message-ID: David Tuggy wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? > > --David Tuggy Yes, to me "are" is not just pedantic in this discourse context. For me, it's the wrong pro-verb for [be good]. "Do" isn't quite the right pro-verb either. I don't think there is a good pro-verb. --Tony Wright From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 20:48:18 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:48:18 -0500 Subject: _bees_ (fwd) ARE ARE ARE Message-ID: I would use ARE, and DO sounds strange to me. So, some traditional approaches really don't capture what grammar is. >> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >I concur with Dave's judgment. you do a good job, and if you do I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the choice of 'do.' Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 21:06:25 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 16:06:25 -0500 Subject: Helping verbs? ellipsis. Message-ID: (I get ARE for the judgement previous) for a formalization of WHY, see below. David Gohre, Grad Student, Spanish/Portuguese Indiana University My opinions on TO BE, To be, in Standard English, functions as an auxiliary, rather than a main verb: Consider a complex Who/what/where question. +WH AUX SUBJ verb What did John do? Where do you live What is the solution 0 (zero) ?Who do you be (different from Standard English) *what does the solution be (ungrammatical in Standard English) This kind of data makes me conclude that "to be" is an auxiliary, not a main verb. ======================================================================= So, withOUT ellipsis of the "verb", I get (elided part in parenthesis) (1) You be (good for grandma), and if you are (good for grandma...) (the two parentheses are equal here) and not (2) You be (good for grandma), and if you do (be good for grandma...) (the two parentheses are not equal here. >>From my perceptional standpoint, the elided part of the sentence is/must be identical to a previous, spoken/realized part of the earlier sentence, therefore, I find that (1) above, with "ARE" is accepable, and (2) below is not. This is merely a formalization of my intuitions, I am not letting my "theory" cloud my judgement. I am from the Great lakes region, having lived there until age 25. WHILE I know that it's not a popular standpoint, especially on FUNKNET, the Mimimalist program's COPY AND DELETE is evolved from analyses like the above. For a treatment on "be" as an auxiliary, even as the sentence "I am sick", you can see the following reference. Pollock Jean Y.(1989) Universal grammar, Verb Movement, and the structure of IP Linguistic Inquiry, 20. Dave From malouf at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Thu Apr 17 21:32:59 1997 From: malouf at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Rob Malouf) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:32:59 -0700 Subject: Helping verbs? ellipsis. In-Reply-To: from "Dave" at Apr 17, 97 04:06:25 pm Message-ID: Unless I've missed something (and that's entirely possible), the whole point of the recent discussion about "be" has been that at least in some varieties of English there *is* a main verb "be", that means something like "act" or "behave". And, furthermore, in some varieties this main verb "be" even inflects like a regular main verb ("he bees..."). That's not to say that there's not also an auxiliary "be", or that all varieties English have this main verb "be", or that there aren't other "be"s that inflect regularly in other varieties of English. As far as I know, a main verb "be" wouldn't really create problems for any reasonale formal theory of grammar. But, a purely formal analysis of this would miss that fact that it's not just any of the many meanings of "be" that's starting to show up as a main verb. It's specifically the one with that's most prototypically verb-like in meaning (i.e., the one that's closest to a volitional action) that's showing more prototypically verb-like morphosyntactic properties. Rob Malouf malouf at csli.stanford.edu From clements at INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 22:31:52 1997 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 17:31:52 -0500 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Kathy Heilenman wrote: > Hate to add to the confusion, but "You be good for Grandma, now, and if you > are..." is exactly what *I* would say (grew up in Kentucky). The "do" > sounds really, really odd. I agree. I CAN'T say *do* here. I'm from the NW. Clancy Clements From PYOUNG at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Thu Apr 17 22:36:24 1997 From: PYOUNG at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Phil Young) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:36:24 -0700 Subject: _bees_: reply to Phil Bralich Message-ID: If Bralich is correct is his rather arrogantly stated assertion, then why does "are" sound so natural and correct to at least some of us native midwesterners? When I was told to be good, I did???? (Actually, sometimes I wasn't.) Phil Young From reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Thu Apr 17 22:46:51 1997 From: reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (P. Reich) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 18:46:51 -0400 Subject: me and John In-Reply-To: <199704172237.SAA18958@chass.utoronto.ca> Message-ID: In a small town several hours north of Toronto the school teachers are accepting sentences such as: Me and John are going to the store. Him and me are going to the store. The teachers claim that the nominative rule in the case of coordination constructions is old fashioned and obsolete. This makes me cringe when taught as standard English in the schools, yet the English grammars I have in my office are strangely silent on the topic of coordination in subjects with personal pronouns. As far as I can find, for example Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik say nothing, nor does Wardhaugh's "Understanding English Grammar." Does anyone have a textbook published in the last few years that comments on this? Peter A. Reich University of Toronto From DZIEGELE at VAXC.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU Fri Apr 18 00:27:50 1997 From: DZIEGELE at VAXC.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU (Debra Ziegeler) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:27:50 +1000 Subject: Bees again Message-ID: The use of 'do' in You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English). It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'. But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do others think? Debra Ziegeler From gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP Fri Apr 18 01:46:10 1997 From: gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP (Guy Modica) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:46:10 +0900 Subject: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics Message-ID: I can't help adding two more pieces of data: You were good for Grandma, and since you did, I'll buy you an ice-cream cone. We're approaching the limit of how functional linguistics can be, don't we? Cheers. Guy Modica gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp "Verbing weirds language." - Calvin (& Hobbes) From gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP Fri Apr 18 01:39:37 1997 From: gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP (Guy Modica) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:39:37 +0900 Subject: we bees be doing it again Message-ID: Astounding that no one in this thread has mentioned that the copula is a somewhat privileged verb in much of its syntactic behavior. "Do" is a proform for most verbs. You type, don't you. You shovel, do you You prevaracated, didn't you He typed, and when he did . . . They shoveled, and when they did . . . I prevaracated, and when I did . . . However, the proform of the copula is "be." She is a graduate, isn't she They were stoned, weren't they She will be a graduate, and when she is . . . They are stoned, and when they are . . . Ellen Prince (implicitly) pointed this out when replying to Philip Bralic's cursory "ordinary verb" comment. "Be" is not just another "main verb." (Not one of Bralic's "analogous" examples was stative, another feature of the copula.) I'll like to hear of some ideolects that have: She is a graduate, don't she They were stoned, didn't they She will be a graduate, and when she does . . . They are stoned, and when they do . . . Notice the contrast with a resultative verb like become: She becomes a graduate (next week), doesn't she They became stoned, didn't they She will become a graduate, and when she does . . . They become stoned, and when they do . . . So I agree with J. Clancy Clements and others that "are" is the choice for we. (Hi Clancy, I haven't seen you since the wonderful seminar on argument structure a few years back, when we ate Thai in Indiana!) Perhaps those who approve "do" for the Granny sentence see "to be good" as having some kind of resultative reading - a state of "goodness" is achieved, and when it do . . . Well, you get my point. :-) Guy Modica gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp "Verbing weirds language." - Calvin (& Hobbes) From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Fri Apr 18 02:05:27 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 19:05:27 -0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I had a course that covered myriad theoretical approaches to first language acquisition. It is very hard to do that -- each student was assigned one chapter/one approach. A "history of linguistics" would be good, and it is offered at UCLA periodically. PPK On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > No argument about THAT, if you reread me! Problem is: haven't the > students the right (and isn't it convenient for them as students) to be > given information as to a) other possible approaches, beside the one > preferred by the teacher, and b) the proper historical and scientific > frame to which refer the selected (imposed?) *modeling model*...? > > Max E. Figueroa > > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > > > > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > > below.. > > > > Pamela Price Klebaum > > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > > > > > Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking > > > linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, > > > useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that > > > mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and > > > apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, > > > without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a > > > different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the > > > "theory" imposed upon him... > > > > > > Best regards! Max > > > > > > On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > > > > > > > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > > > > > > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > > > > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > > > > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > > > > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > > > > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > > > > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > > > > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > > > > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > > > > worthwhile.' > > > > > > > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > > > > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > > > > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > > > > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > > > > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > > > > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > > > > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > > > > > > > --David Tuggy > > > > > > > > > > From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Fri Apr 18 02:08:27 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 19:08:27 -0700 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The "esoteric" was from the previous correspondence. How can you describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is yelling" without formalized rules? PPK On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Sydney M Lamb wrote: > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > > below.. [ref to message from Enrique Figueroa E.] > > An interesting assumption -- that modeling languages entails "esoteric > and highly formalized rules". Why do some people make this assumption? > Is there any evidence for it? (I don't think so.) (We do have evidence > that "highly formalized rules" provide ONE means of describing OUTPUTS of > linguistic systems.) > > Cheers, > --- Syd > From s_mjhall at EDUSERV.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Fri Apr 18 03:13:12 1997 From: s_mjhall at EDUSERV.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Michael Hall) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 13:13:12 +1000 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: >On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Kathy Heilenman wrote: > >> Hate to add to the confusion, but "You be good for Grandma, now, and if you >> are..." is exactly what *I* would say (grew up in Kentucky). The "do" >> sounds really, really odd. > >I agree. I CAN'T say *do* here. I'm from the NW. Clancy Clements > > Same here. I'm from Melbourne, Australia, and would "are" rather than "do". Michael Hall From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Fri Apr 18 04:48:13 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 18:48:13 -1000 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: At 10:02 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Ellen F. Prince wrote: >>At 05:15 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: >>>At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >>>> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >>>> >>>> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >>>> ice-cream cone. >>>> >>>> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >>>> Anybody concur? >>>I concur with Dave's judgment. >> >> >>C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative >>correctly using the simple form of a main verb. Since the verb is a main >>verb, not a helping verb, 'do' is the correct choice here. That is, the >>correct helping verb for main verb 'be' (i.e. not the helping verb) is >>'do' as it is for any main verb, e.g. ... >> >>you eat everything for grandma and if you do, I'll... >>you work hard for grandma and if you do, I'll... >> >>This, of course, would be true for any of the main verb synonyms of the >>helping verbs. >> >>you have a good time, and if you do >>you do a good job, and if you do >> >>I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the >>choice of 'do.' >> >>Phil Bralich >> >>Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. >>President and CEO >>Ergo Linguistic Technologies >>2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 >>Honolulu, HI 96822 > >so i take it, philip bralich phd, that you find the following equally fine?: First off, I think linguists and academics in general would get a lot farther if they could manage to leave the snide comments behind and focus on the discussions. A little professionalism would go a long way. Secondly, the structures below are as ordinary as the one's above. The correctness of 'do' in the above sentences is as unsurprising as the need for 'be' in your sentences. I just meant to say it is as obvious that 'do' is as required in the original imperative examples as it is with emphatic imperatives as the following do be good for grandma do have a good time do do your homework (though the double 'do' is a little stilted) It seems simple enough to assume that if the main verb be will allow a helping verb (which it usually doesn't) it will be the same helping verb as other main verbs as illustrated by these examples. The other two auxiliaries ('have' and 'do') also have main verb equivalents which take naturally take 'do' as a helping verb. Basically you use the main verb 'be' with helping verb 'do' when it is volitional but otherwise, it uses itself in a manner not unlike modals. What's the big deal? >i am a linguist. if you do too... >harry is sick and i do too. >mary is at home but we don't. >there's room in the margin, doesn't there? >i'm more fond of liver than most people do. >this isn't how your parser works, does it? >extraordinary, how language varies... I really don't see it that way. It seems to me patterns are more common than variation. But I suspect saying this is like begging a forest and trees debate between a ranger in a tower and a woodsman chopping. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Fri Apr 18 04:42:37 1997 From: M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Mark Durie) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:42:37 +1100 Subject: Transparence and ease of acquisition Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am looking for published studies which document a relationship between functional transparence and ease of acquisition. By transparence, I mean the degree to which structures have readily interpretable structures. (E.g. some case marking systems are functionally more opaque than others and might perhaps be acquired more slowly). Suggestions of things I can follow up are very welcome. Mark Durie ------------------------------------ From: Mark Durie Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics University of Melbourne Parkville 3052 Hm (03) 9380-5247 Wk (03) 9344-5191 Fax (03) 9349-4326 M.Durie at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/Dept/LALX/staff/durie.html From csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Fri Apr 18 09:41:44 1997 From: csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Chris Johns) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:41:44 +0100 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <01IHT0IVKWVQ006DSE@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? I would say that "do" sounds plain wrong, whereas "are" is fine. Chris Johns (Native speaker British English) From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Apr 18 14:15:59 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 09:15:59 -0500 Subject: Do be do be do Message-ID: Contrary to Chris Johns' intuitions > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an ice-cream cone. sounds perfectly normal to me. In fact, I think I have heard such sentences in my native (Oregon/Washington) dialect many times. To add anecdote to example sentences, when my elder daughter was 2 or 3, I yelled at her Behave! to which she replied I'm BEing have! Pinker reports "I am have!" as a variant of this. I am not sure what this proves vis-a-vis the adult grammar of _be_, but I suspect that it indicates a difference in the syntax and semantics of _be_ as a main verb versus _be_ as auxiliary. Carl From Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE Fri Apr 18 14:48:14 1997 From: Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE (H.J. Sasse) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:48:14 +0200 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE Germany The Philosophical Faculty of the University of Cologne announces the opening of a position for a PROFESSOR (C 3) OF FINNO-UGRIC STUDIES (tenured) The candidate should have a primary specialization in Finnish Linguistics (preferably including further languages of the Baltic-Finnic group) as well as in Finnish Literature and Area Studies. Responsibilities: Undergraduate and graduate teaching in Finnish Language and Literature, languages of the Baltic-Finnic group, Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Finnish Area Studies; student advisement, scholarly research; and Faculty committee assignments. A strong commitment to designing a study program and an official curriculum during the establishing phase of the new branch of Finno-Ugric studies at the University of Cologne is essential. Qualifications: Ph.D. and "habilitation" (or equivalent qualification) in Finnish and/or Finno-Ugric Studies, pedagogical ability, sufficient proficiency in the German language. The candidate should preferably be a native speaker of one of the Baltic-Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian,...). Candidates should send a cover letter, curriculum vitae, list of publications, list of courses taught, and documents on academic degrees and titles to the following address: Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultaet der Universitaet zu Koeln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-50923 Koeln. The University of Cologne is an EO employer. From Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE Fri Apr 18 15:30:11 1997 From: Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE (H.J. Sasse) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 17:30:11 +0200 Subject: [Fwd: job announcement] Message-ID: An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "H.J. Sasse" Subject: job announcement Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:48:14 +0200 Size: 1995 URL: From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Fri Apr 18 15:58:08 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:58:08 +0300 Subject: me and John Message-ID: 'Me and him went...' is just another step in the slow but steady conversion of English nominative pronouns into unstressed preverbal clitics, which can't be conjoined (as has already happened in French). Observe the following (judgments mine): It's me! (??It's I) Who wants to go? Me! (*I) Me, I don't think so. Of course, I think that there is no categorical rule disallowing stressed nominative pronouns for any adults that I know of, but things are definitely going in that direction. And I knew an 8-year-old native English speaker in Michigan who would consistently ask for things by saying, e.g. `I want a drink of water' but would fight for something by saying `ME want it, ME want it.' > In a small town several hours north of Toronto the school teachers are > accepting sentences such as: > > Me and John are going to the store. > Him and me are going to the store. > > The teachers claim that the nominative rule in the case of coordination > constructions is old fashioned and obsolete. > This makes me cringe when taught as standard English in the schools, yet > the English grammars I have in my office are strangely silent on the topic > of coordination in subjects with personal pronouns. > > As far as I can find, for example Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik say > nothing, nor does Wardhaugh's "Understanding English Grammar." > > Does anyone have a textbook published in the last few years that comments > on this? > > Peter A. Reich > University of Toronto From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 17:58:53 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 11:58:53 -0600 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks for answering! That's the spirit, I think: combining highly specialised theory+methodology (both in itself and applied to language analysis) with the historico-scientific frame --not, of course, within the same *course*, but within a *career* in linguistics--. I would also like to subscribe what I think was one, and probably the most important one, of Noel's original preoccupations: quite often, language analysis seems to be used as a *means to illustrate* (the application of) a certain *theory+methodology*, instead of centering upon languages themselves as the main interest of linguists (not only or so much *language*, *le langage*+*la langue*; but mainly *languages*, *les langues*) and considering, therefore, the alternative *theories+methodologies* as nothing else than *means* to attain that goal... Max From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 18:45:50 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 12:45:50 -0600 Subject: we bees be doing it again In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm not a native speaker-hearer of English, so no wonder that to my "prevaricational idiolect" the Granny's *do* sounds awful... I think, though, there may be some truth in the observation about *being good* being semantically interpreted as a process+result, in the sense of *behave well* or, even better, *attain the goal of well-behaving*... Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Guy Modica wrote: > Astounding that no one in this thread has mentioned that the copula is a > somewhat privileged verb in much of its syntactic behavior. "Do" is a > proform for most verbs. > > You type, don't you. > You shovel, do you > You prevaracated, didn't you > He typed, and when he did . . . > They shoveled, and when they did . . . > I prevaracated, and when I did . . . > > However, the proform of the copula is "be." > > She is a graduate, isn't she > They were stoned, weren't they > She will be a graduate, and when she is . . . > They are stoned, and when they are . . . > > Ellen Prince (implicitly) pointed this out when replying to Philip Bralic's > cursory "ordinary verb" comment. "Be" is not just another "main verb." (Not > one of Bralic's "analogous" examples was stative, another feature of the > copula.) > > I'll like to hear of some ideolects that have: > > She is a graduate, don't she > They were stoned, didn't they > She will be a graduate, and when she does . . . > They are stoned, and when they do . . . > > Notice the contrast with a resultative verb like become: > > She becomes a graduate (next week), doesn't she > They became stoned, didn't they > She will become a graduate, and when she does . . . > They become stoned, and when they do . . . > > So I agree with J. Clancy Clements and others that "are" is the choice for > we. (Hi Clancy, I haven't seen you since the wonderful seminar on argument > structure a few years back, when we ate Thai in Indiana!) Perhaps those who > approve "do" for the Granny sentence see "to be good" as having some kind > of resultative reading - a state of "goodness" is achieved, and when it do > . . . > > Well, you get my point. :-) > > Guy Modica > gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp > > "Verbing weirds language." > - Calvin (& Hobbes) > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 18:48:03 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 12:48:03 -0600 Subject: Bees again In-Reply-To: <01IHUIMTFSG68WYEZH@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: In Spanish, for one, we normally say "(Com-)portate bien" or "Se bueno", with preference for the former in most varieties, I should say. Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Debra Ziegeler wrote: > The use of 'do' in > You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream > > does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English). > > It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy > analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'. > > But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine > a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning > 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do > others think? > > Debra Ziegeler > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 19:17:47 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 13:17:47 -0600 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970417101528.006ab21c@saluki-mail.siu.edu> Message-ID: Sorry, but I don't quite see why a stative verb would not tolerate an imperative, as in "Be here!" (in the sense of "Stay here, don't move!", not in the more usual sense implying movement, i.e., "Come (and therefore be) here!". Same thing with "Be quiet!", which may imply, or not, that previously the addressee was not being quiet: ="stay quiet" or "become quiet" ("stop making noise or talking")... Max On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: > At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: > > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > > ice-cream cone. > > > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > > Anybody concur? > I concur with Dave's judgment. > Furthermore, I seem to remember a paper back in the glory days of > generative semantics about DO as an abstract underlying verb encoding > volition, or agenthood (of the subject) or some such. I think it was > written by Haj. It seems to me that uses such as 'be good' are non-stative > (which is why they can occur with the imperative and/or > progressive--another Generative Semantics argument), and hence heading > towards more prototypical verb-hood. Prototypical verbs, of course, encode > actions rather than states. > I think this ties in, somehow, with the regularization of the inflection > (bee-s), and relates also to the issue that Kiparsky and others have > written about on the relation between derived meanings and regular > morphology (the Toronto Maple Leafs debate). > > Geoff > > Geoffrey S. Nathan > Department of Linguistics > Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, > Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA > Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527 > +618 549-0106 (Home) > From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Fri Apr 18 20:29:27 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:29:27 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Pamela Price Klebaum writes, > . . . How can you > describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is > yelling" without formalized rules? > Ans: In any number of ways: charts, diagrams, ordinary prose. But the more important question is: What does such an exercise have to do with language as it is used by real people?, or as it is learned by children?, or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic system come from the linguistic system, not from other outputs. (By the way, has any real human being ever actually said "the man who is caling is yelling"?.) Cheers, Syd From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 21:47:24 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:47:24 -0600 Subject: Mail failure (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:44:00 -0400 From: CAMBRIDGE/EXCHANGE/POSTMASTER To: "Enrique Figueroa E." Subject: Mail failure [005] The mail retry count was exceeded sending to CAMBRIDGE/CAMBRIDGE. [008] Unable to deliver mail due to mailbag contention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: Re[2]: _bees_ Date: 1997-04-18 15:17 Priority: 3 Message ID: F8D178B307B8D011B07E006097329DF4 Sorry, but I don't quite see why a stative verb would not tolerate an imperative, as in "Be here!" (in the sense of "Stay here, don't move!", not in the more usual sense implying movement, i.e., "Come (and therefore be) here!". Same thing with "Be quiet!", which may imply, or not, that previously the addressee was not being quiet: ="stay quiet" or "become quiet" ("stop making noise or talking")... Max On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: > At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: > > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > > ice-cream cone. > > > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > > Anybody concur? > I concur with Dave's judgment. > Furthermore, I seem to remember a paper back in the glory days of > generative semantics about DO as an abstract underlying verb encoding > volition, or agenthood (of the subject) or some such. I think it was > written by Haj. It seems to me that uses such as 'be good' are non-stative > (which is why they can occur with the imperative and/or > progressive--another Generative Semantics argument), and hence heading > towards more prototypical verb-hood. Prototypical verbs, of course, encode > actions rather than states. > I think this ties in, somehow, with the regularization of the inflection > (bee-s), and relates also to the issue that Kiparsky and others have > written about on the relation between derived meanings and regular > morphology (the Toronto Maple Leafs debate). > > Geoff > > Geoffrey S. Nathan > Department of Linguistics > Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, > Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA > Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527 > +618 549-0106 (Home) > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 21:49:16 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:49:16 -0600 Subject: Mail failure (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:26:00 -0400 From: CAMBRIDGE/EXCHANGE/POSTMASTER To: "Enrique Figueroa E." Subject: Mail failure [005] The mail retry count was exceeded sending to CAMBRIDGE/CAMBRIDGE. [008] Unable to deliver mail due to mailbag contention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: we bees be doing it again Date: 1997-04-18 14:45 Priority: 3 Message ID: 4DD278B307B8D011B07E006097329DF4 I'm not a native speaker-hearer of English, so no wonder that to my "prevaricational idiolect" the Granny's *do* sounds awful... I think, though, there may be some truth in the observation about *being good* being semantically interpreted as a process+result, in the sense of *behave well* or, even better, *attain the goal of well-behaving*... Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Guy Modica wrote: > Astounding that no one in this thread has mentioned that the copula is a > somewhat privileged verb in much of its syntactic behavior. "Do" is a > proform for most verbs. > > You type, don't you. > You shovel, do you > You prevaracated, didn't you > He typed, and when he did . . . > They shoveled, and when they did . . . > I prevaracated, and when I did . . . > > However, the proform of the copula is "be." > > She is a graduate, isn't she > They were stoned, weren't they > She will be a graduate, and when she is . . . > They are stoned, and when they are . . . > > Ellen Prince (implicitly) pointed this out when replying to Philip Bralic's > cursory "ordinary verb" comment. "Be" is not just another "main verb." (Not > one of Bralic's "analogous" examples was stative, another feature of the > copula.) > > I'll like to hear of some ideolects that have: > > She is a graduate, don't she > They were stoned, didn't they > She will be a graduate, and when she does . . . > They are stoned, and when they do . . . > > Notice the contrast with a resultative verb like become: > > She becomes a graduate (next week), doesn't she > They became stoned, didn't they > She will become a graduate, and when she does . . . > They become stoned, and when they do . . . > > So I agree with J. Clancy Clements and others that "are" is the choice for > we. (Hi Clancy, I haven't seen you since the wonderful seminar on argument > structure a few years back, when we ate Thai in Indiana!) Perhaps those who > approve "do" for the Granny sentence see "to be good" as having some kind > of resultative reading - a state of "goodness" is achieved, and when it do > . . . > > Well, you get my point. :-) > > Guy Modica > gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp > > "Verbing weirds language." > - Calvin (& Hobbes) > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 21:49:58 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:49:58 -0600 Subject: Mail failure (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:44:00 -0400 From: CAMBRIDGE/EXCHANGE/POSTMASTER To: "Enrique Figueroa E." Subject: Mail failure [005] The mail retry count was exceeded sending to CAMBRIDGE/CAMBRIDGE. [008] Unable to deliver mail due to mailbag contention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: Bees again Date: 1997-04-18 14:48 Priority: 3 Message ID: 20D278B307B8D011B07E006097329DF4 In Spanish, for one, we normally say "(Com-)portate bien" or "Se bueno", with preference for the former in most varieties, I should say. Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Debra Ziegeler wrote: > The use of 'do' in > You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream > > does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English). > > It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy > analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'. > > But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine > a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning > 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do > others think? > > Debra Ziegeler > From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Sat Apr 19 00:02:32 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 19:02:32 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in certain frameworks. Dave Gohre > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Sat Apr 19 01:37:31 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:37:31 -0700 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This has a lot to do with the real world. My rea of interest is children as witnesses, and the syntactic issues that make the understanding of questions/utterances problematic, resulting in a communication problem. Strong crossover, weak crossover, passive, all these things matter. As for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. PPK On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Sydney M Lamb wrote: > > Pamela Price Klebaum writes, > > . . . How can you > > describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is > > yelling" without formalized rules? > > > > Ans: In any number of ways: charts, diagrams, ordinary prose. But the > more important question is: What does such an exercise have to do with > language as it is used by real people?, or as it is learned by children?, > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic > system come from the linguistic system, not from other outputs. > > (By the way, has any real human being ever actually said "the man who is > caling is yelling"?.) > > Cheers, > Syd > From dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Sat Apr 19 01:47:59 1997 From: dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Diego Quesada) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 21:47:59 -0400 Subject: Frameworks vs. the human mind In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > certain frameworks. Because someone else, rather accurately, had written: > > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic There are "frame-works" that can show you that (Lat.) /audio/ is the "underlying synchronic" form of Spanish [oygo] 'I hear'... Morale: A framework can tell you whatever you want to hear (to make it work... and the cycle goes on), but people's minds is something different from frame-works (that happen to be in some people's minds!) J. Diego Quesada University of Toronto From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Sat Apr 19 01:48:29 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:48:29 -0700 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:29:27 -0500 (CDT) From: Sydney M Lamb To: PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM Cc: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: esoteric and highly formalized rules Pamela Price Klebaum writes, > . . . How can you > describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is > yelling" without formalized rules? > Ans: In any number of ways: charts, diagrams, ordinary prose. But the more important question is: What does such an exercise have to do with language as it is used by real people?, or as it is learned by children?, or as it is represented in people's minds? " In people's ordinary use of language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic system come from the linguistic system, not from other outputs." Ever study conversation? People of all ages make questions out of the prior speaker's utterances all the time. ANSWER: Father talking/reading to daughter: "The bear who is in the biggest chair is mad." Child: " Is the bear who's in the biggest chair going to hurt Goldilocks?" (By the way, has any real human being ever actually said "the man who is caling is yelling"?.) ANSWER: What are you asking? The structure can be used and is in many forms: in a cigarette ad: "the man who is smoking is killing himself" -- how do you describe how to do the computation which forms a question out of that Syd From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 04:30:34 1997 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 23:30:34 -0500 Subject: Frameworks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > > certain frameworks. Are rules then totally 'out'? Or could it be said that they are at least good approximations for certain patterns in certain cases (though not always and without any 'deep', 'cosmic' theoretical status)? My perspective is that of a descriptivist. I do wonder about how the mind works, and how exactly people can get the sentences they use. But... in terms of describing a language, writing a grammar... Has any theory got a better way of describing e.g. the English NP 's NP possessive construction that via a rule or diagram (regardless of what *really* goes on in the speaker's mind)? It sometimes seems to me that there are (many?) different endeavors that get mixed in linguistics-- e.g. that of describing the grammar of an unknown language, that of finding 'universal patterns' and accounting for them, that of explaining how speakers can 'do language' the way they do (taking e.g. neurology or psychology into account). Maybe these things should be kept separate more clearly. Sergio Meira From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:10:48 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:10:48 -0400 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules Message-ID: > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > certain frameworks. > Dave Gohre Dave, that's about like saying that humans are derived (or descended) from monkeys. I mean, even in theories that derive structures synchronically from other structures. I'm not sure what the right analogy would be for functionalists. Maybe like saying that humans are derived from dinosaurs. Jon ---------------------------------------- Jon Aske jaske at abacus.bates.edu http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/ From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:19:57 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:19:57 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > certain frameworks. > > Dave Gohre > A good reason to seriously question the validity of such frameworks. From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 15:20:51 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 09:20:51 -0600 Subject: Frameworks vs. the human mind In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Beware hocus-pocus lx! Also beware God's truth lx! The question is ideed crucial, difficult and practically infinitely discussable! I'd try putting it this way: Are "esoteric and highly formalised rules" (sorry and ashamed to admit the phrasing was mine, originally, though I didn't even dream such an unheaval would come out of it!) THE LINGUIST'S *REPRESENTATION* or THE LINGUIST'S *EXPLANATION* (or, perhaps, *EXPLICATION*)? One other thing should be clear, thoguh: as TG points out to me (in a recent private message regarding the same discussion), there IS (and there CANNOT NOT BE) a THEORY necessarily implied in every linguist's approach to any (no matter how punctual aspect of) language. Max (PS. I'm not taking sides here, just trying to shed some light on what I think should be *one* of the cruxes of the ongoing discussion.) On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Diego Quesada wrote: > On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > > > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > > certain frameworks. > > Because someone else, rather accurately, had written: > > > > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > > > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > > > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic > > There are "frame-works" that can show you that (Lat.) /audio/ is the > "underlying synchronic" form of Spanish [oygo] 'I hear'... > > Morale: > A framework can tell you whatever you want to hear (to make it > work... and the cycle goes on), but people's minds is something > different from frame-works (that happen to be in some people's > minds!) > > > J. Diego Quesada > University of Toronto > From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:28:17 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:28:17 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > . . . As > for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. > No. Charts, prose, rules, etc. all reflect either linguistic structure or outputs of ling structure, depending on the orientation of the linguist. And neither the structure nor the outputs is built of rules. From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:34:30 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:34:30 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > . . . > Ever study conversation? People of all ages make questions out of the > prior speaker's utterances all the time. > A highly mechanistic (i.e. anti-mentalistic) point of view, somewhat reminiscent of Bloomfield. I think the questions come from the conceptual systems of the people who form them. From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 15:54:22 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 09:54:22 -0600 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Voila! This dialogue reflects very weel what I have just pointed out in a previous message! RULES 1= a set of "commands" acually underlying language itself (in people's minds) ... versus... RULES2= a set of (the linguist's) "representations" of the "output"... RULES3= [NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH RULES1!!] the linguist's attempt at reproducing, modeling or interpreting the alleged RULES1... Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sydney M Lamb wrote: > On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > > . . . As > > for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. > > > > No. Charts, prose, rules, etc. all reflect either linguistic structure > or outputs of ling structure, depending on the orientation of the linguist. > And neither the structure nor the outputs is built of rules. > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 17:04:01 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:04:01 -0600 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules (fwd) Message-ID: Good sample (see my reply to it, which is not a reply, but a comment) of WHY this kind of discussion about "esoteric and highly formalised rules" (my phrasing, British spelling included!) SHOULD be a central part of the linguist-to-be's warming-up! For, allow me to remind you all, the expression was originally used by me RE the role of theory and the role of a historical frame and (the role of) the RIGHT od lx students to be presented a variety of theoretical alternatives during their basic courses before plunging into ONE of them! It's indeed good and healthy to have such a discussion within FUNKNET! It would be "gooder" and healthier to have it, as a regular component, in the BASIC FORMATION OF EVERY LX STUDENT!!! Max E. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:28:17 -0500 From: Sydney M Lamb To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: esoteric and highly formalized rules On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > . . . As > for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. > No. Charts, prose, rules, etc. all reflect either linguistic structure or outputs of ling structure, depending on the orientation of the linguist. And neither the structure nor the outputs is built of rules. From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 17:24:08 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:24:08 -0600 Subject: bees In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A very late comment! Funny how this use of "bees" echoes in my mind the Czech (Slavic, more generally put) opposition of the verbs *by:t* (to be) / *by:vat* (to usually be). The latter would be used by Czechs Jan je nemocny: (John is [now] sick) Jan by:va: nemocny: (John "bees" sick = John is usually [often] sick) Sorry for the late interruption of the argument! Max On Sun, 6 Apr 1997, Matthew S Dryer wrote: > Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in > > "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." > > My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she > bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates > like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I > have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), > do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his > first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts > sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the > verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in > imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good > boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with > such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a > volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like > "act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if > such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect > that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. > > For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the > validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might > be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, > for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular > verb "be". > > Has this phenomenon been discussed in the literature at all? > > Matthew Dryer > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 17:45:00 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:45:00 -0600 Subject: BE/BECOME//HAVE ( RE: BEES) Message-ID: Looking back in anger... "Be good and, if you do, Granny'll buy an ice-cream" BE=BECOME (any comments on that?) HAVE: What ab out the prescriptive British reusal to use DO as a proverb for HAVE, as against the American usage? ("Do you have a pe ncil? VS Have you a pencil?) BE/HAVE: How about comparing all the ink that has flowed (and flown?) on BE-DO with the status quo of HAVE (as, say, for one, an auxiliary verb ~ a modal in HAVE TO, etc.)? Just provoking! Max From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sat Apr 19 20:26:04 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 16:26:04 -0400 Subject: Structure-dependency & the Wall St. Journal Message-ID: Folks, One thing Brian said in his posting I agree with: structure-dependency/rules-kinds of issues are not going to be resolved on a b-board. There is a rich literature on this. On the other hand, there are some simple questions to ask. If Chomsky claimed that children are not exposed to data on structure dependency, he would be wrong, as Pullum might have shown in his BLS article (I doubt that Chomsky can be accurately said to have claimed this). But let's say that such a gross factual error was made. It turns out, then, that children *are* exposed to sufficient data to draw the correct generalizations about structure-dependency. But what does this mean? What is it that children learn about structure-dependency? They learn embedding, based on notions of main clauses and subordinate clauses (or any label for those things you care to give). How do they do this? By trial and error? If that were the case, then Chomsky really would be wrong. Is there evidence that children err in acquiring their language on the side of linearity, rather than configuration? Chomsky's point was and is that configuration is a much more abstract and difficult concept than linear order. Therefore, it is curious, so Chomsky's argument runs, that children do not err in placing subordinate verbs first in yes/no questions, rather than main verbs, since subordinate verbs would be favored by linearity. Of course, there is an potential response (which readers of this list will be aware of), namely, that children use semantics, not syntax in forming questions, so that the linearity/configurationality issue Chomsky raises might be a red herring. But this is a hard issue in itself - to show, for example, how the semantics and syntax match up. The crucial issue in Chomsky's story is that a behavioristic approach is wrong. That is, there seems to be no convincing evidence that children learn syntax, morphology, or phonology by trial and error (they *do* learn discourses this way, though - one of the significant differences between discourse-level generalizations and sentence-level generalizations). There is something they know when they start learning grammar. And whatever this is, it keeps them from making some fairly easy to imagine errors. So it seems pretty specific. (But maybe it's not. It is something more specific than what a rock, tree, or bat knows, but less specific than what an adult knows. There is a lot of room there. Some of Hume's footnotes make the same points, with very unChomsky-like conclusions.) In any case, Pullum's reading of the Wall St. Journal has nothing to say about any of this, so far as can be told from Brian's report of it. -- DLE From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Sat Apr 19 22:32:56 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 15:32:56 -0700 Subject: easily imagined errors (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 17:03:16 -1246124 From: Brian MacWhinney To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: easily imagined errors The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Never never never? I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. This all started with Max's question about why students are not exposed to differing linguistic theories and then given the opportunity to choose to explore what they wanted. We have talked/written about the necessity of a "grammar" which describes something and how it can be written, and if that necessitates "rules" in some form or another. "Semantic structure" is some form of rules, yes? As I wrote before, I am interested in children as witnesses in the legal system, and problems that arise out of the child not understanding the questions, problems involving the inability or difficulty in understanding questions or statements -- children as young as three are "processed" in the legal system -- There is a need to describe the "grammar" in order to help those who engage in this (legal/justice/forensic) field -- what works, what does not -- and please don't write that the audience will not understand the terminology; I know that -- but to conduct the research, I need to work with a construct. I know we are not going to solve the logical problem of language acquisition in email. PPK From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 00:59:27 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 20:59:27 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: <85184.3070458196@jubilation.psy.cmu.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > these "easy > to imagine errors" are not actually ones that ever occurred to the child. > The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding > declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Because of > this, the linear movement or transformation generalization was not one that > the child was considering in the first place. Brian, I never said that this is what happened. My point is independent of such an approach (although I think that you and the several previous email messages are somewhat incorrect - neither Chomsky nor most other generative linguists believe that the interrogative is formed from the declarative. However, there is solid evidence that both involve displaced constituents. These may be accounted for derivationally or representationally, the choice is irrelevant for my arguments. Also, for my arguments it is irrelevant whether you accept the statement about displaced constituents. The point is that the child knows/learns structure. > I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in > a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. I never said this either. This is one possibility (that the child uses semantics). The other is Chomsky's - that the child uses syntax or a combination of syntax and semantics. This is an empirical issue. > To explore this, we > don't need the hard examples. We can just look at a sentence like "Is > Daddy coming?" There is a pretty rich child language literature on the > development of questions. For this type of question, there appears to be a > stage when the aux is missing and we have just "Daddy coming?" The > intonation is there, as is the verb and the subject. Only later, it > appears, does the child add the aux. I think this path makes sense. The > most uniform, reliable marker of the question across types in English is > the intonation. That gets mapped first, along with the core proposition. > Then the embroidery gets added later. The aux wasn't moved, it was just > added. When we get to the harder examples, the story is the same, since > the complex-NP subject is a cognitive unit the child doesn't look to it for > the required aux. This is a very simple story, Brian. Sounds plausible. The problem you are going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The "cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sun Apr 20 02:41:35 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 22:41:35 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: > The point is that the child knows/learns structure. But what, may I ask, is "structure"? I'm mesmerized. First you get rid of the *meaningful* relations which bind elements together into "structure". And then when you notice that elements are bound together somehow, you wonder how that can be. Don't you see the inconsistency here? The child learns absolutely zero "structure" independent of the meanings associated with that structure. > little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. > The "cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. And the empty categories and other hocus pocus categories and structure are not hand waving, right? And about this business about the "complexities of structure-dependency". This stuff only seems complex because you try to look at it without taking function into consideration. Once you look at functions, everything starts to make sense, for the linguist and for the learner. Sure you can't reduce form to meaning. Nobody's trying to do that though, as you well know. Jon From wilcox at UNM.EDU Sun Apr 20 02:40:28 1997 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 20:40:28 -0600 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: On 4/19/97 6:59 PM, Daniel L. Everett said, >The problem you are >going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too >little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The >"cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. I'm reminded of something Clifford Geertz said many years ago: "To set forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human mind, or vast, a priori _weltanschauungen_, is to pretend a science that does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found." According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this is merely hand-waving. Sherman Wilcox Dept. of Linguistics University of New Mexico From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 03:15:56 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 21:15:56 -0600 Subject: Gedankenexperiment Message-ID: Let's (if you please)imagine a language in which, as linguists optimally equipped with "esoteric and highly formalised" techniques and theories+methods find out, to their utmost surprise and bewilderment... ASSERTIONS (DECLARATIVES) ARE DERIVED FROM QUESTIONS!!!! Once their amazement is somehow subdued, they reason more or less this way: "Well, after all, humankind, especially children, is all full of (unanswered) questions! So it's only natural they come biologically and cognitively equipped with a system of rules to form questions and only at a later stage do they develop the (innate?) capacity to form assertions..." If we can imagine -just for a second- such a "fact", then we might -just might- also imagine a language in which... ASSERTIONS AND QUESTIONS, THOGUH CLEARLY RELATED TO EACH OTHER IN MORE THAN ONE WAY (for it's not only a matter of rules, of course), ARE FORMED ("GENERATED") INDEPENDENTLY FROM EACH OTHER, or, to put a bit differently, are both derived from one basic and single pattern... So, instead of ASSERTIONS QUESTIONS WE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING LIKE: BASIC PATTERN QUESTIONS ASSERTIONS etc. (Please supply the connecting lines!) Max From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 03:48:54 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 21:48:54 -0600 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As usual, I won't take sides with this or the other school or sect, but... The comments included herein seem to me (as well as a child's linguistic behaviour, at least in many, many languages) conclusive as to this fact: the basic pattern is the same both for questions and assertions and could even remain the same for both in some languages or varieties of a certain language... The difference (which I attribute to a semantic-communicative need of the child) springs at some stage and basically consists of different intonation patterns. Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > > > these "easy > > to imagine errors" are not actually ones that ever occurred to the child. > > The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding > > declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Because of > > this, the linear movement or transformation generalization was not one that > > the child was considering in the first place. > > Brian, I never said that this is what happened. My point is independent > of such an approach (although I think that you and the several previous > email messages are somewhat incorrect - neither Chomsky nor most other > generative linguists believe that the interrogative is formed from the > declarative. However, there is solid evidence that both involve displaced > constituents. These may be accounted for derivationally or > representationally, the choice is irrelevant for my arguments. Also, for > my arguments it is irrelevant whether you accept the statement about > displaced constituents. The point is that the child knows/learns structure. > > > > I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in > > a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. > > I never said this either. This is one possibility (that the child uses > semantics). The other is Chomsky's - that the child uses syntax or a > combination of syntax and semantics. This is an empirical issue. > > > > To explore this, we > > don't need the hard examples. We can just look at a sentence like "Is > > Daddy coming?" There is a pretty rich child language literature on the > > development of questions. For this type of question, there appears to be a > > stage when the aux is missing and we have just "Daddy coming?" The > > intonation is there, as is the verb and the subject. Only later, it > > appears, does the child add the aux. I think this path makes sense. The > > most uniform, reliable marker of the question across types in English is > > the intonation. That gets mapped first, along with the core proposition. > > Then the embroidery gets added later. The aux wasn't moved, it was just > > added. When we get to the harder examples, the story is the same, since > > the complex-NP subject is a cognitive unit the child doesn't look to it for > > the required aux. > > This is a very simple story, Brian. Sounds plausible. The problem you are > going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too > little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The > "cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 04:15:16 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 22:15:16 -0600 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My vote (both hands up!) goes to Aske and Geertz!! Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > On 4/19/97 6:59 PM, Daniel L. Everett said, > > >The problem you are > >going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too > >little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The > >"cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. > > I'm reminded of something Clifford Geertz said many years ago: "To set > forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material > complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence > to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human > mind, or vast, a priori _weltanschauungen_, is to pretend a science that > does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found." > > According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be > merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when > Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can > support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but > also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this > is merely hand-waving. > > Sherman Wilcox > Dept. of Linguistics > University of New Mexico > From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Sun Apr 20 04:31:57 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:31:57 -0500 Subject: The discovery of Pluto Message-ID: Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. They called it Pluto So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated something, then they found it. (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, in my opinion. (this goes both ways). How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? Dave From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 05:04:31 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:04:31 -0600 Subject: The discovery of Pluto In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Congrats, Dave, for your astronomic contribution! I hope we shall all take it as seriously as it is meant and deserves to be (taken)! There are indeed many readings of your comment: one is this DON'T SHUT YOURSELF INTO THE PRETENTIOUS AND ARROGANT SHELL OF YOUR OWN CONCEPTIONS! ""DO BE" OPEN TO YOUR COLLEAGUES' IDEAS!! And I, once more, vote both hands up for that (and also for the students' right to be presented "the whole picture")!!! Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune > and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was > causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said > "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They > found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. > They called it Pluto > > So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated > something, then they found it. > > (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display > of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a > falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what > happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) > at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? > > Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human > adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? > > Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't > even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about > here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, > in my opinion. (this goes both ways). > > How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we > don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? > > Dave > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 06:14:54 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 00:14:54 -0600 Subject: worlds... and deontics Message-ID: Perhaps in an ideal First World scenario it would seem to be (not actually be, mind m' words!) OK to devote each Department, Faculty or even University to a certain, unique (in the sense of "sole") SECT of "E&HFLx" ["esoteric and highly formalised linguistics"]. In such a world, each and every student would have regular everyday access to electronic lists, the WWW, etc... and, THEREFORE (therefore??!!), this circumstance would allow what one might call a "fast-track specialisation", given the fact that individuals are (hypothetically) abe to "look into" various discussion-lists, etc. Why, students would in fact CHOOSE a certain Dpt., etc., because of their PREVIOUS readings, "eyes-dropping" into lists, etc. So, no problem whatsoever with their RIGHTS...! Now, seriously, is that the actual situation: a) throughout the planet b) in the foremost "First World" world? Nay! We all know it ain't! And even if it were (/was), would that free us, teachers, from the obligation of giving them, students, a wide picture of the "whole picture"...? Max From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Sun Apr 20 07:47:40 1997 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 02:47:40 -0500 Subject: The discovery of Pluto In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: [The Discovery of Pluto] > Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune > and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was > causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said > "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They > found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. > They called it Pluto > Hmmm... Actually, Pluto's mass is far inferior to what it should have been for the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus and Neptune to be what they are. In fact, Pluto is *not* a good explanation for the problems that astronomers had; another one was needed (some people even still believe there's a tenth planet responsible for the orbital irregularities of the outer planets, and that Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto was a coincidence...). A better example would actually be the discovery of Neptune, based on Adam's and Leverrier's predictions concerning the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus (that had already been noted by Herschell himself, I believe). > So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated > something, then they found it. > (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display > of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a > falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what > happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) > at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? > No. And if subjects are postverbal rather than preverbal, there is no need to postulate a new theory of linguistics. However, if the > Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human > adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? > > Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't > even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about > here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, > in my opinion. (this goes both ways). > > How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we > don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? > > Dave > From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 11:02:09 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 07:02:09 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sherman, Since I enjoy Geertz's writing, I thank you for the quote. Let me just comment on the interpretational richness of your comment on my comment, though: On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > > According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be > merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when > Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can > support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but > also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this > is merely hand-waving. I never said anything about true knowledge. I certainly do not think I have it (at least not in linguistics). Nor do I think Chomsky has it. Brian and the "cognitive units" hypothesis might well be right. But the point about hand-waving here (and in general when it is encountered in the literature) is just this: Aside from the fact that the linguistic situation is much more complex than Brian's analysis allows, when you get down to justifying the notion of cognitive unit, you will find that it cashes out in terms of syntax. In fact, I would agree that there is a cognitive unit here, in fact there are lots of them in sentences - they are called phrases. Syntactic units just are cognitive units (at least in Chomsky's theory of syntax). So to say that something is not syntax, but that it's "cognitive", is self-contradictory, unless the notion "cognitive unit" can be given enough content to handle the kinds of facts that exercise full-time syntacticians. These facts are almost always grossly oversimplified by psychologists looking at language (and lots of linguists too). But I do not discount a priori the possibility that there could be a theory which successfully eliminates syntax. I just have not seen anything like one yet. DLE From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sun Apr 20 15:05:48 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 11:05:48 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: Dan, What exactly do you mean by "eliminating syntax"? I ask this because I get the feeling that this is how formalists dismiss the functionalist perspective, ie by saying: those guys want to "eliminate syntax". I mean, they could say: those guys want to enrich syntax, but they don't. So this question is important. Do you mean eliminating intermediate stages between meaning at one end and utterances at the other (straw-man functionalism)? Or do you mean eliminating form-form relationships among constructions? I think most functionalists would agree that form-meaning associations are made at the level of constructions, which are supposedly cognitive units. You may then hypothesize that some constructions are cognitively related to other constructions, or you may not, and you may argue about the type of relationship that exists between different constructions, eg content questions and statements. In other words, the grammatical units in which form and meaning are conventionalized are constructions (just like the lexical units in which that happens are lexemes), and constructions, just like all other signs, have a meaningful pole and a formal pole. The functionalists' claim is that the two cannot be separated. My question is: is that "eliminating syntax"? Jon >>cashes out in terms of syntax. In fact, I would agree that there is a cognitive unit here, in fact there are lots of them in sentences - they are called phrases. Syntactic units just are cognitive units (at least in Chomsky's theory of syntax). So to say that something is not syntax, but that it's "cognitive", is self-contradictory, unless the notion "cognitive unit" can be given enough content to handle the kinds of facts that exercise full-time syntacticians. These facts are almost always grossly oversimplified by psychologists looking at language (and lots of linguists too). But I do not discount a priori the possibility that there could be a theory which successfully eliminates syntax. I just have not seen anything like one yet.<< DLE From Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE Sun Apr 20 15:14:28 1997 From: Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE (H.J. Sasse) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 17:14:28 +0200 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "H.J. Sasse" Subject: Re: [Fwd: job announcement] Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 17:12:30 +0200 Size: 2104 URL: From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 16:57:01 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:57:01 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: <01BC4D7A.D8F33E60@abacus.bates.edu> Message-ID: Jon, There is a large range of functionalist positions and a range of formalist positions. Most of the literature on constructions, syntax, etc. I see in the functionalist literature seems quite reasonable and convincing to me. Talking about eliminating syntax is not something I see as a general property of functionalism (any more than eliminating cognition or semantics is a part of formalism). In fact, I think that as we are all doing our honest best to understand language, we probably agree more than we disagree. But there is a slight danger in analyses of structures like "Daddy home" --> "Is Daddy home" in terms of addition to cognitive units if by that one means something other or more basic than a syntactic unit. That could lead to a naive view that syntax is somehow epiphenomenal. But, if noone took that view and if I mistakenly attributed it to Brian or anyone else, then there is no problem. I do not have any 'straw man' view of functionalism. I think that functionalism is a vital approach to understanding language and grammar. But there is as much danger of functionalists trivializing the many things to be learned from formalism and formalism ignoring function. I think that, more and more, the divide is less rigid. Most intelligent people realize that you need both. Givon certainly does. So does Lakoff. (And perhaps no models better illustrate this than Optimality Theory and LFG.) -- DLE From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 17:02:10 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:02:10 -0400 Subject: need for hooks In-Reply-To: <4208235.3070529413@jubilation.psy.cmu.edu> Message-ID: Brian, Don't see anything to quarrel about in your last message. My only concern was the idea that I picked up that by calling something a cognitive unit you somehow thought that you had explained or avoided the syntax. I do not disagree with any of your last posting, however. Except one thing: I see no movement in the Minimalist Program towards more incorporation of functionalist principles. It is true that what Chomsky calls 'bare output conditions' could be thought of as functionalist principles (and probably ought to be), the history of the field makes me doubt whether there will be much in common to be found there. (I have a fairly negative review of the Minimalist Program coming out in Language in or around Dec.) -- DLE From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sun Apr 20 17:43:54 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:43:54 EDT Subject: need for hooks In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:50:13 -1244." <4208235.3070529413@jubilation.psy.cmu.edu> Message-ID: brian, while i agree with the spirit of everything you say, i must chime in that all the work i know of re restrictive relatives involves definite heads. (please correct me if i'm wrong -- i'd be very interested!) in a study i did on relatives in english and yiddish, restrictive and nonrestrictive, gap-containing and resumptive pronoun, definite and indefinite headed, it turned out that certain restrictives (more or less indefinite headed) function to a degree like nonrestrictives (typically definite) while having the same syntax (at least the gap-containing kind) as definite restrictives. in particular, and relevant to your post, indefinite restrictives do *not* distinguish members of a contrast set. they typically introduce a hearer-new entity and predicate (hearer-new, of course) information about that entity. nonrestrictives typically evoke a hearer-old entity and predicate hearer-new info about that entity. and, in these terms, definite restrictives -- the kind everyone thinks of -- evoke a member of a hearer-old set of entities and specify hearer-old info about that entity that distinguishes it from the other members of the set. i presume it is these that you are calling 'cognitively unitized', not the indefinite headed restrictives, right? of course i'm oversimplifying here -- formal definiteness is not the cause, only a statistical correlation with the different functional types of restrictive relatives. the reference is: Prince, E.F. 1990. Syntax and discourse: a look at resumptive pronouns. In Hall, K. et al., eds. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Pp. 482-97. it's d/l'able from my web site: http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/~ellen/home.html i'd be very very interested in any feedback, incl hearing about any relevant work. >The idea that restrictive relative clauses are composed of material that >has been cognitively unitized is pretty far from hand-waving. >Psycholinguistic research from the 60s and 70s by Rommetveit and Turner, >Clark, Krauss and Glucksberg showed how restrictive relatives are used to >distinguish members of a contrast set. Typological work by Givon, Keenan, >Comrie, and others demonstrated asymmetries in relativization types that >matched up well with underlying functional characteristics. In more recent >psycholinguistic work, Bock and her colleagues have explored processes >which allow previously mentioned material to form the kernel of further >utterances. Bock has focused on passives and datives. Earlier, Levelt >looked at question structures. The message from this work on what Bock >calls syntactic persistence is that the use of a syntactic pattern in >previous discourse tends to make it available as unit for further >processing. > >Many of the syntactic phenomena that revolve around constraints on raising >from relatives emerge rather directly from these facts. I can't remember >ever having thought or said that syntax should be eliminated. I consider >syntax a wonderful, complex, and fascinating fact of nature. I simply >believe, like Geertz, Wilcox, and Aske, that it should be explicated. In >particular, I think that syntacticians have a responsibility to the rest of >the linguistic community to make their analyses more penetrable to >explication. This can be done by including "hooks" in syntactic theory to >concepts and constructs that match up with what we know about language >processing and use. The treatment of restrictive relative clauses >discussed in some of the previous messages is a prime example of a >construction for which such a "hook" is needed. > >Like computer programs that have hooks, theories that have hooks have to be >designed in a way that supports communication between disciplinary >"modules". For example, the theory of syntax would need to support hooks >for things from psychology like cognitive unitization, syntactic >persistence, memory strings, construction generalization, and the like. >Including hooks to these objects would markedly alter the shape of >syntactic theory. It would definitely not make syntax disappear. However, >it would allow syntacticians, functionalists, and psycholinguists to >communicate and collaborate more effectively. I'm not sure that it would >bring us to the point of using syntactic theory to make statements about >children as expert witnesses, but it might get closer. > >I have been told that the increased role of logical form in minimalist >syntax may represent a movement in this direction. It would be interesting >if that were the case. > >--Brian MacWhinney From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 20 20:01:38 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:01:38 -0700 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: Structure dependence in grammar can (if we choose to look at it with an open mind) be viewed as a language-specific instantiation of some very general principles of part-whole relationships and object constancy that permeate all of perception, cognition and motor planning. From that point of view, it is perhaps less surprising that children come into language development biased to acquire mappings that preserve structure dependence. -liz bates From TIMHAU at SARA.CC.UTU.FI Mon Apr 21 09:55:41 1997 From: TIMHAU at SARA.CC.UTU.FI (TIMO HAUKIOJA) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:55:41 GMT+0200 Subject: Saying A and meaning not-A Message-ID: ** Esa Itkonen asked me to post the following for him. Please direct all correspondence to him at eitkonen at utu.fi. ** - Timo Haukioja ************************************************************** It has been a central claim on the generative side that language-acquisition can take place on the basis of NO evidence. As McWhinney points out, Pullum has shown that in a representative case this is not true; the evidence is there. To this Everett replies that it does not matter. The really important fact (i.e. 'fact') is that language-acquisition concentrates on syntax only; of course, some people might say that semantics is involved too, but these are difficult questions which should be discussed in some other context. What is going on here? If generativists claim that the evidence is not there, surely it is relevant to find out that it IS there. (This means that the original claim is FALSE.) It is also relevant to learn that the semantics ALWAYS there, i.e. that a purely formal learning never occurs. (For arguments, see the section 'Learning forms without meanings' in my 'Concerning the generative paradigm', Journal of Linguistics 1996.) By taking into account semantics and some general analogical capacity, cases that seem to support the innateness hypothesis can be explained away (see Itkonen & J. Haukioja: 'A rehabilitation of analogy in syntax (and elsewhere)' in the 1997 Kertesz book.) I repeat: What is going on here? I tell you what. The generativists claimed that language-acquisition can take place without evidence and that it is about syntax. Both claims have turned out to be false. They know it, but they can't admit it. Esa Itkonen From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Mon Apr 21 10:48:22 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:48:22 -0400 Subject: Saying A and meaning not-A In-Reply-To: <01IHYORPPL1090VNMJ@sara.cc.utu.fi> Message-ID: Folks, To take a line from "Cool Hand Luke", what we have here is a failure to communicate - big time. Let me attempt some answers. On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, TIMO HAUKIOJA wrote: > ** Esa Itkonen asked me to post the following for him. Please > direct all correspondence to him at eitkonen at utu.fi. ** > - Timo Haukioja > > ************************************************************** > > > It has been a central claim on the generative side that > language-acquisition can take place on the basis of NO evidence. Really? this is news to me. Throughout the history of Generative Grammar the role of the environment in triggering and shaping the grammar has been acknowledged. What comes to the environment known, not learned, are the constraints on the range of grammars allowed. This is the standard position. > As > McWhinney points out, Pullum has shown that in a representative case > this is not true; the evidence is there. To this Everett replies > that it does not matter. Does anyone really think that Chomsky or any generative linguist is really so silly as to paint him/herself into a corner by saying that grammar *must* be aquired without evidence? My reply on the "discovery" that children are exposed to evidence wrt their grammar is not only that it is not a problem for Chomksy but that it is expected. > > What is going on here? If generativists claim that the evidence is > not there, surely it is relevant to find out that it IS there. (This > means that the original claim is FALSE.) There never was any such claim. > It is also relevant to > learn that the semantics ALWAYS there, i.e. that a purely formal > learning never occurs. Nobody ever said this either. No generativist would ever claim that semantics is irrelevant. Just that the syntax is underdetermined by the semantics, i.e. that there is syntax. What are you reading for heaven's sake? > > I repeat: What is going on here? I tell you what. The generativists > claimed that language-acquisition can take place without evidence > and that it is about syntax. Both claims have turned out to be > false. They know it, but they can't admit it. > > Esa Itkonen > Do you really think that there are people this stupid, this intransigent, this dishonest in the field? Tsk. Tsk. Well it is either that or your understanding of generative grammar is not quite, umh, accurate. The latter is a hard conclusion to avoid. DLE From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Mon Apr 21 14:17:01 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:17:01 -0500 Subject: HAVE/BE Message-ID: In his recent post, Max mentioned the variants >HAVE, as against the American usage? >("Do you have a pe ncil? VS Have you a pencil?) In my nonstandard (one of the "me and John" dialects) dialect we say Do you got a pencil? Keep on provoking. Carl From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Mon Apr 21 20:48:06 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 14:48:06 -0600 Subject: HAVE/BE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanx, but I can't: I've been practically forbidden to bombard Funknet with short messages and have no extensive message to send for the moment... So, I'll have to lurk, as so many others do! Max On Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Carl.Mills at UC.EDU wrote: > In his recent post, Max mentioned the variants > > >HAVE, as against the American usage? > > >("Do you have a pe ncil? VS Have you a pencil?) > > In my nonstandard (one of the "me and John" dialects) dialect we say > > Do you got a pencil? > > Keep on provoking. > > > Carl > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 22 02:50:21 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 20:50:21 -0600 Subject: Le deluge! Re: The discovery of Pluto (fwd) Message-ID: Le message qui a declenche l'interdiction! Pour tous ceux qui ont ete aussi gentils de me demander qu'est-ce qui se passe... Adieu (pour le moment)! Max E. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:04:31 -0600 (MDT) From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Dave Cc: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: The discovery of Pluto Congrats, Dave, for your astronomic contribution! I hope we shall all take it as seriously as it is meant and deserves to be (taken)! There are indeed many readings of your comment: one is this DON'T SHUT YOURSELF INTO THE PRETENTIOUS AND ARROGANT SHELL OF YOUR OWN CONCEPTIONS! ""DO BE" OPEN TO YOUR COLLEAGUES' IDEAS!! And I, once more, vote both hands up for that (and also for the students' right to be presented "the whole picture")!!! Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune > and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was > causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said > "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They > found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. > They called it Pluto > > So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated > something, then they found it. > > (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display > of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a > falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what > happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) > at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? > > Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human > adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? > > Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't > even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about > here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, > in my opinion. (this goes both ways). > > How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we > don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? > > Dave > From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Tue Apr 22 02:56:56 1997 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 19:56:56 -0700 Subject: linguistics wars Message-ID: It seems that every so often another one of these generativists-vs.-functionalists debates gets going on Funknet (or Linguist); people talk at cross-purposes for awhile, argue about terminology, etc.; then the debate fades away. Does anyone ever go away with a changed mind? Generativist theories of lg. acquisition claim that the range of languages a child can learn is constrained by _innate_ __syntactic__ structure. Therefore, children only need sufficient evidence to figure out which of the possible grammars they are encountering. I believe this is the claim that functionalists disagree with. I think (you all correct me if I'm wrong) most functionalists would agree that children are born with _something_ _innate_ that constrains the types of grammars they can learn, but that this something is not modularly __syntactic__. It is related to (or may consist solely of) semantic and possibly more general innate predispositions concerning cognition. Hence the consistent appeals to semantics and more-general processing strategies by functionalists. As to evidence, we need to sort out what kind of evidence can falsify the generativists' claim, whether that evidence has been presented or not, and, if it has, whether anybody is ignoring it because they are too firmly attached to their theoretical position. I can't speak authoritatively on these issues. I think that Dan Everett should be cautious when saying that Givon and Lakoff both think syntax is necessary. I think they wouldn't agree that __autonomous__ syntax is supportable. This whole discussion got started because of questions about rules and formalisms (those old bugbears). I am wondering how familiar contributors to the discussion are with network models of knowledge of language (a la Langacker, Bybee, Hudson and Lamb) and the fact that rules can be read off of the network via schematization at ever more abstract levels, plus the connections that reside in the network between experienced forms/meanings and others that share features of form/meaning. Rules do not have to be listed separately from their outputs (they are immanent within them), yet are always available for the computation of novel structures. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubba at oboe.aix.calpoly.edu ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Apr 22 03:44:13 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 23:44:13 EDT Subject: linguistics wars In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 21 Apr 1997 19:56:56 PDT." Message-ID: johanna rubba wrote: >It seems that every so often another one of these >generativists-vs.-functionalists debates gets going on Funknet (or >Linguist); people talk at cross-purposes for awhile, argue about >terminology, etc.; then the debate fades away. Does anyone ever go away >with a changed mind? > >Generativist theories of lg. acquisition claim that the range of >languages a child can learn is constrained by _innate_ __syntactic__ >structure. Therefore, children only need sufficient evidence to figure >out which of the possible grammars they are encountering. > >I believe this is the claim that functionalists disagree with. I think >(you all correct me if I'm wrong) most functionalists would agree that >children are born with _something_ _innate_ that constrains the types of >grammars they can learn, but that this something is not modularly >__syntactic__. It is related to (or may consist solely of) >semantic and possibly more general innate predispositions concerning cognition . >Hence the consistent appeals to semantics and more-general processing >strategies by functionalists. since we're playing out this periodic ritual, let me recite my standard contribution: there are many (e.g. me and a number of others on this list) who concern themselves with function and who find the point of view presented in your second paragraph above to be the most reasonable one around. in answer to your first paragraph, i suspect no one changes his/her beliefs around here -- but it would be nice if we updated our meta-beliefs about who believes what. From yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU Tue Apr 22 03:59:10 1997 From: yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU (Yoko Okita) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 21:59:10 -0600 Subject: linguistics wars Message-ID: I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic information?? =========================================================== Yoko Okita $BBgKLMU;R (J Asian Studies G9300 The University of Texas at Austin http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~yokita/welcome.html From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 22 04:35:44 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 22:35:44 -0600 Subject: linguistics wars In-Reply-To: <199704220402.XAA26963@piglet.cc.utexas.edu> Message-ID: Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: "Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" Some others (dissidents, of course), this: "Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" The Incurable Provoker (Sorry, folks, couldn't resist it!) (I'm NOT responding to private responses to this one...) Bye-bye! On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. > But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." > What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? > =========================================================== > Yoko Okita $BBgKLMU;R (J > Asian Studies G9300 > The University of Texas at Austin > http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~yokita/welcome.html > From matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI Tue Apr 22 14:19:14 1997 From: matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI (Matti Miestamo) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 17:19:14 +0300 Subject: SKY 1996 Yearbook Message-ID: SKY 1996 (The Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland) (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Elise Ka"rkka"inen, 176 pp.) is now available! Table of Contents: Marja-Liisa Helasvuo: A Discourse Perspective on the Grammaticization of the Partitive Case in Finnish Tuomas Huumo: On the Semantic Function of Domain Instrumentals Esa Itkonen: Is there a 'Computational Paradigm' within Linguistics? Ritva Laury: Pronouns and Adverbs, Figure and Ground: The Local Case Forms and Locative Forms of the Finnish Demonstratives in Spoken Discourse Arja Piirainen-Marsh: Face and the Organization of Intercultural Interaction Eeva-Leena Seppa"nen: Ways of Referring to a Knowing Co-participant in Finnish Conversation (Price USD 20 / FIM 100 plus shipping&handling) Also available: SKY 1993 (Ed. by Susanna Shore and Maria Vilkuna, 272 pp.) GENERAL SECTION: Deirdre Wilson & Dan Sperber: Pragmatics and Time Laurence R. 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The Hidden Ideology of the Persian Gulf War Pa"ivi Autio: Source Indication as a Persuasive Strategy in News Reporting Heli Huttunen: Pragmatic Functions of the Agentless Passive in News Reports of the 1990 Helsinki Summit Tomi Palo: Metaphors They Live By: Metaphorical Expressions in the Context of the Soviet Crisis 1991 DISCUSSION AND SQUIBS: Martti Nyman: Mental Strain and Abstract Characterization Timo Haukioja: Language, Parameters, and Natural Selection. (Price USD 14 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) SKY 1994 (Ed. by Susanna Shore and Maria Vilkuna, 192 pp.) John Harris & Geoff Lindsey: Segmental Decomposition and the Signal Harry van der Hulst: An Introduction to Radical CV Phonology Pirkko Kukkonen: Consonant Harmony Markku Filppula & Anneli Sarhimaa: Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Parallels and Contact-Induced Change Marja Leinonen: Interpreting the Perfect: the Past as Explanation Martti Nyman: All You Need is What the System Needs? (Price USD 14 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) SKY 1995 (Ed. by Tapio Hokkanen, Marja Leinonen and Susanna Shore, 208 pp.) GENERAL SECTION: Tuomas Huumo: Bound Domains: A Semantic Constraint on Existentials Tarja Riitta Heinonen: Null Subjects in Finnish: from Either-Or to More-Or-Less Lea Laitinen: Metonymy and the Grammaticalization of Necessity in Finnish Merja Koskela: Variation of Thematic Structure within a Text Maija Gro"nholm: Wo"rter und Formen in Finnischen als Zweitsprache: wachsen sie Hand in Hand? Esa Penttila": Linguistic Holism with Special Reference to Donald Davidson SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION: Esa Itkonen: A Note on Explaning Language Change Martti Nyman: On Dialect Split and Random Change (Price USD 14 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) For ordering information please contact: The Linguistic Association of Finland c/o General Linguistics PL 4 00014 University of Helsinki FINLAND or by e-mail: meri.larjavaara at helsinki.fi ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel, @ stands for 'a Swedish o', an 'a' with a small circle on it. ) From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 21 14:19:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:19:00 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Phil Bralich wrote: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative >correctly using the simple form of a main verb. ... >I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the >choice of 'do.' Must be something at least a little mysterious: respondents so far are divided about half and half between finding "do" just plain wrong and agreeing with me that (for them) it's probably more likely than "are". For myself, I'm conscious of (mysteriously) feeling like "are" *ought* to be right, but I doubt I'd ever say it unless I was carefully watching my speech. Also, note that non-volitional "be" doesn't produce "do": You'll probably be a couple of inches taller by the end of summer, and if you are/**do I'll get you a new dress. I've also noticed that "do" is an even stronger choice, for me, when it's negative: You be good/quiet: If you don't/**aren't I'll send you to your room. David Tuggy ***************************************************************** **If the human mind were simple enough to understand, we'd be too simpleminded to understand it.** (Corollary: it is, and we are. Or, maybe, it isn't and we still are. In any case, not *It does and we do.) ***************************************************************** From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 21 14:31:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:31:00 -0500 Subject: _bees_: reply to Phil Bralich Message-ID: Phil Young suggested the sentence >When I was told to be good, I did???? (Actually, sometimes I wasn't.) I agree, "did" sounds really bad here. A bare "was" is still pretty awkward for me, though. I think I'd just avoid the construction, maybe saying something like "I did as I was told/what they told me" or "I WAS good". By the way, everybody's been saying where their dialect is from. For what it's worth ... I grew up in So. America, my grandparents were from Colorado and California, my parents had gone to school as teenagers in S. Carolina. Mom is very careful to use "correct" speech, so many pedantries are natural for me. Since I was 5 or so I've read constantly, nearly as much in English as in American authors. So what's my dialect? David Tuggy From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Tue Apr 22 17:54:23 1997 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 10:54:23 -0700 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: I have finally sorted out a problem that was preventing me from posting to FUNKNET. I wanted to join the ranks of those who find 'are' grammatical and 'do' ungrammatical in the 'if you ___' slot. I can, however, like totally see how someone would find 'do' grammatical. And since when does a verb (viz., 'be') have to be in either one category or another? One of the major points of cognitivist linguistics is that category membership is not .. well, categorical! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubba at oboe.aix.calpoly.edu ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Thu Apr 24 02:54:59 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 12:54:59 +1000 Subject: innate Message-ID: yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic >information?? I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. Chris From dgohre at INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 24 06:36:43 1997 From: dgohre at INDIANA.EDU (david gohre) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 01:36:43 -0500 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240254.MAA26495@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: Yes, you yourself haven't said anything... > yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: > > >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > >information?? > > I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. > > Chris > From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Thu Apr 24 06:59:17 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:59:17 +1000 Subject: innate Message-ID: david gohre writes: >Yes, you yourself haven't said anything... I don't use the word...I read biology. I want to hear it explained by someone who does use in linguistics. Chris From E.Dabrowska at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK Thu Apr 24 10:33:11 1997 From: E.Dabrowska at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK (E.Dabrowska) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 11:33:11 +0100 Subject: bees Message-ID: Here's one I heard on 'How do they do that?' last night (the question was addressed to a Queen Elizabeth look-alike, who was pretty good at 'being the Queen') "How do you do that? How do you be the Queen?" I wonder whether any of the people who found "You be good for Grandma, and if you do, I'll buy you an ice-cream" unacceptable would accept this. There seems to be no other way of saying it... Ewa Dabrowska Department of English Language and Linguistics University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN From 6500ptb0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU Thu Apr 24 14:39:37 1997 From: 6500ptb0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU (Paul T Barthmaier) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 07:39:37 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240659.QAA27580@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > I don't use the word...I read biology. So, in biology the term innate doesn't exist? > I want to hear it explained by someone who does use in linguistics. Because _innate_ is a hot word that can easily be misinterpreted, I don't use the word either. However, my understanding is that there are 2 types of innateness, one that just about everyone agrees on, and one that splits the field in two. The first one says that the ability for humans to produce speech sounds is an innate faculty. The second more divisive reading of innate says that not just the ability to produce the sounds, but the organizing principles, or the grammars, are also hardwired into the human. Personally, I can accept the first interpretation, but see no reason to accept the second. For this reason, I tend not to use the term at all. Paul From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Thu Apr 24 15:34:48 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 11:34:48 EDT Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 24 Apr 1997 07:39:37 PDT." Message-ID: excuse me, but i thought that all the research on asl of the past few decades has shown that, whatever the human language faculty is, it is NOT dependent on anything to do with 'speech sounds'. >On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > >> I don't use the word...I read biology. > >So, in biology the term innate doesn't exist? > >> I want to hear it explained by someone who does use in linguistics. > >Because _innate_ is a hot word that can easily be misinterpreted, I don't >use the word either. However, my understanding is that there are 2 types >of innateness, one that just about everyone agrees on, and one that splits >the field in two. The first one says that the ability for humans to >produce speech sounds is an innate faculty. The second more divisive >reading of innate says that not just the ability to produce the sounds, >but the organizing principles, or the grammars, are also hardwired into >the human. > Personally, I can accept the first interpretation, but see no >reason to accept the second. For this reason, I tend not to use the term >at all. > >Paul From bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA Thu Apr 24 18:00:47 1997 From: bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA (Bill Turkel) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 11:00:47 -0700 Subject: Innate Message-ID: 'Innate' 1: Given the distribution of an attribute in an adult population, and knowledge of who mates with whom, we can predict the distribution of the attribute in the offspring population. Crucially, no mention of the role of experience or other environmental factors. 'Innate' 2: The essential nature of something; derived from the mind rather than experience, etc. Given the potential for confusion between the two meanings, it is probably best not to use the word if it can be avoided. In addition to MacWhinney's list of references, see also papers by Vargha-Khadem and colleagues (e.g., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (1995) 92(3):930-933), Sokal and colleagues (American Naturalist (1990) 135(2):157-175, and Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues. Bill Turkel From reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Thu Apr 24 20:19:04 1997 From: reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (P. Reich) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:19:04 -0400 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240254.MAA26495@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: I, for one don't. I believe we contain the ability to relate sequences of input and to relate these sequences to the external and internal environment--i.e., to make connections from, for example, sound to meaning. The need to have more built in was due to the need, according the Chomsky and followers, to learn a system of rules that was not produceable by a finite state device. That assumption was false, the falacious argument leading to it was discussed in my 1969 paper "Finiteness of Natural Language" in Language, which paper was never refuted by Chomsky et al. The implication is that syntax is learnable, thus does not have to be built in. --Peter Reich, University of Toronto On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: > > >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > >information?? > > I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. > > Chris > From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Fri Apr 25 00:16:37 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn, Linguistics, CU Boulder) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 17:16:37 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240254.MAA26495@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: Nobody I know of, including people who have been cited as making such claims in the past, now holds this strong a position, because it is so biologically unlikely. Most of the properties of an organism that are demonstrably under strong genetic control nevertheless involve the interaction of multiple genes. On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: > > >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > >information?? > > I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. > > Chris > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 01:05:43 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 19:05:43 -0600 Subject: Innate In-Reply-To: <199704241800.LAA14825@babel.hivnet.ubc.ca.cdnhiv.edu> Message-ID: I hope everyone will take appropriate notice of this important distinction. I would consider necessary, however, to subdivide Innate 2 (or, else, to explicitly discriminate its nuances): not everything "innate 2" is related to the *mind*. This might seem trivial, but I reckon it isn't... Max On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Bill Turkel wrote: > 'Innate' 1: Given the distribution of an attribute in an adult population, > and knowledge of who mates with whom, we can predict the distribution > of the attribute in the offspring population. Crucially, no mention > of the role of experience or other environmental factors. > > 'Innate' 2: The essential nature of something; derived from the mind rather > than experience, etc. > > Given the potential for confusion between the two meanings, it is probably > best not to use the word if it can be avoided. > > In addition to MacWhinney's list of references, see also papers by > Vargha-Khadem and colleagues (e.g., Proceedings of the National Academy > of Sciences USA (1995) 92(3):930-933), Sokal and colleagues (American > Naturalist (1990) 135(2):157-175, and Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues. > > Bill Turkel > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 24 23:52:44 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:52:44 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Nobody I know of, including people who have been cited as making such >claims in the past, now holds this strong a position, because it is so >biologically unlikely. Most of the properties of an organism that are >demonstrably under strong genetic control nevertheless involve the >interaction of multiple genes. In response to Lise's point, I enclose the following quote from Gopnik and Crago (1991), a followup in Cognition to the earlier letter to Nature by Gopnik (1990). "It is not unreasonable to entertain an interim hypothesis that a single dominant gene controls for those mechanisms that result in a child's ability to construct the paradigms that constitute morphology" (p. 47). Along the same lines (though without a SINGLE gene claim), I enclose the following rather lengthy quote from a 1996 chapter by Ken Wexler, which contains very strong claims about innateness of language and the maturational nature of change, together with a view of plasticity that is certainly a minority view today (most developmental neurobiologists view plasticity as the primary mechanism of normal brain development, not some bizarre exception that holds only under unusual circumstances). Following Wexler are a few quotes from Chomsky's Managua Lectures (1988), rather clear statements, I think, of a very strong and literal version of innateness. -liz bates "One of the major results of the study of language acquisition in recent years, I believe, is the demonstration that children's language conforms to UG [Universal Grammar] in many essential respects.....At the same time, there has been evidence that certain aspects of UG mature (i.e. develop according to a general human program, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by experience; Borer & Wexler, 1987, 1992; Wexler, 1990a). The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological program, either before or after birth. The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). >>From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based theory of language acquisition." In Mabel Rice (Ed.), Towards a genetics of language. Mahwah, Ner Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996, 113-144. (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. MIT Press, 1988): ³The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less by training, in the course of our experience² (p. 161) ³Now this illustrates a very general fact about biology of organs. There has to be sufficiently rich environmental stimulation for the genetically determined process to develop in the manner in which it is programmed to develop....The term for this is ³triggering²; that is, the experience does not determine how the mind will work but it triggers it, it makes it work in its own largely predetermined way.² (p. 172). ³How can we interpret [Plato's] proposal in modern terms? A modern variant would be that certain aspects of our knowledge and understanding are innate, part of our biological endowment, genetically determined, on a par with the elements of our common nature that cause us to grow arms and legs rather than wings. This version of the classical doctrine is, I think, essentially correct.² (p. 4) ³Turning to still more general principles, it is reasonable to speculate that the possibility of forming complex constructions with an embedded clausal complement involves no learning at all. Rather, this possibility is simply available as a principle of the language faculty.² (p. 17) From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 03:23:30 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 21:23:30 -0600 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Liz Bates wrote: > >Nobody I know of, including people who have been cited as making such > >claims in the past, now holds this strong a position, because it is so > >biologically unlikely. Most of the properties of an organism that are > >demonstrably under strong genetic control nevertheless involve the > >interaction of multiple genes. > > In response to Lise's point, I enclose the following quote from Gopnik and > Crago (1991), a followup in Cognition to the earlier letter to Nature by > Gopnik (1990). > > "It is not unreasonable to entertain an interim hypothesis that a single > dominant gene controls for those mechanisms that result in a child's > ability to construct the paradigms that constitute morphology" (p. 47). > > Along the same lines (though without a SINGLE gene claim), I enclose the > following rather lengthy quote from a 1996 chapter by Ken Wexler, which > contains very strong claims about innateness of language and the > maturational nature of change, together with a view of plasticity that is > certainly a minority view today (most developmental neurobiologists view > plasticity as the primary mechanism of normal brain development, not some > bizarre exception that holds only under unusual circumstances). Following > Wexler are a few quotes from Chomsky's Managua Lectures (1988), rather > clear statements, I think, of a very strong and literal version of > innateness. -liz bates > At the same time, > there has been evidence that certain aspects of UG mature (i.e. develop > according to a general human program, as opposed to being guided in a > detailed way by experience; Borer & Wexler, 1987, 1992; Wexler, 1990a). > Please notice the extremely cautious (and tricky?) expressions "general human program" and "in a detalied way". I would say that there has (also?) been evidence that certain aspects of language acqusisition, development and actual linguistic behaviour are due to and explainable by the general interaction of the individual with the social milieu, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by a 9genetic) biological program. The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that > underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual > charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological > program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the > environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might > affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is > uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, > genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some > aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. > Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological > program, either before or after birth. > > The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study > of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term > is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent > variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major > discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it > is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is > considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a > biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & > Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). > > >From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based > theory of language acquisition." >As for Chomsky's open avowal of his Platonic views: > > (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. > MIT Press, 1988): > �The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental > aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined > as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less > by training, in the course of our experience� (p. 161) May I propose an inversion such as this? The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental aspects of our apparently biological (such as sexual behaviour) and mental such as cognitive processes) life, including language, are largely determined as part of our social interaction, not inherited via genetic inheritance, still less innately possessed qua members of the human species. Further inversions of the cited line of reasoning can be easily made and would be, at least, equally sound and convincing. Max > From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Fri Apr 25 04:32:14 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 00:32:14 EDT Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 24 Apr 1997 21:23:30 MDT." Message-ID: so how come dogs raised in a home with people don't speak? is it that humans discriminate against them and so their social interaction isn't rich enough? and would you also say that a bee's communication system (dance) is likewise explainable by its social milieu? or would you accord a bee a greater genetic endowment than a human? "Enrique Figueroa E." wrote: >Please notice the extremely cautious (and tricky?) expressions "general >human program" and "in a detalied way". >I would say that there has (also?) been evidence that certain aspects of >language acqusisition, development and actual linguistic behaviour are >due to and explainable by the general interaction of the individual with >the social milieu, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by a >9genetic) biological program. > > > > >The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that >> underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual >> charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological >> program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the >> environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might >> affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is >> uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, >> genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some >> aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. >> Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological >> program, either before or after birth. >> >> The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study >> of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term >> is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent >> variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major >> discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it >> is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is >> considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a >> biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & >> Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). >> >> >From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based >> theory of language acquisition." >>As for Chomsky's open avowal of his Platonic views: > >> (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. >> MIT Press, 1988): >> �The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental >> aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined >> as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less >> by training, in the course of our experience� (p. 161) > >May I propose an inversion such as this? > >The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental >aspects of our apparently biological (such as sexual behaviour) and >mental such as cognitive processes) life, including language, are >largely determined as part of our social interaction, not inherited via >genetic >inheritance, still less innately possessed qua members of the human >species. > >Further inversions of the cited line of reasoning can be easily made and >would be, at least, equally sound and convincing. > >Max > From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Fri Apr 25 05:31:45 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:31:45 +0300 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: For, e.g. 'Is daddy coming?' my 5-year-old daughter has been saying 'Right daddy's coming?' (with the right intonation) for I think at least 6 months now, steadfastly resisting all efforts to teach her inversion. This was preceded for a considerable length of time by 'What, daddy's coming?' (again with the right intonation). She seems to be assuming that the way to form questions is by prefixing an invariant particle ('right' or 'what') and changing the intonation (like e.g. Japanese 'ka', except that 'ka' comes at the end of the clause). In discussing how children learn this construction, you do not say that researchers have noticed this strategy, but my daughter seems to be quite taken with it. Is she pathological, or have researchers just not noticed that this is how some young children try to ask questions? John Myhill >Dan, > I agree. It is true that the fact that Chomsky was wrong about the facts >concerning the distribution of data to derive the structure-dependency >generalization does not mean that the rest of Chomsky's argument is wrong. >It is true that, as you and Chomsky say, there is something that "keeps >children from making some fairly easy to imagine errors." But these "easy >to imagine errors" are not actually ones that ever occurred to the child. >The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding >declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Because of >this, the linear movement or transformation generalization was not one that >the child was considering in the first place. > I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in >a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. To explore this, we >don't need the hard examples. We can just look at a sentence like "Is >Daddy coming?" There is a pretty rich child language literature on the >development of questions. For this type of question, there appears to be a >stage when the aux is missing and we have just "Daddy coming?" The >intonation is there, as is the verb and the subject. Only later, it >appears, does the child add the aux. I think this path makes sense. The >most uniform, reliable marker of the question across types in English is >the intonation. That gets mapped first, along with the core proposition. >Then the embroidery gets added later. The aux wasn't moved, it was just >added. When we get to the harder examples, the story is the same, since >the complex-NP subject is a cognitive unit the child doesn't look to it for >the required aux. > >--Brian MacWhinney From wilcox at UNM.EDU Fri Apr 25 05:34:02 1997 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 23:34:02 -0600 Subject: innate Message-ID: So somewhere between dogs not speaking, single genes controlling morphological paradigms, and certain aspects of linguistic behavior being due to the social environment lies the truth. I guess we have the biology of language pretty well nailed down. -- Sherman Wilcox From rmanns at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK Fri Apr 25 11:03:55 1997 From: rmanns at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK (Manns Rachel) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 12:03:55 +0100 Subject: Linguistics Abstracts Message-ID: If you haven't done so already - sign up now for the FREE trial of LINGUISTICS ABSTRACTS ON-LINE Edited by Terry Langendoen, University of Arizona Simply visit the following URL - http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/labs Linguistics Abstracts Online is designed to revolutionise your research and teaching by giving you immediate access via the internet to abstracts from virtually all linguistics articles published since 1985. Easy to access and simple to use, you can search by any combination of journal, title, subject, date, author, or keyword to get the results you need. You will find Linguistics Abstracts Online indispensible for: * Conducting quick, accurate and comprehensive research * Writing papers * Preparing teaching materials for your students * Compiling bibliographies and checking references * Keeping up to date with emerging trends and important developments in the field We would welcome your views and ideas so that we can make this service meet your research needs more precisely. For more information please contact: Emma Barham, Blackwell Publsihers Journals, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK, tel: +44 (0) 1865 791100, fax: +44 (0) 1865 793147, email: ebarham at blackwellpublishers.co.uk From Phlete_Teachout at ESD.TRACOR.COM Fri Apr 25 11:22:25 1997 From: Phlete_Teachout at ESD.TRACOR.COM (Phlete_Teachout at ESD.TRACOR.COM) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 07:22:25 -0400 Subject: innate Message-ID: Did anyone else notice the small article about the results of mixing chicken and quail DNA in this month's Scientific American? When the eggs hatched, some of the hatchlings (would these be 'quicks' (quail+chicks)?) exhibited quail characteristics - quail-like bobbing and quail vocalizations. Wouldn't this imply that, in some animals at least, vocalization is genetically directed? Disclaimer: I am not a biologist or a linguist. - fleet - phlete_teachout at esd.tracor.com ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: innate Author: Sherman Wilcox at ESD Date: 4/24/97 11:34 PM So somewhere between dogs not speaking, single genes controlling morphological paradigms, and certain aspects of linguistic behavior being due to the social environment lies the truth. I guess we have the biology of language pretty well nailed down. -- Sherman Wilcox From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Apr 25 13:38:44 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 06:38:44 -0700 Subject: Fieldwork in Alaska Message-ID: This request was sent by Andrej Kibrik, who is not a current Funknet subscriber. Please respond directly to Andrej. Thanks! -- Tom Payne From: Andrej Kibrik To: Funknet Re: Sociolinguistic Questionnaire Dear Colleagues, I am currently doing linguistic fieldwork on one of Athabaskan languages of Interior Alaska. I have an idea of making a sociolinguistic survey here, in addition to linguistic research as such. The language is in decline and has not been acquired by children for a few decades. The uniqueness of the situation is that the language is spoken by less than one hundred persons (the number of speakers was probably never much higher than now), and the vast majority of speakers reside in one village. Therefore, one can fairly easily conduct not just a representative sociolinguistic survey, but have a nearly complete coverage of potential speakers. The sorts of questions I have in mind include those on bilingualism, degrees of fluency, situations of language use, attitudes toward language maintenance, and reasons for language obsolescence. I am not sufficiently versed in this kind of research, and I am sure that the way you pose questions may dramatically affect your results. I would be very grateful if someone could give me some advice on the set of most crucial question and their formulations, or perhaps send me samples of similar questionnaires. Please contact me directly at ffaak at aurora.alaska.edu Thanks a lot in advance, Andrej A. Kibrik From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Fri Apr 25 15:22:42 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn, Linguistics, CU Boulder) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:22:42 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Gopnik has retracted the single 'grammar gene' position that she held earlier, which was the point I was intending to respond to. I don't think that _that_ view is currently held by anyone prominent in this debate. Nice quote Liz forwarded showing the dim view that Wexler takes of plasticity. He and others are indeed strong adherents of 'genetically programmed maturation' of grammar. They are practically forced into that position because of their abhorrence of any consideration of frequency and gradience of response - two innocent casualties of the Chomskyan revolution. I hope BLS 22 comes out soon; there are some relevant papers in there from a panel on innateness, including Pullum's already legendary slasher attack, a fine reflective paper by Bowerman, an amazing parameter-setting article by Ted Gibson, and one of mine with longitudinal examples showing what I think is solid counterevidence against a general maturational account of language acquisition. But I also pointed out that those of us who think language can be learned have not yet dealt with the complexity of what the child has to be able to do in order to learn from the incoming material - specifically, to be able to recognize whether an adult response is just a felicitous conversational next turn, a recast correcting grammar, a paraphrase for clarity, correction for level of politeness, and other possibilities including several of the above simultaneously, and to use that information in conjunction with updating his/her frequency of occurrence information. I don't think that we have -postulated a simpler or more parsimonious child than Wexler has - I just think ours is more realistic. Lise From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 14:56:44 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 07:56:44 -0700 Subject: innate Message-ID: I think we all agree that humans have language because we are human. Dogs don't have language because they are dogs. The debate is not about innateness in some general sense, but about DOMAIN SPECIFICITY, that is, do we have language because we have evolved some kind of domain-specific language acquisition device (which might, as some linguists have proposed, consist in innate linguistic knowledge, wired right into the brain)? Or do we have language because of one or many characteristics that distinguish the human brain from the brains of other mammals, even other primates. Candidates for such characteristics include (although this is certainly not exhaustive) massive differences in size, striking differences in allometry (the proportion of various regions to one another), degree of direct cortical control over the articulators, and so on. These various adaptations (which are quantitative, not qualitative) appear to have had some interesting computational consequences, i.e. there are classes of problems we can solve and kinds of learning we can do that are not available to other species. Hence these QUANTITATIVE changes in brain have brought about QUALITATIVE changes in possible outcomes. On this second scenario, we get some domain-specific results "for free", and do not need to postulate evolution of domain-specific mechanisms. All the parts of the brain that "do" language also "do" other kinds of work, and if the regions of the brain that usually "do" language are destroyed in infancy, it seems that a number of alternative brain plans are possible, and emerge in response to the language problem. So the parts of the brain that execute language (and there are a lot of them that keep popping up in neural imaging studies these days) are flexible, and they haven't "given up their day jobs", i.e. they are not specific to language and they continue to do non-linguistic forms of processing. Obviously I favor the second, domain-general scenario, because I think the evidence is strongly in its favor, especially the neurobiological evidence. However, I would never want to argue that we have the same brains and the same processing/learning abilities of dogs! One can reject the strong, domain-specific claims about innateness without being forced to the silly conclusion that nothing is innate. -liz bates From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 15:13:13 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:13:13 -0600 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704250432.AAA10579@central.cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: Dear Ellen, the point I was trying to make is NOT denying that there are biological foundations for language, but underlining that there are ALSO social foundations for it. I wouldn't consider a "society" that of bees (or ants), for reasons I don't care to go into right now. As for dogs, those who -like myself- love them very much and know quite a lot about them, the do not speak, but they certainly communicate in a wonderfl way. The are strongly socialized by human company and interaction with them (of the right kind, of course), so that, although they do not use language (since they are biologically impaired to do so), they DO ENRICH AMAZINGLY THEIR SEMIOTIC ARSENAL. A fact, for the rest, as well known as this: isolated humans do NOT develop language. Ergo: both the biological and the social factors are crucial and it would be quite byzantine and scholastic to try and deny either of those factors. I wouldn't agree with comparing the role of the social factor in language development with watering a seed, as Chomskyans love to do (or, for that matter, language with wings, armas, etc.)... Dogs are also incapable of developing LASER, computers, etc. The is undoubdtedly a certain biological foundation for human mental capacities; but, without the social framework and history, such thing would have never ever coeme about! It is characteristcic of humankind that in it are inextracably intertwined the biological and the social, constantly (and not always smoothly) interacting. Max On Fri, 25 Apr 1997, Ellen F. Prince wrote: > so how come dogs raised in a home with people don't speak? is it that > humans discriminate against them and so their social interaction isn't > rich enough? > > and would you also say that a bee's communication system (dance) is likewise > explainable by its social milieu? or would you accord a bee a greater > genetic endowment than a human? > > > "Enrique Figueroa E." wrote: > > >Please notice the extremely cautious (and tricky?) expressions "general > >human program" and "in a detalied way". > >I would say that there has (also?) been evidence that certain aspects of > >language acqusisition, development and actual linguistic behaviour are > >due to and explainable by the general interaction of the individual with > >the social milieu, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by a > >9genetic) biological program. > > > > > > > > > >The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that > >> underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual > >> charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological > >> program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the > >> environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might > >> affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is > >> uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, > >> genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some > >> aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. > >> Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological > >> program, either before or after birth. > >> > >> The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study > >> of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term > >> is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent > >> variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major > >> discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it > >> is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is > >> considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a > >> biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & > >> Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). > >> > >> >From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based > >> theory of language acquisition." > >>As for Chomsky's open avowal of his Platonic views: > > >> (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. > >> MIT Press, 1988): > >> �The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental > >> aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined > >> as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less > >> by training, in the course of our experience� (p. 161) > > > >May I propose an inversion such as this? > > > >The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental > >aspects of our apparently biological (such as sexual behaviour) and > >mental such as cognitive processes) life, including language, are > >largely determined as part of our social interaction, not inherited via > >genetic > >inheritance, still less innately possessed qua members of the human > >species. > > > >Further inversions of the cited line of reasoning can be easily made and > >would be, at least, equally sound and convincing. > > > >Max > > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 15:21:19 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:21:19 -0600 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Not only the BIOLOGY of language, but the SOCIOLOGY and the PSYCHOLOGY of language as well... Max On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > So somewhere between dogs not speaking, single genes controlling > morphological paradigms, and certain aspects of linguistic behavior being > due to the social environment lies the truth. I guess we have the biology > of language pretty well nailed down. > > -- Sherman Wilcox > From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Fri Apr 25 15:21:58 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 11:21:58 EDT Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 25 Apr 1997 07:56:44 PDT." <199704251456.HAA14978@crl.UCSD.EDU> Message-ID: so, if i understand you correctly, the issue being discussed is not innateness at all but modularity? correct? elizabeth bates wrote: >I think we all agree that humans have language because we are human. >Dogs don't have language because they are dogs. The debate is not >about innateness in some general sense, but about DOMAIN SPECIFICITY, >that is, do we have language because we have evolved some kind of >domain-specific language acquisition device (which might, as some >linguists have proposed, consist in innate linguistic knowledge, >wired right into the brain)? Or do we have language because of >one or many characteristics that distinguish the human brain from >the brains of other mammals, even other primates. Candidates >for such characteristics include (although this is certainly not >exhaustive) massive differences in size, striking differences >in allometry (the proportion of various regions to one another), >degree of direct cortical control over the articulators, and >so on. These various adaptations (which are quantitative, not >qualitative) appear to have had some interesting computational >consequences, i.e. there are classes of problems we can solve >and kinds of learning we can do that are not available to >other species. Hence these QUANTITATIVE changes in brain have >brought about QUALITATIVE changes in possible outcomes. On >this second scenario, we get some domain-specific results >"for free", and do not need to postulate >evolution of domain-specific mechanisms. All the parts of the >brain that "do" language also "do" other kinds of work, and >if the regions of the brain that usually "do" language are >destroyed in infancy, it seems that a number of alternative >brain plans are possible, and emerge in response to the language >problem. So the parts of the brain that execute language (and >there are a lot of them that keep popping up in neural imaging >studies these days) are flexible, and they haven't "given up their >day jobs", i.e. they are not specific to language and they continue >to do non-linguistic forms of processing. > >Obviously I favor the second, domain-general scenario, because >I think the evidence is strongly in its favor, especially the >neurobiological evidence. However, I would never want to argue >that we have the same brains and the same processing/learning >abilities of dogs! One can reject the strong, domain-specific >claims about innateness without being forced to the silly conclusion >that nothing is innate. -liz bates From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Apr 25 16:01:06 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 11:01:06 -0500 Subject: Nature vs Nurture one more time Message-ID: Max wrote, in part: >I wouldn't consider a "society" that of bees (or ants), for reasons I >don't care to go into right now. Well, there are quite a few biologists, not limited to E.O. Wilson, who wrote a book by the name, who consider _The Insect Societies_ to be (or is it "bee") societies. I find Liz's attitude quite reasonable. As for me, the older I get, the less patient I become with people--both chomskyan innatist and social folks (?socialists?)--who would draw a sharp line between humans and other animals. Carl From TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Apr 25 16:41:15 1997 From: TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:41:15 -0700 Subject: note to Liz Bates Message-ID: Liz, I don't know if you are familiar with a series of works by Posner and his associates (Petersen, Raichle etc.) on the development of a reading module in the pre-striate areas of the left occipital lobe. The location is of course quite suggestive, being within the object regognition (ventral) stream (cf. Miskin and Ungerleider etc.). But the adaptation of that loication to a reading task seems to be, in itself, highly domain specific. Your 'weaker' position on domain specificity need not be quite as strong. In terms of evolution, it is very clear that all language-related modules were initially specialized to do other things. And even that while they process some aspects of language now, they may continue to do those "daytime" tasks. But it is still an open question whether in their capacity of language processors, they have or have not been restructured (reconfigured) in a highly domain-specific way. I think this is another area where one ought to resist rigid positions. At least two areas that are quitessential "processors" in language -- phonology and grammar -- exhibit enough unique characteristics to suggest that at least the mode of processing (if not the location) is rather unique and domain specific. This is not as extreme as the Chomskyite dogma. But I think, in evolutionary terms, it may be viewed as an intermediate stage, somwhere between a totally domain-general module and a totally domain- specific module. Since the evolution of phonology and grammar are, most likely, the latest evolutionary additions to the array of capacities that combine in supporting human communication, finding them organized in such an "early" fashion should not be all that surprising. Best, TG From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Fri Apr 25 01:17:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 20:17:00 -0500 Subject: innate Message-ID: Just got a posting from 6500ptb0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU, signed "Paul" Hi Paul! (Whoever you are) A suggestion for us all: especially if your email address doesn't give your name, but maybe in any case, consider using the last name too. David Tuggy From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 15:44:19 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:44:19 -0700 Subject: innate/unique? Message-ID: Hello all, I usually just follow these discussions silently...but I have to comment on this one. I have often gotten the impression that when linguists talk about a linguistic ability as "innate", that they are also implying that the ability is unique to humans. I certainly think there is a lot that humans do that is unique. However, I don't think the uniqueness follows from the innateness. I have seen evidence that other species (not just mammals) have sound systems that might be best explained by appealing to phonetic and phonological devices that hitherto have been treated as if they were unique to humans. I'd love to get some feedback on how others view this uniqueness/innateness relationship. Thanks Dianne Patterson dpat at ccit.arizona.edu From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 17:59:35 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:59:35 -0700 Subject: innate Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:56:52 -0700 >To: Tom Givon >From: Liz Bates >Subject: Re: innate >Cc: >Bcc: book-authors,brian,blf2 at cornell.edu >X-Attachments: > > >When I play the piano, and do things with my fingers that are utterly >unique and domain-specific. I have been "adapted" to do that through >experience with the task. But that does NOT mean that, in any meaningful >way, my hands have become "dedicated piano processors." In the same vein, >I do not doubt for a moment that, in most normal individuals, a distinct >system of processors takes charge of the reading task after long >experience with that task. That does NOT mean, in any meaningful way, >that those parts of the brian have become "dedicated reading processors." >In fact, although I am familiar with the Posner work, I am also familiar >with plenty of other work that suggests that the visual regions and >object-recognition areas involved in reading have also "kept their day >jobs" that is, they "do" reading but they continue to do other things too. >And if those areas are damaged early in life, then other areas can take >over to do the reading job. I am not being dogmatic. I honestly believe >that is the most veridical, empirically defensible reading of the current >literature on brain development and neural plasticity, and the current >literature on neural imaging of patterns of activation during complex >tasks. So, not only do I reject the idea that certain areas of the cortex >are innately specified with domain-specific processing or representations, >I also reject the idea that ANY area of the cortex ends up handling one >and only one kind of content (beyond the more banal fact that visual areas >handle visual stimuli, and some visual areas handle especially complex >visual stimuli...). Even that workhorse for modularity, the distinction >between a "what is it" and "where is it" system, has broken down in the >last few years. Putative color areas are also dropping like flies. The >weight of evidence is moving more and more toward highly distributed and >dynamic representations, and against any "thing in a box" view -- and >that's even AFTER experience has wrought its wonders in sculpting the >brain. > >And by the way, SURELY you were not suggested that evolution has anything >to do with reading, much less that there is a dedicated neural system that >evolved for reading! There simply has been enough genetic time for such >an innovation, particularly in view of the fact that universal literacy >still eludes us, and any kind of literacy was a rare hothouse flower a >hundred years ago. -liz > > >Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:40:29 -0700 (PDT) >From: Tom Givon >Subject: Re: innate >To: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU >MIME-version: 1.0 > >Liz, >I don't know if you are familiar with a series of works by Posner and >his associates (Petersen, Raichle etc.) on the development of a reading >module in the pre-striate areas of the left occipital lobe. The location >is of course quite suggestive, being within the object regognition >(ventral) stream (cf. Miskin and Ungerleider etc.). But the adaptation of >that loication to a reading task seems to be, in itself, highly domain >specific. Your 'weaker' position on domain specificity need not be quite >as strong. In terms of evolution, it is very clear that all language-related >modules were initially specialized to do other things. And even that while >they process some aspects of language now, they may continue to do those >"daytime" tasks. But it is still an open question whether in their capacity >of language processors, they have or have not been restructured (reconfigured) >in a highly domain-specific way. I think this is another area where one ought >to resist rigid positions. At least two areas that are quitessential >"processors" >in language -- phonology and grammar -- exhibit enough unique characteristics >to suggest that at least the mode of processing (if not the location) is >rather unique and domain specific. This is not as extreme as the Chomskyite >dogma. But I think, in evolutionary terms, it may be viewed as an intermediate >stage, somwhere between a totally domain-general module and a totally domain- >specific module. Since the evolution of phonology and grammar are, most >likely, >the latest evolutionary additions to the array of capacities that combine in >supporting human communication, finding them organized in such an "early" >fashion should not be all that surprising. >Best, TG > > From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Fri Apr 25 18:22:47 1997 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9=2DLuis?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mend=EDvil?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gir=F3?=) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 20:22:47 +0200 Subject: innate syntax Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. > But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." > What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? and on Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Enrique Figueroa: >Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: >"Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" > >Some others (dissidents, of course), this: >"Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" I think the response is perhaps witty but skeen-deep. A simple question: why should we consider _unfortunate_ such a belief? Is it (or has been) an obstacle for Science? By the other hand: Is syntax a social institution or a conscious, technological human innovation? If it is not, then it must be a genetic constraint, independently now if we consider that syntax developped especifically in natural selection or not. Even if we accept that syntax (in the sense of a computational system that relates properly meaning and sound) can be learned, we would need to say that the device to acquire that system is innate, ergo we can say (in a provisional abstract sense) that syntax is innate (genetically determined in our kind). I believe this is not questionable. The open question is then if the genetic material involved -which determines the structure of natural languages- is specifically _syntactic_ or not, i.e., if the mind is able to create that system using some more general genetic information. Note that even in that case syntax should be considered as innate. *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Fri Apr 25 19:57:46 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn, Linguistics, CU Boulder) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 12:57:46 -0700 Subject: innate/unique? In-Reply-To: <01II47A8886K90P37I@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU> Message-ID: surely, uniqueness and innateness are logically independent concepts. That they were ever bundled together is an example of how fallacious arguments get started and transmitted because of pre-theoretical convictions, or maybe I should say pre-emprical...Lise Menn On Fri, 25 Apr 1997 DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU wrote: > Hello all, I usually just follow these discussions silently...but I have > to comment on this one. I have often gotten the impression that when > linguists talk about a linguistic ability as "innate", that they are also > implying that the ability is unique to humans. I certainly think there > is a lot that humans do that is unique. However, I don't think > the uniqueness follows from the innateness. I have seen evidence > that other species (not just mammals) have sound systems that > might be best explained by appealing to phonetic and phonological > devices that hitherto have been treated as if they were unique to > humans. I'd love to get some feedback on how others view this > uniqueness/innateness relationship. > Thanks > Dianne Patterson > dpat at ccit.arizona.edu > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 19:51:14 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 12:51:14 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <01II4EIKR7FY90RYD8@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> Message-ID: You still are silent about grammar and phonology... TG I see ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to suggest that there are areas of the brain devoted UNIQUELY to grammar or phonology. Re phonology, see David Poeppel's recent review in Brain and Language, a meta-analysis of several PET studies putatively about phonological processing: aside from the fact that the left hemisphere is more important than the right, there is no evidence for an overlap between studies that could be viewed as a "phonological area". There is also some fMRI work (presented at Neurosciences last fall) showing that each and every subcomponent of the Broca complex that is involved in phonological production is also involved in at least one non-verbal motor planning task (of the handful of mouth, face and hand movement tasks that they used). A similar story follows for grammar. I would be happy to send you my forthcoming paper "On the inseparability of grammar and the lexicon" (coming out in Language and Cognitive Processes) where I review extensive evidence that is SUPPOSED To show a double dissociation between grammar and the lexicon, and show that the claims of separability do not go through. In short, although there is no doubt that the brain PARTICIPATES in grammar and phonology, there is no evidence that I have been able to find that unambiguously supports the idea that specific areas of the brain are DEDICATED to grammar or phonology. I would be happy to discuss this with you in more detail, although the above-mentioned paper might be a good place to start. -liz From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 20:21:10 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 13:21:10 -0700 Subject: phonology...unique?? Message-ID: >>From T.Givon >in language -- phonology and grammar -- exhibit enough unique characteristics >to suggest that at least the mode of processing (if not the location) is >rather unique and domain specific. > Since the evolution of phonology and grammar are, most likely, >the latest evolutionary additions to the array of capacities that combine in >supporting human communication, finding them organized in such an "early" >fashion should not be all that surprising. This is very interesting...I can see how you might believe "phonology" to be unique if you only look at us and other primates...and I can imagine that the way humans arrive at things like syllabic templates is accomplished in humans by a human mechanism...but I think that something like a syllabic template appears in other critters...songbirds at least but there are some even more striking examples if you look at creatures with flexible sound systems that learn to talk...like some parrots. I look forward to more comments, Dianne Patterson. From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:00:14 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:00:14 -0700 Subject: phonology...unique?? In-Reply-To: <01II4GPGJOTK936YQD@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU> Message-ID: "I can see how you might believe "phonology" to be unique if you only look at us and other primates...and I can imagine that the way humans arrive at things like syllabic templates is accomplished in humans by a human mechanism." (DPAT) Patricia Kuhl, Keith Kluender and others have shown since the 1970's that several other mammals and birds are able not only to hear phonological contrasts like "ba" vs. "ga", but they also hear them categorically, with boundaries similar to those that prevail in humans. The weight of evidence suggests that the innate contribution to speech processing may NOT be specific to speech or to humans. On the contrary, it looks rather as though speech has evolved to take advantage of pre-existing properties of the mammalian (and perhaps avian) auditory system. -liz bates From kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:11:30 1997 From: kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU (patricia kilroe) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 16:11:30 -0500 Subject: innateness/uniqueness Message-ID: While this topic is receiving so much attention on this list, I was wondering if those familiar with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobos, esp. the apparent fact that these apes can comprehend and execute fairly complex spoken commands upon first hearing, could comment on the biology of language question from the perspective of what SS-R's findings contribute to it. Patricia Kilroe From bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA Fri Apr 25 21:19:53 1997 From: bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA (Bill Turkel) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:19:53 -0700 Subject: Categorical perception Message-ID: > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 14:13:46 1997 > Patricia Kuhl, Keith Kluender and others have shown since the 1970's that > several other mammals and birds are able not only to hear phonological > contrasts like "ba" vs. "ga", but they also hear them categorically, with > boundaries similar to those that prevail in humans. The weight of evidence > suggests that the innate contribution to speech processing may NOT be > specific to speech or to humans. On the contrary, it looks rather as > though speech has evolved to take advantage of pre-existing properties of > the mammalian (and perhaps avian) auditory system. -liz bates > Categorical perception may even be a property of invertebrates: Wyttenbach, May & Hoy (1996) Categorical perception of sound frequency by crickets. Science 273:1542-1544 Bill From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:32:23 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:32:23 -0700 Subject: phonetics/phonology and parrots Message-ID: To those who are interested ( especially toBill Turkel): I have yet to publish anything on the phonological processes (lots of rhyming, word play etc. in the parrot...though we are actively preparing a little article). If you are interested in production of phonetic contrasts we have one paper out on vowels: D.K. Patterson and I.M. Pepperberg, "A comparative study of human and parrot phonation: Acoustic and articulatory correlates of vowels," J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 96, pp. 634-648, 1994. and one paper out on articulation (X-ray video of the bird talking): D.K. Warren, D.K. Patterson, and I.M. Pepperberg, "Mechanisms of American English vowel production in an African Grey parrot" Auk 113, 41-58, 1996. We are working on a description of stop consonants. Thanks for your interest. Dr. Bates, Thankyou, I do know about Kluender, Kuhl, Dooling etc. and what they have to say about categorical perception of phonetic contrasts. They are certainly the pioneers in these areas. My own work has examined production of these contrasts...but I am looking forward to (and in the middle of) looking at slightly higher level more phonological stuff...syllabic template evidence, assimilation, cluster reduction etc. The database is rich in evidence of complex word play. Anyone intrigued should check out the following paper which provides some basic evidence of the vocal behavior I think is so interesting: Pepperberg, I.M., Brese, K.J., and Harris, B. (1991). "Solitary sound play during acquisition of English vocalizations by an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus): Possible parallels with children's monologue speech," Appl. Psycholing. 12, 151-178. Thanks to all of you for sharing your views, interests and information. I am finding it very valuable. Dianne Patterson From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:51:21 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:51:21 -0700 Subject: bonobos/perception and more Message-ID: Patricia Kilroe writes: >While this topic is receiving so much attention on this list, I was wondering >if those familiar with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobos, esp. the >apparent fact that these apes can comprehend and execute fairly complex >spoken commands upon first hearing, could comment on the biology of language >question from the perspective of what SS-R's findings contribute to it. I know a horse that follows verbal commands. Dogs learn to do it too, probably not as complex as what the bonobos do...but, you know, we all hear in roughly the same frequency range (though of course dogs have an even wider range)...it doesn't seem at all surprising to me that human language would occur in an acoustic range which is easy (the path of least resistance)...nor does it seem surprising that other animals can hear the contrasts we use (since our hearing is certainly not exceptional in the animal world). What does seem surprising to me is that we as scientists succeeded in turning the problem on its head...did we imagine that our auditory system adapted itself specially to the demands of language? How could that happen? BTW, it isn't that I don't believe we learn the phonetic categories of our language...surely we "adapt" our auditory systems to the language at hand in that sense. But, Alex the parrot knows the difference between "pea" and "key".. and he doesn't just hear the distinctions...he hears them from a great variety of speakers AND he makes them. Dianne Patterson From wilcox at UNM.EDU Fri Apr 25 22:03:40 1997 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 16:03:40 -0600 Subject: Categorical perception Message-ID: This isn't really about categorical perception, but I'll use the same thread... The type of data that Liberman & Mattingly used to argue that "speech is special" can also be found in fingerspelling. That is, they said: "... the relationship between gesture and signal is not straightforward ... the movements for gestures implied by a single [phonetic] symbol are typically not simultaneous, and the movements implied for successive [phonetic] symbols often overlap extensively. This coarticulation means that the changing shape of the vocal tract, and hence the resulting signal, is influenced by several gestures at the same time. Thus, the relation between gesture and signal, though certainly systematic, is systematic in a way that is peculiar to speech." (L &M, "The motor theory of speech perception revisited," Cognition 21, 1985). >>From this, L &M argued that this coded relationship between gesture and speech requires a special module for phonetic perception, beyond what is required for general acoustic perception. But the same "coded" relationship exists between the articulatory gestures that make up fingerspelled letters and the resulting optical signal: (1) movements for gestures implied by a single [fingerspelled] symbol are typically not simultaneous, and (2) movements implied by successive [fingerspelled] symbols overlap extensively. Coarticulation is very much present in fingerspelling. It is therefore equally true of fingerspelling to say that the changing shape of the [fingerspelling tract? OK, the hand], and hence the resulting [optical] signal, is influenced by several gestures at the same time, and thus that the relation between gesture and signal is systematic in a way that is peculiar to fingerspelling. Does this then lead us to conclude that a special module for fingerspelling perception is required? -- Sherman Wilcox From pesetsk at MIT.EDU Sat Apr 26 02:10:45 1997 From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 22:10:45 -0400 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At 3:51 PM -0400 4/25/97, Liz Bates wrote: > You still are silent about grammar and phonology... TG > > > > I see ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to suggest that there are areas of the brain > devoted UNIQUELY to grammar or phonology. Re phonology, see David > Poeppel's recent review in Brain and Language, a meta-analysis of several > PET studies putatively about phonological processing: aside from the fact > that the left hemisphere is more important than the right, there is no > evidence for an overlap between studies that could be viewed as a > "phonological area". [...] I don't think this brings Poeppel's contribution into proper focus. The purpose of his paper was to call attention to a variety of *inadequacies* in the existing PET work. He argues that the methodological and conceptual problems with existing studies are sufficiently serious that they could not have converged on a "phonological area" even if one were to exist. That is, (if Poeppel's paper is correct) we have no evidence for a phonological area because the proper work has not yet been done -- not because we've looked real hard and not found it. -David Pesetsky From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Apr 26 15:59:37 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 08:59:37 -0700 Subject: references on phonological uniqueness? Message-ID: Hello, I wonder if anybody ou there might be able to direct me to papers that address the issue of the uniqueness of human phonology? I'd like to see some papers that propose that various specific aspects of the phonological system are innate and unique to humans. Is there anything of this sort for, say, syllabic templates? rule governed behaviors like assimilation, cluster reduction, metathesis?? I'd be quite obliged if you could point out relevant references. Thanks, Dianne Patterson P.S. Even a paper that just more generally claimed a unique status for phonology (uniquely human) would be valuable. I appreciate it. From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 27 03:39:55 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 06:39:55 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: For, e.g. 'Is daddy coming?' my 5-year-old daughter has been saying 'Right daddy's coming?' (with the right intonation) for I think at least 6 months now, steadfastly resisting all efforts to teach her inversion. This was preceded for a considerable length of time by 'What, daddy's coming?' (again with the right intonation). She seems to be assuming that the way to form questions is by prefixing an invariant particle ('right' or 'what') and changing the intonation (like e.g. Japanese 'ka', except that 'ka' comes at the end of the clause). In discussing how children learn this construction, you do not say that researchers have noticed this strategy, but my daughter seems to be quite taken with it. Is she pathological, or have researchers just not noticed that this is how some young children try to ask questions? John Myhill From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 27 03:45:26 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 06:45:26 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: In response to Ellen Prince's message: >in answer to your first paragraph, i suspect no one changes his/her beliefs >around here -- but it would be nice if we updated our meta-beliefs about >who believes what. I will report the results of my informal survey conducted several months ago on funknet regarding whether anyone had ever been convinced by anyone else's arguments to change their mind regarding some 'formal' vs. 'nonformal' issue (I believe it was 'the autonomy debate', and I added that this 'conversion' should have taken place after graduate school). The results are in, and Ellen Prince is in fact the only person who has acknowledged having changed her mind as a result of some evidence (from non-autonomy to autonomy). As much as I value Ellen's opinion, I think that the fact that this `debate' has evidently not had any effect upon anyone else leads me to suspect that the formal vs. non-formal `debate' on funknet (in its various incarnations) has had more or less the same meaning as the 2-minute hate in Orwell's 1984, where 'Goldstein' (`Goldberg'? I forget) appears on a video screen ranting against Big Brother and people work themselves into a fury screaming at him for 2 minutes, with Dan Everett serving as our Goldberg (with occasional guest appearances by F. Newmeyer). Perhaps Dan would agree to set up a new 'argue with a formal linguist' network? I'm sure it would be quite popular. John Myhill From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 27 06:31:53 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 09:31:53 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: For, e.g. 'Is daddy coming?' my 5-year-old daughter has been saying 'Right daddy's coming?' (with the right intonation) for I think at least 6 months now, steadfastly resisting all efforts to teach her inversion. This was preceded for a considerable length of time by 'What, daddy's coming?' (again with the right intonation). She seems to be assuming that the way to form questions is by prefixing an invariant particle ('right' or 'what') and changing the intonation (like e.g. Japanese 'ka', except that 'ka' comes at the end of the clause). In discussing how children learn this construction, you do not say that researchers have noticed this strategy, but my daughter seems to be quite taken with it. Is she pathological, or have researchers just not noticed that this is how some young children try to ask questions? John Myhill (Sorry if this message has been posted on FUNKNET already, it seems to keep getting bounced back to me) From M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Sun Apr 27 12:21:12 1997 From: M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Mark Durie) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 23:21:12 +1100 Subject: Ranting against Big Brother In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In response to John Myhill's comments. A functionalist might point out that debate has many functions besides bringing about assent. Gaining a clearer understanding of differences and commonalities is one. Just keeping channels open can be helpful at times. The fact that people are still arguing with each other can in itself be encouraging. Also I think it is important that many people receiving a list like this are listeners, not 'arguers', and at least some of these have not yet made up their minds about the fundamental issues. Mark Durie ------------------------------------ From: Mark Durie Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics University of Melbourne Parkville 3052 Hm (03) 9380-5247 Wk (03) 9344-5191 Fax (03) 9349-4326 M.Durie at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/Dept/LALX/staff/durie.html From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Sun Apr 27 23:39:18 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 09:39:18 +1000 Subject: debate Message-ID: The mass-debates on this list are valuable for many reasons. For example, as well as finding out what people know, you find out what they don't know. You can also study the exchanges in terms of primate dominance hierarchies. The strategies of the young and the old can be compared, as can those of low and high ranks. Even though the most frequent tactic appears to be attacking ones own misunderstanding of another's position, the texts are information-rich for anyone interested in language. Chris From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Mon Apr 28 09:31:27 1997 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:31:27 +0100 Subject: the debate Message-ID: As one of those that Mark Durie describes as a listener, perhaps I could say how I see these recurrent debates on Funknet. The latest one has been really interesting, but there's been hardly any discussion of formal vs functional as such. I think that's usually the case, so it's hardly surprising if people don't change their minds on that particular issue. But every time we read a message about (say) innateness it helps us all to sort out our own ideas a little more clearly on that particular topic. That may not count as `changing our mind', but our minds do change. Personally I think `formal' vs `functional' is like `right' vs `left' in politics - a very crude way of locating oneself and others in a really complex intellectual space. Maybe ok emotionally but not to be taken too seriously as a basis for scientific thinking. ============================================================================== Richard (=Dick) Hudson Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT work phone: +171 419 3152; work fax: +171 383 4108 email: dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk web-sites: home page = http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm unpublished papers available by ftp = ....uk/home/dick/papers.htm From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Mon Apr 28 11:00:56 1997 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9=2DLuis?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mend=EDvil?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gir=F3?=) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 13:00:56 +0200 Subject: No subject Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. > But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." > What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? and on Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Enrique Figueroa: >Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: >"Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" > >Some others (dissidents, of course), this: >"Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" I think the response is perhaps witty but skeen-deep. A simple question: why should we consider _unfortunate_ such a belief? Is it (or has been) an obstacle for Science? By the other hand: Is syntax a social institution or a conscious, technological human innovation? If it is not, then it must be a genetic constraint, independently now if we consider that syntax developped specifically in natural selection or not. Even if we accept that syntax (in the sense of a computational system that relates properly meaning and sound) can be learned, we would need to say that the device to acquire that system is innate, ergo we can say (in a provisional abstract sense) that syntax is innate (genetically determined in our kind). I believe this is not questionable. The open question is then (as observed by Bates on Fri, 25 Apr 1997) if the genetic material involved -which determines the syntactic structure of natural languages- is specifically _syntactic_ or not, i.e., if the mind is able to create that system using some more general genetic information. Note that even in that case syntax should be considered as innate. So, as Bates said: >One can reject the strong, domain-specific claims about innateness without >>being forced to the silly conclusion that nothing is innate By the other way, if the difference with other species is only quantitative (as has been said by Bates too) the question is: why humans do not acquire other's mammals communication systems when in the appropriate context? *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Mon Apr 28 12:21:48 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:21:48 -0200 Subject: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages Message-ID: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th 1997 and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Mon Apr 28 15:49:10 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:49:10 CDT Subject: NO SUBJECT Message-ID: John Myhill: >As much as I value Ellen's opinion, I think that the fact that this `debate' >has evidently not had any effect upon anyone else leads me to suspect that >the formal vs. non-formal `debate' on funknet (in its various incarnations) >has had more or less the same meaning as the 2-minute hate in Orwell's >1984, where 'Goldstein' . . . I wouldn't say that the debate hasn't affected anyone. Just because people don't ditch their position and go over to the other side doesn't mean that the debate has had no effect. I, for one, found it, and continue to find it, very instructive. I feel that I have a much greater understanding of the autonomy/nonautonomy issue than I had before. Moreover, the juxtaposition of different viewpoints in brief, readable, connected messages has been much more helpful for me than, say, reading a book by one author and then reading a book from an opposing viewpoint, neither author having talked to the other. I haven't changed my original position at all, but I understand the basis for it and all the ways it could be challenged much better than ever before. If nothing else, this debate has taught me that I have a lot more reading to do. If Fritz and Dan are the Goldsteins for FUNKNET, who volunteers to be the functionalist Goldsteins for GB2MP (a list for discussions of Chomskyan syntax)? Sign up today and give us your functional accounts of subjacency, your semantic version of the binding conditions, your metrical phonology explanations of heavy-NP shift, etc. Send this message: subscribe GB2MP to this address: majordomo at colmex.mx --Tony Wright From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Mon Apr 28 16:22:35 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:22:35 -0600 Subject: the debate In-Reply-To: <9704280902.AB25188@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: I think we all, both listeners and arguers (and role-exchangers), do learn a lot from these (most of the time) healthy discussions. Which is what lists are for, or not? I guess the main goal of a scientific discussion is not no defeat and convince an opponent, but to contribute to overall clarification, including one's own views and arguments. Much of this -as I have more than once already pointed out- should also take place within our classrooms, but... Which makes these discussions so much more (the) interesting! Respectful greetings to all, arguers, listeners and role-exchangers! Max PS. Chris is right, too, about extrascientific information (and education) we get out of them! From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Mon Apr 28 16:38:54 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:38:54 -0600 Subject: NO SUBJECT In-Reply-To: 19970428.104911.TWRIGHT@SACADMIN Message-ID: I wish I could believe the list you propose everyone (everyone?) to subscribe to would like that and care to answer back... But, by the way, why restrict, in a Manicheistic way, the discussions that go on in/on FUNKNET to the contraposition of functionalism versus Chomskyanism? I think one among the very good traits of FUNKNET is it's openness to all sorts of opinions! A trait I doubt very much (hope I'm all wrong, though!) would also be that of GB2MP... Formalist linguists have won a reputation with respect to their "patience" towards poor second-class pseudolinguists who don't feel comfortable with their jargon and views... Those who don"t honour this reputation do care to participate, as I see it, on FUNKNET. Perhaps we are here in need of a "neutral" discussion list, for those who really care to interact on theoretical issues? For the rest, I entirely agree with your comments (and with your spirit, methinks). Cheers! Max On Mon, 28 Apr 1997, Tony A. Wright wrote: > John Myhill: > > >As much as I value Ellen's opinion, I think that the fact that this `debate' > >has evidently not had any effect upon anyone else leads me to suspect that > >the formal vs. non-formal `debate' on funknet (in its various incarnations) > >has had more or less the same meaning as the 2-minute hate in Orwell's > >1984, where 'Goldstein' . . . > > I wouldn't say that the debate hasn't affected anyone. Just because > people don't ditch their position and go over to the other side doesn't > mean that the debate has had no effect. > > I, for one, found it, and continue to find it, very instructive. > I feel that I have a much greater understanding of the autonomy/nonautonomy > issue than I had before. Moreover, the juxtaposition of different > viewpoints in brief, readable, connected messages has been much more > helpful for me than, say, reading a book by one author and then reading > a book from an opposing viewpoint, neither author having talked to the > other. > > I haven't changed my original position at all, but I understand the > basis for it and all the ways it could be challenged much better than > ever before. If nothing else, this debate has taught me that I have > a lot more reading to do. > > If Fritz and Dan are the Goldsteins for FUNKNET, who volunteers to be > the functionalist Goldsteins for GB2MP (a list for discussions of > Chomskyan syntax)? Sign up today and give us your functional > accounts of subjacency, your semantic version of the binding conditions, > your metrical phonology explanations of heavy-NP shift, etc. > > Send this message: > > subscribe GB2MP > > to this address: > > majordomo at colmex.mx > > --Tony Wright > From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Mon Apr 28 19:12:30 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 09:12:30 -1000 Subject: the debate Message-ID: At 11:31 PM 4/27/97 -1000, Dick Hudson wrote: >Personally I think `formal' vs `functional' is like `right' vs `left' in >politics - a very crude way of locating oneself and others in a really >complex intellectual space. Maybe ok emotionally but not to be taken too >seriously as a basis for scientific thinking. It is this rather profound but ordinary insight that I think prevents people from commenting. We all recognize the intelligence of both sides but are unable to decisively take a stance because of the complexity. Take for example, the autonomy problem with a metahor from biology (one that has been mentioned before I believe) where we can certainly see that a skeleton has very distinct properties from muscles and veins and so on, but we simply cannot say that a skeleton is autonomous to the extent that it will get up and walk off on its own. If biologists were to take sides on the issue of the autonomy vs non- autonomy of the human skeleton, I am sure there would be massively complex arguments on both sides. However, they have recognized that this is somewhat a non issue from the point of view of effective orthopedics and other applications of this science. We can also say that syntax is both autonomous and not autonomous. We can certainly describe and predict a lot about langauges basedon syntax alone, but syntax alone will not get up and walk on its own. I know that when one takes a position on both sides of an issue like this it tends to weaken both sides, but these are often issues where both sides very dearly need to be weakened. We should no more expect linguists to argue the autonomy of syntax than we should expect biologists to argue the autonomy of the skeleton. We should be able to take the analogy from biology, say things are formal and functional, autonomous and non-autonomous and maybe we can get more complete analyses and theories once we have these debates properly set aside. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Mon Apr 28 19:51:57 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 17:51:57 -0200 Subject: Program on Indigenous languages of Brazil Message-ID: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th 1997 and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Mon Apr 28 22:48:04 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 08:48:04 +1000 Subject: debate, innate Message-ID: At 11:31 PM 4/27/97 -1000, Dick Hudson wrote: >Personally I think `formal' vs `functional' is like `right' vs `left' in >politics - a very crude way of locating oneself and others in a really >complex intellectual space. Maybe ok emotionally but not to be taken too >seriously as a basis for scientific thinking. For me this touches on the issue of the role of desire and fear in the acceptance and rejection of classes of theories. For example, does the word "innate" raise fears of intrinsic and uncontestable superiority/inferiority? Is "innate" used to satisfy a desire to establish an *essential* difference between humans and other organisms? Does the linking of an innate syntax to genes raise the fear that an *essential* property of humans may be spliced into the genomes of other species? In this regard, I noticed that innate syntax is more readily accepted among (some) linguists than genes for syntax. This is a gap that needs some explaining. For those who think syntax is innate and coded in the genome: Once these genes arose through mutation or recombination, how did they spread through the gene pool to be found in almost every genome? Did they provide more offspring for the individuals that possessed them (some imagination here pays dividends)? Or perhaps genes for syntax are linked to other genes that directly provide more offspring (say, by stronger than average chemical bonds)? What are the alleles of the genes for syntax (cf blond vs black hair)? For those who think syntax is innate but not coded in the genome: How is the information transmitted from one generation to the next? Is it epigenetic, a result of the cascade of interactions during brain development? If so, would the removal of some genes prevent the development of innate syntax? I am assuming here that what is claimed as innate is more than just a neurophysiological and anatomical capacity. Perhaps someone can clarify this for me. Chris From Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 28 00:24:00 1997 From: Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG (Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 19:24:00 -0500 Subject: Student survey: Phonological theory Message-ID: * * * Cross-posted to COGLING, FUNKNET, LINGUIST, and OPTIMAL * * * Phonology Theory Survey for Students This is a survey of how phonological theory is taught and learned in introductory courses, including graduate level Phonology I and II. I have been investigating the most common conceptual difficulties for students of phonology and would appreciate your help. You need not have taken it recently to answer the survey. Summary posted with sufficient response. Thanks in advance, Beaumont Brush Phonology courses you have taken: Which aspects of phonological theory did you find the most difficult, and why? Textbook(s) used in each phonology course you've taken: Article(s) used in each phonology course you've taken: Institution you study(ed) at (will not be named in any report or summary): Personal information (optional but appreciated) Name: How long have you taught phonology? Names will not be used in any work. However, if it is OK to list your name as a respondent in a mailing list summary, please type the word 'yes': From Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 28 00:30:00 1997 From: Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG (Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 19:30:00 -0500 Subject: Teacher survey: Phonological theory Message-ID: * * * Cross-posted to COGLING, FUNKNET, LINGUIST, and OPTIMAL * * * Phonology Theory Survey for Teachers This is a survey of how phonological theory is taught and learned in introductory courses, including graduate level Phonology I and II. I have been investigating the most common conceptual difficulties for students of phonology and would appreciate your help. You need not have taught it recently to answer the survey. Summary posted with sufficient response. Thanks in advance, Beaumont Brush Course level(s) taught: Average class size: Which aspects of phonological theory caused your students the hardest time? What were you surprised that your students had trouble with, if anything? Textbook(s) used in each phonology course you teach: Article(s) used in each phonology course you teach: Institution you teach at (will not be named in any report or summary): Personal information (optional but appreciated) Name: Professional title: How long have you taught phonology? Names will not be used in any work. However, if it is OK to list your name as a respondent in a mailing list summary, please type the word 'yes': From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Tue Apr 29 18:46:26 1997 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9=2DLuis?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mend=EDvil?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gir=F3?=) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 20:46:26 +0200 Subject: innate syntax Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? and on Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Enrique Figueroa: >Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: >"Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" > >Some others (dissidents, of course), this: >"Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" I think the response is perhaps witty but skin-deep. A simple question: why should we consider _unfortunate_ such a belief? Is it (or has been) an obstacle for Science? By the other hand: Is syntax a social institution or a conscious, technological human innovation? If it is not, then it must be a genetic constraint, independently now if we accept or not that syntax evolved specifically in natural selection. Even if we accept that syntax (in the Chomskyan sense of a computational system that relates properly meaning and sound) can be learned, we would need to say that the device to acquire that system is innate, ergo we can say (in a provisional abstract sense at least) that syntax is innate (i.e. genetically determined in our kind). I believe this is not questionable. The open question is then (as observed by Bates on Fri, 25 Apr 1997) if the involved genetic material -which determines the syntactic structure of natural languages- is specifically _syntactic_ or not, i.e., if the mind is able to create that system using some more general genetic information. Note that even in that anti-modular perspective, human syntax should be considered as innate. So, as Bates wrote: >One can reject the strong, domain-specific claims about innateness without >being forced to the silly conclusion that nothing is innate By the other way (and from a logical point of view) if the difference between human syntax and other animal systems is only quantitative and not qualitative (as has been wrote by Bates too) the question is: why humans do not acquire animal communication systems when in the appropriate environment? As a conclusion, consider what Mills wrote on Fri, 25 Apr 1997: >As for me, the older I get, the less patient I become with people--both >chomskyan innatist and social folks (?socialists?)--who would draw a >sharp line between humans and other animals. If I understand correctly these words, it is suggested that Chomskyan innatism creates a sharp line between humans and other animals. I believe just the opposite: the consideration of human language (especially grammar) as an instinct is the best way to observe the real continuum between humans and other animals. Humans are not more evolved or developped than other species. We just evolved differently in some aspects. *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Tue Apr 29 20:28:56 1997 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 16:28:56 -0400 Subject: Newly Published Functional Work Message-ID: Books from JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING related to Functional Linguistics that have been recently published. (We thought you'd like to know.) TOWARDS A CALCULUS OF MEANING. STUDIES IN MARKEDNESS, DISTINCTIVE FEATURES AND DEIXIS Edna Andrews & Yishai Tobin (eds.) 1996 xxviii, 432 pp. Studies in Functional & Structural Linguistics, 43 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 268 1 Price: US$99.00 Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 1552 9 Price: Hfl. 175,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) This volume contains papers presented at a symposium in honor of Cornelis H. van Schooneveld and invited papers on the topics of invariance, markedness, distinctive feature theory and deixis. It is not a Festschrift in the usual sense of the word, but more of a collection of articles which represent a very specific way of defining and viewing language and linguistics. The specific approach presented in this volume has its origins and inspirations in the theoretical and methodological paradigm of European Structuralism in general, and the sign-oriented legacy of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce and the functional and communication-oriented approach of the Prague School in particular. The book is divided in three sections: Theoretical and Methodological Overview: Cornelis H. van Schooneveld; Anatoly Liberman; Petr Sgall; Alla Bemova and Eva Hajicova; Robert Kirsner. Studies in Russian and Slavic Languages: Edna Andrews; Lawrence E. Feinberg; Annie Joly Sperling; Ronald E. Feldstein; Irina Dologova and Elena Maksimova; Stefan M. Pugh. Applications to Other Languages, Language Families, and Aphasia: Ellen Contini-Morava; Barbara A. Fennell; Victor A. Friedman; Robert Fradkin; Yishai Tobin; Mark Leikin. STUDIES IN ANAPHORA Barbara Fox (ed.) 1996 xii, 518 pp. Typological Studies in Language, 33 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 641 5 Price: US$115.00 Paper: 1 55619 642 3 Price: $34.95 Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 2927 9 Price: Hfl. 200,-- Paper: 90 272 2928 7 Price: Hfl. 70,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) The last 15 years has seen an explosion of research on the topic of anaphora. Studies of anaphora have been important to our understanding of cognitive processes, the relationships between social interaction and grammar, and of directionality in diachronic change. The contributions to this volume represent the "next generation" of studies in anaphora - defined broadly here as those morpho-syntactic forms available to speakers for formulating reference - taking as their starting point the foundation of research done in the 1980s. These studies examine in detail, and with a richness of methods and theories, what patterns of anaphoric usage can reveal to us about cognition, social interaction, and language change. FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTIONS. THEORY IN PRACTICE Ruqaiya Hasan, Carmel Cloran & David G. Butt (eds.) 1996 xxxvi, 381 pp. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 121 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 575 3 Price: $85.00 Rest of the world: 90 272 3624 0 Price: Hfl. 150,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) This volume focuses on the relation between theory and description by examining aspects of transitivity in different languages. Transitivity -- or case grammar, to use the popular term -- has always occupied a center-stage position in linguistics, not least because of its supposedly privileged relation to states of affairs in the real world. Using a systemic functional perspective, the ten papers in this volume make a contribution to this scholarship by focusing on the transitivity patterns in language as the expression of the experiential metafunction. The contributors provide functional descriptions of the various categories of process, their participants and circumstances, including phenomena such as di-transitivity, causativity, the get-passive, etc. The chapters point to the nature of the linguistic fact which is linked ineluctably on the one hand to the nature of the theory and on the other to the speakers' experience of the world in which they live. The majority of papers included in the volume derive from the 19th International Systemic Functional Congress at Macquarie University. THE GRAMMAR OF POSSESSION. INALIENABILITY, INCORPORATION AND POSSESSOR ASCENSION IN GUARANI Maura Velazquez-Castillo 1996 xvi, 274 pp. Studies in Language Companion Series, 33 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 844 2 Price: US$99.00 Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 3036 6 Price: Hfl. 175,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) This volume is an exhaustive study of linguistic structures in Paraguayan Guaraní which are directly or indirectly associated with the semantic domain of inalienability. Constructions analyzed in the book include adnominal and predicative possessive constructions, noun incorporation, and possessor ascension. Examples are drawn from a rich data base that incorporate native speaker intuitions and resources in the construction of illustrative linguistic forms as well as the analysis of the communicative use of the forms under study. The book provides a complete picture of inalienability as a coherent integrated system of grammatical and semantic oppositions in a language that has received little attention in the theoretical linguistic literature. The analysis moves from general principles to specific details of the language while applying principles of Cognitive Grammar and Functional Linguistics. There is an explicit aim to uncover the particularities of form-meaning connections, as well as the communicative and discourse functions of the structures examined. Other approaches are also considered when appropriate, resulting in a theoretically informed study that contains a rich variety of considerations. Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) P O Box 27519 Ph: 215 836-1200 Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 Fax: 215 836-1204 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Tue Apr 29 20:34:52 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 15:34:52 CDT Subject: dialog Message-ID: Enrique Figueroa writes: > I think one among the very good traits of FUNKNET is it's openness to all > sorts of opinions! A trait I doubt very much (hope I'm all wrong, though!) > would also be that of GB2MP... Two things here: 1. I wish to welcome any interested parties to participate. However, I did not advertise for functionalists to join GB2MP en masse and consolidate FUNKNET with GB2MP. There is a reason there are two lists and not just one. I cannot promise that functionalist views will be greeted with open arms, but I think at least the level of open-mindedness displayed on FUNKNET will be in evidence on GB2MP. This does not mean that the typical foramlist rejoinders might not be heard on GB2MP in response to functionalist arguments, such as "That's a performance issue, not a competence issue!" or "Your point is irrelevant to a theory of I-language." These irritations are par for the course, and I wasn't suggesting that people will have immunity from them on GB2MP. Rather, the notion of "Goldstein" (as per John Myhill's apt analogy with Orwell's _1984_) implies a thick-skinned individual who does not mind being in the minority and voicing opinions that go against the stream. I think this has been helpful for FUNKNET, which has gone from being nothing but conference announcements to having a real dialog. The function of Goldstein is to remind people that there are other viewpoints which people conceivably might have, and we mustn't get too comfortable in our cocoon. 2. It would be nice to share your view of FUNKNET as a bastion of equanimity and broad-mindedness. My brief sojourn in this cyberspace, however enjoyable and helpful, nonetheless forces me to insist that this view lacks empirical motivation. At the risk of seeming indelicate, I must point out that I have seen the proverbial flame-thrower in use on this list on a number of occasions in the past few months. I do not think FUNKNET is unusual compared to other lists in terms of flaming, but neither can I honestly concur with an unduly idyllic characterization of the list. The give and take on this list has been great. I hope that it continues in a cordial and broad-minded manner. I anticipate that the contributions of any interested parties here will spur on the same kind of dialog on GB2MP. --Tony Wright From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Wed Apr 30 01:52:32 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 21:52:32 -0400 Subject: dialogue Message-ID: Although I am not going to rush to join, it is nice to hear that our presence would be tolerated in the GB2MP list. I doubt, however, that it would be seen with good eyes if that list received as high a percentage of postings from functionalists as this list receives from formalists. Speaking for myself, I have nothing against formalists participating on this list per se. I think it's wonderful. Sometimes I wonder about these colleagues' motivations, though. I do find it a bit annoying when the apparent sole purpose of their participation is to disparage the basic tenets of functionalism in linguistics, uncertain as these perhaps are, rather than to propose constructive criticism. I also must say, why not, that I found Tony's posting a bit disturbing. Perhaps it is my imagination, and perhaps it was unintended, but I sensed a patronizing attitude in its tone which I would be happy to be spared having to hear again in this list. Like that stuff about lacking empirical motivation. Was that supposed to be a flame, or what? Good thing we're pretty thick skinned around here from having had to put up with stuff like that for so long. Jon ---------------------------------------- Jon Aske jaske at abacus.bates.edu http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/ From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Wed Apr 30 05:35:15 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 08:35:15 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Tony Wright wrote: >Rather, the notion of "Goldstein" (as per John Myhill's apt analogy >with Orwell's _1984_) implies a thick-skinned individual who does not >mind being in the minority and voicing opinions that go against the >stream. I think this has been helpful for FUNKNET, which has gone from >being nothing but conference announcements to having a real dialog. The >function of Goldstein is to remind people that there are other viewpoints >which people conceivably might have, and we mustn't get too comfortable >in our cocoon. I'm sorry I was misunderstood. This is most definitely NOT the function of Goldstein in 1984, and it was not the function I was referring to in my posting. The function of Goldstein was to unite people under a totalitarian regime by giving them something external to hate which took their minds off of the system they themselves were living under. Goldstein was himself ultimately an agent of Big Brother, an indispensible part of the system. The relevance of my analogy to the situation on funknet is that it is depressing to me to see people who are supposed to be interested in talking about language evidently only being really moved by the active presence of 'the enemy'--what would happen if there were no formal linguists to argue with? Would functional linguists have nothing left to do or talk about? I hope that isn't the case, I want to believe that isn't the case, but the interactions on funknet in the last few months give me cause for concern. John Myhill From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Wed Apr 30 07:41:06 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 21:41:06 -1000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: At 07:35 PM 4/29/97 -1000, John Myhill wrote: >The function of Goldstein was to unite people under a totalitarian regime >by giving them something external to hate which took their minds off of >the system they themselves were living under. Goldstein was himself ultimately >an agent of Big Brother, an indispensible part of the system. The relevance of >my analogy to the situation on funknet is that it is depressing to me to see >people who are supposed to be interested in talking about language evidently >only being really moved by the active presence of 'the enemy'--what would happen >if there were no formal linguists to argue with? Would functional linguists >have nothing left to do or talk about? I hope that isn't the case, I want >to believe that isn't the case, but the interactions on funknet in the last >few months give me cause for concern. It's nice to see a discussion of what could be one of the more fundamental issues in this field--the need for an enemy. Frankly, I often think it is not linguists alone, nor academics alone, but rather it is the American love affair with anger that makes it impossible for people to get down to business whether it be on funk net or anywhere else. It seems in linguistics and academia as well as in the news and in politics no one could find a happier place to be than caught in a fit of self-righteous indigation at the miserable understanding and trouble making of someone else. All the better if you can say things in a way that would gather group anger and focus it on an offending individual or group. Congratulations to John Myhill for bringing up a side issue that might clarify many others. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From eitkonen at UTU.FI Wed Apr 30 21:27:27 1997 From: eitkonen at UTU.FI (Esa) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 12:27:27 -0900 Subject: faults of functionalism Message-ID: Dialogue is useful, in the following sense. When I argue, I never try to convince my opponent. I know that (s)he is just too stupid to understand. (This is a joke, I guess.) Who I try to convince, is the one who listens to us, having not yet committed him/herself. (This is not a joke.) Yet it is clear enough that there should be more self-criticism of functionalism. Here is something to start with. The emphasis on biology (e.g. in recent messages) is misplaced. If e.g. in the study of grammaticalization one uses such terms as 'problem-solving' or 'abductive inference', and if one means what one says (which may not always be the case, as we have learned), then it is clear that these terms/concepts have been developed in disciplines other than biology, and it is these disciplines, not biology, that should be consulted. (That is, biology is OK in the right place, but not in the wrong place.) It is customary to ridicule the idea that there might be a clear distinction between study of human nature and study of inanimate nature. But this customary way of thinking should itself be ridiculed. There are absolutely no inferences made by inanimate things qua research objects but there are inferences made by human beings qua research objects (again, provided one is using the terms in their literal sense). Of course at a higher level of abstraction similarities between physics and linguistics get more pronounced, but this is a different matter. Functionalism does not carry the blame of biological overemphasis alone. It inherited it from a once-dominant school of linguistics whose name right now oddly escapes me. There is overemphasis not just on biology but also on cognition (understood as psychology of individuals). Language cannot be adequately understood without the notion of normativity (= correct vs. incorrect or grammatical vs ungrammatical), and this is a necessarily social notion; but normativity is nearly ignored. This means in fact that functionalists (and cognitivists) are only too eager to commit the psychologistic fallacy (= reducing 'ought' to 'is', or ignoring 'ought' entirely), which has - nevertheless - been known to be a fallacy at least for 900 years (i.e. since Pierre Abaelard). Again, the cognitive overemphasis too has been inherited from the same nameless source that was hinted at above. There is more, but it may be good to save it for another occasion. Esa Itkonen From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Wed Apr 30 18:59:29 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:59:29 -0200 Subject: Program on Indigenous Languages of Brazil Message-ID: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information, please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Wed Apr 30 19:40:06 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:40:06 -0200 Subject: Program on Indigenous Languages of Brazil (fwd) Message-ID: Forwarded message: >>From maia Wed Apr 30 16:59:44 1997 From: maia (marcus antonio rezen) Message-Id: <9704301859.AA36288 at acd.ufrj.br> Subject: Program on Indigenous Languages of Brazil To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:59:29 -0200 (GRNLNDDT) Cc: maia (marcus antonio rezen) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2264 Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information, please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Wed Apr 30 22:39:51 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:39:51 CDT Subject: dialog Message-ID: Jon Aske wrote: > Although I am not going to rush to join, it is nice to hear that our > presence would be tolerated in the GB2MP list. I doubt, however, that it > would be seen with good eyes if that list received as high a percentage of > postings from functionalists as this list receives from formalists. I'd have to agree with you. This is not entirely an issue of formalists being intolerant, however. By its very nature, Chomskyan syntax is a more limited domain of inquiry than functional perspectives, which may take into account everything from discourse factors to neurology (I know that this is a old sticking point between functionalists and formalists). This fact itself limits the kinds of posts that would be appropriate on GB2MP. But I do not think it would be inappropriate for people to write, for example, "You know, there are analyses of this phenomenon that account for it semantically. See So and So's forthcoming article." Or, "My data suggest that this rigid either/or dichotomy doesn't hold water." Or "You know, there were real problems with the methodology of the that case study you cited." Or even a little conscience-pricking when we posit counterintuitive solutions to problems. > I also must say, why not, that I found Tony's posting a bit disturbing. > Perhaps it is my imagination, and perhaps it was unintended, but I sensed > a patronizing attitude in its tone which I would be happy to be spared > having to hear again in this list. Like that stuff about lacking empirical > motivation. Was that supposed to be a flame, or what? Good thing we're > pretty thick skinned around here from having had to put up with stuff like > that for so long. I assure you that any patronizing tone was certainly unintended. I only meant that any perception on the part of FUNKNETTERS, as reflected in recent posts, that they are unusually open-minded and tolerant, either of formalists or of other functionalists, seems unwarranted based on the number of "flames" that actually occur. Not that FUNKNET is any more prone to flames than average. I'm happy with FUNKNET overall, as I've said. --Tony Wright From mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA Fri Apr 4 01:39:25 1997 From: mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA (MARK DE VOS) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:39:25 PST Subject: Hi and a question Message-ID: Hi I'm new to the list but it seems like everyone's pretty quiet. I've been wondering about the etymology of the word "BYE" -egs: Goodbye...bye-bye etc My dictionaries (may they live forever) can't tell me where the word originated other than that it is colloquial, which is really rather vague. Any ideas out there? I've wondered it the word isn't a borrowing from Hindi or a dialect of it. I'm still trying to find samples, but I'm sure that I've heard it somewhere before.... mark South Africa ........................................................ This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontide! Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra From dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA Fri Apr 4 19:22:11 1997 From: dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA (DGR) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 19:22:11 +2HRS Subject: Hi and a question Message-ID: Mark wrote: > Hi > > I'm new to the list but it seems like everyone's pretty quiet. > > I've been wondering about the etymology of the word "BYE" > -egs: Goodbye...bye-bye etc > > My dictionaries (may they live forever) can't tell me where the word > originated other than that it is colloquial, which is really rather vague. > Any ideas out there? > > I've wondered it the word isn't a borrowing from Hindi or a dialect of it. > I'm still trying to find samples, but I'm sure that I've heard it > somewhere before.... > Bye is short for goodbye which seems to orginate from the phrase "God be with you". The adj "good" was substituted for "God" by analogy with good morning, good afternoon etc. I am also new on this list and yours is the first message I have received. Regards David Gerard From colinh at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Fri Apr 4 20:00:24 1997 From: colinh at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Colin Harrison) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:00:24 -0700 Subject: Hi and a question Message-ID: >Hi > >I'm new to the list but it seems like everyone's pretty quiet. > >I've been wondering about the etymology of the word "BYE" >-egs: Goodbye...bye-bye etc > >My dictionaries (may they live forever) can't tell me where the word >originated other than that it is colloquial, which is really rather vague. >Any ideas out there? > >I've wondered it the word isn't a borrowing from Hindi or a dialect of it. >I'm still trying to find samples, but I'm sure that I've heard it >somewhere before.... > >mark >South Africa I don't know if this is attested, but I have heard that "bye" is a contraction of "goodbye" (probably due to the persistent analysability of the "good"; and that "goodbye" is itself a contraction of "God be with ye!" At least it's a nice story! Colin Harrison Rice University From shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU Fri Apr 4 22:40:28 1997 From: shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU (Michele Feist) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:40:28 -0600 Subject: Sapir-Whorf summary Message-ID: Greetings. A few weeks ago, I posted the query to these lists: I'm a graduate student at Northwestern University doing work in psycholinguistics. I would like to find out about the current status of the Sapir-Whorf 'hypothesis'. Specifically, what has been done recently in connection with this idea ('Neo-Whorfianism'), and what is the status of that research? I'm sorry to have taken so long on the summary - as you'll see, my query generated quite a few responses. Many thanks to all those who responded: Tom Givon TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Alan C.L. Yu charon at uclink4.berkeley.edu David Kronenfeld KFELD at ucrac1.ucr.edu Phyllis Wilcox pwilcox at unm.edu Morton Ann Gernsbacher MAGernsb at facstaff.wisc.edu Herb Stahlke hstahlke at wp.bsu.edu Richard Scherl scherl at homer.njit.edu Bill Turkel bill at hivnet.ubc.ca Dan I. SLOBIN slobin at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Paul Peranteau paul at benjamins.com Irene Pepperberg imp at biosci.arizona.edu Douglas S. Oliver DOUGLASO at ucrac1.ucr.edu Catherine Harris charris at bu.edu Lawrence W. Barsalou L-Barsalou at uchicago.edu George Lakoff lakoff at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Jeri L. Moxley jmoxley at garnet.berkeley.edu Art Glenberg glenberg at facstaff.wisc.edu Don Peterkin dpeterkin at ucsd.edu Maria D. Sera Maria.D.Sera-1 at tc.umn.edu Jiansheng Guo Jiansheng.Guo at vuw.ac.nz Paul R. Hays hays at lit.sugiyama-u.ac.jp Gary B. Palmer gbp at nevada.edu H Stephen Straight sstraigh at binghamton.edu Michael Hall s_mjhall at eduserv.its.unimelb.EDU.AU Matthias Huening matthias.huenin at univie.ac.at Carsten Hansen carhan at coco.ihi.ku.dk Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen eep at cphling.dk Joseph Hilferty hilferty at lingua.fil.ub.es Steen Wackerhausen FILSW at hum.aau.dk Dick Hudson dick at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk Michelina Bonanno bonannom at gusun.acc.georgetown.edu Jane A. Edwards edwards at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Caitlin Hines chines at autobahn.org Patricia Kilroe kilroe at csd.uwm.edu John Lucy John.Lucy at mpi.nl Christopher Sinha psykcgs at aau.dk In addition to the references that I list below, I received the following suggestions: Consult work by Dan Slobin, Eric Pederson, Stephen Levinson, Suzette Elgin, and Melissa Bowerman, in addition to Piaget's work on child language development and work on Systemic Functional Linguistics, which was founded by Michael Halliday. The first Bohmian Science Dialogue Between Indigenous and Western Scientists involved Native American (academic and traditional) leaders and selected physicists, linguists, psychologists and others -- all of whom took Benjamin Whorf seriously. For a transcript, write to Carol Hegedus, Fetzer Institute, 9292 West KL Ave, Kalamazoo MI 49009. Caitlin Hines is chairing a panel on Whorf in Amsterdam this summer. There has been discussion of Whorf on the Linguist List, which can be accessed at http://linguistlist.org/; there will also be a 'topic page' on this subject at the Linguist-site soon: http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/topics/sapir-whorf/ Finally, I was given the following references (I have lots of reading ahead of me now!): Alford, Dan Moonhawk, "Stealing the Fire, A Linguistic Overview of This Century's Advances in Physics", given AAA/SAC March 25, 1996. Alford, Dan Moonhawk. "The Demise of Whorf Hypothesis". Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Feb. 1978: 485-499. Alford, Dan Moonhawk, "Is Whorf's Relativity Einstein's Relativity?", Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society Feb. 1981, 13-26. Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay. Basic Color Terms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991[1969]. Black, Max. Models and Metaphor. New York: Cornell University Press, 1962. Black, Max. "Some Troubles with Whorfianism" in Language and Philosophy. Ed. Sidney Hook. New York: New York University Press, 1969: 30-35. Bloom, Alfred H. The linguistic shaping of thought: A study in the impact of language on thinking in China and the west. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981. Brown, C. H. "Folk Zoological Life-forms: Their Universality and Growth." American Anthropologist 81 (1979): 791-817. Brown, C.H. "Folk Botanical Life-forms: Their Universality and Growth" American Anthropologist 79 (1977): 317-342. Brown, Roger. Words and Things. Glencoe: Free Press, 1958. Brown, R. and E. H. Lenneberg. "A Study in Language and Cognition." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49 (1954): 454-462. Carroll, John B. & Joseph B. Casagrande. "The function of language classifications in behavior", in E.E. Maccoby, T.M. Newcomb, & E.L.Hartley, eds., Readings in social psychology, 3rd edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 18-31, 1958. Casell, Eric J. 1976. Dease as an "it": concepts of dease revealed by patients' presentation of symptoms. Society Science and Medicine, 10, 143-146. (Journal title may not be completely accurate) Chawla, Saroj, 1991. Linguistic and philosophical roots of our environmental crisis. Environmental Ethids, 13, 253-262. R.L.Cooper and B.Spolsky (eds) The influence of language on culture and thought: essays in honor of Joshua A.Fishman's 65th birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. Croft, William A. A noun is a noun is a noun - or is it? Some reflections on the universality of semantics. Berkely Linguistics Soeciety 19, 1993, 369-380. Culler, Jonathan. Saussure. London: Fontana Press, 1976. Davidson, Donald, 'On the very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' in Inquiries into Truth & Interpretation , Oxford University Press, 1984. Devitt, Michael & Kim Sterelny, Language and Reality, Blackwell, 1987. Ekkehardt Malotki , Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal concepts in the Hopi Language Mouton, 1983. Fasold, Ralph. The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984. Garro, Linda. 1986. Language, memory, and focality: A reexamination. _American Anthropologist_ 88:128-136. Guiora, Alexander Z., B. Beit-Hallahmi, R. Fried, & C. Yoder. "Language environment and gender identity attainment", in Language Learning, 32:2, 289-304, 1982. Gumperz, J. and Levinson, S. (eds.) (1996). Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayward, William G. and Michael J. Tarr. "Spatial Language and Spatial Representation." Cognition 55 (1995): 39-84. Hill, Jane H. and Bruce Mannheim: Language and World View in: Annual Review of Anthropology, 1992, 21:381-406. Hill, Jane H. 1988. "Language, culture, and world-view." In Frederick J. Newmeyer, ed., Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, Volume IV: Language: The socio-cultural context, pp. 14-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Language and Culture, ed. Harry Hoijer, University of Chicago, circa 1955. Sidney Hook (ed.), Language and Philosophy , New York University Press, 1971. Hunt, Earl and Franca Agnoli. (1991). "The Whorfian Hypothesis: A Cognitive Psychology Perspective." Psychological Review. 98 (3), 377-389. Hymes, Dell and John Fought. American Structuralism. The Hague: Mouton, 1981. Kay, Paul and Willett Kempton. "What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?", American Anthropologist 86:1, 65-79, 1984. Kempton, Willett. The Folk Classification of Ceramics: A Study of Cognitive Prototypes. New York: Academic Press, 1981. Kess, J. F. Psycholinguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1992. Khosroshahi, Fatemeh. "Penguins don't care, but women do: A social identity analysis of a Whorfian problem", Language in Society 18:4, 505-525, 1989. Kronenfeld, David B. 1969 (1970) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KINSHIP CATEGORIES AND BEHAVIOR AMONG THE FANTI. Ph. D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University. Ann Arbor, University Microfilms. Kronenfeld, David B. 1975 Kroeber vs. Radcliffe-Brown on Kinship Behavior: The Fanti Test Case. MAN 10:257-284. Kronenfeld, David B. 1973 Fanti Kinship: The Structure of Terminology and Behavior. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 75:1577-1595. Kronenfeld, David B. 1996 PLASTIC DRINKING GLASSES AND CHURCH FATHERS: SEMANTIC EXTENSION FROM THE ETHNOSCIENCE TRADITION. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics Series, Oxford University Press (New York). Kronenfeld, David B., James D. Armstrong and Stan Wilmoth. 1985 Exploring the Internal Structure of Linguistic Categories: An Extensionist Semantic View. In DIRECTIONS IN COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY, edited by Janet W.D. Dougherty. Urbana and Chicago: University. of Illinois Press. pp. 21-110. Kuki, Shuuzou. "Iki" no Kouzou (The Structure of "Iki"). Tokyo: Iwanami, 1979[1930]. Kuno, Susumu. The Structure of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1973. Lakoff, George. "Classifiers as a Reflection of Mind." Typological Studies in Language, Vol. 7, Noun Classes and Categorization. Ed. Craig, C. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1986, 13-51. Lakoff, George. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphor We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lee, Dorothy, Freedom and Culture. Lee, Dorothy, Valuing the Self. Lee, Penny "New work on the linguistic relativity question", in Historiographia Linguistica , 1994, 20,1. Lee, Penny "The Whorf theory complex: A critical reconstruction", John Benjamins Publishing Company. 1996. Leisi, Ernst. Der Wortinhalt: Seine Struktur im Deuttschen und Englischen. 1952. Levi-Strauss, Claude. The savage mind. Trans. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966[1962]. Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Linn, M. and Miller-Cleary, Linda, "Applied Linguistics for Teachers", 1994. Longacre, Robert E. "Review of Language and Reality, by Wilbur M. Urban and Four Articles on Metalinguistics, by Benjamin Lee Whorf." Language 32, (1956): 298-308. Lucy, J. A.: Language diversity and thought - A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Lucy, J. A.. Grammatical Categories and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Lucy, J. A. and Richard A. Shweder. "Whorf and His Critics: Linguistics and Nonlinguistic Influence on Color Memory." American Anthropologist 81 (1979): 581-615. Lucy, John and Richard Schweder. "The effect of incidental conversation on memory for focal colors", American Anthropologist 90, 923-931, 1988. Macnamara, John. "Linguistic Relativity Revisited." in The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought. Ed. Cooper, Robert L. and Bernard Spolsky. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. 45-60. Malmkjaer, Kirsten, The Linguistics Encyclopedia. Martin, Laura. 1986. "Eskimo Words for Snow: A case study in the genesis and decay of an antropological example. American Anthropologist, 88, 418-422. McNeil, N. B. "Color and color terminology." Journal of Linguistics 8 (1972), 21-33. McNeil, N.B. Psycholinguistics: A New Approach. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987. Meiland, Jack W. and Michael Krausz., eds. Relativism. University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. Newmeyer, Frederick J. The politics of linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Palmer, Gary. Toward a Theory of Culture Change (U.T. Press. 1996) Penn, Julia M. Linguistic Relativity versus Innate Ideas. The Hague: Mouton & Co, N. V., Publishers, 1972. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind creates Language, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1994. Rosch, Eleanor. "Linguistic relativity", in A. Silverstein, ed., Human communication: Theoretical explorations, Lawrence Erlbaum, 95-121, 1974. Rumsey, A. "Wording, Meaning, and Linguistic Ideology." American Anthropologist , 92 , (1990): 346-361. Sampson, Geoffrey. Schools of Linguistics. London: Hutchinson, 1980. (In particluar, Chapter 4) Sapir, E. Language. New York: Harcourt Brace, circa 1949. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course de linguistique generale. Trans. Kobayashi Hideo. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1940. Schlesinger, I. M. "The Wax and Wane of Whorfian Views." in The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought, Eds. Cooper, Robert L. and Bernard Spolsky. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. 7-44. Sera, Maria D. (1992). To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 408-427. Sera, Maria D., Bales, Diane W., and del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (in press). Ser helps Spanish speakers identify "real" properties. Child Development. Sera, Maria D., Berge, Christian A.H., and del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (1994). Grammatical and conceptual forces in the attribution of gender by English and Spanish speakers. Cognitive Development, 9, 261-292. Sera, Maria D., Reittinger, Eric L., and del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (1991). Developing definitions of objects and events in English and Spanish speakers. Cognitive Development, 6, 119-142. Shultz, Emily. Dialogue at the Margins: Whorf, Bakhtin, and Linguistic Relativity (UW press). 1990. Slobin, D. I. Psycholinguistics. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1971. Steinberg, Danny D. Psycholinguistics: Language, Mind and Word. New York: Longman, 1982. Tailor, John R. Linguistic Categorization. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1989. Taylor, Talbot J. Mutual Misunderstanding. London: Duke University Press, 1992. R.L. Trask. Language: The Basics. Routledge, 1995. Ullmann, Stephen. Semantics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. Vygotsky, "Thought and language" . Werner, Heinz and Bernard Kaplan. Symbol formation. Trans. Kakizaki et al. Tokyo: Minerva Shobo Ltd, 1974. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, Mind and Reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. J. B. Carroll. New York: MIT Press, 1956. Wierzbicka, Anna. Lingua Mentalis. New York: Academic press, 1980. -, CURRENT TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS, Vol. 13, Part 2 (1975) Thanks again to all who replied! Michele Feist m-feist at nwu.edu From l.stassen at LET.KUN.NL Fri Apr 4 23:25:01 1997 From: l.stassen at LET.KUN.NL (l.m.h. stassen) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 01:25:01 +0200 Subject: Call for judgements Message-ID: Hi, mind if I ask you a question? I need native English speakers for this. Suppose you heard the following story: "I never could figure out the programming instructions for my VCR. Luckily, I know Gerald, and a) he showed me how to do it b) he showed me how it's done " Would you discern a difference in 'meaning' (whatever that is; please be liberal) between a) and b)? Or, alternatively: could you imagine situations in which you would say a) but not b), or the other way around? And if so, could you expand a little on what that difference might be? (Note: the verb 'show' is not essential; if you wish, replace it by 'wrote' or 'told', etc.) It's probably better if you mail me privately. I'll post a summary if/when appropiate. Many thanks in adcvance, Leon. Leon Stassen Dept.of Linguistics (ATD), KU Nijmegen Erasmusplein 1 6525 GG Nijmegen fax : +31-24-3615939 The Netherlands e-mail: l.stassen at let.kun.nl From mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA Sat Apr 5 06:51:04 1997 From: mdevos at CIS.CO.ZA (MARK DE VOS) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:51:04 PST Subject: Hi, a question and me Message-ID: Hi again I'm wondering how I can hide my utter humiliation....yes, I'm the oke that dared to wonder if "bye" was a Hindi borrowing....*blush* My other claim to fame is that my question somehow made FUNKNET erupt. As it turns out no less than 13 people to date have told me that "bye" is the remnants of "God be with you". On this point, I'm going to go with the flow and disappear into welcome obscurity. The question remains: how did I come to link Hindi and BYE at all? I was reading...(folly of follies)...and the word "bai" kept popping up in a Hindi context. Thinking ohmygoshIjustcantbelieveit I made a (rather too obvious link) with English. As it turns out, "bai" more or less means "brother", or so I am informed. Now I'm off to write a thousand lines?: I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY CONCLUSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGES WHICH I DO NOT SPEAK, I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY CONCLUSIONS... bye all Mark-bai ........................................................ This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontide! Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra From simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Sat Apr 5 15:50:55 1997 From: simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU (Beth Simon) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 10:50:55 EST Subject: Hi, a question and me Message-ID: Dear Mark, It's bhai, not bai. A bai is a land sale--and (probably) is borrowed, i.e. a "buy". beth simon From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sat Apr 5 17:08:28 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:08:28 -0500 Subject: Hi, a question and me In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Now I'm off to write a thousand lines?: I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY > CONCLUSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGES WHICH I DO NOT SPEAK, > I WILL NOT JUMP TO SILLY CONCLUSIONS... Mark, Do not worry too much about this. Your line of penitence above sounds like the normal way of doing research for many authors. -- DLE From dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA Sat Apr 5 23:49:05 1997 From: dgr at MEGAWEB.CO.ZA (DGR) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 23:49:05 +2HRS Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: Hi, I came across the following problem on another list. The poster asked whether it is possible to order something/ someone to exist as in the following phrase: "Be my love". In my opinion the form "be" in the above phrase is a subjunctive and expresses a wish rather than a command and not a command or imperative. The phrase is not structurally different from a command like "Be quiet" or "Be seated" What is the function of "be" in this phrase? Regards David Gerard. From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sat Apr 5 23:15:51 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:15:51 -0500 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: It sure sounds like a command to me. Definitely not a wish :) It is true that some languages do not allow sentences with BE to be coded as imperatives and must use some kind of desiderative phrase coded with some kind of irrealis/subjunctive verb form (eg Polish, I believe). But from a functional perspective these things are commands. What else could they be? Let us not confuse functional categories (such as 'command') with form-functional ones (such as 'imperative'). To the extent that the addressee can have volitional control over a state, commands with stative verbs are just fine. Under most circumstances, however, things like "be tall" sound odd, for exactly that reason. Me thinks. Jon ---------------------------------------- Jon Aske jaske at abacus.bates.edu http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/ -----Original Message----- From: DGR [SMTP:dgr at megaweb.co.za] Sent: Saturday, April 05, 1997 4:49 PM To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: Imperative/subjunctive. Hi, I came across the following problem on another list. The poster asked whether it is possible to order something/ someone to exist as in the following phrase: "Be my love". In my opinion the form "be" in the above phrase is a subjunctive and expresses a wish rather than a command and not a command or imperative. The phrase is not structurally different from a command like "Be quiet" or "Be seated" What is the function of "be" in this phrase? Regards David Gerard. From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sun Apr 6 02:57:49 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:57:49 -0800 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > Hi, > > I came across the following problem on another list. The poster asked > whether it is possible to order something/ someone to exist as in the > following phrase: > > "Be my love". > > In my opinion the form "be" in the above phrase is a subjunctive and > expresses a wish rather than a command and not a command or > imperative. The phrase is not structurally different > from a command like "Be quiet" or "Be seated" What is the > function of "be" in this phrase? > > Regards > > David Gerard. First, I don't think "Be my love" is commanding someone/something to "exist." It is a command for someone to take on a certain role. I see this as quite analogous to "be quiet" or "be seated." Second, there is an interesting "misuse" of "be" that I have heard, that makes sense at some level. Here is an example: "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." IOW, he just acts crazy. This is an actual example that went totally unnoticed by the non-linguists in the conversation. I think I've heard others like this. Anyone else? If it has the validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive. I'd be interested in other opinions on this. _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Sun Apr 6 05:14:38 1997 From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 00:14:38 -0500 Subject: bees Message-ID: Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like "act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular verb "be". Has this phenomenon been discussed in the literature at all? Matthew Dryer From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 6 05:24:54 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 08:24:54 +0300 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: Tom Payne wrote: > >Second, there is an interesting "misuse" of "be" that I have heard, that >makes sense at some level. Here is an example: > >"He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." > >IOW, he just acts crazy. This is an actual example that went totally >unnoticed by the non-linguists in the conversation. > >I think I've heard others like this. Anyone else? If it has the >validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might >be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive. > What you heard is a perfectly normal usage in Black English, where invariant BE is used with habitual meaning (`he just acts crazy'). The -s inflection here, at least in Black English, is a bit of a mystery--it doesn't indicate agreement, because this occurs just as easily with non-3rd person or plural subjects. Did the speaker stress the word `be(e)'? This is how I can imagine this being said. I personally think that the -s has some sort of emphatic function, but of course this is completely vague and an empirical study would be needed to confirm this. If the usage Tom heard was by someone who was not likely to speak Black English (e.g. a white person), I would guess that this is still likely to be directly or indirectly the influence of Black English--this is such a completely normal usage in Black English, in terms of both structure and meaning, that it's unlikely to be a complete coincidence. John Myhill From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sun Apr 6 19:08:51 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 12:08:51 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: Yes, I agree with Matthew. There is a distinct, regular verb "be" that has a slightly different meaning than the one we think of as the standard "be." I think the example "He just bees crazy . . . " and others indicates that it is more volitional than standard "be," and that it might have the connotation that the resulting state is "less actual" than analogous expressions with standard "be." I don't know where this might have been discussed in the literature either. _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU Mon Apr 7 00:58:19 1997 From: alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU (Alan Dench) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:58:19 +0800 Subject: Bees Message-ID: 'Bees' is a feature of my children's speech (6 ranging in age from 6 to 13) and does appear to me to be 'more volitional' - but I will keep listening. Eg. I don't like X, he always bees silly. We live in Western Australia and apart from occasional American television have had no exposure to BEV. I don't believe this can be put down to interference. Nor would I suggest it is a regular feature of Australian English. Mind you, we also have a regular transitive verb 'to verse' in the houshold ... as in "Joe versus the volcano", where this form shows 3sgS agreement. So we also regularly hear things like: I'm versing Michael in the next game! We versed the boys in Crash Bandicoot and really kicked! Who needs exotic field locations? Alan Dench Centre for Linguistics University of Western Australia From lenell at UCSU.COLORADO.EDU Mon Apr 7 04:08:07 1997 From: lenell at UCSU.COLORADO.EDU (LENELL ELIZABETH ANN) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 22:08:07 -0600 Subject: bees In-Reply-To: <3347F4C3.1708@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: AAVE "be" verbs pattern nicely with SAE. For a concise intro, and a specific reference to "bees", see Finegan 1994, pg 425. He claims it is an inflected variant used to indicate continuous, repeated, or habitual action. One unconnected AAVE usage I have collected is I beens gonna (do it). I beens wanting one bad. Presumably this is similar to SAE "have been", and may have been idiolect. Elizabeth Lenell Univerisity of Colorado-Boulder Graduate student From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Mon Apr 7 05:24:03 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:24:03 +0300 Subject: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: The particular example Tom mentioned is a completely normal usage in Black English--the form is typical, the habitual meaning is typical. For African Americans, such a usage is not only not unusual, it is the only way to say this (the -s inflection can come or go, regardless of the person/number of the subject, but the invariant BE is always there).Sociolinguists (e.g. Labov) have been talking about this a lot for the last 30 years. I don't know the personal background of the speaker Tom heard, but my first guess at least would be that this is either Black English or a borrowing from Black English. John Myhill From mbuijs at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Mon Apr 7 11:55:28 1997 From: mbuijs at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Michel Buijs) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:55:28 +0100 Subject: bees Message-ID: John Myhill wrote: >Did the speaker stress the word `be(e)'? This is how I can imagine this >being said. >I personally think that the -s has some sort of emphatic function, but of >course this is completely vague and an empirical study would be needed to >confirm this. If the speaker did actually stress the word 'be' in the sentence "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls" this can be accounted for by considering the fact that this is a case of replacing focus: Concerning topic 'he', not x but y is the case. The speaker replaces the wrong assumption he thinks his addressee has with the correct one. In this case, the wrong assumption is a general state of 'being cazy', which is replaced with a temporary/recurring/habitual one, as is precisely indicated by the temporal modifier 'when he's around girls'. The sentence structure 'not' ... 'just' confirms the replacing focus analysis. For the speaker, the proposition 'he is crazy' only holds true if the subordinated proposition holds true. The fact that the verbal constituent _bees_ is a focal element would sufficiently explain its being stressed (I have some doubts as to whether the -s has 'some sort of emphatic function'). And maybe the fact that the verbal constituent has focus function itself may have been a reason for adopting the irregular verb form...(?) Best, Michel |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Drs Michel Buijs Classics Department Leiden University P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands Phone: +31 (0)71 - 527 2774 Fax: +31 (0)71 - 527 2615 E-mail: mbuijs at rullet.leidenuniv.nl |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Mon Apr 7 11:50:52 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 07:50:52 -0400 Subject: FW: Imperative/subjunctive. Message-ID: This was meant for the list. It's got a great example. Jon -----Original Message----- From: Rictus Hep [SMTP:rictus at best.com] Sent: Sunday, April 06, 1997 12:13 AM To: Jon Aske Subject: Re: Imperative/subjunctive. > To the extent that the addressee can have volitional control over a state, > commands with stative verbs are just fine. Under most circumstances, > however, things like "be tall" sound odd, for exactly that reason. Funny you should mention that particular phrase. My wife often says things like, "Be tall for me and get that vase off the top shelf, will you?" nj From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Apr 7 13:07:01 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 06:07:01 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: The regularized inflected "be" may also exist in AAVE, but this is not the source of the example I cited or the ones cited by Alan Dench. I believe there is something about the regular inflection of this verb, and perhaps others, that is particularly suited to the "volitional" connotation. Tell me, is it my imagination or does a clause like "he knowed the answer" sound more like something someone might *do to* an answer than a state the subject is in? (I don't like "speculative linguistics" either, but what the heck, there hasn't been much traffic on Funknet recently . . .) _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Apr 7 16:02:15 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 09:02:15 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: The regularized inflected "be" may also exist in AAVE, but this is not the source of the example I cited or the ones cited by Alan Dench. I believe there is something about the regular inflection of this verb, and perhaps others, that is particularly suited to the "volitional" connotation. Tell me, is it my imagination or does a clause like "he knowed the answer" sound more like something someone might *do to* an answer than a state the subject is in? (Or would such a reading be an extension from "he mowed the lawn"? I don't like "speculative linguistics" either, but what the heck, there hasn't been much traffic on Funknet recently. (. .) -- _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Mon Apr 7 17:23:43 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:23:43 CDT Subject: bees Message-ID: Michel Buijs wrote: > If the speaker did actually stress the word 'be' in the sentence > "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls" > this can be accounted for by considering the fact that this is a case of > replacing focus: Concerning topic 'he', not x but y is the case. > The speaker replaces the wrong assumption he thinks his addressee has with > the correct one. Alan Dench wrote: > 'Bees' is a feature of my children's speech (6 ranging in age > from 6 to 13) and does appear to me to be 'more volitional' - but I > will keep listening. Eg. > I don't like X, he always bees silly. I have heard this in children's speech here in the US, too. I was once told by a boy (in reference to another student) something like: "If he bees bad, you should punish him." This really got me to thinking, and I could certainly agree with him that: "If he is bad, you should punish him." doesn't mean the same thing. I think this is not a focus issue, but an active/stative verb distinction. In these cases, "be" is a synonym for "behave". The semantic difference between this and the stative verb "be" makes it clear to children that they've got a totally new verb on their hands, and lacking any evidence that they should do otherwise, they apply regular processes of grammatical morphology to this new "be". --Tony Wright From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Apr 7 18:03:29 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:03:29 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: Has anyone ever made lists of "regular" vs. "irregular" (or "strong") verbs in English and compared them for semantic features? Might it be the case that "regular" verbs (those that inflect with -s and -ed) tend to describe changes in state, whereas "irregular" verbs tend to describe states or activities? If so, this might explain why children, and other speakers I'm sure, have this tendency to regularize "be" to express a more "volitional" or "active" meaning. Do any other irregular verbs have a more volitional/active meaning when regularized? I'm really interested in this. dove/dived? sank/sinked? Is "They sinked the ship" somehow more logical than "The ship sinked"? _____________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Payne, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA Voice: 541 342-6706. Fax: 541 346-3917 ______________________________________________________________________ From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Mon Apr 7 20:42:43 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:42:43 -0700 Subject: bees Message-ID: If you've only heard a form once from a speaker (or rarely, if you have a large corpus) you might just have heard a slip of the tongue. They tend overwhemingly to be regularizations of regulars... Lise Menn Lise Menn Professor and Chair Department of Linguistics University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0295 (303) 492-8042 - Chair's Office (303) 492-1609 - Faculty Office (303) 492-4416 - Fax E-MAIL: Lise.Menn at colorado.edu From griffith at KULA.USP.AC.FJ Mon Apr 7 21:18:47 1997 From: griffith at KULA.USP.AC.FJ (Patrick Griffiths) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:18:47 +1200 Subject: irregular verb list In-Reply-To: <334936F1.1CBE@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Tom Payne wrote: > Has anyone ever made lists of "regular" vs. "irregular" (or "strong") > verbs in English.... I don't know about the semantic side of the query (= .... in the quotation above), but Bernard Bloch did a very detailed allomorphic taxononmy of English verb classes in LANGUAGE, 1947, 23: 399-418 (reprinted in M Joos (ed) Readings in linguistics I, U Chicago Press, 1966, 243-254). The article is called "English verb inflection". Looking through Bloch's lists might offer an answer to the semantic question. Best wishes Patrick ======================================================================= Dr Patrick Griffiths Senior Lecturer in Linguistics Department of Literature & Language University of the South Pacific P O Box 1168 Suva Fiji Telephone: (+679) 212314 Fax: (+679) 305053 (must bear my name to be sure of reaching me) _______________________________________________________________________ The University of the South Pacific is the university of twelve island countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Western Samoa. The main campus is located in Suva, the capital of Fiji (on Vitilevu, the largest of Fiji's 300+ islands), but there are regional centres in all but one of the countries served. There are on-campus students as well as large numbers enrolled for distance learning. From apawley at COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU Mon Apr 7 23:37:43 1997 From: apawley at COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU (Andy Pawley) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:37:43 +1000 Subject: bees Message-ID: A propos of Tony Wright's remarks on acquiring English verb morphology: >I think this is not a focus issue, but an active/stative verb distinction. >In these cases, "be" is a synonym for "behave". The semantic difference >between this and the stative verb "be" makes it clear to children that >they've got a totally new verb on their hands, and lacking any evidence >that they should do otherwise, they apply regular processes of grammatical >morphology to this new "be".> -- As toddlers in Tasmania, according to my elders, my cousin Max and I were told: 'Now you two behave!" and I protested indignantly "We ARE being have [heyv]!". On the analogy of 'be good', 'be careful' etc., I had concluded there is a predicate adjective 'heyv' meaning something like 'behaving well'. Andy Pawley From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Tue Apr 8 00:05:16 1997 From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:05:16 -0400 Subject: bees Message-ID: I think neither Lise's suggestion regarding a slip of the tongue or John's suggestion re the influence of Black English are plausible. As I reported in my response to Tom's query a couple of days ago, I have heard the phenomenon sufficiently often, and only with volitional predicates (like "crazy" and "quiet"), and by Canadians with little or no exposure to Black English, and neither of these hypotheses would account for these observations. Matthew Dryer From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Apr 8 00:53:06 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:53:06 EDT Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: i'm a little stunned by the readiness to discount aave as the source for this form, given that (a)it's a very well entrenched high frequency form in aave from the atlantic to the pacific, (b)it has *precisely* the aspectual meaning in aave that was attributed to the original token, (c)it certainly has never been a well-known feature of any white dialect, to my knowledge, and (d)i've never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations. in fact, the original token, as i recall, suggests strongly that we are NOT dealing with children's regularization since the first clause had the copula in all its irregular glory, n'est-ce pas? (i no longer have the msg so i may be misremembering it, but i thought the two copulas contrasted aspectually, i.e. what john myhill was talking about as 'focus'.) the argument that the speaker has no contact with aave is pretty strange, considering the number of aave lexical items that have entered the language at large, from _jazz_ to _cool_ and zillions of others. more striking to me is that one now sees the sort of logo graffiti born in the black ghettos of this country all over the world, where the local graffiti artists -- apparently young working-class or poverty-class males -- certainly never saw the 'real thing'. (not your junior-year-abroad types, to be sure.) but they see it in movies and tv shows -- where they also hear (some version of) aave. and it's high-prestige, folks. so if young german kids in some rural area near poland and young ethnic turks in a suburb of stockholm can borrow the graffiti style of bed-stuy and watts, then surely a child in oregon can borrow a lexical item from them. no? From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Tue Apr 8 03:02:13 1997 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne E Kemmer) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 22:02:13 -0500 Subject: 'bees' in child lg. Message-ID: I have also noticed small children (nephews/nieces) saying 'bees', in cases where they were too young for daycare and unlikely to pick up any AAVE forms. I don't find it at all surprising, given that kids are trying to map meanings to gramm. and lexical forms, that a child might create a formal distinction between temporary vs. permanent state, or more agentive vs. less agentive predicate, or whatever the actual distinction turns out to be, via overregularizing the copula for one of the semantic categories and not the other. Especially if the distinction in question were one that many grammars encode formally (e.g. AAVE). The lack of a parallel in the surrounding speech of the family isn't problematic, since kids do come up with their own distinctions before learning the conventional ones in their language. Perhaps the CHILDES database will provide more examples, with some context. The suggestion of a connection with the strong/weak classes is intriguing. I recall Colin Harrison's suggestion on this list a while back that strong verbs are typically associated with motor actions (he was pointing out that this was not controlled for in the Language paper on brain imaging and the strong/weak contrast). That's a somewhat different basis from the pure aktionsart one suggested; both would bear looking into. It would be interesting to look at the question of lexical semantic classes of the verbs and the contribution of the regular inflections more generally (i.e. outside the predicate adjective construction). For example, why shouldn't kids learn to associate an inflectional ending on the verb with agentivity/change, given that these properties are prototypical in verbs? If so, we might predict that such inflections would appear first on verbs with these properties, and only later spread to other kinds of verbs (we'd have to control for frequency). A related idea: Maybe when kids first start overgeneralizing the past tense -ed, they do it first or most often with agentive/change of state verbs, because they think the -ed means "carried out an action". In other words, they'd be more likely to say "She goed" than "she sleeped". Child language people, does this fit with your observations? --Suzanne From nrude at UCINET.COM Tue Apr 8 02:57:28 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 18:57:28 -0800 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Hi folks, Ellen F. Prince says she's "never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations." My kids sure were. My son, for example, had a regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with -en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and then also, "He fixed my airplane". Noel From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Tue Apr 8 15:13:05 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 11:13:05 -0400 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <3349B417.1A21@ucinet.com> Message-ID: > My son, for example, had a > regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with > -en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and > then also, "He fixed my airplane". > How do you know that the ending was really the adult -en, as opposed to what I would have expected in this environment, namely -ing [-In] (in my dialect, So. Calif. English)? DLE From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Apr 8 15:45:47 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 11:45:47 EDT Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 07 Apr 1997 18:57:28 -0800." <3349B417.1A21@ucinet.com> Message-ID: >Hi folks, > > Ellen F. Prince says she's "never heard that children's regularizations >of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic >differentiations." My kids sure were. My son, for example, had a >regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with >-en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and >then also, "He fixed my airplane". > > Noel i would call that morphological or syntactic but definitely not semantic. From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Tue Apr 8 15:50:05 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:50:05 -0500 Subject: irregular verb list In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Patrick Griffiths wrote: > On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Tom Payne wrote: > > > Has anyone ever made lists of "regular" vs. "irregular" (or "strong") > > verbs in English.... > > I don't know about the semantic side of the query (= .... in the quotation > above), but Bernard Bloch did a very detailed allomorphic taxononmy of > English verb classes in LANGUAGE, 1947, 23: 399-418 (reprinted in M Joos > (ed) Readings in linguistics I, U Chicago Press, 1966, 243-254). The > article is called "English verb inflection". > Also, H.A. Gleason Jr. presents a complete list, with categorization, of the irregular (strong) verbs of English in the chapter on English Morphology in his Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics (1961). (Of course, the regular ones could never be completely listed.) --- Syd Lamb From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 8 20:47:42 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 14:47:42 -0600 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Same here! Just told him privately! But then, perhaps the child clearly differenciated -n from -ng..., which in no way excludes a strong association! Max On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > My son, for example, had a > > regularized past tense with -ed and a regularized past participle with > > -en. He would say things like, "Daddy, my airplane needs fixen," and > > then also, "He fixed my airplane". > > > > How do you know that the ending was really the adult -en, as opposed to > what I would have expected in this environment, namely -ing [-In] (in my > dialect, So. Calif. English)? > > DLE > From jtang at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Apr 8 22:50:58 1997 From: jtang at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Joyce Tang Boyland) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 15:50:58 -0700 Subject: bees , undergenlzn Message-ID: I think that children's regularization of "be" is more profitably thought of as a case of *under*generalization, where pieces of the paradigm are being split off to serve particular different functions. That is, there's the "be" that means "act in such a way" (which is consistent with the input to children: be good, be nice, etc.), and then there's the copula (which, in the input, is often just a clitic 'm, 're, or 's). It's pretty reasonable for kids to undergeneralize "be" to mean just the "act thus" sense. It's comparable, say, to the splitting off of "haf to" from the rest of "have". My husband, for example, says things like "They were hafing to shout all day" where "haf to" is just the "must" meaning. Children undergeneralize all the time, and adults do it too. It makes sense to me to see this as a specific case of a general phenomenon. Incidentally, this isn't a case of grammaticization (the opposite, really), but i don't think it's far-fetched to say that processes like this often contribute to grammaticization. (for further discussion of general cognitive processes in grammaticization, ask for my dissertation). Joyce Tang Boyland From nrude at UCINET.COM Tue Apr 8 11:19:15 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 03:19:15 -0800 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Hi again, Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs fixing" would also be good English. All that I can say is that I collected (wrote down) many examples of my son's -en versus -ed: his -en was restricted to passive constructions ("It is fixen" = "It is fixed", etc.) and his -ed to the past tense. Also I suspect that Ellen Prince ("never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations") meant semantic differentiation that was not already there in the child's input, and in this sense then mine was no counterexample. As to where structure leaves off and semantics begins, who am I to know? One would think though that since semantic distinctions are continually being leveled by language change (e.g. OE beon and waesan merging in the single "be" paradigm of modern English) then surely new semantic distinctions must be arising or else our languages would become semantically impoverished. And one imagines not all enrichment comes by borrowing. Surely the kids are responsible for some. Noel From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Wed Apr 9 02:09:11 1997 From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 22:09:11 -0400 Subject: Reply to Ellen Prince on "bees" Message-ID: Ellen says "i've never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations." But the explanation I proposed was that children who do this are unaware that the "be" is "Be quiet" is the same verb as the verb "is, are, etc." Hence what I was suggesting would not really involve regularization of an irregular verb. Ellen says that aave "has *precisely* the aspectual meaning in aave that was attributed to the original token". ("He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls.") Perhaps. But does aave have the property I reported regarding the instances of this phenomenon that I have observed, that it is restricted to predicates over which the subject has some volitional control? I have observed examples of the form "She beed crazy", "I beed a good boy", "He bees quiet", but never examples of the form "He beed hungry", "She bees asleep", or "I bees a tall boy". Is aave like this? Ellen says "the argument that the speaker has no contact with aave is pretty strange". But I was not attempting to explain the particular token that Tom reported but the more general instances of this phenomenon including both the one observed by Tom and those that I have observed, including productive instances by my son, who had limited contact with speakers of English other than his mother, myself, and a babysitter who was an Italian immigrant to Canada. In particular he did not play with other children until he was four years old, and thus had virtually no exposure to aave, direct or indirect. At most he might have been exposed to it on television, but it is my impression that this feature of aave is rarely used on television, or wasn't prior to 1987 (the year that my son turned 4). Furthermore, he was producing such forms in his earliest utterances involving "be" plus volitional stative predicates. It is quite possible that the particular token reported by Tom did reflect influence of aave, but that is another matter. I append my original message about this. Matthew Dryer Original message: Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like "act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular verb "be". From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Apr 9 02:42:34 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 20:42:34 -0600 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <334A29B5.437E@ucinet.com> Message-ID: Guess you're right, pal! Max On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Noel Rude wrote: > Hi again, > > Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs > fixing" would also be good English. All that I can say is that I > collected (wrote down) many examples of my son's -en versus -ed: his > -en was restricted to passive constructions ("It is fixen" = "It is > fixed", etc.) and his -ed to the past tense. Also I suspect that Ellen > Prince ("never heard that children's regularizations of irregular verbs > were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations") meant semantic > differentiation that was not already there in the child's input, and in > this sense then mine was no counterexample. As to where structure > leaves off and semantics begins, who am I to know? One would think > though that since semantic distinctions are continually being leveled by > language change (e.g. OE beon and waesan merging in the single "be" > paradigm of modern English) then surely new semantic distinctions must > be arising or else our languages would become semantically > impoverished. And one imagines not all enrichment comes by borrowing. > Surely the kids are responsible for some. > > Noel > From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Apr 9 04:32:22 1997 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne E Kemmer) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 23:32:22 -0500 Subject: is it undergeneralization? Message-ID: If we're looking for terminology to describe this sort of phenomenon, I think it's exactly parallel to the "repartition" that Breal described for lexical splits in diachrony--differentiations in the history of etymologically the same word. An example going on right now is a pronunciation difference in _virtually_ depending on whether it means 'practically', vs. 'pertaining to virtual, electronic connections' (as in "She laughed, virtually"). The older meaning allows more phonological elision. With _bees_ this differentiation happens to be at the constructional level, and it is in the ontogenetic development of the grammar rather than the larger-scale change of the lg. in a population over time. It's like the case of _gots_ for 'has' which is endemic in child language (and bigger and bigger kids seem to use it). I'm uncomfortable with 'undergeneralization' for this kind of differentiation, since that term sounds like restricting the usage of a morpheme to a range smaller than what it has in the adult lg. There are plenty of examples of the latter in child language, but it seems different from what is going on here. (E.g. using a word for a type to designate an instance: _kuh_ to mean only the child's juice cup.) 'Overgeneralization' is appropriate or not depending on the perspective you take. >>From the point of view of the occurrence of -s, it's putting regular inflection in a place it doesn't belong, on the strength of the entrenched regular pattern. The child's schema for -s is then more general than in the adult language. Yet at the same time, because of the child's different understanding of the predicate _be_ (compared to the adult language) in these 'act' contexts, it's not just a matter of replacing an irregular verb with its regular correlate, like saying _goed_ for _went_. Actually, this whole question makes me wonder what kids are actually doing when 'replacing' irregulars with regulars (which I understand they do only a portion of the time--they do keep producing irregulars the whole period of overgeneralization). We don't know what kinds of semantic distinctions they might be making until we look, and my assumptions about language learning leave the possibility open for such distinctions, rather than precluding them. --Suzanne From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Wed Apr 9 05:38:51 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:38:51 +0300 Subject: Reply to Ellen Prince on "bees" Message-ID: My original point about possible influence from AAVE regarded Tom's observation, which made not statement at all about the personal background of the person involved (escept I have concluded from the preceding discussed that s/he was not black and not a young child). Even if this person was not literally (or figuratively) black, this does not mean that this usage is not ultimately due to contact with AAVE--as Ellen points out, there are innumerable cases like this (how many fellow children of the 60's know that in the 1940's 'groovy' was restricted to black people? In the late 1970's my brother consistently said 'let's book' meaning 'let's go/boogie/split'--'book' in this usage is indisputably a black invention (popular among blacks maybe 5 years before) but my brother had zero black friends at the time and was completely unaware that it had been a 'black' word. To check the case Tom heard, it would be necessary to investigate the personal background of the person who said it, where s/he heard it from, where THAT person heard it from, etc. I would guess that this is likely to lead to AAVE eventually because the usage sounds so much like AAVE. The cases Matt is talking about seem to me different. Firstly, some of them are about young children, where I would suppose some general cognitive/developmental account would be most likely (although it would of course be a good idea to check if the babysitter from Italy gave some second-language errors in this regard). The cases among adults where these are limited to volitional predicates sound different from the AAVE 'be/s', and unlike anything I am aware of in North American sociolinguistics (which by no means suggests that I don't believe Matt, just that this hasn't been reported, although sociolinguistics have been searching North America for white people who have invariant BE for 30 years without finding anything more that a few very old rural southerners (Guy Bailey's work). You ought to tell dialectologists about this, Matt. But first, maybe make sure this isn't really the same phenonemon (or a variant) of the invariant AAVE usage. However, Matt's observation and Tom's do not necessary have to have the same explanation. Before rushing to speculate on universalist accounts of this, it would be a good idea to consider accounts which are more down-to-earth and testable, like dialect contact. John >Ellen says "i've never heard that children's regularizations of irregular >verbs were accompanied by precise semantic differentiations." But the >explanation I proposed was that children who do this are unaware that the >"be" is "Be quiet" is the same verb as the verb "is, are, etc." Hence >what I was suggesting would not really involve regularization of an >irregular verb. > >Ellen says that aave "has *precisely* the aspectual meaning in aave that >was attributed to the original token". ("He's not crazy, he just _bees_ >crazy when he's around girls.") Perhaps. But does aave have the property >I reported regarding the instances of this phenomenon that I have >observed, that it is restricted to predicates over which the subject has >some volitional control? I have observed examples of the form "She beed >crazy", "I beed a good boy", "He bees quiet", but never examples of the >form "He beed hungry", "She bees asleep", or "I bees a tall boy". Is aave >like this? > >Ellen says "the argument that the speaker has no contact with aave is >pretty strange". But I was not attempting to explain the particular token >that Tom reported but the more general instances of this phenomenon >including both the one observed by Tom and those that I have observed, >including productive instances by my son, who had limited contact with >speakers of English other than his mother, myself, and a babysitter who >was an Italian immigrant to Canada. In particular he did not play with >other children until he was four years old, and thus had virtually no >exposure to aave, direct or indirect. At most he might have been exposed >to it on television, but it is my impression that this feature of aave is >rarely used on television, or wasn't prior to 1987 (the year that my son >turned 4). Furthermore, he was producing such forms in his earliest >utterances involving "be" plus volitional stative predicates. It is quite >possible that the particular token reported by Tom did reflect influence >of aave, but that is another matter. > >I append my original message about this. > >Matthew Dryer > > >Original message: > >Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in > >"He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." > >My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she >bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates >like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I >have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), >do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his >first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts >sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the >verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in >imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good >boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with >such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a >volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like >"act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if >such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect >that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. > >For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the >validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might >be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, >for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular >verb "be". From elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Wed Apr 9 15:11:37 1997 From: elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Ellen L. Contini-Morava) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 11:11:37 -0400 Subject: bees , undergenlzn In-Reply-To: <9704082250.AA25659@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: I agree with Joyce Tang Boyland that the most obvious source of _bees_ in "he just bees crazy when he's around girls" is the 'act in such a way' send commonly found in 'be good', 'be nice' etc. (and not just in imperatives: "Don't mind him, he's just being silly"). But I'm surprised that this doesn't lead her (or anyone in this discussion so far) to question the assumed unity of "the paradigm" in which is/are/was/were (copula) are suppletive alternants of _be_ (infinitive, subjunctive etc.). In many languages the copula is a distinct form from an apparently synonymous infinitive and they have different historical sources. For example, in Swahili the copula _ni_ is distinct both grammatically and historically from the infinitive _ku-wa_, the source of the latter being a verb meaning 'become'. It's true that 'be' and is/are/was/were are in complementary distribution, and that symmetry with other verbs makes them look like a paradigm, but they also have different ranges of meaning, as pointed out in this discussion (is/are/was/were don't have the "volitional" sense whereas 'be' allows it) and, most obviously, differ in form. Rather than positing two different _be_s in English, a volitional one and a non-volitional one, it seems more reasonable to attribute the volitionality to context (such as the imperative, which has the same effect in e.g. "smell the coffee" vs. "I smell coffee"), and the resistance of is/are/was/were to a volitional reading suggests that they are not entirely synonymous with _be_, however neatly they might be squeezed into a paradigm. As Dwight Bolinger liked to point out, differences in form are likely loci of differences in meaning. Ellen Contini-Morava On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Joyce Tang Boyland wrote: > I think that children's regularization of "be" is more profitably > thought of as a case of *under*generalization, where pieces of the > paradigm are being split off to serve particular different functions. > > That is, there's the "be" that means "act in such a way" > (which is consistent with the input to children: be good, be nice, etc.), > and then there's the copula (which, in the input, is often just a clitic > 'm, 're, or 's). It's pretty reasonable for kids to undergeneralize "be" > to mean just the "act thus" sense. > > It's comparable, say, to the splitting off of "haf to" from the rest of "have". > My husband, for example, says things like "They were hafing to shout all day" > where "haf to" is just the "must" meaning. > > Children undergeneralize all the time, and adults do it too. > It makes sense to me to see this as a specific case of a general phenomenon. > > Incidentally, this isn't a case of grammaticization (the opposite, really), > but i don't think it's far-fetched to say that processes like this > often contribute to grammaticization. (for further discussion of general > cognitive processes in grammaticization, ask for my dissertation). > > Joyce Tang Boyland > From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed Apr 9 15:35:57 1997 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:35:57 -0700 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <334A29B5.437E@ucinet.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Noel Rude wrote: > Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs > fixing" would also be good English. And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the _needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. The verb form is, of course, a participle, not a past ("Do those eggs need beaten?"). This not only makes your interpretation more plausible (kids--and adults, at least in rural western Oregon, would be much more likely to say "NP needs fixed" than "NP needs fixing"), it also suggests the stimulus for the reinterpretation. Scott DeLancey From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Wed Apr 9 17:18:43 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 13:18:43 -0400 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The "needs x-ed" construction is also extremely well-entrenched in Pittsburgh. In fact, this is the main reason I asked the question - to see if there were reasons for not interpreting -en as -ing. Such reasons *do* exist, as Scott points out, if "needs fixed" would be more expected than "needs fixing". (Alternatively, one could follow my own personal prejudices and say that such expressions are not English. But I suppose I must admit that there is English spoken natively outside of San Diego.) -- DLE ****************************** ****************************** Dan Everett Department of Linguistics University of Pittsburgh 2816 CL Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130 http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu/~dever On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Scott Delancey wrote: > On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Noel Rude wrote: > > > Ah yes, didn't think when making the post that "my airplane needs > > fixing" would also be good English. > > And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't > thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the > _needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. The verb form > is, of course, a participle, not a past ("Do those eggs need beaten?"). > This not only makes your interpretation more plausible (kids--and adults, > at least in rural western Oregon, would be much more likely to say > "NP needs fixed" than "NP needs fixing"), it also suggests the stimulus > for the reinterpretation. > > Scott DeLancey > From clements at INDIANA.EDU Wed Apr 9 20:42:30 1997 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:42:30 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: >And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't >thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the >_needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP needs fixed" construction found? Clancy Clements J. Clancy Clements Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese Ballantine Hall 844 Bloomington, IN 47405 Ph: (812) 855-6141 Fax: (812) 855-4526 From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Wed Apr 9 20:09:18 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:09:18 -0500 Subject: Things that need fixed Message-ID: On the _needs fixed_ etc. construction >>And what probably most of the other readers of your note aren't >>thinking about is that your kids grew up in Oregon, where the >>_needs fixed_ construction is pretty entrenched. >Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south >central Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, >although I'm not sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. >Where else is the "NP needs fixed" construction found? To add a bit to the previous posts, as many Oregon dialectologists have noted, early census data for the Willamette Valley show Missouri and (I believe) Illinois as previous states of residence for the largest percentages of folks residing in the Valley in 1850 and 1860, although the numbers for Missouri are questionable for reasons that we don't need to get into. So the "south Midwest" provenance for the construction is a good bet. In addition, Peter Trudgill has at times talked about similar constructions from Norwich. If we substitute _want_ for _need_ we get things like Your hair wants cut. and so on. So "needs fixed" or "needs fixen" or whatever _need Past Part_ constructions have a good English pedigree, I think. Carl Mills From simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Wed Apr 9 20:37:42 1997 From: simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU (Beth Simon) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:37:42 EST Subject: need + past participle Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Tom Murray, Tim Frazer, and I have an articple specifically discussing the construction, usage, and regionality of need + past particple forthcoming in (the next?) _American Speech_. Stay tuned, beth simon From fletcher at HKUSUA.HKU.HK Thu Apr 10 03:32:21 1997 From: fletcher at HKUSUA.HKU.HK (Paul Fletcher) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:32:21 +0800 Subject: needs + PP Message-ID: Just a footnote to Carl Mills posting: I don't think constructions such as 'my hair needs washed' will be found in Norwich or other English English dialects, but they are well-attested in Scottish English. The only source I have to hand is Trudgill & Hannah, 'International English', 3rd ed. 1994, p.98, where examples are given for ScotEng and the comparison explicitly made with 'some regional US dialects'. Paul Fletcher From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Thu Apr 10 05:02:52 1997 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 22:02:52 -0700 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970409204230.006df4e4@hamlet.ucs.indiana.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, J. Clancy Clements (Kapil) wrote: > Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central > Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not > sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP > needs fixed" construction found? Lowland Scotland, for one. (At least Glasgow, for sure; I'm not sure how pervasive it is). All along both banks of the Ohio, I believe. There was a thread on this on LINGUIST a couple of years ago, should still be in the archives. Scott DeLancey delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From nakayama at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU Thu Apr 10 05:34:32 1997 From: nakayama at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Toshihide Nakayama) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 22:34:32 -0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: Dear all, I am going to teach some courses for the first time and I would like to get your help. The courses are (1) a graduate seminar on Language & Culture and (2) a intro-level undergrad course titled Languages of the World. I would like to have ideas concerning: - textbooks (in addition to ref., it would be really helpful if you could tell me your experience with them) - what kind of things you would put in such courses - possible ways of organizing such courses (if you don't mind sharing your syllabi and/or reading lists, they would be greatly appreciated) Thank you very much in advance. I will post a summary. (This message will also be posted to the LINGUIST.) **************************** Toshihide NAKAYAMA Dept. of Linguistics U of California Santa Barbara, CA 93117 **************************** From yui at IPIED.TU.AC.TH Thu Apr 10 09:04:19 1997 From: yui at IPIED.TU.AC.TH (Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:04:19 +0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: <199704100528.WAA18421@humanitas> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Toshihide Nakayama wrote: > - textbooks > (in addition to ref., it would be really helpful if you could tell > me your > experience with them) For Lgs of the World's textbook: Bernard Comrie's "The world's major languages. Ethnologue database also is interesting (located at www.sil.org) > - what kind of things you would put in such courses For language and culture: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and later studies on that. (including Lakoff's book: Women Fire and Dangerous things.).Perhaps some cross cultural communication thing too. A friend of mine taught an undergrad course in Cross cultural Comm. She has on on-line course at: http://www.siu.edu/~ekachai/301.html. You might find some interesting link from there. > - possible ways of organizing such courses > (if you don't mind sharing your syllabi and/or reading lists, they > would be > greatly appreciated) From csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Thu Apr 10 09:50:03 1997 From: csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Chris Johns) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:50:03 +0100 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970409204230.006df4e4@hamlet.ucs.indiana.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, J. Clancy Clements (Kapil) wrote: > Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central > Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not > sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP > needs fixed" construction found? Never heard it in the UK. Regards Chris Johns From csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Thu Apr 10 10:00:17 1997 From: csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Chris Johns) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:00:17 +0100 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Chris Johns wrote: > > Just a note about "those things need fixed", it's the norm in south central > > Indiana, and I would think in the south Midwest in general, although I'm not > > sure about that. Anyway, it's not an Oregon isolate. Where else is the "NP > > needs fixed" construction found? > Never heard it in the UK. Having read som more recent postings, perhaps I should add that I've never been to Scotland! Regards Chris Johns From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Thu Apr 10 14:42:16 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:42:16 -0500 Subject: 'bees' in child lg. In-Reply-To: <199704080302.WAA00586@ruf.rice.edu> Message-ID: Suzanne -- Just a small point about your generally very cogent remarks of the other day. I noticed an interesting hidden assumption in your statement > I don't find it at all surprising, given that kids are > trying to map meanings to gramm. and lexical forms, that > a child might create a formal distinction between > temporary vs. permanent state, or more agentive vs. > less agentive predicate, or whatever the actual distinction turns > out to be, . . . --- the assumption that the "actual distinction" exists somewhere (out there?) apart from what is in the minds of individual speakers. But if it doesn't, then whatever each kid decides to make of the possibilities, given what he/she has been hearing, provides what that kid does; and different kids doubtless make the distinction betw two kinds of "be" on slightly different semantic/functional bases. (I too have heard kids doing it, incl my own -- and there is no need at all for an influence from AAVE or anthing else to give them the opportunity, motivation, and mental wherewithal to go ahead and do it.) You seem to be accepting this point yourself when you write > the surrounding speech of the family isn't problematic, > since kids do come up with their own distinctions > --- Syd From nrude at UCINET.COM Thu Apr 10 03:30:19 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 19:30:19 -0800 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: Greetings, A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific facts too. The course was organized according to three criteria: 1) Typology (tone lgs., obstruent typologies, the Schleicherian typologies, areal phenomena like serialization, etc.), 2) Genetic relationships (students ought to know about Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Bantu, Sumerian, the diversity in the Americas and New Guinea, etc.), and 3) Geography (divide the world into regions and learn something specific about each). There was a packet of handouts and an article or two, and we used the two books edited by Timothy Shopen (Languages and their Status, forget the name of the other) to gave students the opportunity to look at some "exotic" languages. I feel the course was a success. But alas it's a struggle. Many students resist knowing specific facts about the world. They want to rap about urban situations, languages in contact, language planning problems--they don't want to know about Dravidian or where Gilyak is spoken or the spread of Bantu. I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is worthwhile. Noel From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Thu Apr 10 15:59:40 1997 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne E Kemmer) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:59:40 -0500 Subject: where are the distinctions Message-ID: Syd, What I meant by "actually turns out to be" is "whatever turns out to be the correct analys(es) for what they're doing". The kids may in fact be doing different things, and certainly what they are doing in their linguistic behavior is a result of whatever categorization they have managed to abstract in their minds. I don't believe in "actual distinctions" in the sense of people's categorizations lying "out there" in the data, they are mental phenomena. So "actual distinction" is the "cognitive distinction(s) the kids are IN FACT making". Here's an example of how words suggest different things, guided by what we believe and what we believe others to believe. It's probably the main source of misunderstandings among linguists!! --Suzanne From DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU Thu Apr 10 18:44:31 1997 From: DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU (DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 13:44:31 -0500 Subject: Things that need fixed Message-ID: I've just joined in this discussion and saw the message asking the question as to where else this construction is found. Most of my students from the Pittsburgh area use constructions of this type. "The baby needs changed", for example. Our former departartmental secretary, who was from West Virginia also had this speech pattern. Our university is located about 10 minutes from Erie, PA and about 90 min north of Pittsburgh. I am told by locals that this construction is not typical of the Erie area although you here it from peoploe who've relocated from Pittsburgh. I cannot recall hearing this form at all in Chatauqua or Erie County, NY, or the Buffalo area, which is also about 90 min from Erie. Deborah DuBartell Deborah DuBartell, Ph.D. Linguistics Program Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Edinboro, PA 16444 USA 814-732-2736 From jpd13 at CORNELL.EDU Fri Apr 11 01:58:29 1997 From: jpd13 at CORNELL.EDU (Jenna Dalious) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:58:29 -0400 Subject: Things that need fixed In-Reply-To: <01IHJJ5HB9T28WXDA7@edinboro.edu> Message-ID: At 1:44 PM -0500 on 04/10/97, DUBARTELL at EDINBORO.EDU wrote: > I've just joined in this discussion and saw the message asking the > question as to where else this construction is found. Most of my students > from the Pittsburgh area use constructions of this type. "The baby needs > changed", for example. Our former departartmental secretary, who was from > West Virginia also had this speech pattern. Our university is located > about 10 minutes from Erie, PA and about 90 min north of Pittsburgh. I am > told by locals that this construction is not typical of the Erie area > although you here it from peoploe who've relocated from Pittsburgh. I > cannot recall hearing this form at all in Chatauqua or Erie County, NY, or > the Buffalo area, which is also about 90 min from Erie. I think this construction is used by speakers in most of Western Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate at Penn State University, I heard this construction used by people from the middle of the state (where PSU is located) and westward. As someone who grew up in Eastern PA, I was very surprised to hear this being used by students not only in speech, but also in a term paper I proofread! As in Deborah's example above, the construction was always needs + participle, such as the lightbulb needs changed, etc., not just 'needs fixed.' (Unfortunately, I can't think of any good examples now. My former roommate from Western PA used to say this construction often, to which I would always reply jokingly "to be!") Jenna -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -- Jenna Dalious -- Grad Student Romance Studies Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- From nrude at UCINET.COM Fri Apr 11 02:35:08 1997 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 18:35:08 -0800 Subject: 'bees' in child lg. Message-ID: Greetings, Your comment on _the assumption that the "actual distinction" exists somewhere (out there?) apart from what is in the minds of individual speakers_ suggests another assumption--that there's nothing "out there". Whereas we linguists seem to gravitate between the extremes of biological hardwiring and Whorfism, how many of us know that there are real live Platonists still out there in mathematics and physics. I bring this up because your "out there" remark reminds me of Roger Penrose's books and I was just wondering if perhaps his heresy needs answered by us. Noel From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Apr 11 12:51:06 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 07:51:06 -0500 Subject: Things that need fixed Message-ID: I stand corrected (sort of). When I mentioned that Peter Trudgill had remarked that the American _need + past participle_ construction had a counterpart in the UK, _want + past participle_, I assumed that because Peter had done much of his early research in Norwich that was where he had heard it. As I recall, the discussion of such matters had been prefaced with a lot of good Norwegian beer. A Scots origin for the construction would fit better with American dialect and settlement patterns. Yesterday, I asked our local TESL director, a native of Britain (sorry, I don't know exactly where) for "native speaker intuitions" on both the _need + past participle_ and _want + past participle_ constructions, and she replied immediately "western Pennsylvania," going on to add that she had never heard such constructions until she had started her Ph.D. work at Penn State. So Jenna Dalious and others who Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc., as places where _needs fixed_ etc. can be found are probably correct. As quite a few dialectologists, most notably Michael Montgomery, have pointed out, Scots, Irish, and, especially, Ulster-Scots exerted a great deal of influence on the English of the American highlands (the Alleghanies, the Appalachians, and surrounding regions) since the mid-to-late 18th century. The resulting south midland dialects spread to large areas of the country, including my own native western Oregon, where the construction has long been established. Carl From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Fri Apr 11 21:49:15 1997 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 16:49:15 -0500 Subject: no subject (file transmission) Message-ID: The second meeting of the ASSOCIATION FOR LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY (ALT) - the first to be held in the USA - will take place on SEPTEMBER 11-14 1997 (Thursday through Sunday) on the campus of the UNIVERSITY OF OREGON in Eugene, OR. The conference is open to all: membership in ALT is not required for attendance. Talks will begin on Thursday at 9:00am and end Sunday early afternoon. *** FROM THE PROGRAM: - JOSEPH H. GREENBERG /Stanford University/: "THE RELATION OF HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS TO TYPOLOGY" - a workshop on the native languages of Oregon - a workshop on parts of speech in typology - papers on phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical typology *** FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE PROGRAM, registration, and local accommodations, contact SCOTT DELANCEY - postal address: Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97405 - office telephone: (541) 346-3906 - fax: (541) 346-3917 - e-mail: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu FOR INFORMATION ON ALT and its journal LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY, contact ALT's President Bernard Comrie (comrie at bcf.usc.edu), Secretary-Treasurer Johan van der Auwera (auwera at uia.ua.ac.be), or Editor Frans Plank (linfp at hum.aau.dk). The ALT meeting will immediately follow a CONFERENCE ON EXTERNAL POSSESSORS and related noun incorporation phenomena, held September 7-10 (Sunday through Wednesday) at the same location. For further detail, contact Doris Payne (dlpayne at oregon.uoregon.edu). From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 14 17:40:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 12:40:00 -0500 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is worthwhile.' Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific facts is a much-needed antidote. --David Tuggy From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 15 21:02:38 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 15:02:38 -0600 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: <01IHQH6OZP2M006814@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the "theory" imposed upon him... Best regards! Max On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > worthwhile.' > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > --David Tuggy > From nostler at CHIBCHA.DEMON.CO.UK Tue Apr 15 22:07:48 1997 From: nostler at CHIBCHA.DEMON.CO.UK (Nicholas Ostler) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 17:07:48 -0500 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World Message-ID: I have just come across Anatole V. Lyovin - An Introduction to the Languages of the World, published this year by Oxford University Press in Nrew York (ISBN 0-19-508115-3, and 0-19-508116-1 Paperback). This seems an excellent compilation in one volume of all the information that the originator of this thread seemed to be looking for, with genetic classifications and typological evocations of languages all round the world, and an appendix of language maps drawn from W. Bright's Encyclopaedia of Linguistics. In terms of space, the Americas are rather over-represented, but hey, it's an American book. (Europe too is grossly over-represented of course, but we're used to that.) So there is a text book now, for that survey of the world's languages. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Nicholas Ostler Managing Director President Linguacubun Ltd Foundation for Endangered Languages http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Philosophy/CTLL/FEL/ Batheaston Villa, 172 Bailbrook Lane Bath BA1 7AA England +44-1225-85-2865 fax +44-1225-85-9258 nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Tue Apr 15 23:30:46 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 16:30:46 -0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) below.. Pamela Price Klebaum On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking > linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, > useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that > mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and > apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, > without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a > different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the > "theory" imposed upon him... > > Best regards! Max > > On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > > > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > > worthwhile.' > > > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > > > --David Tuggy > > > From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Wed Apr 16 16:47:37 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:47:37 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > below.. [ref to message from Enrique Figueroa E.] An interesting assumption -- that modeling languages entails "esoteric and highly formalized rules". Why do some people make this assumption? Is there any evidence for it? (I don't think so.) (We do have evidence that "highly formalized rules" provide ONE means of describing OUTPUTS of linguistic systems.) Cheers, --- Syd From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Apr 16 20:43:33 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:43:33 -0600 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: No argument about THAT, if you reread me! Problem is: haven't the students the right (and isn't it convenient for them as students) to be given information as to a) other possible approaches, beside the one preferred by the teacher, and b) the proper historical and scientific frame to which refer the selected (imposed?) *modeling model*...? Max E. Figueroa On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > below.. > > Pamela Price Klebaum > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > > > Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking > > linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, > > useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that > > mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and > > apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, > > without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a > > different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the > > "theory" imposed upon him... > > > > Best regards! Max > > > > On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > > > > > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > > > > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > > > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > > > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > > > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > > > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > > > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > > > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > > > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > > > worthwhile.' > > > > > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > > > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > > > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > > > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > > > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > > > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > > > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > > > > > --David Tuggy > > > > > > From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Tue Apr 15 08:24:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 03:24:00 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an ice-cream cone. "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. Anybody concur? --David Tuggy From geoffn at SIU.EDU Thu Apr 17 15:15:31 1997 From: geoffn at SIU.EDU (Geoffrey S. Nathan) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:15:31 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? I concur with Dave's judgment. Furthermore, I seem to remember a paper back in the glory days of generative semantics about DO as an abstract underlying verb encoding volition, or agenthood (of the subject) or some such. I think it was written by Haj. It seems to me that uses such as 'be good' are non-stative (which is why they can occur with the imperative and/or progressive--another Generative Semantics argument), and hence heading towards more prototypical verb-hood. Prototypical verbs, of course, encode actions rather than states. I think this ties in, somehow, with the regularization of the inflection (bee-s), and relates also to the issue that Kiparsky and others have written about on the relation between derived meanings and regular morphology (the Toronto Maple Leafs debate). Geoff Geoffrey S. Nathan Department of Linguistics Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527 +618 549-0106 (Home) From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 15:38:17 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:38:17 -0500 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <01IHT0IVKWVQ006DSE@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? Sorry, I find this good, in my midwestern (great lakes) dialect, if that's what you're getting at. I'm ignorant of AAVE. Actually, I find "DO" wrong, not even pedantic Dave From elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:01:23 1997 From: elc9j at FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Ellen L. Contini-Morava) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:01:23 -0400 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <01IHT0IVKWVQ006DSE@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: Yup. Ellen C-M On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? > > --David Tuggy > From bfox at SPOT.COLORADO.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:06:16 1997 From: bfox at SPOT.COLORADO.EDU (Fox Barbara) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 13:06:16 -0600 Subject: Forwarded mail.... Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 14:22:28 -0700 (MST) From: "Laura A. Michaelis" To: ling-dept at lists.Colorado.EDU ***TENTATIVE SCHEDULE*** THE THIRD MEETING OF THE CONFERENCE ON CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE,DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE C S D L 3 MAY 24-26, 1997 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER Department of Linguistics and the Institute of Cognitive Science GENERAL INFORMATION. The conference will be in held in the historic Hale Science Building on the west (mountain) side of the Boulder campus. We strongly advise you to book hotel accommodations now; we have reserved 3 blocks of rooms at locations close to the conference site. We also encourage you to preregister by mail for the conference, although on-site registration will be available. For information about registration, transportation, and lodging in Boulder, see the CSDL'97 website: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~linguist/CSDL.html TENTATIVE SCHEDULE. All talks and panel sessions to be held in Hale 270. Saturday, May 24 9:00 Herbert CLARK (Stanford) Title TBA 9:50 BREAK 10:10 Liang TAO (Ohio U), Barbara FOX and Jule GOMEZ DE GARCIA (CU-Bldr), "Recycling, Restructuring and Replacement in Repair: Slips of the Tone and Other Phenomena" 10:35 Robert ENGLEBRETSON (UCSB), "Why don't all the Adjectives Go there? Semantic Classification of Adverbs in Conversational English" 11:00 Christine BARTELS (U-OR), "The Pragmatics of WH-Question Intonation in English" 11:25 Steven FINCKE (UCSB), "The Syntactic Organization of Repair in Bikol" 11:50 LUNCH 1:00 Susanna CUMMING (UCSB) Title TBA 2:00 RECEPTION (Koenig Alumni Center) 3:30 Dominiek SANDRA and Hubert CUYCKENS (U-Antwerp, Belgium), "Fuzziness in Dutch Prepositional Categories" 3:55 Elaine JONES (U-Chicago), "Some Reasons why Iconicity between Lexical Categories and their Discourse Functions isn't Perfect" 4:20 Grace SONG (NW-U), "A Typology of Motion Events and their Expression" 4:45 William THOMPSON and Beth LEVIN (NW-U), "The Semantics of English Deadjectival Verbs" 5:10 Ljuba VESELINOVA (Eastern MI-U/U-Stockholm), "Suppletion in Verb Inflection" 5:35 Meichun LIU (Nat'l Taiwan U), "Lexical Meaning and Discourse Patterning: The Three Cases of Mandarin 'build'" 6:00 DINNER 8:00 PANEL: "Historical Semantics". Participants: William CROFT (Manchester), Ronald LANGACKER (UCSD), Elizabeth O'DOWD (St. Michael's College), Eve SWEESTER (UCB), Elizabeth TRAUGOTT (Stanford). Sunday, May 25 9:00 Walter KINTSCH (CU-Bldr), Title TBA 9:50 BREAK 10:10 Lourdes DE LEON (Reed), "Why Verbs aren't Learnt before Nouns in Tzotzil (Mayan): The Role of Caregiver Input and of Verb-specific Semantics" 11:35 Chikako SAKURAI (Harvard/Japan Women's U), "A Cross-linguistic Study of Early Acquisition of Nouns and Verbs in English and Japanese" 11:00 Michael TOMASELLO and Patricia J. BROOKS (Emory), "Two- and Three-year-olds Learn to Produce Passives with Novel Verbs" 11:25 Virginia C. MUELLER-GATHERCOLE (U-Wales, Bangor),"Cue Coordination: An Alternative to Word Meaning Biases" 11:50 LUNCH 1:00 Dan I. SLOBIN (UCB), Title TBA 1:50 Jean-Pierre KOENIG (SUNY-Buffalo), "On a tue' le pre'sident! The Nature of Passives and Ultra-indefinites" 2:15 David BECK (U-Toronto), "Partial Identification in the Bella Coola Transitivizing Middle" 2:40 Masuhiro NOMURA (Japan Women's U), "A Cognitive Grammar Approach to the Japanese Internally Headed Relative Clause Construction" 3:05 BREAK 3:20 Maria POLINSKY, Mary HARE and Dan JACKSON (UCSD), "Historical Change in a Performance-based Model: From Latin Gender to Gender in French" 3:45 Kaoru HORIE (Tohoku U), "From Core to Periphery: A Study on the Directionality of Syntactic Change in Japanese" 4:10 Ryoko SUZUKI (Nat'l U-Singapore/UCSB), "Multifunctionality: The Developmental Path of the Quotative TTE in Japanese" 4:35 PANEL: "Text". Participants: Susanna CUMMING (UCSB) Gilles FAUCONNIER (UCSD) Barbara FOX (CU-Bldr) Arthur GLENBERG (UW-Madison) Walter KINTSCH (CU-Bldr) 6:35 PARTY. Dinner reception at Mesa Lab Facility of National Center for Atmospheric Research. Busses leave from north side of Hale Building at 6:35. Return to Hale at 10:30. Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day) 9:00 PANEL: "Space and Language" Participants: Annette HERSKOVITZ (UCB) Lise MENN (CU-Bldr) Dan I. SLOBIN (UCB) Leonard TALMY (SUNY-Buffalo) 11:00 BREAK 11:20 Elizabeth TRAUGOTT, Title TBA 12:10 LUNCH 1:30 Seana COULSON and Gilles FAUCONNIER (UCSD), "Fake Guns and False Eyelashes: Conceptual Blending and Privative Adjectives" 1:55 Eve SWEETSER (UCB), "Coherent Structures in Metaphorical Gesture Use" 2:20 Yo MATSUMOTO (Meiji Gakuin U), "On the Extension of Body-part Terms to Object Nouns and Spatial Prepositions: Shape and Location in the Grammar and the Lexicon" 2:45 BREAK 3:00 George LAKOFF (UCB), Title TBA From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:01:03 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:01:03 -1000 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: At 05:15 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: >At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >I concur with Dave's judgment. C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative correctly using the simple form of a main verb. Since the verb is a main verb, not a helping verb, 'do' is the correct choice here. That is, the correct helping verb for main verb 'be' (i.e. not the helping verb) is 'do' as it is for any main verb, e.g. ... you eat everything for grandma and if you do, I'll... you work hard for grandma and if you do, I'll... This, of course, would be true for any of the main verb synonyms of the helping verbs. you have a good time, and if you do you do a good job, and if you do I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the choice of 'do.' Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From l-heilenman at UIOWA.EDU Thu Apr 17 19:29:54 1997 From: l-heilenman at UIOWA.EDU (Kathy Heilenman) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:29:54 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Hate to add to the confusion, but "You be good for Grandma, now, and if you are..." is exactly what *I* would say (grew up in Kentucky). The "do" sounds really, really odd. Kathy At 3:01 PM 4/17/97, Ellen L. Contini-Morava wrote: >Yup. >Ellen C-M > > >On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > >> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >> >> --David Tuggy >> L. Kathy Heilenman French & Italian U. of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 (319) 335-2253 L-HEILENMAN at UIOWA.EDU From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Thu Apr 17 20:02:38 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 16:02:38 EDT Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:01:03 -1000." <2.2.16.19970417090308.34772ec4@pop-server.hawaii.edu> Message-ID: >At 05:15 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: >>At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >>> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >>> >>> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >>> ice-cream cone. >>> >>> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >>> Anybody concur? >>I concur with Dave's judgment. > > >C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative >correctly using the simple form of a main verb. Since the verb is a main >verb, not a helping verb, 'do' is the correct choice here. That is, the >correct helping verb for main verb 'be' (i.e. not the helping verb) is >'do' as it is for any main verb, e.g. ... > >you eat everything for grandma and if you do, I'll... >you work hard for grandma and if you do, I'll... > >This, of course, would be true for any of the main verb synonyms of the >helping verbs. > >you have a good time, and if you do >you do a good job, and if you do > >I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the >choice of 'do.' > >Phil Bralich > >Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. >President and CEO >Ergo Linguistic Technologies >2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 >Honolulu, HI 96822 so i take it, philip bralich phd, that you find the following equally fine?: i am a linguist. if you do too... harry is sick and i do too. mary is at home but we don't. there's room in the margin, doesn't there? i'm more fond of liver than most people do. this isn't how your parser works, does it? extraordinary, how language varies... From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Thu Apr 17 20:17:06 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:17:06 CDT Subject: 2 bees Message-ID: David Tuggy wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? > > --David Tuggy Yes, to me "are" is not just pedantic in this discourse context. For me, it's the wrong pro-verb for [be good]. "Do" isn't quite the right pro-verb either. I don't think there is a good pro-verb. --Tony Wright From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 20:48:18 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:48:18 -0500 Subject: _bees_ (fwd) ARE ARE ARE Message-ID: I would use ARE, and DO sounds strange to me. So, some traditional approaches really don't capture what grammar is. >> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >I concur with Dave's judgment. you do a good job, and if you do I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the choice of 'do.' Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 21:06:25 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 16:06:25 -0500 Subject: Helping verbs? ellipsis. Message-ID: (I get ARE for the judgement previous) for a formalization of WHY, see below. David Gohre, Grad Student, Spanish/Portuguese Indiana University My opinions on TO BE, To be, in Standard English, functions as an auxiliary, rather than a main verb: Consider a complex Who/what/where question. +WH AUX SUBJ verb What did John do? Where do you live What is the solution 0 (zero) ?Who do you be (different from Standard English) *what does the solution be (ungrammatical in Standard English) This kind of data makes me conclude that "to be" is an auxiliary, not a main verb. ======================================================================= So, withOUT ellipsis of the "verb", I get (elided part in parenthesis) (1) You be (good for grandma), and if you are (good for grandma...) (the two parentheses are equal here) and not (2) You be (good for grandma), and if you do (be good for grandma...) (the two parentheses are not equal here. >>From my perceptional standpoint, the elided part of the sentence is/must be identical to a previous, spoken/realized part of the earlier sentence, therefore, I find that (1) above, with "ARE" is accepable, and (2) below is not. This is merely a formalization of my intuitions, I am not letting my "theory" cloud my judgement. I am from the Great lakes region, having lived there until age 25. WHILE I know that it's not a popular standpoint, especially on FUNKNET, the Mimimalist program's COPY AND DELETE is evolved from analyses like the above. For a treatment on "be" as an auxiliary, even as the sentence "I am sick", you can see the following reference. Pollock Jean Y.(1989) Universal grammar, Verb Movement, and the structure of IP Linguistic Inquiry, 20. Dave From malouf at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Thu Apr 17 21:32:59 1997 From: malouf at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Rob Malouf) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:32:59 -0700 Subject: Helping verbs? ellipsis. In-Reply-To: from "Dave" at Apr 17, 97 04:06:25 pm Message-ID: Unless I've missed something (and that's entirely possible), the whole point of the recent discussion about "be" has been that at least in some varieties of English there *is* a main verb "be", that means something like "act" or "behave". And, furthermore, in some varieties this main verb "be" even inflects like a regular main verb ("he bees..."). That's not to say that there's not also an auxiliary "be", or that all varieties English have this main verb "be", or that there aren't other "be"s that inflect regularly in other varieties of English. As far as I know, a main verb "be" wouldn't really create problems for any reasonale formal theory of grammar. But, a purely formal analysis of this would miss that fact that it's not just any of the many meanings of "be" that's starting to show up as a main verb. It's specifically the one with that's most prototypically verb-like in meaning (i.e., the one that's closest to a volitional action) that's showing more prototypically verb-like morphosyntactic properties. Rob Malouf malouf at csli.stanford.edu From clements at INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 17 22:31:52 1997 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 17:31:52 -0500 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Kathy Heilenman wrote: > Hate to add to the confusion, but "You be good for Grandma, now, and if you > are..." is exactly what *I* would say (grew up in Kentucky). The "do" > sounds really, really odd. I agree. I CAN'T say *do* here. I'm from the NW. Clancy Clements From PYOUNG at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Thu Apr 17 22:36:24 1997 From: PYOUNG at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Phil Young) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:36:24 -0700 Subject: _bees_: reply to Phil Bralich Message-ID: If Bralich is correct is his rather arrogantly stated assertion, then why does "are" sound so natural and correct to at least some of us native midwesterners? When I was told to be good, I did???? (Actually, sometimes I wasn't.) Phil Young From reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Thu Apr 17 22:46:51 1997 From: reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (P. Reich) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 18:46:51 -0400 Subject: me and John In-Reply-To: <199704172237.SAA18958@chass.utoronto.ca> Message-ID: In a small town several hours north of Toronto the school teachers are accepting sentences such as: Me and John are going to the store. Him and me are going to the store. The teachers claim that the nominative rule in the case of coordination constructions is old fashioned and obsolete. This makes me cringe when taught as standard English in the schools, yet the English grammars I have in my office are strangely silent on the topic of coordination in subjects with personal pronouns. As far as I can find, for example Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik say nothing, nor does Wardhaugh's "Understanding English Grammar." Does anyone have a textbook published in the last few years that comments on this? Peter A. Reich University of Toronto From DZIEGELE at VAXC.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU Fri Apr 18 00:27:50 1997 From: DZIEGELE at VAXC.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU (Debra Ziegeler) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:27:50 +1000 Subject: Bees again Message-ID: The use of 'do' in You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English). It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'. But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do others think? Debra Ziegeler From gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP Fri Apr 18 01:46:10 1997 From: gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP (Guy Modica) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:46:10 +0900 Subject: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics Message-ID: I can't help adding two more pieces of data: You were good for Grandma, and since you did, I'll buy you an ice-cream cone. We're approaching the limit of how functional linguistics can be, don't we? Cheers. Guy Modica gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp "Verbing weirds language." - Calvin (& Hobbes) From gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP Fri Apr 18 01:39:37 1997 From: gmodica at FH.SEIKEI.AC.JP (Guy Modica) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:39:37 +0900 Subject: we bees be doing it again Message-ID: Astounding that no one in this thread has mentioned that the copula is a somewhat privileged verb in much of its syntactic behavior. "Do" is a proform for most verbs. You type, don't you. You shovel, do you You prevaracated, didn't you He typed, and when he did . . . They shoveled, and when they did . . . I prevaracated, and when I did . . . However, the proform of the copula is "be." She is a graduate, isn't she They were stoned, weren't they She will be a graduate, and when she is . . . They are stoned, and when they are . . . Ellen Prince (implicitly) pointed this out when replying to Philip Bralic's cursory "ordinary verb" comment. "Be" is not just another "main verb." (Not one of Bralic's "analogous" examples was stative, another feature of the copula.) I'll like to hear of some ideolects that have: She is a graduate, don't she They were stoned, didn't they She will be a graduate, and when she does . . . They are stoned, and when they do . . . Notice the contrast with a resultative verb like become: She becomes a graduate (next week), doesn't she They became stoned, didn't they She will become a graduate, and when she does . . . They become stoned, and when they do . . . So I agree with J. Clancy Clements and others that "are" is the choice for we. (Hi Clancy, I haven't seen you since the wonderful seminar on argument structure a few years back, when we ate Thai in Indiana!) Perhaps those who approve "do" for the Granny sentence see "to be good" as having some kind of resultative reading - a state of "goodness" is achieved, and when it do . . . Well, you get my point. :-) Guy Modica gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp "Verbing weirds language." - Calvin (& Hobbes) From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Fri Apr 18 02:05:27 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 19:05:27 -0700 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I had a course that covered myriad theoretical approaches to first language acquisition. It is very hard to do that -- each student was assigned one chapter/one approach. A "history of linguistics" would be good, and it is offered at UCLA periodically. PPK On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > No argument about THAT, if you reread me! Problem is: haven't the > students the right (and isn't it convenient for them as students) to be > given information as to a) other possible approaches, beside the one > preferred by the teacher, and b) the proper historical and scientific > frame to which refer the selected (imposed?) *modeling model*...? > > Max E. Figueroa > > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > > > > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > > below.. > > > > Pamela Price Klebaum > > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Enrique Figueroa E. wrote: > > > > > Which, on the other hand, does NOT mean, I surely hope, that taking > > > linguistics itself and -most important!- its history is NOT necessary, > > > useful and healthy. My experience is almost the opposite to that > > > mentioned by David Tuggy: many students are forced to assimilate and > > > apply esoteric and highly formalized LX to one or the other language, > > > without having been ever given at least the chance to a) choose a > > > different perspective and b) find out whence cometh and whither goeth the > > > "theory" imposed upon him... > > > > > > Best regards! Max > > > > > > On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > > > > > > > On 4/9/97 Noel Rude wrote: > > > > > > > > 'A number of years ago I helped develop an intro-level undergrad course > > > > titled "Languages of the World". The course sprang from the observation > > > > that in our obsession with scientific principles most of our students > > > > were terribly ignorant of basic facts. It seemed good that they should > > > > know something about Bantu. In all our other courses we teach > > > > principles, methodology, how to DO linguistics, and this is good. But > > > > we were old fashioned. We thought students ought to know some specific > > > > facts too. ... I may sound cynical, but I still think the effort is > > > > worthwhile.' > > > > > > > > Too much of the linguistics that I have seen taught didn't even deal > > > > with how to DO linguistics, but rather with the history of > > > > linguistics, the philosophies involved in this or that model, etc. > > > > Instead of using linguistics to look at language (much less any > > > > particular language) it is easy to take linguistics as the object of > > > > study. I agree that knowing and having to deal with some specific > > > > facts is a much-needed antidote. > > > > > > > > --David Tuggy > > > > > > > > > > From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Fri Apr 18 02:08:27 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 19:08:27 -0700 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The "esoteric" was from the previous correspondence. How can you describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is yelling" without formalized rules? PPK On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Sydney M Lamb wrote: > On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > > One of the core questions linguistics asks is, how do we acquire > > our first language? Describing that undertaking entails modeling > > languages, which entails "esoteric and highly formalized" rules. This is b) > > below.. [ref to message from Enrique Figueroa E.] > > An interesting assumption -- that modeling languages entails "esoteric > and highly formalized rules". Why do some people make this assumption? > Is there any evidence for it? (I don't think so.) (We do have evidence > that "highly formalized rules" provide ONE means of describing OUTPUTS of > linguistic systems.) > > Cheers, > --- Syd > From s_mjhall at EDUSERV.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Fri Apr 18 03:13:12 1997 From: s_mjhall at EDUSERV.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Michael Hall) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 13:13:12 +1000 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: >On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Kathy Heilenman wrote: > >> Hate to add to the confusion, but "You be good for Grandma, now, and if you >> are..." is exactly what *I* would say (grew up in Kentucky). The "do" >> sounds really, really odd. > >I agree. I CAN'T say *do* here. I'm from the NW. Clancy Clements > > Same here. I'm from Melbourne, Australia, and would "are" rather than "do". Michael Hall From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Fri Apr 18 04:48:13 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 18:48:13 -1000 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: At 10:02 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Ellen F. Prince wrote: >>At 05:15 AM 4/17/97 -1000, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: >>>At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >>>> Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: >>>> >>>> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >>>> ice-cream cone. >>>> >>>> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >>>> Anybody concur? >>>I concur with Dave's judgment. >> >> >>C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative >>correctly using the simple form of a main verb. Since the verb is a main >>verb, not a helping verb, 'do' is the correct choice here. That is, the >>correct helping verb for main verb 'be' (i.e. not the helping verb) is >>'do' as it is for any main verb, e.g. ... >> >>you eat everything for grandma and if you do, I'll... >>you work hard for grandma and if you do, I'll... >> >>This, of course, would be true for any of the main verb synonyms of the >>helping verbs. >> >>you have a good time, and if you do >>you do a good job, and if you do >> >>I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the >>choice of 'do.' >> >>Phil Bralich >> >>Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. >>President and CEO >>Ergo Linguistic Technologies >>2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 >>Honolulu, HI 96822 > >so i take it, philip bralich phd, that you find the following equally fine?: First off, I think linguists and academics in general would get a lot farther if they could manage to leave the snide comments behind and focus on the discussions. A little professionalism would go a long way. Secondly, the structures below are as ordinary as the one's above. The correctness of 'do' in the above sentences is as unsurprising as the need for 'be' in your sentences. I just meant to say it is as obvious that 'do' is as required in the original imperative examples as it is with emphatic imperatives as the following do be good for grandma do have a good time do do your homework (though the double 'do' is a little stilted) It seems simple enough to assume that if the main verb be will allow a helping verb (which it usually doesn't) it will be the same helping verb as other main verbs as illustrated by these examples. The other two auxiliaries ('have' and 'do') also have main verb equivalents which take naturally take 'do' as a helping verb. Basically you use the main verb 'be' with helping verb 'do' when it is volitional but otherwise, it uses itself in a manner not unlike modals. What's the big deal? >i am a linguist. if you do too... >harry is sick and i do too. >mary is at home but we don't. >there's room in the margin, doesn't there? >i'm more fond of liver than most people do. >this isn't how your parser works, does it? >extraordinary, how language varies... I really don't see it that way. It seems to me patterns are more common than variation. But I suspect saying this is like begging a forest and trees debate between a ranger in a tower and a woodsman chopping. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Fri Apr 18 04:42:37 1997 From: M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Mark Durie) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:42:37 +1100 Subject: Transparence and ease of acquisition Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am looking for published studies which document a relationship between functional transparence and ease of acquisition. By transparence, I mean the degree to which structures have readily interpretable structures. (E.g. some case marking systems are functionally more opaque than others and might perhaps be acquired more slowly). Suggestions of things I can follow up are very welcome. Mark Durie ------------------------------------ From: Mark Durie Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics University of Melbourne Parkville 3052 Hm (03) 9380-5247 Wk (03) 9344-5191 Fax (03) 9349-4326 M.Durie at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/Dept/LALX/staff/durie.html From csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Fri Apr 18 09:41:44 1997 From: csrj100 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Chris Johns) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:41:44 +0100 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <01IHT0IVKWVQ006DSE@SIL.ORG> Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote: > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > ice-cream cone. > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > Anybody concur? I would say that "do" sounds plain wrong, whereas "are" is fine. Chris Johns (Native speaker British English) From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Apr 18 14:15:59 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 09:15:59 -0500 Subject: Do be do be do Message-ID: Contrary to Chris Johns' intuitions > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an ice-cream cone. sounds perfectly normal to me. In fact, I think I have heard such sentences in my native (Oregon/Washington) dialect many times. To add anecdote to example sentences, when my elder daughter was 2 or 3, I yelled at her Behave! to which she replied I'm BEing have! Pinker reports "I am have!" as a variant of this. I am not sure what this proves vis-a-vis the adult grammar of _be_, but I suspect that it indicates a difference in the syntax and semantics of _be_ as a main verb versus _be_ as auxiliary. Carl From Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE Fri Apr 18 14:48:14 1997 From: Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE (H.J. Sasse) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:48:14 +0200 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE Germany The Philosophical Faculty of the University of Cologne announces the opening of a position for a PROFESSOR (C 3) OF FINNO-UGRIC STUDIES (tenured) The candidate should have a primary specialization in Finnish Linguistics (preferably including further languages of the Baltic-Finnic group) as well as in Finnish Literature and Area Studies. Responsibilities: Undergraduate and graduate teaching in Finnish Language and Literature, languages of the Baltic-Finnic group, Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Finnish Area Studies; student advisement, scholarly research; and Faculty committee assignments. A strong commitment to designing a study program and an official curriculum during the establishing phase of the new branch of Finno-Ugric studies at the University of Cologne is essential. Qualifications: Ph.D. and "habilitation" (or equivalent qualification) in Finnish and/or Finno-Ugric Studies, pedagogical ability, sufficient proficiency in the German language. The candidate should preferably be a native speaker of one of the Baltic-Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian,...). Candidates should send a cover letter, curriculum vitae, list of publications, list of courses taught, and documents on academic degrees and titles to the following address: Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultaet der Universitaet zu Koeln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-50923 Koeln. The University of Cologne is an EO employer. From Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE Fri Apr 18 15:30:11 1997 From: Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE (H.J. Sasse) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 17:30:11 +0200 Subject: [Fwd: job announcement] Message-ID: An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "H.J. Sasse" Subject: job announcement Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:48:14 +0200 Size: 1995 URL: From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Fri Apr 18 15:58:08 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:58:08 +0300 Subject: me and John Message-ID: 'Me and him went...' is just another step in the slow but steady conversion of English nominative pronouns into unstressed preverbal clitics, which can't be conjoined (as has already happened in French). Observe the following (judgments mine): It's me! (??It's I) Who wants to go? Me! (*I) Me, I don't think so. Of course, I think that there is no categorical rule disallowing stressed nominative pronouns for any adults that I know of, but things are definitely going in that direction. And I knew an 8-year-old native English speaker in Michigan who would consistently ask for things by saying, e.g. `I want a drink of water' but would fight for something by saying `ME want it, ME want it.' > In a small town several hours north of Toronto the school teachers are > accepting sentences such as: > > Me and John are going to the store. > Him and me are going to the store. > > The teachers claim that the nominative rule in the case of coordination > constructions is old fashioned and obsolete. > This makes me cringe when taught as standard English in the schools, yet > the English grammars I have in my office are strangely silent on the topic > of coordination in subjects with personal pronouns. > > As far as I can find, for example Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik say > nothing, nor does Wardhaugh's "Understanding English Grammar." > > Does anyone have a textbook published in the last few years that comments > on this? > > Peter A. Reich > University of Toronto From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 17:58:53 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 11:58:53 -0600 Subject: Q: course ideas - Lg & Culture, Lgs of the World In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks for answering! That's the spirit, I think: combining highly specialised theory+methodology (both in itself and applied to language analysis) with the historico-scientific frame --not, of course, within the same *course*, but within a *career* in linguistics--. I would also like to subscribe what I think was one, and probably the most important one, of Noel's original preoccupations: quite often, language analysis seems to be used as a *means to illustrate* (the application of) a certain *theory+methodology*, instead of centering upon languages themselves as the main interest of linguists (not only or so much *language*, *le langage*+*la langue*; but mainly *languages*, *les langues*) and considering, therefore, the alternative *theories+methodologies* as nothing else than *means* to attain that goal... Max From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 18:45:50 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 12:45:50 -0600 Subject: we bees be doing it again In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm not a native speaker-hearer of English, so no wonder that to my "prevaricational idiolect" the Granny's *do* sounds awful... I think, though, there may be some truth in the observation about *being good* being semantically interpreted as a process+result, in the sense of *behave well* or, even better, *attain the goal of well-behaving*... Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Guy Modica wrote: > Astounding that no one in this thread has mentioned that the copula is a > somewhat privileged verb in much of its syntactic behavior. "Do" is a > proform for most verbs. > > You type, don't you. > You shovel, do you > You prevaracated, didn't you > He typed, and when he did . . . > They shoveled, and when they did . . . > I prevaracated, and when I did . . . > > However, the proform of the copula is "be." > > She is a graduate, isn't she > They were stoned, weren't they > She will be a graduate, and when she is . . . > They are stoned, and when they are . . . > > Ellen Prince (implicitly) pointed this out when replying to Philip Bralic's > cursory "ordinary verb" comment. "Be" is not just another "main verb." (Not > one of Bralic's "analogous" examples was stative, another feature of the > copula.) > > I'll like to hear of some ideolects that have: > > She is a graduate, don't she > They were stoned, didn't they > She will be a graduate, and when she does . . . > They are stoned, and when they do . . . > > Notice the contrast with a resultative verb like become: > > She becomes a graduate (next week), doesn't she > They became stoned, didn't they > She will become a graduate, and when she does . . . > They become stoned, and when they do . . . > > So I agree with J. Clancy Clements and others that "are" is the choice for > we. (Hi Clancy, I haven't seen you since the wonderful seminar on argument > structure a few years back, when we ate Thai in Indiana!) Perhaps those who > approve "do" for the Granny sentence see "to be good" as having some kind > of resultative reading - a state of "goodness" is achieved, and when it do > . . . > > Well, you get my point. :-) > > Guy Modica > gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp > > "Verbing weirds language." > - Calvin (& Hobbes) > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 18:48:03 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 12:48:03 -0600 Subject: Bees again In-Reply-To: <01IHUIMTFSG68WYEZH@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: In Spanish, for one, we normally say "(Com-)portate bien" or "Se bueno", with preference for the former in most varieties, I should say. Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Debra Ziegeler wrote: > The use of 'do' in > You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream > > does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English). > > It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy > analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'. > > But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine > a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning > 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do > others think? > > Debra Ziegeler > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 19:17:47 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 13:17:47 -0600 Subject: _bees_ In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970417101528.006ab21c@saluki-mail.siu.edu> Message-ID: Sorry, but I don't quite see why a stative verb would not tolerate an imperative, as in "Be here!" (in the sense of "Stay here, don't move!", not in the more usual sense implying movement, i.e., "Come (and therefore be) here!". Same thing with "Be quiet!", which may imply, or not, that previously the addressee was not being quiet: ="stay quiet" or "become quiet" ("stop making noise or talking")... Max On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: > At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: > > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > > ice-cream cone. > > > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > > Anybody concur? > I concur with Dave's judgment. > Furthermore, I seem to remember a paper back in the glory days of > generative semantics about DO as an abstract underlying verb encoding > volition, or agenthood (of the subject) or some such. I think it was > written by Haj. It seems to me that uses such as 'be good' are non-stative > (which is why they can occur with the imperative and/or > progressive--another Generative Semantics argument), and hence heading > towards more prototypical verb-hood. Prototypical verbs, of course, encode > actions rather than states. > I think this ties in, somehow, with the regularization of the inflection > (bee-s), and relates also to the issue that Kiparsky and others have > written about on the relation between derived meanings and regular > morphology (the Toronto Maple Leafs debate). > > Geoff > > Geoffrey S. Nathan > Department of Linguistics > Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, > Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA > Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527 > +618 549-0106 (Home) > From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Fri Apr 18 20:29:27 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:29:27 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Pamela Price Klebaum writes, > . . . How can you > describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is > yelling" without formalized rules? > Ans: In any number of ways: charts, diagrams, ordinary prose. But the more important question is: What does such an exercise have to do with language as it is used by real people?, or as it is learned by children?, or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic system come from the linguistic system, not from other outputs. (By the way, has any real human being ever actually said "the man who is caling is yelling"?.) Cheers, Syd From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 21:47:24 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:47:24 -0600 Subject: Mail failure (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:44:00 -0400 From: CAMBRIDGE/EXCHANGE/POSTMASTER To: "Enrique Figueroa E." Subject: Mail failure [005] The mail retry count was exceeded sending to CAMBRIDGE/CAMBRIDGE. [008] Unable to deliver mail due to mailbag contention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: Re[2]: _bees_ Date: 1997-04-18 15:17 Priority: 3 Message ID: F8D178B307B8D011B07E006097329DF4 Sorry, but I don't quite see why a stative verb would not tolerate an imperative, as in "Be here!" (in the sense of "Stay here, don't move!", not in the more usual sense implying movement, i.e., "Come (and therefore be) here!". Same thing with "Be quiet!", which may imply, or not, that previously the addressee was not being quiet: ="stay quiet" or "become quiet" ("stop making noise or talking")... Max On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote: > At 03:24 AM 4/15/97 -0500, you wrote: > > Re _bees, beed_: the following judgment holds for me: > > > > You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an > > ice-cream cone. > > > > "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. > > Anybody concur? > I concur with Dave's judgment. > Furthermore, I seem to remember a paper back in the glory days of > generative semantics about DO as an abstract underlying verb encoding > volition, or agenthood (of the subject) or some such. I think it was > written by Haj. It seems to me that uses such as 'be good' are non-stative > (which is why they can occur with the imperative and/or > progressive--another Generative Semantics argument), and hence heading > towards more prototypical verb-hood. Prototypical verbs, of course, encode > actions rather than states. > I think this ties in, somehow, with the regularization of the inflection > (bee-s), and relates also to the issue that Kiparsky and others have > written about on the relation between derived meanings and regular > morphology (the Toronto Maple Leafs debate). > > Geoff > > Geoffrey S. Nathan > Department of Linguistics > Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, > Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA > Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527 > +618 549-0106 (Home) > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 21:49:16 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:49:16 -0600 Subject: Mail failure (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 16:26:00 -0400 From: CAMBRIDGE/EXCHANGE/POSTMASTER To: "Enrique Figueroa E." Subject: Mail failure [005] The mail retry count was exceeded sending to CAMBRIDGE/CAMBRIDGE. [008] Unable to deliver mail due to mailbag contention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: we bees be doing it again Date: 1997-04-18 14:45 Priority: 3 Message ID: 4DD278B307B8D011B07E006097329DF4 I'm not a native speaker-hearer of English, so no wonder that to my "prevaricational idiolect" the Granny's *do* sounds awful... I think, though, there may be some truth in the observation about *being good* being semantically interpreted as a process+result, in the sense of *behave well* or, even better, *attain the goal of well-behaving*... Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Guy Modica wrote: > Astounding that no one in this thread has mentioned that the copula is a > somewhat privileged verb in much of its syntactic behavior. "Do" is a > proform for most verbs. > > You type, don't you. > You shovel, do you > You prevaracated, didn't you > He typed, and when he did . . . > They shoveled, and when they did . . . > I prevaracated, and when I did . . . > > However, the proform of the copula is "be." > > She is a graduate, isn't she > They were stoned, weren't they > She will be a graduate, and when she is . . . > They are stoned, and when they are . . . > > Ellen Prince (implicitly) pointed this out when replying to Philip Bralic's > cursory "ordinary verb" comment. "Be" is not just another "main verb." (Not > one of Bralic's "analogous" examples was stative, another feature of the > copula.) > > I'll like to hear of some ideolects that have: > > She is a graduate, don't she > They were stoned, didn't they > She will be a graduate, and when she does . . . > They are stoned, and when they do . . . > > Notice the contrast with a resultative verb like become: > > She becomes a graduate (next week), doesn't she > They became stoned, didn't they > She will become a graduate, and when she does . . . > They become stoned, and when they do . . . > > So I agree with J. Clancy Clements and others that "are" is the choice for > we. (Hi Clancy, I haven't seen you since the wonderful seminar on argument > structure a few years back, when we ate Thai in Indiana!) Perhaps those who > approve "do" for the Granny sentence see "to be good" as having some kind > of resultative reading - a state of "goodness" is achieved, and when it do > . . . > > Well, you get my point. :-) > > Guy Modica > gmodica at fh.seikei.ac.jp > > "Verbing weirds language." > - Calvin (& Hobbes) > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 18 21:49:58 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:49:58 -0600 Subject: Mail failure (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:44:00 -0400 From: CAMBRIDGE/EXCHANGE/POSTMASTER To: "Enrique Figueroa E." Subject: Mail failure [005] The mail retry count was exceeded sending to CAMBRIDGE/CAMBRIDGE. [008] Unable to deliver mail due to mailbag contention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: Bees again Date: 1997-04-18 14:48 Priority: 3 Message ID: 20D278B307B8D011B07E006097329DF4 In Spanish, for one, we normally say "(Com-)portate bien" or "Se bueno", with preference for the former in most varieties, I should say. Max On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Debra Ziegeler wrote: > The use of 'do' in > You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream > > does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English). > > It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy > analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'. > > But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine > a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning > 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do > others think? > > Debra Ziegeler > From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Sat Apr 19 00:02:32 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 19:02:32 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in certain frameworks. Dave Gohre > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Sat Apr 19 01:37:31 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:37:31 -0700 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This has a lot to do with the real world. My rea of interest is children as witnesses, and the syntactic issues that make the understanding of questions/utterances problematic, resulting in a communication problem. Strong crossover, weak crossover, passive, all these things matter. As for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. PPK On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Sydney M Lamb wrote: > > Pamela Price Klebaum writes, > > . . . How can you > > describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is > > yelling" without formalized rules? > > > > Ans: In any number of ways: charts, diagrams, ordinary prose. But the > more important question is: What does such an exercise have to do with > language as it is used by real people?, or as it is learned by children?, > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic > system come from the linguistic system, not from other outputs. > > (By the way, has any real human being ever actually said "the man who is > caling is yelling"?.) > > Cheers, > Syd > From dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Sat Apr 19 01:47:59 1997 From: dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Diego Quesada) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 21:47:59 -0400 Subject: Frameworks vs. the human mind In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > certain frameworks. Because someone else, rather accurately, had written: > > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic There are "frame-works" that can show you that (Lat.) /audio/ is the "underlying synchronic" form of Spanish [oygo] 'I hear'... Morale: A framework can tell you whatever you want to hear (to make it work... and the cycle goes on), but people's minds is something different from frame-works (that happen to be in some people's minds!) J. Diego Quesada University of Toronto From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Sat Apr 19 01:48:29 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:48:29 -0700 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:29:27 -0500 (CDT) From: Sydney M Lamb To: PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM Cc: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: esoteric and highly formalized rules Pamela Price Klebaum writes, > . . . How can you > describe how to form a question out of "The man who is calling is > yelling" without formalized rules? > Ans: In any number of ways: charts, diagrams, ordinary prose. But the more important question is: What does such an exercise have to do with language as it is used by real people?, or as it is learned by children?, or as it is represented in people's minds? " In people's ordinary use of language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic system come from the linguistic system, not from other outputs." Ever study conversation? People of all ages make questions out of the prior speaker's utterances all the time. ANSWER: Father talking/reading to daughter: "The bear who is in the biggest chair is mad." Child: " Is the bear who's in the biggest chair going to hurt Goldilocks?" (By the way, has any real human being ever actually said "the man who is caling is yelling"?.) ANSWER: What are you asking? The structure can be used and is in many forms: in a cigarette ad: "the man who is smoking is killing himself" -- how do you describe how to do the computation which forms a question out of that Syd From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 04:30:34 1997 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 23:30:34 -0500 Subject: Frameworks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > > certain frameworks. Are rules then totally 'out'? Or could it be said that they are at least good approximations for certain patterns in certain cases (though not always and without any 'deep', 'cosmic' theoretical status)? My perspective is that of a descriptivist. I do wonder about how the mind works, and how exactly people can get the sentences they use. But... in terms of describing a language, writing a grammar... Has any theory got a better way of describing e.g. the English NP 's NP possessive construction that via a rule or diagram (regardless of what *really* goes on in the speaker's mind)? It sometimes seems to me that there are (many?) different endeavors that get mixed in linguistics-- e.g. that of describing the grammar of an unknown language, that of finding 'universal patterns' and accounting for them, that of explaining how speakers can 'do language' the way they do (taking e.g. neurology or psychology into account). Maybe these things should be kept separate more clearly. Sergio Meira From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:10:48 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:10:48 -0400 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules Message-ID: > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > certain frameworks. > Dave Gohre Dave, that's about like saying that humans are derived (or descended) from monkeys. I mean, even in theories that derive structures synchronically from other structures. I'm not sure what the right analogy would be for functionalists. Maybe like saying that humans are derived from dinosaurs. Jon ---------------------------------------- Jon Aske jaske at abacus.bates.edu http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/ From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:19:57 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:19:57 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > certain frameworks. > > Dave Gohre > A good reason to seriously question the validity of such frameworks. From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 15:20:51 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 09:20:51 -0600 Subject: Frameworks vs. the human mind In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Beware hocus-pocus lx! Also beware God's truth lx! The question is ideed crucial, difficult and practically infinitely discussable! I'd try putting it this way: Are "esoteric and highly formalised rules" (sorry and ashamed to admit the phrasing was mine, originally, though I didn't even dream such an unheaval would come out of it!) THE LINGUIST'S *REPRESENTATION* or THE LINGUIST'S *EXPLANATION* (or, perhaps, *EXPLICATION*)? One other thing should be clear, thoguh: as TG points out to me (in a recent private message regarding the same discussion), there IS (and there CANNOT NOT BE) a THEORY necessarily implied in every linguist's approach to any (no matter how punctual aspect of) language. Max (PS. I'm not taking sides here, just trying to shed some light on what I think should be *one* of the cruxes of the ongoing discussion.) On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Diego Quesada wrote: > On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > > > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in > > certain frameworks. > > Because someone else, rather accurately, had written: > > > > or as it is represented in people's minds? In people's ordinary use of > > > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other > > > sentences (eg. questions from statements). Outputs of the linguistic > > There are "frame-works" that can show you that (Lat.) /audio/ is the > "underlying synchronic" form of Spanish [oygo] 'I hear'... > > Morale: > A framework can tell you whatever you want to hear (to make it > work... and the cycle goes on), but people's minds is something > different from frame-works (that happen to be in some people's > minds!) > > > J. Diego Quesada > University of Toronto > From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:28:17 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:28:17 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > . . . As > for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. > No. Charts, prose, rules, etc. all reflect either linguistic structure or outputs of ling structure, depending on the orientation of the linguist. And neither the structure nor the outputs is built of rules. From lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Sat Apr 19 15:34:30 1997 From: lamb at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Sydney M Lamb) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:34:30 -0500 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > . . . > Ever study conversation? People of all ages make questions out of the > prior speaker's utterances all the time. > A highly mechanistic (i.e. anti-mentalistic) point of view, somewhat reminiscent of Bloomfield. I think the questions come from the conceptual systems of the people who form them. From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 15:54:22 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 09:54:22 -0600 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Voila! This dialogue reflects very weel what I have just pointed out in a previous message! RULES 1= a set of "commands" acually underlying language itself (in people's minds) ... versus... RULES2= a set of (the linguist's) "representations" of the "output"... RULES3= [NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH RULES1!!] the linguist's attempt at reproducing, modeling or interpreting the alleged RULES1... Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sydney M Lamb wrote: > On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > > > . . . As > > for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. > > > > No. Charts, prose, rules, etc. all reflect either linguistic structure > or outputs of ling structure, depending on the orientation of the linguist. > And neither the structure nor the outputs is built of rules. > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 17:04:01 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:04:01 -0600 Subject: esoteric and highly formalized rules (fwd) Message-ID: Good sample (see my reply to it, which is not a reply, but a comment) of WHY this kind of discussion about "esoteric and highly formalised rules" (my phrasing, British spelling included!) SHOULD be a central part of the linguist-to-be's warming-up! For, allow me to remind you all, the expression was originally used by me RE the role of theory and the role of a historical frame and (the role of) the RIGHT od lx students to be presented a variety of theoretical alternatives during their basic courses before plunging into ONE of them! It's indeed good and healthy to have such a discussion within FUNKNET! It would be "gooder" and healthier to have it, as a regular component, in the BASIC FORMATION OF EVERY LX STUDENT!!! Max E. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:28:17 -0500 From: Sydney M Lamb To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: esoteric and highly formalized rules On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM wrote: > . . . As > for charts, prose, they all reflect rules. > No. Charts, prose, rules, etc. all reflect either linguistic structure or outputs of ling structure, depending on the orientation of the linguist. And neither the structure nor the outputs is built of rules. From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 17:24:08 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:24:08 -0600 Subject: bees In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A very late comment! Funny how this use of "bees" echoes in my mind the Czech (Slavic, more generally put) opposition of the verbs *by:t* (to be) / *by:vat* (to usually be). The latter would be used by Czechs Jan je nemocny: (John is [now] sick) Jan by:va: nemocny: (John "bees" sick = John is usually [often] sick) Sorry for the late interruption of the argument! Max On Sun, 6 Apr 1997, Matthew S Dryer wrote: > Tom Payne notes the use of nonstandard "bees" in > > "He's not crazy, he just _bees_ crazy when he's around girls." > > My eldest son consistently treated "be" as a regular verb (I be, he/she > bees, I beed, etc.) distinct from the irregular verb "be" with predicates > like "quiet" and "a good boy" until he was at least four years old, and I > have occasionally heard adults, including myself (just yesterday in fact), > do similarly. I assumed with my son that this was because during his > first few years, he heard the base form "be" in other contexts > sufficiently infrequently that he did not know that "be" was a form of the > verb "am, are, is, was were", while he often heard the form "be" in > imperative sentences with "volitional" predicates like "quiet" and "a good > boy" and heard forms like "is" and "are" sufficiently infrequently with > such predicates, that he assumed that "be" was a distinct verb with a > volitional meaning, something like "cause oneself to be", or vaguely like > "act" (cf. "he just acts crazy when he's around girls"). I do not know if > such usage is common among children, but if it is not uncommon, I suspect > that it occasionally makes its way into adult usage as well. > > For these reasons, I am skeptical of Tom's suggestion "If it has the > validational force of downplaying the reality of the assertion, it might > be thought of as in the same functional domain as a subjunctive." Rather, > for some speakers, to at least some extent, there is a distinct regular > verb "be". > > Has this phenomenon been discussed in the literature at all? > > Matthew Dryer > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sat Apr 19 17:45:00 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:45:00 -0600 Subject: BE/BECOME//HAVE ( RE: BEES) Message-ID: Looking back in anger... "Be good and, if you do, Granny'll buy an ice-cream" BE=BECOME (any comments on that?) HAVE: What ab out the prescriptive British reusal to use DO as a proverb for HAVE, as against the American usage? ("Do you have a pe ncil? VS Have you a pencil?) BE/HAVE: How about comparing all the ink that has flowed (and flown?) on BE-DO with the status quo of HAVE (as, say, for one, an auxiliary verb ~ a modal in HAVE TO, etc.)? Just provoking! Max From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sat Apr 19 20:26:04 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 16:26:04 -0400 Subject: Structure-dependency & the Wall St. Journal Message-ID: Folks, One thing Brian said in his posting I agree with: structure-dependency/rules-kinds of issues are not going to be resolved on a b-board. There is a rich literature on this. On the other hand, there are some simple questions to ask. If Chomsky claimed that children are not exposed to data on structure dependency, he would be wrong, as Pullum might have shown in his BLS article (I doubt that Chomsky can be accurately said to have claimed this). But let's say that such a gross factual error was made. It turns out, then, that children *are* exposed to sufficient data to draw the correct generalizations about structure-dependency. But what does this mean? What is it that children learn about structure-dependency? They learn embedding, based on notions of main clauses and subordinate clauses (or any label for those things you care to give). How do they do this? By trial and error? If that were the case, then Chomsky really would be wrong. Is there evidence that children err in acquiring their language on the side of linearity, rather than configuration? Chomsky's point was and is that configuration is a much more abstract and difficult concept than linear order. Therefore, it is curious, so Chomsky's argument runs, that children do not err in placing subordinate verbs first in yes/no questions, rather than main verbs, since subordinate verbs would be favored by linearity. Of course, there is an potential response (which readers of this list will be aware of), namely, that children use semantics, not syntax in forming questions, so that the linearity/configurationality issue Chomsky raises might be a red herring. But this is a hard issue in itself - to show, for example, how the semantics and syntax match up. The crucial issue in Chomsky's story is that a behavioristic approach is wrong. That is, there seems to be no convincing evidence that children learn syntax, morphology, or phonology by trial and error (they *do* learn discourses this way, though - one of the significant differences between discourse-level generalizations and sentence-level generalizations). There is something they know when they start learning grammar. And whatever this is, it keeps them from making some fairly easy to imagine errors. So it seems pretty specific. (But maybe it's not. It is something more specific than what a rock, tree, or bat knows, but less specific than what an adult knows. There is a lot of room there. Some of Hume's footnotes make the same points, with very unChomsky-like conclusions.) In any case, Pullum's reading of the Wall St. Journal has nothing to say about any of this, so far as can be told from Brian's report of it. -- DLE From klebaum at UCLA.EDU Sat Apr 19 22:32:56 1997 From: klebaum at UCLA.EDU (PAMELA PRICE KLEBAUM) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 15:32:56 -0700 Subject: easily imagined errors (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 17:03:16 -1246124 From: Brian MacWhinney To: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: easily imagined errors The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Never never never? I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. This all started with Max's question about why students are not exposed to differing linguistic theories and then given the opportunity to choose to explore what they wanted. We have talked/written about the necessity of a "grammar" which describes something and how it can be written, and if that necessitates "rules" in some form or another. "Semantic structure" is some form of rules, yes? As I wrote before, I am interested in children as witnesses in the legal system, and problems that arise out of the child not understanding the questions, problems involving the inability or difficulty in understanding questions or statements -- children as young as three are "processed" in the legal system -- There is a need to describe the "grammar" in order to help those who engage in this (legal/justice/forensic) field -- what works, what does not -- and please don't write that the audience will not understand the terminology; I know that -- but to conduct the research, I need to work with a construct. I know we are not going to solve the logical problem of language acquisition in email. PPK From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 00:59:27 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 20:59:27 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: <85184.3070458196@jubilation.psy.cmu.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > these "easy > to imagine errors" are not actually ones that ever occurred to the child. > The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding > declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Because of > this, the linear movement or transformation generalization was not one that > the child was considering in the first place. Brian, I never said that this is what happened. My point is independent of such an approach (although I think that you and the several previous email messages are somewhat incorrect - neither Chomsky nor most other generative linguists believe that the interrogative is formed from the declarative. However, there is solid evidence that both involve displaced constituents. These may be accounted for derivationally or representationally, the choice is irrelevant for my arguments. Also, for my arguments it is irrelevant whether you accept the statement about displaced constituents. The point is that the child knows/learns structure. > I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in > a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. I never said this either. This is one possibility (that the child uses semantics). The other is Chomsky's - that the child uses syntax or a combination of syntax and semantics. This is an empirical issue. > To explore this, we > don't need the hard examples. We can just look at a sentence like "Is > Daddy coming?" There is a pretty rich child language literature on the > development of questions. For this type of question, there appears to be a > stage when the aux is missing and we have just "Daddy coming?" The > intonation is there, as is the verb and the subject. Only later, it > appears, does the child add the aux. I think this path makes sense. The > most uniform, reliable marker of the question across types in English is > the intonation. That gets mapped first, along with the core proposition. > Then the embroidery gets added later. The aux wasn't moved, it was just > added. When we get to the harder examples, the story is the same, since > the complex-NP subject is a cognitive unit the child doesn't look to it for > the required aux. This is a very simple story, Brian. Sounds plausible. The problem you are going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The "cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sun Apr 20 02:41:35 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 22:41:35 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: > The point is that the child knows/learns structure. But what, may I ask, is "structure"? I'm mesmerized. First you get rid of the *meaningful* relations which bind elements together into "structure". And then when you notice that elements are bound together somehow, you wonder how that can be. Don't you see the inconsistency here? The child learns absolutely zero "structure" independent of the meanings associated with that structure. > little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. > The "cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. And the empty categories and other hocus pocus categories and structure are not hand waving, right? And about this business about the "complexities of structure-dependency". This stuff only seems complex because you try to look at it without taking function into consideration. Once you look at functions, everything starts to make sense, for the linguist and for the learner. Sure you can't reduce form to meaning. Nobody's trying to do that though, as you well know. Jon From wilcox at UNM.EDU Sun Apr 20 02:40:28 1997 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 20:40:28 -0600 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: On 4/19/97 6:59 PM, Daniel L. Everett said, >The problem you are >going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too >little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The >"cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. I'm reminded of something Clifford Geertz said many years ago: "To set forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human mind, or vast, a priori _weltanschauungen_, is to pretend a science that does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found." According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this is merely hand-waving. Sherman Wilcox Dept. of Linguistics University of New Mexico From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 03:15:56 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 21:15:56 -0600 Subject: Gedankenexperiment Message-ID: Let's (if you please)imagine a language in which, as linguists optimally equipped with "esoteric and highly formalised" techniques and theories+methods find out, to their utmost surprise and bewilderment... ASSERTIONS (DECLARATIVES) ARE DERIVED FROM QUESTIONS!!!! Once their amazement is somehow subdued, they reason more or less this way: "Well, after all, humankind, especially children, is all full of (unanswered) questions! So it's only natural they come biologically and cognitively equipped with a system of rules to form questions and only at a later stage do they develop the (innate?) capacity to form assertions..." If we can imagine -just for a second- such a "fact", then we might -just might- also imagine a language in which... ASSERTIONS AND QUESTIONS, THOGUH CLEARLY RELATED TO EACH OTHER IN MORE THAN ONE WAY (for it's not only a matter of rules, of course), ARE FORMED ("GENERATED") INDEPENDENTLY FROM EACH OTHER, or, to put a bit differently, are both derived from one basic and single pattern... So, instead of ASSERTIONS QUESTIONS WE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING LIKE: BASIC PATTERN QUESTIONS ASSERTIONS etc. (Please supply the connecting lines!) Max From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 03:48:54 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 21:48:54 -0600 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As usual, I won't take sides with this or the other school or sect, but... The comments included herein seem to me (as well as a child's linguistic behaviour, at least in many, many languages) conclusive as to this fact: the basic pattern is the same both for questions and assertions and could even remain the same for both in some languages or varieties of a certain language... The difference (which I attribute to a semantic-communicative need of the child) springs at some stage and basically consists of different intonation patterns. Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > > > these "easy > > to imagine errors" are not actually ones that ever occurred to the child. > > The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding > > declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Because of > > this, the linear movement or transformation generalization was not one that > > the child was considering in the first place. > > Brian, I never said that this is what happened. My point is independent > of such an approach (although I think that you and the several previous > email messages are somewhat incorrect - neither Chomsky nor most other > generative linguists believe that the interrogative is formed from the > declarative. However, there is solid evidence that both involve displaced > constituents. These may be accounted for derivationally or > representationally, the choice is irrelevant for my arguments. Also, for > my arguments it is irrelevant whether you accept the statement about > displaced constituents. The point is that the child knows/learns structure. > > > > I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in > > a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. > > I never said this either. This is one possibility (that the child uses > semantics). The other is Chomsky's - that the child uses syntax or a > combination of syntax and semantics. This is an empirical issue. > > > > To explore this, we > > don't need the hard examples. We can just look at a sentence like "Is > > Daddy coming?" There is a pretty rich child language literature on the > > development of questions. For this type of question, there appears to be a > > stage when the aux is missing and we have just "Daddy coming?" The > > intonation is there, as is the verb and the subject. Only later, it > > appears, does the child add the aux. I think this path makes sense. The > > most uniform, reliable marker of the question across types in English is > > the intonation. That gets mapped first, along with the core proposition. > > Then the embroidery gets added later. The aux wasn't moved, it was just > > added. When we get to the harder examples, the story is the same, since > > the complex-NP subject is a cognitive unit the child doesn't look to it for > > the required aux. > > This is a very simple story, Brian. Sounds plausible. The problem you are > going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too > little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The > "cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 04:15:16 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 22:15:16 -0600 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My vote (both hands up!) goes to Aske and Geertz!! Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > On 4/19/97 6:59 PM, Daniel L. Everett said, > > >The problem you are > >going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too > >little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The > >"cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving. > > I'm reminded of something Clifford Geertz said many years ago: "To set > forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material > complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence > to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human > mind, or vast, a priori _weltanschauungen_, is to pretend a science that > does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found." > > According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be > merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when > Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can > support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but > also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this > is merely hand-waving. > > Sherman Wilcox > Dept. of Linguistics > University of New Mexico > From dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Sun Apr 20 04:31:57 1997 From: dgohre at COPPER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Dave) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:31:57 -0500 Subject: The discovery of Pluto Message-ID: Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. They called it Pluto So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated something, then they found it. (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, in my opinion. (this goes both ways). How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? Dave From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 05:04:31 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:04:31 -0600 Subject: The discovery of Pluto In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Congrats, Dave, for your astronomic contribution! I hope we shall all take it as seriously as it is meant and deserves to be (taken)! There are indeed many readings of your comment: one is this DON'T SHUT YOURSELF INTO THE PRETENTIOUS AND ARROGANT SHELL OF YOUR OWN CONCEPTIONS! ""DO BE" OPEN TO YOUR COLLEAGUES' IDEAS!! And I, once more, vote both hands up for that (and also for the students' right to be presented "the whole picture")!!! Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune > and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was > causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said > "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They > found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. > They called it Pluto > > So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated > something, then they found it. > > (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display > of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a > falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what > happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) > at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? > > Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human > adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? > > Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't > even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about > here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, > in my opinion. (this goes both ways). > > How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we > don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? > > Dave > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Sun Apr 20 06:14:54 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 00:14:54 -0600 Subject: worlds... and deontics Message-ID: Perhaps in an ideal First World scenario it would seem to be (not actually be, mind m' words!) OK to devote each Department, Faculty or even University to a certain, unique (in the sense of "sole") SECT of "E&HFLx" ["esoteric and highly formalised linguistics"]. In such a world, each and every student would have regular everyday access to electronic lists, the WWW, etc... and, THEREFORE (therefore??!!), this circumstance would allow what one might call a "fast-track specialisation", given the fact that individuals are (hypothetically) abe to "look into" various discussion-lists, etc. Why, students would in fact CHOOSE a certain Dpt., etc., because of their PREVIOUS readings, "eyes-dropping" into lists, etc. So, no problem whatsoever with their RIGHTS...! Now, seriously, is that the actual situation: a) throughout the planet b) in the foremost "First World" world? Nay! We all know it ain't! And even if it were (/was), would that free us, teachers, from the obligation of giving them, students, a wide picture of the "whole picture"...? Max From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Sun Apr 20 07:47:40 1997 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 02:47:40 -0500 Subject: The discovery of Pluto In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: [The Discovery of Pluto] > Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune > and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was > causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said > "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They > found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. > They called it Pluto > Hmmm... Actually, Pluto's mass is far inferior to what it should have been for the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus and Neptune to be what they are. In fact, Pluto is *not* a good explanation for the problems that astronomers had; another one was needed (some people even still believe there's a tenth planet responsible for the orbital irregularities of the outer planets, and that Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto was a coincidence...). A better example would actually be the discovery of Neptune, based on Adam's and Leverrier's predictions concerning the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus (that had already been noted by Herschell himself, I believe). > So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated > something, then they found it. > (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display > of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a > falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what > happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) > at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? > No. And if subjects are postverbal rather than preverbal, there is no need to postulate a new theory of linguistics. However, if the > Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human > adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? > > Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't > even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about > here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, > in my opinion. (this goes both ways). > > How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we > don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? > > Dave > From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 11:02:09 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 07:02:09 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sherman, Since I enjoy Geertz's writing, I thank you for the quote. Let me just comment on the interpretational richness of your comment on my comment, though: On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > > According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be > merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when > Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can > support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but > also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this > is merely hand-waving. I never said anything about true knowledge. I certainly do not think I have it (at least not in linguistics). Nor do I think Chomsky has it. Brian and the "cognitive units" hypothesis might well be right. But the point about hand-waving here (and in general when it is encountered in the literature) is just this: Aside from the fact that the linguistic situation is much more complex than Brian's analysis allows, when you get down to justifying the notion of cognitive unit, you will find that it cashes out in terms of syntax. In fact, I would agree that there is a cognitive unit here, in fact there are lots of them in sentences - they are called phrases. Syntactic units just are cognitive units (at least in Chomsky's theory of syntax). So to say that something is not syntax, but that it's "cognitive", is self-contradictory, unless the notion "cognitive unit" can be given enough content to handle the kinds of facts that exercise full-time syntacticians. These facts are almost always grossly oversimplified by psychologists looking at language (and lots of linguists too). But I do not discount a priori the possibility that there could be a theory which successfully eliminates syntax. I just have not seen anything like one yet. DLE From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Sun Apr 20 15:05:48 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 11:05:48 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: Dan, What exactly do you mean by "eliminating syntax"? I ask this because I get the feeling that this is how formalists dismiss the functionalist perspective, ie by saying: those guys want to "eliminate syntax". I mean, they could say: those guys want to enrich syntax, but they don't. So this question is important. Do you mean eliminating intermediate stages between meaning at one end and utterances at the other (straw-man functionalism)? Or do you mean eliminating form-form relationships among constructions? I think most functionalists would agree that form-meaning associations are made at the level of constructions, which are supposedly cognitive units. You may then hypothesize that some constructions are cognitively related to other constructions, or you may not, and you may argue about the type of relationship that exists between different constructions, eg content questions and statements. In other words, the grammatical units in which form and meaning are conventionalized are constructions (just like the lexical units in which that happens are lexemes), and constructions, just like all other signs, have a meaningful pole and a formal pole. The functionalists' claim is that the two cannot be separated. My question is: is that "eliminating syntax"? Jon >>cashes out in terms of syntax. In fact, I would agree that there is a cognitive unit here, in fact there are lots of them in sentences - they are called phrases. Syntactic units just are cognitive units (at least in Chomsky's theory of syntax). So to say that something is not syntax, but that it's "cognitive", is self-contradictory, unless the notion "cognitive unit" can be given enough content to handle the kinds of facts that exercise full-time syntacticians. These facts are almost always grossly oversimplified by psychologists looking at language (and lots of linguists too). But I do not discount a priori the possibility that there could be a theory which successfully eliminates syntax. I just have not seen anything like one yet.<< DLE From Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE Sun Apr 20 15:14:28 1997 From: Hj.Sasse at UNI-KOELN.DE (H.J. Sasse) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 17:14:28 +0200 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "H.J. Sasse" Subject: Re: [Fwd: job announcement] Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 17:12:30 +0200 Size: 2104 URL: From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 16:57:01 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:57:01 -0400 Subject: easily imagined errors In-Reply-To: <01BC4D7A.D8F33E60@abacus.bates.edu> Message-ID: Jon, There is a large range of functionalist positions and a range of formalist positions. Most of the literature on constructions, syntax, etc. I see in the functionalist literature seems quite reasonable and convincing to me. Talking about eliminating syntax is not something I see as a general property of functionalism (any more than eliminating cognition or semantics is a part of formalism). In fact, I think that as we are all doing our honest best to understand language, we probably agree more than we disagree. But there is a slight danger in analyses of structures like "Daddy home" --> "Is Daddy home" in terms of addition to cognitive units if by that one means something other or more basic than a syntactic unit. That could lead to a naive view that syntax is somehow epiphenomenal. But, if noone took that view and if I mistakenly attributed it to Brian or anyone else, then there is no problem. I do not have any 'straw man' view of functionalism. I think that functionalism is a vital approach to understanding language and grammar. But there is as much danger of functionalists trivializing the many things to be learned from formalism and formalism ignoring function. I think that, more and more, the divide is less rigid. Most intelligent people realize that you need both. Givon certainly does. So does Lakoff. (And perhaps no models better illustrate this than Optimality Theory and LFG.) -- DLE From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Sun Apr 20 17:02:10 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:02:10 -0400 Subject: need for hooks In-Reply-To: <4208235.3070529413@jubilation.psy.cmu.edu> Message-ID: Brian, Don't see anything to quarrel about in your last message. My only concern was the idea that I picked up that by calling something a cognitive unit you somehow thought that you had explained or avoided the syntax. I do not disagree with any of your last posting, however. Except one thing: I see no movement in the Minimalist Program towards more incorporation of functionalist principles. It is true that what Chomsky calls 'bare output conditions' could be thought of as functionalist principles (and probably ought to be), the history of the field makes me doubt whether there will be much in common to be found there. (I have a fairly negative review of the Minimalist Program coming out in Language in or around Dec.) -- DLE From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sun Apr 20 17:43:54 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:43:54 EDT Subject: need for hooks In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:50:13 -1244." <4208235.3070529413@jubilation.psy.cmu.edu> Message-ID: brian, while i agree with the spirit of everything you say, i must chime in that all the work i know of re restrictive relatives involves definite heads. (please correct me if i'm wrong -- i'd be very interested!) in a study i did on relatives in english and yiddish, restrictive and nonrestrictive, gap-containing and resumptive pronoun, definite and indefinite headed, it turned out that certain restrictives (more or less indefinite headed) function to a degree like nonrestrictives (typically definite) while having the same syntax (at least the gap-containing kind) as definite restrictives. in particular, and relevant to your post, indefinite restrictives do *not* distinguish members of a contrast set. they typically introduce a hearer-new entity and predicate (hearer-new, of course) information about that entity. nonrestrictives typically evoke a hearer-old entity and predicate hearer-new info about that entity. and, in these terms, definite restrictives -- the kind everyone thinks of -- evoke a member of a hearer-old set of entities and specify hearer-old info about that entity that distinguishes it from the other members of the set. i presume it is these that you are calling 'cognitively unitized', not the indefinite headed restrictives, right? of course i'm oversimplifying here -- formal definiteness is not the cause, only a statistical correlation with the different functional types of restrictive relatives. the reference is: Prince, E.F. 1990. Syntax and discourse: a look at resumptive pronouns. In Hall, K. et al., eds. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Pp. 482-97. it's d/l'able from my web site: http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/~ellen/home.html i'd be very very interested in any feedback, incl hearing about any relevant work. >The idea that restrictive relative clauses are composed of material that >has been cognitively unitized is pretty far from hand-waving. >Psycholinguistic research from the 60s and 70s by Rommetveit and Turner, >Clark, Krauss and Glucksberg showed how restrictive relatives are used to >distinguish members of a contrast set. Typological work by Givon, Keenan, >Comrie, and others demonstrated asymmetries in relativization types that >matched up well with underlying functional characteristics. In more recent >psycholinguistic work, Bock and her colleagues have explored processes >which allow previously mentioned material to form the kernel of further >utterances. Bock has focused on passives and datives. Earlier, Levelt >looked at question structures. The message from this work on what Bock >calls syntactic persistence is that the use of a syntactic pattern in >previous discourse tends to make it available as unit for further >processing. > >Many of the syntactic phenomena that revolve around constraints on raising >from relatives emerge rather directly from these facts. I can't remember >ever having thought or said that syntax should be eliminated. I consider >syntax a wonderful, complex, and fascinating fact of nature. I simply >believe, like Geertz, Wilcox, and Aske, that it should be explicated. In >particular, I think that syntacticians have a responsibility to the rest of >the linguistic community to make their analyses more penetrable to >explication. This can be done by including "hooks" in syntactic theory to >concepts and constructs that match up with what we know about language >processing and use. The treatment of restrictive relative clauses >discussed in some of the previous messages is a prime example of a >construction for which such a "hook" is needed. > >Like computer programs that have hooks, theories that have hooks have to be >designed in a way that supports communication between disciplinary >"modules". For example, the theory of syntax would need to support hooks >for things from psychology like cognitive unitization, syntactic >persistence, memory strings, construction generalization, and the like. >Including hooks to these objects would markedly alter the shape of >syntactic theory. It would definitely not make syntax disappear. However, >it would allow syntacticians, functionalists, and psycholinguists to >communicate and collaborate more effectively. I'm not sure that it would >bring us to the point of using syntactic theory to make statements about >children as expert witnesses, but it might get closer. > >I have been told that the increased role of logical form in minimalist >syntax may represent a movement in this direction. It would be interesting >if that were the case. > >--Brian MacWhinney From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Sun Apr 20 20:01:38 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:01:38 -0700 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: Structure dependence in grammar can (if we choose to look at it with an open mind) be viewed as a language-specific instantiation of some very general principles of part-whole relationships and object constancy that permeate all of perception, cognition and motor planning. From that point of view, it is perhaps less surprising that children come into language development biased to acquire mappings that preserve structure dependence. -liz bates From TIMHAU at SARA.CC.UTU.FI Mon Apr 21 09:55:41 1997 From: TIMHAU at SARA.CC.UTU.FI (TIMO HAUKIOJA) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:55:41 GMT+0200 Subject: Saying A and meaning not-A Message-ID: ** Esa Itkonen asked me to post the following for him. Please direct all correspondence to him at eitkonen at utu.fi. ** - Timo Haukioja ************************************************************** It has been a central claim on the generative side that language-acquisition can take place on the basis of NO evidence. As McWhinney points out, Pullum has shown that in a representative case this is not true; the evidence is there. To this Everett replies that it does not matter. The really important fact (i.e. 'fact') is that language-acquisition concentrates on syntax only; of course, some people might say that semantics is involved too, but these are difficult questions which should be discussed in some other context. What is going on here? If generativists claim that the evidence is not there, surely it is relevant to find out that it IS there. (This means that the original claim is FALSE.) It is also relevant to learn that the semantics ALWAYS there, i.e. that a purely formal learning never occurs. (For arguments, see the section 'Learning forms without meanings' in my 'Concerning the generative paradigm', Journal of Linguistics 1996.) By taking into account semantics and some general analogical capacity, cases that seem to support the innateness hypothesis can be explained away (see Itkonen & J. Haukioja: 'A rehabilitation of analogy in syntax (and elsewhere)' in the 1997 Kertesz book.) I repeat: What is going on here? I tell you what. The generativists claimed that language-acquisition can take place without evidence and that it is about syntax. Both claims have turned out to be false. They know it, but they can't admit it. Esa Itkonen From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Mon Apr 21 10:48:22 1997 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:48:22 -0400 Subject: Saying A and meaning not-A In-Reply-To: <01IHYORPPL1090VNMJ@sara.cc.utu.fi> Message-ID: Folks, To take a line from "Cool Hand Luke", what we have here is a failure to communicate - big time. Let me attempt some answers. On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, TIMO HAUKIOJA wrote: > ** Esa Itkonen asked me to post the following for him. Please > direct all correspondence to him at eitkonen at utu.fi. ** > - Timo Haukioja > > ************************************************************** > > > It has been a central claim on the generative side that > language-acquisition can take place on the basis of NO evidence. Really? this is news to me. Throughout the history of Generative Grammar the role of the environment in triggering and shaping the grammar has been acknowledged. What comes to the environment known, not learned, are the constraints on the range of grammars allowed. This is the standard position. > As > McWhinney points out, Pullum has shown that in a representative case > this is not true; the evidence is there. To this Everett replies > that it does not matter. Does anyone really think that Chomsky or any generative linguist is really so silly as to paint him/herself into a corner by saying that grammar *must* be aquired without evidence? My reply on the "discovery" that children are exposed to evidence wrt their grammar is not only that it is not a problem for Chomksy but that it is expected. > > What is going on here? If generativists claim that the evidence is > not there, surely it is relevant to find out that it IS there. (This > means that the original claim is FALSE.) There never was any such claim. > It is also relevant to > learn that the semantics ALWAYS there, i.e. that a purely formal > learning never occurs. Nobody ever said this either. No generativist would ever claim that semantics is irrelevant. Just that the syntax is underdetermined by the semantics, i.e. that there is syntax. What are you reading for heaven's sake? > > I repeat: What is going on here? I tell you what. The generativists > claimed that language-acquisition can take place without evidence > and that it is about syntax. Both claims have turned out to be > false. They know it, but they can't admit it. > > Esa Itkonen > Do you really think that there are people this stupid, this intransigent, this dishonest in the field? Tsk. Tsk. Well it is either that or your understanding of generative grammar is not quite, umh, accurate. The latter is a hard conclusion to avoid. DLE From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Mon Apr 21 14:17:01 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:17:01 -0500 Subject: HAVE/BE Message-ID: In his recent post, Max mentioned the variants >HAVE, as against the American usage? >("Do you have a pe ncil? VS Have you a pencil?) In my nonstandard (one of the "me and John" dialects) dialect we say Do you got a pencil? Keep on provoking. Carl From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Mon Apr 21 20:48:06 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 14:48:06 -0600 Subject: HAVE/BE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanx, but I can't: I've been practically forbidden to bombard Funknet with short messages and have no extensive message to send for the moment... So, I'll have to lurk, as so many others do! Max On Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Carl.Mills at UC.EDU wrote: > In his recent post, Max mentioned the variants > > >HAVE, as against the American usage? > > >("Do you have a pe ncil? VS Have you a pencil?) > > In my nonstandard (one of the "me and John" dialects) dialect we say > > Do you got a pencil? > > Keep on provoking. > > > Carl > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 22 02:50:21 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 20:50:21 -0600 Subject: Le deluge! Re: The discovery of Pluto (fwd) Message-ID: Le message qui a declenche l'interdiction! Pour tous ceux qui ont ete aussi gentils de me demander qu'est-ce qui se passe... Adieu (pour le moment)! Max E. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:04:31 -0600 (MDT) From: Enrique Figueroa E. To: Dave Cc: Multiple recipients of list FUNKNET Subject: Re: The discovery of Pluto Congrats, Dave, for your astronomic contribution! I hope we shall all take it as seriously as it is meant and deserves to be (taken)! There are indeed many readings of your comment: one is this DON'T SHUT YOURSELF INTO THE PRETENTIOUS AND ARROGANT SHELL OF YOUR OWN CONCEPTIONS! ""DO BE" OPEN TO YOUR COLLEAGUES' IDEAS!! And I, once more, vote both hands up for that (and also for the students' right to be presented "the whole picture")!!! Max On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Dave wrote: > Was made by astronomers observing the "erratic" flight pattern of Neptune > and Uranus. Something that the astronomers hadn't seen until then was > causing these planets to waver in their orbit slightly. So they said > "maybe something is out there," they looked, and found something. They > found a planet, wandering right where they predicted that it would be. > They called it Pluto > > So is that kind of science Ad-Hockery, or hand-waving? They postulated > something, then they found it. > > (somebody show me gravity too, not a representation of it, nor a "display > of its effects") We have the calculation of the acceleration of a > falling object(at sea level), -4.9t^2 also, which is a formalization of what > happens. If something falls on the moon, and accelerates to the (ground) > at a different rate, should we formulate a new theory of gravity? > > Does life happen in equations, or are they merely some sort of human > adaptation and effort to describe the world in which we live? > > Many researchers follow different approaches, and these approaches don't > even look at the same range of data. We all know what I'm talking about > here. To assume that one can't learn from the other is rather arrogant, > in my opinion. (this goes both ways). > > How can we find out/describe what the acquisition of a language is, when we > don't have a hard-and-fast, cut-and-dried, analysis of what ADULT language is? > > Dave > From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Tue Apr 22 02:56:56 1997 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 19:56:56 -0700 Subject: linguistics wars Message-ID: It seems that every so often another one of these generativists-vs.-functionalists debates gets going on Funknet (or Linguist); people talk at cross-purposes for awhile, argue about terminology, etc.; then the debate fades away. Does anyone ever go away with a changed mind? Generativist theories of lg. acquisition claim that the range of languages a child can learn is constrained by _innate_ __syntactic__ structure. Therefore, children only need sufficient evidence to figure out which of the possible grammars they are encountering. I believe this is the claim that functionalists disagree with. I think (you all correct me if I'm wrong) most functionalists would agree that children are born with _something_ _innate_ that constrains the types of grammars they can learn, but that this something is not modularly __syntactic__. It is related to (or may consist solely of) semantic and possibly more general innate predispositions concerning cognition. Hence the consistent appeals to semantics and more-general processing strategies by functionalists. As to evidence, we need to sort out what kind of evidence can falsify the generativists' claim, whether that evidence has been presented or not, and, if it has, whether anybody is ignoring it because they are too firmly attached to their theoretical position. I can't speak authoritatively on these issues. I think that Dan Everett should be cautious when saying that Givon and Lakoff both think syntax is necessary. I think they wouldn't agree that __autonomous__ syntax is supportable. This whole discussion got started because of questions about rules and formalisms (those old bugbears). I am wondering how familiar contributors to the discussion are with network models of knowledge of language (a la Langacker, Bybee, Hudson and Lamb) and the fact that rules can be read off of the network via schematization at ever more abstract levels, plus the connections that reside in the network between experienced forms/meanings and others that share features of form/meaning. Rules do not have to be listed separately from their outputs (they are immanent within them), yet are always available for the computation of novel structures. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubba at oboe.aix.calpoly.edu ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Tue Apr 22 03:44:13 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 23:44:13 EDT Subject: linguistics wars In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 21 Apr 1997 19:56:56 PDT." Message-ID: johanna rubba wrote: >It seems that every so often another one of these >generativists-vs.-functionalists debates gets going on Funknet (or >Linguist); people talk at cross-purposes for awhile, argue about >terminology, etc.; then the debate fades away. Does anyone ever go away >with a changed mind? > >Generativist theories of lg. acquisition claim that the range of >languages a child can learn is constrained by _innate_ __syntactic__ >structure. Therefore, children only need sufficient evidence to figure >out which of the possible grammars they are encountering. > >I believe this is the claim that functionalists disagree with. I think >(you all correct me if I'm wrong) most functionalists would agree that >children are born with _something_ _innate_ that constrains the types of >grammars they can learn, but that this something is not modularly >__syntactic__. It is related to (or may consist solely of) >semantic and possibly more general innate predispositions concerning cognition . >Hence the consistent appeals to semantics and more-general processing >strategies by functionalists. since we're playing out this periodic ritual, let me recite my standard contribution: there are many (e.g. me and a number of others on this list) who concern themselves with function and who find the point of view presented in your second paragraph above to be the most reasonable one around. in answer to your first paragraph, i suspect no one changes his/her beliefs around here -- but it would be nice if we updated our meta-beliefs about who believes what. From yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU Tue Apr 22 03:59:10 1997 From: yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU (Yoko Okita) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 21:59:10 -0600 Subject: linguistics wars Message-ID: I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic information?? =========================================================== Yoko Okita $BBgKLMU;R (J Asian Studies G9300 The University of Texas at Austin http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~yokita/welcome.html From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Tue Apr 22 04:35:44 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 22:35:44 -0600 Subject: linguistics wars In-Reply-To: <199704220402.XAA26963@piglet.cc.utexas.edu> Message-ID: Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: "Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" Some others (dissidents, of course), this: "Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" The Incurable Provoker (Sorry, folks, couldn't resist it!) (I'm NOT responding to private responses to this one...) Bye-bye! On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. > But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." > What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? > =========================================================== > Yoko Okita $BBgKLMU;R (J > Asian Studies G9300 > The University of Texas at Austin > http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~yokita/welcome.html > From matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI Tue Apr 22 14:19:14 1997 From: matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI (Matti Miestamo) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 17:19:14 +0300 Subject: SKY 1996 Yearbook Message-ID: SKY 1996 (The Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland) (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Elise Ka"rkka"inen, 176 pp.) is now available! Table of Contents: Marja-Liisa Helasvuo: A Discourse Perspective on the Grammaticization of the Partitive Case in Finnish Tuomas Huumo: On the Semantic Function of Domain Instrumentals Esa Itkonen: Is there a 'Computational Paradigm' within Linguistics? Ritva Laury: Pronouns and Adverbs, Figure and Ground: The Local Case Forms and Locative Forms of the Finnish Demonstratives in Spoken Discourse Arja Piirainen-Marsh: Face and the Organization of Intercultural Interaction Eeva-Leena Seppa"nen: Ways of Referring to a Knowing Co-participant in Finnish Conversation (Price USD 20 / FIM 100 plus shipping&handling) Also available: SKY 1993 (Ed. by Susanna Shore and Maria Vilkuna, 272 pp.) GENERAL SECTION: Deirdre Wilson & Dan Sperber: Pragmatics and Time Laurence R. 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The Hidden Ideology of the Persian Gulf War Pa"ivi Autio: Source Indication as a Persuasive Strategy in News Reporting Heli Huttunen: Pragmatic Functions of the Agentless Passive in News Reports of the 1990 Helsinki Summit Tomi Palo: Metaphors They Live By: Metaphorical Expressions in the Context of the Soviet Crisis 1991 DISCUSSION AND SQUIBS: Martti Nyman: Mental Strain and Abstract Characterization Timo Haukioja: Language, Parameters, and Natural Selection. (Price USD 14 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) SKY 1994 (Ed. by Susanna Shore and Maria Vilkuna, 192 pp.) John Harris & Geoff Lindsey: Segmental Decomposition and the Signal Harry van der Hulst: An Introduction to Radical CV Phonology Pirkko Kukkonen: Consonant Harmony Markku Filppula & Anneli Sarhimaa: Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Parallels and Contact-Induced Change Marja Leinonen: Interpreting the Perfect: the Past as Explanation Martti Nyman: All You Need is What the System Needs? (Price USD 14 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) SKY 1995 (Ed. by Tapio Hokkanen, Marja Leinonen and Susanna Shore, 208 pp.) GENERAL SECTION: Tuomas Huumo: Bound Domains: A Semantic Constraint on Existentials Tarja Riitta Heinonen: Null Subjects in Finnish: from Either-Or to More-Or-Less Lea Laitinen: Metonymy and the Grammaticalization of Necessity in Finnish Merja Koskela: Variation of Thematic Structure within a Text Maija Gro"nholm: Wo"rter und Formen in Finnischen als Zweitsprache: wachsen sie Hand in Hand? Esa Penttila": Linguistic Holism with Special Reference to Donald Davidson SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION: Esa Itkonen: A Note on Explaning Language Change Martti Nyman: On Dialect Split and Random Change (Price USD 14 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) For ordering information please contact: The Linguistic Association of Finland c/o General Linguistics PL 4 00014 University of Helsinki FINLAND or by e-mail: meri.larjavaara at helsinki.fi ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel, @ stands for 'a Swedish o', an 'a' with a small circle on it. ) From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 21 14:19:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:19:00 -0500 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: Phil Bralich wrote: >> >> You be good for Grandma, now, and if you do / ??*are I'll buy you an >> ice-cream cone. >> >> "Are" sounds pedantic if not just plain wrong. >> Anybody concur? >C'mon now, this is a very ordinary structure. This is just an imperative >correctly using the simple form of a main verb. ... >I mean this is pretty basic grammar. There's nothing mysterious about the >choice of 'do.' Must be something at least a little mysterious: respondents so far are divided about half and half between finding "do" just plain wrong and agreeing with me that (for them) it's probably more likely than "are". For myself, I'm conscious of (mysteriously) feeling like "are" *ought* to be right, but I doubt I'd ever say it unless I was carefully watching my speech. Also, note that non-volitional "be" doesn't produce "do": You'll probably be a couple of inches taller by the end of summer, and if you are/**do I'll get you a new dress. I've also noticed that "do" is an even stronger choice, for me, when it's negative: You be good/quiet: If you don't/**aren't I'll send you to your room. David Tuggy ***************************************************************** **If the human mind were simple enough to understand, we'd be too simpleminded to understand it.** (Corollary: it is, and we are. Or, maybe, it isn't and we still are. In any case, not *It does and we do.) ***************************************************************** From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 21 14:31:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:31:00 -0500 Subject: _bees_: reply to Phil Bralich Message-ID: Phil Young suggested the sentence >When I was told to be good, I did???? (Actually, sometimes I wasn't.) I agree, "did" sounds really bad here. A bare "was" is still pretty awkward for me, though. I think I'd just avoid the construction, maybe saying something like "I did as I was told/what they told me" or "I WAS good". By the way, everybody's been saying where their dialect is from. For what it's worth ... I grew up in So. America, my grandparents were from Colorado and California, my parents had gone to school as teenagers in S. Carolina. Mom is very careful to use "correct" speech, so many pedantries are natural for me. Since I was 5 or so I've read constantly, nearly as much in English as in American authors. So what's my dialect? David Tuggy From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Tue Apr 22 17:54:23 1997 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 10:54:23 -0700 Subject: _bees_ Message-ID: I have finally sorted out a problem that was preventing me from posting to FUNKNET. I wanted to join the ranks of those who find 'are' grammatical and 'do' ungrammatical in the 'if you ___' slot. I can, however, like totally see how someone would find 'do' grammatical. And since when does a verb (viz., 'be') have to be in either one category or another? One of the major points of cognitivist linguistics is that category membership is not .. well, categorical! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubba at oboe.aix.calpoly.edu ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Thu Apr 24 02:54:59 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 12:54:59 +1000 Subject: innate Message-ID: yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic >information?? I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. Chris From dgohre at INDIANA.EDU Thu Apr 24 06:36:43 1997 From: dgohre at INDIANA.EDU (david gohre) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 01:36:43 -0500 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240254.MAA26495@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: Yes, you yourself haven't said anything... > yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: > > >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > >information?? > > I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. > > Chris > From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Thu Apr 24 06:59:17 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:59:17 +1000 Subject: innate Message-ID: david gohre writes: >Yes, you yourself haven't said anything... I don't use the word...I read biology. I want to hear it explained by someone who does use in linguistics. Chris From E.Dabrowska at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK Thu Apr 24 10:33:11 1997 From: E.Dabrowska at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK (E.Dabrowska) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 11:33:11 +0100 Subject: bees Message-ID: Here's one I heard on 'How do they do that?' last night (the question was addressed to a Queen Elizabeth look-alike, who was pretty good at 'being the Queen') "How do you do that? How do you be the Queen?" I wonder whether any of the people who found "You be good for Grandma, and if you do, I'll buy you an ice-cream" unacceptable would accept this. There seems to be no other way of saying it... Ewa Dabrowska Department of English Language and Linguistics University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN From 6500ptb0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU Thu Apr 24 14:39:37 1997 From: 6500ptb0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU (Paul T Barthmaier) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 07:39:37 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240659.QAA27580@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > I don't use the word...I read biology. So, in biology the term innate doesn't exist? > I want to hear it explained by someone who does use in linguistics. Because _innate_ is a hot word that can easily be misinterpreted, I don't use the word either. However, my understanding is that there are 2 types of innateness, one that just about everyone agrees on, and one that splits the field in two. The first one says that the ability for humans to produce speech sounds is an innate faculty. The second more divisive reading of innate says that not just the ability to produce the sounds, but the organizing principles, or the grammars, are also hardwired into the human. Personally, I can accept the first interpretation, but see no reason to accept the second. For this reason, I tend not to use the term at all. Paul From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Thu Apr 24 15:34:48 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 11:34:48 EDT Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 24 Apr 1997 07:39:37 PDT." Message-ID: excuse me, but i thought that all the research on asl of the past few decades has shown that, whatever the human language faculty is, it is NOT dependent on anything to do with 'speech sounds'. >On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > >> I don't use the word...I read biology. > >So, in biology the term innate doesn't exist? > >> I want to hear it explained by someone who does use in linguistics. > >Because _innate_ is a hot word that can easily be misinterpreted, I don't >use the word either. However, my understanding is that there are 2 types >of innateness, one that just about everyone agrees on, and one that splits >the field in two. The first one says that the ability for humans to >produce speech sounds is an innate faculty. The second more divisive >reading of innate says that not just the ability to produce the sounds, >but the organizing principles, or the grammars, are also hardwired into >the human. > Personally, I can accept the first interpretation, but see no >reason to accept the second. For this reason, I tend not to use the term >at all. > >Paul From bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA Thu Apr 24 18:00:47 1997 From: bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA (Bill Turkel) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 11:00:47 -0700 Subject: Innate Message-ID: 'Innate' 1: Given the distribution of an attribute in an adult population, and knowledge of who mates with whom, we can predict the distribution of the attribute in the offspring population. Crucially, no mention of the role of experience or other environmental factors. 'Innate' 2: The essential nature of something; derived from the mind rather than experience, etc. Given the potential for confusion between the two meanings, it is probably best not to use the word if it can be avoided. In addition to MacWhinney's list of references, see also papers by Vargha-Khadem and colleagues (e.g., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (1995) 92(3):930-933), Sokal and colleagues (American Naturalist (1990) 135(2):157-175, and Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues. Bill Turkel From reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Thu Apr 24 20:19:04 1997 From: reich at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (P. Reich) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:19:04 -0400 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240254.MAA26495@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: I, for one don't. I believe we contain the ability to relate sequences of input and to relate these sequences to the external and internal environment--i.e., to make connections from, for example, sound to meaning. The need to have more built in was due to the need, according the Chomsky and followers, to learn a system of rules that was not produceable by a finite state device. That assumption was false, the falacious argument leading to it was discussed in my 1969 paper "Finiteness of Natural Language" in Language, which paper was never refuted by Chomsky et al. The implication is that syntax is learnable, thus does not have to be built in. --Peter Reich, University of Toronto On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: > > >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > >information?? > > I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. > > Chris > From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Fri Apr 25 00:16:37 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn, Linguistics, CU Boulder) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 17:16:37 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704240254.MAA26495@fortis.speech.usyd.edu.au> Message-ID: Nobody I know of, including people who have been cited as making such claims in the past, now holds this strong a position, because it is so biologically unlikely. Most of the properties of an organism that are demonstrably under strong genetic control nevertheless involve the interaction of multiple genes. On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote: > yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked: > > >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > >information?? > > I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question. > > Chris > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 01:05:43 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 19:05:43 -0600 Subject: Innate In-Reply-To: <199704241800.LAA14825@babel.hivnet.ubc.ca.cdnhiv.edu> Message-ID: I hope everyone will take appropriate notice of this important distinction. I would consider necessary, however, to subdivide Innate 2 (or, else, to explicitly discriminate its nuances): not everything "innate 2" is related to the *mind*. This might seem trivial, but I reckon it isn't... Max On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Bill Turkel wrote: > 'Innate' 1: Given the distribution of an attribute in an adult population, > and knowledge of who mates with whom, we can predict the distribution > of the attribute in the offspring population. Crucially, no mention > of the role of experience or other environmental factors. > > 'Innate' 2: The essential nature of something; derived from the mind rather > than experience, etc. > > Given the potential for confusion between the two meanings, it is probably > best not to use the word if it can be avoided. > > In addition to MacWhinney's list of references, see also papers by > Vargha-Khadem and colleagues (e.g., Proceedings of the National Academy > of Sciences USA (1995) 92(3):930-933), Sokal and colleagues (American > Naturalist (1990) 135(2):157-175, and Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues. > > Bill Turkel > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Thu Apr 24 23:52:44 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:52:44 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Nobody I know of, including people who have been cited as making such >claims in the past, now holds this strong a position, because it is so >biologically unlikely. Most of the properties of an organism that are >demonstrably under strong genetic control nevertheless involve the >interaction of multiple genes. In response to Lise's point, I enclose the following quote from Gopnik and Crago (1991), a followup in Cognition to the earlier letter to Nature by Gopnik (1990). "It is not unreasonable to entertain an interim hypothesis that a single dominant gene controls for those mechanisms that result in a child's ability to construct the paradigms that constitute morphology" (p. 47). Along the same lines (though without a SINGLE gene claim), I enclose the following rather lengthy quote from a 1996 chapter by Ken Wexler, which contains very strong claims about innateness of language and the maturational nature of change, together with a view of plasticity that is certainly a minority view today (most developmental neurobiologists view plasticity as the primary mechanism of normal brain development, not some bizarre exception that holds only under unusual circumstances). Following Wexler are a few quotes from Chomsky's Managua Lectures (1988), rather clear statements, I think, of a very strong and literal version of innateness. -liz bates "One of the major results of the study of language acquisition in recent years, I believe, is the demonstration that children's language conforms to UG [Universal Grammar] in many essential respects.....At the same time, there has been evidence that certain aspects of UG mature (i.e. develop according to a general human program, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by experience; Borer & Wexler, 1987, 1992; Wexler, 1990a). The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological program, either before or after birth. The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). >>From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based theory of language acquisition." In Mabel Rice (Ed.), Towards a genetics of language. Mahwah, Ner Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996, 113-144. (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. MIT Press, 1988): ?The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less by training, in the course of our experience? (p. 161) ?Now this illustrates a very general fact about biology of organs. There has to be sufficiently rich environmental stimulation for the genetically determined process to develop in the manner in which it is programmed to develop....The term for this is ?triggering?; that is, the experience does not determine how the mind will work but it triggers it, it makes it work in its own largely predetermined way.? (p. 172). ?How can we interpret [Plato's] proposal in modern terms? A modern variant would be that certain aspects of our knowledge and understanding are innate, part of our biological endowment, genetically determined, on a par with the elements of our common nature that cause us to grow arms and legs rather than wings. This version of the classical doctrine is, I think, essentially correct.? (p. 4) ?Turning to still more general principles, it is reasonable to speculate that the possibility of forming complex constructions with an embedded clausal complement involves no learning at all. Rather, this possibility is simply available as a principle of the language faculty.? (p. 17) From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 03:23:30 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 21:23:30 -0600 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Liz Bates wrote: > >Nobody I know of, including people who have been cited as making such > >claims in the past, now holds this strong a position, because it is so > >biologically unlikely. Most of the properties of an organism that are > >demonstrably under strong genetic control nevertheless involve the > >interaction of multiple genes. > > In response to Lise's point, I enclose the following quote from Gopnik and > Crago (1991), a followup in Cognition to the earlier letter to Nature by > Gopnik (1990). > > "It is not unreasonable to entertain an interim hypothesis that a single > dominant gene controls for those mechanisms that result in a child's > ability to construct the paradigms that constitute morphology" (p. 47). > > Along the same lines (though without a SINGLE gene claim), I enclose the > following rather lengthy quote from a 1996 chapter by Ken Wexler, which > contains very strong claims about innateness of language and the > maturational nature of change, together with a view of plasticity that is > certainly a minority view today (most developmental neurobiologists view > plasticity as the primary mechanism of normal brain development, not some > bizarre exception that holds only under unusual circumstances). Following > Wexler are a few quotes from Chomsky's Managua Lectures (1988), rather > clear statements, I think, of a very strong and literal version of > innateness. -liz bates > At the same time, > there has been evidence that certain aspects of UG mature (i.e. develop > according to a general human program, as opposed to being guided in a > detailed way by experience; Borer & Wexler, 1987, 1992; Wexler, 1990a). > Please notice the extremely cautious (and tricky?) expressions "general human program" and "in a detalied way". I would say that there has (also?) been evidence that certain aspects of language acqusisition, development and actual linguistic behaviour are due to and explainable by the general interaction of the individual with the social milieu, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by a 9genetic) biological program. The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that > underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual > charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological > program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the > environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might > affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is > uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, > genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some > aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. > Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological > program, either before or after birth. > > The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study > of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term > is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent > variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major > discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it > is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is > considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a > biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & > Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). > > >From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based > theory of language acquisition." >As for Chomsky's open avowal of his Platonic views: > > (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. > MIT Press, 1988): > ?The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental > aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined > as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less > by training, in the course of our experience? (p. 161) May I propose an inversion such as this? The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental aspects of our apparently biological (such as sexual behaviour) and mental such as cognitive processes) life, including language, are largely determined as part of our social interaction, not inherited via genetic inheritance, still less innately possessed qua members of the human species. Further inversions of the cited line of reasoning can be easily made and would be, at least, equally sound and convincing. Max > From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Fri Apr 25 04:32:14 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 00:32:14 EDT Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 24 Apr 1997 21:23:30 MDT." Message-ID: so how come dogs raised in a home with people don't speak? is it that humans discriminate against them and so their social interaction isn't rich enough? and would you also say that a bee's communication system (dance) is likewise explainable by its social milieu? or would you accord a bee a greater genetic endowment than a human? "Enrique Figueroa E." wrote: >Please notice the extremely cautious (and tricky?) expressions "general >human program" and "in a detalied way". >I would say that there has (also?) been evidence that certain aspects of >language acqusisition, development and actual linguistic behaviour are >due to and explainable by the general interaction of the individual with >the social milieu, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by a >9genetic) biological program. > > > > >The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that >> underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual >> charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological >> program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the >> environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might >> affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is >> uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, >> genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some >> aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. >> Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological >> program, either before or after birth. >> >> The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study >> of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term >> is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent >> variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major >> discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it >> is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is >> considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a >> biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & >> Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). >> >> >From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based >> theory of language acquisition." >>As for Chomsky's open avowal of his Platonic views: > >> (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. >> MIT Press, 1988): >> ?The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental >> aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined >> as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less >> by training, in the course of our experience? (p. 161) > >May I propose an inversion such as this? > >The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental >aspects of our apparently biological (such as sexual behaviour) and >mental such as cognitive processes) life, including language, are >largely determined as part of our social interaction, not inherited via >genetic >inheritance, still less innately possessed qua members of the human >species. > >Further inversions of the cited line of reasoning can be easily made and >would be, at least, equally sound and convincing. > >Max > From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Fri Apr 25 05:31:45 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:31:45 +0300 Subject: easily imagined errors Message-ID: For, e.g. 'Is daddy coming?' my 5-year-old daughter has been saying 'Right daddy's coming?' (with the right intonation) for I think at least 6 months now, steadfastly resisting all efforts to teach her inversion. This was preceded for a considerable length of time by 'What, daddy's coming?' (again with the right intonation). She seems to be assuming that the way to form questions is by prefixing an invariant particle ('right' or 'what') and changing the intonation (like e.g. Japanese 'ka', except that 'ka' comes at the end of the clause). In discussing how children learn this construction, you do not say that researchers have noticed this strategy, but my daughter seems to be quite taken with it. Is she pathological, or have researchers just not noticed that this is how some young children try to ask questions? John Myhill >Dan, > I agree. It is true that the fact that Chomsky was wrong about the facts >concerning the distribution of data to derive the structure-dependency >generalization does not mean that the rest of Chomsky's argument is wrong. >It is true that, as you and Chomsky say, there is something that "keeps >children from making some fairly easy to imagine errors." But these "easy >to imagine errors" are not actually ones that ever occurred to the child. >The child never tries to derive questions from the corresponding >declaratives (as several previous email messages have noted). Because of >this, the linear movement or transformation generalization was not one that >the child was considering in the first place. > I agree that the question is how the child accesses semantic structure in >a disciplined enough way to avoid egregious errors. To explore this, we >don't need the hard examples. We can just look at a sentence like "Is >Daddy coming?" There is a pretty rich child language literature on the >development of questions. For this type of question, there appears to be a >stage when the aux is missing and we have just "Daddy coming?" The >intonation is there, as is the verb and the subject. Only later, it >appears, does the child add the aux. I think this path makes sense. The >most uniform, reliable marker of the question across types in English is >the intonation. That gets mapped first, along with the core proposition. >Then the embroidery gets added later. The aux wasn't moved, it was just >added. When we get to the harder examples, the story is the same, since >the complex-NP subject is a cognitive unit the child doesn't look to it for >the required aux. > >--Brian MacWhinney From wilcox at UNM.EDU Fri Apr 25 05:34:02 1997 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 23:34:02 -0600 Subject: innate Message-ID: So somewhere between dogs not speaking, single genes controlling morphological paradigms, and certain aspects of linguistic behavior being due to the social environment lies the truth. I guess we have the biology of language pretty well nailed down. -- Sherman Wilcox From rmanns at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK Fri Apr 25 11:03:55 1997 From: rmanns at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK (Manns Rachel) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 12:03:55 +0100 Subject: Linguistics Abstracts Message-ID: If you haven't done so already - sign up now for the FREE trial of LINGUISTICS ABSTRACTS ON-LINE Edited by Terry Langendoen, University of Arizona Simply visit the following URL - http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/labs Linguistics Abstracts Online is designed to revolutionise your research and teaching by giving you immediate access via the internet to abstracts from virtually all linguistics articles published since 1985. Easy to access and simple to use, you can search by any combination of journal, title, subject, date, author, or keyword to get the results you need. You will find Linguistics Abstracts Online indispensible for: * Conducting quick, accurate and comprehensive research * Writing papers * Preparing teaching materials for your students * Compiling bibliographies and checking references * Keeping up to date with emerging trends and important developments in the field We would welcome your views and ideas so that we can make this service meet your research needs more precisely. For more information please contact: Emma Barham, Blackwell Publsihers Journals, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK, tel: +44 (0) 1865 791100, fax: +44 (0) 1865 793147, email: ebarham at blackwellpublishers.co.uk From Phlete_Teachout at ESD.TRACOR.COM Fri Apr 25 11:22:25 1997 From: Phlete_Teachout at ESD.TRACOR.COM (Phlete_Teachout at ESD.TRACOR.COM) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 07:22:25 -0400 Subject: innate Message-ID: Did anyone else notice the small article about the results of mixing chicken and quail DNA in this month's Scientific American? When the eggs hatched, some of the hatchlings (would these be 'quicks' (quail+chicks)?) exhibited quail characteristics - quail-like bobbing and quail vocalizations. Wouldn't this imply that, in some animals at least, vocalization is genetically directed? Disclaimer: I am not a biologist or a linguist. - fleet - phlete_teachout at esd.tracor.com ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: innate Author: Sherman Wilcox at ESD Date: 4/24/97 11:34 PM So somewhere between dogs not speaking, single genes controlling morphological paradigms, and certain aspects of linguistic behavior being due to the social environment lies the truth. I guess we have the biology of language pretty well nailed down. -- Sherman Wilcox From tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Apr 25 13:38:44 1997 From: tpayne at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Payne) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 06:38:44 -0700 Subject: Fieldwork in Alaska Message-ID: This request was sent by Andrej Kibrik, who is not a current Funknet subscriber. Please respond directly to Andrej. Thanks! -- Tom Payne From: Andrej Kibrik To: Funknet Re: Sociolinguistic Questionnaire Dear Colleagues, I am currently doing linguistic fieldwork on one of Athabaskan languages of Interior Alaska. I have an idea of making a sociolinguistic survey here, in addition to linguistic research as such. The language is in decline and has not been acquired by children for a few decades. The uniqueness of the situation is that the language is spoken by less than one hundred persons (the number of speakers was probably never much higher than now), and the vast majority of speakers reside in one village. Therefore, one can fairly easily conduct not just a representative sociolinguistic survey, but have a nearly complete coverage of potential speakers. The sorts of questions I have in mind include those on bilingualism, degrees of fluency, situations of language use, attitudes toward language maintenance, and reasons for language obsolescence. I am not sufficiently versed in this kind of research, and I am sure that the way you pose questions may dramatically affect your results. I would be very grateful if someone could give me some advice on the set of most crucial question and their formulations, or perhaps send me samples of similar questionnaires. Please contact me directly at ffaak at aurora.alaska.edu Thanks a lot in advance, Andrej A. Kibrik From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Fri Apr 25 15:22:42 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn, Linguistics, CU Boulder) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:22:42 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Gopnik has retracted the single 'grammar gene' position that she held earlier, which was the point I was intending to respond to. I don't think that _that_ view is currently held by anyone prominent in this debate. Nice quote Liz forwarded showing the dim view that Wexler takes of plasticity. He and others are indeed strong adherents of 'genetically programmed maturation' of grammar. They are practically forced into that position because of their abhorrence of any consideration of frequency and gradience of response - two innocent casualties of the Chomskyan revolution. I hope BLS 22 comes out soon; there are some relevant papers in there from a panel on innateness, including Pullum's already legendary slasher attack, a fine reflective paper by Bowerman, an amazing parameter-setting article by Ted Gibson, and one of mine with longitudinal examples showing what I think is solid counterevidence against a general maturational account of language acquisition. But I also pointed out that those of us who think language can be learned have not yet dealt with the complexity of what the child has to be able to do in order to learn from the incoming material - specifically, to be able to recognize whether an adult response is just a felicitous conversational next turn, a recast correcting grammar, a paraphrase for clarity, correction for level of politeness, and other possibilities including several of the above simultaneously, and to use that information in conjunction with updating his/her frequency of occurrence information. I don't think that we have -postulated a simpler or more parsimonious child than Wexler has - I just think ours is more realistic. Lise From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 14:56:44 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 07:56:44 -0700 Subject: innate Message-ID: I think we all agree that humans have language because we are human. Dogs don't have language because they are dogs. The debate is not about innateness in some general sense, but about DOMAIN SPECIFICITY, that is, do we have language because we have evolved some kind of domain-specific language acquisition device (which might, as some linguists have proposed, consist in innate linguistic knowledge, wired right into the brain)? Or do we have language because of one or many characteristics that distinguish the human brain from the brains of other mammals, even other primates. Candidates for such characteristics include (although this is certainly not exhaustive) massive differences in size, striking differences in allometry (the proportion of various regions to one another), degree of direct cortical control over the articulators, and so on. These various adaptations (which are quantitative, not qualitative) appear to have had some interesting computational consequences, i.e. there are classes of problems we can solve and kinds of learning we can do that are not available to other species. Hence these QUANTITATIVE changes in brain have brought about QUALITATIVE changes in possible outcomes. On this second scenario, we get some domain-specific results "for free", and do not need to postulate evolution of domain-specific mechanisms. All the parts of the brain that "do" language also "do" other kinds of work, and if the regions of the brain that usually "do" language are destroyed in infancy, it seems that a number of alternative brain plans are possible, and emerge in response to the language problem. So the parts of the brain that execute language (and there are a lot of them that keep popping up in neural imaging studies these days) are flexible, and they haven't "given up their day jobs", i.e. they are not specific to language and they continue to do non-linguistic forms of processing. Obviously I favor the second, domain-general scenario, because I think the evidence is strongly in its favor, especially the neurobiological evidence. However, I would never want to argue that we have the same brains and the same processing/learning abilities of dogs! One can reject the strong, domain-specific claims about innateness without being forced to the silly conclusion that nothing is innate. -liz bates From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 15:13:13 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:13:13 -0600 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <199704250432.AAA10579@central.cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: Dear Ellen, the point I was trying to make is NOT denying that there are biological foundations for language, but underlining that there are ALSO social foundations for it. I wouldn't consider a "society" that of bees (or ants), for reasons I don't care to go into right now. As for dogs, those who -like myself- love them very much and know quite a lot about them, the do not speak, but they certainly communicate in a wonderfl way. The are strongly socialized by human company and interaction with them (of the right kind, of course), so that, although they do not use language (since they are biologically impaired to do so), they DO ENRICH AMAZINGLY THEIR SEMIOTIC ARSENAL. A fact, for the rest, as well known as this: isolated humans do NOT develop language. Ergo: both the biological and the social factors are crucial and it would be quite byzantine and scholastic to try and deny either of those factors. I wouldn't agree with comparing the role of the social factor in language development with watering a seed, as Chomskyans love to do (or, for that matter, language with wings, armas, etc.)... Dogs are also incapable of developing LASER, computers, etc. The is undoubdtedly a certain biological foundation for human mental capacities; but, without the social framework and history, such thing would have never ever coeme about! It is characteristcic of humankind that in it are inextracably intertwined the biological and the social, constantly (and not always smoothly) interacting. Max On Fri, 25 Apr 1997, Ellen F. Prince wrote: > so how come dogs raised in a home with people don't speak? is it that > humans discriminate against them and so their social interaction isn't > rich enough? > > and would you also say that a bee's communication system (dance) is likewise > explainable by its social milieu? or would you accord a bee a greater > genetic endowment than a human? > > > "Enrique Figueroa E." wrote: > > >Please notice the extremely cautious (and tricky?) expressions "general > >human program" and "in a detalied way". > >I would say that there has (also?) been evidence that certain aspects of > >language acqusisition, development and actual linguistic behaviour are > >due to and explainable by the general interaction of the individual with > >the social milieu, as opposed to being guided in a detailed way by a > >9genetic) biological program. > > > > > > > > > >The sense of maturation I have in mind is, say, the maturation that > >> underlies the development of a second set of teeth or of secondary sexual > >> charactaeristic. These developments take place according to a biological > >> program, with somewhat varying times in the population. Although the > >> environment certainly can affect the maturation (e.g. nutrition might > >> affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics), it is > >> uncontroversial that the development is essentially guided by a biological, > >> genetically determined program. There is reason to believe that some > >> aspects of UG share this rather omnipresent aspect of biological phonemona. > >> Biological structures and processes mature according to a biological > >> program, either before or after birth. > >> > >> The idea of genetically programmed maturation is so strong in the study > >> of biology that a special term has been defined for exceptions. This term > >> is "plasticity." Plasticity means that there is experience-dependent > >> variation in biological stuctures or processes. It is considered a major > >> discvoery in the study of the brain in neuroscience, for example, when it > >> is demonstrated that a certain process is plastic. The reason this is > >> considered a major discovery is because the general view is one of a > >> biological, genetically based program guiding development (see Nadel & > >> Wexler, 1984, for discussion)." (quotes from pp. 117-118). > >> > >> >From Kenneth Wexler, "The development of inflection in a bioligically based > >> theory of language acquisition." > >>As for Chomsky's open avowal of his Platonic views: > > >> (Chomsky, N. Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua Lectures. > >> MIT Press, 1988): > >> ?The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental > >> aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined > >> as part of our biological endowment, not acquired by learning, still less > >> by training, in the course of our experience? (p. 161) > > > >May I propose an inversion such as this? > > > >The evidence seems compelling, indeed overwhelming, that fundamental > >aspects of our apparently biological (such as sexual behaviour) and > >mental such as cognitive processes) life, including language, are > >largely determined as part of our social interaction, not inherited via > >genetic > >inheritance, still less innately possessed qua members of the human > >species. > > > >Further inversions of the cited line of reasoning can be easily made and > >would be, at least, equally sound and convincing. > > > >Max > > From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Fri Apr 25 15:21:19 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:21:19 -0600 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Not only the BIOLOGY of language, but the SOCIOLOGY and the PSYCHOLOGY of language as well... Max On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > So somewhere between dogs not speaking, single genes controlling > morphological paradigms, and certain aspects of linguistic behavior being > due to the social environment lies the truth. I guess we have the biology > of language pretty well nailed down. > > -- Sherman Wilcox > From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Fri Apr 25 15:21:58 1997 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 11:21:58 EDT Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 25 Apr 1997 07:56:44 PDT." <199704251456.HAA14978@crl.UCSD.EDU> Message-ID: so, if i understand you correctly, the issue being discussed is not innateness at all but modularity? correct? elizabeth bates wrote: >I think we all agree that humans have language because we are human. >Dogs don't have language because they are dogs. The debate is not >about innateness in some general sense, but about DOMAIN SPECIFICITY, >that is, do we have language because we have evolved some kind of >domain-specific language acquisition device (which might, as some >linguists have proposed, consist in innate linguistic knowledge, >wired right into the brain)? Or do we have language because of >one or many characteristics that distinguish the human brain from >the brains of other mammals, even other primates. Candidates >for such characteristics include (although this is certainly not >exhaustive) massive differences in size, striking differences >in allometry (the proportion of various regions to one another), >degree of direct cortical control over the articulators, and >so on. These various adaptations (which are quantitative, not >qualitative) appear to have had some interesting computational >consequences, i.e. there are classes of problems we can solve >and kinds of learning we can do that are not available to >other species. Hence these QUANTITATIVE changes in brain have >brought about QUALITATIVE changes in possible outcomes. On >this second scenario, we get some domain-specific results >"for free", and do not need to postulate >evolution of domain-specific mechanisms. All the parts of the >brain that "do" language also "do" other kinds of work, and >if the regions of the brain that usually "do" language are >destroyed in infancy, it seems that a number of alternative >brain plans are possible, and emerge in response to the language >problem. So the parts of the brain that execute language (and >there are a lot of them that keep popping up in neural imaging >studies these days) are flexible, and they haven't "given up their >day jobs", i.e. they are not specific to language and they continue >to do non-linguistic forms of processing. > >Obviously I favor the second, domain-general scenario, because >I think the evidence is strongly in its favor, especially the >neurobiological evidence. However, I would never want to argue >that we have the same brains and the same processing/learning >abilities of dogs! One can reject the strong, domain-specific >claims about innateness without being forced to the silly conclusion >that nothing is innate. -liz bates From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Apr 25 16:01:06 1997 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 11:01:06 -0500 Subject: Nature vs Nurture one more time Message-ID: Max wrote, in part: >I wouldn't consider a "society" that of bees (or ants), for reasons I >don't care to go into right now. Well, there are quite a few biologists, not limited to E.O. Wilson, who wrote a book by the name, who consider _The Insect Societies_ to be (or is it "bee") societies. I find Liz's attitude quite reasonable. As for me, the older I get, the less patient I become with people--both chomskyan innatist and social folks (?socialists?)--who would draw a sharp line between humans and other animals. Carl From TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Apr 25 16:41:15 1997 From: TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:41:15 -0700 Subject: note to Liz Bates Message-ID: Liz, I don't know if you are familiar with a series of works by Posner and his associates (Petersen, Raichle etc.) on the development of a reading module in the pre-striate areas of the left occipital lobe. The location is of course quite suggestive, being within the object regognition (ventral) stream (cf. Miskin and Ungerleider etc.). But the adaptation of that loication to a reading task seems to be, in itself, highly domain specific. Your 'weaker' position on domain specificity need not be quite as strong. In terms of evolution, it is very clear that all language-related modules were initially specialized to do other things. And even that while they process some aspects of language now, they may continue to do those "daytime" tasks. But it is still an open question whether in their capacity of language processors, they have or have not been restructured (reconfigured) in a highly domain-specific way. I think this is another area where one ought to resist rigid positions. At least two areas that are quitessential "processors" in language -- phonology and grammar -- exhibit enough unique characteristics to suggest that at least the mode of processing (if not the location) is rather unique and domain specific. This is not as extreme as the Chomskyite dogma. But I think, in evolutionary terms, it may be viewed as an intermediate stage, somwhere between a totally domain-general module and a totally domain- specific module. Since the evolution of phonology and grammar are, most likely, the latest evolutionary additions to the array of capacities that combine in supporting human communication, finding them organized in such an "early" fashion should not be all that surprising. Best, TG From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Fri Apr 25 01:17:00 1997 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 20:17:00 -0500 Subject: innate Message-ID: Just got a posting from 6500ptb0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU, signed "Paul" Hi Paul! (Whoever you are) A suggestion for us all: especially if your email address doesn't give your name, but maybe in any case, consider using the last name too. David Tuggy From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 15:44:19 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:44:19 -0700 Subject: innate/unique? Message-ID: Hello all, I usually just follow these discussions silently...but I have to comment on this one. I have often gotten the impression that when linguists talk about a linguistic ability as "innate", that they are also implying that the ability is unique to humans. I certainly think there is a lot that humans do that is unique. However, I don't think the uniqueness follows from the innateness. I have seen evidence that other species (not just mammals) have sound systems that might be best explained by appealing to phonetic and phonological devices that hitherto have been treated as if they were unique to humans. I'd love to get some feedback on how others view this uniqueness/innateness relationship. Thanks Dianne Patterson dpat at ccit.arizona.edu From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 17:59:35 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:59:35 -0700 Subject: innate Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:56:52 -0700 >To: Tom Givon >From: Liz Bates >Subject: Re: innate >Cc: >Bcc: book-authors,brian,blf2 at cornell.edu >X-Attachments: > > >When I play the piano, and do things with my fingers that are utterly >unique and domain-specific. I have been "adapted" to do that through >experience with the task. But that does NOT mean that, in any meaningful >way, my hands have become "dedicated piano processors." In the same vein, >I do not doubt for a moment that, in most normal individuals, a distinct >system of processors takes charge of the reading task after long >experience with that task. That does NOT mean, in any meaningful way, >that those parts of the brian have become "dedicated reading processors." >In fact, although I am familiar with the Posner work, I am also familiar >with plenty of other work that suggests that the visual regions and >object-recognition areas involved in reading have also "kept their day >jobs" that is, they "do" reading but they continue to do other things too. >And if those areas are damaged early in life, then other areas can take >over to do the reading job. I am not being dogmatic. I honestly believe >that is the most veridical, empirically defensible reading of the current >literature on brain development and neural plasticity, and the current >literature on neural imaging of patterns of activation during complex >tasks. So, not only do I reject the idea that certain areas of the cortex >are innately specified with domain-specific processing or representations, >I also reject the idea that ANY area of the cortex ends up handling one >and only one kind of content (beyond the more banal fact that visual areas >handle visual stimuli, and some visual areas handle especially complex >visual stimuli...). Even that workhorse for modularity, the distinction >between a "what is it" and "where is it" system, has broken down in the >last few years. Putative color areas are also dropping like flies. The >weight of evidence is moving more and more toward highly distributed and >dynamic representations, and against any "thing in a box" view -- and >that's even AFTER experience has wrought its wonders in sculpting the >brain. > >And by the way, SURELY you were not suggested that evolution has anything >to do with reading, much less that there is a dedicated neural system that >evolved for reading! There simply has been enough genetic time for such >an innovation, particularly in view of the fact that universal literacy >still eludes us, and any kind of literacy was a rare hothouse flower a >hundred years ago. -liz > > >Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 09:40:29 -0700 (PDT) >From: Tom Givon >Subject: Re: innate >To: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU >MIME-version: 1.0 > >Liz, >I don't know if you are familiar with a series of works by Posner and >his associates (Petersen, Raichle etc.) on the development of a reading >module in the pre-striate areas of the left occipital lobe. The location >is of course quite suggestive, being within the object regognition >(ventral) stream (cf. Miskin and Ungerleider etc.). But the adaptation of >that loication to a reading task seems to be, in itself, highly domain >specific. Your 'weaker' position on domain specificity need not be quite >as strong. In terms of evolution, it is very clear that all language-related >modules were initially specialized to do other things. And even that while >they process some aspects of language now, they may continue to do those >"daytime" tasks. But it is still an open question whether in their capacity >of language processors, they have or have not been restructured (reconfigured) >in a highly domain-specific way. I think this is another area where one ought >to resist rigid positions. At least two areas that are quitessential >"processors" >in language -- phonology and grammar -- exhibit enough unique characteristics >to suggest that at least the mode of processing (if not the location) is >rather unique and domain specific. This is not as extreme as the Chomskyite >dogma. But I think, in evolutionary terms, it may be viewed as an intermediate >stage, somwhere between a totally domain-general module and a totally domain- >specific module. Since the evolution of phonology and grammar are, most >likely, >the latest evolutionary additions to the array of capacities that combine in >supporting human communication, finding them organized in such an "early" >fashion should not be all that surprising. >Best, TG > > From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Fri Apr 25 18:22:47 1997 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9=2DLuis?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mend=EDvil?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gir=F3?=) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 20:22:47 +0200 Subject: innate syntax Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. > But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." > What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? and on Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Enrique Figueroa: >Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: >"Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" > >Some others (dissidents, of course), this: >"Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" I think the response is perhaps witty but skeen-deep. A simple question: why should we consider _unfortunate_ such a belief? Is it (or has been) an obstacle for Science? By the other hand: Is syntax a social institution or a conscious, technological human innovation? If it is not, then it must be a genetic constraint, independently now if we consider that syntax developped especifically in natural selection or not. Even if we accept that syntax (in the sense of a computational system that relates properly meaning and sound) can be learned, we would need to say that the device to acquire that system is innate, ergo we can say (in a provisional abstract sense) that syntax is innate (genetically determined in our kind). I believe this is not questionable. The open question is then if the genetic material involved -which determines the structure of natural languages- is specifically _syntactic_ or not, i.e., if the mind is able to create that system using some more general genetic information. Note that even in that case syntax should be considered as innate. *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU Fri Apr 25 19:57:46 1997 From: lmenn at CLIPR.COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn, Linguistics, CU Boulder) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 12:57:46 -0700 Subject: innate/unique? In-Reply-To: <01II47A8886K90P37I@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU> Message-ID: surely, uniqueness and innateness are logically independent concepts. That they were ever bundled together is an example of how fallacious arguments get started and transmitted because of pre-theoretical convictions, or maybe I should say pre-emprical...Lise Menn On Fri, 25 Apr 1997 DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU wrote: > Hello all, I usually just follow these discussions silently...but I have > to comment on this one. I have often gotten the impression that when > linguists talk about a linguistic ability as "innate", that they are also > implying that the ability is unique to humans. I certainly think there > is a lot that humans do that is unique. However, I don't think > the uniqueness follows from the innateness. I have seen evidence > that other species (not just mammals) have sound systems that > might be best explained by appealing to phonetic and phonological > devices that hitherto have been treated as if they were unique to > humans. I'd love to get some feedback on how others view this > uniqueness/innateness relationship. > Thanks > Dianne Patterson > dpat at ccit.arizona.edu > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 19:51:14 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 12:51:14 -0700 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: <01II4EIKR7FY90RYD8@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> Message-ID: You still are silent about grammar and phonology... TG I see ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to suggest that there are areas of the brain devoted UNIQUELY to grammar or phonology. Re phonology, see David Poeppel's recent review in Brain and Language, a meta-analysis of several PET studies putatively about phonological processing: aside from the fact that the left hemisphere is more important than the right, there is no evidence for an overlap between studies that could be viewed as a "phonological area". There is also some fMRI work (presented at Neurosciences last fall) showing that each and every subcomponent of the Broca complex that is involved in phonological production is also involved in at least one non-verbal motor planning task (of the handful of mouth, face and hand movement tasks that they used). A similar story follows for grammar. I would be happy to send you my forthcoming paper "On the inseparability of grammar and the lexicon" (coming out in Language and Cognitive Processes) where I review extensive evidence that is SUPPOSED To show a double dissociation between grammar and the lexicon, and show that the claims of separability do not go through. In short, although there is no doubt that the brain PARTICIPATES in grammar and phonology, there is no evidence that I have been able to find that unambiguously supports the idea that specific areas of the brain are DEDICATED to grammar or phonology. I would be happy to discuss this with you in more detail, although the above-mentioned paper might be a good place to start. -liz From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 20:21:10 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 13:21:10 -0700 Subject: phonology...unique?? Message-ID: >>From T.Givon >in language -- phonology and grammar -- exhibit enough unique characteristics >to suggest that at least the mode of processing (if not the location) is >rather unique and domain specific. > Since the evolution of phonology and grammar are, most likely, >the latest evolutionary additions to the array of capacities that combine in >supporting human communication, finding them organized in such an "early" >fashion should not be all that surprising. This is very interesting...I can see how you might believe "phonology" to be unique if you only look at us and other primates...and I can imagine that the way humans arrive at things like syllabic templates is accomplished in humans by a human mechanism...but I think that something like a syllabic template appears in other critters...songbirds at least but there are some even more striking examples if you look at creatures with flexible sound systems that learn to talk...like some parrots. I look forward to more comments, Dianne Patterson. From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:00:14 1997 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:00:14 -0700 Subject: phonology...unique?? In-Reply-To: <01II4GPGJOTK936YQD@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU> Message-ID: "I can see how you might believe "phonology" to be unique if you only look at us and other primates...and I can imagine that the way humans arrive at things like syllabic templates is accomplished in humans by a human mechanism." (DPAT) Patricia Kuhl, Keith Kluender and others have shown since the 1970's that several other mammals and birds are able not only to hear phonological contrasts like "ba" vs. "ga", but they also hear them categorically, with boundaries similar to those that prevail in humans. The weight of evidence suggests that the innate contribution to speech processing may NOT be specific to speech or to humans. On the contrary, it looks rather as though speech has evolved to take advantage of pre-existing properties of the mammalian (and perhaps avian) auditory system. -liz bates From kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:11:30 1997 From: kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU (patricia kilroe) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 16:11:30 -0500 Subject: innateness/uniqueness Message-ID: While this topic is receiving so much attention on this list, I was wondering if those familiar with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobos, esp. the apparent fact that these apes can comprehend and execute fairly complex spoken commands upon first hearing, could comment on the biology of language question from the perspective of what SS-R's findings contribute to it. Patricia Kilroe From bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA Fri Apr 25 21:19:53 1997 From: bill at HIVNET.UBC.CA (Bill Turkel) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:19:53 -0700 Subject: Categorical perception Message-ID: > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Apr 25 14:13:46 1997 > Patricia Kuhl, Keith Kluender and others have shown since the 1970's that > several other mammals and birds are able not only to hear phonological > contrasts like "ba" vs. "ga", but they also hear them categorically, with > boundaries similar to those that prevail in humans. The weight of evidence > suggests that the innate contribution to speech processing may NOT be > specific to speech or to humans. On the contrary, it looks rather as > though speech has evolved to take advantage of pre-existing properties of > the mammalian (and perhaps avian) auditory system. -liz bates > Categorical perception may even be a property of invertebrates: Wyttenbach, May & Hoy (1996) Categorical perception of sound frequency by crickets. Science 273:1542-1544 Bill From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:32:23 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:32:23 -0700 Subject: phonetics/phonology and parrots Message-ID: To those who are interested ( especially toBill Turkel): I have yet to publish anything on the phonological processes (lots of rhyming, word play etc. in the parrot...though we are actively preparing a little article). If you are interested in production of phonetic contrasts we have one paper out on vowels: D.K. Patterson and I.M. Pepperberg, "A comparative study of human and parrot phonation: Acoustic and articulatory correlates of vowels," J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 96, pp. 634-648, 1994. and one paper out on articulation (X-ray video of the bird talking): D.K. Warren, D.K. Patterson, and I.M. Pepperberg, "Mechanisms of American English vowel production in an African Grey parrot" Auk 113, 41-58, 1996. We are working on a description of stop consonants. Thanks for your interest. Dr. Bates, Thankyou, I do know about Kluender, Kuhl, Dooling etc. and what they have to say about categorical perception of phonetic contrasts. They are certainly the pioneers in these areas. My own work has examined production of these contrasts...but I am looking forward to (and in the middle of) looking at slightly higher level more phonological stuff...syllabic template evidence, assimilation, cluster reduction etc. The database is rich in evidence of complex word play. Anyone intrigued should check out the following paper which provides some basic evidence of the vocal behavior I think is so interesting: Pepperberg, I.M., Brese, K.J., and Harris, B. (1991). "Solitary sound play during acquisition of English vocalizations by an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus): Possible parallels with children's monologue speech," Appl. Psycholing. 12, 151-178. Thanks to all of you for sharing your views, interests and information. I am finding it very valuable. Dianne Patterson From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Apr 25 21:51:21 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 14:51:21 -0700 Subject: bonobos/perception and more Message-ID: Patricia Kilroe writes: >While this topic is receiving so much attention on this list, I was wondering >if those familiar with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobos, esp. the >apparent fact that these apes can comprehend and execute fairly complex >spoken commands upon first hearing, could comment on the biology of language >question from the perspective of what SS-R's findings contribute to it. I know a horse that follows verbal commands. Dogs learn to do it too, probably not as complex as what the bonobos do...but, you know, we all hear in roughly the same frequency range (though of course dogs have an even wider range)...it doesn't seem at all surprising to me that human language would occur in an acoustic range which is easy (the path of least resistance)...nor does it seem surprising that other animals can hear the contrasts we use (since our hearing is certainly not exceptional in the animal world). What does seem surprising to me is that we as scientists succeeded in turning the problem on its head...did we imagine that our auditory system adapted itself specially to the demands of language? How could that happen? BTW, it isn't that I don't believe we learn the phonetic categories of our language...surely we "adapt" our auditory systems to the language at hand in that sense. But, Alex the parrot knows the difference between "pea" and "key".. and he doesn't just hear the distinctions...he hears them from a great variety of speakers AND he makes them. Dianne Patterson From wilcox at UNM.EDU Fri Apr 25 22:03:40 1997 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 16:03:40 -0600 Subject: Categorical perception Message-ID: This isn't really about categorical perception, but I'll use the same thread... The type of data that Liberman & Mattingly used to argue that "speech is special" can also be found in fingerspelling. That is, they said: "... the relationship between gesture and signal is not straightforward ... the movements for gestures implied by a single [phonetic] symbol are typically not simultaneous, and the movements implied for successive [phonetic] symbols often overlap extensively. This coarticulation means that the changing shape of the vocal tract, and hence the resulting signal, is influenced by several gestures at the same time. Thus, the relation between gesture and signal, though certainly systematic, is systematic in a way that is peculiar to speech." (L &M, "The motor theory of speech perception revisited," Cognition 21, 1985). >>From this, L &M argued that this coded relationship between gesture and speech requires a special module for phonetic perception, beyond what is required for general acoustic perception. But the same "coded" relationship exists between the articulatory gestures that make up fingerspelled letters and the resulting optical signal: (1) movements for gestures implied by a single [fingerspelled] symbol are typically not simultaneous, and (2) movements implied by successive [fingerspelled] symbols overlap extensively. Coarticulation is very much present in fingerspelling. It is therefore equally true of fingerspelling to say that the changing shape of the [fingerspelling tract? OK, the hand], and hence the resulting [optical] signal, is influenced by several gestures at the same time, and thus that the relation between gesture and signal is systematic in a way that is peculiar to fingerspelling. Does this then lead us to conclude that a special module for fingerspelling perception is required? -- Sherman Wilcox From pesetsk at MIT.EDU Sat Apr 26 02:10:45 1997 From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky) Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 22:10:45 -0400 Subject: innate In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At 3:51 PM -0400 4/25/97, Liz Bates wrote: > You still are silent about grammar and phonology... TG > > > > I see ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to suggest that there are areas of the brain > devoted UNIQUELY to grammar or phonology. Re phonology, see David > Poeppel's recent review in Brain and Language, a meta-analysis of several > PET studies putatively about phonological processing: aside from the fact > that the left hemisphere is more important than the right, there is no > evidence for an overlap between studies that could be viewed as a > "phonological area". [...] I don't think this brings Poeppel's contribution into proper focus. The purpose of his paper was to call attention to a variety of *inadequacies* in the existing PET work. He argues that the methodological and conceptual problems with existing studies are sufficiently serious that they could not have converged on a "phonological area" even if one were to exist. That is, (if Poeppel's paper is correct) we have no evidence for a phonological area because the proper work has not yet been done -- not because we've looked real hard and not found it. -David Pesetsky From DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Apr 26 15:59:37 1997 From: DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (DPAT at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 08:59:37 -0700 Subject: references on phonological uniqueness? Message-ID: Hello, I wonder if anybody ou there might be able to direct me to papers that address the issue of the uniqueness of human phonology? I'd like to see some papers that propose that various specific aspects of the phonological system are innate and unique to humans. Is there anything of this sort for, say, syllabic templates? rule governed behaviors like assimilation, cluster reduction, metathesis?? I'd be quite obliged if you could point out relevant references. Thanks, Dianne Patterson P.S. Even a paper that just more generally claimed a unique status for phonology (uniquely human) would be valuable. I appreciate it. From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 27 03:39:55 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 06:39:55 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: For, e.g. 'Is daddy coming?' my 5-year-old daughter has been saying 'Right daddy's coming?' (with the right intonation) for I think at least 6 months now, steadfastly resisting all efforts to teach her inversion. This was preceded for a considerable length of time by 'What, daddy's coming?' (again with the right intonation). She seems to be assuming that the way to form questions is by prefixing an invariant particle ('right' or 'what') and changing the intonation (like e.g. Japanese 'ka', except that 'ka' comes at the end of the clause). In discussing how children learn this construction, you do not say that researchers have noticed this strategy, but my daughter seems to be quite taken with it. Is she pathological, or have researchers just not noticed that this is how some young children try to ask questions? John Myhill From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 27 03:45:26 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 06:45:26 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: In response to Ellen Prince's message: >in answer to your first paragraph, i suspect no one changes his/her beliefs >around here -- but it would be nice if we updated our meta-beliefs about >who believes what. I will report the results of my informal survey conducted several months ago on funknet regarding whether anyone had ever been convinced by anyone else's arguments to change their mind regarding some 'formal' vs. 'nonformal' issue (I believe it was 'the autonomy debate', and I added that this 'conversion' should have taken place after graduate school). The results are in, and Ellen Prince is in fact the only person who has acknowledged having changed her mind as a result of some evidence (from non-autonomy to autonomy). As much as I value Ellen's opinion, I think that the fact that this `debate' has evidently not had any effect upon anyone else leads me to suspect that the formal vs. non-formal `debate' on funknet (in its various incarnations) has had more or less the same meaning as the 2-minute hate in Orwell's 1984, where 'Goldstein' (`Goldberg'? I forget) appears on a video screen ranting against Big Brother and people work themselves into a fury screaming at him for 2 minutes, with Dan Everett serving as our Goldberg (with occasional guest appearances by F. Newmeyer). Perhaps Dan would agree to set up a new 'argue with a formal linguist' network? I'm sure it would be quite popular. John Myhill From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Sun Apr 27 06:31:53 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 09:31:53 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: For, e.g. 'Is daddy coming?' my 5-year-old daughter has been saying 'Right daddy's coming?' (with the right intonation) for I think at least 6 months now, steadfastly resisting all efforts to teach her inversion. This was preceded for a considerable length of time by 'What, daddy's coming?' (again with the right intonation). She seems to be assuming that the way to form questions is by prefixing an invariant particle ('right' or 'what') and changing the intonation (like e.g. Japanese 'ka', except that 'ka' comes at the end of the clause). In discussing how children learn this construction, you do not say that researchers have noticed this strategy, but my daughter seems to be quite taken with it. Is she pathological, or have researchers just not noticed that this is how some young children try to ask questions? John Myhill (Sorry if this message has been posted on FUNKNET already, it seems to keep getting bounced back to me) From M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Sun Apr 27 12:21:12 1997 From: M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Mark Durie) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 23:21:12 +1100 Subject: Ranting against Big Brother In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In response to John Myhill's comments. A functionalist might point out that debate has many functions besides bringing about assent. Gaining a clearer understanding of differences and commonalities is one. Just keeping channels open can be helpful at times. The fact that people are still arguing with each other can in itself be encouraging. Also I think it is important that many people receiving a list like this are listeners, not 'arguers', and at least some of these have not yet made up their minds about the fundamental issues. Mark Durie ------------------------------------ From: Mark Durie Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics University of Melbourne Parkville 3052 Hm (03) 9380-5247 Wk (03) 9344-5191 Fax (03) 9349-4326 M.Durie at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/Dept/LALX/staff/durie.html From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Sun Apr 27 23:39:18 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 09:39:18 +1000 Subject: debate Message-ID: The mass-debates on this list are valuable for many reasons. For example, as well as finding out what people know, you find out what they don't know. You can also study the exchanges in terms of primate dominance hierarchies. The strategies of the young and the old can be compared, as can those of low and high ranks. Even though the most frequent tactic appears to be attacking ones own misunderstanding of another's position, the texts are information-rich for anyone interested in language. Chris From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Mon Apr 28 09:31:27 1997 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:31:27 +0100 Subject: the debate Message-ID: As one of those that Mark Durie describes as a listener, perhaps I could say how I see these recurrent debates on Funknet. The latest one has been really interesting, but there's been hardly any discussion of formal vs functional as such. I think that's usually the case, so it's hardly surprising if people don't change their minds on that particular issue. But every time we read a message about (say) innateness it helps us all to sort out our own ideas a little more clearly on that particular topic. That may not count as `changing our mind', but our minds do change. Personally I think `formal' vs `functional' is like `right' vs `left' in politics - a very crude way of locating oneself and others in a really complex intellectual space. Maybe ok emotionally but not to be taken too seriously as a basis for scientific thinking. ============================================================================== Richard (=Dick) Hudson Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT work phone: +171 419 3152; work fax: +171 383 4108 email: dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk web-sites: home page = http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm unpublished papers available by ftp = ....uk/home/dick/papers.htm From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Mon Apr 28 11:00:56 1997 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9=2DLuis?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mend=EDvil?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gir=F3?=) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 13:00:56 +0200 Subject: No subject Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > I am not so familiar with generative/functional terminology. > But I have been wondering about the definition of "innate." > What does "innate" mean?? Is it biological?? > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? and on Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Enrique Figueroa: >Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: >"Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" > >Some others (dissidents, of course), this: >"Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" I think the response is perhaps witty but skeen-deep. A simple question: why should we consider _unfortunate_ such a belief? Is it (or has been) an obstacle for Science? By the other hand: Is syntax a social institution or a conscious, technological human innovation? If it is not, then it must be a genetic constraint, independently now if we consider that syntax developped specifically in natural selection or not. Even if we accept that syntax (in the sense of a computational system that relates properly meaning and sound) can be learned, we would need to say that the device to acquire that system is innate, ergo we can say (in a provisional abstract sense) that syntax is innate (genetically determined in our kind). I believe this is not questionable. The open question is then (as observed by Bates on Fri, 25 Apr 1997) if the genetic material involved -which determines the syntactic structure of natural languages- is specifically _syntactic_ or not, i.e., if the mind is able to create that system using some more general genetic information. Note that even in that case syntax should be considered as innate. So, as Bates said: >One can reject the strong, domain-specific claims about innateness without >>being forced to the silly conclusion that nothing is innate By the other way, if the difference with other species is only quantitative (as has been said by Bates too) the question is: why humans do not acquire other's mammals communication systems when in the appropriate context? *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Mon Apr 28 12:21:48 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:21:48 -0200 Subject: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages Message-ID: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th 1997 and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Mon Apr 28 15:49:10 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:49:10 CDT Subject: NO SUBJECT Message-ID: John Myhill: >As much as I value Ellen's opinion, I think that the fact that this `debate' >has evidently not had any effect upon anyone else leads me to suspect that >the formal vs. non-formal `debate' on funknet (in its various incarnations) >has had more or less the same meaning as the 2-minute hate in Orwell's >1984, where 'Goldstein' . . . I wouldn't say that the debate hasn't affected anyone. Just because people don't ditch their position and go over to the other side doesn't mean that the debate has had no effect. I, for one, found it, and continue to find it, very instructive. I feel that I have a much greater understanding of the autonomy/nonautonomy issue than I had before. Moreover, the juxtaposition of different viewpoints in brief, readable, connected messages has been much more helpful for me than, say, reading a book by one author and then reading a book from an opposing viewpoint, neither author having talked to the other. I haven't changed my original position at all, but I understand the basis for it and all the ways it could be challenged much better than ever before. If nothing else, this debate has taught me that I have a lot more reading to do. If Fritz and Dan are the Goldsteins for FUNKNET, who volunteers to be the functionalist Goldsteins for GB2MP (a list for discussions of Chomskyan syntax)? Sign up today and give us your functional accounts of subjacency, your semantic version of the binding conditions, your metrical phonology explanations of heavy-NP shift, etc. Send this message: subscribe GB2MP to this address: majordomo at colmex.mx --Tony Wright From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Mon Apr 28 16:22:35 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:22:35 -0600 Subject: the debate In-Reply-To: <9704280902.AB25188@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: I think we all, both listeners and arguers (and role-exchangers), do learn a lot from these (most of the time) healthy discussions. Which is what lists are for, or not? I guess the main goal of a scientific discussion is not no defeat and convince an opponent, but to contribute to overall clarification, including one's own views and arguments. Much of this -as I have more than once already pointed out- should also take place within our classrooms, but... Which makes these discussions so much more (the) interesting! Respectful greetings to all, arguers, listeners and role-exchangers! Max PS. Chris is right, too, about extrascientific information (and education) we get out of them! From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Mon Apr 28 16:38:54 1997 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Enrique Figueroa E.) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:38:54 -0600 Subject: NO SUBJECT In-Reply-To: 19970428.104911.TWRIGHT@SACADMIN Message-ID: I wish I could believe the list you propose everyone (everyone?) to subscribe to would like that and care to answer back... But, by the way, why restrict, in a Manicheistic way, the discussions that go on in/on FUNKNET to the contraposition of functionalism versus Chomskyanism? I think one among the very good traits of FUNKNET is it's openness to all sorts of opinions! A trait I doubt very much (hope I'm all wrong, though!) would also be that of GB2MP... Formalist linguists have won a reputation with respect to their "patience" towards poor second-class pseudolinguists who don't feel comfortable with their jargon and views... Those who don"t honour this reputation do care to participate, as I see it, on FUNKNET. Perhaps we are here in need of a "neutral" discussion list, for those who really care to interact on theoretical issues? For the rest, I entirely agree with your comments (and with your spirit, methinks). Cheers! Max On Mon, 28 Apr 1997, Tony A. Wright wrote: > John Myhill: > > >As much as I value Ellen's opinion, I think that the fact that this `debate' > >has evidently not had any effect upon anyone else leads me to suspect that > >the formal vs. non-formal `debate' on funknet (in its various incarnations) > >has had more or less the same meaning as the 2-minute hate in Orwell's > >1984, where 'Goldstein' . . . > > I wouldn't say that the debate hasn't affected anyone. Just because > people don't ditch their position and go over to the other side doesn't > mean that the debate has had no effect. > > I, for one, found it, and continue to find it, very instructive. > I feel that I have a much greater understanding of the autonomy/nonautonomy > issue than I had before. Moreover, the juxtaposition of different > viewpoints in brief, readable, connected messages has been much more > helpful for me than, say, reading a book by one author and then reading > a book from an opposing viewpoint, neither author having talked to the > other. > > I haven't changed my original position at all, but I understand the > basis for it and all the ways it could be challenged much better than > ever before. If nothing else, this debate has taught me that I have > a lot more reading to do. > > If Fritz and Dan are the Goldsteins for FUNKNET, who volunteers to be > the functionalist Goldsteins for GB2MP (a list for discussions of > Chomskyan syntax)? Sign up today and give us your functional > accounts of subjacency, your semantic version of the binding conditions, > your metrical phonology explanations of heavy-NP shift, etc. > > Send this message: > > subscribe GB2MP > > to this address: > > majordomo at colmex.mx > > --Tony Wright > From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Mon Apr 28 19:12:30 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 09:12:30 -1000 Subject: the debate Message-ID: At 11:31 PM 4/27/97 -1000, Dick Hudson wrote: >Personally I think `formal' vs `functional' is like `right' vs `left' in >politics - a very crude way of locating oneself and others in a really >complex intellectual space. Maybe ok emotionally but not to be taken too >seriously as a basis for scientific thinking. It is this rather profound but ordinary insight that I think prevents people from commenting. We all recognize the intelligence of both sides but are unable to decisively take a stance because of the complexity. Take for example, the autonomy problem with a metahor from biology (one that has been mentioned before I believe) where we can certainly see that a skeleton has very distinct properties from muscles and veins and so on, but we simply cannot say that a skeleton is autonomous to the extent that it will get up and walk off on its own. If biologists were to take sides on the issue of the autonomy vs non- autonomy of the human skeleton, I am sure there would be massively complex arguments on both sides. However, they have recognized that this is somewhat a non issue from the point of view of effective orthopedics and other applications of this science. We can also say that syntax is both autonomous and not autonomous. We can certainly describe and predict a lot about langauges basedon syntax alone, but syntax alone will not get up and walk on its own. I know that when one takes a position on both sides of an issue like this it tends to weaken both sides, but these are often issues where both sides very dearly need to be weakened. We should no more expect linguists to argue the autonomy of syntax than we should expect biologists to argue the autonomy of the skeleton. We should be able to take the analogy from biology, say things are formal and functional, autonomous and non-autonomous and maybe we can get more complete analyses and theories once we have these debates properly set aside. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Mon Apr 28 19:51:57 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 17:51:57 -0200 Subject: Program on Indigenous languages of Brazil Message-ID: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th 1997 and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Mon Apr 28 22:48:04 1997 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 08:48:04 +1000 Subject: debate, innate Message-ID: At 11:31 PM 4/27/97 -1000, Dick Hudson wrote: >Personally I think `formal' vs `functional' is like `right' vs `left' in >politics - a very crude way of locating oneself and others in a really >complex intellectual space. Maybe ok emotionally but not to be taken too >seriously as a basis for scientific thinking. For me this touches on the issue of the role of desire and fear in the acceptance and rejection of classes of theories. For example, does the word "innate" raise fears of intrinsic and uncontestable superiority/inferiority? Is "innate" used to satisfy a desire to establish an *essential* difference between humans and other organisms? Does the linking of an innate syntax to genes raise the fear that an *essential* property of humans may be spliced into the genomes of other species? In this regard, I noticed that innate syntax is more readily accepted among (some) linguists than genes for syntax. This is a gap that needs some explaining. For those who think syntax is innate and coded in the genome: Once these genes arose through mutation or recombination, how did they spread through the gene pool to be found in almost every genome? Did they provide more offspring for the individuals that possessed them (some imagination here pays dividends)? Or perhaps genes for syntax are linked to other genes that directly provide more offspring (say, by stronger than average chemical bonds)? What are the alleles of the genes for syntax (cf blond vs black hair)? For those who think syntax is innate but not coded in the genome: How is the information transmitted from one generation to the next? Is it epigenetic, a result of the cascade of interactions during brain development? If so, would the removal of some genes prevent the development of innate syntax? I am assuming here that what is claimed as innate is more than just a neurophysiological and anatomical capacity. Perhaps someone can clarify this for me. Chris From Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 28 00:24:00 1997 From: Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG (Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 19:24:00 -0500 Subject: Student survey: Phonological theory Message-ID: * * * Cross-posted to COGLING, FUNKNET, LINGUIST, and OPTIMAL * * * Phonology Theory Survey for Students This is a survey of how phonological theory is taught and learned in introductory courses, including graduate level Phonology I and II. I have been investigating the most common conceptual difficulties for students of phonology and would appreciate your help. You need not have taken it recently to answer the survey. Summary posted with sufficient response. Thanks in advance, Beaumont Brush Phonology courses you have taken: Which aspects of phonological theory did you find the most difficult, and why? Textbook(s) used in each phonology course you've taken: Article(s) used in each phonology course you've taken: Institution you study(ed) at (will not be named in any report or summary): Personal information (optional but appreciated) Name: How long have you taught phonology? Names will not be used in any work. However, if it is OK to list your name as a respondent in a mailing list summary, please type the word 'yes': From Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG Mon Apr 28 00:30:00 1997 From: Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG (Beaumont_Brush at SIL.ORG) Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 19:30:00 -0500 Subject: Teacher survey: Phonological theory Message-ID: * * * Cross-posted to COGLING, FUNKNET, LINGUIST, and OPTIMAL * * * Phonology Theory Survey for Teachers This is a survey of how phonological theory is taught and learned in introductory courses, including graduate level Phonology I and II. I have been investigating the most common conceptual difficulties for students of phonology and would appreciate your help. You need not have taught it recently to answer the survey. Summary posted with sufficient response. Thanks in advance, Beaumont Brush Course level(s) taught: Average class size: Which aspects of phonological theory caused your students the hardest time? What were you surprised that your students had trouble with, if anything? Textbook(s) used in each phonology course you teach: Article(s) used in each phonology course you teach: Institution you teach at (will not be named in any report or summary): Personal information (optional but appreciated) Name: Professional title: How long have you taught phonology? Names will not be used in any work. However, if it is OK to list your name as a respondent in a mailing list summary, please type the word 'yes': From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Tue Apr 29 18:46:26 1997 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9=2DLuis?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mend=EDvil?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gir=F3?=) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 20:46:26 +0200 Subject: innate syntax Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Yoko Okita wrote: > Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic > information?? and on Mon, 21 Apr 1997 Enrique Figueroa: >Unfortunately, Many pseudoneoCartesians believe this: >"Sum, ergo loquor, ergo cogito" > >Some others (dissidents, of course), this: >"Sum, ergo cogito, ergo loquor" I think the response is perhaps witty but skin-deep. A simple question: why should we consider _unfortunate_ such a belief? Is it (or has been) an obstacle for Science? By the other hand: Is syntax a social institution or a conscious, technological human innovation? If it is not, then it must be a genetic constraint, independently now if we accept or not that syntax evolved specifically in natural selection. Even if we accept that syntax (in the Chomskyan sense of a computational system that relates properly meaning and sound) can be learned, we would need to say that the device to acquire that system is innate, ergo we can say (in a provisional abstract sense at least) that syntax is innate (i.e. genetically determined in our kind). I believe this is not questionable. The open question is then (as observed by Bates on Fri, 25 Apr 1997) if the involved genetic material -which determines the syntactic structure of natural languages- is specifically _syntactic_ or not, i.e., if the mind is able to create that system using some more general genetic information. Note that even in that anti-modular perspective, human syntax should be considered as innate. So, as Bates wrote: >One can reject the strong, domain-specific claims about innateness without >being forced to the silly conclusion that nothing is innate By the other way (and from a logical point of view) if the difference between human syntax and other animal systems is only quantitative and not qualitative (as has been wrote by Bates too) the question is: why humans do not acquire animal communication systems when in the appropriate environment? As a conclusion, consider what Mills wrote on Fri, 25 Apr 1997: >As for me, the older I get, the less patient I become with people--both >chomskyan innatist and social folks (?socialists?)--who would draw a >sharp line between humans and other animals. If I understand correctly these words, it is suggested that Chomskyan innatism creates a sharp line between humans and other animals. I believe just the opposite: the consideration of human language (especially grammar) as an instinct is the best way to observe the real continuum between humans and other animals. Humans are not more evolved or developped than other species. We just evolved differently in some aspects. *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Tue Apr 29 20:28:56 1997 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 16:28:56 -0400 Subject: Newly Published Functional Work Message-ID: Books from JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING related to Functional Linguistics that have been recently published. (We thought you'd like to know.) TOWARDS A CALCULUS OF MEANING. STUDIES IN MARKEDNESS, DISTINCTIVE FEATURES AND DEIXIS Edna Andrews & Yishai Tobin (eds.) 1996 xxviii, 432 pp. Studies in Functional & Structural Linguistics, 43 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 268 1 Price: US$99.00 Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 1552 9 Price: Hfl. 175,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) This volume contains papers presented at a symposium in honor of Cornelis H. van Schooneveld and invited papers on the topics of invariance, markedness, distinctive feature theory and deixis. It is not a Festschrift in the usual sense of the word, but more of a collection of articles which represent a very specific way of defining and viewing language and linguistics. The specific approach presented in this volume has its origins and inspirations in the theoretical and methodological paradigm of European Structuralism in general, and the sign-oriented legacy of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce and the functional and communication-oriented approach of the Prague School in particular. The book is divided in three sections: Theoretical and Methodological Overview: Cornelis H. van Schooneveld; Anatoly Liberman; Petr Sgall; Alla Bemova and Eva Hajicova; Robert Kirsner. Studies in Russian and Slavic Languages: Edna Andrews; Lawrence E. Feinberg; Annie Joly Sperling; Ronald E. Feldstein; Irina Dologova and Elena Maksimova; Stefan M. Pugh. Applications to Other Languages, Language Families, and Aphasia: Ellen Contini-Morava; Barbara A. Fennell; Victor A. Friedman; Robert Fradkin; Yishai Tobin; Mark Leikin. STUDIES IN ANAPHORA Barbara Fox (ed.) 1996 xii, 518 pp. Typological Studies in Language, 33 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 641 5 Price: US$115.00 Paper: 1 55619 642 3 Price: $34.95 Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 2927 9 Price: Hfl. 200,-- Paper: 90 272 2928 7 Price: Hfl. 70,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) The last 15 years has seen an explosion of research on the topic of anaphora. Studies of anaphora have been important to our understanding of cognitive processes, the relationships between social interaction and grammar, and of directionality in diachronic change. The contributions to this volume represent the "next generation" of studies in anaphora - defined broadly here as those morpho-syntactic forms available to speakers for formulating reference - taking as their starting point the foundation of research done in the 1980s. These studies examine in detail, and with a richness of methods and theories, what patterns of anaphoric usage can reveal to us about cognition, social interaction, and language change. FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTIONS. THEORY IN PRACTICE Ruqaiya Hasan, Carmel Cloran & David G. Butt (eds.) 1996 xxxvi, 381 pp. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 121 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 575 3 Price: $85.00 Rest of the world: 90 272 3624 0 Price: Hfl. 150,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) This volume focuses on the relation between theory and description by examining aspects of transitivity in different languages. Transitivity -- or case grammar, to use the popular term -- has always occupied a center-stage position in linguistics, not least because of its supposedly privileged relation to states of affairs in the real world. Using a systemic functional perspective, the ten papers in this volume make a contribution to this scholarship by focusing on the transitivity patterns in language as the expression of the experiential metafunction. The contributors provide functional descriptions of the various categories of process, their participants and circumstances, including phenomena such as di-transitivity, causativity, the get-passive, etc. The chapters point to the nature of the linguistic fact which is linked ineluctably on the one hand to the nature of the theory and on the other to the speakers' experience of the world in which they live. The majority of papers included in the volume derive from the 19th International Systemic Functional Congress at Macquarie University. THE GRAMMAR OF POSSESSION. INALIENABILITY, INCORPORATION AND POSSESSOR ASCENSION IN GUARANI Maura Velazquez-Castillo 1996 xvi, 274 pp. Studies in Language Companion Series, 33 US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 844 2 Price: US$99.00 Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 3036 6 Price: Hfl. 175,-- John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com Further information e-mail: service at benjamins.com or 800-562-5666 (US & Canada) This volume is an exhaustive study of linguistic structures in Paraguayan Guaran? which are directly or indirectly associated with the semantic domain of inalienability. Constructions analyzed in the book include adnominal and predicative possessive constructions, noun incorporation, and possessor ascension. Examples are drawn from a rich data base that incorporate native speaker intuitions and resources in the construction of illustrative linguistic forms as well as the analysis of the communicative use of the forms under study. The book provides a complete picture of inalienability as a coherent integrated system of grammatical and semantic oppositions in a language that has received little attention in the theoretical linguistic literature. The analysis moves from general principles to specific details of the language while applying principles of Cognitive Grammar and Functional Linguistics. There is an explicit aim to uncover the particularities of form-meaning connections, as well as the communicative and discourse functions of the structures examined. Other approaches are also considered when appropriate, resulting in a theoretically informed study that contains a rich variety of considerations. Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) P O Box 27519 Ph: 215 836-1200 Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 Fax: 215 836-1204 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Tue Apr 29 20:34:52 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 15:34:52 CDT Subject: dialog Message-ID: Enrique Figueroa writes: > I think one among the very good traits of FUNKNET is it's openness to all > sorts of opinions! A trait I doubt very much (hope I'm all wrong, though!) > would also be that of GB2MP... Two things here: 1. I wish to welcome any interested parties to participate. However, I did not advertise for functionalists to join GB2MP en masse and consolidate FUNKNET with GB2MP. There is a reason there are two lists and not just one. I cannot promise that functionalist views will be greeted with open arms, but I think at least the level of open-mindedness displayed on FUNKNET will be in evidence on GB2MP. This does not mean that the typical foramlist rejoinders might not be heard on GB2MP in response to functionalist arguments, such as "That's a performance issue, not a competence issue!" or "Your point is irrelevant to a theory of I-language." These irritations are par for the course, and I wasn't suggesting that people will have immunity from them on GB2MP. Rather, the notion of "Goldstein" (as per John Myhill's apt analogy with Orwell's _1984_) implies a thick-skinned individual who does not mind being in the minority and voicing opinions that go against the stream. I think this has been helpful for FUNKNET, which has gone from being nothing but conference announcements to having a real dialog. The function of Goldstein is to remind people that there are other viewpoints which people conceivably might have, and we mustn't get too comfortable in our cocoon. 2. It would be nice to share your view of FUNKNET as a bastion of equanimity and broad-mindedness. My brief sojourn in this cyberspace, however enjoyable and helpful, nonetheless forces me to insist that this view lacks empirical motivation. At the risk of seeming indelicate, I must point out that I have seen the proverbial flame-thrower in use on this list on a number of occasions in the past few months. I do not think FUNKNET is unusual compared to other lists in terms of flaming, but neither can I honestly concur with an unduly idyllic characterization of the list. The give and take on this list has been great. I hope that it continues in a cordial and broad-minded manner. I anticipate that the contributions of any interested parties here will spur on the same kind of dialog on GB2MP. --Tony Wright From jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU Wed Apr 30 01:52:32 1997 From: jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU (Jon Aske) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 21:52:32 -0400 Subject: dialogue Message-ID: Although I am not going to rush to join, it is nice to hear that our presence would be tolerated in the GB2MP list. I doubt, however, that it would be seen with good eyes if that list received as high a percentage of postings from functionalists as this list receives from formalists. Speaking for myself, I have nothing against formalists participating on this list per se. I think it's wonderful. Sometimes I wonder about these colleagues' motivations, though. I do find it a bit annoying when the apparent sole purpose of their participation is to disparage the basic tenets of functionalism in linguistics, uncertain as these perhaps are, rather than to propose constructive criticism. I also must say, why not, that I found Tony's posting a bit disturbing. Perhaps it is my imagination, and perhaps it was unintended, but I sensed a patronizing attitude in its tone which I would be happy to be spared having to hear again in this list. Like that stuff about lacking empirical motivation. Was that supposed to be a flame, or what? Good thing we're pretty thick skinned around here from having had to put up with stuff like that for so long. Jon ---------------------------------------- Jon Aske jaske at abacus.bates.edu http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/ From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Wed Apr 30 05:35:15 1997 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 08:35:15 +0300 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Tony Wright wrote: >Rather, the notion of "Goldstein" (as per John Myhill's apt analogy >with Orwell's _1984_) implies a thick-skinned individual who does not >mind being in the minority and voicing opinions that go against the >stream. I think this has been helpful for FUNKNET, which has gone from >being nothing but conference announcements to having a real dialog. The >function of Goldstein is to remind people that there are other viewpoints >which people conceivably might have, and we mustn't get too comfortable >in our cocoon. I'm sorry I was misunderstood. This is most definitely NOT the function of Goldstein in 1984, and it was not the function I was referring to in my posting. The function of Goldstein was to unite people under a totalitarian regime by giving them something external to hate which took their minds off of the system they themselves were living under. Goldstein was himself ultimately an agent of Big Brother, an indispensible part of the system. The relevance of my analogy to the situation on funknet is that it is depressing to me to see people who are supposed to be interested in talking about language evidently only being really moved by the active presence of 'the enemy'--what would happen if there were no formal linguists to argue with? Would functional linguists have nothing left to do or talk about? I hope that isn't the case, I want to believe that isn't the case, but the interactions on funknet in the last few months give me cause for concern. John Myhill From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Wed Apr 30 07:41:06 1997 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 21:41:06 -1000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: At 07:35 PM 4/29/97 -1000, John Myhill wrote: >The function of Goldstein was to unite people under a totalitarian regime >by giving them something external to hate which took their minds off of >the system they themselves were living under. Goldstein was himself ultimately >an agent of Big Brother, an indispensible part of the system. The relevance of >my analogy to the situation on funknet is that it is depressing to me to see >people who are supposed to be interested in talking about language evidently >only being really moved by the active presence of 'the enemy'--what would happen >if there were no formal linguists to argue with? Would functional linguists >have nothing left to do or talk about? I hope that isn't the case, I want >to believe that isn't the case, but the interactions on funknet in the last >few months give me cause for concern. It's nice to see a discussion of what could be one of the more fundamental issues in this field--the need for an enemy. Frankly, I often think it is not linguists alone, nor academics alone, but rather it is the American love affair with anger that makes it impossible for people to get down to business whether it be on funk net or anywhere else. It seems in linguistics and academia as well as in the news and in politics no one could find a happier place to be than caught in a fit of self-righteous indigation at the miserable understanding and trouble making of someone else. All the better if you can say things in a way that would gather group anger and focus it on an offending individual or group. Congratulations to John Myhill for bringing up a side issue that might clarify many others. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)5393924 From eitkonen at UTU.FI Wed Apr 30 21:27:27 1997 From: eitkonen at UTU.FI (Esa) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 12:27:27 -0900 Subject: faults of functionalism Message-ID: Dialogue is useful, in the following sense. When I argue, I never try to convince my opponent. I know that (s)he is just too stupid to understand. (This is a joke, I guess.) Who I try to convince, is the one who listens to us, having not yet committed him/herself. (This is not a joke.) Yet it is clear enough that there should be more self-criticism of functionalism. Here is something to start with. The emphasis on biology (e.g. in recent messages) is misplaced. If e.g. in the study of grammaticalization one uses such terms as 'problem-solving' or 'abductive inference', and if one means what one says (which may not always be the case, as we have learned), then it is clear that these terms/concepts have been developed in disciplines other than biology, and it is these disciplines, not biology, that should be consulted. (That is, biology is OK in the right place, but not in the wrong place.) It is customary to ridicule the idea that there might be a clear distinction between study of human nature and study of inanimate nature. But this customary way of thinking should itself be ridiculed. There are absolutely no inferences made by inanimate things qua research objects but there are inferences made by human beings qua research objects (again, provided one is using the terms in their literal sense). Of course at a higher level of abstraction similarities between physics and linguistics get more pronounced, but this is a different matter. Functionalism does not carry the blame of biological overemphasis alone. It inherited it from a once-dominant school of linguistics whose name right now oddly escapes me. There is overemphasis not just on biology but also on cognition (understood as psychology of individuals). Language cannot be adequately understood without the notion of normativity (= correct vs. incorrect or grammatical vs ungrammatical), and this is a necessarily social notion; but normativity is nearly ignored. This means in fact that functionalists (and cognitivists) are only too eager to commit the psychologistic fallacy (= reducing 'ought' to 'is', or ignoring 'ought' entirely), which has - nevertheless - been known to be a fallacy at least for 900 years (i.e. since Pierre Abaelard). Again, the cognitive overemphasis too has been inherited from the same nameless source that was hinted at above. There is more, but it may be good to save it for another occasion. Esa Itkonen From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Wed Apr 30 18:59:29 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:59:29 -0200 Subject: Program on Indigenous Languages of Brazil Message-ID: Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information, please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR Wed Apr 30 19:40:06 1997 From: maia at ACD.UFRJ.BR (marcus antonio rezen) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:40:06 -0200 Subject: Program on Indigenous Languages of Brazil (fwd) Message-ID: Forwarded message: >>From maia Wed Apr 30 16:59:44 1997 From: maia (marcus antonio rezen) Message-Id: <9704301859.AA36288 at acd.ufrj.br> Subject: Program on Indigenous Languages of Brazil To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:59:29 -0200 (GRNLNDDT) Cc: maia (marcus antonio rezen) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2264 Specialization in Brazilian Indigenous Languages This specialization program intends to prepare linguists to do research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished materials on brazilian indigenous languages. The program will be developed in the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro between August/97 and June/98. Four courses will be taught: 1. Phonetic and Phonological systems of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 2. Morphosyntactic Features of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 3. Phonological Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; 4. Morphological and Syntactic Analysis of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; Instructors will be the following faculty members of the Linguistic Division of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum: Bruna Franchetto, Doctor in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Charlotte Emmerich, Doctor in Linguistics (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Marilia Faco Soares, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Yonne de Freitas Leite, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Texas, Austin); Marcia Maria Damaso Vieira, Doctor in Sciences (State University of Campinas- UNICAMP); Marcus Maia, Doctor in Linguistics (University of Southern California). In addition to the regular courses a series of lectures will be conducted by the faculty of the National Museum and by visiting scholars focusing on the following topics: - The history of the studies on Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Field work techniques; - The comparative method and the classification techniques; - Ethnological and Cognitive aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages; - Ethnographic and sociolinguistic aspects of Brazilian Indigenous Languages. Applications will be accepted from April 1st through June 30th and must include the following documents: 1.copy of undergraduate degree; 2.curriculum vitae; 3.2 letters of recommendation; 4.registration fee; 5.two photos. Selection of 20 candidates will be based on CV analysis and personal interview. For further information, please contact: maia at acd.ufrj.br From TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Wed Apr 30 22:39:51 1997 From: TWRIGHT at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony A. Wright) Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:39:51 CDT Subject: dialog Message-ID: Jon Aske wrote: > Although I am not going to rush to join, it is nice to hear that our > presence would be tolerated in the GB2MP list. I doubt, however, that it > would be seen with good eyes if that list received as high a percentage of > postings from functionalists as this list receives from formalists. I'd have to agree with you. This is not entirely an issue of formalists being intolerant, however. By its very nature, Chomskyan syntax is a more limited domain of inquiry than functional perspectives, which may take into account everything from discourse factors to neurology (I know that this is a old sticking point between functionalists and formalists). This fact itself limits the kinds of posts that would be appropriate on GB2MP. But I do not think it would be inappropriate for people to write, for example, "You know, there are analyses of this phenomenon that account for it semantically. See So and So's forthcoming article." Or, "My data suggest that this rigid either/or dichotomy doesn't hold water." Or "You know, there were real problems with the methodology of the that case study you cited." Or even a little conscience-pricking when we posit counterintuitive solutions to problems. > I also must say, why not, that I found Tony's posting a bit disturbing. > Perhaps it is my imagination, and perhaps it was unintended, but I sensed > a patronizing attitude in its tone which I would be happy to be spared > having to hear again in this list. Like that stuff about lacking empirical > motivation. Was that supposed to be a flame, or what? Good thing we're > pretty thick skinned around here from having had to put up with stuff like > that for so long. I assure you that any patronizing tone was certainly unintended. I only meant that any perception on the part of FUNKNETTERS, as reflected in recent posts, that they are unusually open-minded and tolerant, either of formalists or of other functionalists, seems unwarranted based on the number of "flames" that actually occur. Not that FUNKNET is any more prone to flames than average. I'm happy with FUNKNET overall, as I've said. --Tony Wright