From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Tue Jan 6 06:01:22 1998 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 00:01:22 -0600 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19971229141918.3f2f9c98@pop-server.hawaii.edu> Message-ID: > >Dear Funknetters, > >Last week I mailed a question about the relationship among some > >psychological concepts(mind,thought,cognition and intelligence),and I > >received many helpful comments and suggestions.I would like to thank you all. > >However,another problem has come up, and I wish to have your opinion about > >the relationship between Intelligence and Aptitude. > >In foreign language teaching,it is believed that some people "have a knack > >for learning languages".There are also some tests which claim to measure > >this aptitude.But do you think that aptitude is really different from > >intelligence?Don't you think that a person who is intelligent also knows how > >to learn a foreign language (through his use of language learning > >strategies),and in a sense linguistically more talened than the others? > >And is it not the case that a person who is claimed to have a high aptitude > >for learning a foreign language is in a sense capable of solving his > >problems(in this specific case,linguistic problems) ,and as a result more > >intelligent? I look forward to receiving your comments. It seems to me that there is a high involvement of other aspects of the learner's personality, that may increase/decrease the efficiency with which a foreign language can be acquired. Personally, I like to learn foreign languages (I am Brazilian and have a reasonable degree of fluency in 5 to 8 languages, depending on how strictly you define 'reasonable'), and one thing that always helped me was a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question. The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'-- is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the 'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy' may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign language learning capacity. Sergio Meira meira at ruf.rice.edu From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Tue Jan 6 13:53:00 1998 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 08:53:00 -0500 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude Message-ID: Sergio Meira wrote: "... one thing that always helped me was a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question. The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'-- is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the 'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy' may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign language learning capacity." I think Sergio is right on. And it doesn't just hold for language-learning, but for learning in general. I think confidence, and especially confidence linked with the kind of love for what's being learned that he describes, is often, in practical terms, the most crucial component of "intelligence". I expect we've all known people who lacked nothing in the brains department but who were consistently outperformed (scholastically, on "intelligence" tests, in the "real world") by others who weren't afraid to guess, to fail and look silly, or to be thought ignorant, and who weren't wasting energy griping about the inadequate teaching they were receiving, because they were having too much fun learning. I would ten times rather teach someone who isn't all that "smart" but loves to learn, than a genius who couldn't care less. --David Tuggy From dcyr at YORKU.CA Tue Jan 6 19:17:47 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 15:17:47 -0400 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: In the line of intelligence and aptitude ... As an undergraduate student in linguistics, my best classmate was a leff- handed young guy and he was really brilliant. At the doctorate level, in linguistics as well, my advisor was also a left-handed male and also very brilliant. Every year, from my first teaching position in linguistics in 1987 to the present day, I've observed the following regularities: - out of 100 students in linguistics, hardly 10% are males and 30% of these male students are left-handed and, most of the time, among my best students. This year for instance I have 110 students, out of which 7 males, out of which 3 left handed, all outstanding. Among the 103 females, no left handed, but certainly a few outstanding right handed. I'm interested to hear if any of you have noticed the same correlations among their students? And among funknetters, how many left handed male linguists compared to left handed female linguists. I'm mylself a right handed female. Am I correct that in the general population 10% male/female are left handed? Is there existing literature on left/right handedness according to different domains of professional specialization? Danielle Cyr York University Toronto From wilcox at UNM.EDU Tue Jan 6 20:44:00 1998 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 13:44:00 -0700 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: On 1/6/98 12:17 PM, Danielle Cyr said: >As an undergraduate student in linguistics, my best classmate was a leff- >handed young guy and he was really brilliant. I'm a left-handed male linguist. Too bad I'm not brilliant! -- Sherman Wilcox Sherman Wilcox Associate Professor Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 505-277-6353 (v/tty) 505-277-6355 (fax) wilcox at unm.edu http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox From wleman at MCN.NET Tue Jan 6 21:41:01 1998 From: wleman at MCN.NET (Wayne Leman) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 14:41:01 -0700 Subject: Fw: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: ---------- > From: Wayne Leman > To: Danielle Cyr > Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists > Date: Tuesday, January 06, 1998 2:11 PM > > Danielle, I have observed handedness all my life. Over the course of quite > a few years I have noticed a higher percentage of left-handedness among > linguists than among the general population. And the linguists I have known > who are left-handed are typically quite strong theoretically, highly > intuitive. I haven't notice any correlation with gender, but your observations need to be > studied. > > As they say,... "Left handed folks are the only ones in their right minds." > :) > > Wayne Leman > (right-handed and data-oriented) From simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Tue Jan 6 21:42:38 1998 From: simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU (Beth Simon) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 16:42:38 EST Subject: left-handedness Message-ID: Any stats on ambidexterity in this regard? beth simon right handed and not brilliant but with stamina and a fair distance runner assistant professor, linguistics and english indiana university purdue university 219 481 6772 simon at ipfw.edu simon at cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu From edwards at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Jan 6 23:34:12 1998 From: edwards at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Jane A. Edwards) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 15:34:12 -0800 Subject: language masters (NY Times) Message-ID: Perhaps of interest, from the NYT. -Jane Edwards ------------------- New York Times, (12/31/97), p. C21. To Masters of Language, a Long Overdue Toast By WILLIAM H. HONAN NEW YORK -- Each vocation or avocation has its Babe Ruths and Baryshnikovs, and so it is with the Linguistic Society of America. The champion is Francis Sommer, fluent in 94 languages. Sommer, who died in 1978, grew up in Speyer, Germany, amusing himself by inventing languages. While still a schoolboy, he learned Swedish, Sanskrit and Persian. On a visit to Russia, he picked up all the major European languages. By the late 1920s, after emigrating to the United States, where he found work as a research librarian at the Cleveland Public Library, he knew nearly eight dozen languages. There were no Olympic medals or Nobel prizes for him, but that is a mistake that should be rectified, said scholars coming to New York City on Jan. 8 and 9 for the annual convention of the Linguistic Society of America. "People like Sommer are amazing examples of human achievement, and just as unusual as those who do the decathlon," said David Perlmutter, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at San Diego. Language acquisition will be a major topic of discussion at the convention. Linguists are teaming up with psychologists and students of the brain to understand how a high school student from Brooklyn learns to speak French. Other linguists are focused on language preservation, contending that endangered languages like various American Indian and aboriginal Australian languages must be saved for the same reason that biologists seek to protect endangered species. The diversity helps understand the structure of all languages, they maintain. Strangely, linguists say, they know of no one who has made a scientific study of master linguists like Sommer or Harold Williams, a New Zealand journalist who died in 1928 and is listed (incorrectly) in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's greatest linguist, though Somers mastered almost twice as many languages. Williams, who spoke 58 languages, showed off his talent by conversing with every delegate to the League of Nations in his or her native tongue. Many polyglot professors wince at being called superhuman. "It's more like a musical talent than anything else," said Kenneth Hale, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who speaks about 50 languages. "I didn't do very well as a student. I wanted to learn languages, and I let everything else slide." Their motivation, they say, is the sheer delight of mastering a new form of expression. "When I found I could speak Navajo at the age of 12," Hale said, "I used to go out every day and sit on a rock and talk Navajo to myself." Perlmutter explained the fascination this way: "Each new language is like a fantastic puzzle and you want to learn how to do it. Sometimes it's easy because if you know English plus German, it's easy to learn Dutch. If you know Spanish and one other Romance language, Portuguese comes quickly. But of course, that doesn't work with Japanese." Stephen Wurm, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Australian National University at Canberra who knows 48 languages, including one spoken in Papua New Guinea that he considers the world's most difficult, said the ideal way to learn a language was to have it spoken to you beginning at the age of 2. "The members of my family all came from different backgrounds and spoke several languages," he said. "When I was growing up, my father, who was a linguist himself, insisted that each member of the family speak to me in only one language. So my father spoke to me only in English, his father in Norwegian and his mother in Finnish. My mother spoke to me only in Hungarian and her mother only in Mongolian. That way I never got confused. "Then I traveled with my father to his postings in Germany, Russia, China, Argentina and Turkey, so that by the age of 6, I spoke 10 different languages." Hale said he could never learn a language in a classroom. "For me, it's got to be done with another person on a one-to-one basis," he said. "I start with parts of the body and common animals and objects. I learn nouns. Then I pick up the sound system. I write that down. "If it's not a written language, like Nggoth, which is spoken in Australia, I make up how to write it. I can learn that in one or two hours. Then I start making complex sentences because the complex sentences are more regular than the simple ones. Then pretty soon I can name anything in the world." Sommer left pointers in the textbooks he wrote about learning Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and German. But he was a better student than a teacher. When explaining how to speak Russian, for example, he offered advice that must have left many readers tongue- tied. For example: "Try to pronounce 'es' while holding the tongue in the position required for 'oo."' It would be a mistake to think of master linguists as shy, retiring bookworms. Edgar Erskine Hume, an American Army officer who died in 1952, spoke at least 10 languages and was unmistakably a man of action. He fought in World War I and World War II, and held two Distinguished Service Medals, the Silver Star with two clusters, the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart with two clusters. Speaking many languages has not always been a ticket to success. At least once -- in the case of Edgar Tibbetts -- it proved a liability. A self-effacing federal clerk who died in 1908, Tibbetts was employed by the Surgeon General's office in Washington. Modestly, he let it be known that he was fluent in 10 languages. That was not the half of it: He could translate from German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Romanian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese. In 1904, he applied for a transfer to the Bureau of Military Information, where translators were paid a few dollars more than his $1,400-a-year salary. When his superior caught wind of his restlessness, Tibbetts wrote a letter to his own boss, saying that he was "indispensable because of his ability to translate from certain languages" and that his loss would "cripple the work of indexing." That put an end to his aspirations. Four years later, while riding his bicycle home from work, he collided with a horse-drawn wagon and was killed. Some master linguists confess that they live in fear of garbling the various tongues in which they speak. Toward the end of his life, Sommer said he had given up learning new languages because he was experiencing information overload. "I am afraid to cram any more words into my head," he told an interviewer. "Either the top will come off or some morning I will wake up speaking Babel." Likewise, Hale said he sometimes started speaking in one language and found himself unconsciously drifting into another. "Unless I'm attentive and really on the ball," he said, "I can mix up languages like Miskitu and Sumu, both of which are spoken in Central America and are very similar." Then he added with a professorial chuckle, "But I could never confuse Navajo with Warlpiri. Ho, ho, ho. Never with Warlpiri!" ---------------- From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Jan 7 01:10:49 1998 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 19:10:49 -0600 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude In-Reply-To: <199801062015.OAA13477@listserv.rice.edu> Message-ID: Concerning the ability to learn and the emotional attitude towards learning a foreign language, does anyone know of studies showing whether there is any correlation between success in learning a foreign language (up to 'native-like' standards) and any innate specific features of intelligence (if there are such things)? So much of the ability to learn (at least in my experience) comes from having fun with it, that I wonder what else there could be. Sergio Meira From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Jan 7 01:20:27 1998 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 19:20:27 -0600 Subject: language masters (NY Times) In-Reply-To: <9801062334.AA17131@COGSCI.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: Are there any studies on the strategies used by people who learn many languages? Do they all have the same attitude, or use similar techniques, or have a similar modus operandi while learning a new language? Sergio Meira From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Wed Jan 7 01:22:30 1998 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 20:22:30 -0500 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sergio, There is a very large body of literature in Second Language Learning. Look into it. DLE ****************************** ****************************** Daniel L. Everett Department of Linguistics University of Pittsburgh 2816 CL Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130 http://verb.linguist.pitt.edu/~dever From clements at INDIANA.EDU Wed Jan 7 04:42:05 1998 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 23:42:05 -0500 Subject: Left-handed male linguists In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At a linguistic institute I was struck at how many lefties there were, all linguists. I had the impression that there were more the the normal percentage of lefties in the group. I noticed it more in males than females. I thought it would have been a good idea to take a poll on email, but I never did it. Clancy Clements Indiana Univ. From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Wed Jan 7 06:35:31 1998 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 08:35:31 +0200 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I have also informally observed the high frequency of left-handed male linguists, but my observation (to myself) was even more specific--it seemed to be (among professional linguists) that there were a good number of left-handed male psycholinguists/cognitive linguists. I made this observation a few years ago and noticed handedness at a few conferences, but I never made a list and the only names I remember now are David Zubin and Bill Croft, but I'm sure there were a number of others. In Israel I've observed a high proportion of lefthanded people in general in linguistics classes (5/11 in a seminar I taught last year), but this is true of female as well as male students. John Myhill From oesten at LING.SU.SE Wed Jan 7 09:22:03 1998 From: oesten at LING.SU.SE (Östen Dahl) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 11:22:03 +0200 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: Over the years, many people have made the observation that there indeed seem to be unproportionately many left-handed linguists. I think it should be noted that quite a few of them are female (I could give a list but am afraid to forget someone who will be offended). There is a huge literature on correlations between handedness and all sorts of properties; the results are extraordinarily contradictory which is probably due to the difficulties in establishing who should be counted as left-handed or not. In many countries left-handers are still re-trained to write with their right hands; for this reason, the rates of apparent left-handers in the population vary very much, with the U.S. at the top, according to my own informal observations. Some things seem clear, though: there are more left-handed men than women in general; left-handers are over-represented at both ends of various scales, that is, there are more extremely gifted left-handers but also more left-handers with various kinds of learning problems. There are also more homosexuals, alcoholics, mathematicians, architects and according to some rather perplexing observations, more helicopter pilots. Fifty per cent of the U.S. presidents after the war have been left-handed, including the three last ones. On the Internet, there are lots of lists of "famous left-handers", regrettably the reliability seems rather low. If there is also over-representation of left-handers among linguists, it is thus not at all a unique phenomenon. How strong the tendency really is is hard to say. I have also been thinking of doing a survey but have so far refrained in view of the difficulties of getting a reliable result. Östen Dahl left-handed male linguist From harder at COCO.IHI.KU.DK Wed Jan 7 10:25:45 1998 From: harder at COCO.IHI.KU.DK (harder at COCO.IHI.KU.DK) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 04:25:45 -0600 Subject: 'general intelligence' Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, with special reference to Ramin Akbari: A cautionary remark, provoked by the issues involving the concept of intelligence raised by Ramin Akbari: Over Christmas I (belatedly) read 'The Mismeasure of Man' by Steven J. Gould, which I think should be compulsory reading for any academic who uses the word 'intelligence' in a professional context. The main point of the book is to do with the sad history of (pseudo-)scientific racism, but perhaps more fundamental in a scientific context is its meticulous discussion of a fallacy that has plagued discussions on intelligence throughout the history of the concept. The fallacy is a form of reification, in which the investigator goes from a serious of (possibly subtle, interesting and scientifically valid) measurements to the inference that there is a single (immutable as well as hereditary) aspect of reality underlying the measurements. Before nominating 'intelligence' as one of four basic concepts characterizing human individuals, one should take the rather scary history of the concept into consideration. The point is NOT that there is no reality to intelligence, but rather that there is so much complex reality to it that it would be extremely dangerous to start off with it, thus taking for granted that we know what it is (even if short-term memory or 'band width' offers interesting perspectives). An analogy: we would probably feel that it is possible as well as (for some purposes) intersting to offer a general evaluation of someone's 'physical fitness' or 'health' or 'sense of humour' - but few of us would take the step to saying that any of these was a monolithic basic property of an individual. This, however, has been the standard assumption for intelligence. --Peter Harder From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Jan 7 12:51:59 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 05:51:59 -0700 Subject: your mail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It could be interesting to widen the scope to other specialists in language, such as those in literature, for I have also observed th existence of many left-handed students of literature. Max Figueroa From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Jan 7 12:56:21 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 05:56:21 -0700 Subject: Left-handed male linguists In-Reply-To: <01BD1B5E.7B8A9F40.oesten@ling.su.se> Message-ID: I myself was, as a child, ambidexter, but (quite stupidly) forced myself to become a right-handed person. At that time, I was already intensely interested in languages, but also in literature, philosophy, politics and history. In 55 years, I've met many linguists and specialists in literatura that are either left-handed or (much less frequently, though) ambidexter. Max From gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA Wed Jan 7 12:55:35 1998 From: gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA (Greg Thomson, University of Alberta) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 15:55:35 +0300 Subject: language masters (NY Times) In-Reply-To: <9801062334.AA17131@COGSCI.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: >The champion is Francis Sommer, fluent in 94 languages. >Sommer, who died in 1978, grew up in Speyer, Germany, amusing >himself by inventing languages. While still a schoolboy, he learned >Swedish, Sanskrit and Persian. On a visit to Russia, he picked up all >the major European languages. By the late 1920s, after emigrating to >the United States, where he found work as a research librarian at the >Cleveland Public Library, he knew nearly eight dozen languages. So then, he learned his 93 languages by the age of 40? O.K. Assuming he started at age zero, and managed to be lingual in each language with a modest 10,000 item vocabulary, then in 40 years, he acquired 930,000 non-native lexical items, or about 64 per day. Etc. etc. I wonder how he kept his 94 mental lexicons active enough so that they could function well in comprehension and production as he continued knowing all those languages for the next fifty years. (-; Greg Thomson XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Greg Thomson, c/o Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Alberta, 4-32 Assiniboia Hall, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E7, CANADA Phone: 7-812-246-35-48 Favourite Web-Site: http://www.whitehawk.com/baby/babypics.html From ocls at IPA.NET Wed Jan 7 12:48:16 1998 From: ocls at IPA.NET (George Elgin, Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 07:48:16 -0500 Subject: lefthanded linguists Message-ID: Suzette Haden Elgin here -- a left-handed female linguist. From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Wed Jan 7 15:47:08 1998 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 10:47:08 -0500 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: Regarding Danielle Cyr's query, there is a substantial literature on handedness. After trying for years to explain that I naturally do some things, or rather some kinds of things, right-handed and others left-handed, I read some of the literature and discovered that I am apparently "incompletely lateralized"--now known as "inconsistently right-handed". As in many other things, there may, it seems, be a continuum of handedness. At the same time, though I am a linguist, I am hardly brilliant. Carl From dcyr at YORKU.CA Wed Jan 7 16:43:40 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:43:40 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Reply-To: From: "Wayne Leman" To: "Danielle Cyr" Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 10:03:08 -0700 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Status: Danielle, it looks like a number of Funknet folks are interested in this topic. It's always fascinated me. I also predict that the sharpest lefties will score high on the Intuitive (typically, stronger at theory and abstract problem solving) scale of the Jungian personality framework. There is a simple online test that folks can take to determine their profile at Internet site: http://www.keirsey.com/cgi-bin/keirsey/newkts.cgi I guess my reply only went to you and not the entire list. I later tried to send it to the entire list but haven't seen it. I'm not sure I used the correct address for sending to the list: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU Is that the address you use or do you use another and it gets routed to this address? Wayne From dcyr at YORKU.CA Wed Jan 7 16:45:29 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:45:29 -0400 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: >Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists >Date: Wed, 7 Jan 98 11:42:48 -0500 >x-sender: vanvalin at pop.acsu.buffalo.edu >From: >To: "Danielle Cyr" , >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Status: > >I'm left-handed and male, as are two of my colleagues, Jean-Pierre Koenig >and David Zubin. So a third of the SUNY Buffalo department is >left-handed males. > >Robert Van Valin > >*************** >Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713 >Professor & Chair Fax 716 645-3825 >Department of Linguistics >685 Baldy Hall >State University of New York at Buffalo >Buffalo, NY 14260-1030 USA VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Wed Jan 7 17:54:52 1998 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 09:54:52 -0800 Subject: lefties Message-ID: As a left-hander myself, I've also kept track from time to time of the distribution in various settings. As a female leftie, I may have paid more attention to the distribution in females. It had struck me that the number of left-handed females was particularly high in academic settings. One year I was at a conference in Cambridge, and for irrelevant reasons, was carrying around a set of the binomial tables with me, which permit you to look up the probability of obtaining a given distribution by chance, if you know the baserate in the normal population. Assuming a generous 17% baserate for lefthanders (and of course that is a problem in its own right, because handedness really isn't a dichotomous variable, but a "J-shaped" distribution with lots of points in between), it did turn out to be the case, at a level of p < .05, that there were more left-handed women at the conference than we would expect by chance. The same was not true of men. I haven't bothered to replicate this calculation, and wouldn't be in the least surprised if it doesn't replicate. By the way, my European friends all have the impression that most Americans are left handed. Apparently the suppression of left handedness lasted longer in Europe, so the baserates of EXPRESSED left handedness may be a bit high in the U.S. My friend Virginia Volterra remembers catching her mother-in-law whispering to her grandchild "Grandma will give you a cookie if you use the good little hand....". -liz bates From dcyr at YORKU.CA Wed Jan 7 18:00:30 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:00:30 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 16:07:38 -0500 (EST) From: Ron Kuzar To: Danielle Cyr Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists MIME-Version: 1.0 Status: > I guess my reply only went to you and not the entire list. I later tried to > send it to the entire list but haven't seen it. You only see your own messages if you set your relationship with the listserv as follows: set funknet repro otherwise it does not as a default reproduce your own messages. Ron Kuzar I am a linguist and left-handed. ======================================================================== | Dr. Ron Kuzar | | (Dept. of English, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel) | | During the academic year 1997/8 Visiting Professor at: | | Office Address: Berman Center for Jewish Studies, Lehigh University,| | 9 West Packer Avenue | | Bethlehem, PA 18015-3082 | | Office phone: (610) 758-4857 | | Office fax: (610) 758-4858 | | Home Phone: (610) 395-3210 | | Email: rok2 at cs1.cc.lehigh.edu | ======================================================================== From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Jan 7 19:47:58 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:47:58 -0700 Subject: Left-handed male linguists In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As I already told Danielle, I was ambidexter as a child, but forced upon myself the condition of right-handedness, a very stupid decision which I sincerely regret. However, I have sort of specialised my left hand in different tasks and, among other things, my left arm and hand are a bit stronger than the right ones. As a child I not only was ambidexter, but practically a "quadruman" when unobserved (picking up pencils and objects from the floor, out of laziness, even clumsily writing, etc.). This went on until I was about 13 or 14. My stupid decision was not due to parental pression, much to the contrary: I was pathologically shy and simply didn't feel like calling much attention upon myself. I am amazed at the quantity of colleagues who are "lefties" (physically, I mean), [among them you, Van... what about my fellow-countryman, Jorge Guitart? Luis Roberto Choy, also a Cuban linguist, now in the USA, is a "leftie" too, and so are many others in Cuba], although I haven't been able to follow the whole of the discussion. Is anyone dressing up a list of "lefties" and "ambies" among us? It should prove useful and most interesting! As a matter of fact, I've just decided to send the question to Cuban linguists, perhaps also to Dominican linguists, and see what comes out of it! Bye! Max On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Danielle Cyr wrote: > >Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists > >Date: Wed, 7 Jan 98 11:42:48 -0500 > >x-sender: vanvalin at pop.acsu.buffalo.edu > >From: > >To: "Danielle Cyr" , > >Mime-Version: 1.0 > >Status: > > > >I'm left-handed and male, as are two of my colleagues, Jean-Pierre Koenig > >and David Zubin. So a third of the SUNY Buffalo department is > >left-handed males. > > > >Robert Van Valin > > > >*************** > >Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713 > >Professor & Chair Fax 716 645-3825 > >Department of Linguistics > >685 Baldy Hall > >State University of New York at Buffalo > >Buffalo, NY 14260-1030 USA VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > From kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU Wed Jan 7 20:27:13 1998 From: kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU (patricia kilroe) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:27:13 -0600 Subject: lefties Message-ID: I am a left-handed female linguist who as an adolescent and young adult wanted to be a musician. Over the years I have encountered what seems like a surprising number of left-handed musicians, as well as linguists, and it has seemed like there have been more males than females in both groups. Patricia Kilroe From wilcox at UNM.EDU Wed Jan 7 21:16:48 1998 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:16:48 -0700 Subject: lefties Message-ID: Well, well... I'll add a footnote. I'm a left-handed male linguist who was a musician for many years (oboe). -- Sherman Wilcox From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Wed Jan 7 21:35:36 1998 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 13:35:36 -0800 Subject: Lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: By way of caution, it would be prudent to consider tolerance of left-handedness in different cultures before jumping to conclusions about linguists. When my sisters (who are both left-handed, but not linguists; I'm right-handed and a cognitive linguist [albeit female]) and I visited England many years ago, we noticed a much larger proportion of left-handed people around us -- from food servers to shopkeepers. My sisters both experienced attempts on the part of their early educators (nuns in Catholic schools, of course) to 'correct' their left-handedness; this rendered one sister semi-ambidextrous, the other persisted as a leftie; both hated school. Maybe in England, teachers are more tolerant of allowing children's handedness to develop naturally. This may also be true in other countries. Canada, being much influenced by England, may also eschew anti-sinistrism. Still, it's a fun discussion. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubba at polymail.calpoly.edu ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From rok2 at CS1.CC.LEHIGH.EDU Wed Jan 7 21:51:54 1998 From: rok2 at CS1.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Ron Kuzar) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 16:51:54 -0500 Subject: lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > Well, well... I'll add a footnote. I'm a left-handed male linguist who > was a musician for many years (oboe). > -- Sherman Wilcox ------------------------------------ Aren't we going a bit far off? My mother is a (retired) professional musician and left-handed (wow!!) My father was also a professional musican, but was right handed (too bad!) Perhaps we should search higher: one of my grandfathers was a physician (Ob.Gyn, sound almost like oboe). I am not impressed by the data so far. Which doesn't mean one shouldn't go into it seriously, not through sampling obsessive contributors to the net (like me). Happy semester Roni Kuzar From elan at BIS.BG Wed Jan 7 21:38:35 1998 From: elan at BIS.BG (Elena Andonova) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 23:38:35 +0200 Subject: lefties Message-ID: Dear fellow-funknetters, A few more messages from now, and I'll start feeling like a member of an extinct species. Aren't there any kindred right-handers' souls around? Elena From ETODD at TRENTU.CA Wed Jan 7 21:27:00 1998 From: ETODD at TRENTU.CA (ETODD at TRENTU.CA) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 17:27:00 -0400 Subject: Lefties Message-ID: Lordie, I am neither male nor left-handed, maybe I should give up already. Evelyn Todd From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Wed Jan 7 23:31:44 1998 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 15:31:44 -0800 Subject: Lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Aside from the fact that handedness is not a dichotomy (as I said in a previous posting, it is a continuous and J-shaped distribution), it is also worth noting that definitions of handedness in the neuropsychology literature (an *IMMENSE* literature, by the way) are usually not restricted to the hand one uses for writing. There are a number of handedness questionnaires that are widely used in neuropsychology and/or psycholinguistics, tapping into many different aspects of hand use, and also (in some cases) side preferences for other body parts (e.g. the foot used to kick a ball; the preferred eye for looking into a telescope). In fact, because left-handed writing is the behavior that has been suppressed most often in certain cultural contexts, writing may not be the strongest index of lateralization and behavioral asymmetry. -liz bates From dsoliver at EARTHLINK.NET Thu Jan 8 00:02:45 1998 From: dsoliver at EARTHLINK.NET (Douglas S. Oliver) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 16:02:45 -0800 Subject: Intelligence Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, I would like to add my two cents to what Peter Harder said about intelligence. In addition to the objections expressed by Gould, not only in "The Mismeasure of Man" but also in numerous articles and other publications, I believe we must keep in mind that "intelligence" as a concept has no coherent definition that extends beyond very narrow fields of research. No one here has attempted to define the term in relation to language/language learning. Are we talking of specific skills? Are we defining intelligence by these skills? Can we operationalize our definition(s) in any useful way for research purposes? One respondent mentioned the "G" factor; as Gould has also pointed out, this is just a reworking/renaming of older and already worn and discarded concepts. This is not to say that people are not still using this term, but that it has been shown pretty well, I believe, to be inadequate. Speaking as an anthropologist, I must mention the strong cultural variables involved with discussions of intelligence. There abound different folk concepts of what it means to possess intelligence. Each of us has, I suspect, some notion of who is smart and who is not. It sounds to me here like we are each trying to impose our own culturally shaped idea of intelligence in this discussion, which is why I have stressed the need for a definition that would be acceptable for all participants in this brainstorming activity. Even if it is only an ad hoc definition, it would be a start. I would like to turn the question back to Ramin Akbari. What specifically did you mean by “intelligence?” In a previous life (the early 80s) I received an MA in TESL/applied linguistics from UCLA, and while working on that degree, I came across much literature directly related to this current discussion. Most of my books and articles collected at that time are now buried under a ton of stuff making them inaccessible (IÂ’m sorry), but I do remember one specific thing that impressed me at the time: In one study, a skill shared by the largest number of language learners was the ability to mimic (spoken language). This is not necessarily a skill I would include under the idea of intelligence, but who knows? I hope this response has not been too crabby. But I do feel that without a viable definition, any discussion is bound to go nowhere. --Douglas Douglas S. Oliver UC Riverside Dept. of Anthropology Riverside, CA 92521 dsoliver at earthlink.net douglaso at citrus.ucr.edu From AKBARI_R at NET1CS.MODARES.AC.IR Thu Jan 8 05:56:14 1998 From: AKBARI_R at NET1CS.MODARES.AC.IR (Ramin Akbari) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:26:14 +330 Subject: Intelligence Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, The concept of intelligence,as most of you have indicated,is a vague one which needs a more careful scrutiny.It is no doubt a culture-bound concept which has been widely misused since its introduction into the academic community.However,I am sure that no one denies the existence of intelligence.Certainly,you have come across people who can learn better and faster than others;people who can prosper better than the others in identical social and academic situations.The opposition to the use of the term stems from two problems:First,intelligence has different definitions(problem solving ability;the ability to think in abstract terms;the ability to adapt to one's environment;...)and different models(e.g.,Sternbreg's three-component model,Gardner's multiple intelligences model,and Horn's two-level or component model...).The second problem is that the term has got some racist and political overtones.It smacks of segregation,discrimination,and injustice.However,these problems should not deter us to investigate the concept and find its relationship with other variables.We have theoretical controversies in many other ares.Take language proficiency as an example.In the literature related to language assessment and testing,there is an ongoing controversy over the structure the of the concept;some people say it is unitary,while others claim that it is divisible.And regarding the racial connotations of the term intelligence,the solution is not branding it as taboo and discouraging its investigation.In spite of the quest for universalism in philosophy and politics,we must not ignore or blurr individual differences. Instead,we must teach the society to value and respect the differences. My main purpose in my study is to find the relationship between intelligence and language acquisition.There are many differences in the way people learn and store a language,whether first or second,and I guess one of the factors is intelligence. I look forward to receiving your comments. P.S.Will you please send me some web addresses dealing with intelligence? Best wishes, Ramin Akbari, English Department, Tarbiat Modaress University, Tehran,Iran. From crasborn at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Thu Jan 8 08:48:23 1998 From: crasborn at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Onno Crasborn) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:48:23 +0100 Subject: lefties web site Message-ID: There even is a left-handed male linguist with a web site on left-handedness (though not spec. in linguists :-)): http://www.xs4all.nl/~riksmits/index.html Onno (l-h., male, linguist) Onno Crasborn crasborn at rullet.leidenuniv.nl http://oasis.leidenuniv.nl/hil/sign-lang/ From karen at WORDWRITE.COM Thu Jan 8 08:37:12 1998 From: karen at WORDWRITE.COM (Karen Kay) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 00:37:12 -0800 Subject: lefties Message-ID: Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva said: > However, I have sort of specialised my left hand in > different tasks and, among other things, my left arm and hand are a bit > stronger than the right ones. This is quite unusual; even in left-handers, the right arm and hand are usually stronger. > I am amazed at the quantity of colleagues who are "lefties" (physically, > I mean) You find a higher proportion than expected of left-handers in institutions of all kinds. (Mental institutions, prisons, and universities.) This is evidence for the 'brain damage' theory of left-handedness. Another leftie, Karen karen at wordwrite.com From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Thu Jan 8 11:37:39 1998 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:37:39 +0100 Subject: lefties Message-ID: I am a left-handed male linguist, and I consider myself theory-oriented, but I am not gifted for music, and cannot be considered brilliant (I must work hard to understand Chomsky). I have a question: what is the aim, and what is the interest of this discussion? What about bald male linguists? *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From Zylogy at AOL.COM Thu Jan 8 15:18:58 1998 From: Zylogy at AOL.COM (Zylogy) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:18:58 EST Subject: lefties Message-ID: I am finding all this talk about lefties just a bit sinister:) Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Thu Jan 8 17:09:00 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:09:00 -0700 Subject: lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: So was I, sort of: I come, on my father's side, from a family of musicians and teachers, so as a child I played the violin and the piano.But afterwards I rejected that road... Max On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > Well, well... I'll add a footnote. I'm a left-handed male linguist who > was a musician for many years (oboe). > > -- Sherman Wilcox > From dcyr at YORKU.CA Thu Jan 8 16:33:53 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:33:53 -0400 Subject: Avanti la "sinistra" festa Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Thanks for your numerous, generous, serious, righteous, "ambidextreous"," lefteous", spontaneous and hilarious answers on "left-handed male linguists". Altogether, from an epistemological perspective, it wasat the same time riotously funny and enlightening! The reaction shows that this was indeed an interesting question. Many of us have been tickeld by it on the past run obviously. But none of us really wanted to spend time and/or money in thourough investigation. Probably because the answeris too costly given the question itself ... Last year a guy wrote a book called "The Death of Science" or something like that, where he claims that science is about to die because so far, we've answered all the questions we could afford to answer and now we're caugh with only the expensive questions, i.e. those we will never be able to afford answering. Eeeeh! If this makes you nervous, you may want to gomfort the little knot inside your stomach by reading "L'ile des gauchers" ("The Lefties' Island" if there is a translation) by Alexandre Jardin (Ed. Gallimard, 1995 I think). This is about a British scientist whose wife if a lefty. He feels he never manage to love her appropriatly or enough, so he decides to move his whole family to this south Pacific island for lefties only. Since on the lefties' island people do things absolutely "the other way around", the move turns into a series of hilarious and fascinating philosophical and matrimonial adventures. Danielle Cyr Right-handed, with a slight ambidextrous tendency and a scientifically hyphenating sense of humour From DEGIULIO at NMSUA.NMSU.EDU Thu Jan 8 18:14:40 1998 From: DEGIULIO at NMSUA.NMSU.EDU (Stephen DeGiulio) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:14:40 MDT Subject: language masters (NY Times) Message-ID: Hey Greg, not so fast. Often words are found in many, sometimes scores, of languages, with variations in phonology which are transparent to someone familiar with the phonology of the languages involved (which sound systems themselves come in related families). So your million seperate lexical items becomes a very much smaller set of items which appear differently in different language contexts. (The same applies to the morphology of said lexemes, and to syntax.) How about meanings? In fluent conversation the meanings one gives to words, expressions, and grammatical structures can often be made clear by context, non-verbal cues, redundancies, and feedback from pointed questioning--even if those meanings differ from the most usual meanings of native, monolingual speakers; understanding is even easier--to one possessed of a sensitive, well informed linguistic intuition, a flexible imagination, and a minimum of correct data. Sure, one lifetime is not enough to fully master a single language, but that's not what is in question here. Perhaps the ability to speak many languages is little more than an occasionally useful stunt (or even the outcome of a relatively benign compulsion), but I don't see any reason to doubt that it is possible. (Compare to linguists, and others, who know a heck of a lot about certain languages without being able to speak or understand them.) ******************* Greg Thomson wrote: So then, he learned his 93 languages by the age of 40? O.K. Assuming he started at age zero, and managed to be lingual in each language with a modest 10,000 item vocabulary, then in 40 years, he acquired 930,000 non-native lexical items, or about 64 per day. Etc. etc. I wonder how he kept his 94 mental lexicons active enough so that they could function well in comprehension and production as he continued knowing all those languages for the next fifty years. (-; ********************************************************* Stephen De Giulio New Mexico State University 1215 Vermont Avenue at Alamogordo Alamogordo, NM 88310-6342, USA Voice: (505) 439-0797 email: Fax: (505) 439-3643 From AAGHBAR at GROVE.IUP.EDU Thu Jan 8 22:26:49 1998 From: AAGHBAR at GROVE.IUP.EDU (Ali Aghbar) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 17:26:49 -0500 Subject: Language Maters of a Different Kind Message-ID: I think people who master one language fully in adulthood should also be considered language masters. For example, Joseph Conrad, who was 20 before he started learning English should be considered a language master (even though he is reported to have had an atrocious pronunciation). I like to compare learning another language to playing a musical instrument, such as the piano. One can take a few lessons, play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and amuse oneself or a tolerant other, but to become a virtuoso, one needs many (20?) years of constant practice (in addition to dedication, motivation, etc.). And yes, it would be easier if one starts when one is younger. I think fiddling with many languages is like playing many musical instruments. To press the analogy further, when one has learned a foreign language, learning the next one is much easier, just as when one has learned a musical instrument, learning the next one becomes less problematic. (By the same token, as with languages, one might confuse the fingering if one learns musical instruments that are similar, such as the flute and the clarinet.) I do not intend to undermine the accomplishments of those who have learned many languages, especially those who have become quite good in using them. I am making a case for recognizing the accomplishment of those who have mastered one foreign language in adulthood to the point of becoming a virtuoso at it. Ali Aghbar, Dept. of English, Indiana U. of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705 aaghbar at grove.iup.edu Phone: (412) 357 4937 Fax: (412) 357 3056 From kfeld at UCRAC1.UCR.EDU Fri Jan 9 07:38:58 1998 From: kfeld at UCRAC1.UCR.EDU (David B. Kronenfeld) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 01:38:58 -0600 Subject: book on word semantics Message-ID: Anyone interested in a functional approach to word meaning, though one not directly tied to any particular current linguistic school (i.e. Functional--or Cognitive, Transformational,...), might want to look at my recent book, PLASTIC GLASSES AND CHURCH FATHERS: SEMANTIC EXTENSION FROM THE ETHNOSCIENCE TRADITION, (Oxford UP 1996 in the Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics; ISBN 0-19-509408-5). The approach grows out of anthropological work in semantics, attends seriously to the role of context and of presuppositions, and embodies an approach to socially distributed cognition and some utilization of schema theory from psychology. From Linguafile at AOL.COM Sat Jan 10 07:01:01 1998 From: Linguafile at AOL.COM (Linguafile) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:01:01 EST Subject: Intelligence and aptitude Message-ID: << Personally, I like to learn foreign languages (I am Brazilian and have a reasonable degree of fluency in 5 to 8 languages, depending on how strictly you define 'reasonable'), and one thing that always helped me was a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question. The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'-- is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the 'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy' may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign language learning capacity. Sergio Meira meira at ruf.rice.edu >> You're so cool, Sergio! :-) Jacquelyn Pillsbury Undergrad From Linguafile at AOL.COM Sat Jan 10 07:58:21 1998 From: Linguafile at AOL.COM (Linguafile) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:58:21 EST Subject: Funknet Message-ID: Wayne Leman wrote: << Danielle, it looks like a number of Funknet folks are interested in this topic. It's always fascinated me. I also predict that the sharpest lefties will score high on the Intuitive (typically, stronger at theory and abstract problem solving) scale of the Jungian personality framework. >> I'm personally an INTJ. While I haven't learned 93 languages, my capacity for them has been demonstrated (I'm working on #4, a senior in high school, will major in linguistics) and highest on the N-S scale (95% iNtuitive) of the Kiersey Temperament Sorter (Jungian personality framework). I know that NT people like myself are more attracted to mathematical/scientific disciplines, and NFs are more likely to choose languages/humanities. I am well aware I am in the tiny minority as pertains to this, but I have always wondered whether linguists would test closer to the center on the T-F (thinking-feeling) scale, since it involves both areas heavily. (Personally, I am 90% Thinking.) Of course, I am speaking here of language acquisition to fluency as a compent part of the linguistic science--obviously, it is not so in every area of the discipline. It would be interesting to see other linguists' test results in this framework. For the record, I am a right-handed female, and for those of you familiar with Jung's personality framework, I mention that because of my age my tertiary Feeling function has only begun to develop (and, being NT, I am loathe to admit this during recent testings!). That should be taken into consideration as well before my type is brought into discussions regarding my intellectual orientation. Jacquelyn Pillsbury linguafile at aol.com Morro Bay High School From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Sat Jan 10 20:17:21 1998 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 10:17:21 -1000 Subject: Funknet Message-ID: At 09:58 PM 1/9/98 -1000, Linguafile wrote: >I'm personally an INTJ. While I haven't learned 93 languages, my capacity for >them has been demonstrated (I'm working on #4, a senior in high school, will >major in linguistics) and highest on the N-S scale (95% iNtuitive) of the >Kiersey Temperament Sorter (Jungian personality framework). I know that NT >people like myself are more attracted to mathematical/scientific disciplines, >and NFs are more likely to choose languages/humanities. I am well aware I am >in the tiny minority as pertains to this, but I have always wondered whether >linguists would test closer to the center on the T-F (thinking-feeling) scale, >since it involves both areas heavily. (Personally, I am 90% Thinking.) Of >course, I am speaking here of language acquisition to fluency as a compent >part of the linguistic science--obviously, it is not so in every area of the >discipline. It would be interesting to see other linguists' test results in >this framework. I am INTP but I have developed the qualities of J (through academic work) and F through personal work with psychology and personal growth. To my mind, the ability to work with theories of any sort is best done with INTJ type psychology: the NT side of things leads to good insights and the necessary ability to follow them up in the mental world, and the "J" puts a premium on drawing conclusions, but the ability to switch to "P" makes it easier to let go of dead ends. I think the "F" side of things does not play a great role in theory making, but it needs to be consulted to avoid confusing things e.g. to avoid confusing linguistics with math for example. I am a right handed male who believes that handedness indicates propensity to interest rather than talent (i.e. no guarantee of intelligence or aptitude just an indicator of likely focus). Phil Bralich P.S. It might be good to be cautious of talking of matters that require cultivation of a mature psychology (e.g. type theory) as it could set off those who have no desire to look into themselves, but would prefer to dominate academia and beyond with brutish, lawyer-like intellectualism that knows nothing of discovery besides the expeditious use of premises to develop arguments that quash inquiry in the name of growing a movement (e.g. arguments that make it 'unscientific' to look at anything that cannot be physically measured). Remember Freud and Jung were ousted from universities years ago by a political movement (behaviorism) comprised of those who could not or would not look inside themselves for insights into man and the world that went any deeper than stimulus response. 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 mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Sun Jan 11 08:51:43 1998 From: mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Bella Kotik) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 11:51:43 +0300 Subject: lefthanders Message-ID: Dear collegues! All of you sharing your personal observations, did you have equal opportunity to watch other high professionals? There is some evidence< that really lefthanders are more presented at the two extremes of any distribution. Moreovere the general result of the attempts to connect laterality with types and level of abilities (language, math, music) show that, while there may be some relation of laterality (one or another index of it) really talanted subjects are less lateralized with highly efficient input from both hemispheres.That is why some of ambidexters may be at low end of distribution, some on high. The level of development of functions in each hemisphere matters more than difference berween them. Best wishes Bella Kotik, NCJW Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905,Israel From mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Sun Jan 11 09:16:01 1998 From: mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Bella Kotik) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:16:01 +0300 Subject: Ramin Akbari's search for intelligence in SLA Message-ID: Dear Funknets I agree with Rami that to take into account individual differences in SLA is very important. But how practical is study of intelligence in this context? especially taking into consideration the discussion about definitions and approaches? What do you think about learning styles and memory types as components of individuality in SLA, which is possible to operationalise in teaching techniques? What aspects of individuality would you suggest as most promissing for further applications? Best wishes Bella Kotik, NCJW Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905,Israel From mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Sun Jan 11 09:44:31 1998 From: mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Bella Kotik) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:44:31 +0300 Subject: Language Maters of a Different Kind Message-ID: Dear Ali! When you speek about the degree of mastering, of course there is continuum, but at some point you may say:this is a reasonable level of mastering. I started to learn Hebrew (My mothertongue is Russian)at the age 44. After 2,5 years attempted to lecture and next year got a university course. Now after 5 years,I still do not feel a virtuose )far from)and often ask people how to say something and slow in reading (small-right direction, no vowels, difficult script)but I am well ajusted working and communicating. By the way for those who link linguistic and musical abilities: I am totally musically deaf. Teachers tried to teach me piano from age 6 and usually refused after some attempts to continue. But I learned English mostly by myself at school age and now Hebrew. I think an important factor for me was that, besides great motivation, I new my individuality and used it maximally for developing my individual approach: I prefere listening to reading, so I spent much time listening to tapes and later attending lectures and seminars in Hebrew U. writing down new words and expressions, than looking up in dictionnary or asking people. Watching animations with my daughter helped a lot and other TV programs. Best wishes Bella Kotik, NCJW Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905,Israel From annes at HTDC.ORG Mon Jan 12 19:41:28 1998 From: annes at HTDC.ORG (Anne Sing) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 09:41:28 -1000 Subject: NLP Standards on the Web Message-ID: The VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) Consortium (http://www.vrml.org) has just accepted my proposal to form a working group to develop standards for the interaction of Natural Language Processing tools with 3D animations for the purpose of command and control and interactive dialogs with 3D animations. For those who would like to know more about the proposed standards or would like to participate in the working group, the proposal for the working group and the initial set of standards can be found at http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/nlp-anim. The VRML Consortium is a group made up of individuals working to create international standards for VRML under the International Organization of Standardization. The VRML Consortium web page describes these efforts, "The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. ISO is online at http://www.iso.ch. The Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has worked cooperatively over the past two years with the VRML community to transpose the publicly available VRML specification into an International Standard. Within JTC 1, the development work on VRML is assigned to Subcommittee 24 (SC24) whose area of work is Computer Graphics and Image Processing. VRML 97, the latest specification, can be seen at http://www.vrml.org/Specifications/VRML97/. As you know current groups such as EAGLES or the MUC conferences that propose standards for NLP have not done much in the area of interactive dialogs or command and control. For this reason, the discussion on the VRML list concerning the development of standards for NLP in the area of interactive dialogs and command and control may be of value to many readers of this list. To subscribe to the list send the message "subscribe nlp-anim" to nlp-anim-request at vrml.org. To view the initial proposals go to http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/nlp-anim. 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 Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU Mon Jan 12 21:43:25 1998 From: kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU (patricia kilroe) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 15:43:25 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: sign off funknet From khwkim at NMS.KYUNGHEE.AC.KR Tue Jan 13 08:26:56 1998 From: khwkim at NMS.KYUNGHEE.AC.KR (Kyunghwan Kim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 17:26:56 +0900 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Please delete my e-mail address from your funknet subscription list. From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Tue Jan 20 20:45:36 1998 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 07:45:36 +1100 Subject: ICSLP '98 Message-ID: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SPOKEN LANGUAGE PROCESSING ICSLP '98 Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre November 30th - December 4th 1998 The ICSLP '98 conference will continue the eight year tradition of the ICSLP series in bringing together professionals from all the diverse disciplines that contribute to Spoken Language Processing. It will be the premier international display of the state-of-the-art in this broad field in 1998. The conference will build bridges between people and sub-disciplines in order to create and nurture synergies that are important for the future of the field. Keynote presentations and other plenary events which bring both experience and vision of multi-disciplinary attacks on grand challenges in spoken language processing in both humans and machines will contribute to our aims. A student day at which full-time student registrants may present their ideas under the guidance of senior mentors is also planned. However, it is the quality of the delegate presentations which will be the major factor in making ICSLP '98 a truly landmark event. This call for papers offers to you the opportunity to be a part of this significant event. CO-SPONSORING SOCIETIES Acoustical Society of America Acoustical Society of China Acoustical Society of Japan Acoustical Society of Korea Association for Computational Linguistics Association for Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing Audiological Society of Australia Inc. Australian Linguistic Society European Speech Communication Association IEEE Signal Processing Society International Phonetic Association International Society for Phonetic Sciences INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Souguil J.M. Ann, Seoul National University, Korea Jens P. Blauert, Ruhr-Universitaet, Germany Michael Brooke, University of Bath, United Kingdom Timothy Bunnell, University of Delaware, USA Anne Cutler, Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands Hiroya Fujisaki, Science University of Tokyo, Japan Julia Hirschberg, AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA Bjorn Granstrom, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Lin-Shan Lee, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Roger Moore, Defence Research Authority, United Kingdom John J. Ohala, University of California, Berkeley, USA Louis C.W. Pols, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Christel Sorin, Centre Nationale d'Etude des Telecommunications, France Yoh'ichi Tohkura, ATR, Japan Jialu Zhang, Academia Sinica, China CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT Tour Hosts Conference & Exhibition Organisers GPO Box 128 SYDNEY NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 9262 2277 Fax: +61 2 9262 3135 Email: icslp98 at tourhosts.com.au SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Submissions are invited in any of the following technical topic areas: A. Human Speech Production, Acoustic-Phonetics and Articulatory Models B. Human Speech Perception C. Language Acquisition: First and Second Languages D. Spoken Language and Dialogue Modelling; Dialogue Systems E. Isolated Word Recognition F. Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition G. Utterance Verification and Word Spotting H. Speaker Adaptation and Normalisation in Speech Recognition I. Speaker and Language Recognition; Dialects and Speaking Styles J. Multilingual Perception and Recognition K. Signal Processing, Speech Analysis and Feature Extraction L. Robust Speech Processing in Adverse Environments M. Hidden Markov Model Techniques N. Artificial Neural Networks, Fuzzy and Evolutionary Algorithms O. Spoken Language Understanding Systems P. Text-to-Speech Synthesis Q. Prosody and Emotion; Focus, Stress and Accent R. Speech Coding S. Spoken Language Generation Systems; Concept-to-Speech T. Spoken Language Translation Systems U. Analysis of Speech and Hearing Disorders V. Speech Processing for the Speech-impaired and Hearing-impaired W. Segmentation, Labelling and Speech Corpora X. Speech Technology Applications and Human-Machine Interfaces Y. Spoken Language Processing and Multimodality Z. Other Areas of Spoken Language Processing FORMAT OF SUBMISSION Acceptance of papers for presentation at the conference will be on the basis of reviewed summaries. You should submit a summary of your paper comprising approximately 500 words. At the top of the page, please specify the following: Corresponding Author contact details: �Full Name �Full Postal Mail Address �Email Address �Fax Number �Phone Number Proposed Paper details: �Paper Title �Author List �Topic ID (A-Z) �Four additional keywords �Presentation preference (oral, poster, student day) The Topic ID should be a single category from the topic list specified as an alphabetic letter; if your submission falls within the broad area of spoken language processing but is not explicitly represented in the topic list, please use the Z category. The four additional keywords are requested in order to assist the programme committee in assigning reviewers. MEANS OF SUBMISSION Electronic submission of summaries via the World Wide Web is preferred. A Summary Submission Form is available via URL = http://cslab.anu.edu.au/icslp98 . Alternatively, a pro-forma for email submission can be obtained from this URL or by emailing icslp98 at tourhosts.com.au . Email submissions should be sent to icslp98 at one.net.au . If electronic submission is not possible, postal submissions (4 copies) to the ICSLP '98 Secretariat address specified below will be accepted provided that they adhere to the above format. Please do NOT fax submissions. RESTRICTIONS ON SUBMISSIONS Please note that only ASCII summaries written in English will be accepted. Do not include any attachments, graphics, or embedded formatting commands. Given the large number of submissions we expect to receive, anything that cannot be printed directly will be rejected without consideration. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT You should receive an acknowledgment of receipt within 72 hours of electronically submitting your summary. If this does not happen, then you should resend your submission by email to icslp98 at one.net.au with the word RESUBMISSION at the beginning of the subject line. If an acknowledgment is still not forthcoming, an email problem should be assumed, and the summary submitted by fax. Please do not resubmit or send by fax for any other reasons than lack of acknowledgment from the conference. CONDITIONS OF ACCEPTANCE All papers must be presented in English by one of the listed authors. That author will be required to register no later than the full-paper submission date. Summaries will not be accepted after the submission date. STUDENT DAY SUBMISSIONS Students wishing to submit papers for the SST Student Day should submit summaries as above. These submissions will be separately reviewed and published under the banner of the 7th Australian Speech Science & Technology Conference and will also be included on the CDROM containing the ICSLP '98 proceedings. SUBMISSION ADDRESSES World Wide Web: URL = http://cslab.anu.edu.au/icslp98 E-mail Submission: icslp98 at one.net.au Postal: ICSLP '98 Secretariat, GPO Box 128, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia Technical queries: Robert Dale - email: rdale at mpce.mq.edu.au General Information: Email: icslp98 at tourhosts.com.au IMPORTANT DATES Friday 1st May, 1998 Paper summaries due for review Friday 26th June, 1998 Acceptance notification Friday 21st August, 1998 Deadline for full-paper submission From matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI Thu Jan 22 13:51:21 1998 From: matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI (Matti Miestamo) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 15:51:21 +0200 Subject: TOC: SKY1997 Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland Message-ID: SKY 1997 (The Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland) (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 188 pp.) is now available! Table of Contents: SCOTT DELANCEY: What an Innatist Argument should look like GEOFFREY K. PULLUM & BARBARA C. SCHOLZ: Theoretical Linguistics and the Ontology of Linguistic Structure ESA ITKONEN: The Social Ontology of Linguistic Meaning URPO NIKANNE: Lexical Conceptual Structure and Syntactic Arguments ESA PENTTILÄ: Holistic Meaning and Cognition JARNO RAUKKO: The Status of Polysemy in Linguistics: From Discrete Meanings to Default Flexibility ANNA SOLIN: Debating Theoretical Assumptions: Readings of Critical Linguistics (Price USD 20 / FIM 100 plus shipping&handling) **************************** Also available: SKY 1996 (Ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Elise Ka"rkka"inen, 176 pp.) 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 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 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? SKY 1993 (Ed. by Susanna Shore and Maria Vilkuna, 272 pp.) GENERAL SECTION: DEIRDRE WILSON & DAN SPERBER: Pragmatics and Time LAURENCE R. HORN: Economy and Redundancy in a Dualistic Model of Natural Language LAURI CARLSON: Dialogue Games with Finnish Clitics MARIA VILKUNA: Finnish juuri and just: Varieties of Contextual Uniqueness KNUD LAMBRECHT: C'est pas con comme idee - The Syntax of Non-Focal Predicate Nominals in Spoken French AULI HAKULINEN: The Grammar of Opening Routines PIRKKO NUOLIJA"RVI: Interacting in an Institutional Setting SUSANNA SHORE: A Functional and Social-Semiotic Perspective on Language, Context and Text NEWS REPORTING, WORLD CRISES, AND IDEOLOGY: JAN-OLA O"STMAN: Introduction ANNA-MARI MA"KELA": Functional Ambivalence in Headlines in The Sun and The Independent JAANA PO"PPO"NEN & PIRJO-LIISA ST at HLBERG: Whose War Is It? 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 of the earlier editions: USD 15 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) ****************************** For orders, please contact: Bookstore Tiedekirja address: Kirkkokatu 14, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358 9 635177 fax +358 9 635017 e-mail Tiedekirja at pp.kolumbus.fi For further 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 Visit our WWW-pages at http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ (Tilaukset Suomesta suoraan SKY:sta") ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel, @ stands for 'a Swedish o', an 'a' with a small circle on it. ) From shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU Thu Jan 22 23:28:40 1998 From: shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU (Michele Feist) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 17:28:40 -0600 Subject: call for papers: SCIL 10. Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS. Student Conference in Linguistics 10 Special Theme: Linguistics in Cognitive Science Keynote Speaker: Lila Gleitman June 6-7, 1998 Northwestern University The 10th annual Student Conference in Linguistics will be held at Northwestern University in June 1998. SCIL is a student-run conference which aims to bring together graduate students from around the world to present their research and build connections with other students. The proceedings are published in the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. We invite original, unpublished work in any area of linguistics. We would particularly like to encourage submissions which border other disciplines, in keeping with the conference theme. This includes, but is not limited to, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, anthropological linguistics, speech perception and language acquisition. Guidelines for Submission: Please submit ten copies of a one-page, 500-word, anonymous abstract for a twenty-minute paper (optionally, one additional page for data and/or references may be appended), along with a 3" by 5" card with: (1) your name, (2) your affiliation, (3) your address, phone number, and e-mail address, (4) the title of the paper, and (5) an indication of which subdivision of linguistics best describes the topic (e.g., Phonetics, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Psycholinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, etc.) The abstract should be as specific as possible, and it should clearly indicate the data covered, outline the arguments presented, and include any broader implications of the work. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday March 13. Send abstracts to: SCIL 10 Department of Linguistics Northwestern University 2016 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208 E-mail abstracts will be accepted in ASCII ONLY. The email message should also contain your name, affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail address, the title of your paper, and the area of linguistics within which it falls. Email abstracts should be submitted to scil at ling.nwu.edu by 5pm on March 13. Further information is available at http://www.ling.nwu.edu/~scil. Questions can be directed to scil at ling.nwu.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From holton at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU Fri Jan 23 23:31:13 1998 From: holton at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Gary Holton) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 15:31:13 -0800 Subject: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL) Message-ID: **** CALL FOR PAPERS **** Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Santa Barbara, CA May 9-10, 1998 The linguistics department at the University or California, Santa Barbara issues a call for papers to be presented at its first annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL). The workshop will be a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. The workshop will take place on Saturday and Sunday May 9-10, 1998 on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Our invited speakers will be Nicola Bessel, Wallace Chafe, and Marianne Mithun. Dr. Bessell has worked extensively on the phonetics/phonology interface in Coeur d'Alene Salish. Dr. Chafe's current research involves documentation of the Seneca and Caddo languages. He is also writing a popular book on the importance of Native American languages. Dr. Mithun has just completed a book on the Languages of North America for the green series put out by Cambridge University Press. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in linguistics. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be one page with a 500 word limit. A separate page for data and references may be included, if necessary. Abstracts may be submitted in hardcopy or by email. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 22, 1998. For hardcopy submittal, please send four copies of your anonymous one-page abstract. In the envelope, include a 3x5 card with the following information: a. name b. affiliation c. mailing address d. phone number e. e-mail address f. title of your paper Hardcopy abstracts should be mailed to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Email submissions are encouraged. To submit an abstract by email, the information that would be included on the 3x5 card should be in the body of the email message, with the anonymous abstract sent as an attachment. Email abstracts should be sent to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: February 22, 1998 Notification of acceptance will be by email in mid-March. General Information Santa Barbara is situated on the Pacific Ocean near the Santa Ynez mountains. The UCSB campus is located near the Santa Barbara airport, and is approximately 90 miles north of LAX airport in Los Angeles. Shuttle buses run from LAX to Santa Barbara several times each day. Information about hotel accomodations will be provided on request. Crash space for participants may be available with graduate students in the UCSB linguistics department for those who arrange early. WAIL is co-sponsored by the UCSB linguistics department and the department's Native American Indian Languages (NAIL) study group, which has been meeting regularly in Santa Barbara since 1990, providing a forum for the discussion of issues relating to Native American language and culture. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776. From fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Sat Jan 24 23:06:57 1998 From: fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Frederick Newmeyer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 15:06:57 -0800 Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO? Message-ID: Matthew Dryer has shown that, once we correct for areal and genetic bias, the 'preference' for OV order is greater than that for VO order in the world's languages. But interestingly, I have seen it claimed in a variety of places that attested (or uncontroversially reconstructed) word order changes from OV to VO are far more common than those from VO to OV. My first question is how widely accepted is such a claim among historical linguists and typologists? Is there much support for such an idea and its implication of an overall general 'drift' from OV to VO? If this claim seems well motivated, the conjunction of the 'preference' for OV and the 'drift' to VO is very curious, no? One might even conclude that the OV preference is a remnant of a 'proto-world' OV (caused by what?), which functional forces (but what functional forces?) are skewing gradually to VO. And, indeed, linguists coming from a variety of directions (Venneman, Givon, Bichakjian, and others) have concluded something very much along those lines. I'm curious what thoughts FUNKNET subscribers might have on this question. I'll summarize if there is enough interest. Fritz Newmeyer fjn at u.washington.edu From aske at EARTHLINK.NET Sun Jan 25 03:17:48 1998 From: aske at EARTHLINK.NET (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 22:17:48 -0500 Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is about Fritz's question, which of course touched me deeply. Here I go. In my dissertation on Basque word order (UC Berkeley 1997) I proposed a solution for the "original" predominance of OV order as well as for the predominance of OV > VO shifts over VO > VO shift. My argument goes like this, in summarized form: 1) Word order in most languages (even in this odd language known as English) is best seen in terms not of grammatical relations, but of the pragmatic relations topic and focus. In my view, every assertion has a focus element, a most newsworthy, noteworthy, "dynamic", or "focal" idea, which bears the main accent of the rheme (rheme = assertion minus settings; topics are a type of setting). Most assertions, though not all, also have a topic (the referential "ground" of the assertion, a special type of "setting"), which in running discourse is typically expressed covertly (by agreement or an unaccented verb-bound pronoun. (Assertions which don't have topics are typically those in which the subject, the default topic, is the focus and no other argument is filling the topic role.) There is a strong correlation between grammatical subject and topic, on the one hand and grammatical object (when there is one) and focus. Indeed, the category subject seems to be but the grammaticalization of the category topic (although not all subjects are topics, and some are indeed foci). 2) The focus element, besides being accented, typically goes either in (1) F1 position: Right before the verb, which is also rheme-first position, only preceded by any settings there might be, including a phrasal topic; or it goes in (2) F2 position: Right after the verb (rheme-second position); or finally (3) It may also be "bumped" to the end of the rheme, or "dislocated" to the right, as it were, into an intonation unit of its own (not to be confused with so-called "right dislocation" in English, which is really an antitopic construction). 3) Languages fall into two basic types: Type 1: those which place the focus constituent consistently in F1 position (right before the verb), and never in F2 position, (so-called OV languages); and Type 2: languages which place the focus constituent either in F1 position (right before the verb) OR in F2 position (right after the verb), depending on the construction and depending on the degree of salience, or focality of the focus in the assertion. More focal foci go in F1 position and less focal ones in F2 position. (Focus bumping is a possibility in either language type, though it may be rare in some rigid Type 1 languages). Thus in Spanish, for example, a "VO language", in declarative assertions (statements) a complement focus constituent goes after the verb (F2 position), regardless of whether it is an object or the subject (when the focus is the verbal idea or the "polarity"--in emphatic or contrastive assertions--they go in F1 position). In emphatic or contrastive assertions, as well as in content questions, where the focus is very focal, the focus constituents goes before the verb (F1 position). (English is a funny VO language in that a subject focus goes in F1 position. But most VO languages seem to be like Spanish.) In an "OV language", on the other hand, the focus is always in F1 position, regardless of the construction or the degree of focality of the focus. In other words, each system has its merits. "OV languages" are more consistent than "VO languages" in focus placement, and "VO languages" have a syntactic means of coding different degrees of focality (marked and unmarked), at least for complement foci. 4) Word order change: OV > VO order change consists in the development of a secondary position for a focus constituent, namely F2 position, in a language which traditionally only used F1 position. And VO > OV order change consists in the loss of F2 position for focus constituents in languages that had it at one time. ------------------------- So, why is OV > VO order change more common than the inverse: 1) I believe that there is a relatively simple mechanism for the development of an F2 position in a Type 1 language, namely through the gradual overuse of the strategy of focus bumping to an intonation unit of its own following the main assertion. This, I believe, is what is happening in modern spoken Basque, presumably under the influence of Romance languages (all Basque speakers are bilingual now). Remember that focus bumping is available to both Type 1 and Type 2 languages, though VO languages presumably use it more often for a variety of reasons. I believe that the overuse of focus bumping leads to the reanalysis of rheme-final position as rheme-second (F2) position, since, after all, in actual speech there are hardly ever any constituents between the verb and a bumped focus, the separation being primarily an intonational one. 2) I believe that losing an F2 position ("VO > OV"), that is, losing a contrast, is a much less common change because there isn't a simple mechanism which favors that change and perhaps also for unknown cognitive reasons. The process of losing F2 focus position would also seem to require a long period in which the language is relatively free of contact with VO languages, which in general use the focus bumping strategy to a relatively significant degree. Since language contact seems to have been on the increase in the last few thousand years, this might in part explain the preponderance of Type 1 > Type 2 change in the historical record. I hope you followed me this far. Please let me know what you think. Cheers, Jon ________________________________ Jon Aske - Jon.Aske at salem.mass.edu Department of Foreign Languages Meier Hall 248B Salem State College Salem, Massachusetts 01970 978/741-6479 __________________________ Jon Aske - aske at earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~aske/ __________________________ Conran's Law: First things first; second things never. > -----Original Message----- > From: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics > [mailto:FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU]On Behalf Of Frederick Newmeyer > Sent: Saturday, January 24, 1998 6:07 PM > To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU > Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO? > > > Matthew Dryer has shown that, once we correct for areal and genetic bias, > the 'preference' for OV order is greater than that for VO order in the > world's languages. But interestingly, I have seen it claimed in a variety > of places that attested (or uncontroversially reconstructed) word order > changes from OV to VO are far more common than those from VO to OV. > > My first question is how widely accepted is such a claim among historical > linguists and typologists? Is there much support for such an idea and its > implication of an overall general 'drift' from OV to VO? > > If this claim seems well motivated, the conjunction of the 'preference' > for OV and the 'drift' to VO is very curious, no? One might even conclude > that the OV preference is a remnant of a 'proto-world' OV (caused by > what?), which functional forces (but what functional forces?) are skewing > gradually to VO. And, indeed, linguists coming from a variety of > directions (Venneman, Givon, Bichakjian, and others) have concluded > something very much along those lines. > > I'm curious what thoughts FUNKNET subscribers might have on this question. > I'll summarize if there is enough interest. > > Fritz Newmeyer > fjn at u.washington.edu > From annes at HTDC.ORG Tue Jan 27 05:16:18 1998 From: annes at HTDC.ORG (Anne Sing) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 19:16:18 -1000 Subject: PENN TREE BANK STYLE NLP SOFTWARE AVAILABLE Message-ID: To the readers; Derek Bickerton and Phil Bralich of Ergo Linguistics Technology would like to announce the release of free software to the Computational Linguistics, NLP, MT, and linguistics communities. The software offering is a pre-release called "BracketDoctor." It provides a parsed analysis of input strings including labeled brackets and trees in the style of the Penn Treebank of the Linguistic Data Consortium as outlined in "Bracketing Guidelines for Treebank II Style Penn Treebank Project" (Linguistic Data Consortium 1995). While the entire range of structures of that work is not supported, this is the only parser that can generate any such trees and brackets and thus represents a major breakthrough for this field. We understand that this is unlikely to be nominated for citations or awards, but as this is the only software available that can generate such labeled brackets and trees, we believe it is an important contribution to this field of research and it should be of value to researchers in academia and industry alike as well as to students working through their introductory syntax text books. We are announcing this release to linguistics news-lists, translation lists, and the like as well to our entire mailing list of researchers and decision makers in industry, government, and academia. We feel this release is particularly important because even the major universities such as Stanford and MIT as well as companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Xerox do not have programs that offer this sort of demonstration of their ability to work with the Penn Treebank styles. Of course we recognize the importance of being aware of the entire field of NLP and of not misrepresenting such things to government, industry, or academia, so we feel it is important to distribute this as widely as possible as quickly as possible. As this is the only parser that generates Penn Treebank style labeled bracketings and trees, and as NLP, Linguistics, and Computational Linguistics communities have agreed that the Penn Treebank styles are the standard for this field, we feel compelled to suggest that this parser be accepted as the default standard for parsers in the field today until such time as other parsers can show that they can do an equal or better job with the Penn Treebank style book, or until such time as the Penn Treebank styles are removed as the standard. We will also be distributing this software to members of the LDC, EAGLES, the organizers of the MUC conferences, and other organizations that propose to set standards for NLP. (For possible alternative standards for NLP other than the these go to http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/NLP-ANIM). We realize such claims as these may invite accusations of arrogance of immodesty, but what is the point of having such standards as the Penn Treebank II guidelines if the one parser that can generate them is NOT given a central role in the field as a whole and in the journals as the standard against which all other parsers must be measured. As long as we are the default standard for the generation of trees and brackets in the Penn Treebank style, then many publications and proposals in NLP will need to mention this software in their review of current technologies and work. For that purpose, the reference should refer to Philip Bralich and Derek Bickerton, 1998. "BracketDoctor," Ergo Linguistic Technologies, Honolulu, Hawaii. The BracketDoctor can be obtained by writing to Derek Bickerton (derek at hawaii.edu) or Phil Bralich (bralich at hawaii.edu) or it can be downloaded from our web site. It is a standard Windows 95 program in a setup file. It requires 1000 kilobytes of space and less than one megabyte of ram to run. Sentences parse in real time. Phil Bralich P.S. For those who can sign a non-disclosure agreement it is also possible to receive the product called "MemoMaster" which demonstrates our abilities with: 1) question/answer, statement/response repartee (using notes and reminders), 2) NLP messaging for sending faxes, email, and memos, and 3) command and control for browsers and operating systems (a great add- on for any speech rec system). Just email me or a send a fax to (808)539-3924 requesting the non-disclosure. 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 noll at LUNA.CAS.USF.EDU Tue Jan 27 20:47:26 1998 From: noll at LUNA.CAS.USF.EDU (Jane Noll (PSY)) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 15:47:26 -0500 Subject: Chat Room Talk Message-ID: I am in the middle of writing my proposal for a dissertation in the area of psycholinguistics. Part of my proposal involves a content analysis of spontaneous speech. I was curious whether anyone has studied Internet Chat Room "talk" to determine how similar it is to spontaneous speech. I've done a literature search, but would appreciate any references that come to mind or search terms that might be helpful in finding such studies. Also, what are the ethics of analyzing such conversations on the internet? Thanks for your help! Jane Noll Jane A. Noll, M.Ed. Department of Psychology University of South Florida Tampa, FL 33620-7200 Internet: noll at luna.cas.usf.edu From annes at HTDC.ORG Fri Jan 30 02:24:06 1998 From: annes at HTDC.ORG (Anne Sing) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 16:24:06 -1000 Subject: NLP DOWNLOAD PROBLEM Message-ID: The Ergo server problem which prevented some of the downloads from working has been fixed. You may now download the BracketDoctor without problems. (http://www.ergo-ling.com). Phil Bralich >To the readers; >Derek Bickerton and Phil Bralich of Ergo Linguistics Technology would like >to announce the release of free software to the Computational Linguistics, >NLP, MT, and linguistics communities. The software offering is a >pre-release called "BracketDoctor." It provides a parsed analysis of input >strings including labeled brackets and trees in the style of the Penn >Treebank of the Linguistic Data Consortium as outlined in "Bracketing >Guidelines for Treebank II Style Penn Treebank Project" (Linguistic Data >Consortium 1995). While the entire range of structures of that work is not >supported, this is the only parser that can generate any such trees and >brackets and thus represents a major breakthrough for this field. > >We understand that this is unlikely to be nominated for citations or awards, >but as this is the only software available that can generate such labeled >brackets and trees, we believe it is an important contribution to this field >of research and it should be of value to researchers in academia and >industry alike as well as to students working through their introductory >syntax text books. We are announcing this release to linguistics >news-lists, translation lists, and the like as well to our entire mailing >list of researchers and decision makers in industry, government, and >academia. We feel this release is particularly important because even the >major universities such as Stanford and MIT as well as companies such as >Microsoft, IBM, and Xerox do not have programs that offer this sort of >demonstration of their ability to work with the Penn Treebank styles. > >Of course we recognize the importance of being aware of the entire field of >NLP and of not misrepresenting such things to government, industry, or >academia, so we feel it is important to distribute this as widely as >possible as quickly as possible. As this is the only parser that generates >Penn Treebank style labeled bracketings and trees, and as NLP, Linguistics, >and Computational Linguistics communities have agreed that the Penn Treebank >styles are the standard for this field, we feel compelled to suggest that this >parser be accepted as the default standard for parsers in the field today >until such time as other parsers can show that they can do an equal or >better job with the Penn Treebank style book, or until such time as the Penn >Treebank styles are removed as the standard. We will also be distributing >this software to members of the LDC, EAGLES, the organizers of the MUC >conferences, and other organizations that propose to set standards for NLP. >(For possible alternative standards for NLP other than the these go to >http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/NLP-ANIM). > >As long as we are the default standard for the generation of trees and >brackets in the Penn Treebank style, then many publications and proposals >in NLP will need to mention this software in their review of current >technologies and work. For that purpose, the reference should refer to >Philip Bralich and Derek Bickerton, 1998. "BracketDoctor," Ergo Linguistic >Technologies, Honolulu, Hawaii. > >The BracketDoctor can be obtained by writing to Derek Bickerton >(derek at hawaii.edu) or Phil Bralich (bralich at hawaii.edu) or it can be downloaded >from our web site. It is a standard Windows 95 program in a setup file. It >requires 1000 kilobytes of space and less than one megabyte of ram to run. >Sentences parse in real time. > >Phil Bralich > >P.S. For those who can sign a non-disclosure agreement it is also possible >to receive the product called "MemoMaster" which demonstrates our abilities >with: 1) question/answer, statement/response repartee (using notes and >reminders), 2) NLP messaging for sending faxes, email, and memos, and 3) >command and control for browsers and operating systems (a great add- on for >any speech rec system). Just email me or a send a fax to (808)539-3924 >requesting the non-disclosure. > > >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 > Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Tue Jan 6 06:01:22 1998 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 00:01:22 -0600 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19971229141918.3f2f9c98@pop-server.hawaii.edu> Message-ID: > >Dear Funknetters, > >Last week I mailed a question about the relationship among some > >psychological concepts(mind,thought,cognition and intelligence),and I > >received many helpful comments and suggestions.I would like to thank you all. > >However,another problem has come up, and I wish to have your opinion about > >the relationship between Intelligence and Aptitude. > >In foreign language teaching,it is believed that some people "have a knack > >for learning languages".There are also some tests which claim to measure > >this aptitude.But do you think that aptitude is really different from > >intelligence?Don't you think that a person who is intelligent also knows how > >to learn a foreign language (through his use of language learning > >strategies),and in a sense linguistically more talened than the others? > >And is it not the case that a person who is claimed to have a high aptitude > >for learning a foreign language is in a sense capable of solving his > >problems(in this specific case,linguistic problems) ,and as a result more > >intelligent? I look forward to receiving your comments. It seems to me that there is a high involvement of other aspects of the learner's personality, that may increase/decrease the efficiency with which a foreign language can be acquired. Personally, I like to learn foreign languages (I am Brazilian and have a reasonable degree of fluency in 5 to 8 languages, depending on how strictly you define 'reasonable'), and one thing that always helped me was a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question. The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'-- is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the 'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy' may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign language learning capacity. Sergio Meira meira at ruf.rice.edu From David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG Tue Jan 6 13:53:00 1998 From: David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG (David_Tuggy at SIL.ORG) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 08:53:00 -0500 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude Message-ID: Sergio Meira wrote: "... one thing that always helped me was a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question. The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'-- is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the 'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy' may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign language learning capacity." I think Sergio is right on. And it doesn't just hold for language-learning, but for learning in general. I think confidence, and especially confidence linked with the kind of love for what's being learned that he describes, is often, in practical terms, the most crucial component of "intelligence". I expect we've all known people who lacked nothing in the brains department but who were consistently outperformed (scholastically, on "intelligence" tests, in the "real world") by others who weren't afraid to guess, to fail and look silly, or to be thought ignorant, and who weren't wasting energy griping about the inadequate teaching they were receiving, because they were having too much fun learning. I would ten times rather teach someone who isn't all that "smart" but loves to learn, than a genius who couldn't care less. --David Tuggy From dcyr at YORKU.CA Tue Jan 6 19:17:47 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 15:17:47 -0400 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: In the line of intelligence and aptitude ... As an undergraduate student in linguistics, my best classmate was a leff- handed young guy and he was really brilliant. At the doctorate level, in linguistics as well, my advisor was also a left-handed male and also very brilliant. Every year, from my first teaching position in linguistics in 1987 to the present day, I've observed the following regularities: - out of 100 students in linguistics, hardly 10% are males and 30% of these male students are left-handed and, most of the time, among my best students. This year for instance I have 110 students, out of which 7 males, out of which 3 left handed, all outstanding. Among the 103 females, no left handed, but certainly a few outstanding right handed. I'm interested to hear if any of you have noticed the same correlations among their students? And among funknetters, how many left handed male linguists compared to left handed female linguists. I'm mylself a right handed female. Am I correct that in the general population 10% male/female are left handed? Is there existing literature on left/right handedness according to different domains of professional specialization? Danielle Cyr York University Toronto From wilcox at UNM.EDU Tue Jan 6 20:44:00 1998 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 13:44:00 -0700 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: On 1/6/98 12:17 PM, Danielle Cyr said: >As an undergraduate student in linguistics, my best classmate was a leff- >handed young guy and he was really brilliant. I'm a left-handed male linguist. Too bad I'm not brilliant! -- Sherman Wilcox Sherman Wilcox Associate Professor Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 505-277-6353 (v/tty) 505-277-6355 (fax) wilcox at unm.edu http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox From wleman at MCN.NET Tue Jan 6 21:41:01 1998 From: wleman at MCN.NET (Wayne Leman) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 14:41:01 -0700 Subject: Fw: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: ---------- > From: Wayne Leman > To: Danielle Cyr > Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists > Date: Tuesday, January 06, 1998 2:11 PM > > Danielle, I have observed handedness all my life. Over the course of quite > a few years I have noticed a higher percentage of left-handedness among > linguists than among the general population. And the linguists I have known > who are left-handed are typically quite strong theoretically, highly > intuitive. I haven't notice any correlation with gender, but your observations need to be > studied. > > As they say,... "Left handed folks are the only ones in their right minds." > :) > > Wayne Leman > (right-handed and data-oriented) From simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Tue Jan 6 21:42:38 1998 From: simon at CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU (Beth Simon) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 16:42:38 EST Subject: left-handedness Message-ID: Any stats on ambidexterity in this regard? beth simon right handed and not brilliant but with stamina and a fair distance runner assistant professor, linguistics and english indiana university purdue university 219 481 6772 simon at ipfw.edu simon at cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu From edwards at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Jan 6 23:34:12 1998 From: edwards at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Jane A. Edwards) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 15:34:12 -0800 Subject: language masters (NY Times) Message-ID: Perhaps of interest, from the NYT. -Jane Edwards ------------------- New York Times, (12/31/97), p. C21. To Masters of Language, a Long Overdue Toast By WILLIAM H. HONAN NEW YORK -- Each vocation or avocation has its Babe Ruths and Baryshnikovs, and so it is with the Linguistic Society of America. The champion is Francis Sommer, fluent in 94 languages. Sommer, who died in 1978, grew up in Speyer, Germany, amusing himself by inventing languages. While still a schoolboy, he learned Swedish, Sanskrit and Persian. On a visit to Russia, he picked up all the major European languages. By the late 1920s, after emigrating to the United States, where he found work as a research librarian at the Cleveland Public Library, he knew nearly eight dozen languages. There were no Olympic medals or Nobel prizes for him, but that is a mistake that should be rectified, said scholars coming to New York City on Jan. 8 and 9 for the annual convention of the Linguistic Society of America. "People like Sommer are amazing examples of human achievement, and just as unusual as those who do the decathlon," said David Perlmutter, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at San Diego. Language acquisition will be a major topic of discussion at the convention. Linguists are teaming up with psychologists and students of the brain to understand how a high school student from Brooklyn learns to speak French. Other linguists are focused on language preservation, contending that endangered languages like various American Indian and aboriginal Australian languages must be saved for the same reason that biologists seek to protect endangered species. The diversity helps understand the structure of all languages, they maintain. Strangely, linguists say, they know of no one who has made a scientific study of master linguists like Sommer or Harold Williams, a New Zealand journalist who died in 1928 and is listed (incorrectly) in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's greatest linguist, though Somers mastered almost twice as many languages. Williams, who spoke 58 languages, showed off his talent by conversing with every delegate to the League of Nations in his or her native tongue. Many polyglot professors wince at being called superhuman. "It's more like a musical talent than anything else," said Kenneth Hale, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who speaks about 50 languages. "I didn't do very well as a student. I wanted to learn languages, and I let everything else slide." Their motivation, they say, is the sheer delight of mastering a new form of expression. "When I found I could speak Navajo at the age of 12," Hale said, "I used to go out every day and sit on a rock and talk Navajo to myself." Perlmutter explained the fascination this way: "Each new language is like a fantastic puzzle and you want to learn how to do it. Sometimes it's easy because if you know English plus German, it's easy to learn Dutch. If you know Spanish and one other Romance language, Portuguese comes quickly. But of course, that doesn't work with Japanese." Stephen Wurm, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Australian National University at Canberra who knows 48 languages, including one spoken in Papua New Guinea that he considers the world's most difficult, said the ideal way to learn a language was to have it spoken to you beginning at the age of 2. "The members of my family all came from different backgrounds and spoke several languages," he said. "When I was growing up, my father, who was a linguist himself, insisted that each member of the family speak to me in only one language. So my father spoke to me only in English, his father in Norwegian and his mother in Finnish. My mother spoke to me only in Hungarian and her mother only in Mongolian. That way I never got confused. "Then I traveled with my father to his postings in Germany, Russia, China, Argentina and Turkey, so that by the age of 6, I spoke 10 different languages." Hale said he could never learn a language in a classroom. "For me, it's got to be done with another person on a one-to-one basis," he said. "I start with parts of the body and common animals and objects. I learn nouns. Then I pick up the sound system. I write that down. "If it's not a written language, like Nggoth, which is spoken in Australia, I make up how to write it. I can learn that in one or two hours. Then I start making complex sentences because the complex sentences are more regular than the simple ones. Then pretty soon I can name anything in the world." Sommer left pointers in the textbooks he wrote about learning Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and German. But he was a better student than a teacher. When explaining how to speak Russian, for example, he offered advice that must have left many readers tongue- tied. For example: "Try to pronounce 'es' while holding the tongue in the position required for 'oo."' It would be a mistake to think of master linguists as shy, retiring bookworms. Edgar Erskine Hume, an American Army officer who died in 1952, spoke at least 10 languages and was unmistakably a man of action. He fought in World War I and World War II, and held two Distinguished Service Medals, the Silver Star with two clusters, the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart with two clusters. Speaking many languages has not always been a ticket to success. At least once -- in the case of Edgar Tibbetts -- it proved a liability. A self-effacing federal clerk who died in 1908, Tibbetts was employed by the Surgeon General's office in Washington. Modestly, he let it be known that he was fluent in 10 languages. That was not the half of it: He could translate from German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Romanian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese. In 1904, he applied for a transfer to the Bureau of Military Information, where translators were paid a few dollars more than his $1,400-a-year salary. When his superior caught wind of his restlessness, Tibbetts wrote a letter to his own boss, saying that he was "indispensable because of his ability to translate from certain languages" and that his loss would "cripple the work of indexing." That put an end to his aspirations. Four years later, while riding his bicycle home from work, he collided with a horse-drawn wagon and was killed. Some master linguists confess that they live in fear of garbling the various tongues in which they speak. Toward the end of his life, Sommer said he had given up learning new languages because he was experiencing information overload. "I am afraid to cram any more words into my head," he told an interviewer. "Either the top will come off or some morning I will wake up speaking Babel." Likewise, Hale said he sometimes started speaking in one language and found himself unconsciously drifting into another. "Unless I'm attentive and really on the ball," he said, "I can mix up languages like Miskitu and Sumu, both of which are spoken in Central America and are very similar." Then he added with a professorial chuckle, "But I could never confuse Navajo with Warlpiri. Ho, ho, ho. Never with Warlpiri!" ---------------- From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Jan 7 01:10:49 1998 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 19:10:49 -0600 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude In-Reply-To: <199801062015.OAA13477@listserv.rice.edu> Message-ID: Concerning the ability to learn and the emotional attitude towards learning a foreign language, does anyone know of studies showing whether there is any correlation between success in learning a foreign language (up to 'native-like' standards) and any innate specific features of intelligence (if there are such things)? So much of the ability to learn (at least in my experience) comes from having fun with it, that I wonder what else there could be. Sergio Meira From meira at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Jan 7 01:20:27 1998 From: meira at RUF.RICE.EDU (Sergio Meira S.C.O.) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 19:20:27 -0600 Subject: language masters (NY Times) In-Reply-To: <9801062334.AA17131@COGSCI.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: Are there any studies on the strategies used by people who learn many languages? Do they all have the same attitude, or use similar techniques, or have a similar modus operandi while learning a new language? Sergio Meira From dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU Wed Jan 7 01:22:30 1998 From: dever at VERB.LINGUIST.PITT.EDU (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 20:22:30 -0500 Subject: Intelligence and aptitude In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sergio, There is a very large body of literature in Second Language Learning. Look into it. DLE ****************************** ****************************** Daniel L. Everett Department of Linguistics University of Pittsburgh 2816 CL Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130 http://verb.linguist.pitt.edu/~dever From clements at INDIANA.EDU Wed Jan 7 04:42:05 1998 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 23:42:05 -0500 Subject: Left-handed male linguists In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At a linguistic institute I was struck at how many lefties there were, all linguists. I had the impression that there were more the the normal percentage of lefties in the group. I noticed it more in males than females. I thought it would have been a good idea to take a poll on email, but I never did it. Clancy Clements Indiana Univ. From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Wed Jan 7 06:35:31 1998 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 08:35:31 +0200 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I have also informally observed the high frequency of left-handed male linguists, but my observation (to myself) was even more specific--it seemed to be (among professional linguists) that there were a good number of left-handed male psycholinguists/cognitive linguists. I made this observation a few years ago and noticed handedness at a few conferences, but I never made a list and the only names I remember now are David Zubin and Bill Croft, but I'm sure there were a number of others. In Israel I've observed a high proportion of lefthanded people in general in linguistics classes (5/11 in a seminar I taught last year), but this is true of female as well as male students. John Myhill From oesten at LING.SU.SE Wed Jan 7 09:22:03 1998 From: oesten at LING.SU.SE (Östen Dahl) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 11:22:03 +0200 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: Over the years, many people have made the observation that there indeed seem to be unproportionately many left-handed linguists. I think it should be noted that quite a few of them are female (I could give a list but am afraid to forget someone who will be offended). There is a huge literature on correlations between handedness and all sorts of properties; the results are extraordinarily contradictory which is probably due to the difficulties in establishing who should be counted as left-handed or not. In many countries left-handers are still re-trained to write with their right hands; for this reason, the rates of apparent left-handers in the population vary very much, with the U.S. at the top, according to my own informal observations. Some things seem clear, though: there are more left-handed men than women in general; left-handers are over-represented at both ends of various scales, that is, there are more extremely gifted left-handers but also more left-handers with various kinds of learning problems. There are also more homosexuals, alcoholics, mathematicians, architects and according to some rather perplexing observations, more helicopter pilots. Fifty per cent of the U.S. presidents after the war have been left-handed, including the three last ones. On the Internet, there are lots of lists of "famous left-handers", regrettably the reliability seems rather low. If there is also over-representation of left-handers among linguists, it is thus not at all a unique phenomenon. How strong the tendency really is is hard to say. I have also been thinking of doing a survey but have so far refrained in view of the difficulties of getting a reliable result. ?sten Dahl left-handed male linguist From harder at COCO.IHI.KU.DK Wed Jan 7 10:25:45 1998 From: harder at COCO.IHI.KU.DK (harder at COCO.IHI.KU.DK) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 04:25:45 -0600 Subject: 'general intelligence' Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, with special reference to Ramin Akbari: A cautionary remark, provoked by the issues involving the concept of intelligence raised by Ramin Akbari: Over Christmas I (belatedly) read 'The Mismeasure of Man' by Steven J. Gould, which I think should be compulsory reading for any academic who uses the word 'intelligence' in a professional context. The main point of the book is to do with the sad history of (pseudo-)scientific racism, but perhaps more fundamental in a scientific context is its meticulous discussion of a fallacy that has plagued discussions on intelligence throughout the history of the concept. The fallacy is a form of reification, in which the investigator goes from a serious of (possibly subtle, interesting and scientifically valid) measurements to the inference that there is a single (immutable as well as hereditary) aspect of reality underlying the measurements. Before nominating 'intelligence' as one of four basic concepts characterizing human individuals, one should take the rather scary history of the concept into consideration. The point is NOT that there is no reality to intelligence, but rather that there is so much complex reality to it that it would be extremely dangerous to start off with it, thus taking for granted that we know what it is (even if short-term memory or 'band width' offers interesting perspectives). An analogy: we would probably feel that it is possible as well as (for some purposes) intersting to offer a general evaluation of someone's 'physical fitness' or 'health' or 'sense of humour' - but few of us would take the step to saying that any of these was a monolithic basic property of an individual. This, however, has been the standard assumption for intelligence. --Peter Harder From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Jan 7 12:51:59 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 05:51:59 -0700 Subject: your mail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It could be interesting to widen the scope to other specialists in language, such as those in literature, for I have also observed th existence of many left-handed students of literature. Max Figueroa From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Jan 7 12:56:21 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 05:56:21 -0700 Subject: Left-handed male linguists In-Reply-To: <01BD1B5E.7B8A9F40.oesten@ling.su.se> Message-ID: I myself was, as a child, ambidexter, but (quite stupidly) forced myself to become a right-handed person. At that time, I was already intensely interested in languages, but also in literature, philosophy, politics and history. In 55 years, I've met many linguists and specialists in literatura that are either left-handed or (much less frequently, though) ambidexter. Max From gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA Wed Jan 7 12:55:35 1998 From: gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA (Greg Thomson, University of Alberta) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 15:55:35 +0300 Subject: language masters (NY Times) In-Reply-To: <9801062334.AA17131@COGSCI.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: >The champion is Francis Sommer, fluent in 94 languages. >Sommer, who died in 1978, grew up in Speyer, Germany, amusing >himself by inventing languages. While still a schoolboy, he learned >Swedish, Sanskrit and Persian. On a visit to Russia, he picked up all >the major European languages. By the late 1920s, after emigrating to >the United States, where he found work as a research librarian at the >Cleveland Public Library, he knew nearly eight dozen languages. So then, he learned his 93 languages by the age of 40? O.K. Assuming he started at age zero, and managed to be lingual in each language with a modest 10,000 item vocabulary, then in 40 years, he acquired 930,000 non-native lexical items, or about 64 per day. Etc. etc. I wonder how he kept his 94 mental lexicons active enough so that they could function well in comprehension and production as he continued knowing all those languages for the next fifty years. (-; Greg Thomson XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Greg Thomson, c/o Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Alberta, 4-32 Assiniboia Hall, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E7, CANADA Phone: 7-812-246-35-48 Favourite Web-Site: http://www.whitehawk.com/baby/babypics.html From ocls at IPA.NET Wed Jan 7 12:48:16 1998 From: ocls at IPA.NET (George Elgin, Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 07:48:16 -0500 Subject: lefthanded linguists Message-ID: Suzette Haden Elgin here -- a left-handed female linguist. From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Wed Jan 7 15:47:08 1998 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 10:47:08 -0500 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: Regarding Danielle Cyr's query, there is a substantial literature on handedness. After trying for years to explain that I naturally do some things, or rather some kinds of things, right-handed and others left-handed, I read some of the literature and discovered that I am apparently "incompletely lateralized"--now known as "inconsistently right-handed". As in many other things, there may, it seems, be a continuum of handedness. At the same time, though I am a linguist, I am hardly brilliant. Carl From dcyr at YORKU.CA Wed Jan 7 16:43:40 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:43:40 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Reply-To: From: "Wayne Leman" To: "Danielle Cyr" Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 10:03:08 -0700 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Status: Danielle, it looks like a number of Funknet folks are interested in this topic. It's always fascinated me. I also predict that the sharpest lefties will score high on the Intuitive (typically, stronger at theory and abstract problem solving) scale of the Jungian personality framework. There is a simple online test that folks can take to determine their profile at Internet site: http://www.keirsey.com/cgi-bin/keirsey/newkts.cgi I guess my reply only went to you and not the entire list. I later tried to send it to the entire list but haven't seen it. I'm not sure I used the correct address for sending to the list: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU Is that the address you use or do you use another and it gets routed to this address? Wayne From dcyr at YORKU.CA Wed Jan 7 16:45:29 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:45:29 -0400 Subject: Left-handed male linguists Message-ID: >Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists >Date: Wed, 7 Jan 98 11:42:48 -0500 >x-sender: vanvalin at pop.acsu.buffalo.edu >From: >To: "Danielle Cyr" , >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Status: > >I'm left-handed and male, as are two of my colleagues, Jean-Pierre Koenig >and David Zubin. So a third of the SUNY Buffalo department is >left-handed males. > >Robert Van Valin > >*************** >Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713 >Professor & Chair Fax 716 645-3825 >Department of Linguistics >685 Baldy Hall >State University of New York at Buffalo >Buffalo, NY 14260-1030 USA VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Wed Jan 7 17:54:52 1998 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 09:54:52 -0800 Subject: lefties Message-ID: As a left-hander myself, I've also kept track from time to time of the distribution in various settings. As a female leftie, I may have paid more attention to the distribution in females. It had struck me that the number of left-handed females was particularly high in academic settings. One year I was at a conference in Cambridge, and for irrelevant reasons, was carrying around a set of the binomial tables with me, which permit you to look up the probability of obtaining a given distribution by chance, if you know the baserate in the normal population. Assuming a generous 17% baserate for lefthanders (and of course that is a problem in its own right, because handedness really isn't a dichotomous variable, but a "J-shaped" distribution with lots of points in between), it did turn out to be the case, at a level of p < .05, that there were more left-handed women at the conference than we would expect by chance. The same was not true of men. I haven't bothered to replicate this calculation, and wouldn't be in the least surprised if it doesn't replicate. By the way, my European friends all have the impression that most Americans are left handed. Apparently the suppression of left handedness lasted longer in Europe, so the baserates of EXPRESSED left handedness may be a bit high in the U.S. My friend Virginia Volterra remembers catching her mother-in-law whispering to her grandchild "Grandma will give you a cookie if you use the good little hand....". -liz bates From dcyr at YORKU.CA Wed Jan 7 18:00:30 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:00:30 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 16:07:38 -0500 (EST) From: Ron Kuzar To: Danielle Cyr Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists MIME-Version: 1.0 Status: > I guess my reply only went to you and not the entire list. I later tried to > send it to the entire list but haven't seen it. You only see your own messages if you set your relationship with the listserv as follows: set funknet repro otherwise it does not as a default reproduce your own messages. Ron Kuzar I am a linguist and left-handed. ======================================================================== | Dr. Ron Kuzar | | (Dept. of English, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel) | | During the academic year 1997/8 Visiting Professor at: | | Office Address: Berman Center for Jewish Studies, Lehigh University,| | 9 West Packer Avenue | | Bethlehem, PA 18015-3082 | | Office phone: (610) 758-4857 | | Office fax: (610) 758-4858 | | Home Phone: (610) 395-3210 | | Email: rok2 at cs1.cc.lehigh.edu | ======================================================================== From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Wed Jan 7 19:47:58 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:47:58 -0700 Subject: Left-handed male linguists In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As I already told Danielle, I was ambidexter as a child, but forced upon myself the condition of right-handedness, a very stupid decision which I sincerely regret. However, I have sort of specialised my left hand in different tasks and, among other things, my left arm and hand are a bit stronger than the right ones. As a child I not only was ambidexter, but practically a "quadruman" when unobserved (picking up pencils and objects from the floor, out of laziness, even clumsily writing, etc.). This went on until I was about 13 or 14. My stupid decision was not due to parental pression, much to the contrary: I was pathologically shy and simply didn't feel like calling much attention upon myself. I am amazed at the quantity of colleagues who are "lefties" (physically, I mean), [among them you, Van... what about my fellow-countryman, Jorge Guitart? Luis Roberto Choy, also a Cuban linguist, now in the USA, is a "leftie" too, and so are many others in Cuba], although I haven't been able to follow the whole of the discussion. Is anyone dressing up a list of "lefties" and "ambies" among us? It should prove useful and most interesting! As a matter of fact, I've just decided to send the question to Cuban linguists, perhaps also to Dominican linguists, and see what comes out of it! Bye! Max On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Danielle Cyr wrote: > >Subject: Re: Left-handed male linguists > >Date: Wed, 7 Jan 98 11:42:48 -0500 > >x-sender: vanvalin at pop.acsu.buffalo.edu > >From: > >To: "Danielle Cyr" , > >Mime-Version: 1.0 > >Status: > > > >I'm left-handed and male, as are two of my colleagues, Jean-Pierre Koenig > >and David Zubin. So a third of the SUNY Buffalo department is > >left-handed males. > > > >Robert Van Valin > > > >*************** > >Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713 > >Professor & Chair Fax 716 645-3825 > >Department of Linguistics > >685 Baldy Hall > >State University of New York at Buffalo > >Buffalo, NY 14260-1030 USA VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > From kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU Wed Jan 7 20:27:13 1998 From: kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU (patricia kilroe) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:27:13 -0600 Subject: lefties Message-ID: I am a left-handed female linguist who as an adolescent and young adult wanted to be a musician. Over the years I have encountered what seems like a surprising number of left-handed musicians, as well as linguists, and it has seemed like there have been more males than females in both groups. Patricia Kilroe From wilcox at UNM.EDU Wed Jan 7 21:16:48 1998 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:16:48 -0700 Subject: lefties Message-ID: Well, well... I'll add a footnote. I'm a left-handed male linguist who was a musician for many years (oboe). -- Sherman Wilcox From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Wed Jan 7 21:35:36 1998 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 13:35:36 -0800 Subject: Lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: By way of caution, it would be prudent to consider tolerance of left-handedness in different cultures before jumping to conclusions about linguists. When my sisters (who are both left-handed, but not linguists; I'm right-handed and a cognitive linguist [albeit female]) and I visited England many years ago, we noticed a much larger proportion of left-handed people around us -- from food servers to shopkeepers. My sisters both experienced attempts on the part of their early educators (nuns in Catholic schools, of course) to 'correct' their left-handedness; this rendered one sister semi-ambidextrous, the other persisted as a leftie; both hated school. Maybe in England, teachers are more tolerant of allowing children's handedness to develop naturally. This may also be true in other countries. Canada, being much influenced by England, may also eschew anti-sinistrism. Still, it's a fun discussion. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubba at polymail.calpoly.edu ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From rok2 at CS1.CC.LEHIGH.EDU Wed Jan 7 21:51:54 1998 From: rok2 at CS1.CC.LEHIGH.EDU (Ron Kuzar) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 16:51:54 -0500 Subject: lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > Well, well... I'll add a footnote. I'm a left-handed male linguist who > was a musician for many years (oboe). > -- Sherman Wilcox ------------------------------------ Aren't we going a bit far off? My mother is a (retired) professional musician and left-handed (wow!!) My father was also a professional musican, but was right handed (too bad!) Perhaps we should search higher: one of my grandfathers was a physician (Ob.Gyn, sound almost like oboe). I am not impressed by the data so far. Which doesn't mean one shouldn't go into it seriously, not through sampling obsessive contributors to the net (like me). Happy semester Roni Kuzar From elan at BIS.BG Wed Jan 7 21:38:35 1998 From: elan at BIS.BG (Elena Andonova) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 23:38:35 +0200 Subject: lefties Message-ID: Dear fellow-funknetters, A few more messages from now, and I'll start feeling like a member of an extinct species. Aren't there any kindred right-handers' souls around? Elena From ETODD at TRENTU.CA Wed Jan 7 21:27:00 1998 From: ETODD at TRENTU.CA (ETODD at TRENTU.CA) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 17:27:00 -0400 Subject: Lefties Message-ID: Lordie, I am neither male nor left-handed, maybe I should give up already. Evelyn Todd From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Wed Jan 7 23:31:44 1998 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 15:31:44 -0800 Subject: Lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Aside from the fact that handedness is not a dichotomy (as I said in a previous posting, it is a continuous and J-shaped distribution), it is also worth noting that definitions of handedness in the neuropsychology literature (an *IMMENSE* literature, by the way) are usually not restricted to the hand one uses for writing. There are a number of handedness questionnaires that are widely used in neuropsychology and/or psycholinguistics, tapping into many different aspects of hand use, and also (in some cases) side preferences for other body parts (e.g. the foot used to kick a ball; the preferred eye for looking into a telescope). In fact, because left-handed writing is the behavior that has been suppressed most often in certain cultural contexts, writing may not be the strongest index of lateralization and behavioral asymmetry. -liz bates From dsoliver at EARTHLINK.NET Thu Jan 8 00:02:45 1998 From: dsoliver at EARTHLINK.NET (Douglas S. Oliver) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 16:02:45 -0800 Subject: Intelligence Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, I would like to add my two cents to what Peter Harder said about intelligence. In addition to the objections expressed by Gould, not only in "The Mismeasure of Man" but also in numerous articles and other publications, I believe we must keep in mind that "intelligence" as a concept has no coherent definition that extends beyond very narrow fields of research. No one here has attempted to define the term in relation to language/language learning. Are we talking of specific skills? Are we defining intelligence by these skills? Can we operationalize our definition(s) in any useful way for research purposes? One respondent mentioned the "G" factor; as Gould has also pointed out, this is just a reworking/renaming of older and already worn and discarded concepts. This is not to say that people are not still using this term, but that it has been shown pretty well, I believe, to be inadequate. Speaking as an anthropologist, I must mention the strong cultural variables involved with discussions of intelligence. There abound different folk concepts of what it means to possess intelligence. Each of us has, I suspect, some notion of who is smart and who is not. It sounds to me here like we are each trying to impose our own culturally shaped idea of intelligence in this discussion, which is why I have stressed the need for a definition that would be acceptable for all participants in this brainstorming activity. Even if it is only an ad hoc definition, it would be a start. I would like to turn the question back to Ramin Akbari. What specifically did you mean by ?intelligence?? In a previous life (the early 80s) I received an MA in TESL/applied linguistics from UCLA, and while working on that degree, I came across much literature directly related to this current discussion. Most of my books and articles collected at that time are now buried under a ton of stuff making them inaccessible (I?m sorry), but I do remember one specific thing that impressed me at the time: In one study, a skill shared by the largest number of language learners was the ability to mimic (spoken language). This is not necessarily a skill I would include under the idea of intelligence, but who knows? I hope this response has not been too crabby. But I do feel that without a viable definition, any discussion is bound to go nowhere. --Douglas Douglas S. Oliver UC Riverside Dept. of Anthropology Riverside, CA 92521 dsoliver at earthlink.net douglaso at citrus.ucr.edu From AKBARI_R at NET1CS.MODARES.AC.IR Thu Jan 8 05:56:14 1998 From: AKBARI_R at NET1CS.MODARES.AC.IR (Ramin Akbari) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:26:14 +330 Subject: Intelligence Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, The concept of intelligence,as most of you have indicated,is a vague one which needs a more careful scrutiny.It is no doubt a culture-bound concept which has been widely misused since its introduction into the academic community.However,I am sure that no one denies the existence of intelligence.Certainly,you have come across people who can learn better and faster than others;people who can prosper better than the others in identical social and academic situations.The opposition to the use of the term stems from two problems:First,intelligence has different definitions(problem solving ability;the ability to think in abstract terms;the ability to adapt to one's environment;...)and different models(e.g.,Sternbreg's three-component model,Gardner's multiple intelligences model,and Horn's two-level or component model...).The second problem is that the term has got some racist and political overtones.It smacks of segregation,discrimination,and injustice.However,these problems should not deter us to investigate the concept and find its relationship with other variables.We have theoretical controversies in many other ares.Take language proficiency as an example.In the literature related to language assessment and testing,there is an ongoing controversy over the structure the of the concept;some people say it is unitary,while others claim that it is divisible.And regarding the racial connotations of the term intelligence,the solution is not branding it as taboo and discouraging its investigation.In spite of the quest for universalism in philosophy and politics,we must not ignore or blurr individual differences. Instead,we must teach the society to value and respect the differences. My main purpose in my study is to find the relationship between intelligence and language acquisition.There are many differences in the way people learn and store a language,whether first or second,and I guess one of the factors is intelligence. I look forward to receiving your comments. P.S.Will you please send me some web addresses dealing with intelligence? Best wishes, Ramin Akbari, English Department, Tarbiat Modaress University, Tehran,Iran. From crasborn at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL Thu Jan 8 08:48:23 1998 From: crasborn at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL (Onno Crasborn) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:48:23 +0100 Subject: lefties web site Message-ID: There even is a left-handed male linguist with a web site on left-handedness (though not spec. in linguists :-)): http://www.xs4all.nl/~riksmits/index.html Onno (l-h., male, linguist) Onno Crasborn crasborn at rullet.leidenuniv.nl http://oasis.leidenuniv.nl/hil/sign-lang/ From karen at WORDWRITE.COM Thu Jan 8 08:37:12 1998 From: karen at WORDWRITE.COM (Karen Kay) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 00:37:12 -0800 Subject: lefties Message-ID: Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva said: > However, I have sort of specialised my left hand in > different tasks and, among other things, my left arm and hand are a bit > stronger than the right ones. This is quite unusual; even in left-handers, the right arm and hand are usually stronger. > I am amazed at the quantity of colleagues who are "lefties" (physically, > I mean) You find a higher proportion than expected of left-handers in institutions of all kinds. (Mental institutions, prisons, and universities.) This is evidence for the 'brain damage' theory of left-handedness. Another leftie, Karen karen at wordwrite.com From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Thu Jan 8 11:37:39 1998 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:37:39 +0100 Subject: lefties Message-ID: I am a left-handed male linguist, and I consider myself theory-oriented, but I am not gifted for music, and cannot be considered brilliant (I must work hard to understand Chomsky). I have a question: what is the aim, and what is the interest of this discussion? What about bald male linguists? *************************** Dr. Jose-Luis Mendivil Linguistica General Universidad de Zaragoza C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) Fax. 34 976761541 Ph. 34 976761000 Ext. 3978 From Zylogy at AOL.COM Thu Jan 8 15:18:58 1998 From: Zylogy at AOL.COM (Zylogy) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:18:58 EST Subject: lefties Message-ID: I am finding all this talk about lefties just a bit sinister:) Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX Thu Jan 8 17:09:00 1998 From: efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX (Max Enrique Figueroa Esteva) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:09:00 -0700 Subject: lefties In-Reply-To: Message-ID: So was I, sort of: I come, on my father's side, from a family of musicians and teachers, so as a child I played the violin and the piano.But afterwards I rejected that road... Max On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > Well, well... I'll add a footnote. I'm a left-handed male linguist who > was a musician for many years (oboe). > > -- Sherman Wilcox > From dcyr at YORKU.CA Thu Jan 8 16:33:53 1998 From: dcyr at YORKU.CA (Danielle Cyr) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:33:53 -0400 Subject: Avanti la "sinistra" festa Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Thanks for your numerous, generous, serious, righteous, "ambidextreous"," lefteous", spontaneous and hilarious answers on "left-handed male linguists". Altogether, from an epistemological perspective, it wasat the same time riotously funny and enlightening! The reaction shows that this was indeed an interesting question. Many of us have been tickeld by it on the past run obviously. But none of us really wanted to spend time and/or money in thourough investigation. Probably because the answeris too costly given the question itself ... Last year a guy wrote a book called "The Death of Science" or something like that, where he claims that science is about to die because so far, we've answered all the questions we could afford to answer and now we're caugh with only the expensive questions, i.e. those we will never be able to afford answering. Eeeeh! If this makes you nervous, you may want to gomfort the little knot inside your stomach by reading "L'ile des gauchers" ("The Lefties' Island" if there is a translation) by Alexandre Jardin (Ed. Gallimard, 1995 I think). This is about a British scientist whose wife if a lefty. He feels he never manage to love her appropriatly or enough, so he decides to move his whole family to this south Pacific island for lefties only. Since on the lefties' island people do things absolutely "the other way around", the move turns into a series of hilarious and fascinating philosophical and matrimonial adventures. Danielle Cyr Right-handed, with a slight ambidextrous tendency and a scientifically hyphenating sense of humour From DEGIULIO at NMSUA.NMSU.EDU Thu Jan 8 18:14:40 1998 From: DEGIULIO at NMSUA.NMSU.EDU (Stephen DeGiulio) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:14:40 MDT Subject: language masters (NY Times) Message-ID: Hey Greg, not so fast. Often words are found in many, sometimes scores, of languages, with variations in phonology which are transparent to someone familiar with the phonology of the languages involved (which sound systems themselves come in related families). So your million seperate lexical items becomes a very much smaller set of items which appear differently in different language contexts. (The same applies to the morphology of said lexemes, and to syntax.) How about meanings? In fluent conversation the meanings one gives to words, expressions, and grammatical structures can often be made clear by context, non-verbal cues, redundancies, and feedback from pointed questioning--even if those meanings differ from the most usual meanings of native, monolingual speakers; understanding is even easier--to one possessed of a sensitive, well informed linguistic intuition, a flexible imagination, and a minimum of correct data. Sure, one lifetime is not enough to fully master a single language, but that's not what is in question here. Perhaps the ability to speak many languages is little more than an occasionally useful stunt (or even the outcome of a relatively benign compulsion), but I don't see any reason to doubt that it is possible. (Compare to linguists, and others, who know a heck of a lot about certain languages without being able to speak or understand them.) ******************* Greg Thomson wrote: So then, he learned his 93 languages by the age of 40? O.K. Assuming he started at age zero, and managed to be lingual in each language with a modest 10,000 item vocabulary, then in 40 years, he acquired 930,000 non-native lexical items, or about 64 per day. Etc. etc. I wonder how he kept his 94 mental lexicons active enough so that they could function well in comprehension and production as he continued knowing all those languages for the next fifty years. (-; ********************************************************* Stephen De Giulio New Mexico State University 1215 Vermont Avenue at Alamogordo Alamogordo, NM 88310-6342, USA Voice: (505) 439-0797 email: Fax: (505) 439-3643 From AAGHBAR at GROVE.IUP.EDU Thu Jan 8 22:26:49 1998 From: AAGHBAR at GROVE.IUP.EDU (Ali Aghbar) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 17:26:49 -0500 Subject: Language Maters of a Different Kind Message-ID: I think people who master one language fully in adulthood should also be considered language masters. For example, Joseph Conrad, who was 20 before he started learning English should be considered a language master (even though he is reported to have had an atrocious pronunciation). I like to compare learning another language to playing a musical instrument, such as the piano. One can take a few lessons, play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and amuse oneself or a tolerant other, but to become a virtuoso, one needs many (20?) years of constant practice (in addition to dedication, motivation, etc.). And yes, it would be easier if one starts when one is younger. I think fiddling with many languages is like playing many musical instruments. To press the analogy further, when one has learned a foreign language, learning the next one is much easier, just as when one has learned a musical instrument, learning the next one becomes less problematic. (By the same token, as with languages, one might confuse the fingering if one learns musical instruments that are similar, such as the flute and the clarinet.) I do not intend to undermine the accomplishments of those who have learned many languages, especially those who have become quite good in using them. I am making a case for recognizing the accomplishment of those who have mastered one foreign language in adulthood to the point of becoming a virtuoso at it. Ali Aghbar, Dept. of English, Indiana U. of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705 aaghbar at grove.iup.edu Phone: (412) 357 4937 Fax: (412) 357 3056 From kfeld at UCRAC1.UCR.EDU Fri Jan 9 07:38:58 1998 From: kfeld at UCRAC1.UCR.EDU (David B. Kronenfeld) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 01:38:58 -0600 Subject: book on word semantics Message-ID: Anyone interested in a functional approach to word meaning, though one not directly tied to any particular current linguistic school (i.e. Functional--or Cognitive, Transformational,...), might want to look at my recent book, PLASTIC GLASSES AND CHURCH FATHERS: SEMANTIC EXTENSION FROM THE ETHNOSCIENCE TRADITION, (Oxford UP 1996 in the Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics; ISBN 0-19-509408-5). The approach grows out of anthropological work in semantics, attends seriously to the role of context and of presuppositions, and embodies an approach to socially distributed cognition and some utilization of schema theory from psychology. From Linguafile at AOL.COM Sat Jan 10 07:01:01 1998 From: Linguafile at AOL.COM (Linguafile) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:01:01 EST Subject: Intelligence and aptitude Message-ID: << Personally, I like to learn foreign languages (I am Brazilian and have a reasonable degree of fluency in 5 to 8 languages, depending on how strictly you define 'reasonable'), and one thing that always helped me was a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question. The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'-- is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the 'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy' may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign language learning capacity. Sergio Meira meira at ruf.rice.edu >> You're so cool, Sergio! :-) Jacquelyn Pillsbury Undergrad From Linguafile at AOL.COM Sat Jan 10 07:58:21 1998 From: Linguafile at AOL.COM (Linguafile) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:58:21 EST Subject: Funknet Message-ID: Wayne Leman wrote: << Danielle, it looks like a number of Funknet folks are interested in this topic. It's always fascinated me. I also predict that the sharpest lefties will score high on the Intuitive (typically, stronger at theory and abstract problem solving) scale of the Jungian personality framework. >> I'm personally an INTJ. While I haven't learned 93 languages, my capacity for them has been demonstrated (I'm working on #4, a senior in high school, will major in linguistics) and highest on the N-S scale (95% iNtuitive) of the Kiersey Temperament Sorter (Jungian personality framework). I know that NT people like myself are more attracted to mathematical/scientific disciplines, and NFs are more likely to choose languages/humanities. I am well aware I am in the tiny minority as pertains to this, but I have always wondered whether linguists would test closer to the center on the T-F (thinking-feeling) scale, since it involves both areas heavily. (Personally, I am 90% Thinking.) Of course, I am speaking here of language acquisition to fluency as a compent part of the linguistic science--obviously, it is not so in every area of the discipline. It would be interesting to see other linguists' test results in this framework. For the record, I am a right-handed female, and for those of you familiar with Jung's personality framework, I mention that because of my age my tertiary Feeling function has only begun to develop (and, being NT, I am loathe to admit this during recent testings!). That should be taken into consideration as well before my type is brought into discussions regarding my intellectual orientation. Jacquelyn Pillsbury linguafile at aol.com Morro Bay High School From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Sat Jan 10 20:17:21 1998 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 10:17:21 -1000 Subject: Funknet Message-ID: At 09:58 PM 1/9/98 -1000, Linguafile wrote: >I'm personally an INTJ. While I haven't learned 93 languages, my capacity for >them has been demonstrated (I'm working on #4, a senior in high school, will >major in linguistics) and highest on the N-S scale (95% iNtuitive) of the >Kiersey Temperament Sorter (Jungian personality framework). I know that NT >people like myself are more attracted to mathematical/scientific disciplines, >and NFs are more likely to choose languages/humanities. I am well aware I am >in the tiny minority as pertains to this, but I have always wondered whether >linguists would test closer to the center on the T-F (thinking-feeling) scale, >since it involves both areas heavily. (Personally, I am 90% Thinking.) Of >course, I am speaking here of language acquisition to fluency as a compent >part of the linguistic science--obviously, it is not so in every area of the >discipline. It would be interesting to see other linguists' test results in >this framework. I am INTP but I have developed the qualities of J (through academic work) and F through personal work with psychology and personal growth. To my mind, the ability to work with theories of any sort is best done with INTJ type psychology: the NT side of things leads to good insights and the necessary ability to follow them up in the mental world, and the "J" puts a premium on drawing conclusions, but the ability to switch to "P" makes it easier to let go of dead ends. I think the "F" side of things does not play a great role in theory making, but it needs to be consulted to avoid confusing things e.g. to avoid confusing linguistics with math for example. I am a right handed male who believes that handedness indicates propensity to interest rather than talent (i.e. no guarantee of intelligence or aptitude just an indicator of likely focus). Phil Bralich P.S. It might be good to be cautious of talking of matters that require cultivation of a mature psychology (e.g. type theory) as it could set off those who have no desire to look into themselves, but would prefer to dominate academia and beyond with brutish, lawyer-like intellectualism that knows nothing of discovery besides the expeditious use of premises to develop arguments that quash inquiry in the name of growing a movement (e.g. arguments that make it 'unscientific' to look at anything that cannot be physically measured). Remember Freud and Jung were ousted from universities years ago by a political movement (behaviorism) comprised of those who could not or would not look inside themselves for insights into man and the world that went any deeper than stimulus response. 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 mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Sun Jan 11 08:51:43 1998 From: mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Bella Kotik) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 11:51:43 +0300 Subject: lefthanders Message-ID: Dear collegues! All of you sharing your personal observations, did you have equal opportunity to watch other high professionals? There is some evidence< that really lefthanders are more presented at the two extremes of any distribution. Moreovere the general result of the attempts to connect laterality with types and level of abilities (language, math, music) show that, while there may be some relation of laterality (one or another index of it) really talanted subjects are less lateralized with highly efficient input from both hemispheres.That is why some of ambidexters may be at low end of distribution, some on high. The level of development of functions in each hemisphere matters more than difference berween them. Best wishes Bella Kotik, NCJW Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905,Israel From mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Sun Jan 11 09:16:01 1998 From: mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Bella Kotik) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:16:01 +0300 Subject: Ramin Akbari's search for intelligence in SLA Message-ID: Dear Funknets I agree with Rami that to take into account individual differences in SLA is very important. But how practical is study of intelligence in this context? especially taking into consideration the discussion about definitions and approaches? What do you think about learning styles and memory types as components of individuality in SLA, which is possible to operationalise in teaching techniques? What aspects of individuality would you suggest as most promissing for further applications? Best wishes Bella Kotik, NCJW Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905,Israel From mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL Sun Jan 11 09:44:31 1998 From: mskotik at PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL (Bella Kotik) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:44:31 +0300 Subject: Language Maters of a Different Kind Message-ID: Dear Ali! When you speek about the degree of mastering, of course there is continuum, but at some point you may say:this is a reasonable level of mastering. I started to learn Hebrew (My mothertongue is Russian)at the age 44. After 2,5 years attempted to lecture and next year got a university course. Now after 5 years,I still do not feel a virtuose )far from)and often ask people how to say something and slow in reading (small-right direction, no vowels, difficult script)but I am well ajusted working and communicating. By the way for those who link linguistic and musical abilities: I am totally musically deaf. Teachers tried to teach me piano from age 6 and usually refused after some attempts to continue. But I learned English mostly by myself at school age and now Hebrew. I think an important factor for me was that, besides great motivation, I new my individuality and used it maximally for developing my individual approach: I prefere listening to reading, so I spent much time listening to tapes and later attending lectures and seminars in Hebrew U. writing down new words and expressions, than looking up in dictionnary or asking people. Watching animations with my daughter helped a lot and other TV programs. Best wishes Bella Kotik, NCJW Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905,Israel From annes at HTDC.ORG Mon Jan 12 19:41:28 1998 From: annes at HTDC.ORG (Anne Sing) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 09:41:28 -1000 Subject: NLP Standards on the Web Message-ID: The VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) Consortium (http://www.vrml.org) has just accepted my proposal to form a working group to develop standards for the interaction of Natural Language Processing tools with 3D animations for the purpose of command and control and interactive dialogs with 3D animations. For those who would like to know more about the proposed standards or would like to participate in the working group, the proposal for the working group and the initial set of standards can be found at http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/nlp-anim. The VRML Consortium is a group made up of individuals working to create international standards for VRML under the International Organization of Standardization. The VRML Consortium web page describes these efforts, "The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. ISO is online at http://www.iso.ch. The Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has worked cooperatively over the past two years with the VRML community to transpose the publicly available VRML specification into an International Standard. Within JTC 1, the development work on VRML is assigned to Subcommittee 24 (SC24) whose area of work is Computer Graphics and Image Processing. VRML 97, the latest specification, can be seen at http://www.vrml.org/Specifications/VRML97/. As you know current groups such as EAGLES or the MUC conferences that propose standards for NLP have not done much in the area of interactive dialogs or command and control. For this reason, the discussion on the VRML list concerning the development of standards for NLP in the area of interactive dialogs and command and control may be of value to many readers of this list. To subscribe to the list send the message "subscribe nlp-anim" to nlp-anim-request at vrml.org. To view the initial proposals go to http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/nlp-anim. 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 Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU Mon Jan 12 21:43:25 1998 From: kilroe at CSD.UWM.EDU (patricia kilroe) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 15:43:25 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: sign off funknet From khwkim at NMS.KYUNGHEE.AC.KR Tue Jan 13 08:26:56 1998 From: khwkim at NMS.KYUNGHEE.AC.KR (Kyunghwan Kim) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 17:26:56 +0900 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Please delete my e-mail address from your funknet subscription list. From cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU Tue Jan 20 20:45:36 1998 From: cleirig at SPEECH.USYD.EDU.AU (Chris Cleirigh) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 07:45:36 +1100 Subject: ICSLP '98 Message-ID: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SPOKEN LANGUAGE PROCESSING ICSLP '98 Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre November 30th - December 4th 1998 The ICSLP '98 conference will continue the eight year tradition of the ICSLP series in bringing together professionals from all the diverse disciplines that contribute to Spoken Language Processing. It will be the premier international display of the state-of-the-art in this broad field in 1998. The conference will build bridges between people and sub-disciplines in order to create and nurture synergies that are important for the future of the field. Keynote presentations and other plenary events which bring both experience and vision of multi-disciplinary attacks on grand challenges in spoken language processing in both humans and machines will contribute to our aims. A student day at which full-time student registrants may present their ideas under the guidance of senior mentors is also planned. However, it is the quality of the delegate presentations which will be the major factor in making ICSLP '98 a truly landmark event. This call for papers offers to you the opportunity to be a part of this significant event. CO-SPONSORING SOCIETIES Acoustical Society of America Acoustical Society of China Acoustical Society of Japan Acoustical Society of Korea Association for Computational Linguistics Association for Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing Audiological Society of Australia Inc. Australian Linguistic Society European Speech Communication Association IEEE Signal Processing Society International Phonetic Association International Society for Phonetic Sciences INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Souguil J.M. Ann, Seoul National University, Korea Jens P. Blauert, Ruhr-Universitaet, Germany Michael Brooke, University of Bath, United Kingdom Timothy Bunnell, University of Delaware, USA Anne Cutler, Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands Hiroya Fujisaki, Science University of Tokyo, Japan Julia Hirschberg, AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA Bjorn Granstrom, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Lin-Shan Lee, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Roger Moore, Defence Research Authority, United Kingdom John J. Ohala, University of California, Berkeley, USA Louis C.W. Pols, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Christel Sorin, Centre Nationale d'Etude des Telecommunications, France Yoh'ichi Tohkura, ATR, Japan Jialu Zhang, Academia Sinica, China CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT Tour Hosts Conference & Exhibition Organisers GPO Box 128 SYDNEY NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 9262 2277 Fax: +61 2 9262 3135 Email: icslp98 at tourhosts.com.au SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Submissions are invited in any of the following technical topic areas: A. Human Speech Production, Acoustic-Phonetics and Articulatory Models B. Human Speech Perception C. Language Acquisition: First and Second Languages D. Spoken Language and Dialogue Modelling; Dialogue Systems E. Isolated Word Recognition F. Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition G. Utterance Verification and Word Spotting H. Speaker Adaptation and Normalisation in Speech Recognition I. Speaker and Language Recognition; Dialects and Speaking Styles J. Multilingual Perception and Recognition K. Signal Processing, Speech Analysis and Feature Extraction L. Robust Speech Processing in Adverse Environments M. Hidden Markov Model Techniques N. Artificial Neural Networks, Fuzzy and Evolutionary Algorithms O. Spoken Language Understanding Systems P. Text-to-Speech Synthesis Q. Prosody and Emotion; Focus, Stress and Accent R. Speech Coding S. Spoken Language Generation Systems; Concept-to-Speech T. Spoken Language Translation Systems U. Analysis of Speech and Hearing Disorders V. Speech Processing for the Speech-impaired and Hearing-impaired W. Segmentation, Labelling and Speech Corpora X. Speech Technology Applications and Human-Machine Interfaces Y. Spoken Language Processing and Multimodality Z. Other Areas of Spoken Language Processing FORMAT OF SUBMISSION Acceptance of papers for presentation at the conference will be on the basis of reviewed summaries. You should submit a summary of your paper comprising approximately 500 words. At the top of the page, please specify the following: Corresponding Author contact details: ?Full Name ?Full Postal Mail Address ?Email Address ?Fax Number ?Phone Number Proposed Paper details: ?Paper Title ?Author List ?Topic ID (A-Z) ?Four additional keywords ?Presentation preference (oral, poster, student day) The Topic ID should be a single category from the topic list specified as an alphabetic letter; if your submission falls within the broad area of spoken language processing but is not explicitly represented in the topic list, please use the Z category. The four additional keywords are requested in order to assist the programme committee in assigning reviewers. MEANS OF SUBMISSION Electronic submission of summaries via the World Wide Web is preferred. A Summary Submission Form is available via URL = http://cslab.anu.edu.au/icslp98 . Alternatively, a pro-forma for email submission can be obtained from this URL or by emailing icslp98 at tourhosts.com.au . Email submissions should be sent to icslp98 at one.net.au . If electronic submission is not possible, postal submissions (4 copies) to the ICSLP '98 Secretariat address specified below will be accepted provided that they adhere to the above format. Please do NOT fax submissions. RESTRICTIONS ON SUBMISSIONS Please note that only ASCII summaries written in English will be accepted. Do not include any attachments, graphics, or embedded formatting commands. Given the large number of submissions we expect to receive, anything that cannot be printed directly will be rejected without consideration. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT You should receive an acknowledgment of receipt within 72 hours of electronically submitting your summary. If this does not happen, then you should resend your submission by email to icslp98 at one.net.au with the word RESUBMISSION at the beginning of the subject line. If an acknowledgment is still not forthcoming, an email problem should be assumed, and the summary submitted by fax. Please do not resubmit or send by fax for any other reasons than lack of acknowledgment from the conference. CONDITIONS OF ACCEPTANCE All papers must be presented in English by one of the listed authors. That author will be required to register no later than the full-paper submission date. Summaries will not be accepted after the submission date. STUDENT DAY SUBMISSIONS Students wishing to submit papers for the SST Student Day should submit summaries as above. These submissions will be separately reviewed and published under the banner of the 7th Australian Speech Science & Technology Conference and will also be included on the CDROM containing the ICSLP '98 proceedings. SUBMISSION ADDRESSES World Wide Web: URL = http://cslab.anu.edu.au/icslp98 E-mail Submission: icslp98 at one.net.au Postal: ICSLP '98 Secretariat, GPO Box 128, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia Technical queries: Robert Dale - email: rdale at mpce.mq.edu.au General Information: Email: icslp98 at tourhosts.com.au IMPORTANT DATES Friday 1st May, 1998 Paper summaries due for review Friday 26th June, 1998 Acceptance notification Friday 21st August, 1998 Deadline for full-paper submission From matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI Thu Jan 22 13:51:21 1998 From: matmies at ANTARES.UTU.FI (Matti Miestamo) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 15:51:21 +0200 Subject: TOC: SKY1997 Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland Message-ID: SKY 1997 (The Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland) (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 188 pp.) is now available! Table of Contents: SCOTT DELANCEY: What an Innatist Argument should look like GEOFFREY K. PULLUM & BARBARA C. SCHOLZ: Theoretical Linguistics and the Ontology of Linguistic Structure ESA ITKONEN: The Social Ontology of Linguistic Meaning URPO NIKANNE: Lexical Conceptual Structure and Syntactic Arguments ESA PENTTIL?: Holistic Meaning and Cognition JARNO RAUKKO: The Status of Polysemy in Linguistics: From Discrete Meanings to Default Flexibility ANNA SOLIN: Debating Theoretical Assumptions: Readings of Critical Linguistics (Price USD 20 / FIM 100 plus shipping&handling) **************************** Also available: SKY 1996 (Ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Elise Ka"rkka"inen, 176 pp.) 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 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 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? SKY 1993 (Ed. by Susanna Shore and Maria Vilkuna, 272 pp.) GENERAL SECTION: DEIRDRE WILSON & DAN SPERBER: Pragmatics and Time LAURENCE R. HORN: Economy and Redundancy in a Dualistic Model of Natural Language LAURI CARLSON: Dialogue Games with Finnish Clitics MARIA VILKUNA: Finnish juuri and just: Varieties of Contextual Uniqueness KNUD LAMBRECHT: C'est pas con comme idee - The Syntax of Non-Focal Predicate Nominals in Spoken French AULI HAKULINEN: The Grammar of Opening Routines PIRKKO NUOLIJA"RVI: Interacting in an Institutional Setting SUSANNA SHORE: A Functional and Social-Semiotic Perspective on Language, Context and Text NEWS REPORTING, WORLD CRISES, AND IDEOLOGY: JAN-OLA O"STMAN: Introduction ANNA-MARI MA"KELA": Functional Ambivalence in Headlines in The Sun and The Independent JAANA PO"PPO"NEN & PIRJO-LIISA ST at HLBERG: Whose War Is It? 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 of the earlier editions: USD 15 / FIM 70 plus shipping&handling) ****************************** For orders, please contact: Bookstore Tiedekirja address: Kirkkokatu 14, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358 9 635177 fax +358 9 635017 e-mail Tiedekirja at pp.kolumbus.fi For further 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 Visit our WWW-pages at http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ (Tilaukset Suomesta suoraan SKY:sta") ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel, @ stands for 'a Swedish o', an 'a' with a small circle on it. ) From shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU Thu Jan 22 23:28:40 1998 From: shelli at BABEL.LING.NWU.EDU (Michele Feist) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 17:28:40 -0600 Subject: call for papers: SCIL 10. Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS. Student Conference in Linguistics 10 Special Theme: Linguistics in Cognitive Science Keynote Speaker: Lila Gleitman June 6-7, 1998 Northwestern University The 10th annual Student Conference in Linguistics will be held at Northwestern University in June 1998. SCIL is a student-run conference which aims to bring together graduate students from around the world to present their research and build connections with other students. The proceedings are published in the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. We invite original, unpublished work in any area of linguistics. We would particularly like to encourage submissions which border other disciplines, in keeping with the conference theme. This includes, but is not limited to, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, anthropological linguistics, speech perception and language acquisition. Guidelines for Submission: Please submit ten copies of a one-page, 500-word, anonymous abstract for a twenty-minute paper (optionally, one additional page for data and/or references may be appended), along with a 3" by 5" card with: (1) your name, (2) your affiliation, (3) your address, phone number, and e-mail address, (4) the title of the paper, and (5) an indication of which subdivision of linguistics best describes the topic (e.g., Phonetics, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Psycholinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, etc.) The abstract should be as specific as possible, and it should clearly indicate the data covered, outline the arguments presented, and include any broader implications of the work. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday March 13. Send abstracts to: SCIL 10 Department of Linguistics Northwestern University 2016 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208 E-mail abstracts will be accepted in ASCII ONLY. The email message should also contain your name, affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail address, the title of your paper, and the area of linguistics within which it falls. Email abstracts should be submitted to scil at ling.nwu.edu by 5pm on March 13. Further information is available at http://www.ling.nwu.edu/~scil. Questions can be directed to scil at ling.nwu.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From holton at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU Fri Jan 23 23:31:13 1998 From: holton at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Gary Holton) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 15:31:13 -0800 Subject: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL) Message-ID: **** CALL FOR PAPERS **** Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Santa Barbara, CA May 9-10, 1998 The linguistics department at the University or California, Santa Barbara issues a call for papers to be presented at its first annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL). The workshop will be a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. The workshop will take place on Saturday and Sunday May 9-10, 1998 on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Our invited speakers will be Nicola Bessel, Wallace Chafe, and Marianne Mithun. Dr. Bessell has worked extensively on the phonetics/phonology interface in Coeur d'Alene Salish. Dr. Chafe's current research involves documentation of the Seneca and Caddo languages. He is also writing a popular book on the importance of Native American languages. Dr. Mithun has just completed a book on the Languages of North America for the green series put out by Cambridge University Press. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in linguistics. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be one page with a 500 word limit. A separate page for data and references may be included, if necessary. Abstracts may be submitted in hardcopy or by email. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 22, 1998. For hardcopy submittal, please send four copies of your anonymous one-page abstract. In the envelope, include a 3x5 card with the following information: a. name b. affiliation c. mailing address d. phone number e. e-mail address f. title of your paper Hardcopy abstracts should be mailed to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Email submissions are encouraged. To submit an abstract by email, the information that would be included on the 3x5 card should be in the body of the email message, with the anonymous abstract sent as an attachment. Email abstracts should be sent to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: February 22, 1998 Notification of acceptance will be by email in mid-March. General Information Santa Barbara is situated on the Pacific Ocean near the Santa Ynez mountains. The UCSB campus is located near the Santa Barbara airport, and is approximately 90 miles north of LAX airport in Los Angeles. Shuttle buses run from LAX to Santa Barbara several times each day. Information about hotel accomodations will be provided on request. Crash space for participants may be available with graduate students in the UCSB linguistics department for those who arrange early. WAIL is co-sponsored by the UCSB linguistics department and the department's Native American Indian Languages (NAIL) study group, which has been meeting regularly in Santa Barbara since 1990, providing a forum for the discussion of issues relating to Native American language and culture. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776. From fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Sat Jan 24 23:06:57 1998 From: fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Frederick Newmeyer) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 15:06:57 -0800 Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO? Message-ID: Matthew Dryer has shown that, once we correct for areal and genetic bias, the 'preference' for OV order is greater than that for VO order in the world's languages. But interestingly, I have seen it claimed in a variety of places that attested (or uncontroversially reconstructed) word order changes from OV to VO are far more common than those from VO to OV. My first question is how widely accepted is such a claim among historical linguists and typologists? Is there much support for such an idea and its implication of an overall general 'drift' from OV to VO? If this claim seems well motivated, the conjunction of the 'preference' for OV and the 'drift' to VO is very curious, no? One might even conclude that the OV preference is a remnant of a 'proto-world' OV (caused by what?), which functional forces (but what functional forces?) are skewing gradually to VO. And, indeed, linguists coming from a variety of directions (Venneman, Givon, Bichakjian, and others) have concluded something very much along those lines. I'm curious what thoughts FUNKNET subscribers might have on this question. I'll summarize if there is enough interest. Fritz Newmeyer fjn at u.washington.edu From aske at EARTHLINK.NET Sun Jan 25 03:17:48 1998 From: aske at EARTHLINK.NET (Jon Aske) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 22:17:48 -0500 Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This is about Fritz's question, which of course touched me deeply. Here I go. In my dissertation on Basque word order (UC Berkeley 1997) I proposed a solution for the "original" predominance of OV order as well as for the predominance of OV > VO shifts over VO > VO shift. My argument goes like this, in summarized form: 1) Word order in most languages (even in this odd language known as English) is best seen in terms not of grammatical relations, but of the pragmatic relations topic and focus. In my view, every assertion has a focus element, a most newsworthy, noteworthy, "dynamic", or "focal" idea, which bears the main accent of the rheme (rheme = assertion minus settings; topics are a type of setting). Most assertions, though not all, also have a topic (the referential "ground" of the assertion, a special type of "setting"), which in running discourse is typically expressed covertly (by agreement or an unaccented verb-bound pronoun. (Assertions which don't have topics are typically those in which the subject, the default topic, is the focus and no other argument is filling the topic role.) There is a strong correlation between grammatical subject and topic, on the one hand and grammatical object (when there is one) and focus. Indeed, the category subject seems to be but the grammaticalization of the category topic (although not all subjects are topics, and some are indeed foci). 2) The focus element, besides being accented, typically goes either in (1) F1 position: Right before the verb, which is also rheme-first position, only preceded by any settings there might be, including a phrasal topic; or it goes in (2) F2 position: Right after the verb (rheme-second position); or finally (3) It may also be "bumped" to the end of the rheme, or "dislocated" to the right, as it were, into an intonation unit of its own (not to be confused with so-called "right dislocation" in English, which is really an antitopic construction). 3) Languages fall into two basic types: Type 1: those which place the focus constituent consistently in F1 position (right before the verb), and never in F2 position, (so-called OV languages); and Type 2: languages which place the focus constituent either in F1 position (right before the verb) OR in F2 position (right after the verb), depending on the construction and depending on the degree of salience, or focality of the focus in the assertion. More focal foci go in F1 position and less focal ones in F2 position. (Focus bumping is a possibility in either language type, though it may be rare in some rigid Type 1 languages). Thus in Spanish, for example, a "VO language", in declarative assertions (statements) a complement focus constituent goes after the verb (F2 position), regardless of whether it is an object or the subject (when the focus is the verbal idea or the "polarity"--in emphatic or contrastive assertions--they go in F1 position). In emphatic or contrastive assertions, as well as in content questions, where the focus is very focal, the focus constituents goes before the verb (F1 position). (English is a funny VO language in that a subject focus goes in F1 position. But most VO languages seem to be like Spanish.) In an "OV language", on the other hand, the focus is always in F1 position, regardless of the construction or the degree of focality of the focus. In other words, each system has its merits. "OV languages" are more consistent than "VO languages" in focus placement, and "VO languages" have a syntactic means of coding different degrees of focality (marked and unmarked), at least for complement foci. 4) Word order change: OV > VO order change consists in the development of a secondary position for a focus constituent, namely F2 position, in a language which traditionally only used F1 position. And VO > OV order change consists in the loss of F2 position for focus constituents in languages that had it at one time. ------------------------- So, why is OV > VO order change more common than the inverse: 1) I believe that there is a relatively simple mechanism for the development of an F2 position in a Type 1 language, namely through the gradual overuse of the strategy of focus bumping to an intonation unit of its own following the main assertion. This, I believe, is what is happening in modern spoken Basque, presumably under the influence of Romance languages (all Basque speakers are bilingual now). Remember that focus bumping is available to both Type 1 and Type 2 languages, though VO languages presumably use it more often for a variety of reasons. I believe that the overuse of focus bumping leads to the reanalysis of rheme-final position as rheme-second (F2) position, since, after all, in actual speech there are hardly ever any constituents between the verb and a bumped focus, the separation being primarily an intonational one. 2) I believe that losing an F2 position ("VO > OV"), that is, losing a contrast, is a much less common change because there isn't a simple mechanism which favors that change and perhaps also for unknown cognitive reasons. The process of losing F2 focus position would also seem to require a long period in which the language is relatively free of contact with VO languages, which in general use the focus bumping strategy to a relatively significant degree. Since language contact seems to have been on the increase in the last few thousand years, this might in part explain the preponderance of Type 1 > Type 2 change in the historical record. I hope you followed me this far. Please let me know what you think. Cheers, Jon ________________________________ Jon Aske - Jon.Aske at salem.mass.edu Department of Foreign Languages Meier Hall 248B Salem State College Salem, Massachusetts 01970 978/741-6479 __________________________ Jon Aske - aske at earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~aske/ __________________________ Conran's Law: First things first; second things never. > -----Original Message----- > From: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics > [mailto:FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU]On Behalf Of Frederick Newmeyer > Sent: Saturday, January 24, 1998 6:07 PM > To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU > Subject: A 'drift' from OV to VO? > > > Matthew Dryer has shown that, once we correct for areal and genetic bias, > the 'preference' for OV order is greater than that for VO order in the > world's languages. But interestingly, I have seen it claimed in a variety > of places that attested (or uncontroversially reconstructed) word order > changes from OV to VO are far more common than those from VO to OV. > > My first question is how widely accepted is such a claim among historical > linguists and typologists? Is there much support for such an idea and its > implication of an overall general 'drift' from OV to VO? > > If this claim seems well motivated, the conjunction of the 'preference' > for OV and the 'drift' to VO is very curious, no? One might even conclude > that the OV preference is a remnant of a 'proto-world' OV (caused by > what?), which functional forces (but what functional forces?) are skewing > gradually to VO. And, indeed, linguists coming from a variety of > directions (Venneman, Givon, Bichakjian, and others) have concluded > something very much along those lines. > > I'm curious what thoughts FUNKNET subscribers might have on this question. > I'll summarize if there is enough interest. > > Fritz Newmeyer > fjn at u.washington.edu > From annes at HTDC.ORG Tue Jan 27 05:16:18 1998 From: annes at HTDC.ORG (Anne Sing) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 19:16:18 -1000 Subject: PENN TREE BANK STYLE NLP SOFTWARE AVAILABLE Message-ID: To the readers; Derek Bickerton and Phil Bralich of Ergo Linguistics Technology would like to announce the release of free software to the Computational Linguistics, NLP, MT, and linguistics communities. The software offering is a pre-release called "BracketDoctor." It provides a parsed analysis of input strings including labeled brackets and trees in the style of the Penn Treebank of the Linguistic Data Consortium as outlined in "Bracketing Guidelines for Treebank II Style Penn Treebank Project" (Linguistic Data Consortium 1995). While the entire range of structures of that work is not supported, this is the only parser that can generate any such trees and brackets and thus represents a major breakthrough for this field. We understand that this is unlikely to be nominated for citations or awards, but as this is the only software available that can generate such labeled brackets and trees, we believe it is an important contribution to this field of research and it should be of value to researchers in academia and industry alike as well as to students working through their introductory syntax text books. We are announcing this release to linguistics news-lists, translation lists, and the like as well to our entire mailing list of researchers and decision makers in industry, government, and academia. We feel this release is particularly important because even the major universities such as Stanford and MIT as well as companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Xerox do not have programs that offer this sort of demonstration of their ability to work with the Penn Treebank styles. Of course we recognize the importance of being aware of the entire field of NLP and of not misrepresenting such things to government, industry, or academia, so we feel it is important to distribute this as widely as possible as quickly as possible. As this is the only parser that generates Penn Treebank style labeled bracketings and trees, and as NLP, Linguistics, and Computational Linguistics communities have agreed that the Penn Treebank styles are the standard for this field, we feel compelled to suggest that this parser be accepted as the default standard for parsers in the field today until such time as other parsers can show that they can do an equal or better job with the Penn Treebank style book, or until such time as the Penn Treebank styles are removed as the standard. We will also be distributing this software to members of the LDC, EAGLES, the organizers of the MUC conferences, and other organizations that propose to set standards for NLP. (For possible alternative standards for NLP other than the these go to http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/NLP-ANIM). We realize such claims as these may invite accusations of arrogance of immodesty, but what is the point of having such standards as the Penn Treebank II guidelines if the one parser that can generate them is NOT given a central role in the field as a whole and in the journals as the standard against which all other parsers must be measured. As long as we are the default standard for the generation of trees and brackets in the Penn Treebank style, then many publications and proposals in NLP will need to mention this software in their review of current technologies and work. For that purpose, the reference should refer to Philip Bralich and Derek Bickerton, 1998. "BracketDoctor," Ergo Linguistic Technologies, Honolulu, Hawaii. The BracketDoctor can be obtained by writing to Derek Bickerton (derek at hawaii.edu) or Phil Bralich (bralich at hawaii.edu) or it can be downloaded from our web site. It is a standard Windows 95 program in a setup file. It requires 1000 kilobytes of space and less than one megabyte of ram to run. Sentences parse in real time. Phil Bralich P.S. For those who can sign a non-disclosure agreement it is also possible to receive the product called "MemoMaster" which demonstrates our abilities with: 1) question/answer, statement/response repartee (using notes and reminders), 2) NLP messaging for sending faxes, email, and memos, and 3) command and control for browsers and operating systems (a great add- on for any speech rec system). Just email me or a send a fax to (808)539-3924 requesting the non-disclosure. 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 noll at LUNA.CAS.USF.EDU Tue Jan 27 20:47:26 1998 From: noll at LUNA.CAS.USF.EDU (Jane Noll (PSY)) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 15:47:26 -0500 Subject: Chat Room Talk Message-ID: I am in the middle of writing my proposal for a dissertation in the area of psycholinguistics. Part of my proposal involves a content analysis of spontaneous speech. I was curious whether anyone has studied Internet Chat Room "talk" to determine how similar it is to spontaneous speech. I've done a literature search, but would appreciate any references that come to mind or search terms that might be helpful in finding such studies. Also, what are the ethics of analyzing such conversations on the internet? Thanks for your help! Jane Noll Jane A. Noll, M.Ed. Department of Psychology University of South Florida Tampa, FL 33620-7200 Internet: noll at luna.cas.usf.edu From annes at HTDC.ORG Fri Jan 30 02:24:06 1998 From: annes at HTDC.ORG (Anne Sing) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 16:24:06 -1000 Subject: NLP DOWNLOAD PROBLEM Message-ID: The Ergo server problem which prevented some of the downloads from working has been fixed. You may now download the BracketDoctor without problems. (http://www.ergo-ling.com). Phil Bralich >To the readers; >Derek Bickerton and Phil Bralich of Ergo Linguistics Technology would like >to announce the release of free software to the Computational Linguistics, >NLP, MT, and linguistics communities. The software offering is a >pre-release called "BracketDoctor." It provides a parsed analysis of input >strings including labeled brackets and trees in the style of the Penn >Treebank of the Linguistic Data Consortium as outlined in "Bracketing >Guidelines for Treebank II Style Penn Treebank Project" (Linguistic Data >Consortium 1995). While the entire range of structures of that work is not >supported, this is the only parser that can generate any such trees and >brackets and thus represents a major breakthrough for this field. > >We understand that this is unlikely to be nominated for citations or awards, >but as this is the only software available that can generate such labeled >brackets and trees, we believe it is an important contribution to this field >of research and it should be of value to researchers in academia and >industry alike as well as to students working through their introductory >syntax text books. We are announcing this release to linguistics >news-lists, translation lists, and the like as well to our entire mailing >list of researchers and decision makers in industry, government, and >academia. We feel this release is particularly important because even the >major universities such as Stanford and MIT as well as companies such as >Microsoft, IBM, and Xerox do not have programs that offer this sort of >demonstration of their ability to work with the Penn Treebank styles. > >Of course we recognize the importance of being aware of the entire field of >NLP and of not misrepresenting such things to government, industry, or >academia, so we feel it is important to distribute this as widely as >possible as quickly as possible. As this is the only parser that generates >Penn Treebank style labeled bracketings and trees, and as NLP, Linguistics, >and Computational Linguistics communities have agreed that the Penn Treebank >styles are the standard for this field, we feel compelled to suggest that this >parser be accepted as the default standard for parsers in the field today >until such time as other parsers can show that they can do an equal or >better job with the Penn Treebank style book, or until such time as the Penn >Treebank styles are removed as the standard. We will also be distributing >this software to members of the LDC, EAGLES, the organizers of the MUC >conferences, and other organizations that propose to set standards for NLP. >(For possible alternative standards for NLP other than the these go to >http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/NLP-ANIM). > >As long as we are the default standard for the generation of trees and >brackets in the Penn Treebank style, then many publications and proposals >in NLP will need to mention this software in their review of current >technologies and work. For that purpose, the reference should refer to >Philip Bralich and Derek Bickerton, 1998. "BracketDoctor," Ergo Linguistic >Technologies, Honolulu, Hawaii. > >The BracketDoctor can be obtained by writing to Derek Bickerton >(derek at hawaii.edu) or Phil Bralich (bralich at hawaii.edu) or it can be downloaded >from our web site. It is a standard Windows 95 program in a setup file. It >requires 1000 kilobytes of space and less than one megabyte of ram to run. >Sentences parse in real time. > >Phil Bralich > >P.S. For those who can sign a non-disclosure agreement it is also possible >to receive the product called "MemoMaster" which demonstrates our abilities >with: 1) question/answer, statement/response repartee (using notes and >reminders), 2) NLP messaging for sending faxes, email, and memos, and 3) >command and control for browsers and operating systems (a great add- on for >any speech rec system). Just email me or a send a fax to (808)539-3924 >requesting the non-disclosure. > > >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 > Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924