From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Jan 1 19:49:24 1999 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 11:49:24 -0800 Subject: functionalism vs generativism vs ... In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19981231080146.006ba58c@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Thu, 31 Dec 1998, Dick Hudson wrote: > Guy Deutscher's query implies that there are only two positions: > functionalism or generativism. Those who align themselves with one of these > positions may like to think this is so, but it ain't. There's also > cognitivism (non-modular, but also not functionalist in the `discourse' > sense), and Labov's view (explicitly non-functional but not generativist in > the normal sense either), and .... I have no argument with Dick's larger point, but I want to take issue with the definition of functionalism which is implied here. The differences between functional and formal approaches have always been described, and in part defined, by arguments about what counts as data. As generative grammar has come to take more and more cognizance of typological and historical data, it may be true, by this point in time, that functionalism defined by the database differs from formalism primarily in its inclusion of discourse structure as both explanans and explanandum. But while there are functionalists who attempt to explain everything in discourse terms, this can't be taken as a definition of functionalism, unless we want to exclude the likes of Givon or Bybee or Heine from that label. Such a restriction would certainly be controversial. The basic difference between functionalism and formalism is in where explanations are lodged, and what counts as an explanation. Formal linguistics generates explanations out of structure--so that a structural category like Subjacency counts as an explanation for certain facts about various syntactic structures and constructions. Most contemporary formal theories, certainly generative grammar, provide ontological grounding for these explanations in a hypothesized, but unexplored and unexplained, biologically based universal language faculty. Functionalists, in contrast, find explanations in function. Formal principles can be no more than generalizations over data, so that most generative "explanation" seems to functionalists to proceed on the dormitive principle. There is a range of different functional arenas in which explanation can be sought--sentence processing / memory constraints, discourse functions, cognitive structure, even historical tendencies. Of course most researchers specialize in one of these areas, (or at least in one at a time; think of Chafe's earlier work on semantic patterns as explanation for structure, and his later work primarily on discourse). And sometimes--as everywhere in science and scholarship--some of us come to believe that all real explanation lies in our own bailiwick. But in truth the different domains of functional explanation don't separate out all that easily. In particular, when we talk about cognitive explanations, we're explicitly claiming that linguistic structure is informed by general patterns of thought. Obviously these same cognitive factors must inform other domains such as discourse structure as well, so that at a sufficiently deep level of analysis "cognitive" and "discourse-functional" theories are complementary. While it is certainly true that, on the contemporary linguistic scene, "cognitive" and "functional" linguists represent distinct (though overlapping) social-interactional sets, I think it is a mistake to regard them as competing theoretical frameworks. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Mon Jan 4 10:17:32 1999 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 10:17:32 +0000 Subject: functionalism vs generativism vs ... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks to Scott Delancey for the helpful explanation of functionalism. I'm very happy to hear such an inclusive definition, but I wonder what it excludes. What would an explanation have to be like to count as non-functional? After all, even an explanation like subjacency would count as functional if we assumed that it was a cognitive constraint (as Chomskians would assume, I think). And the original functionalists in phonology insisted that elements were defined by contrasts within the system, i.e. by their function of contrasting with other elements. My memory of Systemic Functional Grammar is that the same is true there. This sounds like an extra kind of function, which isn't included in Scott's list - a `formal function'? So maybe *any* explanation is by definition functional, even if the word 'function' isn't used? >I have no argument with Dick's larger point, but I want to take issue >with the definition of functionalism which is implied here. The >differences between functional and formal approaches have always been >described, and in part defined, by arguments about what counts as data. >As generative grammar has come to take more and more cognizance of >typological and historical data, it may be true, by this point in time, >that functionalism defined by the database differs from formalism >primarily in its inclusion of discourse structure as both explanans and >explanandum. But while there are functionalists who attempt to explain >everything in discourse terms, this can't be taken as a definition >of functionalism, unless we want to exclude the likes of Givon or >Bybee or Heine from that label. Such a restriction would certainly be >controversial. > The basic difference between functionalism and formalism is in >where explanations are lodged, and what counts as an explanation. >Formal linguistics generates explanations out of structure--so >that a structural category like Subjacency counts as an >explanation for certain facts about various syntactic structures >and constructions. Most contemporary formal theories, certainly >generative grammar, provide ontological grounding for these >explanations in a hypothesized, but unexplored and unexplained, >biologically based universal language faculty. > Functionalists, in contrast, find explanations in function. >Formal principles can be no more than generalizations over data, so that >most generative "explanation" seems to functionalists to proceed on the >dormitive principle. > There is a range of different functional arenas in which >explanation can be sought--sentence processing / memory >constraints, discourse functions, cognitive structure, even historical >tendencies. Of course most researchers specialize in one of these areas, >(or at least in one at a time; think of Chafe's earlier work on >semantic patterns as explanation for structure, and his later work >primarily on discourse). And sometimes--as everywhere in science and >scholarship--some of us come to believe that all real explanation lies in >our own bailiwick. But in truth the different domains of functional >explanation don't separate out all that easily. > In particular, when we talk about cognitive explanations, we're >explicitly claiming that linguistic structure is informed by general >patterns of thought. Obviously these same cognitive factors must inform >other domains such as discourse structure as well, so that at a >sufficiently deep level of analysis "cognitive" and "discourse-functional" >theories are complementary. While it is certainly true that, on the >contemporary linguistic scene, "cognitive" and "functional" linguists >represent distinct (though overlapping) social-interactional sets, >I think it is a mistake to regard them as competing theoretical >frameworks. > >Scott DeLancey >Department of Linguistics >University of Oregon >Eugene, OR 97403, USA > >delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu >http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html > > > > Richard (= Dick) Hudson Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. +44(0)171 419 3152; fax +44(0)171 383 4108; http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Mon Jan 4 16:35:39 1999 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 16:35:39 +0000 Subject: functionalism and explanatory depth Message-ID: Dick Hudson asks: > So maybe *any* explanation is by definition functional, even if the word > 'function' isn't used? Chomskyans wouldn't like to hear it, but in a sense, this is true. I would put it as follows: Functionalists are primarily interested in explaining language structure, whereas Chomskyans are interested in this only secondarily. Their primary interest is explaining Plato's Problem, the possibility of language acquisition despite the poverty of the stimulus. This involves the postulation of UG as the central explanatory hypothesis, and the fleshing out of UG as the central descriptive task. We have no disagreements when describing low-level generalizations, which are of course also explanations in a sense (e.g. the rule that English nouns form their plural by adding -s, which explains that the plural of _book_ is _book-s_). But when it comes to higher-level generalizations, we differ, because Chomskyans never seek generalizations going beyond the language system. So some obvious functional explanations have no status in Chomskyan linguistics (e.g. the economic-motivation explanation for universal overt marking in plurals). Thus, in a way, Chomskyan linguists are more modest as far as the level of explanatory depth is concerned. They generally don't admit this, but I've found a remarkable quotation concerning diachronic linguistics: "...people seeking a substantive theory of change [i.e. functionalists, MH] are too ambitious, too principled, and seek to explain too much..." (David Lightfoot, The development of language, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, 225) Martin -- Dr. Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Jan 4 19:19:49 1999 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 11:19:49 -0800 Subject: functionalism vs generativism vs ... In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990104101732.00730888@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Jan 1999, Dick Hudson wrote: > Thanks to Scott Delancey for the helpful explanation of functionalism. I'm > very happy to hear such an inclusive definition, but I wonder what it > excludes. What would an explanation have to be like to count as > non-functional? After all, even an explanation like subjacency would count > as functional if we assumed that it was a cognitive constraint (as > Chomskians would assume, I think). Indeed they would, and do, and in fact one sometimes hears a certain amount of annoyance expressed by generativists as what they regard as misappropriation of the term "cognitive" by Cognitive Grammarians. And yes, obviously, whatever's going on in the brain is "cognitive" in some sense. The crucial difference here is that explanatory constructs of generative theory, like subjacency, are assumed to be specifically linguistic, while cognitive explanations within functional grammar* appeal to constructs which are presumed to be aspects of general cognition, not part of a distinct, modular language faculty. The essential difference is whether explanation is being sought outside of linguistic structure itself. Thus an explanation of the cross-linguistic tendency for topics to come in sentence-initial position which is stated in terms of phrase structure is not functionalist, while one which is stated in terms of the psychology of perception is. *I would definitely include Cognitive Grammar here, and I'm not alone in that; see for example Langacker's discussion of the relation between his proposals and other frameworks in vol. I of Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (p. 4) Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Tue Jan 5 01:38:02 1999 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 15:38:02 -1000 Subject: Ergo's 1st ANNUAL PARSING CONTEST Message-ID: Ergo Linguistic Technologies would like to announce its first annual parsing contest based on a fixed set of sentences and a fixed set of tasks to be performed on that set of sentences. The area of NLP to be explored is that of increased syntactic analysis to provide: 1) improvements in navigation and control technology through more complex grammar, 2) improvements in the implementation of question/answer, statement/response dialogs with computers and computer characters, and 3) improvements in web and database searching using natural anguage queries. The contest will be based on a comparison of results for parses of a fixed set of sentences (included at end of this message) and various tasks that can be performed as a result of those parses. That is, the comparison will be based on the actual parse tree and the ability to use that parsed output to generate theory independent parse trees and output and to perform various NLP tasks. The judging will be based on the standards for evaluating NLP that have been proposed previously on this list by myself and Derek Bickerton and which are currently being developed into an ISO standard for the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) as part of the VRML Consortium's development efforts (http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/ NLP-ANIM). The standards proposed are theory and field independent standards which allow both linguists and non-linguists to evaluate NLP systems in the areas of navigation and control, question/answer dialogues, and database and web searching. I will also be at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America this week in Los Angeles for those who would like to discuss this in more detail. The sentences chosen for this contest are rather simple, but as we find more and more parsers that can accomplish the tasks on this list, we will add more complex sentences and tasks to the list. Please, be aware that systems that may be designed for large corpora of unrestricted text actually cannot work in this domain. Thus, while such systems may be useful for certain searching tasks, they are not useful in the domain explored in this contest — and this is evidenced by their inability to perform on tests such as the one provide here. The full contest instructions and an HTML document of Ergo's results in this area can be found at http://www.ergo-ling.com. The standards were designed to allow the developers of a parsing system (statistical or syntactic) to demonstrate the thoroughness and accuracy of the parses they produce by using the parsed output to perform a number of straightforward, traditional syntactic tasks such as changing a statement to a question or an active to a passive as well as demonstrating an ability to create standard trees (Using the Penn Treebank II guidelines) and standard grammatical analyses. All the standards chosen were chosen to be theory independent measures of the accuracy of a parse through the use of standard and ordinary grammatical and syntactic output. The contest officially begins on January 15th and will be closed on March 31st. This will allow developers 2.5 months to develop tools and to work with trouble spots that they may have with the set of sentences offered in this contest. The contest will be offered in subsequent years from January to March. As time develops we hope the parsers, the contest rules, and the test sentences will all grow in sophistication and scope. However, as most parsers have existed many more years than ours, it is reasonable to think these tools exist already. THE CONTEST RULES: Anyone who joins must submit an HTML document and the parser (source code only) that created it. The parser can be in any format but it must require a minimum of effort for the contest judges to set up and run. For example, a WIN95 Interface that takes input files and produces the html output file would be considered a minimum effort parser. There will be tests to ensure that the output is genuine parsed output rather than a synthesis such as a series of print calls that merely present the correct output for a particular string rather than generating it. The HTML files of all contestants will be made available at the Ergo web site (http://www.ergo- ling.com). Those who wish to join even though their parsing system is not robust or complete enough for all the tasks or all the sentences in the contest are also welcome to join. Reviewers will then look at these documents as promising parsers for future contests. Their results will be posted on our web site as well. Judging will be based on the percentage of sentences that parsed, the percentage of the tasks that are completed and on the accuracy of the parses that result and the success on the parsing tasks. Currently, the judges will be Derek Bickerton and myself, but we will welcome others to join in the task. Because of the home court advantage of the judges, there will be printed reports of the judging available on the Ergo web site for review by the overall community of professionals in this area. Complaints or criticisms will also be posted. Anyone who would like to review the judging and the comments on the judging are welcome to do so. Anyone who wishes to be a volunteer judge may also contact us. However, the criteria for all judging will be the accuracy of the parser in creating a correct parse of all the sentences and completing all the tasks set forth in the test materials. We would like this contest to remain open not only to challengers but also to those who would like to design and improve the contest itself through the addition of more sentences or more tasks added to the parsing task. There is one condition, however, on being able to this, we will hold rigidly to the rule that those who would improve on or add to the contest must first meet the original challenge at a minimum level of 75% accuracy before being allowed to contribute. We are starting with a small set of relatively simple sentences to make this as available as possible to as many people as possible. In this manner researchers in industry, academia, and government will be able to compare their results without exposing any proprietary or confidential information. We also do not want the contest to be unduly influenced by those who would like to target some ideal of parsing that is not thoroughly grounded in what is currently possible in these domains. At a Virtual Reality and Multi-Media Conference in Japan (VSMM ‘98), Ergo was awarded the "Best Technical Award" for its NLP technology. I believe the main reason that judges and others were able to notice this is because I was able to point out that "THE ENTIRE FIELD OF VIRTUAL REALITY AN D MULTI-MEDIA IS BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY GRAMMAR." And then I went on to explain that the main reason many VR and Multi-Meida sites and programs are not catching on is because their users cannot ask even a simple question of the characters or about the objects they encounter. Thus, a UNESCO virtual world such as reconstructed cathedral will receive many visitors but they will not stay and explore because they cannot ask even the simplest questions like "How many stairs in this Cathedral?" "When was the Nave built?" and so on. I then pointed out that while speech and graphics were actually ready to work with such projects, the fact that their grammatical abilities is so limited, no one is using them with these products. The missing link between speech, VR and multi- media and users actually talking to avatars and sites is GRAMMAR. When I then demonstrated that this was so with the use of the Ergo tools, we won the award. The main reason I am sponsoring this contest is so that all linguists and NLP researchers who would like to paticipate in this very large future source of jobs can do so as soon as possible. So in order to stimulate research and interest this contest is proposed. WE WOULD ESPECIALLY LIKE TO INVITE PROFESSORS, STUDENTS, AND STAFF AT CARNEGIE MELON, STANFORD, XEROX PARC, MICROSOFT, IBM, DRAGON, LEARNOUT AND HAUSPIE, PHILIPS, MIT, SUN MICROSYSTEMS (JAVASPEECH GROUP), NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, AND GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY TO SUBMIT ENTRIES TO THIS CONTEST. WE WILL BE HAPPY TO POST THEIR RESULTS AND WOULD ALSO BE HAPPY TO TELL THE WORLD IF THEY CAN GENERATE A PARSE THAT IS BETTER THAN OURS ON THE STANDARDS PROVIDED HERE. THIS IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS AND JUNIOR STAFF TO WORK WITH EXTANT PARSERS TO COMBINE AND EXTEND TOOLS INTO THESE VERY USEFUL AND PRACTICAL AREAS. THE SENTENCES The full set of sentences for the contest is available at the http://www.ergo-ling.com web site. This list contains five from each of the three sections: 1) theory independent parsing, 2) navigation and control, and 3) Question/answer, statement/response repartee. The full list contains 105 sentences and will grow and be modified over the years as this annual contest takes root. Section 1: Theory independent parsing. 1. there is a dog on the porch 2. John's house is bigger than mary's house 3. the tall thin man in the office is reading a technical report 4. the man who mary likes is reading the book that john gave her 5. learning how to cope with stress is of primary importance in the work world Section 2: Navigation and Control. 1. Erase all files that end in .doc 2. print the file called teach.doc 3. send an email to bob that says "meeting at eight" 4. send a fax to bob that says "there is a meeting at eight tonight" 5. go to yahoo and find information about golf courses in Georgia Section 3: Question and Answer/Statement Response Repartee. 1. bill's email is bill at server.com what is bill's email address what is bill's email 2. john has romantic books what kind of books does john have 3. My appointment with bob is at six o'clock what time is my appointment what time are my appointments 4. the tall thin man in the office is reading a technical report book what is the man reading what is the man doing is the man reading a report who is reading a report 5. John gave mary a book because it was her birthday who gave mary a book who did john give a book what did john give mary why did john give mary a book did john give mary a book did john give mary a book because it was her birthday did john give mary a pencil did john give mary a book because it was bob's birthday Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Tue Jan 5 10:27:58 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Robinson) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 20:27:58 +1000 Subject: Transitivity Message-ID: I know the literature on transitivity is enormous, but I was wondering whether people on the list could recommend a couple of good works on the issue of where the prototypical transitive scenario originates--in particular, the issue of whether it is innate or learned. I know that some authors (e.g., Hopper & Thompson) feel that transitivity derives its prominence from its association with other things (such as grounding) while others think that it is somehow basic (perhaps innate?). I would assume that if you thought transitivity was derived, you would have to think that it is learned, but that if you thought it was basic, you would lean towards nativism of some sort. But I would be interested in hearing what other people think. Thanks in advance. Sincerely, Stuart Robinson ______________________ Stuart P. Robinson (Stuart.Robinson at anu.edu.au) Linguistics Department, Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia PHONE: 61-2-6249-0703 |||| FAX: 61-2-6279-8214 From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Wed Jan 6 00:37:54 1999 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 16:37:54 -0800 Subject: Share LSA room? Message-ID: I am looking for someone who would like to share their hotel room this weekend at the LSA meeting in Los Angeles**. I do NOT have a room reserved at this time.I am a female nonsmoker and am looking for a congenial person who sleeps soundly. I plan to stay Thursday and Friday night only, but will negotiate a third night if not doing so would nix the whole deal. Please respond by e-mail. Thanks! **at the conference hotel, the Westin Bonaventure. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 Fax: (805)-756-6374 ~ E-mail: jrubba at polymail.calpoly.edu ~ Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From lili99 at 990.NET Thu Jan 7 11:51:58 1999 From: lili99 at 990.NET (Discussion) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 19:51:58 +0800 Subject: PROCESSES IN TRANSITIVITY Message-ID: Hi, everyone: I am also interested in the topic of transitivity. However, it is the first time for me to hear from your great idea of its connection with innate and learned. What is its connection with transitivity to you?What do you mean by saying 'grounding' ? to me, it seems that the primary use of transitivity lies in the analyzing a language to see its processes, such as material, and so on. of course, it seems to be a very narrowed down application of the theory. Could you tell me something more on it?Particularly on the proceses in transitivity. Thank you. Li Li lili99 at 990.net 86-0431-5649962 From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Thu Jan 7 12:05:45 1999 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 13:05:45 +0100 Subject: Transitivity In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At 20:27 05.01.99 +1000, Stuart Robinson wrote: >I know the literature on transitivity is enormous, but I was wondering >whether people on the list could recommend a couple of good works on the >issue of where the prototypical transitive scenario originates--in >particular, the issue of whether it is innate or learned. I know that some >authors (e.g., Hopper & Thompson) feel that transitivity derives its >prominence from its association with other things (such as grounding) while >others think that it is somehow basic (perhaps innate?). I would assume >that if you thought transitivity was derived, you would have to think that >it is learned, but that if you thought it was basic, you would lean towards >nativism of some sort. But I would be interested in hearing what other >people think. Thanks in advance. I think most people from outside the MIT-Orthodoxy would agree upon the claim that linguistic transitivity is somehow derived from other properties of human cognition/behavior. In order to specify the 'source(s)' of transitivity and to describe the derivational procedures or emergent activities that result in the linguistic phenomenon of transitivity it seems to be useful first to explore the possible links between anything 'transitive-like' outside the language architecture and some elements of the architecture itself. Traditionally, transitivity is related either to the lexicon (valency patterns etc.) or to (morpho)syntax (sentence patterns etc.). If you claim that transitivity is represented in the lexicon than the source of the phenomenon should be seeked for within the domain of conceptualisation. In case you prefer a syntactic reading of transitivity, then a potential candidate for its source would be something like the architecture of information processing and communication. However, these two types of approaching the underlying conditions to not exclude each other. I strongly believe that the mental lexicon represents nothing but a 'generification' of external stimuli that are mentally construed as events. Basically, I assume that human cognition accommodates such single external stimuli in terms of 'permanent objects' (Piaget): Such constructed 'permanent events' have two basic aspects: First, they get a relational reading that allows to construe referential 'names' for the paradigm of now permanent object that are 'normally' experienced as being part of a given 'permanent event'. Hence, people construe (in the process of language acquisition) a typology of generic 'objects' that are embedded in a standard event. Quite parallel, the relation itself is "freed" from its standard objects and acquires a 'verbal' reading. In my opinion all verbs are 'generic' in this sense, too. The conceptualisation of these emergent structures (as (referential) objects and verbs) maintain much of their basic conditional (event based) nature. However, (more or less generic) constructions of elements involved in an event are associated with a much high degree of stability in time (and [partly] in space), whereas the relational structure between them (in a given or generic event) is much more unstable: Remember that any relational structure with in an 'event' can only be experienced by checking the complex degree of change that a given 'object' undergoes ['states' have to be judged a little bit different]. Second, the construction of 'permanent events' (and - subsequently - of the elements involved in such events) seems to be based of the cognitive procedure of splitting up an event cluster into a sequence of 'elements', if any kind of communication is intended with respect to the event. This procedure naturally is related to the fact that communication based on language has to respect the prerogatives established by the communicative technique itself: Language allows the clustering of event experience to a much lesser degree than non-verbal cognitive activities [though clustering itself still is a very important and universal option in language]. The serialization (or unpacking) of 'permanent events' (together with their instantiation in a given context) takes place according to a set of basic assumptions (or 'cognitive hypotheses') about how events are structured. One of the most prominent hypothesis sure is that 'omne quod movetur ab alio movetur'. This hypothesis allows to separate 'states' from 'non-states' (though the fixing of what is a state heavily depends on the acquired world knowledge). The above mentioned Peripathetic principle ends up in a second hypothesis metaphorized from the first one, namely that there is no 'reason without effect' or no 'effect without reason' (the famous C(<'motor')->E(<'motum') vector). I don't think that the C->E vector [you can call it the transitivity vector, if you want] itself is innate; rather it seems that it is learnt in the process of the assimilation and accommodation of event experience. More precisely: The experience of 'motion' as a basic factor of events is metaphorized to the extent that the habitus and general knowledge system of a given speech community has sanctioned it. The C->E vector naturally is not the only (metaphorical) basis for transitivity. The structural coupling of the C->E vector with the communicative information flow (itself emergent from the serialization of clustered events) allows to focus on any component of the vector: For instance, the "C" domain can be regarded as more central than the "E" domain (in my terms C->e) or vice versa (c->E). This may effect the internal structure of an event representation as well as its embedding in a given co-text (pivot etc.). Or, potential representatives (or 'actants') of one of the domains (or even of both) are graded in a prototypical sense ('heavy actants' are the most prototypical, and 'light actants' are the least prototypical (and marked) representatives). Or, the C->E vector allows to canonically mask one of the domains (C->zero;zero->E). These and many other procedures are emergent aspects of the activity of the cognitive-communicative interface [we should bear in mind that communication is a cognitive parameter too, though strongly 'autonomized'] and lead to the particularization of the universals of how human beings construe event: These particularizations are based on the coupling of world and communicative knowledge and a given language system. Moreover, language is a system to pass tradition (or a given habitus) together with its actualization, but it is also a traditional system itself (language is passed by language). The resulting diachronic features of a language system are very often anachronistic with respect to how people get used to communicate their way of construing events; hence, the linguistic templates of how to encode the C->E vector together with its particularizations acquire a pseudo-autonomous character that has its own history and that is processed according to the prerogatives of the paradigmatic procedures of human cognition. To sum up: In my mind we cannot claim that 'transitivity' as a linguistic 'category' (or so) is either learnt or native. Transitivity is an emergent property of language that results from the complex interaction of cognition, communication, and habitus. The fact that all languages seem to have something like transitive 'properties' does not hint at the universality of this 'category' but rather at the universality of the interaction of the above mentioned three constituents. For those who want to learn a little more about the claims I have made here: I have elaborated the claims made here in the first volume of my series "Person, Klasse, Kongruenz: Fragmente einer Kategorialtypologie des einfachen Satzes in den ostkauaksischen Sprachen. Vol. 1 (in two parts): Die Grundlagen". München/Newcastle: Lincom 1998 [this volume unfortunately is in German (and has many misprints, sorry for that!)]. This volume concentrates on what I call a "Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios" (GSS) both with respect to its theoretical foundations and its (typological) architecture [East Caucasian is chosen as a field of evaluation (in the forthcoming volumes) and does not play a prominent role in this first volume]. Wolfgang Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut für Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: +89-21802486 (secr.) +89-21802485 (office) http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/ From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Fri Jan 8 03:14:35 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Payton Robinson) Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 14:14:35 +1100 Subject: Transitivity & Grounding Message-ID: Hello, everyone. Many thanks for the replies I've received to my posting about transitivity. I have another question which I was hoping that others could answer. Hopper and Thompson claim that transitivity derives it prominence from its association with foregrounding, a claim which I think requires a fairly high correlation between foregrounding and high transitivity properties. Who else has looked at the relationship between the two? Do such follow-up studies generally confirm or disconfirm the proposed relationship? Thanks in advance. Cheers, Stuart Robinson From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Jan 8 06:36:35 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 22:36:35 -0800 Subject: Transitivity & Grounding In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi, Please take a look at Sally Rice's superb 1987 UCSD dissertation: Participants and Nonparticipants: Toward a Cognitive Model of Transitivity. It goes well beyond Hopper and Thompson's fine earlier work. She also has a paper-- Transitivity and the Lexicon -- in the CRL Newsletter 2.2, 1987, available online I think from the Center for Research on Language at UCSD. Hope you enjoy it. George Lakoff From ph1u+ at ANDREW.CMU.EDU Sat Jan 9 12:57:12 1999 From: ph1u+ at ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Paul J Hopper) Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 07:57:12 -0500 Subject: Transitivity & Grounding Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, A brief addendum to George's posting. Work presenting cognitive models of transitivity has indeed provided valuable additions to our understanding of transitivity at the clause level. At the same time, we note that in our 1980 paper we presented a two-fold theory of transitivity: one part was a componential analysis of transitive clauses, the other an attempt to find a basis for the transitivity components in discourse grounding. The two parts were for us inseparable. In this sense, work that "goes beyond" the early work might be not so much work that abandons the original communicative perspective while continuing to look at the componential analysis of clauses, but rather work which would examine a wider variety of discourse genres, especially conversation, and find out more about the communicative functions of argument structure in general, of which transitivity might actually turn out to be a just one manifestation. We are beginning to do this for English. Other research that moves in this direction includes the by now considerable body of work on 'preferred argument structure' (Du Bois in LANGUAGE, 1987), such as the volume of papers forthcoming with Benjamins called PREFERRED ARGUMENT STRUCTURE: THE NEXT GENERATION, edited by Ashby, Du Bois, Kumpf, as well as: Fox, Barbara A. 1995. The category 'S' in English conversation. In Werner Abraham, T. Givon, and Sandra A. Thompson, eds., Discourse grammar and typology, 153-178. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Karkkainen, Elise. 1996. Preferred argument structure and subject role in American English conversational discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 25:675-701. Other examples include: Cooreman, Ann. 1987. Transitivity and discourse continuity in Chamorro narrative. Berlin: Mouton. Tao, Hongyin. 1996. Units in Mandarin conversation: prosody, discourse and grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Cheers, Paul and Sandy ----------------------------------- Excerpts from mail: 7-Jan-99 Re: Transitivity & Grounding by George Lakoff at COGSCI.BER > > Hi, > > Please take a look at Sally Rice's superb 1987 UCSD dissertation: > Participants and Nonparticipants: Toward a Cognitive Model of Transitivity. > It goes well beyond Hopper and Thompson's fine earlier work. > > She also has a paper-- Transitivity and the Lexicon -- in the CRL Newsletter > 2.2, 1987, available online I think from the Center for Research on > Language at UCSD. > > Hope you enjoy it. > > George Lakoff From lachler at UNM.EDU Mon Jan 11 01:26:10 1999 From: lachler at UNM.EDU (Jordan Lachler) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 18:26:10 -0700 Subject: 1999 Athabaskan Language Conference Message-ID: ATHABASKAN LANGUAGE CONFERENCE University of New Mexico Albuquerque May 21-23, 1999 The Organizing Committee is looking for talks and presentations from native speakers of Athabaskan languages, native non-speakers, storytellers, and linguists. Suggested Topics and Themes Language Maintenance and Language Teaching ------------------------------------------- * Elementary, Secondary, and Post-secondary Programs * Immersion Programs: Summer Programs * Innovative Pedagogies Linguistic Research ------------------- * The Structure of the Athabaskan Lexicon * Historical and Comparative Athabaskan Morphosyntax * Interface of Phonetics and Phonology in Athabaskan Suggestions for Panel Presentations Welcome! Please submit the following: * one-page proposal for your presentation * a 50-word abstract for the Conference Program, including: * your name * your affiliation * your e-mail and/or snail mail address Please submit your proposal and abstract via mail, fax, or e-mail by Friday, April 16, 1999. Talks will be scheduled for 20-minute slots, with 10 minutes for discussion, but longer presentations may also be arranged. E-Mail : athconf at s-leodm.unm.edu FAX : 505-277-6355 Mail : Athabaskan Language Conference Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 Updated information can be found at the conference website: http://s-leodm.unm.edu/~athconf/ --- Jordan From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Wed Jan 13 06:46:31 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 22:46:31 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: PLEASE FORWARD TO ANY FRIENDS OR MAILING LISTS YOU THINK WOULD BE INTERESTED. Just Published! PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Basic Books Hardcover, 624 pages, $30 list price $21 + shipping at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com Thought is mostly unconscious. The mind is inherently embodied. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are three major findings in cognitive science that contradict most of Western philosophy, including both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy. This book asks, What would happen if we started with these empirical discoveries about the nature of mind and constructed philosophy anew from there? Virtually everything changes when the embodiment of mind is taken into account: -New understandings of truth and of science are required. -The most basic philosophical ideas-time, events, causes, the mind, the self, and morality-are reanalyzed in detail and shown to be radically different than the Western tradition has supposed. -Great philosophical theories-from the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to analytic philosophy-are shown to be composed out of a small number of metaphors taken as eternal truths. -Even contemporary accounts of language (Chomskyan linguistics) and rationality (the rational actor model using game theory) are shown to have a metaphorical basis. Most importantly, the very idea of what a human being is changes radically. -There is no Cartesian person, whose essence is a mind separate from, and independent of the body. -There is no Kantian, radically autonomous person, with an absolute freedom and a transcendent universal reason that correctly dictates what is and isn't moral. -There is no utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality-the maximization of utility. -There is no postmodernist person-no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent. -There is no person as posed by analytic philosophy for whom truth is a correspondence between words and the world, independent of human psychology and biology. -There is no computational person, whose mind is like computer software able to work on any suitable computer or neural hardware. -There is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context, perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature of communication and whom language is a total genetic innovation that began with human beings. Contemporary cognitive science reveals that we human beings are radically different kinds of creatures than Western philosophy has taught us that we were. GEORGE LAKOFF is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society and has been President of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. MARK JOHNSON is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3604 bytes Desc: not available URL: From matmies at LING.HELSINKI.FI Wed Jan 13 11:45:17 1999 From: matmies at LING.HELSINKI.FI (Matti Miestamo) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 13:45:17 +0200 Subject: TOC: SKY 1998 - Linguistic Association of Finland Message-ID: (Apologies for the cross-posting) SKY 1998 (The Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, edited by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 139 pp.) is now available! Table of Contents: Elizabeth COUPER-KUHLEN: Prosody in Interactional Discourse Shengli FENG: Prosodically Motivated Passive bei Constructions in Classical Chinese Antti IIVONEN: Functional Interpretation of Prosody within the Linguistic System Esa ITKONEN: On (Sign) Language, Music, and Anti-Modularity Tarja LEPPA"AHO: On the Margins: Interpreting as an Object of Linguistic Inquiry Jussi NIEMI, Marja NENONEN, Esa PENTTILA" and Helka RIIONHEIMO: Is the Order of Adverbs Predictable on Lexical Grounds? **************************** Also available: SKY 1997 (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 188 pp.) 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 PENTTILA": 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 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? The tables of contents of earlier SKY Yearbooks can be found at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/SKY-1996.html ****************************** Prices: SKY 1998: EUR 17 / FIM 100 / USD 20 plus shipping & handling Earlier editions: EUR 12 / FIM 70 / USD 15 plus shipping&handling Orders: Bookstore Tiedekirja address: Kirkkokatu 14, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358 9 635177 fax +358 9 635017 e-mail Tiedekirja at pp.kolumbus.fi (Tilaukset Suomesta suoraan SKY:sta") For further information, please visit our WWW-pages at http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ or contact our secretary: meri.larjavaara at helsinki.fi ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel, @ stands for 'a Swedish o', an 'a' with a small circle on it. ) From TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed Jan 13 19:39:27 1999 From: TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:39:27 -0800 Subject: TRANSITIVITY Message-ID: TRANSITIVITY I was waiting for someone to make some of the points that I thought could (& should) have been made in the discussion of transitivity. But given that the discussion seems to have petered out, maybe this is a good point to try & make them; under two headings. 1. SEMANGTICS VS. PRAGMATICS OF EVENTS: TWO TYPES OF COGNITIVE FRAMING One of the great contributions of the Hopper & Thompsopn (1980) article was to gather under one roof all the phenomena associated with transitivity, and underscore the strong--and multiple--typologicaland textual associations they display . But focusing on strong associations tends, on occasion, to distract our attention from recognizing a simple caveat--that an association, be it even a strong one, need not necessarily mean identity. a. THE COGNITIVE SEMANTICS OF TRANSITIVITY The semantic core of transitivity resides in the framing of the prototype transitive event (a) acting, volitional CAUSER/AGENT (b) passive, affected CAUSEE/PATIENT (c) fast changing, telic EVENT/VERB The cognitive framing of such events in humans harkens back to the pre- linguistic sensory-motor developmental stage in the first 9 months of life, where the sensory-motor foundations of our experiential universe--external, internal & social--are laid out. At this developmental stage, human discourse is largely mono-propositional (single states/events) rather than multi-propositional (coherence over multiple states/events). This is also a stage that, in principle, is not all that distinct from the perceptual/ cognitive organization of pre-human species. I think we can take it for granted that there is a strong ADAPTIVE motivation for why higher vertebrates concentrate so many resources on the processing of prototype transitive events. All three key features of such events reside at the very heart of the daily survival of a moving, self-feeding, social, interacting, prey-or-predator species. The fact that the mammalian perceptual system is so biased toward changes/telicity, self-propelled entities/animates, affected objects/foods/prey etc. is exhaustively well established. This is true in all major perceptual modalities, and simply gets extended into the higher cognitive processes that are but evolutionary extensions, elaborations and extra complications of the early perceptual modalities. b. THE COMMUNICATIVE PRAGMATICS OF TRANSITIVITY The cognitive "framing" of semantically-transitive events (a. above) is fundamentally of the type Ron Langacker has been talking about in his extensive work. Now, while the communicative-pragmatics of transitivity interacts--extensively--with the cognitive-semantic framing, the two not identical. To begin with, it is not the NATURE of the event itself that needs to be at issue here, but often rather the WIDER framing of the event within the more extended communicative goals of the speaker/hearer. So that the very same transitive event may be framed with different ATTENTIONAL FOCUSING. Thus, in the active-direct framing of the event: (1) Mary demolished the house the topical/attention focus is stronger on 'Mary' than on the house, a fact that has been demonstrated by both discourse-heuristic measurements and, more recently, by attentional-cognitive measurements (Russ Tomlin's work, among others). In the "classical" promotional passive, on the other hand, as in: (2) The house was demolished by Mary the topical/attentional focus is on the patient, again a fact that has been sufficiently demonstrated by both text-based & cognitive measures. Now, there is absolutely no evidence that the three semantic core-features of transitivity need have changed even one iota between the active-direct (1) and the passive (2). So there is, in principle, a healthy DISSOCIATION between the semantics & pragmatics of transitivity. Having noted that, one could of course see that there **could** be a CARRYOVER--thus a strong association--between the pragmatics & semantics of de-transitivization. Thus, for example, in (3) below, semantic AGENCY is presumsably deficient: (3) The house was demolished in the earthquake And indeed, there are some syntactic constructions--middle voice, in particular--in which the pragmatics & semantics of de-transitivization are almost obligatorily associated, as in: (4) (Mary broke the glass) The glass broke The glass is broken The glass is breakable The glass breaks real easy So, the semantics & pragmatics of TRANSITIVE EVENT or DE-TRANSITIVE EVENT can often coincide. But the fact that they CAN also be fully dissociated from e.o. suggests that, at least in principle, one ought to consider them as two distinct 'cycles' of cognitive framing, each one with its own specific properties, & each driven by its own distinct functional-adaptive motivations. One could go on and make the very same argumnent for the anti-passive, citing both AP constructions that allow a healthy dissociation between the pragmatics of de-transitivity (DE-TOPICALIZING THE PATIENT) and its event semantics, but also AP constructions that exhibit strong association between the two. One of the most strinking facets of STRONG ASSOCIATION between the semantics & pragmatics of transitivity is observed in the **text distribution** of transtive & intransitive constructions, where the ACTIVE-DIRECT is overwhelming in text-frequency, and both PASS & AP relatively rare. But again, strong frequency association in behavior (SUBJ = AGT; OBJ = PAT) should in no way be interpreted as **identity** (Ed Keenan made this unfortunate slip when he listed AGT as one of the properties of SUBJ in his 1976 paper). In passing, one may as well note that the distinctness of event-semantics from communicative pragmatics was recognized IMPLICITLY in Chomsky's 1965 (Aspects) model, where 'deep structure' was seen as fully isomorphic with propositional (EVENT) semantics. While the un-mentioned discourse pragmatics was provided for, albeit only **tacitly**, by various "markers" that triggered 'transformations'. In this version of 'the model', such 'markers' were built into the DS tree and treated, with the normal disregard for functional correlates, as purely syntactic. 2. INNATENESS There is a wealth of evidence from the study of vertebrate & mammalian & primate & human perception suggesting that the bias towards ACTING AGENTS, FAST CHANGES & SALIENT OBJECTS is genetically wired-in. It remains an open question whether the cognitive mechanisms responsible for the strong PRAGMATIC-COMMUNICATIVE bias we display, in our everyday communication, towards talking more about agents (i.e. investing more time & attention in them) is the very same as, or is distinct from, the neurologically/ evolutionarily much older mechanisms of event perception/cognition. There is very clearly a strong assoiciation between the two. But there is just as clearly a strong disssociation. Thus, the bias toward action/change/motion is much more automatic/unattended/subconscious. We simply can't help it (just observe your cat, dog, horse or child...). On the other hand, communicative/textual evidence suggests, at least tentatively, that some more sophisticated CONTEXT-SCANNING CHOICES may be involved in the discourse-pragmatics of transitivity & de-transitivi- zation. So, while we know relatively little so far about the neurology associated with grammatical constructions, even Russ Tomlin's cuing experiments suggest that attention can be manipulated by changing contexts. I.e. that we pay attention to the communicative context. The process itself is largely automatic, but it is not necessarily the same process that impells us to pay attention to transitive events (over stasis)--even in the total absence of communicative intent. Finally, given both the order-of-magnitude jump in complexity between event-semantics & discourse-pragmatics, their clear inclusion relation (discourse subsumes event-clauses, but not vice-versa), and lastly, their rather distinct evolutionary history (all vertebrates engage in event perception; but only the most complex social communicating species indulge in multi-propositional coherence...), one strongly suspects that the relevant processing mechanisms--while strongly connected--are not identical. Cheers, T. Givon From eitkonen at UTU.FI Thu Jan 14 13:21:52 1999 From: eitkonen at UTU.FI (Esa) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 05:21:52 -0800 Subject: Western thought contradicted? Message-ID: In a recent message to Funknet George Lakoff asserts that the new book by Lakoff & Johnson 'contradicts most of Western thought'. What follows is a brief and preliminary comment, based not on this 1998 book but on earlier writings by Lakoff and Johnson. The main target of Lakoff & Johnson's historiographial critique is 'objectivism' or the view that extramental reality is reflected as such in the human mind. They correctly claim that objectivisim is characteristic of common-sense thinking (e.g. Lakoff 1987: 174-175, 270; Johnson 1987: xxi). However, they also claim that 'objectivism' is characteristic of the history of Western philosophy as a whole. Now, everybody who has even a superficial knowledge about this topic knows that Western philosophy has been - rightly or wrongly - DOMINATED by sceptical or idealistic schools of thinking, i.e. schools which either question or deny that humans are able to acquire any (trustworthy) knowledge about extramental reality. (And having more-than-superficial knowledge about the topic makes it even easier to accept what I am saying here.) Do I really have to recall Demokritos (= 'primary' vs 'secondary' qualities anticipated), Hellenistic sceptics from Pyrrho to Carneades, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx & Engels, the sense data theorists (e.g. Carnap of the 'Aufbau'), and many, many more? Considering the 'embodied mind' thesis it is particularly interesting that Marx & Engels (in 'German Ideology') state that it is the bodily organization ('koerperliche Organisation') which determines how people think. Also, the rejection of the mind-body dualism was not invented by Lakoff & Johnson, but by Aristotle and - somewhat later - by Hegel, Marx & Engels, the later Wittgenstein, and many, many more. Obviously, there is more to be said. Stay tuned. Esa Itkonen From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Jan 14 07:58:26 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 23:58:26 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: Just Published! PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Basic Books Hardcover, 624 pages, $30 list $21 + shipping at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com Thought is mostly unconscious. The mind is inherently embodied. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are three major findings in cognitive science that contradict most of Western philosophy, including both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy. This book asks, What would happen if we started with these empirical discoveries about the nature of mind and constructed philosophy anew from there? Virtually everything changes when the embodiment of mind is taken into account: -New understandings of truth and of science are required. -The most basic philosophical ideas-time, events, causes, the mind, the self, and morality-are reanalyzed in detail and shown to be radically different than the Western tradition has supposed. -Great philosophical theories-from the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to analytic philosophy-are shown to be composed out of a small number of metaphors taken as eternal truths. -Even contemporary accounts of language (Chomskyan linguistics) and rationality (the rational actor model using game theory) are shown to have a metaphorical basis. Most importantly, the very idea of what a human being is changes radically. -There is no Cartesian person, whose essence is a mind separate from, and independent of the body. -There is no Kantian, radically autonomous person, with an absolute freedom and a transcendent universal reason that correctly dictates what is and isn't moral. -There is no utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality-the maximization of utility. -There is no postmodernist person-no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent. -There is no person as posed by analytic philosophy for whom truth is a correspondence between words and the world, independent of human psychology and biology. -There is no computational person, whose mind is like computer software able to work on any suitable computer or neural hardware. -There is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context, perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature of communication and whom language is a total genetic innovation that began with human beings. Contemporary cognitive science reveals that we human beings are radically different kinds of creatures than Western philosophy has taught us that we were. GEORGE LAKOFF is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society and has been President of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. MARK JOHNSON is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3522 bytes Desc: not available URL: From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Thu Jan 14 16:40:18 1999 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 16:40:18 +0000 Subject: Postdoc and Ph.D. positions in typology & diachrony Message-ID: There are a number of postdoc and Ph.D. positions available at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Bernard Comrie's linguistics department. More details in the official advertisements below. **************** The Linguistics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is offering 1999 postdoctoral staff positions. These are non_permanent positions for which the normal term of appointment is 2 years. Applicants should have completed a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related discipline (or expect to finish before starting the postdoctoral position), and have a specialization in one or more of the following areas: 1) linguistic typology; 2) documentation of a hitherto undescribed or little described language, including fieldwork; 3) historical linguistics, preferably broad-scale and/or theoretically oriented, including comparative linguistics and language contact; 4) development of computer tools to assist in any of the above. Applicants are requested to send a C.V., statement of research interests, two letters of recommendation, and a sample of written work on a relevant topic to: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Personnel Administration Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie - Postdoctoral staff position - Inselstrasse 22 D-01403 Leipzig Germany fax: +49 341 99 52 119 e_mail: comrie at eva.mpg.de The URL of the Max Planck Institute is: http://www.eva.mpg.de Deadline for receipt of applications: 28 Feb 1999 ********************************* The Linguistics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has doctoral student fellowships available in the following areas: 1) linguistic typology; 2) documentation of a hitherto undescribed or little described language, including fieldwork; 3) historical linguistics, preferably broad-scale and/ or theoretically oriented, including comparative linguistics and language contact; 4) development of computer tools to assist in any of the above. Fellowships provide full support (including fieldwork where appropriate) for two years, renewable for one further year. Residence is in Leipzig, Germany, except during fieldwork, but doctoral dissertations/theses may be examined by Universities elsewhere. Prerequisites are: (a) good linguistic training, especially in descriptive or historical linguistics or in linguistic typology; (b) completion of prerequisites for entry into a PhD program (such as a Master's degree) as determined by the University (and country) where the applicant intends to submit the dissertation/thesis; Applicants are requested to send a C.V., statement of research interests, two letters of recommendation, and a sample of written work on a relevant topic to: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Personnel Administration Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie - PhD Fellowships - Inselstrasse 22 D-01403 Leipzig Germany fax: +49 341 99 52 119 e_mail: comrie at eva.mpg.de The URL of the Max Planck Institute is: http://www.eva.mpg.de Deadline for receipt of applications: 28 Feb 1999 From lili99 at 990.NET Thu Jan 14 23:49:18 1999 From: lili99 at 990.NET (Discussion) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 07:49:18 +0800 Subject: transitivity Message-ID: Dear T. Givon: I am very happy to have got your Transitivitiy discussion suggestion list. It seems to me that Halliday's transitivity is running controrary to the communicative pragmatics. From his analysis of the Inheritors, we see that he is mainly concerned with the typological or textual aspect. I want to hear some of your ideas on it. What do you mean by saying typological or textual ? What is the concrete means that could lead to the analysis of the communicative pragmatics of transitivity, which runs conterpart with the former typological or textual meas? Could you tell me some journals on the use of transitivity? Thanks. Li Li lili99 at 163.net From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Fri Jan 15 02:41:14 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Robinson) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 12:41:14 +1000 Subject: TRANSITIVITY Message-ID: I would like to respond to the comments made by Givon regarding transitivity, because I think what he says is important. A. Cause & Effect One point Givon makes is that "an association, be it even a strong one, need not necessarily mean identity". I think this point is fundamental, because essentially the same caveat applies to the overarching claim of Hopper & Thompson (1980)--viz.,that transitivity derives its prominence from foregrounding. Setting aside the question of just how strong the correlation between the two really is, the problem is that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Perhaps both transitivity and foregrounding correlate because they are associated with something else--say, a deep-seated semantic prototype. It's like the researchers who were studying ulcer development and found that there was a high correlation between developing ulcers and having a neat, well-trimmed moustache! Obviously, having a neat, well-trimmed moustache didn't cause ulcers, but there was some sort of relationship between the two nonetheless. Alternatively, think of the relationship between thunder and lightning. Even though the two correlate perfectly, one cannot be said to cause the other. Rather, they are both effects of the same underlying cause--an electromagnetic event. I think DeLancey makes essentially this same point in his 1984 paper, "Transitivity in grammar and cognition". He doesn't think that transitivity derives its prominence from foregrounding. Rather, he thinks that: "the various transitivity parameters cohere in the way that they do because they code aspects of a coherent semantic prototype, and that transitivity in morphosyntax is associated with foregrounding in discourse because events which approximate the transitive prototype are more like to be of interest and thus inherently more likely to constitute foregrounded information" (p. 55). B. The Nature of O So, if we concentrate on trying to characterise this semantic prototype, we have to think about Givon's take on it. He claims that one feature of the prototype for a transitive event is a "passive, affected CAUSEE/PATIENT". I think that Givon has said elsewhere that "the prototypical transitive object-patient is not a human, but primarily a dumb inanimate" (1990: 630). But how does this claim relate to Hopper & Thompson's claim that a highly individuated O is a highly transitive feature? There is a tendency across languages to single out animate, definite O's for special treatment (e.g., Spanish, Hindi, etc.), which Hopper & Thomspon see as being some sort of underscoring of the high transitivity of such clauses, but this doesn't jibe very well with classical markedness theory, which claims that special marking should be given to configurations that are unusual or unexpected. I think Croft (1988) and Aristar (to appear:http://linguistlist.org/aristar/transitivity.html) both tackle this question, but they come up with different solutions. Croft basically rejects the claim that the most natural O is highly individuated while Aristar takes it on board and adopts a middle-of-the-road position--viz., that the most natural O is neither low or high in individuation, but rather somewhere in between. It seems to me that part of the problem is that highly individuated O's are likely to be topical and topical O's tend to get passivised. But this seems to be an area of considerable controversy. This topic doesn't seem to have generated a great deal of interest on the list but hopefully the discussion won't peter out entirely. I am quite interested in hearing the opinion of others on this matter and would like to take this opportunity to the various people who have responded to my original posting. Sincerely, Stuart Robinson ______________________ Stuart P. Robinson (Stuart.Robinson at anu.edu.au) Linguistics Department, Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia PHONE: 61-2-6249-0703 |||| FAX: 61-2-6279-8214 From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Jan 15 13:16:20 1999 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 08:16:20 -0500 Subject: Western thought Message-ID: With all due respect to Esa Itkonen, whatever the main thrust of Lakoff and Johnson's earlier work has been, one would be led by the posting describing their latest book to conclude that its main target is not "objectivism." Rather, Lakoff and Johnson seem in this latest book to be taking on the presumption, present in a lot of thought, western and otherwise, that the mind is disembodied. I am waiting to get my copy of the book. But it would seem that L&J have touched on a crucial idea laid out most trenchantly in Antonio Damasio's (1994) Descartes' Error. How about it, George, while we are waiting for the book to arrive, would you care to comment on similarities and differences between L&J and Damasio? Carl From lili99 at 990.NET Fri Jan 15 13:26:07 1999 From: lili99 at 990.NET (Discussion) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 21:26:07 +0800 Subject: query Message-ID: Hi, everybody: I am very happy to have got T.G.'s Transitivitiy discussion suggestion list. It seems to me that Halliday's transitivity is running controrary to the communicative pragmatics. From his analysis of the Inheritors, we see that he is mainly concerned with the typological or textual aspect. I want to hear some of your ideas on it. What do you mean by saying typological or textual ? What is the concrete means that could lead to the analysis of the communicative pragmatics of transitivity, which runs conterpart with the former typological or textual meas? Could you tell me something concerned the world view on the use of transitivity? Thanks. Li Li lili99 at 163.net From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Jan 15 18:19:26 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 10:19:26 -0800 Subject: Western thought In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Carl, Thanks for your note. The excellent empirical research of the Damasios is part of the literature we cite. We accept their findings. We know of no research to lead us to disagree with what they say. You are right that we are not just talking about objectivism, but rather all philsophical views relying on the ideas of the disembodied mind, exclusively literal meaning. and exclusively conscious reason. That covers idealists and a lot of continental philosophy. There is another issue we take up besides philosophy itself. Various disembodied philosophies have tended to intrude into science, especially in psychology and linguistics, but also throughout the social and physical sciences.In such cases, disembodied philosphy tends to distort the science. We take up such special cases as Chomskyan linguistics and the rational actor model in the social sciences, as well as the attempt to interpret relativity theory literally. All the best, George At 8:16 AM -0500 1/15/99, Carl.Mills at UC.Edu wrote: >With all due respect to Esa Itkonen, whatever the main thrust of Lakoff >and Johnson's earlier work has been, one >would be led by the posting describing their latest book to conclude that >its main target is not "objectivism." >Rather, Lakoff and Johnson seem in this latest book to be taking on the >presumption, present in a lot of thought, >western and otherwise, that the mind is disembodied. > >I am waiting to get my copy of the book. But it would seem that L&J have >touched on a crucial idea laid out most >trenchantly in Antonio Damasio's (1994) Descartes' Error. How about it, >George, while we are waiting for the >book to arrive, would you care to comment on similarities and differences >between L&J and Damasio? > >Carl From nrude at UCINET.COM Sat Jan 16 03:03:26 1999 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 19:03:26 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: Wow! But don't you exult just a little too much! Like Francis Crick's "The Astonishing Hypothesis", it sounds like this will be just more of the same old materialist philosophy that has dominated Western Civ ever since deism became agnosticism became atheism. Should you have finally proven the "state religion", then what? Do we drop out of the churches and synagogues, quit the Republican party, and let the academics tell us how it really is? Noel From lachler at UNM.EDU Sun Jan 17 11:44:01 1999 From: lachler at UNM.EDU (Jordan Lachler) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 04:44:01 -0700 Subject: Final Call for Papers: HDLS-2 Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS The High Desert Linguistics Society 2nd Annual Student Conference in Linguistics (HDLS-2) March 26-27, 1999 University of New Mexico Albuquerque KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Dr. Sandra Thompson, UCSB SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Abstracts must be received by Friday, January 22, 1999. For details, see the conference website: http://www.unm.edu/~hdls/hdls-2/ ====== Jordan Lachler lachler at unm.edu President, HIGH DESERT LINGUISTICS SOCIETY From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Sun Jan 17 18:14:42 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 10:14:42 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh In-Reply-To: <36A0017D.18F2@ucinet.com> Message-ID: At 7:03 PM -0800 1/15/99, Noel Rude wrote: >Wow! > > But don't you exult just a little too much! Like Francis Crick's "The >Astonishing Hypothesis", it sounds like this will be just more of the >same old materialist philosophy that has dominated Western Civ ever >since deism became agnosticism became atheism. Should you have finally >proven the "state religion", then what? Do we drop out of the churches >and synagogues, quit the Republican party, and let the academics tell us >how it really is? > > Noel Quitting the Republican Party will do. From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Mon Jan 18 00:11:11 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Payton Robinson) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 11:11:11 +1100 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I thought we had agreed to keep politics out of funknet. Let's nip this in the bud before it becomes another spate of unwanted, off-topic e-mail messages. (It's especially obnoxious to non-Americans.) Thank you. Sincerely, Stuart Robinson > Quitting the Republican Party will do. From jirsa at IX.NETCOM.COM Mon Jan 18 04:51:46 1999 From: jirsa at IX.NETCOM.COM (Jirsa) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 21:51:46 -0700 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: The exchange in question was as political as it was personal. However, I found it had one saving grace: with apologies to non-Americans, it made me laugh (and I just voted for a Republican Senator). Do we really need to excise all things colorful? Stuart Payton Robinson wrote: > I thought we had agreed to keep politics out of funknet. Let's nip this > in the bud before it becomes another spate of unwanted, off-topic e-mail > messages. (It's especially obnoxious to non-Americans.) Thank you. > > Sincerely, > Stuart Robinson > > > Quitting the Republican Party will do. From funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU Tue Jan 19 20:13:24 1999 From: funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU (funkadmn Departmental Account) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 14:13:24 -0600 Subject: Deadline for 1999 Institute Fellowship Applications: Feb 11 Message-ID: >>From Jody Littleton Linguistic Institute *****************1999 LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE************************** REMINDER: DEADLINE for applications for the 1999 LSA Linguistic Institute FELLOWSHIPS is FEBRUARY 11. All fellowship application materials, including letters of recommendation, must be received by the LSA at their Washington, D.C. office by Feb. 11th. The Institute will be held from June 21 to July 30 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The Institute brochure including fellowship and application forms, and information about tuition/fees, courses, concurrent events, housing, and transportation is available at our website; http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/linguist. ================================================================ 1999 Linguistic Institute www.beckman.uiuc.edu/linginst Department of Linguistics E-mail: linginst at uiuc.edu University of Illinois Phone: (217) 333-1563 ================================================================ From fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Thu Jan 21 02:09:04 1999 From: fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Frederick Newmeyer) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 18:09:04 -0800 Subject: influence of Prague School Message-ID: Much has been written about the influence of the pre- World War II Prague School on generative phonology. I am interested in the extent to which Prague School conceptions have influenced North American and Western European SYNTAX, both generative and nongenerative. For example, the use by generativists of distinctive features on morphological and syntactic elements presumably derives from Prague. Likewise, one would assume that Praguean work on functional sentence perspective has influenced current functional linguistics. Has anything been written about 'direct lines of transmission' between pre-war Praguean linguistics and the development of modern formal and functional linguistics? Do such direct lines of transmission exist? I'll summarize. Fritz Newmeyer fjn at u.washington.edu From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Thu Jan 21 19:51:33 1999 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 14:51:33 -0500 Subject: Role and Reference Grammar Workshop & Conference at LSA Institute Message-ID: A workshop and conference on Role and Reference Grammar will be held at the LSA Summer Institute at the University of Illinois, July 23-25, 1999. The workshop is for linguists already working in RRG as well as those wishing to become better acquainted with the theory. There will be two parts to the workshop. First, there will be a series of introductory lectures on the basics of RRG for those not yet acquainted with the theory. Second, there will be a series of working sessions for linguists already familiar with RRG; some of the sessions will be focussed on particular topics, e.g. argument structure, the semantics of complex sentences, the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic implications of RRG, and some will be devoted to specific languages or families, e.g. Korean, Japanese, Austronesian. There will be a one-day conference at which current work in RRG will be presented. Talks will be 30 minutes long. Please send three copies of your abstract (2 pages maximum), which should include your name, e-mail address and regular address, by March 1, 1999 to the following address: RRG Conference Abstracts Dept. of Linguistics 685 Baldy Hall SUNY at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 USA Submission of abstracts by e-mail is also acceptable; send them to VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU. Robert Van Valin SUNY Buffalo *************** 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 6500frw0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU Sat Jan 23 10:23:11 1999 From: 6500frw0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU (Fiona Whalen) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 02:23:11 -0800 Subject: Call for papers (Workshop on American Indigenous Languages) Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES Santa Barbara, CA May 14-16, 1999 The linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its second annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Invited Speaker: Sara Trechter Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in Native American 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 500 word s or less and can submitted by hard copy or e-mail. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) e-mail address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 E-mail submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the e-mail message, with the anonymous abstract as an attachment. Send e-mail submissions to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: March 19, 1999 Notification of acceptance will be by e-mail in late-March. Registration: $20 (checks payable to WAIL) For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our web site at http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/wail/wail.html From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Wed Jan 27 01:20:01 1999 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 15:20:01 -1000 Subject: Ergo's ATIS results Message-ID: As part of the parsing contest we posted last week in which we challenged members of the academic and industrial NLP community to meet or beat our parsing results on 100 sentences in the areas of basic grammatical analysis, navigation and control and question and answer repartee, we have just posted our results on the ATIS (Air Travel Industry Sentences) sentences for the standards and tasks of that contest. Refer to our web page at http://www.ergo-ling.com for the contest details, our results on the 100 sentences for that contest and the ATIS sentences parsed as to the requirements of the contest. Again we would be happy to post results from IBM, Microsoft, Stanford, MIT or any of the smaller companies and universities who would like to participate in this contest for either the specific 100 sentences of the contest or for the ATIS sentences. Contest results will be posted at the end of March or early April, but we will post all entrants on our web site as soon as they arrive. We are especially interested in seeing the ATIS results from other companies and universities. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Thu Jan 28 02:49:54 1999 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 16:49:54 -1000 Subject: New NLP Books Message-ID: After returning from the LSA conference in Los Angeles I was a little dismayed at the almost total lack of new books (publication late 98 or early 99) in NLP. I believe that of the two or three book publishers who were there, there was only one new title in NLP. Could readers post to me any newly published or soon to be published books in this very important area of linguistics? I will post a summary to the list. I would like references to new books dealing with NLP from statistical or other approaches. I am especially interested in books which talk about improvements to navigation and control devices (particularly with commercially available speech products), searching databases and the Internet, and question and answer dialoging systems, but I would like to have as thorough a biblio- ography of new works in NLP as possible. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite #175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel:(808)539-3921 Fax:(808)539-3924 Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU Thu Jan 28 15:44:27 1999 From: funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU (funkadmn Departmental Account) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 09:44:27 -0600 Subject: Correction to Web Address Message-ID: Forwarded from Adele Goldberg: PLEASE NOTE CORRECTION TO WEB ADDRESS: Subject: deadline for 1999 Linguistic Institute Fellowship applications: Feb 11, 1999 *****************1999 LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE************************** REMINDER: DEADLINE for applications for the 1999 LSA Linguistic Institute FELLOWSHIPS is FEBRUARY 11. All fellowship application materials, including letters of recommendation, must be received by the LSA at their Washington, D.C. office by Feb. 11th. The Institute will be held from June 21 to July 30 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The Institute brochure including fellowship and application forms, and information about tuition/fees, courses, concurrent events, housing, and transportation is available at our website; http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/linginst From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Thu Jan 28 18:25:45 1999 From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike L Gildea) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:25:45 -0600 Subject: December 1998 LSA Bulletin (fwd) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 11:43:08 -0500 From: LSA Subject: December 1998 LSA Bulletin The December 1998 LSA Bulletin is now available on the LSA web site: www.lsadc.org From jmarin at FLOG.UNED.ES Thu Jan 28 18:59:40 1999 From: jmarin at FLOG.UNED.ES (Juana I. Marn Arrese) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 19:59:40 +0100 Subject: [Fwd: New monograph: Estudios de Linguistica Cognitiva] Message-ID: > > Please, excuse any cross-postings > > NEW MONOGRAPH: > > José Luis Cifuentes Honrubia (ed.): Estudios de Lingüística Cognitiva, I > y II. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1998, 952 págs. > ISBN: 84-930403-0-4 > Depósito Legal: A-1497-1998 > Orders: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante. > > > ÍNDICE: > > J. L. CIFUENTES HONRUBIA > Introducción p. 9 > > 1. ANÁLISIS DEL DISCURSO > > R. ALMELA PÉREZ > Sobre rasgos kinésicos p. 17 > > P. ALONSO RODRÍGUEZ > El alcance de las proyecciones metafóricas en el discurso narrativo > complejo. Estudio de un caso: «The Wallet» de John Updike p. 29 > > A. BOCAZ - G. SOTO > Esquemas cognitivos en el origen de la marcación aspectual en el > discurso: el caso de estar subido p. 41 > > C. FIGUERAS SOLANILLA > Semántica y pragmática de las expresiones anafóricas p. 61 > > J. L. GUIJARRO > ¿Hay alguna posibilidad de descolgar la literatura de su gancho > celestial? p. 77 > > C. LACHAT LEAL > Análisis del concepto de contexto en la teoría de la relevancia p. 103 > > R. LINEROS QUINTERO > Procesos cognitivos en el almacenamiento de la información p. 113 > > A. LÓPEZ-VARELA AZCÁRATE > A semiotic approach to Modernism. Its role in creating an aesthetics > of cognition p. 129 > > S. MARTÍN MENÉNDEZ > Léxico y estrategias discursivas: un enfoque sociocognitivo p. 137 > > E. RAMÓN TRIVES > Aspectos cognitivos en la aproximación integrada a la dinámica p. 149 > léxico-discursiva > > J. SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA - J. M. MARTÍN MORILLAS: > Organización cognitiva y coherencia léxico-discursiva en el discurso > de lego y experto: análisis de discursos sobre el SIDA p. 171 > > 2. ADQUISICIÓN DEL LENGUAJE > > A. CASTAÑEDA CASTRO > Límites de la capacidad de atención y secuencias de adquisición > en el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras p. 185 > > E. FERNÁNDEZ SÁNCHEZ > El aprendizaje de una segunda lengua concebido como la adquisición > de un nuevo sistema cognitivo p. 197 > > A. HERRERO BLANCO > La seña y el signo. Notas sobre la iconicidad lingüística de la LSE p. > 207 > > M. P. MONTIJANO CABRERA > Hacia un entendimiento de la secuencia cognitiva que subyace a cada > ejercicio de comprensión oral con vistas a su explotación efectiva en > el aula de lengua extranjera p. 227 > > 3. LEXICOLOGÍA Y LEXICOGRAFÍA > > L. BALLESTEROS VALLADARES - R. JIMÉNEZ BRIONES > The «tolerance» of Spanish dictionaries regarding selection restrictions > p. 235 > > Mª. ANTONIA CANO - JOSEP MARTINES > Cap a una teoria lingüística de la toponímia > des de l’òptica de la Gramàtica Cognitiva p. 247 > > M. D. FERNÁNDEZ DE LA TORRE MADUEÑO > Cognitive aspects of sexism and lexicography p. 265 > > A. SOARES DA SILVA > Prototipicidad y cambio semántico: el caso ibérico de deixar/dejar p. > 279 > > 4. EPISTEMOLOGÍA DEL LENGUAJE > > J. A. CANDALIJA REINA > Sobre la cientificidad de la gramática: el uso de corpora informatizados > como método de análisis lingüístico p. 295 > > J. L. JIMÉNEZ RUIZ > Hermenéutica y cognición: propuestas para una lingüística integral p. > 309 > > A. LÓPEZ GARCÍA - R. MORANT > La posición de la lingüística cognitiva en el desarrollo histórico de > los > modelos gramaticales p. 319 > > F. RASTIER > De la representación a la interpretación p. 329 > > M. VEYRAT RIGAT > Concepción fenomenológico-perceptiva del lenguaje p. 353 > > 5. METÁFORA Y METONIMIA > > A. BARCELONA SÁNCHEZ > El poder de la metonimia p. 365 > > I. DE LA CRUZ CABANILLAS - C. TEJEDOR MARTÍNEZ > La metaforización de algunas denominaciones genéricas de animales p. 381 > > C. MAÍZ ARÉVALO - E. GONZÁLEZ ABAD > Love and its conceptual metaphors: syntactic realizations p. 389 > > J. A. MOMPEÁN GONZÁLEZ > The role of linguistic expressions in metaphor and metonimy: a cognitive > account p. 403 > > S. PEÑA CERVEL > Towards a new theory of image-schemas: interaction among image-schemas > p. 417 > > F. J. RUIZ DE MENDOZA IBÁÑEZ > Implicatures, explicatures and conceptual mappings p. 429 > > 6. GRAMÁTICA > > F. ALIAGA - E. DE BUSTOS > Espacios mentales y actitudes epistémicas: la alternancia indicativo/ > subjuntivo en español p. 441 > > E. BERNÁRDEZ SANCHÍS > El subjuntivo español y los espacios mentales p. 451 > > P. A. BRANDT > Domains and the Grounding of Meaning p. 467 > > J. L. CIFUENTES HONRUBIA > Verbos con incorporación conceptual direccional p. 479 > > M. J. CUENCA I ORDINYANA > Sobre la interrelació del lèxic i la gramàtica: el concepte de connexió > lèxica p. 507 > > N. DELBECQUE > La dimensión paradigmática de la alternancia a/Ø en la construcción > transitiva y más allá p. 527 > > RENÉ DIRVEN - GÜNTER RADDEN > The Conceptualisation of situation types in English p. 549 > > A. DOIZ BIENZOBAS > La evolución diacrónica de la categoría de la modalidad deóntica en > euskera p. 559 > > L. FOGSGAARD > Las clases de palabras p. 575 > > M. GARACHANA CAMARERO > La noción de preferencia en la gramaticalización de ahora (que), > ahora bien, antes, antes bien y más bien p. 593 > > M. GUARDDON ANELO > Visualización, idealización y objetivación del espacio. Un análisis > semántico p. 615 > > M. C. HORNO CHÉLIZ > Conceptualización y categorización lingüística de las relaciones > espaciales > en verbos locativos p. 629 > > C. INCHAURRALDE BESGA > La interacción tiempo-modo-aspecto en el verbo. Una perspectiva > cognitiva p. 639 > > R. W. LANGACKER > Indeterminacy in semantics and grammar p. 649 > > I. LÓPEZ-VARELA AZCÁRATE > Tipología del pretérito perfecto en inglés y en español basada en un > tratamiento cognitivo de la predicación verbal y completa p. 673 > > R. MALDONADO > Datividad y distancia conceptual p. 687 > > J. I. MARÍN ARRESE > Transitivity and passivizability: the cognitive basis for peculiar > passives p. 707 > > M. A. MARTÍN GAVILANES > A cognitive approach to contrastive analysis: along as a preposition > of location in English and Spanish p. 719 > > E. MARTÍNEZ CARO > Adelantamiento de complementos argumentales en español: > diferenciación pragmática p. 731 > > J. L. MARTOS > Traducció i lingüística cognitiva: la distribució del día en anglés, > català i espanyol p. 743 > > C. MICHAUX > Dénominations et représentations conceptuelles P. 755 > > I. NAVARRO I FERRANDO > A multimodel system for the description of spatial semantics: > the preposition on p. 767 > > SVEND OESTERGAARD > Verbal coding of dynamic processes p. 789 > > E. PASCUAL OLIVÉ > The counsel’s report: a cognitive sociopragmatic analysis of > rhetorical questions p. 805 > > F. M. PÉREZ HERRANZ - A. J. LÓPEZ CRUCES > Estudio de la preposición desde la semántica topológica p. 817 > > M. PÉREZ SALDANYA > Iconicidad y cognición en morfología flexiva p. 839 > > B. POTTIER > La topología y los esquemas mentales p. 857 > > V. SALVADOR > Concessivity and processes of grammaticalization: > the case of the Catalan connective encara que p. 863 > > P. SANCHO CREMADES > Construccions d’exclusió en catalá i espanyol p. 873 > > J. TODOLÍ > Els pronoms predicatius i el límit atribució/predicació: > un enfocament cognitiu p. 889 > > P. TWARDZISZ > The weak characters of polish existentials p. 905 > > J. WILK-RACI?SKA > How to be a hypocrite, or axiology of diminutives p. 921 > > D. H. YANG - M. SONG > Extracting role archetypes and constructing their hierarchy related > to korean case particle ulo ‘to, as, with, etc’ p. 931 > > Índice p. 949 -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: unknown sender Subject: no subject Date: no date Size: 8194 URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: vcard.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 421 bytes Desc: Tarjeta de Mar?n Arrese, Juana I. URL: From Sally.Rice at UALBERTA.CA Thu Jan 28 20:42:30 1999 From: Sally.Rice at UALBERTA.CA (Sally Rice) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 13:42:30 -0700 Subject: Experimental linguistics position at the University of Alberta Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, invites applications for a tenure-track position at the junior Assistant Professor level in experimental linguistics, effective 1 July 1999. An active research program in one or more of the following areas is sought: linguistic theory (e.g., syntax), prosody, or another area that interfaces with the continuing research strengths of the department. The candidate should hold the PhD and have demonstrated teaching and research ability. The salary range for Assistant Professors effective 1 July 1999 begins at $42,054. The Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta is engaged in an extensive process of renewal, and is committed to ensuring that the substantial number of hirings projected over the next several years will ensure for the future the lively and productive intellectual environment on which the Faculty prides itself. The Department of Linguistics has a strong commitment to empirical and experimental approaches to linguistic research. Department members are engaged in ongoing research projects, many grant-funded, in experimental phonetics, discourse processing, and the study of the phonological, morphological, and semantic aspects of the mental lexicon. The Department offers both graduate (PhD and MSc) and undergraduate degrees, and values its reputation for excellence in teaching and graduate training. We seek a colleague who wishes to engage in leading-edge research in a collegial and supportive research environment, to recruit and train promising graduate students, and to participate in innovative teaching/learning at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In accordance with Canadian Immigration requirements, this advertisement is directed to Canadian citizens and permanent residents. If suitable Canadian citizens and permanent residents cannot be found, other individuals will be considered. The University of Alberta is committed to the principle of equity in employment. As an employer we welcome diversity in the workplace and encourage applications from all qualified women and men, including Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities. A letter of application, curriculum vitae, all university transcripts, and three letters of reference should be received by 1 March 1999 by: Lois M Stanford, Chair Department of Linguistics University of Alberta Edmonton T6G 2E7 Canada phone: (780) 492 3459 fax: (780) 492 0806 e-mail: lois.stanford at ualberta.ca From davpark at MICROSOFT.COM Fri Jan 29 17:35:33 1999 From: davpark at MICROSOFT.COM (David Parkinson) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 09:35:33 -0800 Subject: Request for good syntactic examples Message-ID: Hello Funknetters: A friend is seeking to convince some colleagues of the (at least partial) independence of syntax from semantics, and is looking for good and reasonably incontrovertible examples of syntactic phenomena or alternations which are hard to explain as deriving from their semantic content. If you have a favorite cocktail party or classroom example of the donate/give or "*who do you wanna read the books?" type, please send it along to me. I will post a summary to FUNKNET as appropriate. (Incidentally, I won't be unhappy if people try to argue that such examples are in principle nonexistent... but maybe these arguments would be best posted to the list, in the interests of sparking discussion.) Thanks! David Parkinson From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Jan 29 18:06:33 1999 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 10:06:33 -0800 Subject: where does grammar come from Message-ID: Subject: Re: Request for good syntactic examples Yes do keep looking for semantically opaque syntactic phenomena, that is an important issue. But I think it is important to keep in mind that semantic content is only PART of a functionalist argument for why grammars look the way they do. As Brian MacWhinney and I have noted for a few years, a functionalist account is going to need to take into considerably both the semantic content AND the large set of information- processing constraints that serve as the "Darwinian space" in which grammars have evolved. A metaphor: line orientation detectors, center-surround cells and ocular dominance columns do not "look like" the content of vision, and yet they arise over and over again. two possible explanations: (1) These features of visual cortex are entirely arbitrary, mutations under strict genetic control, innately insured. (2) These features are necessary to get the job of vision done, and will arise even if they are not innate. There are now multiple neural network simulations showing that many of these features DO arise, inevitably, in a neural network with no innate "knowledge", as a function of trying to solve (a) the dimension-reduction problems involved in mapping from a 3-dimensional world through a 2-dimensional retina, (b) the special problems posed by competing inputs from two eyes with overlapping visual fields, (c) waves of plasticity that pass over cortex due perhaps to maturational gradients (think of plants being periodically sprayed by nutri-grow....). In other words, opaque-looking features can be the product of processing and development, so inevitable that they do not have to be innate above and beyond the innate factors that get the animal to try to solve that problem in the first place (e.g. eyes that happen to be placed on the head so that the visual fields overlap -- frogs don't have that problem, and don't have ocular dominance columns as a result, but they GET ocular dominance columns if you implant a third eye right in between the usual two in an embryonic frog.....). So, it is useful to collect semantically opaque grammatical phenomena, but these cannot constitute, ipso facto, evidence for innate knowledge. The pathway may be very indirect, heavily determined by processing facts and by the severe dimension-reduction and constraint-satisfaction problem involved in mapping from a high dimensional meaning space (with a lot of competing material) onto a low-dimensional channel. -liz bates From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Jan 29 18:16:46 1999 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 13:16:46 -0500 Subject: Request for good syntactic examples Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 09:35:33 -0800 >From: David Parkinson >Subject: Request for good syntactic examples >To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU >Reply-to: David Parkinson > >Hello Funknetters: >A friend is seeking to convince some colleagues of the (at least partial) >independence of syntax from semantics, and is looking for good and >reasonably incontrovertible examples of syntactic phenomena or alternations >which are hard to explain as deriving from their semantic content. If you >have a favorite cocktail party or classroom example of the donate/give or >"*who do you wanna read the books?" type, please send it along to me. I will >post a summary to FUNKNET as appropriate. >(Incidentally, I won't be unhappy if people try to argue that such examples >are in principle nonexistent... but maybe these arguments would be best >posted to the list, in the interests of sparking discussion.) > >Thanks! >David Parkinson > I suspect "that such examples are in principle nonexistent." A more basic problem stems from characteristics of the very example that David Parkinson cites: *who do you wanna read the books? and others, originally from David Lightfoot, I think, like Who do you wanna succeed? 'who do you want to follow?' vs. *Who do you wanna succeed? 'who do you wish to see emerge successful from this endeavor?' Frankly, I find myself saying _wanna_ in both cases. That is, the starred examples are not starred in my dialect or in the dialects of many people I overhear every day. These sorts of examples ( and the, sometimes unwarranted, conclusions drawn from them) are why I have been giving papers on grammaticality and acceptability judgments for the past 20 years. And while I like the work of people like Cowert and Schutze, I do not think the robustness of such judgments is well supported. But of course, the real problem stems from relying on Gedankeneksperimenten to establish which sentences are, out of context, grammatical or ungrammatical and then arguing points of linguistic theory from such shaky "data." Carl Mills University of Cincinnati From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Jan 1 19:49:24 1999 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 11:49:24 -0800 Subject: functionalism vs generativism vs ... In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19981231080146.006ba58c@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Thu, 31 Dec 1998, Dick Hudson wrote: > Guy Deutscher's query implies that there are only two positions: > functionalism or generativism. Those who align themselves with one of these > positions may like to think this is so, but it ain't. There's also > cognitivism (non-modular, but also not functionalist in the `discourse' > sense), and Labov's view (explicitly non-functional but not generativist in > the normal sense either), and .... I have no argument with Dick's larger point, but I want to take issue with the definition of functionalism which is implied here. The differences between functional and formal approaches have always been described, and in part defined, by arguments about what counts as data. As generative grammar has come to take more and more cognizance of typological and historical data, it may be true, by this point in time, that functionalism defined by the database differs from formalism primarily in its inclusion of discourse structure as both explanans and explanandum. But while there are functionalists who attempt to explain everything in discourse terms, this can't be taken as a definition of functionalism, unless we want to exclude the likes of Givon or Bybee or Heine from that label. Such a restriction would certainly be controversial. The basic difference between functionalism and formalism is in where explanations are lodged, and what counts as an explanation. Formal linguistics generates explanations out of structure--so that a structural category like Subjacency counts as an explanation for certain facts about various syntactic structures and constructions. Most contemporary formal theories, certainly generative grammar, provide ontological grounding for these explanations in a hypothesized, but unexplored and unexplained, biologically based universal language faculty. Functionalists, in contrast, find explanations in function. Formal principles can be no more than generalizations over data, so that most generative "explanation" seems to functionalists to proceed on the dormitive principle. There is a range of different functional arenas in which explanation can be sought--sentence processing / memory constraints, discourse functions, cognitive structure, even historical tendencies. Of course most researchers specialize in one of these areas, (or at least in one at a time; think of Chafe's earlier work on semantic patterns as explanation for structure, and his later work primarily on discourse). And sometimes--as everywhere in science and scholarship--some of us come to believe that all real explanation lies in our own bailiwick. But in truth the different domains of functional explanation don't separate out all that easily. In particular, when we talk about cognitive explanations, we're explicitly claiming that linguistic structure is informed by general patterns of thought. Obviously these same cognitive factors must inform other domains such as discourse structure as well, so that at a sufficiently deep level of analysis "cognitive" and "discourse-functional" theories are complementary. While it is certainly true that, on the contemporary linguistic scene, "cognitive" and "functional" linguists represent distinct (though overlapping) social-interactional sets, I think it is a mistake to regard them as competing theoretical frameworks. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Mon Jan 4 10:17:32 1999 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 10:17:32 +0000 Subject: functionalism vs generativism vs ... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks to Scott Delancey for the helpful explanation of functionalism. I'm very happy to hear such an inclusive definition, but I wonder what it excludes. What would an explanation have to be like to count as non-functional? After all, even an explanation like subjacency would count as functional if we assumed that it was a cognitive constraint (as Chomskians would assume, I think). And the original functionalists in phonology insisted that elements were defined by contrasts within the system, i.e. by their function of contrasting with other elements. My memory of Systemic Functional Grammar is that the same is true there. This sounds like an extra kind of function, which isn't included in Scott's list - a `formal function'? So maybe *any* explanation is by definition functional, even if the word 'function' isn't used? >I have no argument with Dick's larger point, but I want to take issue >with the definition of functionalism which is implied here. The >differences between functional and formal approaches have always been >described, and in part defined, by arguments about what counts as data. >As generative grammar has come to take more and more cognizance of >typological and historical data, it may be true, by this point in time, >that functionalism defined by the database differs from formalism >primarily in its inclusion of discourse structure as both explanans and >explanandum. But while there are functionalists who attempt to explain >everything in discourse terms, this can't be taken as a definition >of functionalism, unless we want to exclude the likes of Givon or >Bybee or Heine from that label. Such a restriction would certainly be >controversial. > The basic difference between functionalism and formalism is in >where explanations are lodged, and what counts as an explanation. >Formal linguistics generates explanations out of structure--so >that a structural category like Subjacency counts as an >explanation for certain facts about various syntactic structures >and constructions. Most contemporary formal theories, certainly >generative grammar, provide ontological grounding for these >explanations in a hypothesized, but unexplored and unexplained, >biologically based universal language faculty. > Functionalists, in contrast, find explanations in function. >Formal principles can be no more than generalizations over data, so that >most generative "explanation" seems to functionalists to proceed on the >dormitive principle. > There is a range of different functional arenas in which >explanation can be sought--sentence processing / memory >constraints, discourse functions, cognitive structure, even historical >tendencies. Of course most researchers specialize in one of these areas, >(or at least in one at a time; think of Chafe's earlier work on >semantic patterns as explanation for structure, and his later work >primarily on discourse). And sometimes--as everywhere in science and >scholarship--some of us come to believe that all real explanation lies in >our own bailiwick. But in truth the different domains of functional >explanation don't separate out all that easily. > In particular, when we talk about cognitive explanations, we're >explicitly claiming that linguistic structure is informed by general >patterns of thought. Obviously these same cognitive factors must inform >other domains such as discourse structure as well, so that at a >sufficiently deep level of analysis "cognitive" and "discourse-functional" >theories are complementary. While it is certainly true that, on the >contemporary linguistic scene, "cognitive" and "functional" linguists >represent distinct (though overlapping) social-interactional sets, >I think it is a mistake to regard them as competing theoretical >frameworks. > >Scott DeLancey >Department of Linguistics >University of Oregon >Eugene, OR 97403, USA > >delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu >http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html > > > > Richard (= Dick) Hudson Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. +44(0)171 419 3152; fax +44(0)171 383 4108; http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Mon Jan 4 16:35:39 1999 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 16:35:39 +0000 Subject: functionalism and explanatory depth Message-ID: Dick Hudson asks: > So maybe *any* explanation is by definition functional, even if the word > 'function' isn't used? Chomskyans wouldn't like to hear it, but in a sense, this is true. I would put it as follows: Functionalists are primarily interested in explaining language structure, whereas Chomskyans are interested in this only secondarily. Their primary interest is explaining Plato's Problem, the possibility of language acquisition despite the poverty of the stimulus. This involves the postulation of UG as the central explanatory hypothesis, and the fleshing out of UG as the central descriptive task. We have no disagreements when describing low-level generalizations, which are of course also explanations in a sense (e.g. the rule that English nouns form their plural by adding -s, which explains that the plural of _book_ is _book-s_). But when it comes to higher-level generalizations, we differ, because Chomskyans never seek generalizations going beyond the language system. So some obvious functional explanations have no status in Chomskyan linguistics (e.g. the economic-motivation explanation for universal overt marking in plurals). Thus, in a way, Chomskyan linguists are more modest as far as the level of explanatory depth is concerned. They generally don't admit this, but I've found a remarkable quotation concerning diachronic linguistics: "...people seeking a substantive theory of change [i.e. functionalists, MH] are too ambitious, too principled, and seek to explain too much..." (David Lightfoot, The development of language, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, 225) Martin -- Dr. Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Jan 4 19:19:49 1999 From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 11:19:49 -0800 Subject: functionalism vs generativism vs ... In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990104101732.00730888@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Jan 1999, Dick Hudson wrote: > Thanks to Scott Delancey for the helpful explanation of functionalism. I'm > very happy to hear such an inclusive definition, but I wonder what it > excludes. What would an explanation have to be like to count as > non-functional? After all, even an explanation like subjacency would count > as functional if we assumed that it was a cognitive constraint (as > Chomskians would assume, I think). Indeed they would, and do, and in fact one sometimes hears a certain amount of annoyance expressed by generativists as what they regard as misappropriation of the term "cognitive" by Cognitive Grammarians. And yes, obviously, whatever's going on in the brain is "cognitive" in some sense. The crucial difference here is that explanatory constructs of generative theory, like subjacency, are assumed to be specifically linguistic, while cognitive explanations within functional grammar* appeal to constructs which are presumed to be aspects of general cognition, not part of a distinct, modular language faculty. The essential difference is whether explanation is being sought outside of linguistic structure itself. Thus an explanation of the cross-linguistic tendency for topics to come in sentence-initial position which is stated in terms of phrase structure is not functionalist, while one which is stated in terms of the psychology of perception is. *I would definitely include Cognitive Grammar here, and I'm not alone in that; see for example Langacker's discussion of the relation between his proposals and other frameworks in vol. I of Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (p. 4) Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Tue Jan 5 01:38:02 1999 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 15:38:02 -1000 Subject: Ergo's 1st ANNUAL PARSING CONTEST Message-ID: Ergo Linguistic Technologies would like to announce its first annual parsing contest based on a fixed set of sentences and a fixed set of tasks to be performed on that set of sentences. The area of NLP to be explored is that of increased syntactic analysis to provide: 1) improvements in navigation and control technology through more complex grammar, 2) improvements in the implementation of question/answer, statement/response dialogs with computers and computer characters, and 3) improvements in web and database searching using natural anguage queries. The contest will be based on a comparison of results for parses of a fixed set of sentences (included at end of this message) and various tasks that can be performed as a result of those parses. That is, the comparison will be based on the actual parse tree and the ability to use that parsed output to generate theory independent parse trees and output and to perform various NLP tasks. The judging will be based on the standards for evaluating NLP that have been proposed previously on this list by myself and Derek Bickerton and which are currently being developed into an ISO standard for the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) as part of the VRML Consortium's development efforts (http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/ NLP-ANIM). The standards proposed are theory and field independent standards which allow both linguists and non-linguists to evaluate NLP systems in the areas of navigation and control, question/answer dialogues, and database and web searching. I will also be at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America this week in Los Angeles for those who would like to discuss this in more detail. The sentences chosen for this contest are rather simple, but as we find more and more parsers that can accomplish the tasks on this list, we will add more complex sentences and tasks to the list. Please, be aware that systems that may be designed for large corpora of unrestricted text actually cannot work in this domain. Thus, while such systems may be useful for certain searching tasks, they are not useful in the domain explored in this contest ? and this is evidenced by their inability to perform on tests such as the one provide here. The full contest instructions and an HTML document of Ergo's results in this area can be found at http://www.ergo-ling.com. The standards were designed to allow the developers of a parsing system (statistical or syntactic) to demonstrate the thoroughness and accuracy of the parses they produce by using the parsed output to perform a number of straightforward, traditional syntactic tasks such as changing a statement to a question or an active to a passive as well as demonstrating an ability to create standard trees (Using the Penn Treebank II guidelines) and standard grammatical analyses. All the standards chosen were chosen to be theory independent measures of the accuracy of a parse through the use of standard and ordinary grammatical and syntactic output. The contest officially begins on January 15th and will be closed on March 31st. This will allow developers 2.5 months to develop tools and to work with trouble spots that they may have with the set of sentences offered in this contest. The contest will be offered in subsequent years from January to March. As time develops we hope the parsers, the contest rules, and the test sentences will all grow in sophistication and scope. However, as most parsers have existed many more years than ours, it is reasonable to think these tools exist already. THE CONTEST RULES: Anyone who joins must submit an HTML document and the parser (source code only) that created it. The parser can be in any format but it must require a minimum of effort for the contest judges to set up and run. For example, a WIN95 Interface that takes input files and produces the html output file would be considered a minimum effort parser. There will be tests to ensure that the output is genuine parsed output rather than a synthesis such as a series of print calls that merely present the correct output for a particular string rather than generating it. The HTML files of all contestants will be made available at the Ergo web site (http://www.ergo- ling.com). Those who wish to join even though their parsing system is not robust or complete enough for all the tasks or all the sentences in the contest are also welcome to join. Reviewers will then look at these documents as promising parsers for future contests. Their results will be posted on our web site as well. Judging will be based on the percentage of sentences that parsed, the percentage of the tasks that are completed and on the accuracy of the parses that result and the success on the parsing tasks. Currently, the judges will be Derek Bickerton and myself, but we will welcome others to join in the task. Because of the home court advantage of the judges, there will be printed reports of the judging available on the Ergo web site for review by the overall community of professionals in this area. Complaints or criticisms will also be posted. Anyone who would like to review the judging and the comments on the judging are welcome to do so. Anyone who wishes to be a volunteer judge may also contact us. However, the criteria for all judging will be the accuracy of the parser in creating a correct parse of all the sentences and completing all the tasks set forth in the test materials. We would like this contest to remain open not only to challengers but also to those who would like to design and improve the contest itself through the addition of more sentences or more tasks added to the parsing task. There is one condition, however, on being able to this, we will hold rigidly to the rule that those who would improve on or add to the contest must first meet the original challenge at a minimum level of 75% accuracy before being allowed to contribute. We are starting with a small set of relatively simple sentences to make this as available as possible to as many people as possible. In this manner researchers in industry, academia, and government will be able to compare their results without exposing any proprietary or confidential information. We also do not want the contest to be unduly influenced by those who would like to target some ideal of parsing that is not thoroughly grounded in what is currently possible in these domains. At a Virtual Reality and Multi-Media Conference in Japan (VSMM ?98), Ergo was awarded the "Best Technical Award" for its NLP technology. I believe the main reason that judges and others were able to notice this is because I was able to point out that "THE ENTIRE FIELD OF VIRTUAL REALITY AN D MULTI-MEDIA IS BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY GRAMMAR." And then I went on to explain that the main reason many VR and Multi-Meida sites and programs are not catching on is because their users cannot ask even a simple question of the characters or about the objects they encounter. Thus, a UNESCO virtual world such as reconstructed cathedral will receive many visitors but they will not stay and explore because they cannot ask even the simplest questions like "How many stairs in this Cathedral?" "When was the Nave built?" and so on. I then pointed out that while speech and graphics were actually ready to work with such projects, the fact that their grammatical abilities is so limited, no one is using them with these products. The missing link between speech, VR and multi- media and users actually talking to avatars and sites is GRAMMAR. When I then demonstrated that this was so with the use of the Ergo tools, we won the award. The main reason I am sponsoring this contest is so that all linguists and NLP researchers who would like to paticipate in this very large future source of jobs can do so as soon as possible. So in order to stimulate research and interest this contest is proposed. WE WOULD ESPECIALLY LIKE TO INVITE PROFESSORS, STUDENTS, AND STAFF AT CARNEGIE MELON, STANFORD, XEROX PARC, MICROSOFT, IBM, DRAGON, LEARNOUT AND HAUSPIE, PHILIPS, MIT, SUN MICROSYSTEMS (JAVASPEECH GROUP), NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, AND GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY TO SUBMIT ENTRIES TO THIS CONTEST. WE WILL BE HAPPY TO POST THEIR RESULTS AND WOULD ALSO BE HAPPY TO TELL THE WORLD IF THEY CAN GENERATE A PARSE THAT IS BETTER THAN OURS ON THE STANDARDS PROVIDED HERE. THIS IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS AND JUNIOR STAFF TO WORK WITH EXTANT PARSERS TO COMBINE AND EXTEND TOOLS INTO THESE VERY USEFUL AND PRACTICAL AREAS. THE SENTENCES The full set of sentences for the contest is available at the http://www.ergo-ling.com web site. This list contains five from each of the three sections: 1) theory independent parsing, 2) navigation and control, and 3) Question/answer, statement/response repartee. The full list contains 105 sentences and will grow and be modified over the years as this annual contest takes root. Section 1: Theory independent parsing. 1. there is a dog on the porch 2. John's house is bigger than mary's house 3. the tall thin man in the office is reading a technical report 4. the man who mary likes is reading the book that john gave her 5. learning how to cope with stress is of primary importance in the work world Section 2: Navigation and Control. 1. Erase all files that end in .doc 2. print the file called teach.doc 3. send an email to bob that says "meeting at eight" 4. send a fax to bob that says "there is a meeting at eight tonight" 5. go to yahoo and find information about golf courses in Georgia Section 3: Question and Answer/Statement Response Repartee. 1. bill's email is bill at server.com what is bill's email address what is bill's email 2. john has romantic books what kind of books does john have 3. My appointment with bob is at six o'clock what time is my appointment what time are my appointments 4. the tall thin man in the office is reading a technical report book what is the man reading what is the man doing is the man reading a report who is reading a report 5. John gave mary a book because it was her birthday who gave mary a book who did john give a book what did john give mary why did john give mary a book did john give mary a book did john give mary a book because it was her birthday did john give mary a pencil did john give mary a book because it was bob's birthday Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Tue Jan 5 10:27:58 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Robinson) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 20:27:58 +1000 Subject: Transitivity Message-ID: I know the literature on transitivity is enormous, but I was wondering whether people on the list could recommend a couple of good works on the issue of where the prototypical transitive scenario originates--in particular, the issue of whether it is innate or learned. I know that some authors (e.g., Hopper & Thompson) feel that transitivity derives its prominence from its association with other things (such as grounding) while others think that it is somehow basic (perhaps innate?). I would assume that if you thought transitivity was derived, you would have to think that it is learned, but that if you thought it was basic, you would lean towards nativism of some sort. But I would be interested in hearing what other people think. Thanks in advance. Sincerely, Stuart Robinson ______________________ Stuart P. Robinson (Stuart.Robinson at anu.edu.au) Linguistics Department, Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia PHONE: 61-2-6249-0703 |||| FAX: 61-2-6279-8214 From jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU Wed Jan 6 00:37:54 1999 From: jrubba at POLYMAIL.CPUNIX.CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 16:37:54 -0800 Subject: Share LSA room? Message-ID: I am looking for someone who would like to share their hotel room this weekend at the LSA meeting in Los Angeles**. I do NOT have a room reserved at this time.I am a female nonsmoker and am looking for a congenial person who sleeps soundly. I plan to stay Thursday and Friday night only, but will negotiate a third night if not doing so would nix the whole deal. Please respond by e-mail. Thanks! **at the conference hotel, the Westin Bonaventure. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 Fax: (805)-756-6374 ~ E-mail: jrubba at polymail.calpoly.edu ~ Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From lili99 at 990.NET Thu Jan 7 11:51:58 1999 From: lili99 at 990.NET (Discussion) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 19:51:58 +0800 Subject: PROCESSES IN TRANSITIVITY Message-ID: Hi, everyone: I am also interested in the topic of transitivity. However, it is the first time for me to hear from your great idea of its connection with innate and learned. What is its connection with transitivity to you?What do you mean by saying 'grounding' ? to me, it seems that the primary use of transitivity lies in the analyzing a language to see its processes, such as material, and so on. of course, it seems to be a very narrowed down application of the theory. Could you tell me something more on it?Particularly on the proceses in transitivity. Thank you. Li Li lili99 at 990.net 86-0431-5649962 From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Thu Jan 7 12:05:45 1999 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 13:05:45 +0100 Subject: Transitivity In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At 20:27 05.01.99 +1000, Stuart Robinson wrote: >I know the literature on transitivity is enormous, but I was wondering >whether people on the list could recommend a couple of good works on the >issue of where the prototypical transitive scenario originates--in >particular, the issue of whether it is innate or learned. I know that some >authors (e.g., Hopper & Thompson) feel that transitivity derives its >prominence from its association with other things (such as grounding) while >others think that it is somehow basic (perhaps innate?). I would assume >that if you thought transitivity was derived, you would have to think that >it is learned, but that if you thought it was basic, you would lean towards >nativism of some sort. But I would be interested in hearing what other >people think. Thanks in advance. I think most people from outside the MIT-Orthodoxy would agree upon the claim that linguistic transitivity is somehow derived from other properties of human cognition/behavior. In order to specify the 'source(s)' of transitivity and to describe the derivational procedures or emergent activities that result in the linguistic phenomenon of transitivity it seems to be useful first to explore the possible links between anything 'transitive-like' outside the language architecture and some elements of the architecture itself. Traditionally, transitivity is related either to the lexicon (valency patterns etc.) or to (morpho)syntax (sentence patterns etc.). If you claim that transitivity is represented in the lexicon than the source of the phenomenon should be seeked for within the domain of conceptualisation. In case you prefer a syntactic reading of transitivity, then a potential candidate for its source would be something like the architecture of information processing and communication. However, these two types of approaching the underlying conditions to not exclude each other. I strongly believe that the mental lexicon represents nothing but a 'generification' of external stimuli that are mentally construed as events. Basically, I assume that human cognition accommodates such single external stimuli in terms of 'permanent objects' (Piaget): Such constructed 'permanent events' have two basic aspects: First, they get a relational reading that allows to construe referential 'names' for the paradigm of now permanent object that are 'normally' experienced as being part of a given 'permanent event'. Hence, people construe (in the process of language acquisition) a typology of generic 'objects' that are embedded in a standard event. Quite parallel, the relation itself is "freed" from its standard objects and acquires a 'verbal' reading. In my opinion all verbs are 'generic' in this sense, too. The conceptualisation of these emergent structures (as (referential) objects and verbs) maintain much of their basic conditional (event based) nature. However, (more or less generic) constructions of elements involved in an event are associated with a much high degree of stability in time (and [partly] in space), whereas the relational structure between them (in a given or generic event) is much more unstable: Remember that any relational structure with in an 'event' can only be experienced by checking the complex degree of change that a given 'object' undergoes ['states' have to be judged a little bit different]. Second, the construction of 'permanent events' (and - subsequently - of the elements involved in such events) seems to be based of the cognitive procedure of splitting up an event cluster into a sequence of 'elements', if any kind of communication is intended with respect to the event. This procedure naturally is related to the fact that communication based on language has to respect the prerogatives established by the communicative technique itself: Language allows the clustering of event experience to a much lesser degree than non-verbal cognitive activities [though clustering itself still is a very important and universal option in language]. The serialization (or unpacking) of 'permanent events' (together with their instantiation in a given context) takes place according to a set of basic assumptions (or 'cognitive hypotheses') about how events are structured. One of the most prominent hypothesis sure is that 'omne quod movetur ab alio movetur'. This hypothesis allows to separate 'states' from 'non-states' (though the fixing of what is a state heavily depends on the acquired world knowledge). The above mentioned Peripathetic principle ends up in a second hypothesis metaphorized from the first one, namely that there is no 'reason without effect' or no 'effect without reason' (the famous C(<'motor')->E(<'motum') vector). I don't think that the C->E vector [you can call it the transitivity vector, if you want] itself is innate; rather it seems that it is learnt in the process of the assimilation and accommodation of event experience. More precisely: The experience of 'motion' as a basic factor of events is metaphorized to the extent that the habitus and general knowledge system of a given speech community has sanctioned it. The C->E vector naturally is not the only (metaphorical) basis for transitivity. The structural coupling of the C->E vector with the communicative information flow (itself emergent from the serialization of clustered events) allows to focus on any component of the vector: For instance, the "C" domain can be regarded as more central than the "E" domain (in my terms C->e) or vice versa (c->E). This may effect the internal structure of an event representation as well as its embedding in a given co-text (pivot etc.). Or, potential representatives (or 'actants') of one of the domains (or even of both) are graded in a prototypical sense ('heavy actants' are the most prototypical, and 'light actants' are the least prototypical (and marked) representatives). Or, the C->E vector allows to canonically mask one of the domains (C->zero;zero->E). These and many other procedures are emergent aspects of the activity of the cognitive-communicative interface [we should bear in mind that communication is a cognitive parameter too, though strongly 'autonomized'] and lead to the particularization of the universals of how human beings construe event: These particularizations are based on the coupling of world and communicative knowledge and a given language system. Moreover, language is a system to pass tradition (or a given habitus) together with its actualization, but it is also a traditional system itself (language is passed by language). The resulting diachronic features of a language system are very often anachronistic with respect to how people get used to communicate their way of construing events; hence, the linguistic templates of how to encode the C->E vector together with its particularizations acquire a pseudo-autonomous character that has its own history and that is processed according to the prerogatives of the paradigmatic procedures of human cognition. To sum up: In my mind we cannot claim that 'transitivity' as a linguistic 'category' (or so) is either learnt or native. Transitivity is an emergent property of language that results from the complex interaction of cognition, communication, and habitus. The fact that all languages seem to have something like transitive 'properties' does not hint at the universality of this 'category' but rather at the universality of the interaction of the above mentioned three constituents. For those who want to learn a little more about the claims I have made here: I have elaborated the claims made here in the first volume of my series "Person, Klasse, Kongruenz: Fragmente einer Kategorialtypologie des einfachen Satzes in den ostkauaksischen Sprachen. Vol. 1 (in two parts): Die Grundlagen". M?nchen/Newcastle: Lincom 1998 [this volume unfortunately is in German (and has many misprints, sorry for that!)]. This volume concentrates on what I call a "Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios" (GSS) both with respect to its theoretical foundations and its (typological) architecture [East Caucasian is chosen as a field of evaluation (in the forthcoming volumes) and does not play a prominent role in this first volume]. Wolfgang Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut f?r Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: +89-21802486 (secr.) +89-21802485 (office) http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/ From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Fri Jan 8 03:14:35 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Payton Robinson) Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 14:14:35 +1100 Subject: Transitivity & Grounding Message-ID: Hello, everyone. Many thanks for the replies I've received to my posting about transitivity. I have another question which I was hoping that others could answer. Hopper and Thompson claim that transitivity derives it prominence from its association with foregrounding, a claim which I think requires a fairly high correlation between foregrounding and high transitivity properties. Who else has looked at the relationship between the two? Do such follow-up studies generally confirm or disconfirm the proposed relationship? Thanks in advance. Cheers, Stuart Robinson From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Jan 8 06:36:35 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 22:36:35 -0800 Subject: Transitivity & Grounding In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi, Please take a look at Sally Rice's superb 1987 UCSD dissertation: Participants and Nonparticipants: Toward a Cognitive Model of Transitivity. It goes well beyond Hopper and Thompson's fine earlier work. She also has a paper-- Transitivity and the Lexicon -- in the CRL Newsletter 2.2, 1987, available online I think from the Center for Research on Language at UCSD. Hope you enjoy it. George Lakoff From ph1u+ at ANDREW.CMU.EDU Sat Jan 9 12:57:12 1999 From: ph1u+ at ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Paul J Hopper) Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 07:57:12 -0500 Subject: Transitivity & Grounding Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, A brief addendum to George's posting. Work presenting cognitive models of transitivity has indeed provided valuable additions to our understanding of transitivity at the clause level. At the same time, we note that in our 1980 paper we presented a two-fold theory of transitivity: one part was a componential analysis of transitive clauses, the other an attempt to find a basis for the transitivity components in discourse grounding. The two parts were for us inseparable. In this sense, work that "goes beyond" the early work might be not so much work that abandons the original communicative perspective while continuing to look at the componential analysis of clauses, but rather work which would examine a wider variety of discourse genres, especially conversation, and find out more about the communicative functions of argument structure in general, of which transitivity might actually turn out to be a just one manifestation. We are beginning to do this for English. Other research that moves in this direction includes the by now considerable body of work on 'preferred argument structure' (Du Bois in LANGUAGE, 1987), such as the volume of papers forthcoming with Benjamins called PREFERRED ARGUMENT STRUCTURE: THE NEXT GENERATION, edited by Ashby, Du Bois, Kumpf, as well as: Fox, Barbara A. 1995. The category 'S' in English conversation. In Werner Abraham, T. Givon, and Sandra A. Thompson, eds., Discourse grammar and typology, 153-178. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Karkkainen, Elise. 1996. Preferred argument structure and subject role in American English conversational discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 25:675-701. Other examples include: Cooreman, Ann. 1987. Transitivity and discourse continuity in Chamorro narrative. Berlin: Mouton. Tao, Hongyin. 1996. Units in Mandarin conversation: prosody, discourse and grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Cheers, Paul and Sandy ----------------------------------- Excerpts from mail: 7-Jan-99 Re: Transitivity & Grounding by George Lakoff at COGSCI.BER > > Hi, > > Please take a look at Sally Rice's superb 1987 UCSD dissertation: > Participants and Nonparticipants: Toward a Cognitive Model of Transitivity. > It goes well beyond Hopper and Thompson's fine earlier work. > > She also has a paper-- Transitivity and the Lexicon -- in the CRL Newsletter > 2.2, 1987, available online I think from the Center for Research on > Language at UCSD. > > Hope you enjoy it. > > George Lakoff From lachler at UNM.EDU Mon Jan 11 01:26:10 1999 From: lachler at UNM.EDU (Jordan Lachler) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 18:26:10 -0700 Subject: 1999 Athabaskan Language Conference Message-ID: ATHABASKAN LANGUAGE CONFERENCE University of New Mexico Albuquerque May 21-23, 1999 The Organizing Committee is looking for talks and presentations from native speakers of Athabaskan languages, native non-speakers, storytellers, and linguists. Suggested Topics and Themes Language Maintenance and Language Teaching ------------------------------------------- * Elementary, Secondary, and Post-secondary Programs * Immersion Programs: Summer Programs * Innovative Pedagogies Linguistic Research ------------------- * The Structure of the Athabaskan Lexicon * Historical and Comparative Athabaskan Morphosyntax * Interface of Phonetics and Phonology in Athabaskan Suggestions for Panel Presentations Welcome! Please submit the following: * one-page proposal for your presentation * a 50-word abstract for the Conference Program, including: * your name * your affiliation * your e-mail and/or snail mail address Please submit your proposal and abstract via mail, fax, or e-mail by Friday, April 16, 1999. Talks will be scheduled for 20-minute slots, with 10 minutes for discussion, but longer presentations may also be arranged. E-Mail : athconf at s-leodm.unm.edu FAX : 505-277-6355 Mail : Athabaskan Language Conference Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 Updated information can be found at the conference website: http://s-leodm.unm.edu/~athconf/ --- Jordan From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Wed Jan 13 06:46:31 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 22:46:31 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: PLEASE FORWARD TO ANY FRIENDS OR MAILING LISTS YOU THINK WOULD BE INTERESTED. Just Published! PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Basic Books Hardcover, 624 pages, $30 list price $21 + shipping at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com Thought is mostly unconscious. The mind is inherently embodied. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are three major findings in cognitive science that contradict most of Western philosophy, including both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy. This book asks, What would happen if we started with these empirical discoveries about the nature of mind and constructed philosophy anew from there? Virtually everything changes when the embodiment of mind is taken into account: -New understandings of truth and of science are required. -The most basic philosophical ideas-time, events, causes, the mind, the self, and morality-are reanalyzed in detail and shown to be radically different than the Western tradition has supposed. -Great philosophical theories-from the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to analytic philosophy-are shown to be composed out of a small number of metaphors taken as eternal truths. -Even contemporary accounts of language (Chomskyan linguistics) and rationality (the rational actor model using game theory) are shown to have a metaphorical basis. Most importantly, the very idea of what a human being is changes radically. -There is no Cartesian person, whose essence is a mind separate from, and independent of the body. -There is no Kantian, radically autonomous person, with an absolute freedom and a transcendent universal reason that correctly dictates what is and isn't moral. -There is no utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality-the maximization of utility. -There is no postmodernist person-no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent. -There is no person as posed by analytic philosophy for whom truth is a correspondence between words and the world, independent of human psychology and biology. -There is no computational person, whose mind is like computer software able to work on any suitable computer or neural hardware. -There is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context, perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature of communication and whom language is a total genetic innovation that began with human beings. Contemporary cognitive science reveals that we human beings are radically different kinds of creatures than Western philosophy has taught us that we were. GEORGE LAKOFF is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society and has been President of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. MARK JOHNSON is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3604 bytes Desc: not available URL: From matmies at LING.HELSINKI.FI Wed Jan 13 11:45:17 1999 From: matmies at LING.HELSINKI.FI (Matti Miestamo) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 13:45:17 +0200 Subject: TOC: SKY 1998 - Linguistic Association of Finland Message-ID: (Apologies for the cross-posting) SKY 1998 (The Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, edited by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 139 pp.) is now available! Table of Contents: Elizabeth COUPER-KUHLEN: Prosody in Interactional Discourse Shengli FENG: Prosodically Motivated Passive bei Constructions in Classical Chinese Antti IIVONEN: Functional Interpretation of Prosody within the Linguistic System Esa ITKONEN: On (Sign) Language, Music, and Anti-Modularity Tarja LEPPA"AHO: On the Margins: Interpreting as an Object of Linguistic Inquiry Jussi NIEMI, Marja NENONEN, Esa PENTTILA" and Helka RIIONHEIMO: Is the Order of Adverbs Predictable on Lexical Grounds? **************************** Also available: SKY 1997 (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 188 pp.) 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 PENTTILA": 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 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? The tables of contents of earlier SKY Yearbooks can be found at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/SKY-1996.html ****************************** Prices: SKY 1998: EUR 17 / FIM 100 / USD 20 plus shipping & handling Earlier editions: EUR 12 / FIM 70 / USD 15 plus shipping&handling Orders: Bookstore Tiedekirja address: Kirkkokatu 14, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358 9 635177 fax +358 9 635017 e-mail Tiedekirja at pp.kolumbus.fi (Tilaukset Suomesta suoraan SKY:sta") For further information, please visit our WWW-pages at http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ or contact our secretary: meri.larjavaara at helsinki.fi ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel, @ stands for 'a Swedish o', an 'a' with a small circle on it. ) From TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed Jan 13 19:39:27 1999 From: TGIVON at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:39:27 -0800 Subject: TRANSITIVITY Message-ID: TRANSITIVITY I was waiting for someone to make some of the points that I thought could (& should) have been made in the discussion of transitivity. But given that the discussion seems to have petered out, maybe this is a good point to try & make them; under two headings. 1. SEMANGTICS VS. PRAGMATICS OF EVENTS: TWO TYPES OF COGNITIVE FRAMING One of the great contributions of the Hopper & Thompsopn (1980) article was to gather under one roof all the phenomena associated with transitivity, and underscore the strong--and multiple--typologicaland textual associations they display . But focusing on strong associations tends, on occasion, to distract our attention from recognizing a simple caveat--that an association, be it even a strong one, need not necessarily mean identity. a. THE COGNITIVE SEMANTICS OF TRANSITIVITY The semantic core of transitivity resides in the framing of the prototype transitive event (a) acting, volitional CAUSER/AGENT (b) passive, affected CAUSEE/PATIENT (c) fast changing, telic EVENT/VERB The cognitive framing of such events in humans harkens back to the pre- linguistic sensory-motor developmental stage in the first 9 months of life, where the sensory-motor foundations of our experiential universe--external, internal & social--are laid out. At this developmental stage, human discourse is largely mono-propositional (single states/events) rather than multi-propositional (coherence over multiple states/events). This is also a stage that, in principle, is not all that distinct from the perceptual/ cognitive organization of pre-human species. I think we can take it for granted that there is a strong ADAPTIVE motivation for why higher vertebrates concentrate so many resources on the processing of prototype transitive events. All three key features of such events reside at the very heart of the daily survival of a moving, self-feeding, social, interacting, prey-or-predator species. The fact that the mammalian perceptual system is so biased toward changes/telicity, self-propelled entities/animates, affected objects/foods/prey etc. is exhaustively well established. This is true in all major perceptual modalities, and simply gets extended into the higher cognitive processes that are but evolutionary extensions, elaborations and extra complications of the early perceptual modalities. b. THE COMMUNICATIVE PRAGMATICS OF TRANSITIVITY The cognitive "framing" of semantically-transitive events (a. above) is fundamentally of the type Ron Langacker has been talking about in his extensive work. Now, while the communicative-pragmatics of transitivity interacts--extensively--with the cognitive-semantic framing, the two not identical. To begin with, it is not the NATURE of the event itself that needs to be at issue here, but often rather the WIDER framing of the event within the more extended communicative goals of the speaker/hearer. So that the very same transitive event may be framed with different ATTENTIONAL FOCUSING. Thus, in the active-direct framing of the event: (1) Mary demolished the house the topical/attention focus is stronger on 'Mary' than on the house, a fact that has been demonstrated by both discourse-heuristic measurements and, more recently, by attentional-cognitive measurements (Russ Tomlin's work, among others). In the "classical" promotional passive, on the other hand, as in: (2) The house was demolished by Mary the topical/attentional focus is on the patient, again a fact that has been sufficiently demonstrated by both text-based & cognitive measures. Now, there is absolutely no evidence that the three semantic core-features of transitivity need have changed even one iota between the active-direct (1) and the passive (2). So there is, in principle, a healthy DISSOCIATION between the semantics & pragmatics of transitivity. Having noted that, one could of course see that there **could** be a CARRYOVER--thus a strong association--between the pragmatics & semantics of de-transitivization. Thus, for example, in (3) below, semantic AGENCY is presumsably deficient: (3) The house was demolished in the earthquake And indeed, there are some syntactic constructions--middle voice, in particular--in which the pragmatics & semantics of de-transitivization are almost obligatorily associated, as in: (4) (Mary broke the glass) The glass broke The glass is broken The glass is breakable The glass breaks real easy So, the semantics & pragmatics of TRANSITIVE EVENT or DE-TRANSITIVE EVENT can often coincide. But the fact that they CAN also be fully dissociated from e.o. suggests that, at least in principle, one ought to consider them as two distinct 'cycles' of cognitive framing, each one with its own specific properties, & each driven by its own distinct functional-adaptive motivations. One could go on and make the very same argumnent for the anti-passive, citing both AP constructions that allow a healthy dissociation between the pragmatics of de-transitivity (DE-TOPICALIZING THE PATIENT) and its event semantics, but also AP constructions that exhibit strong association between the two. One of the most strinking facets of STRONG ASSOCIATION between the semantics & pragmatics of transitivity is observed in the **text distribution** of transtive & intransitive constructions, where the ACTIVE-DIRECT is overwhelming in text-frequency, and both PASS & AP relatively rare. But again, strong frequency association in behavior (SUBJ = AGT; OBJ = PAT) should in no way be interpreted as **identity** (Ed Keenan made this unfortunate slip when he listed AGT as one of the properties of SUBJ in his 1976 paper). In passing, one may as well note that the distinctness of event-semantics from communicative pragmatics was recognized IMPLICITLY in Chomsky's 1965 (Aspects) model, where 'deep structure' was seen as fully isomorphic with propositional (EVENT) semantics. While the un-mentioned discourse pragmatics was provided for, albeit only **tacitly**, by various "markers" that triggered 'transformations'. In this version of 'the model', such 'markers' were built into the DS tree and treated, with the normal disregard for functional correlates, as purely syntactic. 2. INNATENESS There is a wealth of evidence from the study of vertebrate & mammalian & primate & human perception suggesting that the bias towards ACTING AGENTS, FAST CHANGES & SALIENT OBJECTS is genetically wired-in. It remains an open question whether the cognitive mechanisms responsible for the strong PRAGMATIC-COMMUNICATIVE bias we display, in our everyday communication, towards talking more about agents (i.e. investing more time & attention in them) is the very same as, or is distinct from, the neurologically/ evolutionarily much older mechanisms of event perception/cognition. There is very clearly a strong assoiciation between the two. But there is just as clearly a strong disssociation. Thus, the bias toward action/change/motion is much more automatic/unattended/subconscious. We simply can't help it (just observe your cat, dog, horse or child...). On the other hand, communicative/textual evidence suggests, at least tentatively, that some more sophisticated CONTEXT-SCANNING CHOICES may be involved in the discourse-pragmatics of transitivity & de-transitivi- zation. So, while we know relatively little so far about the neurology associated with grammatical constructions, even Russ Tomlin's cuing experiments suggest that attention can be manipulated by changing contexts. I.e. that we pay attention to the communicative context. The process itself is largely automatic, but it is not necessarily the same process that impells us to pay attention to transitive events (over stasis)--even in the total absence of communicative intent. Finally, given both the order-of-magnitude jump in complexity between event-semantics & discourse-pragmatics, their clear inclusion relation (discourse subsumes event-clauses, but not vice-versa), and lastly, their rather distinct evolutionary history (all vertebrates engage in event perception; but only the most complex social communicating species indulge in multi-propositional coherence...), one strongly suspects that the relevant processing mechanisms--while strongly connected--are not identical. Cheers, T. Givon From eitkonen at UTU.FI Thu Jan 14 13:21:52 1999 From: eitkonen at UTU.FI (Esa) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 05:21:52 -0800 Subject: Western thought contradicted? Message-ID: In a recent message to Funknet George Lakoff asserts that the new book by Lakoff & Johnson 'contradicts most of Western thought'. What follows is a brief and preliminary comment, based not on this 1998 book but on earlier writings by Lakoff and Johnson. The main target of Lakoff & Johnson's historiographial critique is 'objectivism' or the view that extramental reality is reflected as such in the human mind. They correctly claim that objectivisim is characteristic of common-sense thinking (e.g. Lakoff 1987: 174-175, 270; Johnson 1987: xxi). However, they also claim that 'objectivism' is characteristic of the history of Western philosophy as a whole. Now, everybody who has even a superficial knowledge about this topic knows that Western philosophy has been - rightly or wrongly - DOMINATED by sceptical or idealistic schools of thinking, i.e. schools which either question or deny that humans are able to acquire any (trustworthy) knowledge about extramental reality. (And having more-than-superficial knowledge about the topic makes it even easier to accept what I am saying here.) Do I really have to recall Demokritos (= 'primary' vs 'secondary' qualities anticipated), Hellenistic sceptics from Pyrrho to Carneades, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx & Engels, the sense data theorists (e.g. Carnap of the 'Aufbau'), and many, many more? Considering the 'embodied mind' thesis it is particularly interesting that Marx & Engels (in 'German Ideology') state that it is the bodily organization ('koerperliche Organisation') which determines how people think. Also, the rejection of the mind-body dualism was not invented by Lakoff & Johnson, but by Aristotle and - somewhat later - by Hegel, Marx & Engels, the later Wittgenstein, and many, many more. Obviously, there is more to be said. Stay tuned. Esa Itkonen From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Jan 14 07:58:26 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 23:58:26 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: Just Published! PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Basic Books Hardcover, 624 pages, $30 list $21 + shipping at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com Thought is mostly unconscious. The mind is inherently embodied. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are three major findings in cognitive science that contradict most of Western philosophy, including both Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy. This book asks, What would happen if we started with these empirical discoveries about the nature of mind and constructed philosophy anew from there? Virtually everything changes when the embodiment of mind is taken into account: -New understandings of truth and of science are required. -The most basic philosophical ideas-time, events, causes, the mind, the self, and morality-are reanalyzed in detail and shown to be radically different than the Western tradition has supposed. -Great philosophical theories-from the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to analytic philosophy-are shown to be composed out of a small number of metaphors taken as eternal truths. -Even contemporary accounts of language (Chomskyan linguistics) and rationality (the rational actor model using game theory) are shown to have a metaphorical basis. Most importantly, the very idea of what a human being is changes radically. -There is no Cartesian person, whose essence is a mind separate from, and independent of the body. -There is no Kantian, radically autonomous person, with an absolute freedom and a transcendent universal reason that correctly dictates what is and isn't moral. -There is no utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic rationality-the maximization of utility. -There is no postmodernist person-no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent. -There is no person as posed by analytic philosophy for whom truth is a correspondence between words and the world, independent of human psychology and biology. -There is no computational person, whose mind is like computer software able to work on any suitable computer or neural hardware. -There is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context, perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature of communication and whom language is a total genetic innovation that began with human beings. Contemporary cognitive science reveals that we human beings are radically different kinds of creatures than Western philosophy has taught us that we were. GEORGE LAKOFF is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society and has been President of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. MARK JOHNSON is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3522 bytes Desc: not available URL: From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Thu Jan 14 16:40:18 1999 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 16:40:18 +0000 Subject: Postdoc and Ph.D. positions in typology & diachrony Message-ID: There are a number of postdoc and Ph.D. positions available at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Bernard Comrie's linguistics department. More details in the official advertisements below. **************** The Linguistics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is offering 1999 postdoctoral staff positions. These are non_permanent positions for which the normal term of appointment is 2 years. Applicants should have completed a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related discipline (or expect to finish before starting the postdoctoral position), and have a specialization in one or more of the following areas: 1) linguistic typology; 2) documentation of a hitherto undescribed or little described language, including fieldwork; 3) historical linguistics, preferably broad-scale and/or theoretically oriented, including comparative linguistics and language contact; 4) development of computer tools to assist in any of the above. Applicants are requested to send a C.V., statement of research interests, two letters of recommendation, and a sample of written work on a relevant topic to: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Personnel Administration Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie - Postdoctoral staff position - Inselstrasse 22 D-01403 Leipzig Germany fax: +49 341 99 52 119 e_mail: comrie at eva.mpg.de The URL of the Max Planck Institute is: http://www.eva.mpg.de Deadline for receipt of applications: 28 Feb 1999 ********************************* The Linguistics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has doctoral student fellowships available in the following areas: 1) linguistic typology; 2) documentation of a hitherto undescribed or little described language, including fieldwork; 3) historical linguistics, preferably broad-scale and/ or theoretically oriented, including comparative linguistics and language contact; 4) development of computer tools to assist in any of the above. Fellowships provide full support (including fieldwork where appropriate) for two years, renewable for one further year. Residence is in Leipzig, Germany, except during fieldwork, but doctoral dissertations/theses may be examined by Universities elsewhere. Prerequisites are: (a) good linguistic training, especially in descriptive or historical linguistics or in linguistic typology; (b) completion of prerequisites for entry into a PhD program (such as a Master's degree) as determined by the University (and country) where the applicant intends to submit the dissertation/thesis; Applicants are requested to send a C.V., statement of research interests, two letters of recommendation, and a sample of written work on a relevant topic to: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Personnel Administration Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie - PhD Fellowships - Inselstrasse 22 D-01403 Leipzig Germany fax: +49 341 99 52 119 e_mail: comrie at eva.mpg.de The URL of the Max Planck Institute is: http://www.eva.mpg.de Deadline for receipt of applications: 28 Feb 1999 From lili99 at 990.NET Thu Jan 14 23:49:18 1999 From: lili99 at 990.NET (Discussion) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 07:49:18 +0800 Subject: transitivity Message-ID: Dear T. Givon: I am very happy to have got your Transitivitiy discussion suggestion list. It seems to me that Halliday's transitivity is running controrary to the communicative pragmatics. From his analysis of the Inheritors, we see that he is mainly concerned with the typological or textual aspect. I want to hear some of your ideas on it. What do you mean by saying typological or textual ? What is the concrete means that could lead to the analysis of the communicative pragmatics of transitivity, which runs conterpart with the former typological or textual meas? Could you tell me some journals on the use of transitivity? Thanks. Li Li lili99 at 163.net From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Fri Jan 15 02:41:14 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Robinson) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 12:41:14 +1000 Subject: TRANSITIVITY Message-ID: I would like to respond to the comments made by Givon regarding transitivity, because I think what he says is important. A. Cause & Effect One point Givon makes is that "an association, be it even a strong one, need not necessarily mean identity". I think this point is fundamental, because essentially the same caveat applies to the overarching claim of Hopper & Thompson (1980)--viz.,that transitivity derives its prominence from foregrounding. Setting aside the question of just how strong the correlation between the two really is, the problem is that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Perhaps both transitivity and foregrounding correlate because they are associated with something else--say, a deep-seated semantic prototype. It's like the researchers who were studying ulcer development and found that there was a high correlation between developing ulcers and having a neat, well-trimmed moustache! Obviously, having a neat, well-trimmed moustache didn't cause ulcers, but there was some sort of relationship between the two nonetheless. Alternatively, think of the relationship between thunder and lightning. Even though the two correlate perfectly, one cannot be said to cause the other. Rather, they are both effects of the same underlying cause--an electromagnetic event. I think DeLancey makes essentially this same point in his 1984 paper, "Transitivity in grammar and cognition". He doesn't think that transitivity derives its prominence from foregrounding. Rather, he thinks that: "the various transitivity parameters cohere in the way that they do because they code aspects of a coherent semantic prototype, and that transitivity in morphosyntax is associated with foregrounding in discourse because events which approximate the transitive prototype are more like to be of interest and thus inherently more likely to constitute foregrounded information" (p. 55). B. The Nature of O So, if we concentrate on trying to characterise this semantic prototype, we have to think about Givon's take on it. He claims that one feature of the prototype for a transitive event is a "passive, affected CAUSEE/PATIENT". I think that Givon has said elsewhere that "the prototypical transitive object-patient is not a human, but primarily a dumb inanimate" (1990: 630). But how does this claim relate to Hopper & Thompson's claim that a highly individuated O is a highly transitive feature? There is a tendency across languages to single out animate, definite O's for special treatment (e.g., Spanish, Hindi, etc.), which Hopper & Thomspon see as being some sort of underscoring of the high transitivity of such clauses, but this doesn't jibe very well with classical markedness theory, which claims that special marking should be given to configurations that are unusual or unexpected. I think Croft (1988) and Aristar (to appear:http://linguistlist.org/aristar/transitivity.html) both tackle this question, but they come up with different solutions. Croft basically rejects the claim that the most natural O is highly individuated while Aristar takes it on board and adopts a middle-of-the-road position--viz., that the most natural O is neither low or high in individuation, but rather somewhere in between. It seems to me that part of the problem is that highly individuated O's are likely to be topical and topical O's tend to get passivised. But this seems to be an area of considerable controversy. This topic doesn't seem to have generated a great deal of interest on the list but hopefully the discussion won't peter out entirely. I am quite interested in hearing the opinion of others on this matter and would like to take this opportunity to the various people who have responded to my original posting. Sincerely, Stuart Robinson ______________________ Stuart P. Robinson (Stuart.Robinson at anu.edu.au) Linguistics Department, Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia PHONE: 61-2-6249-0703 |||| FAX: 61-2-6279-8214 From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Jan 15 13:16:20 1999 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 08:16:20 -0500 Subject: Western thought Message-ID: With all due respect to Esa Itkonen, whatever the main thrust of Lakoff and Johnson's earlier work has been, one would be led by the posting describing their latest book to conclude that its main target is not "objectivism." Rather, Lakoff and Johnson seem in this latest book to be taking on the presumption, present in a lot of thought, western and otherwise, that the mind is disembodied. I am waiting to get my copy of the book. But it would seem that L&J have touched on a crucial idea laid out most trenchantly in Antonio Damasio's (1994) Descartes' Error. How about it, George, while we are waiting for the book to arrive, would you care to comment on similarities and differences between L&J and Damasio? Carl From lili99 at 990.NET Fri Jan 15 13:26:07 1999 From: lili99 at 990.NET (Discussion) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 21:26:07 +0800 Subject: query Message-ID: Hi, everybody: I am very happy to have got T.G.'s Transitivitiy discussion suggestion list. It seems to me that Halliday's transitivity is running controrary to the communicative pragmatics. From his analysis of the Inheritors, we see that he is mainly concerned with the typological or textual aspect. I want to hear some of your ideas on it. What do you mean by saying typological or textual ? What is the concrete means that could lead to the analysis of the communicative pragmatics of transitivity, which runs conterpart with the former typological or textual meas? Could you tell me something concerned the world view on the use of transitivity? Thanks. Li Li lili99 at 163.net From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Jan 15 18:19:26 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 10:19:26 -0800 Subject: Western thought In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Carl, Thanks for your note. The excellent empirical research of the Damasios is part of the literature we cite. We accept their findings. We know of no research to lead us to disagree with what they say. You are right that we are not just talking about objectivism, but rather all philsophical views relying on the ideas of the disembodied mind, exclusively literal meaning. and exclusively conscious reason. That covers idealists and a lot of continental philosophy. There is another issue we take up besides philosophy itself. Various disembodied philosophies have tended to intrude into science, especially in psychology and linguistics, but also throughout the social and physical sciences.In such cases, disembodied philosphy tends to distort the science. We take up such special cases as Chomskyan linguistics and the rational actor model in the social sciences, as well as the attempt to interpret relativity theory literally. All the best, George At 8:16 AM -0500 1/15/99, Carl.Mills at UC.Edu wrote: >With all due respect to Esa Itkonen, whatever the main thrust of Lakoff >and Johnson's earlier work has been, one >would be led by the posting describing their latest book to conclude that >its main target is not "objectivism." >Rather, Lakoff and Johnson seem in this latest book to be taking on the >presumption, present in a lot of thought, >western and otherwise, that the mind is disembodied. > >I am waiting to get my copy of the book. But it would seem that L&J have >touched on a crucial idea laid out most >trenchantly in Antonio Damasio's (1994) Descartes' Error. How about it, >George, while we are waiting for the >book to arrive, would you care to comment on similarities and differences >between L&J and Damasio? > >Carl From nrude at UCINET.COM Sat Jan 16 03:03:26 1999 From: nrude at UCINET.COM (Noel Rude) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 19:03:26 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: Wow! But don't you exult just a little too much! Like Francis Crick's "The Astonishing Hypothesis", it sounds like this will be just more of the same old materialist philosophy that has dominated Western Civ ever since deism became agnosticism became atheism. Should you have finally proven the "state religion", then what? Do we drop out of the churches and synagogues, quit the Republican party, and let the academics tell us how it really is? Noel From lachler at UNM.EDU Sun Jan 17 11:44:01 1999 From: lachler at UNM.EDU (Jordan Lachler) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 04:44:01 -0700 Subject: Final Call for Papers: HDLS-2 Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS The High Desert Linguistics Society 2nd Annual Student Conference in Linguistics (HDLS-2) March 26-27, 1999 University of New Mexico Albuquerque KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Dr. Sandra Thompson, UCSB SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Abstracts must be received by Friday, January 22, 1999. For details, see the conference website: http://www.unm.edu/~hdls/hdls-2/ ====== Jordan Lachler lachler at unm.edu President, HIGH DESERT LINGUISTICS SOCIETY From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Sun Jan 17 18:14:42 1999 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 10:14:42 -0800 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh In-Reply-To: <36A0017D.18F2@ucinet.com> Message-ID: At 7:03 PM -0800 1/15/99, Noel Rude wrote: >Wow! > > But don't you exult just a little too much! Like Francis Crick's "The >Astonishing Hypothesis", it sounds like this will be just more of the >same old materialist philosophy that has dominated Western Civ ever >since deism became agnosticism became atheism. Should you have finally >proven the "state religion", then what? Do we drop out of the churches >and synagogues, quit the Republican party, and let the academics tell us >how it really is? > > Noel Quitting the Republican Party will do. From Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU Mon Jan 18 00:11:11 1999 From: Stuart.Robinson at ANU.EDU.AU (Stuart Payton Robinson) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 11:11:11 +1100 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I thought we had agreed to keep politics out of funknet. Let's nip this in the bud before it becomes another spate of unwanted, off-topic e-mail messages. (It's especially obnoxious to non-Americans.) Thank you. Sincerely, Stuart Robinson > Quitting the Republican Party will do. From jirsa at IX.NETCOM.COM Mon Jan 18 04:51:46 1999 From: jirsa at IX.NETCOM.COM (Jirsa) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 21:51:46 -0700 Subject: New Book: Philosophy in the Flesh Message-ID: The exchange in question was as political as it was personal. However, I found it had one saving grace: with apologies to non-Americans, it made me laugh (and I just voted for a Republican Senator). Do we really need to excise all things colorful? Stuart Payton Robinson wrote: > I thought we had agreed to keep politics out of funknet. Let's nip this > in the bud before it becomes another spate of unwanted, off-topic e-mail > messages. (It's especially obnoxious to non-Americans.) Thank you. > > Sincerely, > Stuart Robinson > > > Quitting the Republican Party will do. From funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU Tue Jan 19 20:13:24 1999 From: funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU (funkadmn Departmental Account) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 14:13:24 -0600 Subject: Deadline for 1999 Institute Fellowship Applications: Feb 11 Message-ID: >>From Jody Littleton Linguistic Institute *****************1999 LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE************************** REMINDER: DEADLINE for applications for the 1999 LSA Linguistic Institute FELLOWSHIPS is FEBRUARY 11. All fellowship application materials, including letters of recommendation, must be received by the LSA at their Washington, D.C. office by Feb. 11th. The Institute will be held from June 21 to July 30 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The Institute brochure including fellowship and application forms, and information about tuition/fees, courses, concurrent events, housing, and transportation is available at our website; http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/linguist. ================================================================ 1999 Linguistic Institute www.beckman.uiuc.edu/linginst Department of Linguistics E-mail: linginst at uiuc.edu University of Illinois Phone: (217) 333-1563 ================================================================ From fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU Thu Jan 21 02:09:04 1999 From: fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Frederick Newmeyer) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 18:09:04 -0800 Subject: influence of Prague School Message-ID: Much has been written about the influence of the pre- World War II Prague School on generative phonology. I am interested in the extent to which Prague School conceptions have influenced North American and Western European SYNTAX, both generative and nongenerative. For example, the use by generativists of distinctive features on morphological and syntactic elements presumably derives from Prague. Likewise, one would assume that Praguean work on functional sentence perspective has influenced current functional linguistics. Has anything been written about 'direct lines of transmission' between pre-war Praguean linguistics and the development of modern formal and functional linguistics? Do such direct lines of transmission exist? I'll summarize. Fritz Newmeyer fjn at u.washington.edu From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Thu Jan 21 19:51:33 1999 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 14:51:33 -0500 Subject: Role and Reference Grammar Workshop & Conference at LSA Institute Message-ID: A workshop and conference on Role and Reference Grammar will be held at the LSA Summer Institute at the University of Illinois, July 23-25, 1999. The workshop is for linguists already working in RRG as well as those wishing to become better acquainted with the theory. There will be two parts to the workshop. First, there will be a series of introductory lectures on the basics of RRG for those not yet acquainted with the theory. Second, there will be a series of working sessions for linguists already familiar with RRG; some of the sessions will be focussed on particular topics, e.g. argument structure, the semantics of complex sentences, the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic implications of RRG, and some will be devoted to specific languages or families, e.g. Korean, Japanese, Austronesian. There will be a one-day conference at which current work in RRG will be presented. Talks will be 30 minutes long. Please send three copies of your abstract (2 pages maximum), which should include your name, e-mail address and regular address, by March 1, 1999 to the following address: RRG Conference Abstracts Dept. of Linguistics 685 Baldy Hall SUNY at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 USA Submission of abstracts by e-mail is also acceptable; send them to VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU. Robert Van Valin SUNY Buffalo *************** 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 6500frw0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU Sat Jan 23 10:23:11 1999 From: 6500frw0 at UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU (Fiona Whalen) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 02:23:11 -0800 Subject: Call for papers (Workshop on American Indigenous Languages) Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES Santa Barbara, CA May 14-16, 1999 The linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its second annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Invited Speaker: Sara Trechter Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in Native American 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 500 word s or less and can submitted by hard copy or e-mail. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) e-mail address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 E-mail submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the e-mail message, with the anonymous abstract as an attachment. Send e-mail submissions to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: March 19, 1999 Notification of acceptance will be by e-mail in late-March. Registration: $20 (checks payable to WAIL) For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our web site at http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/wail/wail.html From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Wed Jan 27 01:20:01 1999 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 15:20:01 -1000 Subject: Ergo's ATIS results Message-ID: As part of the parsing contest we posted last week in which we challenged members of the academic and industrial NLP community to meet or beat our parsing results on 100 sentences in the areas of basic grammatical analysis, navigation and control and question and answer repartee, we have just posted our results on the ATIS (Air Travel Industry Sentences) sentences for the standards and tasks of that contest. Refer to our web page at http://www.ergo-ling.com for the contest details, our results on the 100 sentences for that contest and the ATIS sentences parsed as to the requirements of the contest. Again we would be happy to post results from IBM, Microsoft, Stanford, MIT or any of the smaller companies and universities who would like to participate in this contest for either the specific 100 sentences of the contest or for the ATIS sentences. Contest results will be posted at the end of March or early April, but we will post all entrants on our web site as soon as they arrive. We are especially interested in seeing the ATIS results from other companies and universities. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From bralich at HAWAII.EDU Thu Jan 28 02:49:54 1999 From: bralich at HAWAII.EDU (Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 16:49:54 -1000 Subject: New NLP Books Message-ID: After returning from the LSA conference in Los Angeles I was a little dismayed at the almost total lack of new books (publication late 98 or early 99) in NLP. I believe that of the two or three book publishers who were there, there was only one new title in NLP. Could readers post to me any newly published or soon to be published books in this very important area of linguistics? I will post a summary to the list. I would like references to new books dealing with NLP from statistical or other approaches. I am especially interested in books which talk about improvements to navigation and control devices (particularly with commercially available speech products), searching databases and the Internet, and question and answer dialoging systems, but I would like to have as thorough a biblio- ography of new works in NLP as possible. Phil Bralich Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite #175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel:(808)539-3921 Fax:(808)539-3924 Philip A. Bralich, President Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 tel:(808)539-3920 fax:(880)539-3924 From funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU Thu Jan 28 15:44:27 1999 From: funkadmn at RUF.RICE.EDU (funkadmn Departmental Account) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 09:44:27 -0600 Subject: Correction to Web Address Message-ID: Forwarded from Adele Goldberg: PLEASE NOTE CORRECTION TO WEB ADDRESS: Subject: deadline for 1999 Linguistic Institute Fellowship applications: Feb 11, 1999 *****************1999 LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE************************** REMINDER: DEADLINE for applications for the 1999 LSA Linguistic Institute FELLOWSHIPS is FEBRUARY 11. All fellowship application materials, including letters of recommendation, must be received by the LSA at their Washington, D.C. office by Feb. 11th. The Institute will be held from June 21 to July 30 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The Institute brochure including fellowship and application forms, and information about tuition/fees, courses, concurrent events, housing, and transportation is available at our website; http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/linginst From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU Thu Jan 28 18:25:45 1999 From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike L Gildea) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:25:45 -0600 Subject: December 1998 LSA Bulletin (fwd) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 11:43:08 -0500 From: LSA Subject: December 1998 LSA Bulletin The December 1998 LSA Bulletin is now available on the LSA web site: www.lsadc.org From jmarin at FLOG.UNED.ES Thu Jan 28 18:59:40 1999 From: jmarin at FLOG.UNED.ES (Juana I. Marn Arrese) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 19:59:40 +0100 Subject: [Fwd: New monograph: Estudios de Linguistica Cognitiva] Message-ID: > > Please, excuse any cross-postings > > NEW MONOGRAPH: > > Jos? Luis Cifuentes Honrubia (ed.): Estudios de Ling??stica Cognitiva, I > y II. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1998, 952 p?gs. > ISBN: 84-930403-0-4 > Dep?sito Legal: A-1497-1998 > Orders: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante. > > > ?NDICE: > > J. L. CIFUENTES HONRUBIA > Introducci?n p. 9 > > 1. AN?LISIS DEL DISCURSO > > R. ALMELA P?REZ > Sobre rasgos kin?sicos p. 17 > > P. ALONSO RODR?GUEZ > El alcance de las proyecciones metaf?ricas en el discurso narrativo > complejo. Estudio de un caso: ?The Wallet? de John Updike p. 29 > > A. BOCAZ - G. SOTO > Esquemas cognitivos en el origen de la marcaci?n aspectual en el > discurso: el caso de estar subido p. 41 > > C. FIGUERAS SOLANILLA > Sem?ntica y pragm?tica de las expresiones anaf?ricas p. 61 > > J. L. GUIJARRO > ?Hay alguna posibilidad de descolgar la literatura de su gancho > celestial? p. 77 > > C. LACHAT LEAL > An?lisis del concepto de contexto en la teor?a de la relevancia p. 103 > > R. LINEROS QUINTERO > Procesos cognitivos en el almacenamiento de la informaci?n p. 113 > > A. L?PEZ-VARELA AZC?RATE > A semiotic approach to Modernism. Its role in creating an aesthetics > of cognition p. 129 > > S. MART?N MEN?NDEZ > L?xico y estrategias discursivas: un enfoque sociocognitivo p. 137 > > E. RAM?N TRIVES > Aspectos cognitivos en la aproximaci?n integrada a la din?mica p. 149 > l?xico-discursiva > > J. S?NCHEZ GARC?A - J. M. MART?N MORILLAS: > Organizaci?n cognitiva y coherencia l?xico-discursiva en el discurso > de lego y experto: an?lisis de discursos sobre el SIDA p. 171 > > 2. ADQUISICI?N DEL LENGUAJE > > A. CASTA?EDA CASTRO > L?mites de la capacidad de atenci?n y secuencias de adquisici?n > en el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras p. 185 > > E. FERN?NDEZ S?NCHEZ > El aprendizaje de una segunda lengua concebido como la adquisici?n > de un nuevo sistema cognitivo p. 197 > > A. HERRERO BLANCO > La se?a y el signo. Notas sobre la iconicidad ling??stica de la LSE p. > 207 > > M. P. MONTIJANO CABRERA > Hacia un entendimiento de la secuencia cognitiva que subyace a cada > ejercicio de comprensi?n oral con vistas a su explotaci?n efectiva en > el aula de lengua extranjera p. 227 > > 3. LEXICOLOG?A Y LEXICOGRAF?A > > L. BALLESTEROS VALLADARES - R. JIM?NEZ BRIONES > The ?tolerance? of Spanish dictionaries regarding selection restrictions > p. 235 > > M?. ANTONIA CANO - JOSEP MARTINES > Cap a una teoria ling??stica de la topon?mia > des de l??ptica de la Gram?tica Cognitiva p. 247 > > M. D. FERN?NDEZ DE LA TORRE MADUE?O > Cognitive aspects of sexism and lexicography p. 265 > > A. SOARES DA SILVA > Prototipicidad y cambio sem?ntico: el caso ib?rico de deixar/dejar p. > 279 > > 4. EPISTEMOLOG?A DEL LENGUAJE > > J. A. CANDALIJA REINA > Sobre la cientificidad de la gram?tica: el uso de corpora informatizados > como m?todo de an?lisis ling??stico p. 295 > > J. L. JIM?NEZ RUIZ > Hermen?utica y cognici?n: propuestas para una ling??stica integral p. > 309 > > A. L?PEZ GARC?A - R. MORANT > La posici?n de la ling??stica cognitiva en el desarrollo hist?rico de > los > modelos gramaticales p. 319 > > F. RASTIER > De la representaci?n a la interpretaci?n p. 329 > > M. VEYRAT RIGAT > Concepci?n fenomenol?gico-perceptiva del lenguaje p. 353 > > 5. MET?FORA Y METONIMIA > > A. BARCELONA S?NCHEZ > El poder de la metonimia p. 365 > > I. DE LA CRUZ CABANILLAS - C. TEJEDOR MART?NEZ > La metaforizaci?n de algunas denominaciones gen?ricas de animales p. 381 > > C. MA?Z AR?VALO - E. GONZ?LEZ ABAD > Love and its conceptual metaphors: syntactic realizations p. 389 > > J. A. MOMPE?N GONZ?LEZ > The role of linguistic expressions in metaphor and metonimy: a cognitive > account p. 403 > > S. PE?A CERVEL > Towards a new theory of image-schemas: interaction among image-schemas > p. 417 > > F. J. RUIZ DE MENDOZA IB??EZ > Implicatures, explicatures and conceptual mappings p. 429 > > 6. GRAM?TICA > > F. ALIAGA - E. DE BUSTOS > Espacios mentales y actitudes epist?micas: la alternancia indicativo/ > subjuntivo en espa?ol p. 441 > > E. BERN?RDEZ SANCH?S > El subjuntivo espa?ol y los espacios mentales p. 451 > > P. A. BRANDT > Domains and the Grounding of Meaning p. 467 > > J. L. CIFUENTES HONRUBIA > Verbos con incorporaci?n conceptual direccional p. 479 > > M. J. CUENCA I ORDINYANA > Sobre la interrelaci? del l?xic i la gram?tica: el concepte de connexi? > l?xica p. 507 > > N. DELBECQUE > La dimensi?n paradigm?tica de la alternancia a/? en la construcci?n > transitiva y m?s all? p. 527 > > REN? DIRVEN - G?NTER RADDEN > The Conceptualisation of situation types in English p. 549 > > A. DOIZ BIENZOBAS > La evoluci?n diacr?nica de la categor?a de la modalidad de?ntica en > euskera p. 559 > > L. FOGSGAARD > Las clases de palabras p. 575 > > M. GARACHANA CAMARERO > La noci?n de preferencia en la gramaticalizaci?n de ahora (que), > ahora bien, antes, antes bien y m?s bien p. 593 > > M. GUARDDON ANELO > Visualizaci?n, idealizaci?n y objetivaci?n del espacio. Un an?lisis > sem?ntico p. 615 > > M. C. HORNO CH?LIZ > Conceptualizaci?n y categorizaci?n ling??stica de las relaciones > espaciales > en verbos locativos p. 629 > > C. INCHAURRALDE BESGA > La interacci?n tiempo-modo-aspecto en el verbo. Una perspectiva > cognitiva p. 639 > > R. W. LANGACKER > Indeterminacy in semantics and grammar p. 649 > > I. L?PEZ-VARELA AZC?RATE > Tipolog?a del pret?rito perfecto en ingl?s y en espa?ol basada en un > tratamiento cognitivo de la predicaci?n verbal y completa p. 673 > > R. MALDONADO > Datividad y distancia conceptual p. 687 > > J. I. MAR?N ARRESE > Transitivity and passivizability: the cognitive basis for peculiar > passives p. 707 > > M. A. MART?N GAVILANES > A cognitive approach to contrastive analysis: along as a preposition > of location in English and Spanish p. 719 > > E. MART?NEZ CARO > Adelantamiento de complementos argumentales en espa?ol: > diferenciaci?n pragm?tica p. 731 > > J. L. MARTOS > Traducci? i ling??stica cognitiva: la distribuci? del d?a en angl?s, > catal? i espanyol p. 743 > > C. MICHAUX > D?nominations et repr?sentations conceptuelles P. 755 > > I. NAVARRO I FERRANDO > A multimodel system for the description of spatial semantics: > the preposition on p. 767 > > SVEND OESTERGAARD > Verbal coding of dynamic processes p. 789 > > E. PASCUAL OLIV? > The counsel?s report: a cognitive sociopragmatic analysis of > rhetorical questions p. 805 > > F. M. P?REZ HERRANZ - A. J. L?PEZ CRUCES > Estudio de la preposici?n desde la sem?ntica topol?gica p. 817 > > M. P?REZ SALDANYA > Iconicidad y cognici?n en morfolog?a flexiva p. 839 > > B. POTTIER > La topolog?a y los esquemas mentales p. 857 > > V. SALVADOR > Concessivity and processes of grammaticalization: > the case of the Catalan connective encara que p. 863 > > P. SANCHO CREMADES > Construccions d?exclusi? en catal? i espanyol p. 873 > > J. TODOL? > Els pronoms predicatius i el l?mit atribuci?/predicaci?: > un enfocament cognitiu p. 889 > > P. TWARDZISZ > The weak characters of polish existentials p. 905 > > J. WILK-RACI?SKA > How to be a hypocrite, or axiology of diminutives p. 921 > > D. H. YANG - M. SONG > Extracting role archetypes and constructing their hierarchy related > to korean case particle ulo ?to, as, with, etc? p. 931 > > ?ndice p. 949 -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: unknown sender Subject: no subject Date: no date Size: 8194 URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: vcard.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 421 bytes Desc: Tarjeta de Mar?n Arrese, Juana I. URL: From Sally.Rice at UALBERTA.CA Thu Jan 28 20:42:30 1999 From: Sally.Rice at UALBERTA.CA (Sally Rice) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 13:42:30 -0700 Subject: Experimental linguistics position at the University of Alberta Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, invites applications for a tenure-track position at the junior Assistant Professor level in experimental linguistics, effective 1 July 1999. An active research program in one or more of the following areas is sought: linguistic theory (e.g., syntax), prosody, or another area that interfaces with the continuing research strengths of the department. The candidate should hold the PhD and have demonstrated teaching and research ability. The salary range for Assistant Professors effective 1 July 1999 begins at $42,054. The Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta is engaged in an extensive process of renewal, and is committed to ensuring that the substantial number of hirings projected over the next several years will ensure for the future the lively and productive intellectual environment on which the Faculty prides itself. The Department of Linguistics has a strong commitment to empirical and experimental approaches to linguistic research. Department members are engaged in ongoing research projects, many grant-funded, in experimental phonetics, discourse processing, and the study of the phonological, morphological, and semantic aspects of the mental lexicon. The Department offers both graduate (PhD and MSc) and undergraduate degrees, and values its reputation for excellence in teaching and graduate training. We seek a colleague who wishes to engage in leading-edge research in a collegial and supportive research environment, to recruit and train promising graduate students, and to participate in innovative teaching/learning at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In accordance with Canadian Immigration requirements, this advertisement is directed to Canadian citizens and permanent residents. If suitable Canadian citizens and permanent residents cannot be found, other individuals will be considered. The University of Alberta is committed to the principle of equity in employment. As an employer we welcome diversity in the workplace and encourage applications from all qualified women and men, including Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities. A letter of application, curriculum vitae, all university transcripts, and three letters of reference should be received by 1 March 1999 by: Lois M Stanford, Chair Department of Linguistics University of Alberta Edmonton T6G 2E7 Canada phone: (780) 492 3459 fax: (780) 492 0806 e-mail: lois.stanford at ualberta.ca From davpark at MICROSOFT.COM Fri Jan 29 17:35:33 1999 From: davpark at MICROSOFT.COM (David Parkinson) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 09:35:33 -0800 Subject: Request for good syntactic examples Message-ID: Hello Funknetters: A friend is seeking to convince some colleagues of the (at least partial) independence of syntax from semantics, and is looking for good and reasonably incontrovertible examples of syntactic phenomena or alternations which are hard to explain as deriving from their semantic content. If you have a favorite cocktail party or classroom example of the donate/give or "*who do you wanna read the books?" type, please send it along to me. I will post a summary to FUNKNET as appropriate. (Incidentally, I won't be unhappy if people try to argue that such examples are in principle nonexistent... but maybe these arguments would be best posted to the list, in the interests of sparking discussion.) Thanks! David Parkinson From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Fri Jan 29 18:06:33 1999 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 10:06:33 -0800 Subject: where does grammar come from Message-ID: Subject: Re: Request for good syntactic examples Yes do keep looking for semantically opaque syntactic phenomena, that is an important issue. But I think it is important to keep in mind that semantic content is only PART of a functionalist argument for why grammars look the way they do. As Brian MacWhinney and I have noted for a few years, a functionalist account is going to need to take into considerably both the semantic content AND the large set of information- processing constraints that serve as the "Darwinian space" in which grammars have evolved. A metaphor: line orientation detectors, center-surround cells and ocular dominance columns do not "look like" the content of vision, and yet they arise over and over again. two possible explanations: (1) These features of visual cortex are entirely arbitrary, mutations under strict genetic control, innately insured. (2) These features are necessary to get the job of vision done, and will arise even if they are not innate. There are now multiple neural network simulations showing that many of these features DO arise, inevitably, in a neural network with no innate "knowledge", as a function of trying to solve (a) the dimension-reduction problems involved in mapping from a 3-dimensional world through a 2-dimensional retina, (b) the special problems posed by competing inputs from two eyes with overlapping visual fields, (c) waves of plasticity that pass over cortex due perhaps to maturational gradients (think of plants being periodically sprayed by nutri-grow....). In other words, opaque-looking features can be the product of processing and development, so inevitable that they do not have to be innate above and beyond the innate factors that get the animal to try to solve that problem in the first place (e.g. eyes that happen to be placed on the head so that the visual fields overlap -- frogs don't have that problem, and don't have ocular dominance columns as a result, but they GET ocular dominance columns if you implant a third eye right in between the usual two in an embryonic frog.....). So, it is useful to collect semantically opaque grammatical phenomena, but these cannot constitute, ipso facto, evidence for innate knowledge. The pathway may be very indirect, heavily determined by processing facts and by the severe dimension-reduction and constraint-satisfaction problem involved in mapping from a high dimensional meaning space (with a lot of competing material) onto a low-dimensional channel. -liz bates From Carl.Mills at UC.EDU Fri Jan 29 18:16:46 1999 From: Carl.Mills at UC.EDU (Carl.Mills at UC.EDU) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 13:16:46 -0500 Subject: Request for good syntactic examples Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 09:35:33 -0800 >From: David Parkinson >Subject: Request for good syntactic examples >To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU >Reply-to: David Parkinson > >Hello Funknetters: >A friend is seeking to convince some colleagues of the (at least partial) >independence of syntax from semantics, and is looking for good and >reasonably incontrovertible examples of syntactic phenomena or alternations >which are hard to explain as deriving from their semantic content. If you >have a favorite cocktail party or classroom example of the donate/give or >"*who do you wanna read the books?" type, please send it along to me. I will >post a summary to FUNKNET as appropriate. >(Incidentally, I won't be unhappy if people try to argue that such examples >are in principle nonexistent... but maybe these arguments would be best >posted to the list, in the interests of sparking discussion.) > >Thanks! >David Parkinson > I suspect "that such examples are in principle nonexistent." A more basic problem stems from characteristics of the very example that David Parkinson cites: *who do you wanna read the books? and others, originally from David Lightfoot, I think, like Who do you wanna succeed? 'who do you want to follow?' vs. *Who do you wanna succeed? 'who do you wish to see emerge successful from this endeavor?' Frankly, I find myself saying _wanna_ in both cases. That is, the starred examples are not starred in my dialect or in the dialects of many people I overhear every day. These sorts of examples ( and the, sometimes unwarranted, conclusions drawn from them) are why I have been giving papers on grammaticality and acceptability judgments for the past 20 years. And while I like the work of people like Cowert and Schutze, I do not think the robustness of such judgments is well supported. But of course, the real problem stems from relying on Gedankeneksperimenten to establish which sentences are, out of context, grammatical or ungrammatical and then arguing points of linguistic theory from such shaky "data." Carl Mills University of Cincinnati