From nuyts at UIA.UA.AC.BE  Tue Feb  1 15:26:55 2000
From: nuyts at UIA.UA.AC.BE (Jan.Nuyts)
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 16:26:55 +0100
Subject: International Conference on Cognitive Typology website
Message-ID: <TUE.1.FEB.2000.162655.0100.NUYTS@UIA.UA.AC.BE>

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 'COGNITIVE TYPOLOGY'
April 12-14, 2000
University of Antwerp (UIA), Belgium

All information pertaining to the conference is available at:
http://www.ufsia.ac.be/cgct

Jan Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera

                               *****
Jan Nuyts                                       phone: 32/3/820.27.73
University of Antwerp                           fax: 32/3/820.27.62
Linguistics                                     email: nuyts at uia.ua.ac.be
Universiteitsplein 1
B-2610 Wilrijk - Belgium


From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU  Wed Feb  2 19:56:26 2000
From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike Gildea)
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 13:56:26 -0600
Subject: LSA Bulletin
Message-ID: <WED.2.FEB.2000.135626.0600.SPIKEG@OWLNET.RICE.EDU>

>Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 14:24:22 -0500
>From: LSA <lsa at lsadc.org>
>
>The December 1999 issue of the LSA Bulletin is now available on the LSA web
>site:  www.lsadc.org
>


From ph1u at ANDREW.CMU.EDU  Thu Feb  3 18:59:32 2000
From: ph1u at ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Paul J Hopper)
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 13:59:32 -0500
Subject: sad news (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.3.FEB.2000.135932.0500.PH1U@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 09:52:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Elizabeth Traugott <traugott at csli.Stanford.EDU>
To: hopper <ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu>, sathomps at humanitas.ucsb.edu,
    chafe at humanitas.ucsb.edu, mithin at humanitas.ucsb.edu,
    lsa <lsa at lsadc.org>, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>,
    Joan Bresnan <bresnan at csli.stanford.edu>,
    Paul Kiparsky <kiparsky at csli.stanford.edu>
Cc: Elizabeth Traugott <traugott at csli.stanford.edu>
Subject: sad news

Dear friends,
Suzanne Fleischman died last night, Wed. Feb 2nd, of complications
associated with chemotherapy for leukemia, at the age of 50.
As you know she was a pioneer in grammaticalization, historical
discourse analysis, historical narratology, orality and literacy,
and more recently, medical discourse.  She will be sorely missed.
Plans for a celebration of her life are pending.
Elizabeth


From maxstam at bas.bg  Tue Feb  8 08:02:20 2000
From: maxstam at bas.bg (maxstam)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:02:20 +0200
Subject: evolution of language and brain conference
Message-ID: <TUE.8.FEB.2000.100220.0200.>

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

Title: "Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language".

Hosted by Hanse Institute for Advanced Study
Delmenhorst, GERMANY

Primary organizers:
Vittorio Gallese (University of Parma) and Maxim Stamenov (Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences)


Theme:
The aim of this conference will be to bring together scholars from
several disciplines and fields of study for discussion of some of the
basic problems and perspectives related to the discovery of a new class
of neurons in the monkey premotor cortex — mirror neurons.
 The point of this discovery is that it shed new light on the neural
correlate of the social sharedness of intentions and actions. The action
of mirror neurons (MNs) seems to provide a bridge and mapping between
one's own behavioral actions (and their potential monitoring) with the
observed actions of other individuals. The consequences of this
discovery can have implications for our understanding of animal
communication and cognition and human cognition and consciousness and
the way of their genetic inheritance and implementation in the brain.
 The discovery of MNs may provide a new, although still sketchy,
neurobiological basis to account for the emergence of language (cf. G.
Rizzolatti & M. Arbib. 1998. "Language within Our Grasp". Trends in
Neurosciences 21:188-194, for orientation). This assumption is founded
on the following premises:

(a) Language skill has emerged through evolution by means of a process
of preadaptation: specific behaviors and the nervous structures
supporting them, originally selected for other purposes, acquire new
functions that side and eventually supersede the previous one;
(b) A continuity can be traced between language skill and pre-language
brachio-manual behaviors, being the primate premotor cortex the common
playground of this evolutionary continuity;
(c) The specialization for language of human Broca's region derives from
an ancient mechanism, the mirror system, originally devised for action
understanding.

The orientation of organizers is to bring together scholars interested
in the co-evolution of language, cognition, and consciousness along the
following lines, among others:

(i) mirror neurons, the brain's microstructure and the specificity of
their performance in monkeys, primates and humans in supporting
high-level cognitive processing;
(ii) the macrostructure of the brain and its evolution from monkeys to
primates to man in the development of specific cognitive functions;
(iii) the philogenetic and ontogenetic links between behavioral action,
gesture, and communicative verbal action in the development of the
language faculty.

Conference format
The conference will host 15 invited speakers. There are 24 slots
available for oral presentations and 30 slots for poster presentations.
Submissions are invited for selection for oral papers (with 20 min.
presentation time and 10 min. discussion time), as well as for poster
presentations. Unless explicitly specified, submitted abstracts will be
considered for both oral and poster presentation. Posters will be
displayed during the whole duration of the meeting and a special session
of the conference will be dedicated to their discussion.
 The invited speakers who already confirmed their participation are
(please note that the titles of their talks are preliminary ones):

Harold BEKKERING (Munich): "The Observation and Execution of Finger and
Mouth Movements";
Stein BRATEN (Oslo): "Altercentric Perception and Participation: Infant
and adult dialogue partners";
Colin BROWN (Nijmegen): "Brain-Imaging Studies of Language Comprehension
and Production: A focus on Broca's region";
Luciano FADIGA (Parma): tba;
Leo FOGASSI (Parma): "The Neural Correlates of Action Understanding in
Nonhuman Primates";
Marc JEANNEROD (Lyon): tba;
Charles LI (Santa Barbara) & Jean-Marie HOMBERT (Lyon): "The
Evolutionary Origin of Language: A linguistic perspective";
Michael PETRIDES (Montreal); tba;
Daniel POVINELLI (New Iberia, LA): "Evolution of Cognitive Diversity";
Giacomo RIZZOLATTI (Parma): "Action Understanding in Humans";
Gerhard ROTH (Bremen): "Is the Human Brain Unique?";
Sue SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH (Atlanta, GA): "Mirror Neurons and Interspecies
Intersubjectivity";
Maxim STAMENOV (Sofia): "Human Verbal Communication as Monitored Joint
Action";
Michael STUDDERT-KENNEDY (New Haven, CT): "Imitation and Evolution of
Particulate Speech";
Edda WEIGAND (Muenster): "Constitutive Features of Human Dialogical
Interaction";

 In addition to regular program, the conference will feature three
evening discussions dealing with the problems of:

(1) the evolution of the brain from monkeys to humans (neuroscience
perspective);
(2) the co-evolution of executive functions and cognitive abilities from
monkeys to humans (cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience
perspective); and
(3) the evolution of communication and language (the perspective of the
language sciences).

Abstract submission:
Abstracts of 500 words are requested by March 15, 2000 both for oral
presentations and posters. The abstracts should be sent preferably by
e-mail (in ASCII) to:

hardopo at uni-bremen.de (Dr. Mechthild Harders-Opolka);
gallese at ipruniv.cce.unipr.it (Dr. Vittorio Gallese);
maxstam at bas.bg (Dr. Maxim Stamenov).

In case an author prefers to send the abstract in hard copy, three
copies of it should be sent to Dr. Mechthild Harders-Opolka, Hanse
Institute for Advanced Study, Lehmkuhlenbusch 4, D-27753 Delmenhorst,
GERMANY.

Publication policy:
The organizers intend to publish a collective volume with selected
contributions to the conference after the meeting takes place.


Important information:

Deadline for abstract submission: March 15, 2000;

Confirmation of acceptance of selected papers: April 01, 2000;

Time of the conference: July 05-08, 2000;

Conference site: Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Lehmkuhlenbusch 4,
D-27753 Delmenhorst, GERMANY;

Conference fee: DM150,-; DM100,- for students;

Questions and inquiries about the program: maxstam at bas.bg (Maxim
Stamenov);

Questions and inquiries about local organization, housing, etc.:
hardopo at uni-bremen.de (Dr. Mechthild Harders-Opolka).


From mariel at DELLNET.COM  Tue Feb  8 22:49:36 2000
From: mariel at DELLNET.COM (Mira Ariel)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:49:36 -0800
Subject: CSDL 2000 Conference - 2nd CALL - EXTENDED DEADLINE
Message-ID: <TUE.8.FEB.2000.144936.0800.MARIEL@DELLNET.COM>

CSDL 2000 -- 2nd CALL FOR ABSTRACTS -- EXTENDED DEADLINE
(Apologies for cross-postings)

The 5th conference on
"CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE, and LANGUAGE"

will be held on May 11-14, 2000, at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

The deadline for abstracts has been extended to March 1.

The following invited speakers will speak at the conference:

    Kathryn BOCK (Illinois)
    Wallace CHAFE (Santa Barbara)
    Dedre GENTNER (Northwestern)
    Rachel GIORA (Tel Aviv)
    George LAKOFF (Berkeley)
    Ron LANGACKER (San Diego)
    Charles LI (Santa Barbara)
    Sandra THOMPSON (Santa Barbara)
    Mark Turner (Maryland)

The conference is sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of
Discourse, Cognitive Science Program, Department of Linguistics, Department
of Psychology, and Department of Geography.

Papers in all areas of cognitive linguistics and related research areas are
welcome, including research on conceptual structure, conceptual operations,
grammar, meaning, cognitive processing, acquisition, language use, discourse
function, and other issues. Papers are especially encouraged bearing on, but
not limited to, the special conference themes of:

    Metaphor
    Analogy
    Irony
    Space
    Grammar and Cognition
    Discourse and Cognition
    Learning and Acquisition
    Interactionally Distributed Cognition
    Language in Interaction
    Usage-Based Models
    Cognition, Gesture, and Sign
    Cognitive Issues in Politics and Literature

TALKS will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be two to three parallel sessions of regular papers, plus plenary
lectures.

ABSTRACTS are due March 1, 2000. An anonymous abstract of 500 words should
be submitted via email, preferably as a Word attachment, to Patricia Clancy
at pclancy at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Abstracts should make a clear and interesting point, and indicate the kind
of arguments and evidence that will be given in support of it.

Although the body of the abstract should not identify the author, the
following contact information should be included at the top of the email
message (so it can be removed before it is sent to reviewers):

    Name
    Institution
    Email address
    Mailing address
    Telephone

THEME SESSIONS are encouraged. A theme session is organized by an individual
and submitted as a unit. It treats a unified idea or topic, whether from
similar or diverse viewpoints. The topic may correspond to one of the
conference themes, or to another theme of interest. Theme sessions will
normally include 3 or 4 papers, plus a brief introduction. For each
individual paper included in a theme session, a regular abstract should be
submitted. In addition, one general abstract for the session itself should
be submitted, explaining the goals and rationale of the session, and listing
each paper to be included. The form of the abstract for the theme session,
and for each included paper, is the same as that for regular abstracts.
Likewise, the deadline date, review criteria, and review process are
identical to those for regular abstracts.

Of course, individual papers (not part of a theme session) are equally
welcome.

NOTIFICATION of acceptance will be given by March 31.

REGISTRATION for the conference will be at the following rates. (Early
registration is up until April 15, 2000.)
    General registration, early: $50
    General registration, late: $70
    Student registration, early: $30
    Student registration, late: $50
    Banquet at Faculty Club: $25
Payment must be made in the form of a check in US dollars, drawn on a US
bank.

LODGING AND TRANSPORTATION Additional information about special conference
discount rate lodging, transportation, etc. will be sent to people when they
register.

For additional information contact John Du Bois at
dubois at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Or consult our WEB SITE at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/CSDL/CSDL.htm



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000208/95e587f2/attachment.html>

From mariel at DELLNET.COM  Tue Feb  8 23:13:49 2000
From: mariel at DELLNET.COM (Mira Ariel)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:13:49 -0800
Subject: CSDL 2000 -- 2nd CALL FOR ABSTRACTS -- EXTENDED DEADLINE
Message-ID: <TUE.8.FEB.2000.151349.0800.MARIEL@DELLNET.COM>

CSDL 2000 -- 2nd CALL FOR ABSTRACTS -- EXTENDED DEADLINE
(Apologies for cross-postings)

The 5th conference on
"CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE, and LANGUAGE"

will be held on May 11-14, 2000, at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

The deadline for abstracts has been extended to March 1.

The following invited speakers will speak at the conference:

    Kathryn BOCK (Illinois)
    Wallace CHAFE (Santa Barbara)
    Dedre GENTNER (Northwestern)
    Rachel GIORA (Tel Aviv)
    George LAKOFF (Berkeley)
    Ron LANGACKER (San Diego)
    Charles LI (Santa Barbara)
    Sandra THOMPSON (Santa Barbara)
    Mark TURNER (Maryland)

The conference is sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of
Discourse, Cognitive Science Program, Department of Linguistics, Department
of Psychology, and Department of Geography.

Papers in all areas of cognitive linguistics and related research areas are
welcome, including research on conceptual structure, conceptual operations,
grammar, meaning, cognitive processing, acquisition, language use, discourse
function, and other issues. Papers are especially encouraged bearing on, but
not limited to, the special conference themes of:

    Metaphor
    Analogy
    Irony
    Space
    Grammar and Cognition
    Discourse and Cognition
    Learning and Acquisition
    Interactionally Distributed Cognition
    Language in Interaction
    Usage-Based Models
    Cognition, Gesture, and Sign
    Cognitive Issues in Politics and Literature

TALKS will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be two to three parallel sessions of regular papers, plus plenary
lectures.

ABSTRACTS are due March 1, 2000. An anonymous abstract of 500 words should
be submitted via email, preferably as a Word attachment, to Patricia Clancy
at pclancy at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Abstracts should make a clear and interesting point, and indicate the kind
of arguments and evidence that will be given in support of it.

Although the body of the abstract should not identify the author, the
following contact information should be included at the top of the email
message (so it can be removed before it is sent to reviewers):

    Name
    Institution
    Email address
    Mailing address
    Telephone

THEME SESSIONS are encouraged. A theme session is organized by an individual
and submitted as a unit. It treats a unified idea or topic, whether from
similar or diverse viewpoints. The topic may correspond to one of the
conference themes, or to another theme of interest. Theme sessions will
normally include 3 or 4 papers, plus a brief introduction. For each
individual paper included in a theme session, a regular abstract should be
submitted. In addition, one general abstract for the session itself should
be submitted, explaining the goals and rationale of the session, and listing
each paper to be included. The form of the abstract for the theme session,
and for each included paper, is the same as that for regular abstracts.
Likewise, the deadline date, review criteria, and review process are
identical to those for regular abstracts.

Of course, individual papers (not part of a theme session) are equally
welcome.

NOTIFICATION of acceptance will be given by March 31.

REGISTRATION for the conference will be at the following rates. (Early
registration is up until April 15, 2000.)
    General registration, early: $50
    General registration, late: $70
    Student registration, early: $30
    Student registration, late: $50
    Banquet at Faculty Club: $25
Payment must be made in the form of a check in US dollars, drawn on a US
bank.

LODGING AND TRANSPORTATION Additional information about special conference
discount rate lodging, transportation, etc. will be sent to people when they
register.

For additional information contact John Du Bois at
dubois at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Or consult our WEB SITE at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/CSDL/CSDL.htm


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Wed Feb  9 14:47:40 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 15:47:40 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.9.FEB.2000.154740.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

    Dear colleagues,

I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
allowing reflexives in subject position.

My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization

(1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
    president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
          "The president saved himself"

allows subject reflexives as well:

(2) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

The sentence is ambiguous between the (a) and (b) readings. It can have
either of them but not both at the same time.

The reflexive phrase in (2) has an ergative case marker and functions as
subject just like as the ergative noun phrase in (3):

(3) mcvel-ma       ixsna      president-i
   guard-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
      "The guard saved the president"

It has to be noted that in (2) there are other meanings (emphatic and
non-volitional) more central than reflexive one. Of course, there is a
reflexive semantics there in (2) but normally no one pronounces it when one
needs to express only reflexive meaning. For expressing reflexivity (1) is
quite all right.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

    Nino Amiridze


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Wed Feb  9 15:02:17 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 16:02:17 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.9.FEB.2000.160217.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

>Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 15:47:40 +0100
>To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU
>From: Nino Amiridze <Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl>
>Subject: reflexives in subject position
>
>    Dear colleagues,
>
>I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
allowing reflexives in subject position.
>
>My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization
>
>(1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
>    president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
>          "The president saved himself"
>
>allows subject reflexives as well:
>
>(2) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
>   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
>(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible
for saving him" (emphatic reading);
>(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).
>
>The sentence is ambiguous between the (a) and (b) readings. It can have
either of them but not both at the same time.
>
>The reflexive phrase in (2) has an ergative case marker and functions as
subject just like as the ergative noun phrase in (3):
>
>(3) mcvel-ma       ixsna      president-i
>   guard-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
>      "The guard saved the president"
>
>It has to be noted that in (2) there are other meanings (emphatic and
non-volitional) more central than reflexive one. Of course, there is a
reflexive semantics there in (2) but normally no one pronounces it when one
needs to express only reflexive meaning. For expressing reflexivity (1) is
quite all right.
>
>Thank you very much.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>    Nino Amiridze
>


From sepkit at UTU.FI  Thu Feb 10 06:13:07 2000
From: sepkit at UTU.FI (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Seppo_Kittil=E4?=)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 08:13:07 +0200
Subject: Die vs. kill
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.081307.0200.SEPKIT@UTU.FI>

Dear colleagues,

could anyone give me an example of a language where 'die' derives from
'kill'. I´m searching for a language where the verb 'kill' is the
unmarked one and 'die' is derived from it, for example, by adding some
kind of detransitivizing affix to the verb 'kill'. I have only found
languages in which the derivation is from 'die' to 'kill', e.g.,
Turkish:

Hasan   öl-dü
H.NOM   die-PAST
"Hasan died"

Ali     Hasan-i  öl-dür-dü
A.NOM   H.-ACC   die-CAUS-PAST
"Ali killed Hasan"

I´m very grateful for all the help I can get,

best wishes,
Seppo Kittilä


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Thu Feb 10 07:02:02 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 09:02:02 +0200
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.090202.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Dear Nino,
Just out of curiosity, does it have anything to do with the subject
being in the ergative? Can you do the same thing with a sentence in the
present, when the subject is in the nominative?
John


From jwilson at LING.UTA.EDU  Thu Feb 10 19:33:25 2000
From: jwilson at LING.UTA.EDU (Janet Wilson)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:33:25 -0600
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.133325.0600.JWILSON@LING.UTA.EDU>

To the Funknet list,
Last semester I read quite a bit from G. Lakoff's book, Women, Fire, &
Dangerous Things. I've been interested for quite some time in prototype
categories.  Lakoff says that classical categories (a la Aristotle) are like
containers:  a thing is either IN a category or it is NOT IN a category, and
there is no in-between.  Real-life categories (esp. linguistic categories)
are not like that:  there are shades of gray, prototypical members,
peripheral members, etc.

I think there is a good metaphor for prototype categories--they are more
like piles than like containers.  Two reasons (there are more, but these are
at the forefront of my thinking) for liking the metaphor of "piles" are:

1.    When a container is empty, there is still something there.  When a
pile is empty, there is nothing.

2.    A container imposes its shape (form) on the contents.  A pile, on the
other hand, gets its shape from the contents.

If one of the tenets of functional grammar is that form follows function,
then we should prefer the "piles" model.  We should expect that the
(semantic) content of the category will have an impact on the shape of the
category.  If a category can be empty and have some form even when it
contains nothing, what then determines the shape?

I cannot remember ever hearing this particular metaphorical model mentioned
before in association with prototype categories, but, to my mind, it's an
excellent "fit."  If it has come up somewhere in the literature and I've
missed it, I would appreciate being pointed towards it.  I'd also like to
know what the rest of you think of this model.

Thanks,
Janet Wilson
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000210/cfde9634/attachment.html>

From Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU  Thu Feb 10 19:53:59 2000
From: Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony Wright)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:53:59 -0600
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <200002101929.NAA19163@ns2.uta.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.135359.0600.TWRIGHT@ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU>

At 01:33 PM 2/10/00 -0600, Janet Wilson wrote:

> I think there is a good metaphor for prototype categories--they are more
like > piles than like containers. Two reasons (there are more, but these
are at the > forefront of my thinking) for liking the metaphor of "piles" are:

> 1.    When a container is empty, there is still something there. When a
pile > is empty, there is nothing.

> 2.    A container imposes its shape (form) on the contents. A pile, on
the > other hand, gets its shape from the contents.

I agree!  Also, I would add that things are typically in a container or not
in a container (with some exceptions).  But things can be in or near a
pile, or in between two piles, etc.

I have often wondered how it would be if we re-cast the classical notion of
the phoneme in terms of "fuzzy regions in phonetic space."  Opinions?

--Tony Wright


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 11 11:39:51 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:39:51 -0300
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.083951.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Jerry Fodor has recently published some cogent criticisms against the
overuse of prototypes as mental explanans. If anyone on this list has
read that work, I'd be interested in hearing replies.

Best,

Dan Everett


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 11 16:14:49 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:14:49 -0300
Subject: fodor and prototypes
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.131449.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Ah, Elizabeth, I see you have the same sense of humor. Math has not
changed since the 70s either. Are we outdated becausewe haven't changed
it? If something is right, how can it be anachronistic to point out that
the recent work (recent for some, aberration to others) is misguided?

But I really have no opinion and I really would like to see some
responses.

Here is one reference.

Fodor, Jerry. 1998. _Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong_,
Oxford Univ. Press.

There is enough in that book to make plenty of people upset, including
formal linguists (an interesting chapter criticizing the very idea of
lexical semantics, including work by Pinker & Jackendoff.

Reactions welcome.

Dan

Dan Everett
SIL International
Caixa Postal 129
Porto Velho, RO
BRAZIL 78900-970

Elizabeth Bates wrote:

> it sounds like Fodor hasn't left the 1970's.  Cognitive Science has
> really moved on with respect to models of mental representation, and
> the important ideas and evidence that Eleanor Rosch brought to our
> attention have long since been incorporated (with modifications,
> of course) into other theories and implementations that preserve
> some of the best aspects (fuzzy boundaries, probabilistic mappings,
> distributed internal representations, heterogeneous membership)
> but go well beyond them in precision, formalization, and machine
> modeling.  I should read Fodor's critiques before going any
> further than this, but judging only by Dan Everett's message, it
> sounds a lot like Fodor as Austin Powers.  -liz bates
>


From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE  Fri Feb 11 17:54:34 2000
From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 18:54:34 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.185434.0100.W.SCHULZE@LRZ.UNIMUENCHEN.DE>

Dear Nino,

you asked:

> I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
> reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
> allowing reflexives in subject position.
>

I guess you will receive a considerable number of positive answers
referring to East Caucasian. In fact I think that the use of reflexives
in 'subject' position is documented in many (if not most) of these
languages. Let me just quote three examples from Udi (South East
Caucasian):

(1)    ich Baqi-x kar-re-xa
        REFL:ABS Baku-DAT2 live-3SG:S-LV-INTRANS:PRES
        '(S)he lives in Baku.'

(2)    ich-en ish'oun ash-ne-b-sa
        REFL-ERG at=night work-3SG:A-LV:TRANS-PRES
        '(S)he works at night'

(3)    ich-u ich a"iel-gh-ox gölö-t'u buq'-sa
        REFL-DAT REFL:POSS child-PL-DAT2 much-3SG:IO love-PRES
        '(S)he loves her children evry much'

(1) is intransitive, (2) is transitive [ergative case], (3) is
'indirect' (or 'inversion' or a verbum sentiendi construction'...]. Note
that agreement always is 'accusative' (S=A(=IO)).

The function of headless reflexives in Udi seems to be to emphasize
coreference in referential tracking (normally on an accusative basis
(S=A)). I have tested the use of 'headless reflexives' with other
persons than non-SAP. The results were ambigous. Some informants
accepted a construction like (4), others didn't.

(4)   ? ich Baqi-x kar-zu-exa
          REF:ABS Baku-DAT2 live-1SG:S-LV:INTRANS:PRES
          'I (myself) live in Baku.'

Most informants did not accept SAP-related 'headless reflexives' as A in
transitive constructions except in questions addressing SAP(2), cf.:

(5)    ich-en fi-n ugh-sa?
        REFL-ERG wine-2SG:A drink-PRES
        'Do YOU drink wine?'

I assume that the use of headless reflexives is related to the emphatic
function that reflexives have in East Cauacsian (esp. in Lezgian
languages), cf. Tabasaran:

(6)    dumu uchw chan bazhr-a-qadzhi shah-r-s ghush-nu
        he:ABS REFL:ABS REFL:GEN son-SA-COM town-SA-DAT go-AOR
        'He himself went with his son into the town.'

(7)    uzu uchw dzhanuwar k'unu-za
        I:ABS REFL:ABS wolf kill:past-1SG:A
        'I myself killed the wolf.'

In (7) the reflexive copies the 'accusative' behavior (ABS instead of
ERG) of the SAP(1) pronoun, contrary e.g. to Aghul (Kurag):

(8)    zun uch-i aq'une kar
        I:ABS REFL-ERG make:AOR work
        'I did the work myself.'

The dropping of the pronoun leads to either an ergative or absolutive
coding of the reflexive, depending on which strategy the language
prefers [(7) or (8)], cf. (9) which is an ambigous construction in Aghul
(Burshag) [no personal agreement]:

(9)    che k'inaw huch
        REFL:ERG kill:PAST wolf
        'I/you/(s)he.... killed the wolf.'

I hope that helps,

Wolfgang

--
*****************************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
*****************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000211/9c035ee5/attachment.html>

From catieb at UNM.EDU  Fri Feb 11 18:13:19 2000
From: catieb at UNM.EDU (Catie Berkenfield)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:13:19 -0700
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000210135359.007beb10@accdvm.accd.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.111319.0700.CATIEB@UNM.EDU>

Hi all,

In fact, Miller, Joanne. 1994. On the internal structure of phonetic
categories: a progress report.  Cognition 50: 271-285 shows evidence for
graded phonetic category structure which supports both the prototype and
exemplar models.

Also look for Joan Bybee's forthcoming Phonology and Language Use (John
Benjamins, in preparation) for critique of the classical phoneme analysis.

Does anyone else have recommended readings on this topic? I would be
particularly interested in anything on the association of what are
traditionally "segments" and what are usually characterized as independent
prosodic features. For instance, if a particular construction tends to
take a particular kind of sentence stress (eg an element of a predictable
grammatical construction), how do we represent this in our grammar? Do the
vocalic "segments" remain as full vowels or does the vowel representation
change due to a very regular (reduced) prosodic environment?

And, is this process quantitatively different from representation of
vowels in clearly lexical items? which also always occur in constructions.

Catie Berkenfield
Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico


On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Tony Wright wrote:

> At 01:33 PM 2/10/00 -0600, Janet Wilson wrote:
>
> > I think there is a good metaphor for prototype categories--they are more
> like > piles than like containers. Two reasons (there are more, but these
> are at the > forefront of my thinking) for liking the metaphor of "piles" are:
>
> > 1.    When a container is empty, there is still something there. When a
> pile > is empty, there is nothing.
>
> > 2.    A container imposes its shape (form) on the contents. A pile, on
> the > other hand, gets its shape from the contents.
>
> I agree!  Also, I would add that things are typically in a container or not
> in a container (with some exceptions).  But things can be in or near a
> pile, or in between two piles, etc.
>
> I have often wondered how it would be if we re-cast the classical notion of
> the phoneme in terms of "fuzzy regions in phonetic space."  Opinions?
>
> --Tony Wright
>


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Fri Feb 11 18:30:37 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 12:30:37 -0600
Subject: reflexives as subjects
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.123037.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

As Wolfgang Schulze's interesting discussion of East Causasian suggests,
any language which has emphatic reflexives and which is also pro-drop will
allow for sentences where the subject is just the emphatic reflexives,
with the subject pronoun itself absent.

However, as I remember, the original query pertained to anaphoric,
rather than emphatic, reflexives in subject position; i.e., cases where
the same person is referred to as both subject and object (or oblique) in
a sentence and, of the two mentions, it is the subject that takes on a
reflexive form (i.e. _Himself hurt him._, to mean 'He hurt himself.')

Edith Moravcsik


   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From geoffn at SIU.EDU  Fri Feb 11 20:02:14 2000
From: geoffn at SIU.EDU (Geoffrey S. Nathan)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:02:14 -0600
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.21.0002111059280.64458-100000@ben01.unm.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.140214.0600.GEOFFN@SIU.EDU>

At 11:13 AM 2/11/2000 -0700, Catie wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>In fact, Miller, Joanne. 1994. On the internal structure of phonetic
>categories: a progress report.  Cognition 50: 271-285 shows evidence for
>graded phonetic category structure which supports both the prototype and
>exemplar models.
>
>Also look for Joan Bybee's forthcoming Phonology and Language Use (John
>Benjamins, in preparation) for critique of the classical phoneme analysis.
>
>Does anyone else have recommended readings on this topic? I would be
>particularly interested in anything on the association of what are
>traditionally "segments" and what are usually characterized as independent
>prosodic features. For instance, if a particular construction tends to
>take a particular kind of sentence stress (eg an element of a predictable
>grammatical construction), how do we represent this in our grammar? Do the
>vocalic "segments" remain as full vowels or does the vowel representation
>change due to a very regular (reduced) prosodic environment?
>
>And, is this process quantitatively different from representation of
>vowels in clearly lexical items? which also always occur in constructions.
>
>Catie Berkenfield
>Department of Linguistics
>University of New Mexico



In a number of papers I have argued that phonemes are prototype categories,
with phonological processes serving as the analog of image schema
transformations (a la Lakoff/Brugmann's analysis of 'over').  Such facts as
phonemic overlap and phonemicization are easily understood in these
terms.  Relevant references include:

REFERENCES
Hurch, Bernhard, and Geoffrey S. Nathan. 1996. "Naturalness in Phonology."
STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung) 49(3):231-45.
Nathan, Geoffrey S. 1986. "Phonemes as Mental Categories." Pp. 212-24 in
Proceedings of the 12th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics
Society., vol. 12.
------. 1989. "Preliminaries to a Theory of Phonological Substance:  The
Substance of Sonority." Pp. 55-68 in Linguistic Categorization, edited by
Roberta Corrigan, Fred Eckman, and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam Studies in the
Theory and History of Linguistic Science.  Series IV - Current Issues in
Linguistic Theory.  Vol. 61. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
------. 1995. "How the Phoneme Inventory Gets Its Shape--Cognitive
Grammar's View of Phonological Systems." Rivista Di Linguistica 6(2):275-88.
------. 1996. "Towards a Cognitive Phonology." Pp. 107-20 in Natural
Phonology:  The State of the Art, eds Bernhard Hurch and Richard Rhodes.
Berlin: Mouton/de Gruyter.
------. 1999. "What Functionalists Can Learn from Formalists in Phonology."
Pp. 305-27 in Proceedings of the Symposium on Formalism and Functionalism.
Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Much of my work supports the traditional phoneme analysis (specifically the
Baudouin/Sapir/Stampe view, not Bloomfieldian or Generative Phonology
versions), although some of it can be recast in the OT framework.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Department of Linguistics
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL, 62901-4517
Phone:  (618) 453-3421 (Office) / FAX (618) 453-6527
         (618) 549-0106 (Home)
                                                         geoffn at siu.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000211/8c819b56/attachment.html>

From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Sat Feb 12 01:22:34 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 20:22:34 -0500
Subject: fodor and prototypes
In-Reply-To: <38A43579.295028C4@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.202234.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

> Elizabeth Bates wrote:
>
> it sounds like Fodor hasn't left the 1970's.

*That* is so-o-o twentieth-century.

-DP
*************************************************************************
David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu  Mon Feb 14 17:29:06 2000
From: bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu (Balthasar Bickel)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:29:06 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <MON.14.FEB.2000.092906.0800.>

The following question was recently posted on FUNKNET and, with
apologies for duplicates, I cc this to LINGTYP:

Nino Amiridze wrote:
> I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
> reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
> allowing reflexives in subject position.
>
> My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization
>
> (1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
>     president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
>           "The president saved himself"
>
> allows subject reflexives as well:
>
> (2) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
>    self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
> (a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
> saving him" (emphatic reading);
> (b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
> (his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
> imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

Reflexives in A function (and with a truly anaphoric function) are also
attested in Nepali, e.g.,

aaphai-le     Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-yo.
self:EMPH-ERG R.-DAT     spoiling do-PT3sM
‘Ram got himself spoiled.’ (from Bickel & Yadava, 'A fresh look at
grammatical relations in Indo-Aryan', in press, Lingua 2000)

In his 1994 book, Dixon (p. 238f) suggests that reflexives in A function
involve "verb[s] referring to a mental process", quoting Modern Greek
and Basque as examples. Nepali fully confirms this pattern. Georgian
apparently doesn't, but it is interesting to note that the (b) reading
in (2) above has a non-volitional flavor to it that is also
characteristic of Nepali.

Is anybody aware of other instances of reflexive pronouns in A function,
and of semantic effects tied to such constructions?

Balthasar Bickel.


From catieb at UNM.EDU  Mon Feb 14 17:38:37 2000
From: catieb at UNM.EDU (Catie Berkenfield)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:38:37 -0700
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.21.0002111059280.64458-100000@ben01.unm.edu>
Message-ID: <MON.14.FEB.2000.103837.0700.CATIEB@UNM.EDU>

Hello again

point of clarification...Joan Bybee's Phonology and Language Use textbook
is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, not John Benjamins.

apologies for the error. and thanks for the recommendations.

Catie Berkenfield
Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico


From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU  Tue Feb 15 01:09:29 2000
From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 18:09:29 -0700
Subject: subject reflexives
Message-ID: <MON.14.FEB.2000.180929.0700.LAKOFF@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU>

Of course, English has reflexives in subject position, as in :

My own father hates me.

George


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Tue Feb 15 09:37:47 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:37:47 +0200
Subject: subject reflexives
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.113747.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

George, that isn't a subject reflexive, it's a genitive/possessor reflexive.

John

>Of course, English has reflexives in subject position, as in :
>
>My own father hates me.
>
>George


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Tue Feb 15 10:01:10 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 12:01:10 +0200
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.120110.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Regarding the ostensible reflexives in subject position: Are the people
who have suggested them (in e.g. Georgian, Nepali) sure that these aren't
logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'? In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible
'reflexive', can freely be used in subject position, but this is because
it isn't really a reflexive, in the sense that it doesn't require (and
doesn't normally have) an antecedent in the same clause. It gets used in
3rd person narratives when the writer wants to clearly take the viewpoint
of a certain character, e.g. In a 3rd person narrative section if you say
'jibun was tired' it's sort of like throwing in a quote 'I'm tired', without
quotations marks, you're reporting it 'from the inside' so to speak. In
traditional generative studies of Japanese 'jibun' is called a `reflexive',
but this is because theories based on languages like English need something
called a reflexive they can use for their syntactic tests, and 'jibun' is the
closest they can come in Japanese, because it IS used in cases translating
as reflexives. But I had a student once who did a study on how 'jibun' is
used in Japanese texts, gathered about 50 examples of long-range viewpoint
usages of various types and analyzed them nicely, and after she had given
her presentation I asked her 'what about reflexive usages, where the antecedent
is in the same clause?' She had forgotten about them completely, and when
she went back to check her database, there wasn't a single one. So you could
say that Japanese allows 'reflexive subjects', but it's kind of silly.

Is this what's going on in Georgian and Nepali?

John


From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE  Tue Feb 15 12:01:33 2000
From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:01:33 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.130133.0100.W.SCHULZE@LRZ.UNIMUENCHEN.DE>

I guess that in many such instances of reflexives in pseudo-A or demoted

A-function the reflexive has a referential background at least in a
diachronic
perspective (just as in Georgian, cf. Georgian _tavi_ < 'head'). This
would
explain a) the possibility to have the reflexive in A function without
on antecedent, and b) why this process seems somewhat related to
techniques of 'de-controlization':

Let us assume that the relationship between what now is a 'reflexive'
and its 'antecedent' once was a part-whole or a possessum-possessor
relation ('head > human being' in the Georgian case). Canonically we
would expect that the whole controls the part and the possessor its
possessum. Or, in other word, the 'whole' or the possessor would have
protoypical A-functions, whereas the 'part' or the 'possessum' is
related to O-functions. The inference 'possessor > A' vs. 'possessum >
O' is a well-known case in a number of language systems (esp. in those
that know a parallel 'ergative behavior' of their case or agreement
system. Let us put this into  a scheme:

        'whole' > antecedent        'part' > reflexive
        Possessor                        possessum
        Construed as A               construed as O
        Controler                        controlled

In case the roles switch, that is in case 'part' or 'possessum' etc. is
morphologcally or syntactically treated as A whereas 'whole' or
'possessor' is associated with O we arrive at a 'clash': A rather 'light
noun' (with reference to A) becomes A, and a rather 'heavy noun' (with
reference to A) becomes O. The inferential dynamics of such a clash are
self-evident: 'part' as A (which then becomes the 'head-less' reflexive)
acquires certain A-properties without matching them semantically. As a
result, 'part' or 'possessum' as A has reached a (rather) limited degree
of control, whereas 'whole' (or 'possessor') - which is atypical in
O-function if 'part' is present - looses at least certain 'portions' of
is controlhood, cf.

    'part' in A [-control -> + control]
    'whole' in O [+control -> -control]

Note that a prerogative of this analysis is the existence of a
referential background of the reflexive in question. I know that this is
true for a number of reflexives especially in languages that have a
relatively strong ergative behavior. It would be good to know of a
counter-example, that is a language that knows the construction noticed
by Nino (let's call it 'postcedent A-reflexives') but the reflexive of
which cannot be reconstructed as or related to a referential noun
diachronically.

Wolfgang


--
*****************************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
*****************************


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Tue Feb 15 13:58:47 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 14:58:47 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.145847.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

I would like to thank everyone who sent me a reply on my question on
reflexives in subject position.

William Morris suggested the following book: Dixon, R.M.W.  1994.
Ergativity.  Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press
Where the author cites several frozen expressions, NOT productive, which
involve reflexives in subject position:
> "Himself enchants my brother" Basque (Citation, Salterelli, 1988)
> "Myself enchants me" Modern Greek (Citation, Joseph and
Philippaki-Warburton, 1987)
> And in personal communication from Kibrik, references to the Dargwa verb
"praise".
Georgian does not allow subject reflexives with psych verbs but causatives
(both lexical and morphological). And they are not frozen expressions. They
are productive.

John Myhill asked whether it has anything to do with the subject being in
the ergative?
> Can you do the same thing with a sentence in the present, when the
subject is > in the nominative?
Georgian can have a reflexive in the subject position no matter the tense:
(1) prezident-i            ixsnis              tavis    tav-s
   president-nom  he-saves/shall-save-him   self's-dat  head-dat
             "The president saves/shall save himself"
(2) tavis-i     tav-i             ixsnis            president-s
  self's-nom   head-nom   he-saves/shall-save-him   president-dat
(a) "It is the president who saves/shall save himself, no one else is/will
be responsible for saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president is/will be out of the hard situation only because of
himself (his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he cannot even
imagine/know/account for that" (non-volitional reading).

Wolfgang Schulze gave me examples form East Caucasian languages. I think
(and agree with Edith A Moravcsik) that these are the examples of emphatic
reflexives.
The Udi (South East Caucasian) example
>        ich Baqi-x kar-re-xa
>        REFL:ABS Baku-DAT2 live-3SG:S-LV-INTRANS:PRES
>        '(S)he lives in Baku.'
can be translated into Georgian only the following way:
Tviton          (is)        cxovrob-s   Baqu-shi.
Himself   (he-nom)      live-S3      Baku-in
         "He himself lives in Baku"
where in Georgian the subject pronoun is dropped out (pro-drop).
It has to be noted that emphasis is normally expressed in Georgian by
emphatic pronouns like tvit (<tav-it "head-INST"); tviton
(<tvit-an<tvit-van<tvit- man<tav-it-man "head-INST-ERG"); tavad (<tav-ad
"head-ABL") rather than reflexive phrase. All of them are historically
derived from tav- "head" (like the reflexive pronoun having the form
<POSSESSIVE + tav->) but they are not the same as the reflexive pronoun:
mcvel-ma       ixsna         president-i
guard-erg   he-saved-him    president-nom
     "The guard saved the president"
mcvel-ma       tavad  / *tavis-ma  tav-ma       ixsna         president-i
guard-erg   by-himself / self's-erg head-erg  he-saved-him    president-nom

     "The guard himself saved the president"

Balthasar Bickel gave me an example from Nepali
> aaphai-le     Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-yo.
> self:EMPH-ERG R.-DAT     spoiling do-PT3sM
> 'Ram got himself spoiled.' (from Bickel & Yadava, 'A fresh look at
Subject reflexive can perfectly be used with this verb in Georgian as well.
In fact a reflexive in subject position can be used with any verb being
able to imply a non-volitional agent.

Answering John Myhill, the reflexives in subject position are not
logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'.
> In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible 'reflexive', can freely be used in
> subject position, but this is because it isn't really a reflexive, in the
> sense that it doesn't require (and doesn't normally have) an antecedent
in the
> same clause.
The long distance "jibun" can be replaced by a personal pronoun without any
harm to the meaning and grammaticality. Is that right?
As for Goergian, the replacement will change the meaning:
    man       ixsna        president-i
   he-erg  he-saved-him   president-nom
     "He(i) saved the president(j)"
Here there is neither reflexive, nor emphatic / non-volitional readings.

> It gets used in 3rd person narratives when the writer wants to clearly
take the viewpoint of a certain character, e.g. In a 3rd person narrative
section if > you say 'jibun was tired' it's sort of like throwing in a
quote 'I'm tired',
> without quotations marks, you're reporting it 'from the inside' so to
speak.
The fact is that subject reflexives in Georgian are used not only in the
3rd person but in the 1st and 2nd person as well:

chem-ma   tav-ma        m-a-idzula           me         meqvira
myERG    headERG    O1-CAUS-force(PAST)     meDAT       to-shout
(a)  "(It was) MYSELF (who) forced me to shout" (emphatic)
(b) "(It was) myself (who) forced me to shout (I shouted though I was not
willing so" (non-volitional)

The reflexives in subject position are not logophors since they represent
not an entity from the previous discourse but one of the arguments of a
given verb - the Causer.

Wolfgang Schulze suggested the penomenon to be related to the fact that
reflexive is historically derived from a body-part noun (tav "head").
> I guess that in many such instances of reflexives in pseudo-A or demoted
> A-function the reflexive has a referential background at least in a
> Diachronic perspective (just as in Georgian, cf. Georgian _tavi_ < 'head').
> This Would explain a) the possibility to have the reflexive in A function
> without on antecedent,
It may not be called an "antecedent" but clearly there is an NP which is
co-referential to the reflexive in subject position.

> and b) why this process seems somewhat related to techniques of
'de-controlization'.
>As a result, 'part' or 'possessum' as A has reached a (rather) limited degree
> of control, whereas 'whole' (or 'possessor') - which is atypical in
O-function > if 'part' is present - looses at least certain 'portions' of
is controlhood, cf.
>    'part' in A [-control -> + control]
>    'whole' in O [+control -> -control]
It is really interesting to look at the reflexive phrase from the
part/whole relationship perspective. In Goergian in subject anaphoric
clauses the causee (full NP) is totally affected but not by the whole
referent but by a property(s) of it. The causer reduces metaphorically to
its property(s):

tavis-ma     tav-ma        dag'upa            prezidenti
self's-erg   head-erg   he-destroyed-him     persident-nom
(a)"It is the president and NO ONE ELSE who destroyed himself" (it is not
differentiated the action was volitional or not)
(b)"The president destroyed himself unconsciously, without really wanting
this, non-volitionally".
President's past doings, charachter, etc. is in fact a part not the whole
of his personality.

Subject anaphors are allowed even if there is not the reduction of the
whole to its part but another referent resembling the causee (wax statue, a
twin, etc). Therefore, there is not a part/whole relationship but still it
is possible to have a reflexive as a subject:
(1) Ringo     daeca       tavis       tav-s
 Ringo(NOM)   fell-on   self's(DAT)  head(NOM)
          "Ringo fell on himself"
 Actual Ringo fell on the statue of Ringo
*Statue of Ringo fell on the actual Ringo

(2) tavis-i     tav-i      daeca     Ringo-s
  self's(NOM)  head(NOM)   fell-on   Ringo(DAT)
????? "Himself fell on Ringo"
*Actual Ringo fell on the statue of Ringo
Statue of Ringo fell on the actual Ringo

There are such cases when there cannot be an non-volitional reading and the
only meaning that a sentence can bear is the emphatic one. Such cases are
mostly in certain contexts or with verbs of certain semantic class. Namely,
with verbs the semantics of which excludes volition as such:
tavis-ma       tav-ma             damarxa                mixa
self's-Erg     head-erg     (s)he-buried-him(her)     Michael-nom

Since a dead person  cannot bury himself neither with volition nor without
it the sentence is grammatical only when there is a metaphorical shift in
meaning. The only thing that the sentence can mean is the following: "No
one/nothing else but Michael's savings made it possible to pay for all
expenses related to his funeral".
Therefore, volition is completely out while emphasis is still there.

What gives the emphatic reading?
There is no emphatic reflexive (tvit/tavad/tviton) there in subject
anaphoric sentences. Perhaps the reflexive phrase in the pre-verbal slot
which is a focus slot in Georgian?
But even if we remove the reflexive from the focus slot the emphatic
meaning will still remain there:

   president-i          ixsna        tavis-ma     tav-ma
   president-nom     he-saved-him   self's-erg  head-erg
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

Thank you.

Sincerely,

    Nino Amiridze


From bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu  Tue Feb 15 18:08:42 2000
From: bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu (Balthasar Bickel)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:08:42 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.100842.0800.>

John Myhill wrote:
> Regarding the ostensible reflexives in subject position: Are the people
> who have suggested them (in e.g. Georgian, Nepali) sure that these aren't
> logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'? In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible

I agree, this distinction is very important to make, and not only that:
Nepali also allows exophoric uses of the reflexives, similar to the
emphatic uses that Edith Moravcsik talked about yesterday and that Nino
Amiridze discussed his reply. In the construction I quoted, however, we
are dealing with a truly anaphoric (more precisely, kataphoric) use of
the reflexive. There is no need nor suggestion in the clause to construe
any exophoric or discourse bearing. What's crucial about the Nepali
construction (based on a preliminary analysis) is that this is the
standard way of indicating coreference between A and O if (a) the
speaker wants to indicate a non-volitional meaning, and (b) the clause
involves a psychological predicate.

> John Myhill asked whether it has anything to do with the subject being in
> the ergative?
> > Can you do the same thing with a sentence in the present, when the
> subject is > in the nominative?
> Georgian can have a reflexive in the subject position no matter the tense:

The same is true of Nepali:

aaphu    Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-cha
REFL:NOM R.-DAT     spoiling do-3SG.PT
'Ram will get himself spoiled.'

This is important to note because the Nepali ergative also covers
instrumental uses and on the face of it, 'aaphaile' (or 'aaphule') could
also be analyzed as an instrumental rather than an ergative. Unlike an
instrumental NP, 'aaphaile' alternates with the nominative in non-past
and non-perfective contexts, whence such an analysis would not hold up.


-- Balthasar Bickel.




__________________________________________

Balthasar Bickel
University of California at Berkeley
Department of Slavic Languages
6303 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-2979
Phone:    +1-510-848 4875 (home)
Fax:      +1-510-642 6220 (office)
E-Mail:   bickel at socrates.berkeley.edu
Web Site: socrates.berkeley.edu/~bickel
__________________________________________


From meryem_sen at YAHOO.COM  Wed Feb 16 06:13:00 2000
From: meryem_sen at YAHOO.COM (Meryem SEN)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:13:00 +0200
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.081300.0200.MERYEMSEN@YAHOO.COM>

In Turkish language the self pronoun 'kendi' is used in the subject position as in the following example:
Kendi (himself/herself) geldi (came). It is an inflectional pronoun. Thus, it is possible to use it for the other subject pronouns. For instance, kendi-m (myself), kendi /kendisi (himself/herself/itself), kendi-leri (themselves).
Tüm (All) hazırlıkları (preparations) kendileri (themselves) yaptılar (did).
"Themselves did all the preparations.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000216/3770d1ee/attachment.html>

From m.perkins at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK  Wed Feb 16 10:05:44 2000
From: m.perkins at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK (Mick Perkins)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:05:44 -0000
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.100544.0000.M.PERKINS@SHEFFIELD.AC.UK>

I've occasionally heard men in the UK refer to their wives/female partners using a reflexive pronoun as subject as follows: "Herself won't be interested" or "Herself will be staying in tonight". The effect is slightly humorous, and seems to imply that the wife/partner is the dominant member in the relationship.

Mick


Dr Mick Perkins
Senior Lecturer in Clinical Linguistics 
Department of Human Communication Sciences
University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN
UK

Tel: (+44) (0)114 2222408
Fax: (+44) (0)114 2730547
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/R-Z/spsu/staff/mick.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000216/4ba2479e/attachment.html>

From dkp at U.ARIZONA.EDU  Wed Feb 16 16:25:51 2000
From: dkp at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Dianne K. Patterson)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 09:25:51 -0700
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <004f01bf7865$63c750e0$ab8ea78f@shef.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.092551.0700.DKP@U.ARIZONA.EDU>

You remind me that in the UK "themselves" is the preferred term for
referring to little people (elves and fairies)...I imagine the term can be
used in subject position...and I wonder if it has anything to do with the
humor in referring to ones wife that way...

Dianne



On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, Mick Perkins wrote:

> I've occasionally heard men in the UK refer to their wives/female partners using a reflexive pronoun as subject as follows: "Herself won't be interested" or "Herself will be staying in tonight". The effect is slightly humorous, and seems to imply that the wife/partner is the dominant member in the relationship.
>
> Mick
>
>
> Dr Mick Perkins
> Senior Lecturer in Clinical Linguistics
> Department of Human Communication Sciences
> University of Sheffield
> Sheffield S10 2TN
> UK
>
> Tel: (+44) (0)114 2222408
> Fax: (+44) (0)114 2730547
> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/R-Z/spsu/staff/mick.html
>


From jfsmith at MEDIOM.QC.CA  Wed Feb 16 20:59:20 2000
From: jfsmith at MEDIOM.QC.CA (Jeff Smith)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:59:20 -0500
Subject: Question
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.155920.0500.JFSMITH@MEDIOM.QC.CA>

Greetings to all,

        I'm a young undergraduate student who would like to know what are the
conclusions drawn from present neurological datas and researches regarding
language innateness envisaged à la Chomsky, with a few references. There's
no bias behind this question. I just want some update. My teacher thinks
we're still in the 70's, so I ought to ask someone else. If you will,
answer me privately.

All my thanks,
Jean-François Smith


From wmorris at CS.UCSD.EDU  Thu Feb 17 14:01:56 2000
From: wmorris at CS.UCSD.EDU (William Morris)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 06:01:56 -0800
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.060156.0800.WMORRIS@CS.UCSD.EDU>

> I've occasionally heard men in the UK refer to their wives/female
>partners using a reflexive pronoun as subject as follows: "Herself
>won't be interested" or "Herself will be staying in tonight". The effect
>is slightly humorous, and seems to imply that the wife/partner is the
>dominant member in the relationship.
>

This is likely from Irish English, in which "himself" (and presumably
"herself") is an honorific, usually used to refer to the head of the
household.  And this is from Irish, in which "fein" 'self' is used
in emphatic usage

O Siadhail, Michael.  1988.  "Learning Irish".  New Haven & London:
Yale University Press.

I'm told that it is also used as an honorific in Irish.

Bill Morris


From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Thu Feb 17 14:44:15 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:44:15 -0500
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <38A99626.B03020DC@uclink.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.094415.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

At 10:08 AM -0800  2/15/00, Balthasar Bickel wrote:
> John Myhill wrote:
>> Regarding the ostensible reflexives in subject position: Are the people
>> who have suggested them (in e.g. Georgian, Nepali) sure that these aren't
>> logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'? In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible
>
> I agree, this distinction is very important to make, and not only that:
> Nepali also allows exophoric uses of the reflexives, similar to the
> emphatic uses that Edith Moravcsik talked about yesterday and that Nino
> Amiridze discussed his reply. In the construction I quoted, however, we
> are dealing with a truly anaphoric (more precisely, kataphoric) use of
> the reflexive. There is no need nor suggestion in the clause to construe
> any exophoric or discourse bearing. What's crucial about the Nepali
> construction (based on a preliminary analysis) is that this is the
> standard way of indicating coreference between A and O if (a) the
> speaker wants to indicate a non-volitional meaning, and (b) the clause
> involves a psychological predicate.

Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.

Some years ago, Pierre Pica suggested that bimorphemic reflexives (and
reciprocals) always require a sentence-internal antecedent, with locality
conditions related to intervening subjects, while monomorphemic forms
typically do not have this property.  There are some counterexamples (I
don't know about languages that use forms like 'his head' for 'himself) and
I'm not sure what the current wisdom is on Pica's generalization.

There has been a lot of work on the typology of reflexives,
semi-reflexives, quasi-reflexives, etc. in recent years.  I know that Ken
Safir (Rutgers) has an ongoing project about this that has led to a number
of interesting publications.  His papers would also be a good place to find
references to other work.

-David Pesetsky
*************************************************************************
David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Thu Feb 17 15:28:35 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 12:28:35 -0300
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.122835.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

David Pesetsky wrote:
To David's posting, I would add a reference to work by Eric Reuland and
Tanya Reinhart, who edited a very interesting book titled Long-Distance
Reflexives about 8 years ago. That's probably enough information to find
the book on Amazon.com or some such.

Dan Everett

>
> There has been a lot of work on the typology of reflexives,
> semi-reflexives, quasi-reflexives, etc. in recent years.  I know that Ken
> Safir (Rutgers) has an ongoing project about this that has led to a number
> of interesting publications.  His papers would also be a good place to find
> references to other work.
>
> -David Pesetsky
> *************************************************************************
> David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
> Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
> Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
> E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
> (617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
> http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From moorej at UCSD.EDU  Sun Feb 13 17:41:54 2000
From: moorej at UCSD.EDU (John Moore)
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 09:41:54 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <38AC13A3.6EB84466@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <SUN.13.FEB.2000.094154.0800.MOOREJ@UCSD.EDU>

>To David's posting, I would add a reference to work by Eric Reuland and
>Tanya Reinhart, who edited a very interesting book titled Long-Distance
>Reflexives about 8 years ago. That's probably enough information to find
>the book on Amazon.com or some such.
>
>Dan Everett
>
>

Reinhart and Reuland have a paper in that volume, but it was edited by
Reuland and Koster.  Here is the reference:

Long-distance anaphora /, edited by Jan Koster and Eric Reuland. Cambridge
[England] ; New York : Cambridge
                       University Press, 1991.

The introduction is an excellent overview of long-distance anaphora.  The
Reinhart and Reuland paper in this volume, as well as their LI paper
"Reflexivity" should be of interest.  I think this is work that really
transcends the formalist/functionalist divide (as does Pollard and Sag's
HPSG paper on binding).  It is true that many formal devices are used, but
also many functional insights are there.  These are works that make me
optimistic about the field.

John Moore

http://ling.ucsd.edu/~moore/


From cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU  Thu Feb 17 18:30:28 2000
From: cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU (cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:30:28 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <v04220801b4d1b8099513@[18.173.0.105]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.103028.0800.>

On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
 > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
 > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
 > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.

The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)

Chris Manning


From bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU  Thu Feb 17 18:52:30 2000
From: bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Joan Bresnan)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:52:30 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:30:28 PST.
 <14508.15940.817124.774025@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.105230.0800.BRESNAN@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>

See also Haihua Pan's paper on Chinese `ta ziji', another
counterexmaple to "Pica's Generalization" (which is really Faltz's
generalization):

Pan, Haihua.  1998.  Closeness, prominence, and binding theory.  \ital{Natural
  Language \& Linguistic Theory} 16: 817--889.

This has an excellent discussion of a number of relevant issues
regarding binding and subject reflexives.


From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Thu Feb 17 19:03:12 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 14:03:12 -0500
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <14508.15940.817124.774025@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.140312.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
>
> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)

I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?

-DP
*************************************************************************
David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From J.F.Crocker at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK  Thu Feb 17 19:24:51 2000
From: J.F.Crocker at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK (Jean Crocker)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 19:24:51 GMT0BST
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <v04220801b4d1b8099513@[18.173.0.105]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.192451.GMT0BST.J.F.CROCKER@NEWCASTLE.AC.UK>

Does AmE  use 'his ass' like this?

Jean

>
> Some years ago, Pierre Pica suggested that bimorphemic reflexives (and
> reciprocals) always require a sentence-internal antecedent, with locality
> conditions related to intervening subjects, while monomorphemic forms
> typically do not have this property.  There are some counterexamples (I
> don't know about languages that use forms like 'his head' for 'himself) and
> I'm not sure what the current wisdom is on Pica's generalization.
>

> -David Pesetsky
Jean Crocker
Language Centre
University of Newcastle
Newcastle on Tyne NE1 7RU


From cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU  Thu Feb 17 22:11:28 2000
From: cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU (Christopher Manning)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 14:11:28 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <v04220801b4d1f668f5bb@[18.173.0.105]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.141128.0800.CMANNING@SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU>

On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
 > What is the claim, that there is no effect of
 > intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?

That the preference for local binding follows from the emphatic nature
of zibun-zisin rather than the existence of a clear syntactic domain
restriction.  Certainly this includes the possibility of intervening
subjects, as in:

Tanaka-kyoozyu$_i$ wa [gakusei ga gakkoo-tookyoku dake de-naku
zibun-zisin$_i$ ni mo sinrai o oi-te i-nakat-ta] noni gakuzen to si-ta.
Tanaka-professor {\sc top} student {\sc nom} school-authorities only
be-{\sc neg} self on even reliance {\sc acc} place-{\sc prog-neg}-{\sc
past} since shocked {\sc comp} do-{\sc past}
`Prof. Tanaka$_i$ got shocked at the fact that the students didn't
rely on not only the school authorities but also him$_i$.

Chris Manning


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Fri Feb 18 09:07:08 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 11:07:08 +0200
Subject: jibun
Message-ID: <FRI.18.FEB.2000.110708.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Dear David,
I find it difficult (actually impossible) to believe that ANY use of jibun
is constrained to take a subject as an antecedent, or ANY syntactically
defined category for that matter, as an antecedent. It's a pronoun with a
particular discourse/referential function; to try to delimit its usage
syntactically is like trying to delimit the usage of 'someone'
syntactically. If you want to participate in an informed discussion of
this, David, I suggest you learn enough Japanese to read it, see how jibun
is actually used, and see if you can come up with a syntactic rule to
account for it. And if you insist on having a naive discussion of this,
divorced of first-hand knowledge of the language or second-hand knowledge
of the actual usage of the word, please don't do it on funknet, do it on
some formalist network where such discussions are presumably routine.
John Myhill






>At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
>> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
>>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
>>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
>>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
>>
>> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
>> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
>> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
>> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
>> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
>> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)
>
>I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
>intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?
>
>-DP
>*************************************************************************
>David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
>Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
>E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
>(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
>http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Fri Feb 18 16:36:07 2000
From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 08:36:07 -0800
Subject: jibun
Message-ID: <FRI.18.FEB.2000.083607.0800.TGIVON@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

John,

I really think it's time, maybe, that you started worrying a bit about
the tone of (some of) your submissions. We are not here to stick it to
the other guys & call them ignorant. We are here to learn, together.
Maybe, just maybe, you too have something to learn from 'the
formalists'. Have you ever considered that possibility? Well, maybe you
don't need to. But maybe some of the rest of us, who are not so smart,
might? At any rate, let's keep FUNKNET a forum where people come, in
good faith, to learn from each other. After all, if we all believed in,
and knew, exactly the same things, it would be a rather boring place,
with not much learning... Best,  TG
=====================

John Myhill wrote:
>
> Dear David,
> I find it difficult (actually impossible) to believe that ANY use of jibun
> is constrained to take a subject as an antecedent, or ANY syntactically
> defined category for that matter, as an antecedent. It's a pronoun with a
> particular discourse/referential function; to try to delimit its usage
> syntactically is like trying to delimit the usage of 'someone'
> syntactically. If you want to participate in an informed discussion of
> this, David, I suggest you learn enough Japanese to read it, see how jibun
> is actually used, and see if you can come up with a syntactic rule to
> account for it. And if you insist on having a naive discussion of this,
> divorced of first-hand knowledge of the language or second-hand knowledge
> of the actual usage of the word, please don't do it on funknet, do it on
> some formalist network where such discussions are presumably routine.
> John Myhill
>
> >At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
> >> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
> >>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
> >>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
> >>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
> >>
> >> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
> >> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
> >> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
> >> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
> >> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
> >> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)
> >
> >I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
> >intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?
> >
> >-DP
> >*************************************************************************
> >David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
> >Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
> >Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
> >E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> >Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
> >(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
> >http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 18 17:07:29 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 14:07:29 -0300
Subject: Morphology
Message-ID: <FRI.18.FEB.2000.140729.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Folks,

I would be interested in knowing what linguists consider to be the
three-five most important desiderata of a model/theory of morphology.
That is, what would the most important pieces of such a theory be to
you? What ought it most try to account for?

If there are sufficient responses, I will post a summary to this list.

Thanks,

Dan Everett


From clements at INDIANA.EDU  Tue Feb 22 01:46:31 2000
From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:46:31 -0600
Subject: 4th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium -- CALL FOR PAPERS
In-Reply-To: <199912140522.VAA07011@hypatia.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <MON.21.FEB.2000.194631.0600.CLEMENTS@INDIANA.EDU>

                   SYMPOSIUM ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS


4th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium
Nov. 17-19, 2000 at
Indiana University, Bloomington


Keynote Speakers

John Lipski, University of New Mexico
Bill VanPatten, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign


Abstract deadline:  April 10, 2000
Response from organizers:  May 1, 2000


We are soliciting one page abstracts of original work on any area of
Hispanic linguistics: historical, phonology, second language acquisition,
semantics, sociolinguistics, syntax; and ALL theoretical frameworks

Abstracts can be submitted electronically to James F. Lee:
leejames at indiana.edu or via regular mail:


James F. Lee, Hispanic Linguistics Symposium
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
844 Ballantine Hall
Bloomington, IN  47405

---------------------------



J. Clancy Clements
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese
Ballantine Hall 844 / IU
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
Tel. (812) 855-6141
Fax: (812) 855-4526


From jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU  Tue Feb 22 03:56:53 2000
From: jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU (Jon Aske)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 22:56:53 -0500
Subject: jibun
In-Reply-To: <38AD74F7.DD589231@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Message-ID: <MON.21.FEB.2000.225653.0500.JASKE@SALEM.MASS.EDU>

You will all pardon me for butting in, since I haven't been participating,
or even following closely, the latest discussions, but I wanted to say
something in John's defense for his somewhat rude words, namely that perhaps
they were provoked (and thus can perhaps explained, if not excused) by what
I see a change in the tone of our list, a list that I have belonged to since
its inception and whose basic tenets I thought were those that Tom one day
wrote and which can be found here:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~ling/funknet.html

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that perhaps in recent months
John, like myself, may have had a sense that this list of ours has been
hijacked and taken over by people who do not believe, not even loosely, in
those principles.

I may be wrong and I am willing to hear arguments about my wrongheadedness,
as long as they're put forth in a respectful manner, of course.

Cheers to all of you with whom I had lost touch in the last few years.  I'm
still alive.

Jon
_____________________________________________________
Jon Aske
Department of Foreign Languages, Salem State College
SB 209A, Phone: (978) 542-4358, Fax: (978) 542-7215
jaske at salem.mass.edu - http://www.salem.mass.edu/~jaske/
personal: aske at basqueland.com - http://basqueland.com
_____________________________________________________
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier
to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.  --Jassamyn West


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Tue Feb 22 08:09:23 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:09:23 +0200
Subject: funknet principles
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.100923.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Thank you, Jon. In fact, I noticed this change more than a few months ago.
I do not think that the purpose of funknet should be to establish a dialogue
with formalists; the functionalists who are interested in doing this are
doing it out of a hope of making them 'see the light' or 'bring them
around' (they do not, of course, say this in general postings, but they do
in private postings), to `convert' formalists, and aside from being boring,
I think this
is just plain a waste of time (see my repeated earlier challenges to
funknetters to identify people who have been `converted' either way, which
yielded a grand total of two people, (one in each direction), neither of
whom had been converted by exchanges on funknet).

I see the purpose of funknet as exchanging information and ideas related to
functional-typological linguistics. A crucial part of this is, to me, is
a responsible and respectful attitude towards linguistic data, particularly
from languages which not so many of us know (where the proliferation of
misinformation is more likely and dangerous). This level of responsibility
simply doesn't exist in discussions among formalists, where it is routine
for people to make unchallenged and absurd statements about languages they
know nothing about, referring to studies by people who either also don't
know these languages or were highly impressionable graduate students at the
time they did the study. Listening to discussions among formalists about data
from non-Indo-European languages is basically like reading accounts by explorers
in the Dark Ages who would report that country A is inhabited by dragons
while the population of country B is made up of giants; they might even
bring back someone
from these countries to confirm these stories. This is not to say that
there are not individual formal linguists who have a responsible attitude
towards data (there are), but that the general tone of such discussions is
essentially empirically
irresponsible.

I DON'T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN ON FUNKNET!!!!!!!!!! I WANT TO BE ABLE TO TRUST
THE DATA I SEE ON FUNKNET!!!!!!!!!!

The discussion on reflexives in subject position was great. It was initiated by
Nino, a native speaker of Georgian, and there were contributions by
Wolfgang on Udi, Balthasar on Nepali, Meryem on Turkish, and Mick and
Dianne on dialectal
English. For each of these contributions, I had the impression that I could
basically trust the data. Then came David Pesetsky's contribution, from the
empirical Dark Ages, referring to the type of fifthhand hearsay which is
acceptable in formal linguistics but not in functional linguistics (at
least not to me). I don't want this, and I think it should be stopped. This
is NOT a matter of 'ideological purity.' It's a matter of 'empirical
purity.' If formalists who are knowledgeable about and respectful of the
data they refer to (e.g. Dan Everett) want to participate in funknet,
great. But I DON'T want people on funknet referring to studies by, e.g. Ken
Safir (as David did) as a source of cross-linguistic data. I know about Ken
(we overlapped at Penn); I know his data can (and should) be thrown in the
garbage can before people waste even more of their time making up theories
based upon them. I don't know how many of the other several hundred people
on funknet realize this.

Because I believe that it is necessary to stop the proliferation of
misinformation, I told David he should investigate this himself before
referring to it, and if he insisted on doing proliferating misinformation
without checking it, he at least keep this information away from
functionalist discussions. I worded this seriously (rudely, some might say)
because I wanted to make it absolutely clear that empirical
irresponsibility isn't a casual matter. If insistence upon empirical
responsibility means David doesn't want to participate in funknet, if Talmy
is deprived of this forum for trying to convert David to functionalism,
well, that's a price I would be willing to pay.

John Myhill


From chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU  Tue Feb 22 17:22:25 2000
From: chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Wallace Chafe)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:22:25 -0800
Subject: funknet principles
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04b4d7e4752e96@[132.74.19.230]>
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.092225.0800.CHAFE@HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU>

Good for John and Jon.  Having seen what has been done with
pseudo-Iroquoian languages, I couldn't agree more.  The reference to the
Dark Ages is quite apt.

Wally


From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU  Tue Feb 22 18:17:55 2000
From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike Gildea)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:17:55 -0600
Subject: Another take on Funknet Principles
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.121755.0600.SPIKEG@OWLNET.RICE.EDU>

I am writing this posting with two hats on: one is as the co-owner of the
list, to express my dismay at the personal attacks that have come out in
recent postings and to ask that this stop -- the other co-owner, Michael
Barlow, has indicated that he agrees.  The other is as a member of the
FUNKNET community interested in detaching some substantive issues from the
personal vitriol.

(1) On personal attacks and "rudeness" (and its correlate, "formalist
bashing").

First, on tone.  Attacks on unreliable data and poorly-considered analyses
can be made without taking a personally demeaning tone (e.g. "If you really
want to participate in an informed discussion of this, David, I suggest you
learn enough...").  This sort of tone changes the focus of discussion from
substantive issues (like the importance of being empirically responsible)
to the personal (Was that "rude"?  Should David respond in kind?).  An
alternative might be something like: "The data from the literature David
cites is full of errors, as any fluent speaker of Japanese will attest.
Unfortunately, this bogus data seems to have some respectability in
formalist circles, so that David is perpetuating the error by repeating it.
See <references> for the real story."  It really isn't hard to be polite
while telling someone their source is full of shit.

On "formalist-bashing" and ad hominem attacks.  I don't want to interact
with people who dismiss functionalism as "irrelevant" or "uninteresting"
(i.e. generic "functionalist bashers), nor am I interested in generic
"formalist-bashing".  The contributions to this list by formalists have by
and large been limited to offering different takes on issues we are
discussing, along with calling us on it when we have particularly egregious
examples of content-free "formalist bashing".  In the case of David's
recent posting on jibun, given what he knew from the literature, he was
making a reasonable contribution -- that we should look at the body of work
by Safir, as we might learn something interesting from it.  Dan Everett
also gave a reference that those who are interested might follow up on.
This is how people engage in a constructive conversation.  If you don't
like the references they offer, you are free to enter that conversation and
explain why.

John's response was not constructive: "I DON'T want people on funknet
referring to studies by, e.g. Ken Safir (as David did) as a source of
cross-linguistic data. I know about Ken (we overlapped at Penn); I know his
data can (and should) be thrown in the garbage can before people waste even
more of their time making up theories based upon them. I don't know how
many of the other several hundred people on funknet realize this."

This kind of unsupported blanket condemnation is a form of verbal terrorism
-- John does not like Safir's work and insists that nobody mention it on
FUNKNET unless they are prepared to face personal attacks themselves.  He
explicitly tries to force David to stop posting on FUNKNET because he finds
his sources of data offensive.  Attacks on the empirical reliability of our
colleagues' work should also maintain high empirical standards, and right
now we have nothing but John's assertion that, because he and Ken were once
at the same institution, he knows that the entire body of Ken's work is not
worthy of consideration by "serious" linguists.  That's called an ad
hominem attack and it has no place in any discussion of substance,
especially not one where some 800 other people might be influenced by it.
I'm all for empirical reliability, but I demand it from my theoretical
friends as well as from my theoretical foes.

I request that future public condemnations of *work* by other linguists --
both formalist and functionalist -- include some thoughtful discussion of
the basis for the attacks, and that they take a respectful tone towards the
*people* involved, at least if you want to post them to FUNKNET.

(2) On empirically reliable data.  I think this is a critically important
issue that many linguists somehow take for granted.  No, all that is
published, especially about "exotic" languages, is not true.  And I believe
the collection and repetition of unreliable data are not limited to
formalists.  How about a discussion of methods by which data collection can
be made more reliable, whether by learning to speak the language in
question, by relying primarily on naturally-occurring discourse for
examples (especially, where possible, from large, searchable corpora), or
by at the very least reading the entire grammar of the language before
extracting some small piece to present in a more theoretically or
typologically-oriented setting (cf. Mithun's 1999 magnificent treatment of
the languages of North America).

I have never believed in the equation FUNCTIONALIST = RELIABLE DATA, so I
don't identify with John's impassioned plea to *keep* FUNKNET as a place
where data are always reliable.  ALL data in ALL linguistic discussions
need to be subject to the same scrutiny for reliability -- FUNKNET
contributions never have been and never will be exempted from the need for
that scrutiny.

(3) On the "purity" of discussion on the list.

TG's original mission statement was designed to attract like-minded people
to a list where we could discuss the issues we care about.  That mission
statement attracted a community, and ever since that community has been
evolving.  John's and Jon's most recent postings are an attempt to pull the
community in a certain direction, which they identify as more compatible
with the vision that launched the original community.  As members of the
community that is their right.

On the other hand, I am actually quite contented with all the diverse
directions the list has taken over the years, as I am happy to see the
entire enterprise of functionalist linugistics evolving.  In my own
evolution, as I do more historical work I see more and more the importance
of persevering patterns, and not just in morphology but in syntax.  The
existence of "autonomous" patterns, which change function but persevere in
form, should be no more controversial than the existence of autonomous
patterns in phonology, (e.g. words), which change meaning but persevere
(more or less) in form.  I am able to reconcile this reality with my
orientation as a functionalist because I have always been able to find
functional/semantic roots for the creation of innovative grammatical
patterns, and functional motivations for their subsequent functional
evolution.  So frankly, I think people who believe in "grammar" have as
much place on this list as people who do not, and I want to be able to hear
from people who mix their functional explanation with formal issues.  I
often disagree with the formal "explanations", but the data that
formalistshave brought to discussions of South American languages (to
choose a domain I am more familiar with) is both interesting and
challenging.

One of the issues that many of us care increasingly about is the
interaction between formal and functional views on language.  Frankly, I am
not interested in "converting" anyone,  and I'm not sure that I would be
interested in interacting with anyone who might be converted merely by the
discussions I have seen thus far on this list.  I am interested in
substantive criticisms of formal models (and I believe there are many to be
made, including over-reliance on unreliable elicited judgements of
grammaticality), but more, I am interested in seeing how we, as
functionalists, address the challenge of explaining form when it does *not*
appear (at least synchronically) to be driven by function. If most people
on this list are uninterested in discussion on issues like these, then I
suppose they will lead the discussion in other directions, and that's OK
too.  We continue to define our community every time we take up a new topic
that interests enough people to generate discussion.

Spike


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Tue Feb 22 19:04:16 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 16:04:16 -0300
Subject: Another take on Funknet Principles
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.160416.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

I applaud Spike's posting on these issues - at the same time that I
sympathize with John Myhill.

With regard to suggestions on how to do better empirical work, Paul
Newman and Martha Ratliff have edited a new volume on _Linguistic
Fieldwork_, to appear, I believe, from Cambridge University Press. I
have a chapter in there on "monolingual field research" in which I argue
that one should always learn to speak the language one is working on.
But the other chapters look even better. Chapters by Larry Hyman, Ian
Maddieson, Keren Rice, Marianne Mithun, and others of my heroes all look
interesting and useful. This book (and it isn't the only one) targets
the entire field. It is vital that all of us pay careful attention to
data and, yes, methodology.

Having said that, let me say that besides being one of the smartest
people I have ever met, David Pesetsky is an incredibly careful
researcher. If he cites a published source which has errors, well, then,
as Spike points out, let's offer him a better source. Don't assume that
anyone is irresponsible. Trust and respect should be the defaults.

Anyway, glad to see Spike's statement.

At the same time, I read FUNKNET for about the same reason as John
Myhill does - to learn about and discuss good functional analyses of
careful empirical research data. If we argue about these occasionally,
that is not to 'convert' anyone, but simply to try to get the best
analysis to come out, whether formal or functional. Although I believe
that formal analyses have a much harder time coming up with an
intensionally definable subject matter, I still think that occasionally
at least, formal analyses are more insightful. Debating and discussing
on this list have helped me tremendously.

Dan Everett


From clements at INDIANA.EDU  Tue Feb 22 20:45:55 2000
From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 14:45:55 -0600
Subject: SPSS and Varbrul
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.144555.0600.CLEMENTS@INDIANA.EDU>

Dear Funknetters,
Recently, SPSS came out with a new version of their software.  I was
wondering if anyone knows whether this latest version of SPSS can take care
of linguistic data in the same way Varbrul can.  Any information and
pointers on the subject would be greatly appreciated.  I will compile the
responses and post them.

Thanks,


Clancy Clements

J. Clancy Clements
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese
Ballantine Hall 844 / IU
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
Tel. (812) 855-6141
Fax: (812) 855-4526


From ardise at HOTMAIL.COM  Tue Feb 22 23:57:01 2000
From: ardise at HOTMAIL.COM (Ardis Eschenberg)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 15:57:01 PST
Subject: back to the data...
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.155701.PST.ARDISE@HOTMAIL.COM>

Getting back to the data, I thought it might be worth noting  that in
Turkish the use of the self pronoun as subject occurs in the contexts (as
was noted for other languages) where there is an emphasis on the fact that
the particular set of people did the action, as in the English,"They
themselves made the dinner."  (No one helped them.)  Likely people figured
this from what was presented, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to add for
people like me who wondered about the use/context.  The original message is
below.
Peacefully,
Ardis Eschenberg
State University of New York at Buffalo
Wayne State College of Nebraska

>In Turkish language the self pronoun 'kendi' is used in the subjectposition
>as in the following example:
>Kendi (himself/herself) geldi (came). It is an inflectional pronoun. Thus,
>it is possible to use it for the other subject pronouns. For instance,
>kendi-m (myself), kendi /kendisi (himself/herself/itself), kendi-leri
>(themselves).
>T�m (All) haz�rl�klar� (preparations) kendileri (themselves) yapt�lar(did).
>"Themselves did all the preparations.


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


From ardise at HOTMAIL.COM  Wed Feb 23 00:33:49 2000
From: ardise at HOTMAIL.COM (Ardis Eschenberg)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 16:33:49 PST
Subject: back to the data...
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.163349.PST.ARDISE@HOTMAIL.COM>

Getting back to the data, I thought it might be worth noting  that in
Turkish the use of the self pronoun as subject occurs in the contexts (as
was noted for other languages) where there is an emphasis on the fact that
the particular set of people did the action, as in the English,"They
themselves made the dinner."  (No one helped them.)  Likely people figured
this from what was presented, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to add for
people like me who wondered about the use/context.  The original message is
below.
Peacefully,
Ardis Eschenberg
State University of New York at Buffalo
Wayne State College of Nebraska

>In Turkish language the self pronoun 'kendi' is used in the subjectposition
>as in the following example:
>Kendi (himself/herself) geldi (came). It is an inflectional pronoun. Thus,
>it is possible to use it for the other subject pronouns. For instance,
>kendi-m (myself), kendi /kendisi (himself/herself/itself), kendi-leri
>(themselves).
>T�m (All) haz�rl�klar� (preparations) kendileri (themselves) yapt�lar(did).
>"Themselves did all the preparations.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


From traugott at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU  Wed Feb 23 03:35:03 2000
From: traugott at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Elizabeth Traugott)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 19:35:03 -0800
Subject: tribute to Suzanne Fleischman
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.193503.0800.TRAUGOTT@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>

Many members of the lists on which the death of Suzanne
Fleischman was announced very briefly a few weeks ago have
asked for further news about her life and work.

The following is based on the University of California, Berkeley,
news release, with information about a memorial to be held on
March 11th.

Suzanne Fleischman, an internationally recognized professor of
French and Romance Philology at the University of California,
Berkeley,  died Wednesday February 2nd, aged 51.

She had taught at UC Berkeley since 1975. During her career,
Fleischman earned numerous honors, including Fulbright,
Guggenheim, American Council of Learned Societies and French
government fellowships, and a 1995 medal of honor for
research from the University of Helsinki. She was invited to deliver
the Zaharoff lectures in French studies at Oxford University last
year.

Fleischman earned her PhD in Romance Philology at UC Berkeley
in 1975. She received her MA in Spanish from UC Berkeley in
1971 and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan in 1969.

In addition to dozens of articles, Fleischman wrote and edited five
books: Cultural and Linguistic Factors in Word Formation: An
Integrated Approach to the Development of the Suffix '-age',
University of California Publications in Linguistics 86, Univ. of
California Press (1987); The Future in Thought and Language:
Diachronic Evidence from Romance, Cambridge Studies in
Linguistics 35, Cambridge UP (1982); Tense and Narrativity: From
Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction, Univ. of Austin Press
(1990); Discourse Pragmatics and the Verb: The Evidence from
Romance, ed. with Linda R. Waugh, Routledge, Chapman & Hall
(1991); Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. with Joan L.
Bybee, Benjamins (1995).

A volume of Fleischman's papers is being prepared by Dan I.
Slobin and Eve E. Sweetser.

Colleagues and friends recall Fleischman as an athletic, joyful,
witty friend and a dedicated professor. In the past several
years she devoted her energies to studying, understanding and
clarifying the relationships between language and disease, after
being diagnosed in 1993 with myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood
disorder known as MDS.

At the time of her death, Fleischman was working on a book
examining the pervasiveness of the military metaphor in the
language of medicine and illness. People with illnesses are no longer
the focus of medicine, Fleischman wrote, "but merely the clinical
stage on which the main protagonists of the drama - the doctors and
the disease - battle it out". Last December, she gave a lecture on
language and medicine at a hematology conference at Mount Sinai
Hospital in New York.

Contributions to the memorial fund, which the MDS Foundation is
calling the Suzanne Fleischman Memorial Fund for MDS Patient
Outreach, may be sent to: The MDS Foundation, Box 477, 464
Main Street Crosswicks, NJ 08515. Those who wish to direct
contributions to the new MDS Patient Outreach Fund may specify
"Suzanne Fleischman Memorial Patient Outreach Fund".  Donors
who wish to earmark contributions for general research into causes
of and treatment for MDS may specify "MDS General Fund".

According to the MDS Foundation, the Suzanne Fleischman
Memorial Patient Outreach Fund will provide for patient education
conferences around the country, support MDS sufferers who cannot
afford care, and enable the MDS Foundation to reproduce and
distribute to patients a speech Fleischman gave last April in Prague,
at the International Symposium on Myelodysplastic Syndromes, in
which she outlined ways for patients to research and cope with
MDS.

A memorial gathering for Suzanne Fleischman, hosted by the
University of California at Berkeley in conjunction with her family
and friends, will take place on Saturday, March 11 2000, at 2 p.m.
in the Great Hall of the Faculty Club on the UC-Berkeley campus.


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Wed Feb 23 10:39:29 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 12:39:29 +0200
Subject: funknet principles
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.123929.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

The problem is not so simple as criticizing how one person happened
to analyze something in a particular paper. In the case of jibun, as
I have already written in several postings here, you just plain can't
understand how it's used with a formalist/structuralist account. It's
related to viewpoint, empathy, textual factors. You can't understand
it from isolated sentences. It has nothing to do with structure at all.
The most brilliant linguist in the world couldn't give an empirically
adequate structural account of its use, because there is none. The problem,
therefore, is NOT that formal analyses happen to have certain shortcomings;

it's that, in this case, formal analysis is inherently inappropriate.
If you can read Japanese texts, this is simply inherently obvious, but
textual function as an explanation is by definition out in formal
linguistics. Therefore, I felt that the correct course of action in this
case was not to criticize individual studies but the entire field of
formal linguistics, for trying to explain something for which the
only empirically adequate explanation is something which it methodologically
excludes. In this respect I'm 'formalist-bashing'--there is no
formal account of jibun. There is also no formal account of tu vs. usted in
Spanish. There aren't formalist accounts of a lot of things. The difference
in the case of jibun is that formalists for some reason THINK there is
an account.

Sorry, Spike, evidently I take empirical responsibility more seriously than
you do. I think that crackpots are dangerous and should be identified; this
is how to stop them (please note that whatever I have said about David
Pesetsky, I would absolutely not put him in the same class as Ken Safir).
Moralizing
is nice but it isn't nearly enough. It's nice to say 'all data should be
open to criticism', but in practice this is the first discussion we've had of
this in the several years I've been on the network.

If you don't like my postings, Spike, you're in charge here, bounce them back.

I have no objections to formalist-functionalist interaction on funknet. I'm
not interested in it, but I have no objections to it. I have objections to
introducing lower standards of empirical accountability into our discussions.

John Myhill


From dparvaz at UNM.EDU  Wed Feb 23 14:35:15 2000
From: dparvaz at UNM.EDU (Dan Parvaz)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 07:35:15 -0700
Subject: back to the data...
In-Reply-To: <20000222235701.65088.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.073515.0700.DPARVAZ@UNM.EDU>

Farsi has a similar use of the reflexive, as in:

khodeshaan shaam  raa tahiyye kardand.
REFLEX-3pl dinner ACC prepare did-3pl
Themselves dinner  -  prepare did.
"*They* fixed dinner"

This might be given as a response to "They had help, didn't they?"

Cheers,

Dan.


From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU  Wed Feb 23 14:56:23 2000
From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike Gildea)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 08:56:23 -0600
Subject: Funknet
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.085623.0600.SPIKEG@OWLNET.RICE.EDU>

Thanks for your follow-up posting, John.  I can see I need to address a
point regarding FUNKNET procedure, as apparently this is not clear to
everyone:

>If you don't like my postings, Spike, you're in charge here, bounce them back.

Actually, Michael and I are "in charge" only in the sense that we respond
to technical difficulties as they come up and that we can remove
individuals from the list and prevent their re-subscription (something we
have done only once in our nearly five years).  We do not see any postings
before they become public -- this is not a *moderated* list (like, e.g.
Linguist List).  Were this a moderated list, we would have the option of
bouncing messages back to senders, but frankly we don't want to be the
"conscience" of the list, or to put ouselves in the position of deciding
what people do and don't get to say on FUNKNET day in and day out.  When we
find the tone of postings moving in an uncomfortable direction, we send
private messages in the hope of pre-empting scenes like the one yesterday
(and I understand that others in the community do this as well).  Hopefully
the personal stuff can stay in private messages from here on out.

One more word on empirical accountability.  I find myself wanting to be
convinced by what John has to say about jibun; the first two paragraphs of
his last posting were really clear and pursuasive.  The only missing step
is some idea where I would go to read data and arguments for those
extremely plausible-sounding conclusions.  I remain serious that empirical
responsibility includes providing some *evidence* (or references to
published evidence) that "there is no formal account of Jibun", or that
someone is identifiable as a "crackpot" -- without evidence, these remain,
respectively, empirically empty assertions and namecalling.  I am familiar
enough with John's work to trust that there is substance behind these
assertions (notice that nowhere in my postings have I defended the
empirical reliability of the work under attack, nor suggested that his
analysis is wrong); I just want to know where the substance is so I can
verify my gut-reaction with my brain.  That's the standard I would like to
see on FUNKNET, and in linguistics in general.

Spike


From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Wed Feb 23 14:52:30 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 09:52:30 -0500
Subject: jibun
In-Reply-To: <NABBKFMEEPINEMNDAHHGKEJDEGAA.jaske@salem.mass.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.095230.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

Dear list,

I'm sorry to have caused so much commotion.  My original remark had  a
context:  a poster had noted that Nepali has a reflexive that can stand in
subject position, yet takes its antecedent within its own clause.   I
pointed out that the availability of a reflexive-like element in subject
position does indeed seem to be unrelated to the question of
discourse-level vs. sentence-internal antecedent.  My intent was to make
the same point as the previous poster, in a different way.  It was in that
context that I mentioned Japanese zibun-zisin.

To the extent that I hedged about the accuracy of the data in my own
message ("the bimorphemic zibun-zisin *is supposed to* differ from
zibun..."), it was not because I heard about it fifth-hand or because it
was a "formalist rumor".  My main source of knowledge about zibun-zisin
comes from a 1986 UMass dissertation by Yoshihisa Kitagawa ("Subject in
Japanese and English") for which I was the committee chair.  He, in turn,
was building on work by fellow student Kiyoshi Kurata.  Both are native
speakers of Japanese.  Both have done careful, constructive and interesting
work on a variety of topics.  I hedged about the accuracy of the data
simply because I have not kept up with the more recent literature on the
subject  and because I  was aware that the story, like most stories in
linguistics, was certainly more complex.

Indeed, there is at least one relevant paper that I should have remembered
(because it is by a former colleague) that takes up the issue of
zibun-zisin in its discourse context, and shows the story to be more
complex.  It is a 1994 paper by Takako Aikawa called "Logophoric Use of the
Japanese Reflexive zibun-zisin 'self-self'" in  -- dare I say it? --
"Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics I", a conference proceedings
volume available from MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. ( I believe that
her Ohio State dissertation also discussed zibun-zisin, but I cannot find
my copy at the moment.)    There is clearly other work on the topic by
other researchers that I was completely unaware of, from a variety of
perspectives.  Chris Manning has pointed out some of this work in his
messages to this list.  It is to learn such things that I subscribe to
lists like this one.

Most important, I apologize to Ken Safir, whose name has been dragged
through the mud for no apparent reason other than the fact that I called
his papers interesting.   I do think the work is interesting, and probably
related to the ongoing discussion, but if others disagree on factual or
conceptual grounds, that's fine and interesting too.

In any case, I wrote my message about zibun-zisin as a very casual, very
minor contribution to an interesting ongoing discussion, with the intention
of learning from the responses of other readers.  That is the spirit in
which my note should have been read.  So please, as a recent poster says,
back to the data.

-David Pesetsky


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Wed Feb 23 16:14:41 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 10:14:41 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.101441.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

This is to respond to two points in John Myhill's recent posting.

One of the points he made was that there were syntactic phenomena that
could not be described in formal terms. If describing syntactic phenomena
in formal terms means describing the coocurrence and linear relations
among words without reference to meaning, then I cannot quite see how any
syntactic phenomenon would defy such a description. The resulting formal
description may not be explanatory or general to any extent; but it should
be possible. If all else fails, the formal description would say: "X may
occur with anything in any order."

Formal descriptions seem not only possible in all cases; they are
also necessary for a functionalist to have available. If functionalists
are trying to explain form by function, then some description of form is
a prerequisite for their endeavor. - The dependency relationship
between formalists and functionalists also holds in the other direction:
if describing and explaining sentence form is a shared goal between them,
then functionalists depend on formalists for their explananda just as
formalists in turn depend on functionalists for functional explanations
for those aspects of form where such are available.

John's other point has to do with whether discourse analysis is beyond
the pale of the formalist approach. John implied that it was. But why
couldn't the same distributional analysis that formalists impose on
sentences be also carried out on discourse, by looking at cooccurrence and
linear order across, rather than within, sentences?

Edith M.



   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Wed Feb 23 16:59:17 2000
From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 11:59:17 -0500
Subject: Dubrovnik Courses/Conference on Syntax & Semantics
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.115917.0500.>

               PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT

Conference and courses on NEW THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE

to be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from September 2 to
10, 2000

A five-day working week of courses will be given by:

R. Van Valin (SUNY Buffalo)
     'Syntactic Theory'
D. Wilkins (MPI Nijmegen)
     'Diachronic Semantics'
J. Pustejovsky (Brandeis U)
     'The Generative Lexicon and Semantic Theory'
D. Everett (SIL International)
     'Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory'
R. Matasovic (U of Zagreb)
     'Synchronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic
     Structures' (tentative)

Additional courses will be announced in March.

The five-day course week will be followed by a
three-day conference.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: June 1, 2000

The first official announcement with further details
will appear during the first week of March.

For further information please contact:
ctt.cogsci at fsb.hr

Organizer(s):
     University of Zagreb
     The State University of New York at Buffalo

Organizing committee:
     Rober D. Van Valin, Jr. SUNY Buffalo
     David P. Wilkins, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Nijmegen
     Milena Zic Fuchs, University of Zagreb
     Zrinka Jelaska, University of Zagreb
     Melita Kovacevic, University of Zagreb
     Ranko Matasovic, University of Zagreb

Conference secretaries:
     Nina Tudjman, Univesity of Zagreb
     Irena Zovko, University of Zagreb


***************
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.                  Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713
Professor & Chair                         Fax 716 645-3825
Department of Linguistics
609 Baldy Hall
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-1030   USA              VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Thu Feb 24 13:08:52 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:08:52 +0200
Subject: Funknet
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.150852.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

The issue is not one of knowing Japanese or not knowing Japanese. The issue
is looking for extrasentential (non-syntactic) factors motivating the use
of jibun. If one adopts a framework (e.g. P&P etc.) in which one by definition
does not even look for non-syntactic motivation, even if one is a native
speaker of Japanese, one is obviously not going to discover non-syntactic
motivation. It does not matter whether someone is 'up to date' on the
literature or not, unless more 'up to date' literature uses a different
methodology (which in the case of P&P it doesn't).

I did not think that it would be at all controversial on funknet to say that
an account which only considers syntactic factors (which is by definition
the case with any P&P account) is inadequate. Sorry if this is
'formalist-bashing', but here I guess I'm guilty of it.

On the other hand, I recognize that there is such a bewildering array of
published claims about jibun that it is pointless to refer to printed sources
as 'proving' one claim or another. If you want to really be sure of what's
going on, the only way is to learn Japanese and check it out for yourself;
I'm not being facetious here, that really is the only way to know. That's
why I originally suggested this possibility to David. Although David was
making claims about jibun, and although David has had graduate students
write dissertations on this topic, my suggestion that he learn enough
Japanese to actually see for himself were interpreted by some as being
rude--presumably, the idea is that the actual possibility of him doing this
is so remote and absurd that, by something resembling a Gricean maxim, I
must have been intending to insult him. On the contrary; my suggestion was
made in all seriousness.

As I mentioned before (my Feb. 15 message), there was a graduate student of
mine (Hisako Onuki) who wrote a term paper on jibun about 10 years ago,
using naturally occurring data, but she didn't even bother to show that the
use of jibun isn't controled by syntactic factors because in her database
(about 50 tokens) there wasn't a single token of jibun with an antecedent
in the same clause, not a single one where a syntactic account could
possibly work. I don't think I have a copy of the paper around any more,
but in any case she didn't even bother to argue against a syntactic
analysis of jibun because considering how it's actually used it would have
been beating a dead horse--it was so obviously controled by
viewpoint/discourse factors that there was no point in arguing about it.

I know I jumped on David for what seems to be a small point, to a posting
which he made relatively casually. But behind his thinking was a
presupposition which is much more significant: That discourse factors,
things which cannot be given a syntactic account, have no place in
scientific research. That the only acceptable methodology for researching
is intuitive judgments of isolated and out-of-context sentences. This
thinking underlies P&P and all of David's comments, as well as the research
he referred to. Only with such thinking, and such methodology, could formal
syntacticians have wasted 30 years of research on jibun trying to give it a
syntactic account. This is a very serious matter, going way past this
discussion of jibun. This is an extremely fundamental
distinction between formal and functional linguists (more categorical than
responsibility/irresponsibility about data).

John Myhill


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Thu Feb 24 14:07:16 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 08:07:16 -0600
Subject: SAALA Conference (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.080716.0600.>

Posted for DAVE GOUGH



Southern African Applied Linguistics Association
Suider-Afrikaanse Vereniging vir Toegepaste Linguistiek
SAALA     Umbutho Wasemazantsi E-Afrika
Wezingokusetyenziswa Kolwimi



                           SAALA CONFERENCE 2000

                           FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference theme: Towards a Socially Responsible Applied Linguistics

Dates: 14-16 September Venue: University of Stellenbosch

Hosts: University of the Western Cape and University of Stellenbosch

Abstracts: Abstracts of papers, poster presentations and
workshops should be no more than 200 words. They should be in MS Word format
and include the following information:

   * Title, presenter's or presenters' names, addresses,
telephone numbers and email addresses
   * An indication as to whether the abstract is for a
poster presentation, a workshop (90 minutes) or a paper. If you are
presenting a paper also indicate if it is going to be a
        o shorter paper, on, for example, work in progress
(30 minutes * 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion time) or
        o a longer paper (45 minutes * 25 minutes plus 20
minutes discussion time).

Abstracts must be mailed to dgough at uwc.ac.za. If applicants
do not have access to email, they may post or fax their abstracts to:

David Gough (SAALA Abstract), Department of Linguistics,
University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa
(Fax: +27 21 959 2420 or 959 2376)

Final date for submission of abstracts is 19 May.
Acceptances will be announced by 29 May.

   * Details of registration, costs and accommodation will
be posted after 29 May.

Conference organising committee: Prof. A. Weideman
(albertw at uwc.ac.za) Dr
P. van der Merwe (pvdmerwe at uwc.ac.za), Dr E Ridge
(er at maties.sun.ac.za) Mr
D. Spofana (dspofana at uwc.ac.za) Prof D Gough
(dgough at uwc.ac.za).


From li at GRADDIV.UCSB.EDU  Thu Feb 24 17:14:50 2000
From: li at GRADDIV.UCSB.EDU (Charles Li)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:14:50 -0800
Subject: SAALA Conference (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <200002241407.IAA14976@consulting.is.rice.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.091450.0800.LI@GRADDIV.UCSB.EDU>

Dear Michael,

Could you announce the 2001 Linguistic Institute at your Conference. the
Institute will be sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America,
Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the Academia Sinica of Taiwan. The
theme is:  The Diversity of Language: How and Why languages differ.  The
sub-theme is The Pacific Rim languages and linguistics. There will be more
than 75 professors coming from 54 institutions in 21 countries. In
addition, Santa Barbara is a beautiful beach resort with balmy weather and
a great variety of gourmet restaurants and natural environment. The website
of the Institute is:

http://www.summer.ucsb.edu/lsa2001institute/html

Please let the students in South Africa know that there will be a large
number of fellowships to be awarded by a committee at the Linguistic
Society of America. Competition is open to everyone across the world. Write
to LSA for information.

I would also be glad to send you a bunch of posters if you think they are
useful.

Charles Li





At 08:07 AM 2/24/00 -0600, Michael Barlow wrote:
>Posted for DAVE GOUGH
>
>
>
>Southern African Applied Linguistics Association
>Suider-Afrikaanse Vereniging vir Toegepaste Linguistiek
>SAALA     Umbutho Wasemazantsi E-Afrika
>Wezingokusetyenziswa Kolwimi
>
>
>
>                            SAALA CONFERENCE 2000
>
>                            FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
>
>Conference theme: Towards a Socially Responsible Applied Linguistics
>
>Dates: 14-16 September Venue: University of Stellenbosch
>
>Hosts: University of the Western Cape and University of Stellenbosch
>
>Abstracts: Abstracts of papers, poster presentations and
>workshops should be no more than 200 words. They should be in MS Word format
>and include the following information:
>
>    * Title, presenter's or presenters' names, addresses,
>telephone numbers and email addresses
>    * An indication as to whether the abstract is for a
>poster presentation, a workshop (90 minutes) or a paper. If you are
>presenting a paper also indicate if it is going to be a
>         o shorter paper, on, for example, work in progress
>(30 minutes * 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion time) or
>         o a longer paper (45 minutes * 25 minutes plus 20
>minutes discussion time).
>
>Abstracts must be mailed to dgough at uwc.ac.za. If applicants
>do not have access to email, they may post or fax their abstracts to:
>
>David Gough (SAALA Abstract), Department of Linguistics,
>University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa
>(Fax: +27 21 959 2420 or 959 2376)
>
>Final date for submission of abstracts is 19 May.
>Acceptances will be announced by 29 May.
>
>    * Details of registration, costs and accommodation will
>be posted after 29 May.
>
>Conference organising committee: Prof. A. Weideman
>(albertw at uwc.ac.za) Dr
>P. van der Merwe (pvdmerwe at uwc.ac.za), Dr E Ridge
>(er at maties.sun.ac.za) Mr
>D. Spofana (dspofana at uwc.ac.za) Prof D Gough
>(dgough at uwc.ac.za).

___________________________________________________
Charles Li
Professor of Linguistics, Dean of Graduate Division
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Tel: 805-893-2013               Fax: 805-893-8259


From kemmer at eva.mpg.de  Thu Feb 24 19:39:44 2000
From: kemmer at eva.mpg.de (Suzanne Kemmer)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 20:39:44 +0100
Subject: LSA Summer Institute URL typo
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.203944.0100.>

There was a small typo in the URL for the
LSA Summer Institute that Charles sent around.

The correct address is:
http://www.summer.ucsb.edu/lsa2001institute.html

--Suzanne


From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Thu Feb 24 23:33:53 2000
From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 18:33:53 -0500
Subject: form and function
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.96.1000223095743.17921C-100000@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.183353.0500.DRYER@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>

While I agree with Edith Moravcsik's statement that functionalists need
"some description of form", I strongly disagree with her claim that "if
describing and explaining sentence form is a shared goal between them,
then functionalists depend on formalists for their explananda".

First, in the particular case of Japanese jibun, the issue is what is an
accurate description of its distribution: is its distribution accurately
described in the sort of syntactic terms proposed in the formal literature
or is it to be described in the sort of functional terms proposed in the
functionalist literature?  If the functionalist accounts are right, then
generalizations provided in the formal literature are not something for
functionalists to explain, but just inaccurate descriptions of the facts.
The data based on judgments of isolated sentences cited in the formal
literature will either be inaccurate (for example, sentences that could be
used in an appropriate context are treated as ungrammatical) or given a
pragmatic explanation (the oddness of a sentence treated as ungrammatical
can be explained in pragmatic rather than syntactic terms).  The
generalizations based on this data will be at best pseudo-generalizations,
epiphenomenal illusions that are artifacts of judging sentences in
isolation.  From a functionalist perspective, the data and conclusions in
the formal literature will be useless.

Second, in so far as functionalists need descriptions of form, I am not
aware of any instance in which the descriptions provided by formal
linguists have been of value.  If a functionalist is attempting to explain
some typological pattern, for example, the useful descriptions of form
will be descriptive grammars, rather than anything provided by formal
linguists.

I thus see no reason to think that functionalists ever depend on
formalists for their explananda.

Matthew Dryer


From alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU  Fri Feb 25 02:52:52 2000
From: alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU (Alan Dench)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 10:52:52 +0800
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.105252.0800.ALANDEN@CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU>

I disagree with a number of the recent postings about the value of
formal
work, the nature and use of data, and from my heart with the sharp
divide that
some seem to want to draw between functionalist and formalist.

1. Matthew Dryer is unaware of "any instance in which the descriptions
provided by
formal linguists have been of value", and that typologists will find
descriptions of
form in descriptive grammars rather than in anything provided by
formalists.

Having written a few grammars, I know how little one should trust these,
but that is a different issue. There *are* descriptive grammars informed
by formal
theory and these are very useful to the typologist. To cite a well known
example,
though the theory is quite dated, Dixon's grammar of Dyirbal is largely
based in the then current generative phonology/transformational grammar
framework. I suspect that
it was not just the facts of the language that generated such interest
in this grammar -- an interest that has persisted -- but Dixon's
explicit use of the formal tools then at hand.
In discovering where these tools worked and where they didn't we learnt
a lot about
this language and looked at quite a few others in a different way.

Generally, I would agree with Dryer's statements that functionalists do
not depend on
formalists for their explananda. But I have to say that many descriptive
grammarians,
writing the descriptions on which a range of research enterprises
(including functionalist ones) are based, depend very much on formalist
linguistics for many of their *questions*.

How important was it to describe the properties of reflexive pronouns
before the advent of binding theory? Descriptions of argument structure
and case relations, of Equi etc. are fairly standard in grammars these
days. It hasn't always been like this.

2. John Myhill asks that David Pesetsky learn enough Japanese to see for
himself, though John assures us that the issue is not about knowing or
not knowing Japanese.
One wonders, given the obvious complexity of jibun (as far as I can
glean from the discussion) just how much Japanese one would need to
learn. At what point in their acquisition do second language learners
provide intuitions as reliable as those of native speakers? At what
point can a linguist learning a language trust his or her own
intuitions? Can only native speaker linguists write 'correct'
descriptions?

3. Please don't ask, as a requirement, for descriptive linguists to
learn the languages they write descriptions of. The material available
for secondary description/analysis would dry up pretty quickly. And
please don't write off those descriptions/grammars that have been
written by linguists who didn't 'know' the languages as necessarily
incomplete. Please take into consideration that any description is
limited -- by the nature of data, by the knowledge of the informants, by
the interests and expertise of the describer, etc. etc. Especially,
please don't expect that grammatical descriptions of any kind, whether
written by 'formalists', 'functionalists' or just plain eclectics say
all there is to say about a phenomenon, or more importantly ask the only
questions worth asking.

4. Incidentally, I wonder how many term papers have been prompted by the
discussion of jibun.

Alan Dench


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Fri Feb 25 07:05:49 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:05:49 +0200
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.090549.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

I feel a little bit strange jumping to the defense of formalists after
my recent contributions, but I can think of at least two occasions upon
which my own (functionalist) thinking has been significantly influenced
by articles by formalists (and I'm not talking about cases like Dixon's
Dyirbal grammar, which are basically descriptive but use formal tools).
These are (1) Chomsky's article 'on wh-movement', in which he connected
syntactic phenomena related to relativization, topicalization, and clefting,
a connection which was at the time (1977) quite striking to me at least,
and (2) Burzio's various articles on VS word order in Italian, which
showed how a variety of factors could motivate word order alternations.
I doubt that either of these two formalists would approve of the use I
made of their ideas (and they might not even understand how my use
was related to their work), but to me it was quite clear that my thinking
was influenced significantly by these articles.

Regarding 'how much Japanese' to learn to understand jibun to see that
formal 'reflexive' accounts don't work--in this case I don't think much
beyond reading ability. Even minimal reading ability. Get a Japanese book,
an English translation, a Japanese-English dictionary, and a basic grammar.
Learn how jibun is written in Japanese. Scan the Japanese text for this
combination (depending upon the text you should find one every 5-10 pages).
When you find a token, translate the whole sentence, with the help of the
English translation. After a
while, you will doubtless notice that few or none of the tokens of jibun
translate as reflexives or have an antecedent in the same clause. At this
point, the absurdity of attempting to define the use of jibun syntactically
will be obvious. In terms of a more fine-grained analysis, well, that's
another question, but I was particularly addressing the question of the
plausibility of formal accounts of this.

John Myhill







>I disagree with a number of the recent postings about the value of
>formal
>work, the nature and use of data, and from my heart with the sharp
>divide that
>some seem to want to draw between functionalist and formalist.
>
>1. Matthew Dryer is unaware of "any instance in which the descriptions
>provided by
>formal linguists have been of value", and that typologists will find
>descriptions of
>form in descriptive grammars rather than in anything provided by
>formalists.
>
>Having written a few grammars, I know how little one should trust these,
>but that is a different issue. There *are* descriptive grammars informed
>by formal
>theory and these are very useful to the typologist. To cite a well known
>example,
>though the theory is quite dated, Dixon's grammar of Dyirbal is largely
>based in the then current generative phonology/transformational grammar
>framework. I suspect that
>it was not just the facts of the language that generated such interest
>in this grammar -- an interest that has persisted -- but Dixon's
>explicit use of the formal tools then at hand.
>In discovering where these tools worked and where they didn't we learnt
>a lot about
>this language and looked at quite a few others in a different way.
>
>Generally, I would agree with Dryer's statements that functionalists do
>not depend on
>formalists for their explananda. But I have to say that many descriptive
>grammarians,
>writing the descriptions on which a range of research enterprises
>(including functionalist ones) are based, depend very much on formalist
>linguistics for many of their *questions*.
>
>How important was it to describe the properties of reflexive pronouns
>before the advent of binding theory? Descriptions of argument structure
>and case relations, of Equi etc. are fairly standard in grammars these
>days. It hasn't always been like this.
>
>2. John Myhill asks that David Pesetsky learn enough Japanese to see for
>himself, though John assures us that the issue is not about knowing or
>not knowing Japanese.
>One wonders, given the obvious complexity of jibun (as far as I can
>glean from the discussion) just how much Japanese one would need to
>learn. At what point in their acquisition do second language learners
>provide intuitions as reliable as those of native speakers? At what
>point can a linguist learning a language trust his or her own
>intuitions? Can only native speaker linguists write 'correct'
>descriptions?
>
>3. Please don't ask, as a requirement, for descriptive linguists to
>learn the languages they write descriptions of. The material available
>for secondary description/analysis would dry up pretty quickly. And
>please don't write off those descriptions/grammars that have been
>written by linguists who didn't 'know' the languages as necessarily
>incomplete. Please take into consideration that any description is
>limited -- by the nature of data, by the knowledge of the informants, by
>the interests and expertise of the describer, etc. etc. Especially,
>please don't expect that grammatical descriptions of any kind, whether
>written by 'formalists', 'functionalists' or just plain eclectics say
>all there is to say about a phenomenon, or more importantly ask the only
>questions worth asking.
>
>4. Incidentally, I wonder how many term papers have been prompted by the
>discussion of jibun.
>
>Alan Dench


From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK  Fri Feb 25 08:22:43 2000
From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:22:43 +0000
Subject: formal/functional
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.082243.0000.DICK@LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK>

I agree wholeheartedly with Alan Dench, who says:

"I disagree with a number of the recent postings about the value of formal
work, the nature and use of data, and from my heart with the sharp divide
that some seem to want to draw between functionalist and formalist."

The discussion on this list is often fascinating, but can turn into the
exchange of slogans, which encourage people to paint themselves into
corners that they may not really want to defend.

Some people give the impression that they think there are no linguistic
facts which demand a 'formal' (rather than 'pragmatic') explanation. That
seems to imply a rejection on principle of rules such as agreement between
a noun and its modifying adjective:

Data A:
bon ami         bonne amie         bons  amis      bonnes amies

This is surely a purely formal rule, in the sense that it is sensitive only
to the intra-linguistic relations between the words concerned:

Rule A:
If an adjective modifies a noun, the adjective agrees in number and gender
with the noun.

I imagine everyone would be happy to accept a rule such as this, even if
they then went on to provide a functional explanation for why it exists
(e.g. to help keep track of grammatical relations). Or do some of our
colleagues really believe that explanations such as Rule A are
misconceived and should be replaced by *purely* pragmatic explanations? And
if so, how would the explanation work?

Maybe some people mean something different by 'formal' when they contrast
it with 'functional'? Both Mathew Dryer and John Myhill contrast it with
'descriptive', and seem to reserve 'formal' for a specifically Chomskyan
approach to grammar, complete with abstract structures etc. That's quite
confusing, since much of 'descriptive' grammar is purely formal in the more
general sense of simply stating formal patterns of syntax and morphology,
rather than relating them to pragmatic functions. Maybe we could do with a
clarification of terminology:

'formal' = involving relations within language
'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
'Chomskyan' = Chomskyan
'formal grammar' = (study of) grammar where external relations are left
unanalysed
'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
explained in terms of functional patterns.


Dick Hudson


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/home.htm


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Fri Feb 25 11:04:45 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:04:45 +0100
Subject: No subject
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.120445.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

      Dear Prof. Myhill,

>I guess I could better sum up my question by saying:
>Can the `reflexive' be used when there is NO coreference in the same sentence
>at all?
Yes, it is possible.
In Georgian the grammaticalized body-part noun for 'head' tav- preceded by
a possessive pronoun (POSS + tav-) can be used to express not only
reflexive action (see (1) but also the cases when none of the pairs of
arguments of the verb are coreferential (see (2):
(1) me      šen      chem-s    tav-s           gixat'av
  I(NOM)  you(DAT)   my(DAT)  head(DAT)   I-draw-him-for-you
                   'I draw myself for you'
(2) šen     mas     chem-s    tav-s    / *  me           uxat'av
  you(NOM) he(DAT)  my(DAT)  head(DAT) /  I(DAT)   you-draw-him-for-him
                        'You draw me for him'
The latter use (called object camouflage in literature (see Alice c.
Harris, Georgian Syntax, 1981, Cambridge University Press) is not anaphoric
as it has no antecedent within the clause. Neither it is logophoric since
the phrase refers to nothing else but the direct object argument of the
given verb. The thing is that the reflexive phrases are always
cross-referenced in the finite verb form as 3rd person items (see (6),
(7)), whatever person of the antecedent. They trigger 3rd person agreement
even in the cases of object camouflage. That is why the use of personal
pronouns instead of the phrases POSS + tav- is ungrammatical as, for
instance, the 1st/2nd personal pronouns will not be able to trigger 3rd
person agreement (see (7)).

But I think it has nothing to do with subject reflexives.

Sincerely,

    Nino Amiridze


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 25 10:54:12 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:54:12 -0300
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.075412.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Alan Dench wrote:
>
>
> Having written a few grammars, I know how little one should trust these,
> but that is a different issue.

I don't know that it is a different issue. People are too ready to trust
grammars, primarily because most are scared as hell of trying to do one.
Both functionalists and formalists would rather write about grammars
than write grammars, by and large. But this is the most urgent task
facing the field and one of the two most important. Those of us who have
written them know how much the field not only needs more grammars, but
revisions of extant grammars, because we know, as Paul Simon said in a
different context, that our words 'tear and strain to rhyme'. The only
way the field can really cure its empirical flaccidity is to conflate
the distinction between theoretical and field linguist - these ought to
refer to the same people. Everyone needs to try to write grammars. And
if anyone out there can write a grammar without being heavily informed
by linguistic theory (and I don't just mean what Bob Dixon calls 'Basic
Linguistic Theory' - nor do I think Dixon means this, really, either),
I'd like to meet 'em.

There *are* descriptive grammars informed
> by formal
> theory

The grammar of Hidatsa, by Hu Matthews, is still worth reading - Chomsky
(1965) said it was worth 1,000 descriptive grammars uniformed by theory.
I don't know, but it is good.

> 3. Please don't ask, as a requirement, for descriptive linguists to
> learn the languages they write descriptions of.


In fact, in a new article I already mentioned on this list, "Monolingual
Field Research", I do impose this as a desideratum on all grammars.
Everyone should learn to speak the language they write a grammar on
(unless they are co-authoring it with someone who speaks it. In 1966,
Paul Postal, in a review of Longacre's _Grammar Discovery Procedures_,
argued that Longacre left out the most important methodological
component of fieldwork - learn to speak the language. (And I know some
on this list have opinions about the quality of Postal's own fieldwork -
I have no opinion on that, nor am I saying that learning a language is a
sufficient condition for good grammars.))

Do functionalists use formalist ideas and data in their write-ups?
Probably about as much as the average westerner is influenced by Plato,
with about as much consciousness of it. The agenda of research, like it
or not, was set by Chomsky. We are maturing as a field, so that Noam is
not the only one to tell us what to work on. I think that is vital. But
let no one underestimate the power of his influence - even on those
writing on this list, deriving from the most powerful mind ever to enter
the field of linguistics. And I am not a hero-worshipper. That's just a
fact.

And while I am on non-sequiturs, I think that Chomsky's writings have
even played a role in the recent independence of East Timor. Amazing
influence, but not an influence most people are aware of. Similar in
linguistics.

DLE


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Fri Feb 25 12:07:20 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 13:07:20 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <200002230915.KAA25473@freya.let.rug.nl>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.130720.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

            Dear Prof. Abraham,

thank you very much for your message.
>Hi, colleagues:
>Take a superficial look at the below! I am aghast and find myself
>rubbing my eyes: This has nothing to do with reflexivity in subject
>position!!! These are intensifiers with a reflexive form, but there is
>no antecedent and, consequently, no coreferentiality within local
>boundaries! In certain languages, among which German and Latin,
>this does not even have a reflexive form (Pers. pronoun-selbst;
>Pers. pronoun-ipse)!
>    What kind of conclusions do we have to draw from such awfully
>misguided contributions to the field - and, quite obviously, total
>naivete?! Werner

Please have a closer look at the examples like:
Georgian
(1) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

They have no antecedent which can c-command them but it does not mean that
the sentence has no reflexive meaning. I agree that reflexive phrase
fuctions also as an intensifies in (a) reading of the sentence but there IS
reflexive meaning there. It means the following: "The president saved
himself (no one else helped him to do so)"
In (b) reading there is no emphasis at all. I do not think we can call
those phrases (Possessive + tav-) intensifiers. But still there is a
reflexive meaning there. No matter of the fact that there is no c-command
relation.

Sincerely,

  Nino Amiridze


From jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU  Fri Feb 25 14:32:56 2000
From: jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU (Jon Aske)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:32:56 -0500
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.20000225082243.006a8e1c@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.093256.0500.JASKE@SALEM.MASS.EDU>

I must strongly object to Dick's definitions about functional and
functionalism.  I am surprised that these misconceptions still exist, even
among formalists:

> 'formal' = involving relations within language
> 'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
> 'formal grammar' = (study of) grammar where external relations are left
> unanalysed
> 'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
> explained in terms of functional patterns.

This presupposes that a functional analysis takes a formal analysis and adds
something to it (explanation, relation to language use, etc.).  That is not
what functionalism is about as I -- and as I believe most people on this
list (at least until recently) -- understand it.  Dick's functionalism is
the functionalism of formalists who sprinkle some functional notions on
their autonomous formal analyses as an afterthought.  People who believe
that on this list have joined the wrong list, as far as I am concerned.

Functionalism and functional analyses have at their core the belief that you
cannot separate form and function/meaning.  They form an inseparable unit at
every level, from the word (cf. Saussure) to the many different types of
constructions that there are at every level (from the morphological level to
the discourse level).  Sometimes the function motivates (I am not saying
predicts or explains 100%) the form in rather obvious ways, without
necessarily explaining it, and figuring out those ways is also a crucial
aspect of functionalism.  Often times, however, form takes a life of its own
and it cannot be explained or motivated by function, but the formal pole of
any linguistic unit still does not exist without the functional pole.  They
are the two sides of the coin.

Isn't that what this list is all about?  Maybe I'm wrong.  Have those who
think like me become a minority on this list?  Or is it that the other guys
are a very vocal minority.  Don't those guys have their own lists?

Note that I am not saying that anyone should leave this list, but if such an
eclectic group is going to have meaningful discussions, we should be very
clear about what our different beliefs and presuppositions are.  It seems to
me that there is an awful lot of confusion about that, as evidenced by
Dick's definitions above.

Jon
_____________________________________________________
Jon Aske
Department of Foreign Languages, Salem State College
jaske at salem.mass.edu - http://www.salem.mass.edu/~jaske/
personal: aske at basqueland.com - http://basqueland.com
_____________________________________________________
Get the facts first. You can distort them later. --Mark Twain


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Fri Feb 25 14:37:59 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:37:59 -0600
Subject: formal/functional
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.083759.0600.>

Dick Hudson says:
> Some people give the impression that they think there are no linguistic
> facts which demand a 'formal' (rather than 'pragmatic') explanation. That
> seems to imply a rejection on principle of rules such as agreement between
> a noun and its modifying adjective:

Dick, like many people, turns to agreement as the prototypical formal relation
and was obviously not expecting any argument on this score. However, I
wouldn't accept that agreement rules are "sensitive only to the
intra-linguistic relations between the words concerned" (nor would I accept
that agreement rules are semantically/pragmatically based). I have argued that
agreement should be seen as a discourse relation, and the particulars of that
approach neatly straddle Dick's formal/functional divide. But in thinking
about it, one could also perhaps argue that treatments of agreement in formal
grammars such as minimalism or HPSG are functional on Dick's definition since
they include "language in use" components, namely, co-indexing and referential
indices.

The main thrust of Dick's remark, however, is to question whether anyone would
reject a purely formal rule on principle. I suppose that many functionalists
on the list would see a formal rule as only a partial description. One central
problem here is that formal rules don't just come along with the data. There
is no formal rule in the agreement examples Dick gave; there are only
(written) forms. He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.

Michael


From dparvaz at unm.edu  Fri Feb 25 16:39:21 2000
From: dparvaz at unm.edu (Dan Parvaz)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:39:21 -0700
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.093921.0700.>

(Wondering aloud)

Caucasian languages, Turkish, Farsi... and Nepali. Is there a language
contact/Sprachbund-type connection here?

Cheers,

Dan.


From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Fri Feb 25 17:20:12 2000
From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:20:12 -0500
Subject: form, function, data, description
In-Reply-To: <38B5EE72.3DB3070A@cyllene.uwa.edu.au>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.122012.0500.DRYER@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>

In response to Alan Dench, what he says is largely consistent with what I
said, so let me repeat it and add some clarifying remarks: I said that I
was not aware of "any instance in which the descriptions provided by
formal linguists have been of value" to functionalists.  I did not say,
nor would I say, that there are no instances in which descriptive work has
been informed by work by formal linguists.  In particular, I think that
what Bob Dixon calls basic linguistic theory, the theoretical framework in
which most descriptive work has been done, has clearly been influenced by
various forms of generative theory, although I think the primary influence
in syntax has come from earlier generative theory (pre-1970).  I should
also qualify my claim so as not to exclude descriptive work by formal
linguists who use basic linguistic theory rather than current (or
then-current) formal theoretical frameworks.  For example, the descriptive
work by Dan Everett or Keren Rice's grammar of Slave are little different
in orientation from descriptive work by functional linguists, such as Li
and Thompson's grammar of Mandarin Chinese or John Haiman's grammar of
Hua, and are of equal value.  My claim is that there is very little if any
description using current or recent formal theoretical frameworks that is
of value to functional linguists.  I concede that if we go far enough back
in time, we do find partial exceptions to this, like Bob Dixon's grammar
of Dyirbal.

Matthew Dryer


From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Fri Feb 25 17:53:56 2000
From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:53:56 -0500
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.125356.0500.>

Toba Batak provides a good example of a reflexive in subject position.
Toba Batak is VOS and has the Western Austronesian subject-only
constraint on extraction and other phenomena; only the final NP can be
questioned, omitted, etc.  Consider the following examples, from
Schachter 1984, Shugamoto 198.:

(1) a. Mang-ida    si   Ria  si      Torus.
                     ACTive-see PNM       PNM                   ŒTorus sees Ria.¹

           b.   Di-ida     si Torus si Ria.
                     PASS-see
                     ŒTorus sees Ria.¹
           c.   Mang-ida si Torus si Ria
                     ACTIVE-see
                    ŒRia sees Torus.¹
           d.   Di-ida  si Ria si Torus.
                     PASS-see
                     ŒRia sees Torus.¹

(2)     a.      Mang-ida   diri-na       si Torus.
                      ACTIVE-see self-3sgPOSS                            ŒTorus sees himself.¹

           b.   *Di-ida      diri-na      si Torus.
                      PASSIVE-see self-3sgPOSS             *ŒHimself sees Torus.¹
            c.  Di-ida      si Torus diri-na.
                      PASSIVE-see            self-3sgPOSS   ŒTorus sees himself.¹

            d.  *Mang-ida si Torus diri-na.
                       ACTIVE-see        self-3sgPOSS       *ŒHimself sees Torus.¹

The voice system, briefly illustrated in (1), signals whether the O
(internal argument) and S (external argument) are actor and undergoer,
respectively; if the prefix is mang-, the S is actor and the O undergoer,
and if the prefix is di-, the O is actor and the S is undergoer, as the
translations show.  Reflexives are illustrated in (2), the relevant
examples are (c, d): the reflexive is in subject (external argument)
position in these two examples, and when the voice is marked by di-, the
sentence is perfectly grammatical.  If one takes the ang-NP in Tagalog to
be the subject, as e.g. Kroeger argues, then it too has constructions
like (2c) in which the antecedent is marked by ng and the reflexive by
ang.

Robert Van Valin

All three accounts correctly predict the grammaticality of (9a) and the
ungrammaticality of

***************
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.                  Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713
Professor & Chair                         Fax 716 645-3825
Department of Linguistics
609 Baldy Hall
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-1030   USA              VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 25 17:20:34 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:20:34 -0300
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.142034.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Matthew S Dryer wrote:
>
> My claim is that there is very little if any
> description using current or recent formal theoretical frameworks that is
> of value to functional linguists.  I concede that if we go far enough back
> in time, we do find partial exceptions to this, like Bob Dixon's grammar
> of Dyirbal.
>
> Matthew Dryer

This depends on the model. I would agree if you were referring to
Minimalism, an incipient program which is a complete jumble at this
point (or, to quote Paul Simon again, it is a "pocketful of mumbles,
such are promises"). But surely there are important insights that people
of all persuasions have received or could gain from paying careful
attention to Joan Bresnan's work, for example. Maybe not.

But I do agree that in reading the better grammars, e.g. Keren Rice's
work or Bob Dixon's Dyirbal (and his forthcoming Yarawara grammar, his
first Amazonian grammar), it matters little whether the author is a
formalist or a functionalist or, as Bob, neither really.

By the way, Tom Givon suggested to me that Hu Matthews' grammar of
Hidatsa is not the best example. I think he is probably right about
that, come to think of it. The 'grammars' of 'exotic' languages written
under the shadow of Aspects were, with several notable exceptions,
disasters.

Dan

Dan


From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Fri Feb 25 20:19:41 2000
From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:19:41 -0800
Subject: form, function, data, description
In-Reply-To: <38B65F54.858EB7B9@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.121941.0800.DELANCEY@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Dan Everett wrote:

> The grammar of Hidatsa, by Hu Matthews, is still worth reading - Chomsky
> (1965) said it was worth 1,000 descriptive grammars uniformed by theory.
> I don't know, but it is good.

Peculiar example to choose--I've only ever heard this mentioned (by
Americanists, Siouanists in particular) as a particularly egregious
example of how useless most grammars written in an explicitly generative
framework are.  I can't claim to have read through it myself, but I
did, many years ago, try to use it as a resource for something I was
working on, and found it, to put it diplomatically, a very frustrating
experience.  "Worth", of course, is a two-argument predicate; there's
no such thing as intrinsic worth, only worth to somebody--Matthews'
grammar may well be worth a lot to Chomsky, but I honestly don't think
it would be on many people's lists of really useful grammars.

Scott DeLancey


From gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA  Fri Feb 25 10:19:15 2000
From: gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA (Greg Thomson)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 15:49:15 +0530
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.20000225082243.006a8e1c@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.154915.0530.GTHOMSON@GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA>

Dick Hudson suggests
>'formal' = involving relations within language
>'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
...
>'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
>explained in terms of functional patterns.

Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
sense)?

Greg Thomson


From dick at LING.UCL.AC.UK  Fri Feb 25 23:03:23 2000
From: dick at LING.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 23:03:23 +0000
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.230323.0000.DICK@LING.UCL.AC.UK>

Jon Aske says:
At 09:32 25/02/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>I must strongly object to Dick's definitions about functional and
>functionalism.  I am surprised that these misconceptions still exist, even
>among formalists:
>
>> 'formal' = involving relations within language
>> 'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
>> 'formal grammar' = (study of) grammar where external relations are left
>> unanalysed
>> 'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
>> explained in terms of functional patterns.
>
>This presupposes that a functional analysis takes a formal analysis and adds
>something to it (explanation, relation to language use, etc.).  That is not
>what functionalism is about as I -- and as I believe most people on this
>list (at least until recently) -- understand it.  Dick's functionalism is
>the functionalism of formalists who sprinkle some functional notions on
>their autonomous formal analyses as an afterthought.
## This comes from you, not from me. You're pushing me into a stereotype
which may make you feel comfortable and morally superior, but which doesn't
fit. I was brought up on Firth and Halliday and am just as keen to find
functional explanations as you are, I suspect. Moreover I believe (like
every other linguist, I guess), that formal categories are generally
defined in part in terms of their function; e.g. an English present tense
verb is identified partly by its suffix (zero or -s) and partly by its
function (contrasting with past tense, able to function as sentence root,
etc.). No-one would try to define it purely in terms of form - we would all
classify the same verb form (e.g. "come") sometimes as present tense,
sometimes as imperative, sometimes as infinitive, according to its form.
And the same is surely true of every category that would be recognised by
any (good) linguist, including Chomsky.

People who believe
>that on this list have joined the wrong list, as far as I am concerned.
## I deplore this attitude. I believe passionately that linguistics needs
bridges much more than barriers.

>
>Functionalism and functional analyses have at their core the belief that you
>cannot separate form and function/meaning.  They form an inseparable unit at
>every level, from the word (cf. Saussure) to the many different types of
>constructions that there are at every level (from the morphological level to
>the discourse level).  Sometimes the function motivates (I am not saying
>predicts or explains 100%) the form in rather obvious ways, without
>necessarily explaining it, and figuring out those ways is also a crucial
>aspect of functionalism.
>Often times, however, form takes a life of its own
>and it cannot be explained or motivated by function, but the formal pole of
>any linguistic unit still does not exist without the functional pole.
## Quite so - just as Pollard and Sag say in their book on HPSG, which I
imagine you'd classify as formal? (At least, that's how Michael Barlow
classifies it.)

>They are the two sides of the coin.
## But you can *distinguish* the two sides of a coin even if you can't
separate them, and you can distinguish them both from the coin itself. The
sides have a pattern, but no value or thickness; the coin has a value and
thickness, but no single pattern. Similarly you must be able to distinguish
the signifier and the signified because they have different properties.
Take Saussure's example of "tree": the form has four letters (or three
phonemes or whatever), but the meaning has a trunk and branches. And what
brings them together is the word TREE, which is defined partly in terms of
its form and partly in terms of its function - just like any other
analytical category that you can think of. (In homonymy, two words share
the same form; in synonymy they share the same function.)

>
>Isn't that what this list is all about?  Maybe I'm wrong.  Have those who
>think like me become a minority on this list?  Or is it that the other guys
>are a very vocal minority.  Don't those guys have their own lists?
## Yes, we do have our own lists, and you'd be most welcome to join at
least the one I run even if you made life a bit uncomfortable for us; it's
good for orthodoxies and slogans to be challenged.

>
>Note that I am not saying that anyone should leave this list,
## Thanks.

>but if such an
>eclectic group is going to have meaningful discussions, we should be very
>clear about what our different beliefs and presuppositions are.
## Precisely - which is why I made my suggestion.

It seems to
>me that there is an awful lot of confusion about that, as evidenced by
>Dick's definitions above.
## You may prefer to use the terms in different ways, but you haven't shown
that my definitions were confused.

Then Michael Barlow says:

>The main thrust of Dick's remark, however, is to question whether anyone
would
>reject a purely formal rule on principle. I suppose that many functionalists
>on the list would see a formal rule as only a partial description.
## Exactly what my proposed definitions say: a functional analysis is a
formal analysis with explicit attention to function.

>One central problem here is that formal rules don't just come along with
the data. There
>is no formal rule in the agreement examples Dick gave; there are only
(written) forms.
## Yes, that's why I labelled the data "Data A"!!

>He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's now
over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun, Adjective
and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
better analysis than Rule A.

Dick Hudson



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/home.htm


From dparvaz at UNM.EDU  Fri Feb 25 23:32:21 2000
From: dparvaz at UNM.EDU (Dan Parvaz)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 16:32:21 -0700
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <l03102800b4dbe2b1611f@[129.128.237.16]>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.163221.0700.DPARVAZ@UNM.EDU>

> Does anyone really believe in functionless form?

Paperwork comes to mind... :-)

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Cheers,

Dan.


From moorej at UCSD.EDU  Tue Feb 22 01:04:06 2000
From: moorej at UCSD.EDU (John Moore)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:04:06 -0800
Subject: anaphors vs. logophors
In-Reply-To: <l03102800b4dbe2b1611f@[129.128.237.16]>
Message-ID: <MON.21.FEB.2000.170406.0800.MOOREJ@UCSD.EDU>

I'd like to comment on John Myhill's claim that no formal account of the
distribution of jibun is possible.  Since I don't know anything about
jibun, I will address a question that John didn't raise - namely whether it
is desirable to have a formal account of reflexive pronouns in English.  I
suspect that the answer to this question bears on John's original one, but
I'll leave that to people who know something about jibun to decide.

One of the big problems with the classic GB (LGB - Chomsky 1981) binding
theory was that it attempted to provide a unified account of the
distribution of `himself' in (i-ii):

(i) Patrick admires himself.
(ii) Pictures of himself embarrass Patrick.

What (i) seems to illustrate is that reflexives require local antecedents -
this can be stated quite simply in any of a number of ways, using any of a
number of formal devices (e.g., in terms of tree-theoretic concepts like
c-command, argument structure terms, grammatical relations, etc.).  (ii),
on the other hand, is problematic for these straightforward formal
approaches, and led Chomsky to introduce a host of complications, including
a disjunctive definition of SUBJECT and the notion of accessibility, which
were not independently motivated.  Even with these devices, there were
still problematic data - e.g.,

(iii) Physicists like yourself are a godsend.

It seems that the basic flaw was trying to unify uses of reflexives that
shouldn't have been unified - the desire for global parsimony often comes
at the expense of local parsimony and leads to greater abstraction.

Building on previous work by Cantrall, Kuno, and others, a number of formal
accounts emerged in the early 1990s - including Reinhart and Reuland (P&P),
Pollard and Sag (HPSG), and Dalrymple (1990).  These accounts distinguished
uses of reflexives that could be easily treated in a sentence-internal,
syntactic approach, from logophoric uses that required a discourse-based
approach.  This simplified the formal syntactic approach considerably, as
its domain of application was reduced.  Furthermore, these approaches did
provide a means to tease apart the two uses - that is, it was not the case
that recalcitrant data was simply thrown to `some theory of discourse'.
Thus, by abandoning a unified account, one gains in local parsimony.

However, there is another possibility - and I suspect this may be what John
was getting at.  Given that some uses of reflexives *require* a discourse
account, could one develop a unfied discourse-based analysis on all uses of
English reflexives.  Will such an analysis suffer from the kind of global
parsimony problems that the LGB binding theory did?

The one proposal I know about is in an excellent paper by Zribi-Hertz
(Language 1989).  She raises these questions very clearly and argues that
the putative syntactic effects in reflexive binding are essentially
manifestations of the more general discourse-based effects found
independently in their logophoric uses.  In the end, however, her analysis
becomes rather complex, involves a number of disjunctive conditions, and
eventually has to admit that there are basic differences between
clause-bounded anaphora and long-distance bounded logophora.  Trying to
achieve global parsimony, again, seems to have a cost in local parsimony.

This is not to say that Zribi-Hertz's approach is not the right one - it
could be that all of the uses of English reflexives have a functional,
discourse explanation; it could also be that the logophoric uses have
discourse explanation, while the clause-bounded cases have a formal
account, albeit with a functional motivation, or it could be that there are
discourse-based and formal accounts that are essentially unrelated.  I
suspect that one's choice among these options will have a lot to do with
one's ideological beliefs about language.  I don't think it is safe to say
that a formal analysis is impossible for these facts - plently of
formalists appreciate the need for discourse factors as explanatory devices.

In the end, however, it seems that getting the right split between global
and local parsimony is part of what makes linguistics an art.

John Moore

http://ling.ucsd.edu/~moore/


From jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU  Sat Feb 26 01:35:22 2000
From: jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 17:35:22 -0800
Subject: formal/functional flaming
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.173522.0800.JRUBBA@CALPOLY.EDU>

Why can't we all just get along?

I thought Spike made some wonderful suggestions about how to respond
politely but critically to other people's postings, but I still see a
lot of pretty unkind remarks flying around. Can't we just cool it a bit?
Count to a hundred before posting a response to a posting that riles us?
Read our own responses closely for implied offense before we hit the
'send' button?

Let's practice some of those politeness hedges. It's getting so I tense
up when I open Funknet postings ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-259
• E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu •  Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
                                       **
"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank  Oppenheimer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


From ardise at HOTMAIL.COM  Sat Feb 26 01:42:37 2000
From: ardise at HOTMAIL.COM (Ardis Eschenberg)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 17:42:37 PST
Subject: Agreement as purely formal?
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.174237.PST.ARDISE@HOTMAIL.COM>

Unfortunately, I cannot comment on French, but Russian agreement has been
shown in many instances to operate on pragmatic grounds, combining both
natural and grammatical gender in utterances dependent upon situation.  For
example,

Vrac  poshla.
Doctor-M left-F.
'The doctor left.'  (The doctor is female.)

This is discussed in 'Sex , Gender and the October Revolution,' an article
which I lack a better reference to as I'm doing fieldwork and it's home.
This is a particularly nice example because most doctors in Russia are
female.  Perhaps, this is less than an argument against agreement as a
formal property, because by and large it does operate according to
grammatical gender, but any study which did not take into account pragmatic
and social factors (such agreement is more likely to occur in certain
registers/keys) would fail to account for/even look at a common pattern in
Russian. Indeed, before I understood this was going on, people thought it
funny when I told them that I wanted to be a 'lingvist-ka' (linguist +
feminine ending, retains diminuitive meaning which is inappropriate for such
a profession).
Relatedly, much interesting work has been done on gender/nominal
classification systems showing underlying cognitive motivations for such
classifications.  Others would be much more qualified than I to comment upon
this.
Even in realms thought to be easily (best?) handled by purely formal
description, the functional creeps in.  But likely this is no news to anyone
on this list.
Sincerely,
Ardis Eschenberg
State University of New York at Buffalo
Wayne State College of Nebraska



______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Sat Feb 26 03:36:35 2000
From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 22:36:35 -0500
Subject: Response to Dan Everett
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.223635.0500.DRYER@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>

In response to my comment
"> My claim is that there is very little if any
> description using current or recent formal theoretical frameworks that
is
> of value to functional linguists."
Dan Everett says:
"But surely there are important insights that people
of all persuasions have received or could gain from paying careful
attention to Joan Bresnan's work, for example."

Nothing in my statement says that there may not be important insights in
formal work.  My claim was in response to Edith Moravcsik's assertion that
functionalists DEPEND on formalists for their explananda, for their
description of forms.  Something can be a valuable insight without
providing explananda (things to be explained) to functionalists that they
could not do without.

Consider, for example, the (now old) insight of LFG that a variety of
phenomena that were described in tranformational grammar by means of
transformations can be (and should be) described in terms of lexical
rules.  I see this as an insight that is of clear potential value to
functionalists.  But I don't see that it provided anything new for
functionalists to explain.

Matthew Dryer


From gvk at ciaccess.com  Sat Feb 26 16:04:23 2000
From: gvk at ciaccess.com (Gerald van Koeverden)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:04:23 -0500
Subject: formal/functional
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.110423.0500.>

Is "functionality" descriptive of the interaction between "form" and
"content"??

In philosphy, there has always been a debate over form vs. content.

You can easily separate out between them in 'comprehension,' in
thought.

The problem is you can't 'apprehend' one without the other.  In order
to apprehend anything, you have to experience it as a whole, through a
union of form and content.

Arguing that one is real and the other isn't, is analogous to arguing
thatlight is wave-like not photon-like, or vice versa, as physicists did
previous to Einsteinian physics and Compton's proof of the dual nature
of
light...

Where does "functionality" fit?  I suggest it is how "form" and
"content" interact in apprehension, and how we try to explicitly define
the nature of that interaction in our comprehension of our
apprehensions!

gerald van koeverden

Greg Thomson wrote:

> Dick Hudson suggests
> >'formal' = involving relations within language
> >'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
> ...
> >'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
> >explained in terms of functional patterns.
>
> Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
> aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
> functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
> utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
> functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
> keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
> example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
> particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
> were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
> not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
> sense)?
>
> Greg Thomson


From chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU  Sat Feb 26 19:37:05 2000
From: chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Wallace Chafe)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:37:05 -0800
Subject: Form and function
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10002251219290.26589-100000@lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.113705.0800.CHAFE@HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU>

        It may be that there's been some confusion caused by the fact that
the word "formalism" contains the element "form".  It would certainly be
wrong to suppose that formalists believe that language has form and
functionalists don't.  Probably most people would agree that language
exhibits form, or structure, or patterning, although there's plenty of
room for disagreement as to the nature of the elements that enter into the
form, as to its stability, and above all as to its provenience.
        It's too simple to assign linguists to one or the other of two
camps, but there does seem to be a significant divide established by one's
beliefs and goals.  Most "functionalists", I think, believe that the
patterns found in language result from cognitive, social, and/or
historical forces, and they see it as their goal to identify those forces
and place them within larger contexts of mental functioning, social
interaction, and grammaticalization.  Being of that persuasion myself,
I find it harder to characterize the beliefs and goals of "formalists",
but they seem to believe that linguistic form has been wired into the
human brain through mysterious processes of evolution, and they see it as
their goal to invent some kind of complex machinery that will be able to
deal with (describe?) that form, independently of the cognitive, social,
and historical forces that attract functionalists.  It's evidently this
philosophical stance that seems to exempt formalists from the empirical
responsibility that's been the topic of much of this discussion.  If this
is an unfair caricature, I'd be glad to be set straight.

Wally Chafe


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Sat Feb 26 22:52:14 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:52:14 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.165214.0600.>

Dick Hudson states:

> >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's now
> over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun, Adjective
> and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> better analysis than Rule A.
>

I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I need
them too.

Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the noun,
is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where (ii)
the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from the
features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the discovery of
examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account than
by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in which
there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and, for
French, by Blinkenberg 1950).

Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something like
"multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM feature
might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a language and
are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For Dick
(and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.

If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether the
agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic and
depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
"consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends on
the properties of the referent associated with the noun.

My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and tracking of
discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is a "better
analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be shown
that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A mismatch
in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information about
the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a discourse
fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by, then
somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.

I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain of
discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated interpretations
be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of Folia
Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to send to
Dick and anyone else interested.)

I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down to
the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of commitment
or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is associated
with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the lines
of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.

Michael


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Sat Feb 26 23:43:14 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 20:43:14 -0300
Subject: Form and function
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.204314.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Wallace Chafe wrote:
>
> I find it harder to characterize the beliefs and goals of "formalists",
> but they seem to believe that linguistic form has been wired into the
> human brain through mysterious processes of evolution, and they see it as
> their goal to invent some kind of complex machinery that will be able to
> deal with (describe?) that form, independently of the cognitive, social,
> and historical forces that attract functionalists.  It's evidently this
> philosophical stance that seems to exempt formalists from the empirical
> responsibility that's been the topic of much of this discussion.  If this
> is an unfair caricature, I'd be glad to be set straight.
>
> Wally Chafe

Wally,

I cannot understand why abductive attempts to discover or propose models
of phenomena that were hardwired in by evolution would be a
'philosophical stance' conducive to empirical irresponsibility. If so,
one would think that your criticism would have also applied to the work
of Watson & Crick. It is just wrong to think that formalists have little
concern with empirical responsibility. MANY DO. But the same lack of
concern can be found across the discipline and across the social
sciences and humanities, as tendencies to 'invent' terms become more
popular than slow, careful research. No group, it seems to me, has a
monopoly on responsibility or irresponsibility. And why would belief in
evolution lead anyone towards irresponsibility?

That said, I agree with you that there are forces at work in the
formation of grammars which formalism cannot get at. But there are
always things that no theory can explain well. That doesn't make the
theory anti data.

Best,

Dan


From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Sun Feb 27 01:00:04 2000
From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 17:00:04 -0800
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.170004.0800.TGIVON@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

Dear friends,

This exchange has been skirting hilarity, or the Theater of the Absurd.
I get a verigo feeling, something like irrealis, like people not only
forget to listen to the other guy (common enough), but have stopped
listening to what they themselves are saying. Otherwise I can't imagine
why there seems to be such an abundant, recurrent, reflexive need to
jump on reasonable people (Edith Moravcsik, Dick Hudson) and try to push
them into extremist positions which realy don't fit. So how about a
simple exercise in logic, to begin with:

1. If "form correlates with function", or
      "form is iconic with function", or
      "form it motivated by function"
   are all true, them "form exists" is also true.

2. If "form correlates with function" is true,
   then, unless you wish to be tautological, you have no choice but to
   define "form" and "function" independent of each other. And unless
you
   defined structure in purely structural terms, you haven't escaped
this
   tautology. (That's *all* Edith meant).

3. Escaping tautology in (2) above does not mean that you could not or
   should not investigate the functional (semantic, pragmatic)
motivation
   of form/structure. Non sequitus.

4. In most biologically-based system, functions are not simply performed
   by themselves. They are performed by some structures. Why should
   this overwhelming fact, which has bothered no biologist since
Aristotle,
   should be such a shocking revelation to linguists?

5. The notion of "structure" is, by definition, formal and more abstract
than
   unstructured, unconstrained, unorganized reality. The only remaining
   question is -- "How formal? How abstract?" And that question must be
   resolved empirically. Different domains, in language and elsewhere,
   are structured with different degrees of formality ('generativity',
   'rule governedness').

6. When functionalists cite Sapir's famous dictum: "...all grammars
leak...",
   they often forget that Sapir did not say "all grammars leak 100% all
   the time". What he *meant*, I think, is something like this:
"Grammatical
   rules/regularities/structures often, maybe always, retain a ceretain
   measure of flex, rule-ungovernedness" Fact of life.

7. Chomsky's apriori assertion that grammars are 100% algorithmic (see
'On
   the notion 'rule of grammar'", 1961) clearly over-shoots the
empirical
   facts, and was not motivated by them. It was motivated, I suspect, by
   his background in Machine Theory. Of course, the notion of
*competence*
   allowed him to do it, by ruling out facts of natural communication as
   *performance tainted*. But the fact that Chomsky was wrong, and
grammar is
   not 100% generative, does not mean that grammar is 0% generative.
Such an
   assertion is just as much at variance with the facts as Chomsky's
assertion
   of 100% generativity (and damn the rest of the facts).

8. Grammar is just another instance of *automaticity* of processing.
   In all known cases (vision, memory, motor control, music) the
acquisition
   of complex, rhythmic-hierarchic skills entails autoimaticity. And
   automated processing is *highly* structure-dependent and category-
   dependent. That's what 'chunking' is all about in memory
organization,
   kinesiology & elsewhere.

9. Why should both evolution and history conspire to -- repeatedly --
   grammaticalize so many communicative functions if grammar was just
   a mushy affair with near-zero generativity/rule governedness or pre-
   dictability? Why this extravagant machinery that we desvcribe both
   synchronically and diachronically? All spandrells? Come on. Get real.

10. Grammar arises diachronically from pre-grammar, and has a life
trajectory
   during which the degree of 'generativity' changes drastically. At the
   very early stages of grammaticalization of paratactic constructions
with
   only 'pragmatic'('discourse') regularities, one tends to find low
   generativity. A nascent construction reveals variability of behavior,
   it is not 'well governed'. Somnewhere in mid-life of constructions,
rule-
   governedness increases, i.e. efficiency and predictability of
form-fuction
   correlations ('iconicity'). But sooner or later, what John Haiman
calls
   'ritualization' begins to creep in: Contructions and morphology
become
   nearly-100% rule-governed, indeed highly inflexible, but also slowly
   loose their iconicity. This is the *more* Chomskian, *more* arbitrary
   phase of grammatical structure.

11. It is unfortunate that, for whatever reasons, different people
choose
    to look at *only* the earliest stage of grammaticalization
('emergence',
    high motivation, low generativity), or the latest (arbitrariness &
high
    generativity). Sort of reminds you of the three blind men reporting
    on the elephant. Taking one aspect & claiming it represents the
whole.
    It would be nice if we started considering the whole.

12. In the process of early grammaticalization, constraints creep in
    rather gradually, often in a subtle way. The argument about the
    reflexive is of course a case in point. Older reflexives are much
more
    relationally governed, having severed their umbilical cord, their
    connections to old *emphatic* pronouns that were *not* relationally
    governed. Newly-emergent reflexives are a mix, the old 'discourse'
    constraints on contrast/emphasis co-exist with 'goverened true
reflexives'
    that are not emphatic anymore. But 'severing of the umbilical cord'
can
    be both gradual and subtle. And it allows coexistence of older and
    newer, emerging 'structured' or 'governed' constraints.

13. EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that REL-clauses in Japanese are
*not*
    relationally governed, since they only have zero anaphora,
presumably
    just like in main clauses governed by 'discourse'. But haven't we
    forgotrten someting? Zero anaphora in Japanese discourse is
*overwhel-
    moingly* anaphoric. But zero anaphora in Japanes REL-clauses is 100%
    cataphoric, because REL-clauses in Japanese precede their head noun.
    So something new and construction-specific has crept in here,
whatever
    its diachronic source may have been.

    EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that in Malagasy (VOS) the zeroes in
    EQUI (verb complements) are just the same as zero anaphora in
    'discourse'. But again, discourse zeroes are overwhelmingly
anaphoric,
    while the EQUI zero in complementation are 100% cataphoric, because
the
    subject of the  main clause *follows* the zero in the complement
verb.
    Again, something new is creeping in during the process of
grammatica-
    lization. Not only functions are re-analyzed and re-organized, but
    structures too.

I suppose I could go on forever, everybody who seriously studies the
process of grammaticalization probably could. So let me just suggest
that maybe it is time we bade farewell to reductionism, and to the
bizarre idea that complex systems can be described and explained by
single principles. Sure, that is the hallmark of much of what Chomsky
has been trying to do. But all of us, functionalists and formalists
alike, know language is much too complex for such reduction. And we
ought to, by now, know enough about conflicting motivation and adaptive
compromise ('OC'?) to know better. So let's get off the dime.

Cheers,  TG
=============


Michael Barlow wrote:
>
> Dick Hudson states:
>
> > >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> > ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's now
> > over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> > modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun, Adjective
> > and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> > better analysis than Rule A.
> >
>
> I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I need
> them too.
>
> Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the noun,
> is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where (ii)
> the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from the
> features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the discovery of
> examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
> than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
> formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account than
> by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in which
> there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
> Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and, for
> French, by Blinkenberg 1950).
>
> Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
> interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
> within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something like
> "multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM feature
> might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
> between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a language and
> are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For Dick
> (and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.
>
> If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether the
> agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic and
> depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
> "consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends on
> the properties of the referent associated with the noun.
>
> My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
> nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and tracking of
> discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is a "better
> analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be shown
> that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
> typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A mismatch
> in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information about
> the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
> examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a discourse
> fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by, then
> somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.
>
> I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
> conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
> conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
> interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain of
> discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated interpretations
> be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of Folia
> Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to send to
> Dick and anyone else interested.)
>
> I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down to
> the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of commitment
> or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is associated
> with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the lines
> of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.
>
> Michael


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Sun Feb 27 11:23:48 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 13:23:48 +0200
Subject: various topics
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.132348.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Wow, things certainly have gotten lively this weekend.


(1) Three cheers for Dan Everett's message on the responsibilities of those
who write reference grammars. It was

(2) I do not think that there are inherent relationships 'formalist=empirically
irresponsible' and 'functionalist=empirically responsible'. There are individual
formal linguists who are empirically responsible and there are individual
functional linguists who seem not to be. But the ATMOSPHERE of the discussions
is different. In discussions between formal linguists, it is routine for
the participants to refer to 'facts' about 'exotic languages' which no one
present knows and which no one present knows of a responsible work on, with
no one questioning this as potentially problematic; it is assumed that if
it is in print, it's true. In discussions between functional linguists,
this happens only extremely rarely. If a formalist is careful about data
from 'exotic' languages, it is because s/he personally believes that this
is the responsible thing to do. If a functionalist is careful about such
data, it is because of this but also because s/he is afraid of getting
shown up or getting a bad reputation; you just can't get away with as much.


(3) Contra Talmy, I think that the ongoing Edith Moravcsik/Matthew Dryer
and Dick Hudson/Michael Barlow arguments are indeed substantive. Please
continue! I am not sure
if Talmy's summary of Edith's position indeed accurately reflects it. Edith?

(4) Some of the discussants regarding reflexives in subject position seem to
have started including cases where they are purely emphatic (cf. Werner's
justified complaint). Nino originally made it quite clear that this is not
necessarily the case for Georgian, but some of the follow-up messages got a
little bit off the topic and started talking about emphatic usages without
emphasizing that they were changing the topic a little, hence Werner's
comment.

(5) I think that certainly English -self form usages are definitely best
explained
with a discourse account, but we definitely
need to refer to formal/structural factors as well to get the best
description. I think one would have to be kind of a fanatic one way or the
other to conclude otherwise. Contrary to what John Moore suggested, I was
NOT 'getting at' a purely discourse-based analysis for English reflexives
as well! I remember once I got excited about this for a few weeks sometime
around 1987 but after a while I decided this was just too artificial for
English. For jibun, though, this is definitely what's needed.

(6) Regarding Johanna's message: The more spontaneous mode of interaction
which has characterized recent messages on funknet makes me feel more
RELAXED. People are saying what they think in a nice straightforward way.
What makes me feel
nervous is if everyone is trying to be diplomatic, either to be polite or
to make it
appear as though functionalists really agree more than we do. Who needs to
be distracted
by this?

John Myhill


From kosam at LIBR.UG.EDU.GH  Sat Feb 26 21:08:21 2000
From: kosam at LIBR.UG.EDU.GH (Kweku Osam)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 21:08:21 +0000
Subject: Formalism
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.210821.0000.KOSAM@LIBR.UG.EDU.GH>

Dick Hudson wrote:

"Maybe some people mean something different by 'formal' when they contrast
it with 'functional'?"

I suspect this is part of the problem. May be we should ask people to give
their definitions of "formal"/"formalism".

Kweku Osam


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Sun Feb 27 17:01:11 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 11:01:11 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.110111.0600.>

Who is going to argue with grammaticalisation, routinisation and the
complexity of language phenomena?

Immanuel Barshi wrote a paper a few years ago arguing, as I remember, that
some agreement patterns in Hebrew should really be thought of as set routines
rather than regular, analysable agreement patterns. I can accept that; I
certainly believe that routines and chunks play a large role in language use.
I assume that we are not talking about such instances.

There may be relations which, for all intents and purposes, may count as
purely formal. Here I am simply taking issue with Dicks's assumption (and the
assumption of many people) that is agreement is clearly formal in the sense
that agreement can best be described by saying that form of the agreement
target depends on the morphosyntactic form of the agreement source. If you
want to account for a range of agreement phenomena in a language (even
English), then such an approach breaks down.

If agreement morphemes exert themselves in Quirk-style examples such as "that
two weeks", "England collapse" "rain and mist is expected", "two is too many"
"the french fries at table 10 is" etc., then are we assume that something
completely different is occurring in the above examples compared to in "those
two weeks" "England collapses" etc.

A quick note from a service station on the M40 near Oxford.

Michael

In message  <38B87714.77D9F7B5 at oregon.uoregon.edu>
 tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU writes:
> Dear friends,
>
> This exchange has been skirting hilarity, or the Theater of the Absurd.
> I get a verigo feeling, something like irrealis, like people not only
> forget to listen to the other guy (common enough), but have stopped
> listening to what they themselves are saying. Otherwise I can't imagine
> why there seems to be such an abundant, recurrent, reflexive need to
> jump on reasonable people (Edith Moravcsik, Dick Hudson) and try to push
> them into extremist positions which realy don't fit. So how about a
> simple exercise in logic, to begin with:
>
> 1. If "form correlates with function", or
>       "form is iconic with function", or
>       "form it motivated by function"
>    are all true, them "form exists" is also true.
>
> 2. If "form correlates with function" is true,
>    then, unless you wish to be tautological, you have no choice but to
>    define "form" and "function" independent of each other. And unless
> you
>    defined structure in purely structural terms, you haven't escaped
> this
>    tautology. (That's *all* Edith meant).
>
> 3. Escaping tautology in (2) above does not mean that you could not or
>    should not investigate the functional (semantic, pragmatic)
> motivation
>    of form/structure. Non sequitus.
>
> 4. In most biologically-based system, functions are not simply performed
>    by themselves. They are performed by some structures. Why should
>    this overwhelming fact, which has bothered no biologist since
> Aristotle,
>    should be such a shocking revelation to linguists?
>
> 5. The notion of "structure" is, by definition, formal and more abstract
> than
>    unstructured, unconstrained, unorganized reality. The only remaining
>    question is -- "How formal? How abstract?" And that question must be
>    resolved empirically. Different domains, in language and elsewhere,
>    are structured with different degrees of formality ('generativity',
>    'rule governedness').
>
> 6. When functionalists cite Sapir's famous dictum: "...all grammars
> leak...",
>    they often forget that Sapir did not say "all grammars leak 100% all
>    the time". What he *meant*, I think, is something like this:
> "Grammatical
>    rules/regularities/structures often, maybe always, retain a ceretain
>    measure of flex, rule-ungovernedness" Fact of life.
>
> 7. Chomsky's apriori assertion that grammars are 100% algorithmic (see
> 'On
>    the notion 'rule of grammar'", 1961) clearly over-shoots the
> empirical
>    facts, and was not motivated by them. It was motivated, I suspect, by
>    his background in Machine Theory. Of course, the notion of
> *competence*
>    allowed him to do it, by ruling out facts of natural communication as
>    *performance tainted*. But the fact that Chomsky was wrong, and
> grammar is
>    not 100% generative, does not mean that grammar is 0% generative.
> Such an
>    assertion is just as much at variance with the facts as Chomsky's
> assertion
>    of 100% generativity (and damn the rest of the facts).
>
> 8. Grammar is just another instance of *automaticity* of processing.
>    In all known cases (vision, memory, motor control, music) the
> acquisition
>    of complex, rhythmic-hierarchic skills entails autoimaticity. And
>    automated processing is *highly* structure-dependent and category-
>    dependent. That's what 'chunking' is all about in memory
> organization,
>    kinesiology & elsewhere.
>
> 9. Why should both evolution and history conspire to -- repeatedly --
>    grammaticalize so many communicative functions if grammar was just
>    a mushy affair with near-zero generativity/rule governedness or pre-
>    dictability? Why this extravagant machinery that we desvcribe both
>    synchronically and diachronically? All spandrells? Come on. Get real.
>
> 10. Grammar arises diachronically from pre-grammar, and has a life
> trajectory
>    during which the degree of 'generativity' changes drastically. At the
>    very early stages of grammaticalization of paratactic constructions
> with
>    only 'pragmatic'('discourse') regularities, one tends to find low
>    generativity. A nascent construction reveals variability of behavior,
>    it is not 'well governed'. Somnewhere in mid-life of constructions,
> rule-
>    governedness increases, i.e. efficiency and predictability of
> form-fuction
>    correlations ('iconicity'). But sooner or later, what John Haiman
> calls
>    'ritualization' begins to creep in: Contructions and morphology
> become
>    nearly-100% rule-governed, indeed highly inflexible, but also slowly
>    loose their iconicity. This is the *more* Chomskian, *more* arbitrary
>    phase of grammatical structure.
>
> 11. It is unfortunate that, for whatever reasons, different people
> choose
>     to look at *only* the earliest stage of grammaticalization
> ('emergence',
>     high motivation, low generativity), or the latest (arbitrariness &
> high
>     generativity). Sort of reminds you of the three blind men reporting
>     on the elephant. Taking one aspect & claiming it represents the
> whole.
>     It would be nice if we started considering the whole.
>
> 12. In the process of early grammaticalization, constraints creep in
>     rather gradually, often in a subtle way. The argument about the
>     reflexive is of course a case in point. Older reflexives are much
> more
>     relationally governed, having severed their umbilical cord, their
>     connections to old *emphatic* pronouns that were *not* relationally
>     governed. Newly-emergent reflexives are a mix, the old 'discourse'
>     constraints on contrast/emphasis co-exist with 'goverened true
> reflexives'
>     that are not emphatic anymore. But 'severing of the umbilical cord'
> can
>     be both gradual and subtle. And it allows coexistence of older and
>     newer, emerging 'structured' or 'governed' constraints.
>
> 13. EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that REL-clauses in Japanese are
> *not*
>     relationally governed, since they only have zero anaphora,
> presumably
>     just like in main clauses governed by 'discourse'. But haven't we
>     forgotrten someting? Zero anaphora in Japanese discourse is
> *overwhel-
>     moingly* anaphoric. But zero anaphora in Japanes REL-clauses is 100%
>     cataphoric, because REL-clauses in Japanese precede their head noun.
>     So something new and construction-specific has crept in here,
> whatever
>     its diachronic source may have been.
>
>     EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that in Malagasy (VOS) the zeroes in
>     EQUI (verb complements) are just the same as zero anaphora in
>     'discourse'. But again, discourse zeroes are overwhelmingly
> anaphoric,
>     while the EQUI zero in complementation are 100% cataphoric, because
> the
>     subject of the  main clause *follows* the zero in the complement
> verb.
>     Again, something new is creeping in during the process of
> grammatica-
>     lization. Not only functions are re-analyzed and re-organized, but
>     structures too.
>
> I suppose I could go on forever, everybody who seriously studies the
> process of grammaticalization probably could. So let me just suggest
> that maybe it is time we bade farewell to reductionism, and to the
> bizarre idea that complex systems can be described and explained by
> single principles. Sure, that is the hallmark of much of what Chomsky
> has been trying to do. But all of us, functionalists and formalists
> alike, know language is much too complex for such reduction. And we
> ought to, by now, know enough about conflicting motivation and adaptive
> compromise ('OC'?) to know better. So let's get off the dime.
>
> Cheers,  TG
> =============
>
>
> Michael Barlow wrote:
> >
> > Dick Hudson states:
> >
> > > >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> > > ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's
now
> > > over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> > > modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun,
Adjective
> > > and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> > > better analysis than Rule A.
> > >
> >
> > I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I
need
> > them too.
> >
> > Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the
noun,
> > is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where
(ii)
> > the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from
the
> > features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the
discovery of
> > examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
> > than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
> > formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account
than
> > by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in
which
> > there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
> > Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and,
for
> > French, by Blinkenberg 1950).
> >
> > Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
> > interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
> > within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something
like
> > "multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM
feature
> > might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
> > between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a
language and
> > are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For
Dick
> > (and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.
> >
> > If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether
the
> > agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic
and
> > depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
> > "consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends
on
> > the properties of the referent associated with the noun.
> >
> > My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
> > nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and
tracking of
> > discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is
a "better
> > analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be
shown
> > that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
> > typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A
mismatch
> > in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information
about
> > the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
> > examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a
discourse
> > fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by,
then
> > somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.
> >
> > I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
> > conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
> > conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
> > interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain
of
> > discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated
interpretations
> > be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of
Folia
> > Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to
send to
> > Dick and anyone else interested.)
> >
> > I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down
to
> > the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of
commitment
> > or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is
associated
> > with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the
lines
> > of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.
> >
> > Michael


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Sun Feb 27 18:25:26 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 12:25:26 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.122526.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

In his message of Friday, February 25, Jon Aske wrote: "...you cannot
separate form and function/meaning... The formal pole of any linguistic
unit... does not exist without the functional pole. They are the two
sides of the coin."

There are two claims that emerge from this statement:

  (1) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot occur separately.
  (2) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot be described
      separately.

These are of course very important "foundational" issues and I am
trying to think through them carefully.

Let us first consider the two points in GENERAL terms - i.e., not
specifically in relation to language.

  (1) DISTRIBUTIONAL SEPARABILITY
      What does it mean to say that two things occur separably or that
they are occur inseparably? (In)separability claims are about the
distribution of things. If two things are said to be separable in
occurrence, that means each can occur without the other: they are not
mutually cooccurrent (i.e., they are not mutually dependent on each other
for occurrence). If, on the other hand, they are said to be inseparable in
occurrence, that means neither can occur without the other: they are
mutually coocurrent or mutually dependent on each other for occurrence.

      For example, as Jon mentioned, the two sides of a coin are
inseparable: one side cannot occur without the other.
Similarly, a living head and its living body are inseparable. A man and
his shadow are also inseparable because, under the same light conditions,
neither can occur without the other. On the other hand, two different
coins, somebody's body and someone else's head, and one person's body and
somebody else's shadow are separable.

     Inseparable occurrence thus rules out a one-to-zero relationship
between the two things (i.e., one occurring without the other).
It also rules out one-to-many relationships: if two things are
inseparable, neither can vary without the other varying. Thus, each
coin can only have ONE other side; each person can only have ONE shadow
(given that light conditions remain the same and they involve a single
light source); and bodies cannot have varying heads and vice versa.

     Thus, inseparability of two objects means there is a constant
one-to-one relation between the two. One-to-zero and one-to-many relations
(where "many" means "many alternatives") are ruled out by
inseparability.

  (2) DESCRIPTIVE SEPARABILITY

      What does it mean to say that two things are independently
describable or that they are not describable independently? The
independent describability of two objects would mean that one can describe
one without describing the other. If two objects are not independently
describable, that would mean one cannot describe one without describing
the other.

      Can one think of ANY two things that are not independently
describable? Perhaps the only things that would meet this criterion
would be things that are in a type-subtype (or type-token) relationship.
For example, if I want to describe the concept "bird" and the concept
"whooping crane", they are not independently describable because I cannot
give a full description of the whooping crane without including the
description of birds in general; and I cannot give a valid description
of birds unless I know about all the different kinds of birds including
whooping cranes.

      If two things are independently describable, that does not mean that
the two descriptions cannot jointly serve in statements, such as as terms
in an explanatory argument. For example, a man and his shadow are
independently describable but in order to EXPLAIN the shape of the shadow,
one needs to make reference to properties of the man. Similarly, each side
of a coin is independently describable but the shape of one side depends
on the shape of the other side and thus explains it. Also, the size of a
head and the size of its body may be mutually explanatory (e.g., an
insect-size body could not support an elephant-size head).  But claiming
an explanans-explanadum relationship between two things does not mean that
they are not independently describable; in fact, it PRESUPPOSES that they
are (Talmy Givo'n' point).

     More generally, almost any statement ABOUT two objects - whether it
is a statement of an explanatory relationship or simply a distributional
relationship such as that they are separable or inseparable - presupposes
that the two objects are independently describable. For example,
when we say that the two sides of a coin are inseparable, what this means
is that we operate in terms of the separate concepts of one side and
the other side. Similarly, in order for the statement according to which
the man and his shadow are inseparable to make sense, we need to have a
separate concept (a separate description) of the man and of the shadow.

     In sum:

     (A) Re descriptive separability:
         Two things are descriptively inseparable if neither can be
         described without describing the other; they are descriptively
         separable if either can be described without describing the
         other. - Almost(?) any two things seem to be separately
         describable.

     (B) Re distributional separability:
         Two things are distributionally inseparable if neither can
         occur without the other; they are distributionally separable if
         either can occur without the other. - Some things are
         distributionally separable, other things are not.

     (C) Re the relationship between descriptive and distributional
         separability:
         The statement of any distributional claim about two things,
         whether saying that they are separable or that
         they are inseparable, presupposes that the two are
         separately describable.

Let us now apply these points to FORM AND FUNCTION in LANGUAGE.
The two questions to which we are looking for answers are these:

     (1) Are form and function distributionally separable or
         or descriptively inseparable?
     (2) Are form and function descriptively separable or
         descriptively inseparable?

If the above general considerations are valid, then even just raising
the first question about distributional separability implies that we are
talking about two different things when we say "form" and "function"
(Talmy Givo'n's point again) - that is, that the two are separately
describable. Thus, if question (1) makes sense both to
formalists and functionalist to the extent that both have it on their
agenda to try to answer it, this necessarily implies that both
formalists and functionalist subscribe to form and function as being
descriptively separate concepts. Thus, the answer to question (2) about
the DESCRIPTIVE independence of form and function would need to be in the
affirmative for linguists of both persuasions.

Acknowledging that form and function are descriptively
independent leaves question (1) about their DISTRIBUTIONAL independence
entirely open: the two may or may not be distributionally separable and
in fact one could design languages where the two are separable and
languages where they are inseparable. As suggested above, we can seek the
answer to whether form and function are distributionally independent or
not in actual languages by checking whether either can occur without the
other (one-to-zero relationship) and whether forms can occur with
alternative functions and functions can occur with alternative forms
(one-to-many relationship). If any of these hold, then the relationship is
that of separability rather than inseparability.

The separability of form and function (or meaning) for functional objects
in general can be easily demonstrated. A string of beads has a
describable form regardless whether it has a meaning (such as when it is
used as a rosary, with every bead standing for a prayer) or whether it has
no meaning (such as when it is used as a necklace). Similarly, a function
can occur without form in toolmaking; for example, the inventor of the
knife must have had in mind the function before he found the right form to
perform that function. Similarly, an object with the form of a knife
can be used for different alternative purposes (to cut things, to pry
something open, etc.); and each of these functions can be served by
different alternative forms.

What about language? Is there linguistic form without function? Is there
function without linguistic form? Are there multiple alternative
functions for a form? And are there multiple alternative forms for a
function? It seems to me that the answer to at least three of these four
questions is affirmative. Linguistic form without function is a string of
words that do not make sense. The existence of meaning without linguistic
form appears to be indicated by the "groping-for-words" phenomenon. And
examples of ambiguity and synonym (IF it exists...) bear out the
one-to-many relationship between form and meaning and thus the mutual
detachability of the two. Thus, the answer to question (1) above is that
form and meaning are not only descriptively but also distributionally
separable.

What is WRONG with this train of thought? (I am somewhat tentative
about it since I feel I am treading on "dangerous" grounds - I
shudder to think how a philosophically-trained person would evaluate it.)
Exactly which are the assumptions or the logical steps that are false or
at least questionable? Exactly WHERE would a CONTRARY argument part ways
with the one above - an argument that would lead us to the opposite
conclusions which I think Jon Aske and others hold true: that form and
function are both descriptively and distributionally inseparable?

Edith M.


   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA  Sun Feb 27 19:01:14 2000
From: dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Diego Quesada)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 14:01:14 -0500
Subject: various topics
In-Reply-To: <v01540b00b4dead50e406@[132.74.19.230]>
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.140114.0500.DQUESADA@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA>

On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, John Myhill wrote:

> In discussions between formal linguists, it is routine for
> the participants to refer to 'facts' about 'exotic languages' which no one
> present knows and which no one present knows of a responsible work on, with
> no one questioning this as potentially problematic; it is assumed that if
> it is in print, it's true. In discussions between functional linguists,
> this happens only extremely rarely. If a formalist is careful about data
> from 'exotic' languages, it is because s/he personally believes that this
> is the responsible thing to do. If a functionalist is careful about such
> data, it is because of this but also because s/he is afraid of getting
> shown up or getting a bad reputation; you just can't get away with as much.


Uff!  That is a rather challengeable "slip of the fingers (on the
keyboard)". This is the sort of black-and-white judgements that have
hindered understanding in this discussion, as Givon pointed out yesterday.

At least two counterexamples can be cited that call for a softening of the
above statement: One is the much cited "impersonal, non-promotional
passive" of Spanish, which has given rise to the most fantastic theories
on the evolution of "passives", simply by paraphrasing traditional or
traditionally tainted grammars. The other is the celebrated "ergativity"
for some, "voice" for others, nature of Tagalog and sister languages,
analyses that always leak; with the most notable exception of one proposed
not precisely in the context of typological comparison, but from the
insights of a native speaker, who apparently did not feel pressed by any
straitjacket forcing him to abide to what was/is in the market:

Naylor, Paz-Buenaventura. 1995. Subject, topic and Tagalog syntax. In:
        Bennet, D. et al. 161-201. Object, Voice, and Ergativity.
        University of London: School of Oriental and African Studies.

This paper is so nice to read, especially because it puts a categorical
end to the phantasies existing on Tagalog syntax.

In view of the two counterexamples cited (and I'm sure people can come up
with more), John's above claim needs mending. I would suggest first of all
to speak in terms of tendencies rather than in terms of "discreet"
categories (the latter being an antifunctional precept).  Second, the
tendency that can be linked to the folks on the other sidewalk is that the
data are secondary to the model, while on our sidewalk the ***TENDENCY***
is to let the data speak first and then try to come up with some
explanation that need not be constrained by the structural configuration
of the phenomenon dealt with.  In other words, Chomskians (which is what
most people on this list have in mind when they say "formalists") are
deductive (a bit too much for some), while functionalists tend to be
inductive. The professional irresponsibilities incurred by either group
are not intrinsec to the approach, they simply reveal how lazy a linguist
can be when it comes to testing a retesting.

J. Diego Quesada
University of Toronto


From jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU  Sun Feb 27 20:31:26 2000
From: jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU (Jon Aske)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 15:31:26 -0500
Subject: form and function
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.96.1000227122334.6029G-100000@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.153126.0500.JASKE@SALEM.MASS.EDU>

I thank Edith for the very thorough and clear exposition which may help us
advance in our search for an understanding of form and function.  I am not
going to be able to give a thorough reply to all the points that Edith
mentions, although I hope that others will.  But I wanted to comment on
Edith's knife metaphor, which I find very interesting.

As my old teacher George Lakoff would argue, we depend on metaphors (as well
as prototypes, stereotypes, and other types) to understand such complex and
abstract issues, or to lead our thinking about them.  I am sure that we are
all using different metaphors to lead our thinking but, also, it seems that
when we use the same metaphor we are not necessarily drawing the same
conclusions.

Actually, I think the knife metaphor is much more apt than the one about the
coin when it comes to form and function in complex linguistic units (even
though it is faulty in many respects).  Let me explain.

Surely a life form very different from us could come across a knife left by
us in space by mistake and give a very thorough description of it, including
measurements, element composition, as well as devise theories of natural
knife formation inside volcanoes, or about their divine creation.

Still, I would find those descriptions, and explanations, to be rather
unsatisfying.  Knifes are the way they are because of the functions that
they were designed to fill and because of our technical and other
limitations, including the size and shape of our hands, the types of
materials that we know how to work at a particular time, etc.

Surely, you can use a knife for functions different from those for which it
was created, and we do it all the time, and that may even lead to
innovations in the construction of knives or similar implements (machetes,
swords, etc.).  In fact, there are many specialized types of knives,
depending on their specific function (a way in which the metaphor may cease
to be helpful).

Still, I believe that the information about function and the maker's
abilities (and the history of knife-making in a particular culture, etc.)
are all crucial in any description and "explanation" of particular knives.
Why we might want to keep that functional information out of an integral
description of knives escapes me, unless of course the information was not
available (the alien example).

Equally, to try to describe the form and distribution of reflexives without
making their function and their historical source and historical changes and
adaptations an integral part of that description, not an afterthought, is
incomprehensible to me.  (Unless, of course, we were space aliens of a
different sort and we were convinced a priori that reflexives were made by
some god for our amusement.)

That doesn't mean that we cannot (and should not) to some extent describe
the form (only) of the reflexive morphemes of a certain language or talk
about the reflexive function (only) in language in general.  Still, why stop
there?  Why leave the interesting stuff for somebody else?

Jon

PS. On the topic of our recent exchanges, I agree with John and not with
Johanna that this discussion is getting exciting and I hope that someone
won't try to stop it (as it has happened in the past) because it may lead to
dissension.  As long as we remain civil about it, I think we can continue.
I also realize, of course, that we are not likely to change anybody's views,
but I find these conversations to be stimulating since they lead us to
clarify our own thoughts, and perhaps come a bit closer together, or at
least to come to understand the other side(s) better.

In reply to Dick's comments, I am sorry if I offended you.  It was not my
intention to misrepresent your beliefs.  I really thought that that was what
you were saying with your definitions.  But, again, you may be right that I
was stereotyping you.  I will try very hard to avoid stereotyping (although,
as I said above, the use stereotypes is part of our way to make sense of the
world).  Still, if I stereotyped you, I would like to think that it wasn't
in order to "make [me] feel comfortable and morally superior."


> -----Original Message-----
> From: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics
> [mailto:FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu]On Behalf Of Edith A Moravcsik
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 1:25 PM
> To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu
> Subject: form and function
>
>
> In his message of Friday, February 25, Jon Aske wrote: "...you cannot
> separate form and function/meaning... The formal pole of any linguistic
> unit... does not exist without the functional pole. They are the two
> sides of the coin."
>
> There are two claims that emerge from this statement:
>
>   (1) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot occur separately.
>   (2) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot be described
>       separately.
>
> These are of course very important "foundational" issues and I am
> trying to think through them carefully.
>
> Let us first consider the two points in GENERAL terms - i.e., not
> specifically in relation to language.
>
>   (1) DISTRIBUTIONAL SEPARABILITY
>       What does it mean to say that two things occur separably or that
> they are occur inseparably? (In)separability claims are about the
> distribution of things. If two things are said to be separable in
> occurrence, that means each can occur without the other: they are not
> mutually cooccurrent (i.e., they are not mutually dependent on each other
> for occurrence). If, on the other hand, they are said to be inseparable in
> occurrence, that means neither can occur without the other: they are
> mutually coocurrent or mutually dependent on each other for occurrence.
>
>       For example, as Jon mentioned, the two sides of a coin are
> inseparable: one side cannot occur without the other.
> Similarly, a living head and its living body are inseparable. A man and
> his shadow are also inseparable because, under the same light conditions,
> neither can occur without the other. On the other hand, two different
> coins, somebody's body and someone else's head, and one person's body and
> somebody else's shadow are separable.
>
>      Inseparable occurrence thus rules out a one-to-zero relationship
> between the two things (i.e., one occurring without the other).
> It also rules out one-to-many relationships: if two things are
> inseparable, neither can vary without the other varying. Thus, each
> coin can only have ONE other side; each person can only have ONE shadow
> (given that light conditions remain the same and they involve a single
> light source); and bodies cannot have varying heads and vice versa.
>
>      Thus, inseparability of two objects means there is a constant
> one-to-one relation between the two. One-to-zero and one-to-many relations
> (where "many" means "many alternatives") are ruled out by
> inseparability.
>
>   (2) DESCRIPTIVE SEPARABILITY
>
>       What does it mean to say that two things are independently
> describable or that they are not describable independently? The
> independent describability of two objects would mean that one can describe
> one without describing the other. If two objects are not independently
> describable, that would mean one cannot describe one without describing
> the other.
>
>       Can one think of ANY two things that are not independently
> describable? Perhaps the only things that would meet this criterion
> would be things that are in a type-subtype (or type-token) relationship.
> For example, if I want to describe the concept "bird" and the concept
> "whooping crane", they are not independently describable because I cannot
> give a full description of the whooping crane without including the
> description of birds in general; and I cannot give a valid description
> of birds unless I know about all the different kinds of birds including
> whooping cranes.
>
>       If two things are independently describable, that does not mean that
> the two descriptions cannot jointly serve in statements, such as as terms
> in an explanatory argument. For example, a man and his shadow are
> independently describable but in order to EXPLAIN the shape of the shadow,
> one needs to make reference to properties of the man. Similarly, each side
> of a coin is independently describable but the shape of one side depends
> on the shape of the other side and thus explains it. Also, the size of a
> head and the size of its body may be mutually explanatory (e.g., an
> insect-size body could not support an elephant-size head).  But claiming
> an explanans-explanadum relationship between two things does not mean that
> they are not independently describable; in fact, it PRESUPPOSES that they
> are (Talmy Givo'n' point).
>
>      More generally, almost any statement ABOUT two objects - whether it
> is a statement of an explanatory relationship or simply a distributional
> relationship such as that they are separable or inseparable - presupposes
> that the two objects are independently describable. For example,
> when we say that the two sides of a coin are inseparable, what this means
> is that we operate in terms of the separate concepts of one side and
> the other side. Similarly, in order for the statement according to which
> the man and his shadow are inseparable to make sense, we need to have a
> separate concept (a separate description) of the man and of the shadow.
>
>      In sum:
>
>      (A) Re descriptive separability:
>          Two things are descriptively inseparable if neither can be
>          described without describing the other; they are descriptively
>          separable if either can be described without describing the
>          other. - Almost(?) any two things seem to be separately
>          describable.
>
>      (B) Re distributional separability:
>          Two things are distributionally inseparable if neither can
>          occur without the other; they are distributionally separable if
>          either can occur without the other. - Some things are
>          distributionally separable, other things are not.
>
>      (C) Re the relationship between descriptive and distributional
>          separability:
>          The statement of any distributional claim about two things,
>          whether saying that they are separable or that
>          they are inseparable, presupposes that the two are
>          separately describable.
>
> Let us now apply these points to FORM AND FUNCTION in LANGUAGE.
> The two questions to which we are looking for answers are these:
>
>      (1) Are form and function distributionally separable or
>          or descriptively inseparable?
>      (2) Are form and function descriptively separable or
>          descriptively inseparable?
>
> If the above general considerations are valid, then even just raising
> the first question about distributional separability implies that we are
> talking about two different things when we say "form" and "function"
> (Talmy Givo'n's point again) - that is, that the two are separately
> describable. Thus, if question (1) makes sense both to
> formalists and functionalist to the extent that both have it on their
> agenda to try to answer it, this necessarily implies that both
> formalists and functionalist subscribe to form and function as being
> descriptively separate concepts. Thus, the answer to question (2) about
> the DESCRIPTIVE independence of form and function would need to be in the
> affirmative for linguists of both persuasions.
>
> Acknowledging that form and function are descriptively
> independent leaves question (1) about their DISTRIBUTIONAL independence
> entirely open: the two may or may not be distributionally separable and
> in fact one could design languages where the two are separable and
> languages where they are inseparable. As suggested above, we can seek the
> answer to whether form and function are distributionally independent or
> not in actual languages by checking whether either can occur without the
> other (one-to-zero relationship) and whether forms can occur with
> alternative functions and functions can occur with alternative forms
> (one-to-many relationship). If any of these hold, then the relationship is
> that of separability rather than inseparability.
>
> The separability of form and function (or meaning) for functional objects
> in general can be easily demonstrated. A string of beads has a
> describable form regardless whether it has a meaning (such as when it is
> used as a rosary, with every bead standing for a prayer) or whether it has
> no meaning (such as when it is used as a necklace). Similarly, a function
> can occur without form in toolmaking; for example, the inventor of the
> knife must have had in mind the function before he found the right form to
> perform that function. Similarly, an object with the form of a knife
> can be used for different alternative purposes (to cut things, to pry
> something open, etc.); and each of these functions can be served by
> different alternative forms.
>
> What about language? Is there linguistic form without function? Is there
> function without linguistic form? Are there multiple alternative
> functions for a form? And are there multiple alternative forms for a
> function? It seems to me that the answer to at least three of these four
> questions is affirmative. Linguistic form without function is a string of
> words that do not make sense. The existence of meaning without linguistic
> form appears to be indicated by the "groping-for-words" phenomenon. And
> examples of ambiguity and synonym (IF it exists...) bear out the
> one-to-many relationship between form and meaning and thus the mutual
> detachability of the two. Thus, the answer to question (1) above is that
> form and meaning are not only descriptively but also distributionally
> separable.
>
> What is WRONG with this train of thought? (I am somewhat tentative
> about it since I feel I am treading on "dangerous" grounds - I
> shudder to think how a philosophically-trained person would evaluate it.)
> Exactly which are the assumptions or the logical steps that are false or
> at least questionable? Exactly WHERE would a CONTRARY argument part ways
> with the one above - an argument that would lead us to the opposite
> conclusions which I think Jon Aske and others hold true: that form and
> function are both descriptively and distributionally inseparable?
>
> Edith M.
>
>
>
> ************************************************************************
>                          Edith A. Moravcsik
>                          Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
>                          University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
>                          Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
>                          USA
>
>                          E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
>                          Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
>                                     (414) 332-0141 /home/
>                          Fax: (414) 229-2741
>
>
>
>
>
>


From 3lfyuji at CMICH.EDU  Sun Feb 27 20:30:12 2000
From: 3lfyuji at CMICH.EDU (William C. Spruiell)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 15:30:12 -0500
Subject: Using formalist grammars
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.153012.0500.3LFYUJI@CMICH.EDU>

    There's a crucial difference between arguing that formalist grammars
aren't useful and arguing that *particular* formalist grammars aren't.
The first assertion is, as has been pointed out, fatally flawed;
probably most of us have gotten valuable information from at least one
grammar written within a formalist framework. The second assertion is,
of course true: there are relatively useless formalist grammars
(begging, for the moment, how to define "useless").  The question at
this point is why those particular grammars appear relatively useless,
and whether their condition results from something specifically
formalist or whether it results from a more general "grammar-writing
sin" that everyone, formalists and functionalists alike, are prone to. I
would argue that there are at least three problems with problematical
formalist grammars, and there are at plenty of other grammars that
suffer from at least two of these:

(1) Data bias. We all evaluate and elicit data based on large sets of
hypotheses that we operate on either consciously or unconsciously; these
sets are influence by our theoretical background. So, many formalist
grammars exclude data that would have bearing on things functionalists
are interested in. I'm sure many functionalist grammars exclude data
bearing on things formalists are interested in. One of the marks of a
good grammar is that the author tries to anticipate what the greatest
number of linguists might want to know about, and includes enough
"ground level data" (transcriptions of actual utterances with at least
some description of apparent intended meaning or context) for those with
different interests to evaluate.

(2) Jargon inflation. Both formalists and functionalists use
field-internal jargon that can render a grammar opaque to those
"outside" (especially if this is conjoined with severe data bias). In my
opinion, formalists are worse about this, partly, I think, because of
misguided attempt to rhetorically position the field more towards
computer science, where faculty get paid more and no one cares if your
teaching evals are poor. But functionalist grammars can be just as
jargon-intensive; I don't think anyone would accuse either Tagmemicists
or Systemic-Functionalists of being formalists, but there's a sizable
jargon hurdle to overcome (for those from other backgrounds) before
using their grammars.

(3) Accepting theory-internal constructs as empirical data. We all do
this to some extent of course -- every grammar I've ever read presented
data at least in some spots as "words," even though "words" are products
of analysis. I've encountered some formalist grammars, however, that
seem to feel much freer about including "zero" elements as actual
empirical data than I felt comfortable with.  Lefebvre and Muysken's
1988 examination of Quechua nominalizations, for example, bases part of
an argument on the observation that two sentences (their examples 22 and
23 on p. 174) are different -- even though the sentences are identical
if you remove their null elements. This particular problem, however, is
easily solved if the grammar simply provides an "unanalyzed" sentence
before adding whatever theory-internal constructs are needed on the next
line, and many formalist grammars do this.

In conclusion, I have also found a number of formalist grammars
relatively useless, but part of the reason for that is that I'm not
interested in what they're focussing on and I don't have time to learn
large amounts of jargon internal to a theory which, for other reasons, I
might think is misguided. I can't fault those authors very much for
that, though, since they'd react the same way to any grammar I'd write.
I think we *can,* however, propose sets of principles that any writer of
grammars should follow to make her/his work more accessible to everyone.

_______________________________
William C. Spruiell
Dept. of English Language and Literature
Central Michigan University


From mew1 at SIU.EDU  Sun Feb 27 22:59:05 2000
From: mew1 at SIU.EDU (Margaret E. Winters)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 16:59:05 -0600
Subject: Using formalist grammars
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.165905.0600.MEW1@SIU.EDU>

    There's a crucial difference between arguing that formalist grammars
aren't useful and arguing that *particular* formalist grammars aren't.
The first assertion is, as has been pointed out, fatally flawed;
probably most of us have gotten valuable information from at least one
grammar written within a formalist framework. The second assertion is,
of course true: there are relatively useless formalist grammars
(begging, for the moment, how to define "useless").  The question at
this point is why those particular grammars appear relatively useless,
and whether their condition results from something specifically
formalist or whether it results from a more general "grammar-writing
sin" that everyone, formalists and functionalists alike, are prone to. I
would argue that there are at least three problems with problematical
formalist grammars, and there are at plenty of other grammars that
suffer from at least two of these:

(1) Data bias. We all evaluate and elicit data based on large sets of
hypotheses that we operate on either consciously or unconsciously; these
sets are influence by our theoretical background. So, many formalist
grammars exclude data that would have bearing on things functionalists
are interested in. I'm sure many functionalist grammars exclude data
bearing on things formalists are interested in. One of the marks of a
good grammar is that the author tries to anticipate what the greatest
number of linguists might want to know about, and includes enough
"ground level data" (transcriptions of actual utterances with at least
some description of apparent intended meaning or context) for those with
different interests to evaluate.

(2) Jargon inflation. Both formalists and functionalists use
field-internal jargon that can render a grammar opaque to those
"outside" (especially if this is conjoined with severe data bias). In my
opinion, formalists are worse about this, partly, I think, because of
misguided attempt to rhetorically position the field more towards
computer science, where faculty get paid more and no one cares if your
teaching evals are poor. But functionalist grammars can be just as
jargon-intensive; I don't think anyone would accuse either Tagmemicists
or Systemic-Functionalists of being formalists, but there's a sizable
jargon hurdle to overcome (for those from other backgrounds) before
using their grammars.

(3) Accepting theory-internal constructs as empirical data. We all do
this to some extent of course -- every grammar I've ever read presented
data at least in some spots as "words," even though "words" are products
of analysis. I've encountered some formalist grammars, however, that
seem to feel much freer about including "zero" elements as actual
empirical data than I felt comfortable with.  Lefebvre and Muysken's
1988 examination of Quechua nominalizations, for example, bases part of
an argument on the observation that two sentences (their examples 22 and
23 on p. 174) are different -- even though the sentences are identical
if you remove their null elements. This particular problem, however, is
easily solved if the grammar simply provides an "unanalyzed" sentence
before adding whatever theory-internal constructs are needed on the next
line, and many formalist grammars do this.

In conclusion, I have also found a number of formalist grammars
relatively useless, but part of the reason for that is that I'm not
interested in what they're focussing on and I don't have time to learn
large amounts of jargon internal to a theory which, for other reasons, I
might think is misguided. I can't fault those authors very much for
that, though, since they'd react the same way to any grammar I'd write.
I think we *can,* however, propose sets of principles that any writer of
grammars should follow to make her/his work more accessible to everyone.

_______________________________
William C. Spruiell
Dept. of English Language and Literature
Central Michigan University

-----------------------
Dr. Margaret E. Winters
Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL  62901-4305

tel: (618) 453-5744
fax: (618) 453-1478
e-mail:  mew1 at siu.edu


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Mon Feb 28 08:46:47 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:46:47 +0200
Subject: various topics
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.104647.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Regarding Diego's point:

Let me try to put this as diplomatically as I am capable while still making my
basic point.

It is certainly true that there are cases of empirically irresponsibility
among functionalists. But well-known cases such as you have cited have a
remarkable tendency to be ultimately traceable to the claims of an
extremely limited number of individuals working within the framework of
functionalism (an EXTREMELY limited number) whose claims are, shall we say,
accepted by their disciples without perhaps receiving the degree of careful
and critical scrutiny which they might receive had they been advanced by
researchers with less, shall we say, verve.

They are not the norm. In formal linguistics, they are the norm (though my
no means universal).

Incidentally, Paz Naylor is a woman.

John Myhill


FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu




>On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, John Myhill wrote:
>
>> In discussions between formal linguists, it is routine for
>> the participants to refer to 'facts' about 'exotic languages' which no one
>> present knows and which no one present knows of a responsible work on, with
>> no one questioning this as potentially problematic; it is assumed that if
>> it is in print, it's true. In discussions between functional linguists,
>> this happens only extremely rarely. If a formalist is careful about data
>> from 'exotic' languages, it is because s/he personally believes that this
>> is the responsible thing to do. If a functionalist is careful about such
>> data, it is because of this but also because s/he is afraid of getting
>> shown up or getting a bad reputation; you just can't get away with as much.
>
>
>Uff!  That is a rather challengeable "slip of the fingers (on the
>keyboard)". This is the sort of black-and-white judgements that have
>hindered understanding in this discussion, as Givon pointed out yesterday.
>
>At least two counterexamples can be cited that call for a softening of the
>above statement: One is the much cited "impersonal, non-promotional
>passive" of Spanish, which has given rise to the most fantastic theories
>on the evolution of "passives", simply by paraphrasing traditional or
>traditionally tainted grammars. The other is the celebrated "ergativity"
>for some, "voice" for others, nature of Tagalog and sister languages,
>analyses that always leak; with the most notable exception of one proposed
>not precisely in the context of typological comparison, but from the
>insights of a native speaker, who apparently did not feel pressed by any
>straitjacket forcing him to abide to what was/is in the market:
>
>Naylor, Paz-Buenaventura. 1995. Subject, topic and Tagalog syntax. In:
>        Bennet, D. et al. 161-201. Object, Voice, and Ergativity.
>        University of London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
>
>This paper is so nice to read, especially because it puts a categorical
>end to the phantasies existing on Tagalog syntax.
>
>In view of the two counterexamples cited (and I'm sure people can come up
>with more), John's above claim needs mending. I would suggest first of all
>to speak in terms of tendencies rather than in terms of "discreet"
>categories (the latter being an antifunctional precept).  Second, the
>tendency that can be linked to the folks on the other sidewalk is that the
>data are secondary to the model, while on our sidewalk the ***TENDENCY***
>is to let the data speak first and then try to come up with some
>explanation that need not be constrained by the structural configuration
>of the phenomenon dealt with.  In other words, Chomskians (which is what
>most people on this list have in mind when they say "formalists") are
>deductive (a bit too much for some), while functionalists tend to be
>inductive. The professional irresponsibilities incurred by either group
>are not intrinsec to the approach, they simply reveal how lazy a linguist
>can be when it comes to testing a retesting.
>
>J. Diego Quesada
>University of Toronto


From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK  Mon Feb 28 10:36:22 2000
From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:36:22 +0000
Subject: form and function
In-Reply-To: <200002271701.LAA27791@consulting.is.rice.edu>
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.103622.0000.DICK@LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK>

Dear Michael (Barlow) and Funknet,
Thanks for the two messages about agreement, reacting to my use of
adjective-noun agreement as an example of a purely formal relationship. I
think you may well be right, and agreement isn't anything like as good an
example as I thought it was.

>There may be relations which, for all intents and purposes, may count as
>purely formal. Here I am simply taking issue with Dicks's assumption (and the
>assumption of many people) that agreement is clearly formal in the sense
>that agreement can best be described by saying that form of the agreement
>target depends on the morphosyntactic form of the agreement source. If you
>want to account for a range of agreement phenomena in a language (even
>English), then such an approach breaks down.
## Yes, I certainly agree that in some cases it's clearly driven by
meaning, so we have to decide for each case how best to treat it. As a
matter of fact I've recently written a paper on English Subject-Verb
Agreement in which I've argued against the traditional agreement story in
terms of morphosyntactic features of person and number (English Lang and
Linguistics 3, 1999, 173-207).

>
>If agreement morphemes exert themselves in Quirk-style examples such as "that
>two weeks", "England collapse" "rain and mist is expected", "two is too many"
>"the french fries at table 10 is" etc., then are we assume that something
>completely different is occurring in the above examples compared to in "those
>two weeks" "England collapses" etc.
## Yes, precisely. These examples are strong evidence against a purely
formal account.


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/home.htm


From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK  Mon Feb 28 10:48:20 2000
From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:48:20 +0000
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <l03102800b4dbe2b1611f@[129.128.237.16]>
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.104820.0000.DICK@LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK>

Thanks to Greg Thomson for this, which I found helpful. Just for the record
(and a bit late), I'd like to say that I agree with him. What I meant to
say in my earlier postings, but didn't, was that I see the difference
between 'formal grammar' and 'functional grammar' as simply a matter of
focus, where we decide to put our research effort. We all pay attention to
both form and function in defining the structures we recognise - that's
what linguistic 'structure' is, as we've all recognised since Saussure -
and that includes extralinguistic functions (whether to do with semantics,
pragmatics, discourse, sociolinguistics or processing). Where we differ is
the kind of analysis we enjoy doing and think we do well; but not
surprisingly, perhaps, there's a certain tendency to be a bit
over-enthusiastic about our own favourite area, which I suspect we could
all find examples of in our own work.

     Dick

>Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
>aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
>functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
>utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
>functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
>keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
>example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
>particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
>were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
>not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
>sense)?
>
>Greg Thomson


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/home.htm


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Mon Feb 28 11:43:46 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 08:43:46 -0300
Subject: formal/functional: a commercial
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.084346.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Responding partially to Dick Hudson, partially to myself:

There is a serious problem, however, with formal accounts, especially
Chomskyan, though, which renders the issue of what to study a bit more
serious than 'where to put our research effort', as Dick puts it. This
will not be news to many readers of this list, but the light has just
come on for me, so let me say how it did.

The problem is just this: Formal linguistics, at least of the straight
Chomskyan pedigree, has no intensionally definable object of study. It
claims to study "I-Language". But what is I-Language, really? It is just
grammar. But what kind of grammar? It is the grammar of an individual
speaker, abstracting away from historical, functional, and sociological
properties of that grammar. However, how can we know, a priori, what
aspects of the grammar fall into these three categories? The answer is,
we cannot. Therefore, one cannot define the object of the study of
I-Language grammars a priori. There are no properties which can pick it
out except, perhaps (and I doubt this for most cases) empirical
properties. But if this is so, then I-Language can only be defined
extensionally. What would that mean? It would mean that I-Language must
be reduced to the grammar of a set of sentences. Which? Those the
researcher chooses to study. What happens if these sentences turn out to
be products of functional, historical, or sociological forces? Move on
to another set of sentences.

I have ceased to be sanguine about the possibility of building an
interesting research program on such an elusive object of study.

Functionalists do a little bit better. They are willing to study
everything related to language. One can give an intensional definition
of this. But it would be a bit, uh, broad.

Neither of these two approaches has a lot to cheer about when it comes
to define what it is studying. But I think functionalism does better.

In any case, although I still am working on some formalist phonology,
this is why, more and more I have come to believe that the best activity
for the linguist to engage in is writing grammars and *from these
efforts* offering 'explanations' of what we find important, puzzling, or
just interesting. And this is why I have come to be convinced, finally,
that any serious theory of grammar must allow non-formal information to
be part of its architecture. Semantics and pragmatics must be causally
implicated in the theoretical constructs of a good theory of grammar.
Yet, at the same time, formalist discoveries must be accounted for. The
most important empirical findings of formal grammar were made in 1967 by
Ross, following a 1964 lead of Chomsky's: the island-constraints.

Any theory of grammar ought to be able to handle these, yet avoid the
problems I have just mentioned about the object of study. I only know of
one theory of grammar that meets this requirement, RRG. So it is my
growing disquiet with the disappearing object of study of formal
grammars, what I call in a paper in progress, "The shrinking Chomskyan
corner", coupled with my concern for accounting for the semantics,
structure, and pragmatics of natural language that have led me to RRG as
the best port in the storm.

On the other hand, none of this changes my belief that we ought to all
be asking for NSF money to get into the field and describe languages.

End of commercial.

What I would like to hear (and this isn't, I know, the best list on
which to pose the question) is if anyone can think of how one might go
about defining the object of study for a formal theory.

Dan Everett


From iadimly at USC.ES  Mon Feb 28 13:50:30 2000
From: iadimly at USC.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Mar=EDa_de_los_=C1ngeles_G=F3mez?=)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 14:50:30 +0100
Subject: TITLES
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.145030.0100.IADIMLY@USC.ES>

I would appreciate some bibliographic information
on the following research field:
TITLES: ASPECTS OF COHERENCE, COHESION AND POINT OF VIEW.
Thank you in advance

Dr María Ángeles Gómez-González
Department of English Philology
Facultade de Filoloxia
University of Santiago de Compostela
Avda. de Castelao, s/n
E-15704 Compostela.  Spain
Fax.: 981-574646
Tel: 981-563100 Ext.: 11856
email: iadimly at usc.es


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Mon Feb 28 14:35:36 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 08:35:36 -0600
Subject: response to a small point
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.083536.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

This is in response to a question by John Myhill. He asked whether I
thought Tom Givo'n had correctly paraphrased my point that statements
about form presupposed the acknowledgment of the existence of form. Yes,
he did.

Edith


   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From clements at INDIANA.EDU  Mon Feb 28 21:34:41 2000
From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 15:34:41 -0600
Subject: Stats on Linguistic Groups
In-Reply-To: <38BA5F72.4BF294B9@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.153441.0600.CLEMENTS@INDIANA.EDU>

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 17:31:51 +0800
From: Linguistic Studies <linguistic.studies at insead.edu.sg>

Subject: Stats on Linguistic Groups

 In a recent monograph on linguistic cultures I have published
over 130,000 stats covering 460+ language groups worldwide
(demographics, economics, geography, etc.).*  I have recently
created a spreadsheet of the database which is complementary to
researchers/scholars.  If you or a colleague might find this useful
for your research, please let me know and I can send you a zip or XLS file
of the data.

Yours,

Phil Parker
Professor of Economics and International Studies
UCSD & INSEAD

*Source: Parker, Philip M., Linguistic Cultures of the World: A Statistical
Reference, Greenwood Press, 1997.





J. Clancy Clements
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese
Ballantine Hall 844 / IU
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
Tel. (812) 855-6141
Fax: (812) 855-4526


From matmies at ling.helsinki.fi  Tue Feb 29 10:41:45 2000
From: matmies at ling.helsinki.fi (Matti Miestamo)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:41:45 +0200
Subject: New Book: The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.124145.0200.MATMIES@LING.HELSINKI.FI>

                 *** New book ***

The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries
                         by
          Even Hovdhaugen, University of Oslo
         Fred Karlsson, University of Helsinki
        Carol Henriksen, University of Roskilde
           Bengt Sigurd, University of Lund

Publisher: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki

            appeared on February 28, 2000

Hardback, 672 pages.
Price: 130 FIM (162 DKK, 175 NOK, 185 SEK, 22 euros, 21 USD) + postage.

At http://www.ling.Helsinki.FI/~fkarlsso/nordhist.htm
you find the Preface and Table of Contents of the book
as well as a presentation of the authors.

Mail orders to: Bookstore Tiedekirja, Mariankatu 5, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland
FAX orders to: +358 9 635 017
E-mail orders: tiedekirja at tsv.fi
Further information:
please call the Bookstore at +358 9 635177,
or Fred Karlsson at +358 9 19123512 (fkarlsso at ling.helsinki.fi)


From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE  Tue Feb 29 12:42:47 2000
From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:42:47 +0100
Subject: Sprachbund and A-reflexives
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.134247.0100.W.SCHULZE@LRZ.UNIMUENCHEN.DE>

Dan is [w]ondering aloud:

> Caucasian languages, Turkish, Farsi... and Nepali. Is there a language
> contact/Sprachbund-type connection here?

I don't think that A-reflexives (or reflexives in subject position) in
the languages you mentioned have something to do with sprachbund
phenomena. Sure, we have some hints at a certain communcative style that
share in Farsi, Turkish, and some esp. southeast Caucasian languages.
This 'style' is based on loan words, chalques populaires, and a
restricted number of phenomena in morphsyntax as well as in pragmatics
(another important feature may be sentence intonation). As for
A-reflexives, we cannot refer to this technique neither in the sense of
a specific inter-communicative style nor to a sprachbund at least with
respect to the Caucasus/Turkey/Iran etc. connection [note that the
notion of 'sprachbund' is not applicable for the Caucasian languages,
see Kevin Tuite' excellent article in Lingua 1999 (108,1):-1-29 ('The
myth of the Caucasian Sprachbund: The case of ergativity")].

Just in those 'Caucasian' areas that have the closest contact with
Iranian and Turkic languages (i.e., in Southeast Caucasian (Lezgian)) we
do not find cataphoric A-reflexives that have a referential 'postcedent'
in O-function (the type: 'REFL(i):A (PRO)NOUN(i):O VERB). I claimed in
in earlier posting that A-reflexivization is perhaps based on (and
restricted to?) de-nominal reflexives (such as body-part terms) which
maintain parts of their nominal (and referential?) semantics in
A-function. This is true for Georgian _tavi_ ('head'), but not for the
South East Caucasian reflexives (*_VchwV_ or something the like).
Persian _xod_ stems from the IE reflexive *su- (Old Persian _uva:-_,
Avesta xvato:, Pehlevi _xvat(i:h)_, Sanskrit _svátas_ etc.), Turkish
_kendi_ is nothing but a reflexives pronoun already in Old Turkish
(_kendü_ in the sense of '-self', cf. _ol kendü aidy_ 'he himself said'
etc.). I did not check the history of Nepali _aaphii_ but my guess it
that it has another grammaticalization background. To my knowledge
neither _kendi_ nor _xod_ allow A-reflexivization with co-referential
'postcedent'...

That fact that many of the languages in question allow A-reflexives (as
well as S-reflexives) in the sense of emphatic pronouns (Udi _ich
tanesa_ 'self:ABS go:3SG:PRES' '(s)he go(es)') [no 'postcedent' in
O-function] may belong to that kind of (polite/emphatic) communicative
style that I alluded to above...

Hence, sorry to say: No sprachbund phenomenon at all.

Wolfgang

*****************************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
*****************************


From wolters at IKP.UNI-BONN.DE  Tue Feb 29 17:19:15 2000
From: wolters at IKP.UNI-BONN.DE (Maria Wolters)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:19:15 +0100
Subject: English vs. Spanish vs. Italian pronouns
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.181915.0100.WOLTERS@IKP.UNIBONN.DE>

Dear list,

I am looking for contrastive functional
studies of the Spanish and Italian pronoun
system as compared to English stressed
vs. unstressed pronouns.

I have a set of discourses that were
previously used in a production experiment
conducted by David Beaver and myself,
and I'm wondering how those items
would fare if they were to be translated into
Spanish or Italian, which pronouns speakers
would use (if any).

In order to be able to interpret the results from
our informants from a functional perspective,
I would like to know about relevant literature
from the field. (Since there is no particularly
strong functionalist community at my university,
I need to resort to the Net).

I will post a summary of responses to the list.

Thank you very much in advance for your help,

Maria Wolters
(wolters at ikp.uni-bonn.de)

(P.S.: In case anybody is wondering about the background of this study:
I'm interested in prosodic correlates of givenness, more
specifically discourse referent information status.
Hence the interest in those odd animals, the "stressed pronouns" ...)


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Tue Feb 29 17:02:48 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:02:48 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.110248.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

This is in response to Jon Aske's interesting message on form and
function. I agree with each of his four main points.

First, Jon pointed out that the description of function should not be
left out of integral accounts of functional objects since function serves
(or may serve) to explain form, such as in the case of knives.
I believe that this point is uncontroversial: both functionalists and
formalists would subscribe to it, with the exception that
functionalists believe that MORE of form is explainable in terms of
meaning than formalists do.

Jon's second point is that, once function is included in descriptions
of functional objects, the description of function should not be seen as
secondary to that of form - a kind of add-on, or afterthought. I agree
that function should not be seen as second to form _in significance_.
As far as _logical_ ranking is concerned, it depends on what exactly
one wants to do. Here are two scenarios:

   (a) If the immediate goal is to _describe the relationship between form
and function_, then form and function are logically on a par - that is,
neither is secondary to the other: the descriptions of both are logically
primary to (i.e., presupposed by) statements about the relationship
between the two.

   (b) If the goal is to _explain form in terms of function_, then
function is logically secondary to form since form needs to be described
before any explanation can be looked for it. But "logically secondary"
does not mean "second in importance".

Thirdly, Jon argued that there was no reason to describe form separately
from function, rather than describing the two together, without a clear
separation of the two concepts. I basically agree on this, too:
traditional descriptive grammars often proceed in this manner. Describing
form and function as two distinct entities is imperative ONLY if our goal
is to study the relationships between the two; such as how form conveys
meaning and how meaning explains form. If the goal of linguistic
description is formulated differently so that "form" and "function" do not
figure as terms, then separate descriptions of form and meaning are not
called for.

I think, however, that one can argue for the usefulness of accounting for
meaning-form relations in language chosen as the goal of descriptive
linguistics. First, there are some interesting linguistic patterns that we
could not talk about otherwise. Such are intra-language and cross-language
synonymy and ambiguity and the existence of formally well-formed but
semantically ill-formed sentences, or formally ill-formed but semantically
well-formed ones. Second, by looking at sentences as relating form
and meaning, we also manage to link language to many extralinguistic
phenomena. These  include other semiotic objects which, by definition,
provide a link between some form and some meaning (such as body language,
road signs etc.). More broadly, they also include things that share form
properties with language even if there is no meaning attached (such as any
temporal activity whether it conveys meaning or not; or for that matter,
any complex object that consists of classifiable parts).

Fourthly, Jon raised the question of why there should be different people
to describe form and to describe function. As he said, if you describe
form, why would you stop there and leave "the interesting stuff" to
others? I'd say linguists should be free to focus on one or more aspects
of the total endeavor.

Edith



   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From nuyts at UIA.UA.AC.BE  Tue Feb  1 15:26:55 2000
From: nuyts at UIA.UA.AC.BE (Jan.Nuyts)
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 16:26:55 +0100
Subject: International Conference on Cognitive Typology website
Message-ID: <TUE.1.FEB.2000.162655.0100.NUYTS@UIA.UA.AC.BE>

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 'COGNITIVE TYPOLOGY'
April 12-14, 2000
University of Antwerp (UIA), Belgium

All information pertaining to the conference is available at:
http://www.ufsia.ac.be/cgct

Jan Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera

                               *****
Jan Nuyts                                       phone: 32/3/820.27.73
University of Antwerp                           fax: 32/3/820.27.62
Linguistics                                     email: nuyts at uia.ua.ac.be
Universiteitsplein 1
B-2610 Wilrijk - Belgium


From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU  Wed Feb  2 19:56:26 2000
From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike Gildea)
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 13:56:26 -0600
Subject: LSA Bulletin
Message-ID: <WED.2.FEB.2000.135626.0600.SPIKEG@OWLNET.RICE.EDU>

>Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 14:24:22 -0500
>From: LSA <lsa at lsadc.org>
>
>The December 1999 issue of the LSA Bulletin is now available on the LSA web
>site:  www.lsadc.org
>


From ph1u at ANDREW.CMU.EDU  Thu Feb  3 18:59:32 2000
From: ph1u at ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Paul J Hopper)
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 13:59:32 -0500
Subject: sad news (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.3.FEB.2000.135932.0500.PH1U@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 09:52:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Elizabeth Traugott <traugott at csli.Stanford.EDU>
To: hopper <ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu>, sathomps at humanitas.ucsb.edu,
    chafe at humanitas.ucsb.edu, mithin at humanitas.ucsb.edu,
    lsa <lsa at lsadc.org>, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>,
    Joan Bresnan <bresnan at csli.stanford.edu>,
    Paul Kiparsky <kiparsky at csli.stanford.edu>
Cc: Elizabeth Traugott <traugott at csli.stanford.edu>
Subject: sad news

Dear friends,
Suzanne Fleischman died last night, Wed. Feb 2nd, of complications
associated with chemotherapy for leukemia, at the age of 50.
As you know she was a pioneer in grammaticalization, historical
discourse analysis, historical narratology, orality and literacy,
and more recently, medical discourse.  She will be sorely missed.
Plans for a celebration of her life are pending.
Elizabeth


From maxstam at bas.bg  Tue Feb  8 08:02:20 2000
From: maxstam at bas.bg (maxstam)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:02:20 +0200
Subject: evolution of language and brain conference
Message-ID: <TUE.8.FEB.2000.100220.0200.>

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

Title: "Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language".

Hosted by Hanse Institute for Advanced Study
Delmenhorst, GERMANY

Primary organizers:
Vittorio Gallese (University of Parma) and Maxim Stamenov (Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences)


Theme:
The aim of this conference will be to bring together scholars from
several disciplines and fields of study for discussion of some of the
basic problems and perspectives related to the discovery of a new class
of neurons in the monkey premotor cortex ? mirror neurons.
 The point of this discovery is that it shed new light on the neural
correlate of the social sharedness of intentions and actions. The action
of mirror neurons (MNs) seems to provide a bridge and mapping between
one's own behavioral actions (and their potential monitoring) with the
observed actions of other individuals. The consequences of this
discovery can have implications for our understanding of animal
communication and cognition and human cognition and consciousness and
the way of their genetic inheritance and implementation in the brain.
 The discovery of MNs may provide a new, although still sketchy,
neurobiological basis to account for the emergence of language (cf. G.
Rizzolatti & M. Arbib. 1998. "Language within Our Grasp". Trends in
Neurosciences 21:188-194, for orientation). This assumption is founded
on the following premises:

(a) Language skill has emerged through evolution by means of a process
of preadaptation: specific behaviors and the nervous structures
supporting them, originally selected for other purposes, acquire new
functions that side and eventually supersede the previous one;
(b) A continuity can be traced between language skill and pre-language
brachio-manual behaviors, being the primate premotor cortex the common
playground of this evolutionary continuity;
(c) The specialization for language of human Broca's region derives from
an ancient mechanism, the mirror system, originally devised for action
understanding.

The orientation of organizers is to bring together scholars interested
in the co-evolution of language, cognition, and consciousness along the
following lines, among others:

(i) mirror neurons, the brain's microstructure and the specificity of
their performance in monkeys, primates and humans in supporting
high-level cognitive processing;
(ii) the macrostructure of the brain and its evolution from monkeys to
primates to man in the development of specific cognitive functions;
(iii) the philogenetic and ontogenetic links between behavioral action,
gesture, and communicative verbal action in the development of the
language faculty.

Conference format
The conference will host 15 invited speakers. There are 24 slots
available for oral presentations and 30 slots for poster presentations.
Submissions are invited for selection for oral papers (with 20 min.
presentation time and 10 min. discussion time), as well as for poster
presentations. Unless explicitly specified, submitted abstracts will be
considered for both oral and poster presentation. Posters will be
displayed during the whole duration of the meeting and a special session
of the conference will be dedicated to their discussion.
 The invited speakers who already confirmed their participation are
(please note that the titles of their talks are preliminary ones):

Harold BEKKERING (Munich): "The Observation and Execution of Finger and
Mouth Movements";
Stein BRATEN (Oslo): "Altercentric Perception and Participation: Infant
and adult dialogue partners";
Colin BROWN (Nijmegen): "Brain-Imaging Studies of Language Comprehension
and Production: A focus on Broca's region";
Luciano FADIGA (Parma): tba;
Leo FOGASSI (Parma): "The Neural Correlates of Action Understanding in
Nonhuman Primates";
Marc JEANNEROD (Lyon): tba;
Charles LI (Santa Barbara) & Jean-Marie HOMBERT (Lyon): "The
Evolutionary Origin of Language: A linguistic perspective";
Michael PETRIDES (Montreal); tba;
Daniel POVINELLI (New Iberia, LA): "Evolution of Cognitive Diversity";
Giacomo RIZZOLATTI (Parma): "Action Understanding in Humans";
Gerhard ROTH (Bremen): "Is the Human Brain Unique?";
Sue SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH (Atlanta, GA): "Mirror Neurons and Interspecies
Intersubjectivity";
Maxim STAMENOV (Sofia): "Human Verbal Communication as Monitored Joint
Action";
Michael STUDDERT-KENNEDY (New Haven, CT): "Imitation and Evolution of
Particulate Speech";
Edda WEIGAND (Muenster): "Constitutive Features of Human Dialogical
Interaction";

 In addition to regular program, the conference will feature three
evening discussions dealing with the problems of:

(1) the evolution of the brain from monkeys to humans (neuroscience
perspective);
(2) the co-evolution of executive functions and cognitive abilities from
monkeys to humans (cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience
perspective); and
(3) the evolution of communication and language (the perspective of the
language sciences).

Abstract submission:
Abstracts of 500 words are requested by March 15, 2000 both for oral
presentations and posters. The abstracts should be sent preferably by
e-mail (in ASCII) to:

hardopo at uni-bremen.de (Dr. Mechthild Harders-Opolka);
gallese at ipruniv.cce.unipr.it (Dr. Vittorio Gallese);
maxstam at bas.bg (Dr. Maxim Stamenov).

In case an author prefers to send the abstract in hard copy, three
copies of it should be sent to Dr. Mechthild Harders-Opolka, Hanse
Institute for Advanced Study, Lehmkuhlenbusch 4, D-27753 Delmenhorst,
GERMANY.

Publication policy:
The organizers intend to publish a collective volume with selected
contributions to the conference after the meeting takes place.


Important information:

Deadline for abstract submission: March 15, 2000;

Confirmation of acceptance of selected papers: April 01, 2000;

Time of the conference: July 05-08, 2000;

Conference site: Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Lehmkuhlenbusch 4,
D-27753 Delmenhorst, GERMANY;

Conference fee: DM150,-; DM100,- for students;

Questions and inquiries about the program: maxstam at bas.bg (Maxim
Stamenov);

Questions and inquiries about local organization, housing, etc.:
hardopo at uni-bremen.de (Dr. Mechthild Harders-Opolka).


From mariel at DELLNET.COM  Tue Feb  8 22:49:36 2000
From: mariel at DELLNET.COM (Mira Ariel)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:49:36 -0800
Subject: CSDL 2000 Conference - 2nd CALL - EXTENDED DEADLINE
Message-ID: <TUE.8.FEB.2000.144936.0800.MARIEL@DELLNET.COM>

CSDL 2000 -- 2nd CALL FOR ABSTRACTS -- EXTENDED DEADLINE
(Apologies for cross-postings)

The 5th conference on
"CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE, and LANGUAGE"

will be held on May 11-14, 2000, at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

The deadline for abstracts has been extended to March 1.

The following invited speakers will speak at the conference:

    Kathryn BOCK (Illinois)
    Wallace CHAFE (Santa Barbara)
    Dedre GENTNER (Northwestern)
    Rachel GIORA (Tel Aviv)
    George LAKOFF (Berkeley)
    Ron LANGACKER (San Diego)
    Charles LI (Santa Barbara)
    Sandra THOMPSON (Santa Barbara)
    Mark Turner (Maryland)

The conference is sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of
Discourse, Cognitive Science Program, Department of Linguistics, Department
of Psychology, and Department of Geography.

Papers in all areas of cognitive linguistics and related research areas are
welcome, including research on conceptual structure, conceptual operations,
grammar, meaning, cognitive processing, acquisition, language use, discourse
function, and other issues. Papers are especially encouraged bearing on, but
not limited to, the special conference themes of:

    Metaphor
    Analogy
    Irony
    Space
    Grammar and Cognition
    Discourse and Cognition
    Learning and Acquisition
    Interactionally Distributed Cognition
    Language in Interaction
    Usage-Based Models
    Cognition, Gesture, and Sign
    Cognitive Issues in Politics and Literature

TALKS will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be two to three parallel sessions of regular papers, plus plenary
lectures.

ABSTRACTS are due March 1, 2000. An anonymous abstract of 500 words should
be submitted via email, preferably as a Word attachment, to Patricia Clancy
at pclancy at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Abstracts should make a clear and interesting point, and indicate the kind
of arguments and evidence that will be given in support of it.

Although the body of the abstract should not identify the author, the
following contact information should be included at the top of the email
message (so it can be removed before it is sent to reviewers):

    Name
    Institution
    Email address
    Mailing address
    Telephone

THEME SESSIONS are encouraged. A theme session is organized by an individual
and submitted as a unit. It treats a unified idea or topic, whether from
similar or diverse viewpoints. The topic may correspond to one of the
conference themes, or to another theme of interest. Theme sessions will
normally include 3 or 4 papers, plus a brief introduction. For each
individual paper included in a theme session, a regular abstract should be
submitted. In addition, one general abstract for the session itself should
be submitted, explaining the goals and rationale of the session, and listing
each paper to be included. The form of the abstract for the theme session,
and for each included paper, is the same as that for regular abstracts.
Likewise, the deadline date, review criteria, and review process are
identical to those for regular abstracts.

Of course, individual papers (not part of a theme session) are equally
welcome.

NOTIFICATION of acceptance will be given by March 31.

REGISTRATION for the conference will be at the following rates. (Early
registration is up until April 15, 2000.)
    General registration, early: $50
    General registration, late: $70
    Student registration, early: $30
    Student registration, late: $50
    Banquet at Faculty Club: $25
Payment must be made in the form of a check in US dollars, drawn on a US
bank.

LODGING AND TRANSPORTATION Additional information about special conference
discount rate lodging, transportation, etc. will be sent to people when they
register.

For additional information contact John Du Bois at
dubois at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Or consult our WEB SITE at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/CSDL/CSDL.htm



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000208/95e587f2/attachment.htm>

From mariel at DELLNET.COM  Tue Feb  8 23:13:49 2000
From: mariel at DELLNET.COM (Mira Ariel)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:13:49 -0800
Subject: CSDL 2000 -- 2nd CALL FOR ABSTRACTS -- EXTENDED DEADLINE
Message-ID: <TUE.8.FEB.2000.151349.0800.MARIEL@DELLNET.COM>

CSDL 2000 -- 2nd CALL FOR ABSTRACTS -- EXTENDED DEADLINE
(Apologies for cross-postings)

The 5th conference on
"CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE, and LANGUAGE"

will be held on May 11-14, 2000, at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

The deadline for abstracts has been extended to March 1.

The following invited speakers will speak at the conference:

    Kathryn BOCK (Illinois)
    Wallace CHAFE (Santa Barbara)
    Dedre GENTNER (Northwestern)
    Rachel GIORA (Tel Aviv)
    George LAKOFF (Berkeley)
    Ron LANGACKER (San Diego)
    Charles LI (Santa Barbara)
    Sandra THOMPSON (Santa Barbara)
    Mark TURNER (Maryland)

The conference is sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of
Discourse, Cognitive Science Program, Department of Linguistics, Department
of Psychology, and Department of Geography.

Papers in all areas of cognitive linguistics and related research areas are
welcome, including research on conceptual structure, conceptual operations,
grammar, meaning, cognitive processing, acquisition, language use, discourse
function, and other issues. Papers are especially encouraged bearing on, but
not limited to, the special conference themes of:

    Metaphor
    Analogy
    Irony
    Space
    Grammar and Cognition
    Discourse and Cognition
    Learning and Acquisition
    Interactionally Distributed Cognition
    Language in Interaction
    Usage-Based Models
    Cognition, Gesture, and Sign
    Cognitive Issues in Politics and Literature

TALKS will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be two to three parallel sessions of regular papers, plus plenary
lectures.

ABSTRACTS are due March 1, 2000. An anonymous abstract of 500 words should
be submitted via email, preferably as a Word attachment, to Patricia Clancy
at pclancy at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Abstracts should make a clear and interesting point, and indicate the kind
of arguments and evidence that will be given in support of it.

Although the body of the abstract should not identify the author, the
following contact information should be included at the top of the email
message (so it can be removed before it is sent to reviewers):

    Name
    Institution
    Email address
    Mailing address
    Telephone

THEME SESSIONS are encouraged. A theme session is organized by an individual
and submitted as a unit. It treats a unified idea or topic, whether from
similar or diverse viewpoints. The topic may correspond to one of the
conference themes, or to another theme of interest. Theme sessions will
normally include 3 or 4 papers, plus a brief introduction. For each
individual paper included in a theme session, a regular abstract should be
submitted. In addition, one general abstract for the session itself should
be submitted, explaining the goals and rationale of the session, and listing
each paper to be included. The form of the abstract for the theme session,
and for each included paper, is the same as that for regular abstracts.
Likewise, the deadline date, review criteria, and review process are
identical to those for regular abstracts.

Of course, individual papers (not part of a theme session) are equally
welcome.

NOTIFICATION of acceptance will be given by March 31.

REGISTRATION for the conference will be at the following rates. (Early
registration is up until April 15, 2000.)
    General registration, early: $50
    General registration, late: $70
    Student registration, early: $30
    Student registration, late: $50
    Banquet at Faculty Club: $25
Payment must be made in the form of a check in US dollars, drawn on a US
bank.

LODGING AND TRANSPORTATION Additional information about special conference
discount rate lodging, transportation, etc. will be sent to people when they
register.

For additional information contact John Du Bois at
dubois at humanitas.ucsb.edu.

Or consult our WEB SITE at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/CSDL/CSDL.htm


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Wed Feb  9 14:47:40 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 15:47:40 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.9.FEB.2000.154740.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

    Dear colleagues,

I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
allowing reflexives in subject position.

My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization

(1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
    president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
          "The president saved himself"

allows subject reflexives as well:

(2) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

The sentence is ambiguous between the (a) and (b) readings. It can have
either of them but not both at the same time.

The reflexive phrase in (2) has an ergative case marker and functions as
subject just like as the ergative noun phrase in (3):

(3) mcvel-ma       ixsna      president-i
   guard-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
      "The guard saved the president"

It has to be noted that in (2) there are other meanings (emphatic and
non-volitional) more central than reflexive one. Of course, there is a
reflexive semantics there in (2) but normally no one pronounces it when one
needs to express only reflexive meaning. For expressing reflexivity (1) is
quite all right.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

    Nino Amiridze


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Wed Feb  9 15:02:17 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 16:02:17 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.9.FEB.2000.160217.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

>Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 15:47:40 +0100
>To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU
>From: Nino Amiridze <Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl>
>Subject: reflexives in subject position
>
>    Dear colleagues,
>
>I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
allowing reflexives in subject position.
>
>My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization
>
>(1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
>    president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
>          "The president saved himself"
>
>allows subject reflexives as well:
>
>(2) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
>   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
>(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible
for saving him" (emphatic reading);
>(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).
>
>The sentence is ambiguous between the (a) and (b) readings. It can have
either of them but not both at the same time.
>
>The reflexive phrase in (2) has an ergative case marker and functions as
subject just like as the ergative noun phrase in (3):
>
>(3) mcvel-ma       ixsna      president-i
>   guard-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
>      "The guard saved the president"
>
>It has to be noted that in (2) there are other meanings (emphatic and
non-volitional) more central than reflexive one. Of course, there is a
reflexive semantics there in (2) but normally no one pronounces it when one
needs to express only reflexive meaning. For expressing reflexivity (1) is
quite all right.
>
>Thank you very much.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>    Nino Amiridze
>


From sepkit at UTU.FI  Thu Feb 10 06:13:07 2000
From: sepkit at UTU.FI (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Seppo_Kittil=E4?=)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 08:13:07 +0200
Subject: Die vs. kill
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.081307.0200.SEPKIT@UTU.FI>

Dear colleagues,

could anyone give me an example of a language where 'die' derives from
'kill'. I?m searching for a language where the verb 'kill' is the
unmarked one and 'die' is derived from it, for example, by adding some
kind of detransitivizing affix to the verb 'kill'. I have only found
languages in which the derivation is from 'die' to 'kill', e.g.,
Turkish:

Hasan   ?l-d?
H.NOM   die-PAST
"Hasan died"

Ali     Hasan-i  ?l-d?r-d?
A.NOM   H.-ACC   die-CAUS-PAST
"Ali killed Hasan"

I?m very grateful for all the help I can get,

best wishes,
Seppo Kittil?


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Thu Feb 10 07:02:02 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 09:02:02 +0200
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.090202.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Dear Nino,
Just out of curiosity, does it have anything to do with the subject
being in the ergative? Can you do the same thing with a sentence in the
present, when the subject is in the nominative?
John


From jwilson at LING.UTA.EDU  Thu Feb 10 19:33:25 2000
From: jwilson at LING.UTA.EDU (Janet Wilson)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:33:25 -0600
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.133325.0600.JWILSON@LING.UTA.EDU>

To the Funknet list,
Last semester I read quite a bit from G. Lakoff's book, Women, Fire, &
Dangerous Things. I've been interested for quite some time in prototype
categories.  Lakoff says that classical categories (a la Aristotle) are like
containers:  a thing is either IN a category or it is NOT IN a category, and
there is no in-between.  Real-life categories (esp. linguistic categories)
are not like that:  there are shades of gray, prototypical members,
peripheral members, etc.

I think there is a good metaphor for prototype categories--they are more
like piles than like containers.  Two reasons (there are more, but these are
at the forefront of my thinking) for liking the metaphor of "piles" are:

1.    When a container is empty, there is still something there.  When a
pile is empty, there is nothing.

2.    A container imposes its shape (form) on the contents.  A pile, on the
other hand, gets its shape from the contents.

If one of the tenets of functional grammar is that form follows function,
then we should prefer the "piles" model.  We should expect that the
(semantic) content of the category will have an impact on the shape of the
category.  If a category can be empty and have some form even when it
contains nothing, what then determines the shape?

I cannot remember ever hearing this particular metaphorical model mentioned
before in association with prototype categories, but, to my mind, it's an
excellent "fit."  If it has come up somewhere in the literature and I've
missed it, I would appreciate being pointed towards it.  I'd also like to
know what the rest of you think of this model.

Thanks,
Janet Wilson
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000210/cfde9634/attachment.htm>

From Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU  Thu Feb 10 19:53:59 2000
From: Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony Wright)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:53:59 -0600
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <200002101929.NAA19163@ns2.uta.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.10.FEB.2000.135359.0600.TWRIGHT@ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU>

At 01:33 PM 2/10/00 -0600, Janet Wilson wrote:

> I think there is a good metaphor for prototype categories--they are more
like > piles than like containers. Two reasons (there are more, but these
are at the > forefront of my thinking) for liking the metaphor of "piles" are:

> 1.    When a container is empty, there is still something there. When a
pile > is empty, there is nothing.

> 2.    A container imposes its shape (form) on the contents. A pile, on
the > other hand, gets its shape from the contents.

I agree!  Also, I would add that things are typically in a container or not
in a container (with some exceptions).  But things can be in or near a
pile, or in between two piles, etc.

I have often wondered how it would be if we re-cast the classical notion of
the phoneme in terms of "fuzzy regions in phonetic space."  Opinions?

--Tony Wright


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 11 11:39:51 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:39:51 -0300
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.083951.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Jerry Fodor has recently published some cogent criticisms against the
overuse of prototypes as mental explanans. If anyone on this list has
read that work, I'd be interested in hearing replies.

Best,

Dan Everett


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 11 16:14:49 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:14:49 -0300
Subject: fodor and prototypes
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.131449.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Ah, Elizabeth, I see you have the same sense of humor. Math has not
changed since the 70s either. Are we outdated becausewe haven't changed
it? If something is right, how can it be anachronistic to point out that
the recent work (recent for some, aberration to others) is misguided?

But I really have no opinion and I really would like to see some
responses.

Here is one reference.

Fodor, Jerry. 1998. _Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong_,
Oxford Univ. Press.

There is enough in that book to make plenty of people upset, including
formal linguists (an interesting chapter criticizing the very idea of
lexical semantics, including work by Pinker & Jackendoff.

Reactions welcome.

Dan

Dan Everett
SIL International
Caixa Postal 129
Porto Velho, RO
BRAZIL 78900-970

Elizabeth Bates wrote:

> it sounds like Fodor hasn't left the 1970's.  Cognitive Science has
> really moved on with respect to models of mental representation, and
> the important ideas and evidence that Eleanor Rosch brought to our
> attention have long since been incorporated (with modifications,
> of course) into other theories and implementations that preserve
> some of the best aspects (fuzzy boundaries, probabilistic mappings,
> distributed internal representations, heterogeneous membership)
> but go well beyond them in precision, formalization, and machine
> modeling.  I should read Fodor's critiques before going any
> further than this, but judging only by Dan Everett's message, it
> sounds a lot like Fodor as Austin Powers.  -liz bates
>


From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE  Fri Feb 11 17:54:34 2000
From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 18:54:34 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.185434.0100.W.SCHULZE@LRZ.UNIMUENCHEN.DE>

Dear Nino,

you asked:

> I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
> reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
> allowing reflexives in subject position.
>

I guess you will receive a considerable number of positive answers
referring to East Caucasian. In fact I think that the use of reflexives
in 'subject' position is documented in many (if not most) of these
languages. Let me just quote three examples from Udi (South East
Caucasian):

(1)    ich Baqi-x kar-re-xa
        REFL:ABS Baku-DAT2 live-3SG:S-LV-INTRANS:PRES
        '(S)he lives in Baku.'

(2)    ich-en ish'oun ash-ne-b-sa
        REFL-ERG at=night work-3SG:A-LV:TRANS-PRES
        '(S)he works at night'

(3)    ich-u ich a"iel-gh-ox g?l?-t'u buq'-sa
        REFL-DAT REFL:POSS child-PL-DAT2 much-3SG:IO love-PRES
        '(S)he loves her children evry much'

(1) is intransitive, (2) is transitive [ergative case], (3) is
'indirect' (or 'inversion' or a verbum sentiendi construction'...]. Note
that agreement always is 'accusative' (S=A(=IO)).

The function of headless reflexives in Udi seems to be to emphasize
coreference in referential tracking (normally on an accusative basis
(S=A)). I have tested the use of 'headless reflexives' with other
persons than non-SAP. The results were ambigous. Some informants
accepted a construction like (4), others didn't.

(4)   ? ich Baqi-x kar-zu-exa
          REF:ABS Baku-DAT2 live-1SG:S-LV:INTRANS:PRES
          'I (myself) live in Baku.'

Most informants did not accept SAP-related 'headless reflexives' as A in
transitive constructions except in questions addressing SAP(2), cf.:

(5)    ich-en fi-n ugh-sa?
        REFL-ERG wine-2SG:A drink-PRES
        'Do YOU drink wine?'

I assume that the use of headless reflexives is related to the emphatic
function that reflexives have in East Cauacsian (esp. in Lezgian
languages), cf. Tabasaran:

(6)    dumu uchw chan bazhr-a-qadzhi shah-r-s ghush-nu
        he:ABS REFL:ABS REFL:GEN son-SA-COM town-SA-DAT go-AOR
        'He himself went with his son into the town.'

(7)    uzu uchw dzhanuwar k'unu-za
        I:ABS REFL:ABS wolf kill:past-1SG:A
        'I myself killed the wolf.'

In (7) the reflexive copies the 'accusative' behavior (ABS instead of
ERG) of the SAP(1) pronoun, contrary e.g. to Aghul (Kurag):

(8)    zun uch-i aq'une kar
        I:ABS REFL-ERG make:AOR work
        'I did the work myself.'

The dropping of the pronoun leads to either an ergative or absolutive
coding of the reflexive, depending on which strategy the language
prefers [(7) or (8)], cf. (9) which is an ambigous construction in Aghul
(Burshag) [no personal agreement]:

(9)    che k'inaw huch
        REFL:ERG kill:PAST wolf
        'I/you/(s)he.... killed the wolf.'

I hope that helps,

Wolfgang

--
*****************************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet M?nchen
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 M?nchen
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
*****************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000211/9c035ee5/attachment.htm>

From catieb at UNM.EDU  Fri Feb 11 18:13:19 2000
From: catieb at UNM.EDU (Catie Berkenfield)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:13:19 -0700
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000210135359.007beb10@accdvm.accd.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.111319.0700.CATIEB@UNM.EDU>

Hi all,

In fact, Miller, Joanne. 1994. On the internal structure of phonetic
categories: a progress report.  Cognition 50: 271-285 shows evidence for
graded phonetic category structure which supports both the prototype and
exemplar models.

Also look for Joan Bybee's forthcoming Phonology and Language Use (John
Benjamins, in preparation) for critique of the classical phoneme analysis.

Does anyone else have recommended readings on this topic? I would be
particularly interested in anything on the association of what are
traditionally "segments" and what are usually characterized as independent
prosodic features. For instance, if a particular construction tends to
take a particular kind of sentence stress (eg an element of a predictable
grammatical construction), how do we represent this in our grammar? Do the
vocalic "segments" remain as full vowels or does the vowel representation
change due to a very regular (reduced) prosodic environment?

And, is this process quantitatively different from representation of
vowels in clearly lexical items? which also always occur in constructions.

Catie Berkenfield
Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico


On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Tony Wright wrote:

> At 01:33 PM 2/10/00 -0600, Janet Wilson wrote:
>
> > I think there is a good metaphor for prototype categories--they are more
> like > piles than like containers. Two reasons (there are more, but these
> are at the > forefront of my thinking) for liking the metaphor of "piles" are:
>
> > 1.    When a container is empty, there is still something there. When a
> pile > is empty, there is nothing.
>
> > 2.    A container imposes its shape (form) on the contents. A pile, on
> the > other hand, gets its shape from the contents.
>
> I agree!  Also, I would add that things are typically in a container or not
> in a container (with some exceptions).  But things can be in or near a
> pile, or in between two piles, etc.
>
> I have often wondered how it would be if we re-cast the classical notion of
> the phoneme in terms of "fuzzy regions in phonetic space."  Opinions?
>
> --Tony Wright
>


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Fri Feb 11 18:30:37 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 12:30:37 -0600
Subject: reflexives as subjects
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.123037.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

As Wolfgang Schulze's interesting discussion of East Causasian suggests,
any language which has emphatic reflexives and which is also pro-drop will
allow for sentences where the subject is just the emphatic reflexives,
with the subject pronoun itself absent.

However, as I remember, the original query pertained to anaphoric,
rather than emphatic, reflexives in subject position; i.e., cases where
the same person is referred to as both subject and object (or oblique) in
a sentence and, of the two mentions, it is the subject that takes on a
reflexive form (i.e. _Himself hurt him._, to mean 'He hurt himself.')

Edith Moravcsik


   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From geoffn at SIU.EDU  Fri Feb 11 20:02:14 2000
From: geoffn at SIU.EDU (Geoffrey S. Nathan)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:02:14 -0600
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.21.0002111059280.64458-100000@ben01.unm.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.140214.0600.GEOFFN@SIU.EDU>

At 11:13 AM 2/11/2000 -0700, Catie wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>In fact, Miller, Joanne. 1994. On the internal structure of phonetic
>categories: a progress report.  Cognition 50: 271-285 shows evidence for
>graded phonetic category structure which supports both the prototype and
>exemplar models.
>
>Also look for Joan Bybee's forthcoming Phonology and Language Use (John
>Benjamins, in preparation) for critique of the classical phoneme analysis.
>
>Does anyone else have recommended readings on this topic? I would be
>particularly interested in anything on the association of what are
>traditionally "segments" and what are usually characterized as independent
>prosodic features. For instance, if a particular construction tends to
>take a particular kind of sentence stress (eg an element of a predictable
>grammatical construction), how do we represent this in our grammar? Do the
>vocalic "segments" remain as full vowels or does the vowel representation
>change due to a very regular (reduced) prosodic environment?
>
>And, is this process quantitatively different from representation of
>vowels in clearly lexical items? which also always occur in constructions.
>
>Catie Berkenfield
>Department of Linguistics
>University of New Mexico



In a number of papers I have argued that phonemes are prototype categories,
with phonological processes serving as the analog of image schema
transformations (a la Lakoff/Brugmann's analysis of 'over').  Such facts as
phonemic overlap and phonemicization are easily understood in these
terms.  Relevant references include:

REFERENCES
Hurch, Bernhard, and Geoffrey S. Nathan. 1996. "Naturalness in Phonology."
STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung) 49(3):231-45.
Nathan, Geoffrey S. 1986. "Phonemes as Mental Categories." Pp. 212-24 in
Proceedings of the 12th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics
Society., vol. 12.
------. 1989. "Preliminaries to a Theory of Phonological Substance:  The
Substance of Sonority." Pp. 55-68 in Linguistic Categorization, edited by
Roberta Corrigan, Fred Eckman, and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam Studies in the
Theory and History of Linguistic Science.  Series IV - Current Issues in
Linguistic Theory.  Vol. 61. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
------. 1995. "How the Phoneme Inventory Gets Its Shape--Cognitive
Grammar's View of Phonological Systems." Rivista Di Linguistica 6(2):275-88.
------. 1996. "Towards a Cognitive Phonology." Pp. 107-20 in Natural
Phonology:  The State of the Art, eds Bernhard Hurch and Richard Rhodes.
Berlin: Mouton/de Gruyter.
------. 1999. "What Functionalists Can Learn from Formalists in Phonology."
Pp. 305-27 in Proceedings of the Symposium on Formalism and Functionalism.
Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Much of my work supports the traditional phoneme analysis (specifically the
Baudouin/Sapir/Stampe view, not Bloomfieldian or Generative Phonology
versions), although some of it can be recast in the OT framework.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Department of Linguistics
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL, 62901-4517
Phone:  (618) 453-3421 (Office) / FAX (618) 453-6527
         (618) 549-0106 (Home)
                                                         geoffn at siu.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000211/8c819b56/attachment.htm>

From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Sat Feb 12 01:22:34 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 20:22:34 -0500
Subject: fodor and prototypes
In-Reply-To: <38A43579.295028C4@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.FEB.2000.202234.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

> Elizabeth Bates wrote:
>
> it sounds like Fodor hasn't left the 1970's.

*That* is so-o-o twentieth-century.

-DP
*************************************************************************
David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu  Mon Feb 14 17:29:06 2000
From: bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu (Balthasar Bickel)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:29:06 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <MON.14.FEB.2000.092906.0800.>

The following question was recently posted on FUNKNET and, with
apologies for duplicates, I cc this to LINGTYP:

Nino Amiridze wrote:
> I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
> reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
> allowing reflexives in subject position.
>
> My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization
>
> (1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
>     president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
>           "The president saved himself"
>
> allows subject reflexives as well:
>
> (2) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
>    self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
> (a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
> saving him" (emphatic reading);
> (b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
> (his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
> imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

Reflexives in A function (and with a truly anaphoric function) are also
attested in Nepali, e.g.,

aaphai-le     Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-yo.
self:EMPH-ERG R.-DAT     spoiling do-PT3sM
?Ram got himself spoiled.? (from Bickel & Yadava, 'A fresh look at
grammatical relations in Indo-Aryan', in press, Lingua 2000)

In his 1994 book, Dixon (p. 238f) suggests that reflexives in A function
involve "verb[s] referring to a mental process", quoting Modern Greek
and Basque as examples. Nepali fully confirms this pattern. Georgian
apparently doesn't, but it is interesting to note that the (b) reading
in (2) above has a non-volitional flavor to it that is also
characteristic of Nepali.

Is anybody aware of other instances of reflexive pronouns in A function,
and of semantic effects tied to such constructions?

Balthasar Bickel.


From catieb at UNM.EDU  Mon Feb 14 17:38:37 2000
From: catieb at UNM.EDU (Catie Berkenfield)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:38:37 -0700
Subject: Metaphor for Categories
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.4.21.0002111059280.64458-100000@ben01.unm.edu>
Message-ID: <MON.14.FEB.2000.103837.0700.CATIEB@UNM.EDU>

Hello again

point of clarification...Joan Bybee's Phonology and Language Use textbook
is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, not John Benjamins.

apologies for the error. and thanks for the recommendations.

Catie Berkenfield
Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico


From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU  Tue Feb 15 01:09:29 2000
From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff)
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 18:09:29 -0700
Subject: subject reflexives
Message-ID: <MON.14.FEB.2000.180929.0700.LAKOFF@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU>

Of course, English has reflexives in subject position, as in :

My own father hates me.

George


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Tue Feb 15 09:37:47 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:37:47 +0200
Subject: subject reflexives
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.113747.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

George, that isn't a subject reflexive, it's a genitive/possessor reflexive.

John

>Of course, English has reflexives in subject position, as in :
>
>My own father hates me.
>
>George


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Tue Feb 15 10:01:10 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 12:01:10 +0200
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.120110.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Regarding the ostensible reflexives in subject position: Are the people
who have suggested them (in e.g. Georgian, Nepali) sure that these aren't
logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'? In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible
'reflexive', can freely be used in subject position, but this is because
it isn't really a reflexive, in the sense that it doesn't require (and
doesn't normally have) an antecedent in the same clause. It gets used in
3rd person narratives when the writer wants to clearly take the viewpoint
of a certain character, e.g. In a 3rd person narrative section if you say
'jibun was tired' it's sort of like throwing in a quote 'I'm tired', without
quotations marks, you're reporting it 'from the inside' so to speak. In
traditional generative studies of Japanese 'jibun' is called a `reflexive',
but this is because theories based on languages like English need something
called a reflexive they can use for their syntactic tests, and 'jibun' is the
closest they can come in Japanese, because it IS used in cases translating
as reflexives. But I had a student once who did a study on how 'jibun' is
used in Japanese texts, gathered about 50 examples of long-range viewpoint
usages of various types and analyzed them nicely, and after she had given
her presentation I asked her 'what about reflexive usages, where the antecedent
is in the same clause?' She had forgotten about them completely, and when
she went back to check her database, there wasn't a single one. So you could
say that Japanese allows 'reflexive subjects', but it's kind of silly.

Is this what's going on in Georgian and Nepali?

John


From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE  Tue Feb 15 12:01:33 2000
From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:01:33 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.130133.0100.W.SCHULZE@LRZ.UNIMUENCHEN.DE>

I guess that in many such instances of reflexives in pseudo-A or demoted

A-function the reflexive has a referential background at least in a
diachronic
perspective (just as in Georgian, cf. Georgian _tavi_ < 'head'). This
would
explain a) the possibility to have the reflexive in A function without
on antecedent, and b) why this process seems somewhat related to
techniques of 'de-controlization':

Let us assume that the relationship between what now is a 'reflexive'
and its 'antecedent' once was a part-whole or a possessum-possessor
relation ('head > human being' in the Georgian case). Canonically we
would expect that the whole controls the part and the possessor its
possessum. Or, in other word, the 'whole' or the possessor would have
protoypical A-functions, whereas the 'part' or the 'possessum' is
related to O-functions. The inference 'possessor > A' vs. 'possessum >
O' is a well-known case in a number of language systems (esp. in those
that know a parallel 'ergative behavior' of their case or agreement
system. Let us put this into  a scheme:

        'whole' > antecedent        'part' > reflexive
        Possessor                        possessum
        Construed as A               construed as O
        Controler                        controlled

In case the roles switch, that is in case 'part' or 'possessum' etc. is
morphologcally or syntactically treated as A whereas 'whole' or
'possessor' is associated with O we arrive at a 'clash': A rather 'light
noun' (with reference to A) becomes A, and a rather 'heavy noun' (with
reference to A) becomes O. The inferential dynamics of such a clash are
self-evident: 'part' as A (which then becomes the 'head-less' reflexive)
acquires certain A-properties without matching them semantically. As a
result, 'part' or 'possessum' as A has reached a (rather) limited degree
of control, whereas 'whole' (or 'possessor') - which is atypical in
O-function if 'part' is present - looses at least certain 'portions' of
is controlhood, cf.

    'part' in A [-control -> + control]
    'whole' in O [+control -> -control]

Note that a prerogative of this analysis is the existence of a
referential background of the reflexive in question. I know that this is
true for a number of reflexives especially in languages that have a
relatively strong ergative behavior. It would be good to know of a
counter-example, that is a language that knows the construction noticed
by Nino (let's call it 'postcedent A-reflexives') but the reflexive of
which cannot be reconstructed as or related to a referential noun
diachronically.

Wolfgang


--
*****************************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet M?nchen
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 M?nchen
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
*****************************


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Tue Feb 15 13:58:47 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 14:58:47 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.145847.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

I would like to thank everyone who sent me a reply on my question on
reflexives in subject position.

William Morris suggested the following book: Dixon, R.M.W.  1994.
Ergativity.  Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press
Where the author cites several frozen expressions, NOT productive, which
involve reflexives in subject position:
> "Himself enchants my brother" Basque (Citation, Salterelli, 1988)
> "Myself enchants me" Modern Greek (Citation, Joseph and
Philippaki-Warburton, 1987)
> And in personal communication from Kibrik, references to the Dargwa verb
"praise".
Georgian does not allow subject reflexives with psych verbs but causatives
(both lexical and morphological). And they are not frozen expressions. They
are productive.

John Myhill asked whether it has anything to do with the subject being in
the ergative?
> Can you do the same thing with a sentence in the present, when the
subject is > in the nominative?
Georgian can have a reflexive in the subject position no matter the tense:
(1) prezident-i            ixsnis              tavis    tav-s
   president-nom  he-saves/shall-save-him   self's-dat  head-dat
             "The president saves/shall save himself"
(2) tavis-i     tav-i             ixsnis            president-s
  self's-nom   head-nom   he-saves/shall-save-him   president-dat
(a) "It is the president who saves/shall save himself, no one else is/will
be responsible for saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president is/will be out of the hard situation only because of
himself (his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he cannot even
imagine/know/account for that" (non-volitional reading).

Wolfgang Schulze gave me examples form East Caucasian languages. I think
(and agree with Edith A Moravcsik) that these are the examples of emphatic
reflexives.
The Udi (South East Caucasian) example
>        ich Baqi-x kar-re-xa
>        REFL:ABS Baku-DAT2 live-3SG:S-LV-INTRANS:PRES
>        '(S)he lives in Baku.'
can be translated into Georgian only the following way:
Tviton          (is)        cxovrob-s   Baqu-shi.
Himself   (he-nom)      live-S3      Baku-in
         "He himself lives in Baku"
where in Georgian the subject pronoun is dropped out (pro-drop).
It has to be noted that emphasis is normally expressed in Georgian by
emphatic pronouns like tvit (<tav-it "head-INST"); tviton
(<tvit-an<tvit-van<tvit- man<tav-it-man "head-INST-ERG"); tavad (<tav-ad
"head-ABL") rather than reflexive phrase. All of them are historically
derived from tav- "head" (like the reflexive pronoun having the form
<POSSESSIVE + tav->) but they are not the same as the reflexive pronoun:
mcvel-ma       ixsna         president-i
guard-erg   he-saved-him    president-nom
     "The guard saved the president"
mcvel-ma       tavad  / *tavis-ma  tav-ma       ixsna         president-i
guard-erg   by-himself / self's-erg head-erg  he-saved-him    president-nom

     "The guard himself saved the president"

Balthasar Bickel gave me an example from Nepali
> aaphai-le     Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-yo.
> self:EMPH-ERG R.-DAT     spoiling do-PT3sM
> 'Ram got himself spoiled.' (from Bickel & Yadava, 'A fresh look at
Subject reflexive can perfectly be used with this verb in Georgian as well.
In fact a reflexive in subject position can be used with any verb being
able to imply a non-volitional agent.

Answering John Myhill, the reflexives in subject position are not
logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'.
> In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible 'reflexive', can freely be used in
> subject position, but this is because it isn't really a reflexive, in the
> sense that it doesn't require (and doesn't normally have) an antecedent
in the
> same clause.
The long distance "jibun" can be replaced by a personal pronoun without any
harm to the meaning and grammaticality. Is that right?
As for Goergian, the replacement will change the meaning:
    man       ixsna        president-i
   he-erg  he-saved-him   president-nom
     "He(i) saved the president(j)"
Here there is neither reflexive, nor emphatic / non-volitional readings.

> It gets used in 3rd person narratives when the writer wants to clearly
take the viewpoint of a certain character, e.g. In a 3rd person narrative
section if > you say 'jibun was tired' it's sort of like throwing in a
quote 'I'm tired',
> without quotations marks, you're reporting it 'from the inside' so to
speak.
The fact is that subject reflexives in Georgian are used not only in the
3rd person but in the 1st and 2nd person as well:

chem-ma   tav-ma        m-a-idzula           me         meqvira
myERG    headERG    O1-CAUS-force(PAST)     meDAT       to-shout
(a)  "(It was) MYSELF (who) forced me to shout" (emphatic)
(b) "(It was) myself (who) forced me to shout (I shouted though I was not
willing so" (non-volitional)

The reflexives in subject position are not logophors since they represent
not an entity from the previous discourse but one of the arguments of a
given verb - the Causer.

Wolfgang Schulze suggested the penomenon to be related to the fact that
reflexive is historically derived from a body-part noun (tav "head").
> I guess that in many such instances of reflexives in pseudo-A or demoted
> A-function the reflexive has a referential background at least in a
> Diachronic perspective (just as in Georgian, cf. Georgian _tavi_ < 'head').
> This Would explain a) the possibility to have the reflexive in A function
> without on antecedent,
It may not be called an "antecedent" but clearly there is an NP which is
co-referential to the reflexive in subject position.

> and b) why this process seems somewhat related to techniques of
'de-controlization'.
>As a result, 'part' or 'possessum' as A has reached a (rather) limited degree
> of control, whereas 'whole' (or 'possessor') - which is atypical in
O-function > if 'part' is present - looses at least certain 'portions' of
is controlhood, cf.
>    'part' in A [-control -> + control]
>    'whole' in O [+control -> -control]
It is really interesting to look at the reflexive phrase from the
part/whole relationship perspective. In Goergian in subject anaphoric
clauses the causee (full NP) is totally affected but not by the whole
referent but by a property(s) of it. The causer reduces metaphorically to
its property(s):

tavis-ma     tav-ma        dag'upa            prezidenti
self's-erg   head-erg   he-destroyed-him     persident-nom
(a)"It is the president and NO ONE ELSE who destroyed himself" (it is not
differentiated the action was volitional or not)
(b)"The president destroyed himself unconsciously, without really wanting
this, non-volitionally".
President's past doings, charachter, etc. is in fact a part not the whole
of his personality.

Subject anaphors are allowed even if there is not the reduction of the
whole to its part but another referent resembling the causee (wax statue, a
twin, etc). Therefore, there is not a part/whole relationship but still it
is possible to have a reflexive as a subject:
(1) Ringo     daeca       tavis       tav-s
 Ringo(NOM)   fell-on   self's(DAT)  head(NOM)
          "Ringo fell on himself"
 Actual Ringo fell on the statue of Ringo
*Statue of Ringo fell on the actual Ringo

(2) tavis-i     tav-i      daeca     Ringo-s
  self's(NOM)  head(NOM)   fell-on   Ringo(DAT)
????? "Himself fell on Ringo"
*Actual Ringo fell on the statue of Ringo
Statue of Ringo fell on the actual Ringo

There are such cases when there cannot be an non-volitional reading and the
only meaning that a sentence can bear is the emphatic one. Such cases are
mostly in certain contexts or with verbs of certain semantic class. Namely,
with verbs the semantics of which excludes volition as such:
tavis-ma       tav-ma             damarxa                mixa
self's-Erg     head-erg     (s)he-buried-him(her)     Michael-nom

Since a dead person  cannot bury himself neither with volition nor without
it the sentence is grammatical only when there is a metaphorical shift in
meaning. The only thing that the sentence can mean is the following: "No
one/nothing else but Michael's savings made it possible to pay for all
expenses related to his funeral".
Therefore, volition is completely out while emphasis is still there.

What gives the emphatic reading?
There is no emphatic reflexive (tvit/tavad/tviton) there in subject
anaphoric sentences. Perhaps the reflexive phrase in the pre-verbal slot
which is a focus slot in Georgian?
But even if we remove the reflexive from the focus slot the emphatic
meaning will still remain there:

   president-i          ixsna        tavis-ma     tav-ma
   president-nom     he-saved-him   self's-erg  head-erg
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

Thank you.

Sincerely,

    Nino Amiridze


From bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu  Tue Feb 15 18:08:42 2000
From: bickel at uclink.berkeley.edu (Balthasar Bickel)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:08:42 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <TUE.15.FEB.2000.100842.0800.>

John Myhill wrote:
> Regarding the ostensible reflexives in subject position: Are the people
> who have suggested them (in e.g. Georgian, Nepali) sure that these aren't
> logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'? In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible

I agree, this distinction is very important to make, and not only that:
Nepali also allows exophoric uses of the reflexives, similar to the
emphatic uses that Edith Moravcsik talked about yesterday and that Nino
Amiridze discussed his reply. In the construction I quoted, however, we
are dealing with a truly anaphoric (more precisely, kataphoric) use of
the reflexive. There is no need nor suggestion in the clause to construe
any exophoric or discourse bearing. What's crucial about the Nepali
construction (based on a preliminary analysis) is that this is the
standard way of indicating coreference between A and O if (a) the
speaker wants to indicate a non-volitional meaning, and (b) the clause
involves a psychological predicate.

> John Myhill asked whether it has anything to do with the subject being in
> the ergative?
> > Can you do the same thing with a sentence in the present, when the
> subject is > in the nominative?
> Georgian can have a reflexive in the subject position no matter the tense:

The same is true of Nepali:

aaphu    Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-cha
REFL:NOM R.-DAT     spoiling do-3SG.PT
'Ram will get himself spoiled.'

This is important to note because the Nepali ergative also covers
instrumental uses and on the face of it, 'aaphaile' (or 'aaphule') could
also be analyzed as an instrumental rather than an ergative. Unlike an
instrumental NP, 'aaphaile' alternates with the nominative in non-past
and non-perfective contexts, whence such an analysis would not hold up.


-- Balthasar Bickel.




__________________________________________

Balthasar Bickel
University of California at Berkeley
Department of Slavic Languages
6303 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-2979
Phone:    +1-510-848 4875 (home)
Fax:      +1-510-642 6220 (office)
E-Mail:   bickel at socrates.berkeley.edu
Web Site: socrates.berkeley.edu/~bickel
__________________________________________


From meryem_sen at YAHOO.COM  Wed Feb 16 06:13:00 2000
From: meryem_sen at YAHOO.COM (Meryem SEN)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:13:00 +0200
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.081300.0200.MERYEMSEN@YAHOO.COM>

In Turkish language the self pronoun 'kendi' is used in the subject position as in the following example:
Kendi (himself/herself) geldi (came). It is an inflectional pronoun. Thus, it is possible to use it for the other subject pronouns. For instance, kendi-m (myself), kendi /kendisi (himself/herself/itself), kendi-leri (themselves).
T?m (All) haz?rl?klar? (preparations) kendileri (themselves) yapt?lar (did).
"Themselves did all the preparations.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000216/3770d1ee/attachment.htm>

From m.perkins at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK  Wed Feb 16 10:05:44 2000
From: m.perkins at SHEFFIELD.AC.UK (Mick Perkins)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:05:44 -0000
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.100544.0000.M.PERKINS@SHEFFIELD.AC.UK>

I've occasionally heard men in the UK refer to their wives/female partners using a reflexive pronoun as subject as follows: "Herself won't be interested" or "Herself will be staying in tonight". The effect is slightly humorous, and seems to imply that the wife/partner is the dominant member in the relationship.

Mick


Dr Mick Perkins
Senior Lecturer in Clinical Linguistics 
Department of Human Communication Sciences
University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN
UK

Tel: (+44) (0)114 2222408
Fax: (+44) (0)114 2730547
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/R-Z/spsu/staff/mick.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20000216/4ba2479e/attachment.htm>

From dkp at U.ARIZONA.EDU  Wed Feb 16 16:25:51 2000
From: dkp at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Dianne K. Patterson)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 09:25:51 -0700
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <004f01bf7865$63c750e0$ab8ea78f@shef.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.092551.0700.DKP@U.ARIZONA.EDU>

You remind me that in the UK "themselves" is the preferred term for
referring to little people (elves and fairies)...I imagine the term can be
used in subject position...and I wonder if it has anything to do with the
humor in referring to ones wife that way...

Dianne



On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, Mick Perkins wrote:

> I've occasionally heard men in the UK refer to their wives/female partners using a reflexive pronoun as subject as follows: "Herself won't be interested" or "Herself will be staying in tonight". The effect is slightly humorous, and seems to imply that the wife/partner is the dominant member in the relationship.
>
> Mick
>
>
> Dr Mick Perkins
> Senior Lecturer in Clinical Linguistics
> Department of Human Communication Sciences
> University of Sheffield
> Sheffield S10 2TN
> UK
>
> Tel: (+44) (0)114 2222408
> Fax: (+44) (0)114 2730547
> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/R-Z/spsu/staff/mick.html
>


From jfsmith at MEDIOM.QC.CA  Wed Feb 16 20:59:20 2000
From: jfsmith at MEDIOM.QC.CA (Jeff Smith)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:59:20 -0500
Subject: Question
Message-ID: <WED.16.FEB.2000.155920.0500.JFSMITH@MEDIOM.QC.CA>

Greetings to all,

        I'm a young undergraduate student who would like to know what are the
conclusions drawn from present neurological datas and researches regarding
language innateness envisaged ? la Chomsky, with a few references. There's
no bias behind this question. I just want some update. My teacher thinks
we're still in the 70's, so I ought to ask someone else. If you will,
answer me privately.

All my thanks,
Jean-Fran?ois Smith


From wmorris at CS.UCSD.EDU  Thu Feb 17 14:01:56 2000
From: wmorris at CS.UCSD.EDU (William Morris)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 06:01:56 -0800
Subject: Reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.060156.0800.WMORRIS@CS.UCSD.EDU>

> I've occasionally heard men in the UK refer to their wives/female
>partners using a reflexive pronoun as subject as follows: "Herself
>won't be interested" or "Herself will be staying in tonight". The effect
>is slightly humorous, and seems to imply that the wife/partner is the
>dominant member in the relationship.
>

This is likely from Irish English, in which "himself" (and presumably
"herself") is an honorific, usually used to refer to the head of the
household.  And this is from Irish, in which "fein" 'self' is used
in emphatic usage

O Siadhail, Michael.  1988.  "Learning Irish".  New Haven & London:
Yale University Press.

I'm told that it is also used as an honorific in Irish.

Bill Morris


From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Thu Feb 17 14:44:15 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:44:15 -0500
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <38A99626.B03020DC@uclink.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.094415.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

At 10:08 AM -0800  2/15/00, Balthasar Bickel wrote:
> John Myhill wrote:
>> Regarding the ostensible reflexives in subject position: Are the people
>> who have suggested them (in e.g. Georgian, Nepali) sure that these aren't
>> logophoric/long-range 'reflexives'? In Japanese, 'jibun', the ostensible
>
> I agree, this distinction is very important to make, and not only that:
> Nepali also allows exophoric uses of the reflexives, similar to the
> emphatic uses that Edith Moravcsik talked about yesterday and that Nino
> Amiridze discussed his reply. In the construction I quoted, however, we
> are dealing with a truly anaphoric (more precisely, kataphoric) use of
> the reflexive. There is no need nor suggestion in the clause to construe
> any exophoric or discourse bearing. What's crucial about the Nepali
> construction (based on a preliminary analysis) is that this is the
> standard way of indicating coreference between A and O if (a) the
> speaker wants to indicate a non-volitional meaning, and (b) the clause
> involves a psychological predicate.

Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.

Some years ago, Pierre Pica suggested that bimorphemic reflexives (and
reciprocals) always require a sentence-internal antecedent, with locality
conditions related to intervening subjects, while monomorphemic forms
typically do not have this property.  There are some counterexamples (I
don't know about languages that use forms like 'his head' for 'himself) and
I'm not sure what the current wisdom is on Pica's generalization.

There has been a lot of work on the typology of reflexives,
semi-reflexives, quasi-reflexives, etc. in recent years.  I know that Ken
Safir (Rutgers) has an ongoing project about this that has led to a number
of interesting publications.  His papers would also be a good place to find
references to other work.

-David Pesetsky
*************************************************************************
David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Thu Feb 17 15:28:35 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 12:28:35 -0300
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.122835.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

David Pesetsky wrote:
To David's posting, I would add a reference to work by Eric Reuland and
Tanya Reinhart, who edited a very interesting book titled Long-Distance
Reflexives about 8 years ago. That's probably enough information to find
the book on Amazon.com or some such.

Dan Everett

>
> There has been a lot of work on the typology of reflexives,
> semi-reflexives, quasi-reflexives, etc. in recent years.  I know that Ken
> Safir (Rutgers) has an ongoing project about this that has led to a number
> of interesting publications.  His papers would also be a good place to find
> references to other work.
>
> -David Pesetsky
> *************************************************************************
> David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
> Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
> Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
> E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
> (617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
> http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From moorej at UCSD.EDU  Sun Feb 13 17:41:54 2000
From: moorej at UCSD.EDU (John Moore)
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 09:41:54 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <38AC13A3.6EB84466@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <SUN.13.FEB.2000.094154.0800.MOOREJ@UCSD.EDU>

>To David's posting, I would add a reference to work by Eric Reuland and
>Tanya Reinhart, who edited a very interesting book titled Long-Distance
>Reflexives about 8 years ago. That's probably enough information to find
>the book on Amazon.com or some such.
>
>Dan Everett
>
>

Reinhart and Reuland have a paper in that volume, but it was edited by
Reuland and Koster.  Here is the reference:

Long-distance anaphora /, edited by Jan Koster and Eric Reuland. Cambridge
[England] ; New York : Cambridge
                       University Press, 1991.

The introduction is an excellent overview of long-distance anaphora.  The
Reinhart and Reuland paper in this volume, as well as their LI paper
"Reflexivity" should be of interest.  I think this is work that really
transcends the formalist/functionalist divide (as does Pollard and Sag's
HPSG paper on binding).  It is true that many formal devices are used, but
also many functional insights are there.  These are works that make me
optimistic about the field.

John Moore

http://ling.ucsd.edu/~moore/


From cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU  Thu Feb 17 18:30:28 2000
From: cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU (cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:30:28 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <v04220801b4d1b8099513@[18.173.0.105]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.103028.0800.>

On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
 > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
 > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
 > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.

The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)

Chris Manning


From bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU  Thu Feb 17 18:52:30 2000
From: bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Joan Bresnan)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:52:30 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:30:28 PST.
 <14508.15940.817124.774025@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.105230.0800.BRESNAN@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>

See also Haihua Pan's paper on Chinese `ta ziji', another
counterexmaple to "Pica's Generalization" (which is really Faltz's
generalization):

Pan, Haihua.  1998.  Closeness, prominence, and binding theory.  \ital{Natural
  Language \& Linguistic Theory} 16: 817--889.

This has an excellent discussion of a number of relevant issues
regarding binding and subject reflexives.


From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Thu Feb 17 19:03:12 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 14:03:12 -0500
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <14508.15940.817124.774025@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.140312.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
>
> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)

I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?

-DP
*************************************************************************
David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From J.F.Crocker at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK  Thu Feb 17 19:24:51 2000
From: J.F.Crocker at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK (Jean Crocker)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 19:24:51 GMT0BST
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <v04220801b4d1b8099513@[18.173.0.105]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.192451.GMT0BST.J.F.CROCKER@NEWCASTLE.AC.UK>

Does AmE  use 'his ass' like this?

Jean

>
> Some years ago, Pierre Pica suggested that bimorphemic reflexives (and
> reciprocals) always require a sentence-internal antecedent, with locality
> conditions related to intervening subjects, while monomorphemic forms
> typically do not have this property.  There are some counterexamples (I
> don't know about languages that use forms like 'his head' for 'himself) and
> I'm not sure what the current wisdom is on Pica's generalization.
>

> -David Pesetsky
Jean Crocker
Language Centre
University of Newcastle
Newcastle on Tyne NE1 7RU


From cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU  Thu Feb 17 22:11:28 2000
From: cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU (Christopher Manning)
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 14:11:28 -0800
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <v04220801b4d1f668f5bb@[18.173.0.105]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.FEB.2000.141128.0800.CMANNING@SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU>

On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
 > What is the claim, that there is no effect of
 > intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?

That the preference for local binding follows from the emphatic nature
of zibun-zisin rather than the existence of a clear syntactic domain
restriction.  Certainly this includes the possibility of intervening
subjects, as in:

Tanaka-kyoozyu$_i$ wa [gakusei ga gakkoo-tookyoku dake de-naku
zibun-zisin$_i$ ni mo sinrai o oi-te i-nakat-ta] noni gakuzen to si-ta.
Tanaka-professor {\sc top} student {\sc nom} school-authorities only
be-{\sc neg} self on even reliance {\sc acc} place-{\sc prog-neg}-{\sc
past} since shocked {\sc comp} do-{\sc past}
`Prof. Tanaka$_i$ got shocked at the fact that the students didn't
rely on not only the school authorities but also him$_i$.

Chris Manning


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Fri Feb 18 09:07:08 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 11:07:08 +0200
Subject: jibun
Message-ID: <FRI.18.FEB.2000.110708.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Dear David,
I find it difficult (actually impossible) to believe that ANY use of jibun
is constrained to take a subject as an antecedent, or ANY syntactically
defined category for that matter, as an antecedent. It's a pronoun with a
particular discourse/referential function; to try to delimit its usage
syntactically is like trying to delimit the usage of 'someone'
syntactically. If you want to participate in an informed discussion of
this, David, I suggest you learn enough Japanese to read it, see how jibun
is actually used, and see if you can come up with a syntactic rule to
account for it. And if you insist on having a naive discussion of this,
divorced of first-hand knowledge of the language or second-hand knowledge
of the actual usage of the word, please don't do it on funknet, do it on
some formalist network where such discussions are presumably routine.
John Myhill






>At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
>> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
>>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
>>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
>>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
>>
>> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
>> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
>> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
>> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
>> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
>> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)
>
>I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
>intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?
>
>-DP
>*************************************************************************
>David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
>Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
>E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
>(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
>http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Fri Feb 18 16:36:07 2000
From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 08:36:07 -0800
Subject: jibun
Message-ID: <FRI.18.FEB.2000.083607.0800.TGIVON@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

John,

I really think it's time, maybe, that you started worrying a bit about
the tone of (some of) your submissions. We are not here to stick it to
the other guys & call them ignorant. We are here to learn, together.
Maybe, just maybe, you too have something to learn from 'the
formalists'. Have you ever considered that possibility? Well, maybe you
don't need to. But maybe some of the rest of us, who are not so smart,
might? At any rate, let's keep FUNKNET a forum where people come, in
good faith, to learn from each other. After all, if we all believed in,
and knew, exactly the same things, it would be a rather boring place,
with not much learning... Best,  TG
=====================

John Myhill wrote:
>
> Dear David,
> I find it difficult (actually impossible) to believe that ANY use of jibun
> is constrained to take a subject as an antecedent, or ANY syntactically
> defined category for that matter, as an antecedent. It's a pronoun with a
> particular discourse/referential function; to try to delimit its usage
> syntactically is like trying to delimit the usage of 'someone'
> syntactically. If you want to participate in an informed discussion of
> this, David, I suggest you learn enough Japanese to read it, see how jibun
> is actually used, and see if you can come up with a syntactic rule to
> account for it. And if you insist on having a naive discussion of this,
> divorced of first-hand knowledge of the language or second-hand knowledge
> of the actual usage of the word, please don't do it on funknet, do it on
> some formalist network where such discussions are presumably routine.
> John Myhill
>
> >At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
> >> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
> >>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
> >>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
> >>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
> >>
> >> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
> >> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
> >> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
> >> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
> >> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
> >> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)
> >
> >I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
> >intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?
> >
> >-DP
> >*************************************************************************
> >David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
> >Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
> >Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
> >E39-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> >Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
> >(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
> >http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.home.html


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 18 17:07:29 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 14:07:29 -0300
Subject: Morphology
Message-ID: <FRI.18.FEB.2000.140729.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Folks,

I would be interested in knowing what linguists consider to be the
three-five most important desiderata of a model/theory of morphology.
That is, what would the most important pieces of such a theory be to
you? What ought it most try to account for?

If there are sufficient responses, I will post a summary to this list.

Thanks,

Dan Everett


From clements at INDIANA.EDU  Tue Feb 22 01:46:31 2000
From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:46:31 -0600
Subject: 4th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium -- CALL FOR PAPERS
In-Reply-To: <199912140522.VAA07011@hypatia.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <MON.21.FEB.2000.194631.0600.CLEMENTS@INDIANA.EDU>

                   SYMPOSIUM ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS


4th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium
Nov. 17-19, 2000 at
Indiana University, Bloomington


Keynote Speakers

John Lipski, University of New Mexico
Bill VanPatten, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign


Abstract deadline:  April 10, 2000
Response from organizers:  May 1, 2000


We are soliciting one page abstracts of original work on any area of
Hispanic linguistics: historical, phonology, second language acquisition,
semantics, sociolinguistics, syntax; and ALL theoretical frameworks

Abstracts can be submitted electronically to James F. Lee:
leejames at indiana.edu or via regular mail:


James F. Lee, Hispanic Linguistics Symposium
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
844 Ballantine Hall
Bloomington, IN  47405

---------------------------



J. Clancy Clements
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese
Ballantine Hall 844 / IU
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
Tel. (812) 855-6141
Fax: (812) 855-4526


From jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU  Tue Feb 22 03:56:53 2000
From: jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU (Jon Aske)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 22:56:53 -0500
Subject: jibun
In-Reply-To: <38AD74F7.DD589231@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Message-ID: <MON.21.FEB.2000.225653.0500.JASKE@SALEM.MASS.EDU>

You will all pardon me for butting in, since I haven't been participating,
or even following closely, the latest discussions, but I wanted to say
something in John's defense for his somewhat rude words, namely that perhaps
they were provoked (and thus can perhaps explained, if not excused) by what
I see a change in the tone of our list, a list that I have belonged to since
its inception and whose basic tenets I thought were those that Tom one day
wrote and which can be found here:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~ling/funknet.html

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that perhaps in recent months
John, like myself, may have had a sense that this list of ours has been
hijacked and taken over by people who do not believe, not even loosely, in
those principles.

I may be wrong and I am willing to hear arguments about my wrongheadedness,
as long as they're put forth in a respectful manner, of course.

Cheers to all of you with whom I had lost touch in the last few years.  I'm
still alive.

Jon
_____________________________________________________
Jon Aske
Department of Foreign Languages, Salem State College
SB 209A, Phone: (978) 542-4358, Fax: (978) 542-7215
jaske at salem.mass.edu - http://www.salem.mass.edu/~jaske/
personal: aske at basqueland.com - http://basqueland.com
_____________________________________________________
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier
to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.  --Jassamyn West


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Tue Feb 22 08:09:23 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:09:23 +0200
Subject: funknet principles
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.100923.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Thank you, Jon. In fact, I noticed this change more than a few months ago.
I do not think that the purpose of funknet should be to establish a dialogue
with formalists; the functionalists who are interested in doing this are
doing it out of a hope of making them 'see the light' or 'bring them
around' (they do not, of course, say this in general postings, but they do
in private postings), to `convert' formalists, and aside from being boring,
I think this
is just plain a waste of time (see my repeated earlier challenges to
funknetters to identify people who have been `converted' either way, which
yielded a grand total of two people, (one in each direction), neither of
whom had been converted by exchanges on funknet).

I see the purpose of funknet as exchanging information and ideas related to
functional-typological linguistics. A crucial part of this is, to me, is
a responsible and respectful attitude towards linguistic data, particularly
from languages which not so many of us know (where the proliferation of
misinformation is more likely and dangerous). This level of responsibility
simply doesn't exist in discussions among formalists, where it is routine
for people to make unchallenged and absurd statements about languages they
know nothing about, referring to studies by people who either also don't
know these languages or were highly impressionable graduate students at the
time they did the study. Listening to discussions among formalists about data
from non-Indo-European languages is basically like reading accounts by explorers
in the Dark Ages who would report that country A is inhabited by dragons
while the population of country B is made up of giants; they might even
bring back someone
from these countries to confirm these stories. This is not to say that
there are not individual formal linguists who have a responsible attitude
towards data (there are), but that the general tone of such discussions is
essentially empirically
irresponsible.

I DON'T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN ON FUNKNET!!!!!!!!!! I WANT TO BE ABLE TO TRUST
THE DATA I SEE ON FUNKNET!!!!!!!!!!

The discussion on reflexives in subject position was great. It was initiated by
Nino, a native speaker of Georgian, and there were contributions by
Wolfgang on Udi, Balthasar on Nepali, Meryem on Turkish, and Mick and
Dianne on dialectal
English. For each of these contributions, I had the impression that I could
basically trust the data. Then came David Pesetsky's contribution, from the
empirical Dark Ages, referring to the type of fifthhand hearsay which is
acceptable in formal linguistics but not in functional linguistics (at
least not to me). I don't want this, and I think it should be stopped. This
is NOT a matter of 'ideological purity.' It's a matter of 'empirical
purity.' If formalists who are knowledgeable about and respectful of the
data they refer to (e.g. Dan Everett) want to participate in funknet,
great. But I DON'T want people on funknet referring to studies by, e.g. Ken
Safir (as David did) as a source of cross-linguistic data. I know about Ken
(we overlapped at Penn); I know his data can (and should) be thrown in the
garbage can before people waste even more of their time making up theories
based upon them. I don't know how many of the other several hundred people
on funknet realize this.

Because I believe that it is necessary to stop the proliferation of
misinformation, I told David he should investigate this himself before
referring to it, and if he insisted on doing proliferating misinformation
without checking it, he at least keep this information away from
functionalist discussions. I worded this seriously (rudely, some might say)
because I wanted to make it absolutely clear that empirical
irresponsibility isn't a casual matter. If insistence upon empirical
responsibility means David doesn't want to participate in funknet, if Talmy
is deprived of this forum for trying to convert David to functionalism,
well, that's a price I would be willing to pay.

John Myhill


From chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU  Tue Feb 22 17:22:25 2000
From: chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Wallace Chafe)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:22:25 -0800
Subject: funknet principles
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04b4d7e4752e96@[132.74.19.230]>
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.092225.0800.CHAFE@HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU>

Good for John and Jon.  Having seen what has been done with
pseudo-Iroquoian languages, I couldn't agree more.  The reference to the
Dark Ages is quite apt.

Wally


From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU  Tue Feb 22 18:17:55 2000
From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike Gildea)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:17:55 -0600
Subject: Another take on Funknet Principles
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.121755.0600.SPIKEG@OWLNET.RICE.EDU>

I am writing this posting with two hats on: one is as the co-owner of the
list, to express my dismay at the personal attacks that have come out in
recent postings and to ask that this stop -- the other co-owner, Michael
Barlow, has indicated that he agrees.  The other is as a member of the
FUNKNET community interested in detaching some substantive issues from the
personal vitriol.

(1) On personal attacks and "rudeness" (and its correlate, "formalist
bashing").

First, on tone.  Attacks on unreliable data and poorly-considered analyses
can be made without taking a personally demeaning tone (e.g. "If you really
want to participate in an informed discussion of this, David, I suggest you
learn enough...").  This sort of tone changes the focus of discussion from
substantive issues (like the importance of being empirically responsible)
to the personal (Was that "rude"?  Should David respond in kind?).  An
alternative might be something like: "The data from the literature David
cites is full of errors, as any fluent speaker of Japanese will attest.
Unfortunately, this bogus data seems to have some respectability in
formalist circles, so that David is perpetuating the error by repeating it.
See <references> for the real story."  It really isn't hard to be polite
while telling someone their source is full of shit.

On "formalist-bashing" and ad hominem attacks.  I don't want to interact
with people who dismiss functionalism as "irrelevant" or "uninteresting"
(i.e. generic "functionalist bashers), nor am I interested in generic
"formalist-bashing".  The contributions to this list by formalists have by
and large been limited to offering different takes on issues we are
discussing, along with calling us on it when we have particularly egregious
examples of content-free "formalist bashing".  In the case of David's
recent posting on jibun, given what he knew from the literature, he was
making a reasonable contribution -- that we should look at the body of work
by Safir, as we might learn something interesting from it.  Dan Everett
also gave a reference that those who are interested might follow up on.
This is how people engage in a constructive conversation.  If you don't
like the references they offer, you are free to enter that conversation and
explain why.

John's response was not constructive: "I DON'T want people on funknet
referring to studies by, e.g. Ken Safir (as David did) as a source of
cross-linguistic data. I know about Ken (we overlapped at Penn); I know his
data can (and should) be thrown in the garbage can before people waste even
more of their time making up theories based upon them. I don't know how
many of the other several hundred people on funknet realize this."

This kind of unsupported blanket condemnation is a form of verbal terrorism
-- John does not like Safir's work and insists that nobody mention it on
FUNKNET unless they are prepared to face personal attacks themselves.  He
explicitly tries to force David to stop posting on FUNKNET because he finds
his sources of data offensive.  Attacks on the empirical reliability of our
colleagues' work should also maintain high empirical standards, and right
now we have nothing but John's assertion that, because he and Ken were once
at the same institution, he knows that the entire body of Ken's work is not
worthy of consideration by "serious" linguists.  That's called an ad
hominem attack and it has no place in any discussion of substance,
especially not one where some 800 other people might be influenced by it.
I'm all for empirical reliability, but I demand it from my theoretical
friends as well as from my theoretical foes.

I request that future public condemnations of *work* by other linguists --
both formalist and functionalist -- include some thoughtful discussion of
the basis for the attacks, and that they take a respectful tone towards the
*people* involved, at least if you want to post them to FUNKNET.

(2) On empirically reliable data.  I think this is a critically important
issue that many linguists somehow take for granted.  No, all that is
published, especially about "exotic" languages, is not true.  And I believe
the collection and repetition of unreliable data are not limited to
formalists.  How about a discussion of methods by which data collection can
be made more reliable, whether by learning to speak the language in
question, by relying primarily on naturally-occurring discourse for
examples (especially, where possible, from large, searchable corpora), or
by at the very least reading the entire grammar of the language before
extracting some small piece to present in a more theoretically or
typologically-oriented setting (cf. Mithun's 1999 magnificent treatment of
the languages of North America).

I have never believed in the equation FUNCTIONALIST = RELIABLE DATA, so I
don't identify with John's impassioned plea to *keep* FUNKNET as a place
where data are always reliable.  ALL data in ALL linguistic discussions
need to be subject to the same scrutiny for reliability -- FUNKNET
contributions never have been and never will be exempted from the need for
that scrutiny.

(3) On the "purity" of discussion on the list.

TG's original mission statement was designed to attract like-minded people
to a list where we could discuss the issues we care about.  That mission
statement attracted a community, and ever since that community has been
evolving.  John's and Jon's most recent postings are an attempt to pull the
community in a certain direction, which they identify as more compatible
with the vision that launched the original community.  As members of the
community that is their right.

On the other hand, I am actually quite contented with all the diverse
directions the list has taken over the years, as I am happy to see the
entire enterprise of functionalist linugistics evolving.  In my own
evolution, as I do more historical work I see more and more the importance
of persevering patterns, and not just in morphology but in syntax.  The
existence of "autonomous" patterns, which change function but persevere in
form, should be no more controversial than the existence of autonomous
patterns in phonology, (e.g. words), which change meaning but persevere
(more or less) in form.  I am able to reconcile this reality with my
orientation as a functionalist because I have always been able to find
functional/semantic roots for the creation of innovative grammatical
patterns, and functional motivations for their subsequent functional
evolution.  So frankly, I think people who believe in "grammar" have as
much place on this list as people who do not, and I want to be able to hear
from people who mix their functional explanation with formal issues.  I
often disagree with the formal "explanations", but the data that
formalistshave brought to discussions of South American languages (to
choose a domain I am more familiar with) is both interesting and
challenging.

One of the issues that many of us care increasingly about is the
interaction between formal and functional views on language.  Frankly, I am
not interested in "converting" anyone,  and I'm not sure that I would be
interested in interacting with anyone who might be converted merely by the
discussions I have seen thus far on this list.  I am interested in
substantive criticisms of formal models (and I believe there are many to be
made, including over-reliance on unreliable elicited judgements of
grammaticality), but more, I am interested in seeing how we, as
functionalists, address the challenge of explaining form when it does *not*
appear (at least synchronically) to be driven by function. If most people
on this list are uninterested in discussion on issues like these, then I
suppose they will lead the discussion in other directions, and that's OK
too.  We continue to define our community every time we take up a new topic
that interests enough people to generate discussion.

Spike


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Tue Feb 22 19:04:16 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 16:04:16 -0300
Subject: Another take on Funknet Principles
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.160416.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

I applaud Spike's posting on these issues - at the same time that I
sympathize with John Myhill.

With regard to suggestions on how to do better empirical work, Paul
Newman and Martha Ratliff have edited a new volume on _Linguistic
Fieldwork_, to appear, I believe, from Cambridge University Press. I
have a chapter in there on "monolingual field research" in which I argue
that one should always learn to speak the language one is working on.
But the other chapters look even better. Chapters by Larry Hyman, Ian
Maddieson, Keren Rice, Marianne Mithun, and others of my heroes all look
interesting and useful. This book (and it isn't the only one) targets
the entire field. It is vital that all of us pay careful attention to
data and, yes, methodology.

Having said that, let me say that besides being one of the smartest
people I have ever met, David Pesetsky is an incredibly careful
researcher. If he cites a published source which has errors, well, then,
as Spike points out, let's offer him a better source. Don't assume that
anyone is irresponsible. Trust and respect should be the defaults.

Anyway, glad to see Spike's statement.

At the same time, I read FUNKNET for about the same reason as John
Myhill does - to learn about and discuss good functional analyses of
careful empirical research data. If we argue about these occasionally,
that is not to 'convert' anyone, but simply to try to get the best
analysis to come out, whether formal or functional. Although I believe
that formal analyses have a much harder time coming up with an
intensionally definable subject matter, I still think that occasionally
at least, formal analyses are more insightful. Debating and discussing
on this list have helped me tremendously.

Dan Everett


From clements at INDIANA.EDU  Tue Feb 22 20:45:55 2000
From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 14:45:55 -0600
Subject: SPSS and Varbrul
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.144555.0600.CLEMENTS@INDIANA.EDU>

Dear Funknetters,
Recently, SPSS came out with a new version of their software.  I was
wondering if anyone knows whether this latest version of SPSS can take care
of linguistic data in the same way Varbrul can.  Any information and
pointers on the subject would be greatly appreciated.  I will compile the
responses and post them.

Thanks,


Clancy Clements

J. Clancy Clements
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese
Ballantine Hall 844 / IU
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
Tel. (812) 855-6141
Fax: (812) 855-4526


From ardise at HOTMAIL.COM  Tue Feb 22 23:57:01 2000
From: ardise at HOTMAIL.COM (Ardis Eschenberg)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 15:57:01 PST
Subject: back to the data...
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.155701.PST.ARDISE@HOTMAIL.COM>

Getting back to the data, I thought it might be worth noting  that in
Turkish the use of the self pronoun as subject occurs in the contexts (as
was noted for other languages) where there is an emphasis on the fact that
the particular set of people did the action, as in the English,"They
themselves made the dinner."  (No one helped them.)  Likely people figured
this from what was presented, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to add for
people like me who wondered about the use/context.  The original message is
below.
Peacefully,
Ardis Eschenberg
State University of New York at Buffalo
Wayne State College of Nebraska

>In Turkish language the self pronoun 'kendi' is used in the subjectposition
>as in the following example:
>Kendi (himself/herself) geldi (came). It is an inflectional pronoun. Thus,
>it is possible to use it for the other subject pronouns. For instance,
>kendi-m (myself), kendi /kendisi (himself/herself/itself), kendi-leri
>(themselves).
>T?m (All) haz?rl?klar? (preparations) kendileri (themselves) yapt?lar(did).
>"Themselves did all the preparations.


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


From ardise at HOTMAIL.COM  Wed Feb 23 00:33:49 2000
From: ardise at HOTMAIL.COM (Ardis Eschenberg)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 16:33:49 PST
Subject: back to the data...
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.163349.PST.ARDISE@HOTMAIL.COM>

Getting back to the data, I thought it might be worth noting  that in
Turkish the use of the self pronoun as subject occurs in the contexts (as
was noted for other languages) where there is an emphasis on the fact that
the particular set of people did the action, as in the English,"They
themselves made the dinner."  (No one helped them.)  Likely people figured
this from what was presented, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to add for
people like me who wondered about the use/context.  The original message is
below.
Peacefully,
Ardis Eschenberg
State University of New York at Buffalo
Wayne State College of Nebraska

>In Turkish language the self pronoun 'kendi' is used in the subjectposition
>as in the following example:
>Kendi (himself/herself) geldi (came). It is an inflectional pronoun. Thus,
>it is possible to use it for the other subject pronouns. For instance,
>kendi-m (myself), kendi /kendisi (himself/herself/itself), kendi-leri
>(themselves).
>T?m (All) haz?rl?klar? (preparations) kendileri (themselves) yapt?lar(did).
>"Themselves did all the preparations.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


From traugott at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU  Wed Feb 23 03:35:03 2000
From: traugott at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Elizabeth Traugott)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 19:35:03 -0800
Subject: tribute to Suzanne Fleischman
Message-ID: <TUE.22.FEB.2000.193503.0800.TRAUGOTT@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>

Many members of the lists on which the death of Suzanne
Fleischman was announced very briefly a few weeks ago have
asked for further news about her life and work.

The following is based on the University of California, Berkeley,
news release, with information about a memorial to be held on
March 11th.

Suzanne Fleischman, an internationally recognized professor of
French and Romance Philology at the University of California,
Berkeley,  died Wednesday February 2nd, aged 51.

She had taught at UC Berkeley since 1975. During her career,
Fleischman earned numerous honors, including Fulbright,
Guggenheim, American Council of Learned Societies and French
government fellowships, and a 1995 medal of honor for
research from the University of Helsinki. She was invited to deliver
the Zaharoff lectures in French studies at Oxford University last
year.

Fleischman earned her PhD in Romance Philology at UC Berkeley
in 1975. She received her MA in Spanish from UC Berkeley in
1971 and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan in 1969.

In addition to dozens of articles, Fleischman wrote and edited five
books: Cultural and Linguistic Factors in Word Formation: An
Integrated Approach to the Development of the Suffix '-age',
University of California Publications in Linguistics 86, Univ. of
California Press (1987); The Future in Thought and Language:
Diachronic Evidence from Romance, Cambridge Studies in
Linguistics 35, Cambridge UP (1982); Tense and Narrativity: From
Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction, Univ. of Austin Press
(1990); Discourse Pragmatics and the Verb: The Evidence from
Romance, ed. with Linda R. Waugh, Routledge, Chapman & Hall
(1991); Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. with Joan L.
Bybee, Benjamins (1995).

A volume of Fleischman's papers is being prepared by Dan I.
Slobin and Eve E. Sweetser.

Colleagues and friends recall Fleischman as an athletic, joyful,
witty friend and a dedicated professor. In the past several
years she devoted her energies to studying, understanding and
clarifying the relationships between language and disease, after
being diagnosed in 1993 with myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood
disorder known as MDS.

At the time of her death, Fleischman was working on a book
examining the pervasiveness of the military metaphor in the
language of medicine and illness. People with illnesses are no longer
the focus of medicine, Fleischman wrote, "but merely the clinical
stage on which the main protagonists of the drama - the doctors and
the disease - battle it out". Last December, she gave a lecture on
language and medicine at a hematology conference at Mount Sinai
Hospital in New York.

Contributions to the memorial fund, which the MDS Foundation is
calling the Suzanne Fleischman Memorial Fund for MDS Patient
Outreach, may be sent to: The MDS Foundation, Box 477, 464
Main Street Crosswicks, NJ 08515. Those who wish to direct
contributions to the new MDS Patient Outreach Fund may specify
"Suzanne Fleischman Memorial Patient Outreach Fund".  Donors
who wish to earmark contributions for general research into causes
of and treatment for MDS may specify "MDS General Fund".

According to the MDS Foundation, the Suzanne Fleischman
Memorial Patient Outreach Fund will provide for patient education
conferences around the country, support MDS sufferers who cannot
afford care, and enable the MDS Foundation to reproduce and
distribute to patients a speech Fleischman gave last April in Prague,
at the International Symposium on Myelodysplastic Syndromes, in
which she outlined ways for patients to research and cope with
MDS.

A memorial gathering for Suzanne Fleischman, hosted by the
University of California at Berkeley in conjunction with her family
and friends, will take place on Saturday, March 11 2000, at 2 p.m.
in the Great Hall of the Faculty Club on the UC-Berkeley campus.


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Wed Feb 23 10:39:29 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 12:39:29 +0200
Subject: funknet principles
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.123929.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

The problem is not so simple as criticizing how one person happened
to analyze something in a particular paper. In the case of jibun, as
I have already written in several postings here, you just plain can't
understand how it's used with a formalist/structuralist account. It's
related to viewpoint, empathy, textual factors. You can't understand
it from isolated sentences. It has nothing to do with structure at all.
The most brilliant linguist in the world couldn't give an empirically
adequate structural account of its use, because there is none. The problem,
therefore, is NOT that formal analyses happen to have certain shortcomings;

it's that, in this case, formal analysis is inherently inappropriate.
If you can read Japanese texts, this is simply inherently obvious, but
textual function as an explanation is by definition out in formal
linguistics. Therefore, I felt that the correct course of action in this
case was not to criticize individual studies but the entire field of
formal linguistics, for trying to explain something for which the
only empirically adequate explanation is something which it methodologically
excludes. In this respect I'm 'formalist-bashing'--there is no
formal account of jibun. There is also no formal account of tu vs. usted in
Spanish. There aren't formalist accounts of a lot of things. The difference
in the case of jibun is that formalists for some reason THINK there is
an account.

Sorry, Spike, evidently I take empirical responsibility more seriously than
you do. I think that crackpots are dangerous and should be identified; this
is how to stop them (please note that whatever I have said about David
Pesetsky, I would absolutely not put him in the same class as Ken Safir).
Moralizing
is nice but it isn't nearly enough. It's nice to say 'all data should be
open to criticism', but in practice this is the first discussion we've had of
this in the several years I've been on the network.

If you don't like my postings, Spike, you're in charge here, bounce them back.

I have no objections to formalist-functionalist interaction on funknet. I'm
not interested in it, but I have no objections to it. I have objections to
introducing lower standards of empirical accountability into our discussions.

John Myhill


From dparvaz at UNM.EDU  Wed Feb 23 14:35:15 2000
From: dparvaz at UNM.EDU (Dan Parvaz)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 07:35:15 -0700
Subject: back to the data...
In-Reply-To: <20000222235701.65088.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.073515.0700.DPARVAZ@UNM.EDU>

Farsi has a similar use of the reflexive, as in:

khodeshaan shaam  raa tahiyye kardand.
REFLEX-3pl dinner ACC prepare did-3pl
Themselves dinner  -  prepare did.
"*They* fixed dinner"

This might be given as a response to "They had help, didn't they?"

Cheers,

Dan.


From spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU  Wed Feb 23 14:56:23 2000
From: spikeg at OWLNET.RICE.EDU (Spike Gildea)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 08:56:23 -0600
Subject: Funknet
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.085623.0600.SPIKEG@OWLNET.RICE.EDU>

Thanks for your follow-up posting, John.  I can see I need to address a
point regarding FUNKNET procedure, as apparently this is not clear to
everyone:

>If you don't like my postings, Spike, you're in charge here, bounce them back.

Actually, Michael and I are "in charge" only in the sense that we respond
to technical difficulties as they come up and that we can remove
individuals from the list and prevent their re-subscription (something we
have done only once in our nearly five years).  We do not see any postings
before they become public -- this is not a *moderated* list (like, e.g.
Linguist List).  Were this a moderated list, we would have the option of
bouncing messages back to senders, but frankly we don't want to be the
"conscience" of the list, or to put ouselves in the position of deciding
what people do and don't get to say on FUNKNET day in and day out.  When we
find the tone of postings moving in an uncomfortable direction, we send
private messages in the hope of pre-empting scenes like the one yesterday
(and I understand that others in the community do this as well).  Hopefully
the personal stuff can stay in private messages from here on out.

One more word on empirical accountability.  I find myself wanting to be
convinced by what John has to say about jibun; the first two paragraphs of
his last posting were really clear and pursuasive.  The only missing step
is some idea where I would go to read data and arguments for those
extremely plausible-sounding conclusions.  I remain serious that empirical
responsibility includes providing some *evidence* (or references to
published evidence) that "there is no formal account of Jibun", or that
someone is identifiable as a "crackpot" -- without evidence, these remain,
respectively, empirically empty assertions and namecalling.  I am familiar
enough with John's work to trust that there is substance behind these
assertions (notice that nowhere in my postings have I defended the
empirical reliability of the work under attack, nor suggested that his
analysis is wrong); I just want to know where the substance is so I can
verify my gut-reaction with my brain.  That's the standard I would like to
see on FUNKNET, and in linguistics in general.

Spike


From pesetsk at MIT.EDU  Wed Feb 23 14:52:30 2000
From: pesetsk at MIT.EDU (David Pesetsky)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 09:52:30 -0500
Subject: jibun
In-Reply-To: <NABBKFMEEPINEMNDAHHGKEJDEGAA.jaske@salem.mass.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.095230.0500.PESETSK@MIT.EDU>

Dear list,

I'm sorry to have caused so much commotion.  My original remark had  a
context:  a poster had noted that Nepali has a reflexive that can stand in
subject position, yet takes its antecedent within its own clause.   I
pointed out that the availability of a reflexive-like element in subject
position does indeed seem to be unrelated to the question of
discourse-level vs. sentence-internal antecedent.  My intent was to make
the same point as the previous poster, in a different way.  It was in that
context that I mentioned Japanese zibun-zisin.

To the extent that I hedged about the accuracy of the data in my own
message ("the bimorphemic zibun-zisin *is supposed to* differ from
zibun..."), it was not because I heard about it fifth-hand or because it
was a "formalist rumor".  My main source of knowledge about zibun-zisin
comes from a 1986 UMass dissertation by Yoshihisa Kitagawa ("Subject in
Japanese and English") for which I was the committee chair.  He, in turn,
was building on work by fellow student Kiyoshi Kurata.  Both are native
speakers of Japanese.  Both have done careful, constructive and interesting
work on a variety of topics.  I hedged about the accuracy of the data
simply because I have not kept up with the more recent literature on the
subject  and because I  was aware that the story, like most stories in
linguistics, was certainly more complex.

Indeed, there is at least one relevant paper that I should have remembered
(because it is by a former colleague) that takes up the issue of
zibun-zisin in its discourse context, and shows the story to be more
complex.  It is a 1994 paper by Takako Aikawa called "Logophoric Use of the
Japanese Reflexive zibun-zisin 'self-self'" in  -- dare I say it? --
"Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics I", a conference proceedings
volume available from MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. ( I believe that
her Ohio State dissertation also discussed zibun-zisin, but I cannot find
my copy at the moment.)    There is clearly other work on the topic by
other researchers that I was completely unaware of, from a variety of
perspectives.  Chris Manning has pointed out some of this work in his
messages to this list.  It is to learn such things that I subscribe to
lists like this one.

Most important, I apologize to Ken Safir, whose name has been dragged
through the mud for no apparent reason other than the fact that I called
his papers interesting.   I do think the work is interesting, and probably
related to the ongoing discussion, but if others disagree on factual or
conceptual grounds, that's fine and interesting too.

In any case, I wrote my message about zibun-zisin as a very casual, very
minor contribution to an interesting ongoing discussion, with the intention
of learning from the responses of other readers.  That is the spirit in
which my note should have been read.  So please, as a recent poster says,
back to the data.

-David Pesetsky


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Wed Feb 23 16:14:41 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 10:14:41 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.101441.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

This is to respond to two points in John Myhill's recent posting.

One of the points he made was that there were syntactic phenomena that
could not be described in formal terms. If describing syntactic phenomena
in formal terms means describing the coocurrence and linear relations
among words without reference to meaning, then I cannot quite see how any
syntactic phenomenon would defy such a description. The resulting formal
description may not be explanatory or general to any extent; but it should
be possible. If all else fails, the formal description would say: "X may
occur with anything in any order."

Formal descriptions seem not only possible in all cases; they are
also necessary for a functionalist to have available. If functionalists
are trying to explain form by function, then some description of form is
a prerequisite for their endeavor. - The dependency relationship
between formalists and functionalists also holds in the other direction:
if describing and explaining sentence form is a shared goal between them,
then functionalists depend on formalists for their explananda just as
formalists in turn depend on functionalists for functional explanations
for those aspects of form where such are available.

John's other point has to do with whether discourse analysis is beyond
the pale of the formalist approach. John implied that it was. But why
couldn't the same distributional analysis that formalists impose on
sentences be also carried out on discourse, by looking at cooccurrence and
linear order across, rather than within, sentences?

Edith M.



   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Wed Feb 23 16:59:17 2000
From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 11:59:17 -0500
Subject: Dubrovnik Courses/Conference on Syntax & Semantics
Message-ID: <WED.23.FEB.2000.115917.0500.>

               PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT

Conference and courses on NEW THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE

to be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from September 2 to
10, 2000

A five-day working week of courses will be given by:

R. Van Valin (SUNY Buffalo)
     'Syntactic Theory'
D. Wilkins (MPI Nijmegen)
     'Diachronic Semantics'
J. Pustejovsky (Brandeis U)
     'The Generative Lexicon and Semantic Theory'
D. Everett (SIL International)
     'Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory'
R. Matasovic (U of Zagreb)
     'Synchronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic
     Structures' (tentative)

Additional courses will be announced in March.

The five-day course week will be followed by a
three-day conference.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: June 1, 2000

The first official announcement with further details
will appear during the first week of March.

For further information please contact:
ctt.cogsci at fsb.hr

Organizer(s):
     University of Zagreb
     The State University of New York at Buffalo

Organizing committee:
     Rober D. Van Valin, Jr. SUNY Buffalo
     David P. Wilkins, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Nijmegen
     Milena Zic Fuchs, University of Zagreb
     Zrinka Jelaska, University of Zagreb
     Melita Kovacevic, University of Zagreb
     Ranko Matasovic, University of Zagreb

Conference secretaries:
     Nina Tudjman, Univesity of Zagreb
     Irena Zovko, University of Zagreb


***************
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.                  Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713
Professor & Chair                         Fax 716 645-3825
Department of Linguistics
609 Baldy Hall
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-1030   USA              VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Thu Feb 24 13:08:52 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:08:52 +0200
Subject: Funknet
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.150852.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

The issue is not one of knowing Japanese or not knowing Japanese. The issue
is looking for extrasentential (non-syntactic) factors motivating the use
of jibun. If one adopts a framework (e.g. P&P etc.) in which one by definition
does not even look for non-syntactic motivation, even if one is a native
speaker of Japanese, one is obviously not going to discover non-syntactic
motivation. It does not matter whether someone is 'up to date' on the
literature or not, unless more 'up to date' literature uses a different
methodology (which in the case of P&P it doesn't).

I did not think that it would be at all controversial on funknet to say that
an account which only considers syntactic factors (which is by definition
the case with any P&P account) is inadequate. Sorry if this is
'formalist-bashing', but here I guess I'm guilty of it.

On the other hand, I recognize that there is such a bewildering array of
published claims about jibun that it is pointless to refer to printed sources
as 'proving' one claim or another. If you want to really be sure of what's
going on, the only way is to learn Japanese and check it out for yourself;
I'm not being facetious here, that really is the only way to know. That's
why I originally suggested this possibility to David. Although David was
making claims about jibun, and although David has had graduate students
write dissertations on this topic, my suggestion that he learn enough
Japanese to actually see for himself were interpreted by some as being
rude--presumably, the idea is that the actual possibility of him doing this
is so remote and absurd that, by something resembling a Gricean maxim, I
must have been intending to insult him. On the contrary; my suggestion was
made in all seriousness.

As I mentioned before (my Feb. 15 message), there was a graduate student of
mine (Hisako Onuki) who wrote a term paper on jibun about 10 years ago,
using naturally occurring data, but she didn't even bother to show that the
use of jibun isn't controled by syntactic factors because in her database
(about 50 tokens) there wasn't a single token of jibun with an antecedent
in the same clause, not a single one where a syntactic account could
possibly work. I don't think I have a copy of the paper around any more,
but in any case she didn't even bother to argue against a syntactic
analysis of jibun because considering how it's actually used it would have
been beating a dead horse--it was so obviously controled by
viewpoint/discourse factors that there was no point in arguing about it.

I know I jumped on David for what seems to be a small point, to a posting
which he made relatively casually. But behind his thinking was a
presupposition which is much more significant: That discourse factors,
things which cannot be given a syntactic account, have no place in
scientific research. That the only acceptable methodology for researching
is intuitive judgments of isolated and out-of-context sentences. This
thinking underlies P&P and all of David's comments, as well as the research
he referred to. Only with such thinking, and such methodology, could formal
syntacticians have wasted 30 years of research on jibun trying to give it a
syntactic account. This is a very serious matter, going way past this
discussion of jibun. This is an extremely fundamental
distinction between formal and functional linguists (more categorical than
responsibility/irresponsibility about data).

John Myhill


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Thu Feb 24 14:07:16 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 08:07:16 -0600
Subject: SAALA Conference (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.080716.0600.>

Posted for DAVE GOUGH



Southern African Applied Linguistics Association
Suider-Afrikaanse Vereniging vir Toegepaste Linguistiek
SAALA     Umbutho Wasemazantsi E-Afrika
Wezingokusetyenziswa Kolwimi



                           SAALA CONFERENCE 2000

                           FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference theme: Towards a Socially Responsible Applied Linguistics

Dates: 14-16 September Venue: University of Stellenbosch

Hosts: University of the Western Cape and University of Stellenbosch

Abstracts: Abstracts of papers, poster presentations and
workshops should be no more than 200 words. They should be in MS Word format
and include the following information:

   * Title, presenter's or presenters' names, addresses,
telephone numbers and email addresses
   * An indication as to whether the abstract is for a
poster presentation, a workshop (90 minutes) or a paper. If you are
presenting a paper also indicate if it is going to be a
        o shorter paper, on, for example, work in progress
(30 minutes * 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion time) or
        o a longer paper (45 minutes * 25 minutes plus 20
minutes discussion time).

Abstracts must be mailed to dgough at uwc.ac.za. If applicants
do not have access to email, they may post or fax their abstracts to:

David Gough (SAALA Abstract), Department of Linguistics,
University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa
(Fax: +27 21 959 2420 or 959 2376)

Final date for submission of abstracts is 19 May.
Acceptances will be announced by 29 May.

   * Details of registration, costs and accommodation will
be posted after 29 May.

Conference organising committee: Prof. A. Weideman
(albertw at uwc.ac.za) Dr
P. van der Merwe (pvdmerwe at uwc.ac.za), Dr E Ridge
(er at maties.sun.ac.za) Mr
D. Spofana (dspofana at uwc.ac.za) Prof D Gough
(dgough at uwc.ac.za).


From li at GRADDIV.UCSB.EDU  Thu Feb 24 17:14:50 2000
From: li at GRADDIV.UCSB.EDU (Charles Li)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:14:50 -0800
Subject: SAALA Conference (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <200002241407.IAA14976@consulting.is.rice.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.091450.0800.LI@GRADDIV.UCSB.EDU>

Dear Michael,

Could you announce the 2001 Linguistic Institute at your Conference. the
Institute will be sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America,
Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the Academia Sinica of Taiwan. The
theme is:  The Diversity of Language: How and Why languages differ.  The
sub-theme is The Pacific Rim languages and linguistics. There will be more
than 75 professors coming from 54 institutions in 21 countries. In
addition, Santa Barbara is a beautiful beach resort with balmy weather and
a great variety of gourmet restaurants and natural environment. The website
of the Institute is:

http://www.summer.ucsb.edu/lsa2001institute/html

Please let the students in South Africa know that there will be a large
number of fellowships to be awarded by a committee at the Linguistic
Society of America. Competition is open to everyone across the world. Write
to LSA for information.

I would also be glad to send you a bunch of posters if you think they are
useful.

Charles Li





At 08:07 AM 2/24/00 -0600, Michael Barlow wrote:
>Posted for DAVE GOUGH
>
>
>
>Southern African Applied Linguistics Association
>Suider-Afrikaanse Vereniging vir Toegepaste Linguistiek
>SAALA     Umbutho Wasemazantsi E-Afrika
>Wezingokusetyenziswa Kolwimi
>
>
>
>                            SAALA CONFERENCE 2000
>
>                            FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
>
>Conference theme: Towards a Socially Responsible Applied Linguistics
>
>Dates: 14-16 September Venue: University of Stellenbosch
>
>Hosts: University of the Western Cape and University of Stellenbosch
>
>Abstracts: Abstracts of papers, poster presentations and
>workshops should be no more than 200 words. They should be in MS Word format
>and include the following information:
>
>    * Title, presenter's or presenters' names, addresses,
>telephone numbers and email addresses
>    * An indication as to whether the abstract is for a
>poster presentation, a workshop (90 minutes) or a paper. If you are
>presenting a paper also indicate if it is going to be a
>         o shorter paper, on, for example, work in progress
>(30 minutes * 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion time) or
>         o a longer paper (45 minutes * 25 minutes plus 20
>minutes discussion time).
>
>Abstracts must be mailed to dgough at uwc.ac.za. If applicants
>do not have access to email, they may post or fax their abstracts to:
>
>David Gough (SAALA Abstract), Department of Linguistics,
>University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa
>(Fax: +27 21 959 2420 or 959 2376)
>
>Final date for submission of abstracts is 19 May.
>Acceptances will be announced by 29 May.
>
>    * Details of registration, costs and accommodation will
>be posted after 29 May.
>
>Conference organising committee: Prof. A. Weideman
>(albertw at uwc.ac.za) Dr
>P. van der Merwe (pvdmerwe at uwc.ac.za), Dr E Ridge
>(er at maties.sun.ac.za) Mr
>D. Spofana (dspofana at uwc.ac.za) Prof D Gough
>(dgough at uwc.ac.za).

___________________________________________________
Charles Li
Professor of Linguistics, Dean of Graduate Division
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Tel: 805-893-2013               Fax: 805-893-8259


From kemmer at eva.mpg.de  Thu Feb 24 19:39:44 2000
From: kemmer at eva.mpg.de (Suzanne Kemmer)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 20:39:44 +0100
Subject: LSA Summer Institute URL typo
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.203944.0100.>

There was a small typo in the URL for the
LSA Summer Institute that Charles sent around.

The correct address is:
http://www.summer.ucsb.edu/lsa2001institute.html

--Suzanne


From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Thu Feb 24 23:33:53 2000
From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 18:33:53 -0500
Subject: form and function
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.96.1000223095743.17921C-100000@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.24.FEB.2000.183353.0500.DRYER@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>

While I agree with Edith Moravcsik's statement that functionalists need
"some description of form", I strongly disagree with her claim that "if
describing and explaining sentence form is a shared goal between them,
then functionalists depend on formalists for their explananda".

First, in the particular case of Japanese jibun, the issue is what is an
accurate description of its distribution: is its distribution accurately
described in the sort of syntactic terms proposed in the formal literature
or is it to be described in the sort of functional terms proposed in the
functionalist literature?  If the functionalist accounts are right, then
generalizations provided in the formal literature are not something for
functionalists to explain, but just inaccurate descriptions of the facts.
The data based on judgments of isolated sentences cited in the formal
literature will either be inaccurate (for example, sentences that could be
used in an appropriate context are treated as ungrammatical) or given a
pragmatic explanation (the oddness of a sentence treated as ungrammatical
can be explained in pragmatic rather than syntactic terms).  The
generalizations based on this data will be at best pseudo-generalizations,
epiphenomenal illusions that are artifacts of judging sentences in
isolation.  From a functionalist perspective, the data and conclusions in
the formal literature will be useless.

Second, in so far as functionalists need descriptions of form, I am not
aware of any instance in which the descriptions provided by formal
linguists have been of value.  If a functionalist is attempting to explain
some typological pattern, for example, the useful descriptions of form
will be descriptive grammars, rather than anything provided by formal
linguists.

I thus see no reason to think that functionalists ever depend on
formalists for their explananda.

Matthew Dryer


From alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU  Fri Feb 25 02:52:52 2000
From: alanden at CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU (Alan Dench)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 10:52:52 +0800
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.105252.0800.ALANDEN@CYLLENE.UWA.EDU.AU>

I disagree with a number of the recent postings about the value of
formal
work, the nature and use of data, and from my heart with the sharp
divide that
some seem to want to draw between functionalist and formalist.

1. Matthew Dryer is unaware of "any instance in which the descriptions
provided by
formal linguists have been of value", and that typologists will find
descriptions of
form in descriptive grammars rather than in anything provided by
formalists.

Having written a few grammars, I know how little one should trust these,
but that is a different issue. There *are* descriptive grammars informed
by formal
theory and these are very useful to the typologist. To cite a well known
example,
though the theory is quite dated, Dixon's grammar of Dyirbal is largely
based in the then current generative phonology/transformational grammar
framework. I suspect that
it was not just the facts of the language that generated such interest
in this grammar -- an interest that has persisted -- but Dixon's
explicit use of the formal tools then at hand.
In discovering where these tools worked and where they didn't we learnt
a lot about
this language and looked at quite a few others in a different way.

Generally, I would agree with Dryer's statements that functionalists do
not depend on
formalists for their explananda. But I have to say that many descriptive
grammarians,
writing the descriptions on which a range of research enterprises
(including functionalist ones) are based, depend very much on formalist
linguistics for many of their *questions*.

How important was it to describe the properties of reflexive pronouns
before the advent of binding theory? Descriptions of argument structure
and case relations, of Equi etc. are fairly standard in grammars these
days. It hasn't always been like this.

2. John Myhill asks that David Pesetsky learn enough Japanese to see for
himself, though John assures us that the issue is not about knowing or
not knowing Japanese.
One wonders, given the obvious complexity of jibun (as far as I can
glean from the discussion) just how much Japanese one would need to
learn. At what point in their acquisition do second language learners
provide intuitions as reliable as those of native speakers? At what
point can a linguist learning a language trust his or her own
intuitions? Can only native speaker linguists write 'correct'
descriptions?

3. Please don't ask, as a requirement, for descriptive linguists to
learn the languages they write descriptions of. The material available
for secondary description/analysis would dry up pretty quickly. And
please don't write off those descriptions/grammars that have been
written by linguists who didn't 'know' the languages as necessarily
incomplete. Please take into consideration that any description is
limited -- by the nature of data, by the knowledge of the informants, by
the interests and expertise of the describer, etc. etc. Especially,
please don't expect that grammatical descriptions of any kind, whether
written by 'formalists', 'functionalists' or just plain eclectics say
all there is to say about a phenomenon, or more importantly ask the only
questions worth asking.

4. Incidentally, I wonder how many term papers have been prompted by the
discussion of jibun.

Alan Dench


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Fri Feb 25 07:05:49 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:05:49 +0200
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.090549.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

I feel a little bit strange jumping to the defense of formalists after
my recent contributions, but I can think of at least two occasions upon
which my own (functionalist) thinking has been significantly influenced
by articles by formalists (and I'm not talking about cases like Dixon's
Dyirbal grammar, which are basically descriptive but use formal tools).
These are (1) Chomsky's article 'on wh-movement', in which he connected
syntactic phenomena related to relativization, topicalization, and clefting,
a connection which was at the time (1977) quite striking to me at least,
and (2) Burzio's various articles on VS word order in Italian, which
showed how a variety of factors could motivate word order alternations.
I doubt that either of these two formalists would approve of the use I
made of their ideas (and they might not even understand how my use
was related to their work), but to me it was quite clear that my thinking
was influenced significantly by these articles.

Regarding 'how much Japanese' to learn to understand jibun to see that
formal 'reflexive' accounts don't work--in this case I don't think much
beyond reading ability. Even minimal reading ability. Get a Japanese book,
an English translation, a Japanese-English dictionary, and a basic grammar.
Learn how jibun is written in Japanese. Scan the Japanese text for this
combination (depending upon the text you should find one every 5-10 pages).
When you find a token, translate the whole sentence, with the help of the
English translation. After a
while, you will doubtless notice that few or none of the tokens of jibun
translate as reflexives or have an antecedent in the same clause. At this
point, the absurdity of attempting to define the use of jibun syntactically
will be obvious. In terms of a more fine-grained analysis, well, that's
another question, but I was particularly addressing the question of the
plausibility of formal accounts of this.

John Myhill







>I disagree with a number of the recent postings about the value of
>formal
>work, the nature and use of data, and from my heart with the sharp
>divide that
>some seem to want to draw between functionalist and formalist.
>
>1. Matthew Dryer is unaware of "any instance in which the descriptions
>provided by
>formal linguists have been of value", and that typologists will find
>descriptions of
>form in descriptive grammars rather than in anything provided by
>formalists.
>
>Having written a few grammars, I know how little one should trust these,
>but that is a different issue. There *are* descriptive grammars informed
>by formal
>theory and these are very useful to the typologist. To cite a well known
>example,
>though the theory is quite dated, Dixon's grammar of Dyirbal is largely
>based in the then current generative phonology/transformational grammar
>framework. I suspect that
>it was not just the facts of the language that generated such interest
>in this grammar -- an interest that has persisted -- but Dixon's
>explicit use of the formal tools then at hand.
>In discovering where these tools worked and where they didn't we learnt
>a lot about
>this language and looked at quite a few others in a different way.
>
>Generally, I would agree with Dryer's statements that functionalists do
>not depend on
>formalists for their explananda. But I have to say that many descriptive
>grammarians,
>writing the descriptions on which a range of research enterprises
>(including functionalist ones) are based, depend very much on formalist
>linguistics for many of their *questions*.
>
>How important was it to describe the properties of reflexive pronouns
>before the advent of binding theory? Descriptions of argument structure
>and case relations, of Equi etc. are fairly standard in grammars these
>days. It hasn't always been like this.
>
>2. John Myhill asks that David Pesetsky learn enough Japanese to see for
>himself, though John assures us that the issue is not about knowing or
>not knowing Japanese.
>One wonders, given the obvious complexity of jibun (as far as I can
>glean from the discussion) just how much Japanese one would need to
>learn. At what point in their acquisition do second language learners
>provide intuitions as reliable as those of native speakers? At what
>point can a linguist learning a language trust his or her own
>intuitions? Can only native speaker linguists write 'correct'
>descriptions?
>
>3. Please don't ask, as a requirement, for descriptive linguists to
>learn the languages they write descriptions of. The material available
>for secondary description/analysis would dry up pretty quickly. And
>please don't write off those descriptions/grammars that have been
>written by linguists who didn't 'know' the languages as necessarily
>incomplete. Please take into consideration that any description is
>limited -- by the nature of data, by the knowledge of the informants, by
>the interests and expertise of the describer, etc. etc. Especially,
>please don't expect that grammatical descriptions of any kind, whether
>written by 'formalists', 'functionalists' or just plain eclectics say
>all there is to say about a phenomenon, or more importantly ask the only
>questions worth asking.
>
>4. Incidentally, I wonder how many term papers have been prompted by the
>discussion of jibun.
>
>Alan Dench


From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK  Fri Feb 25 08:22:43 2000
From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:22:43 +0000
Subject: formal/functional
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.082243.0000.DICK@LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK>

I agree wholeheartedly with Alan Dench, who says:

"I disagree with a number of the recent postings about the value of formal
work, the nature and use of data, and from my heart with the sharp divide
that some seem to want to draw between functionalist and formalist."

The discussion on this list is often fascinating, but can turn into the
exchange of slogans, which encourage people to paint themselves into
corners that they may not really want to defend.

Some people give the impression that they think there are no linguistic
facts which demand a 'formal' (rather than 'pragmatic') explanation. That
seems to imply a rejection on principle of rules such as agreement between
a noun and its modifying adjective:

Data A:
bon ami         bonne amie         bons  amis      bonnes amies

This is surely a purely formal rule, in the sense that it is sensitive only
to the intra-linguistic relations between the words concerned:

Rule A:
If an adjective modifies a noun, the adjective agrees in number and gender
with the noun.

I imagine everyone would be happy to accept a rule such as this, even if
they then went on to provide a functional explanation for why it exists
(e.g. to help keep track of grammatical relations). Or do some of our
colleagues really believe that explanations such as Rule A are
misconceived and should be replaced by *purely* pragmatic explanations? And
if so, how would the explanation work?

Maybe some people mean something different by 'formal' when they contrast
it with 'functional'? Both Mathew Dryer and John Myhill contrast it with
'descriptive', and seem to reserve 'formal' for a specifically Chomskyan
approach to grammar, complete with abstract structures etc. That's quite
confusing, since much of 'descriptive' grammar is purely formal in the more
general sense of simply stating formal patterns of syntax and morphology,
rather than relating them to pragmatic functions. Maybe we could do with a
clarification of terminology:

'formal' = involving relations within language
'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
'Chomskyan' = Chomskyan
'formal grammar' = (study of) grammar where external relations are left
unanalysed
'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
explained in terms of functional patterns.


Dick Hudson


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/home.htm


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Fri Feb 25 11:04:45 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:04:45 +0100
Subject: No subject
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.120445.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

      Dear Prof. Myhill,

>I guess I could better sum up my question by saying:
>Can the `reflexive' be used when there is NO coreference in the same sentence
>at all?
Yes, it is possible.
In Georgian the grammaticalized body-part noun for 'head' tav- preceded by
a possessive pronoun (POSS + tav-) can be used to express not only
reflexive action (see (1) but also the cases when none of the pairs of
arguments of the verb are coreferential (see (2):
(1) me      ?en      chem-s    tav-s           gixat'av
  I(NOM)  you(DAT)   my(DAT)  head(DAT)   I-draw-him-for-you
                   'I draw myself for you'
(2) ?en     mas     chem-s    tav-s    / *  me           uxat'av
  you(NOM) he(DAT)  my(DAT)  head(DAT) /  I(DAT)   you-draw-him-for-him
                        'You draw me for him'
The latter use (called object camouflage in literature (see Alice c.
Harris, Georgian Syntax, 1981, Cambridge University Press) is not anaphoric
as it has no antecedent within the clause. Neither it is logophoric since
the phrase refers to nothing else but the direct object argument of the
given verb. The thing is that the reflexive phrases are always
cross-referenced in the finite verb form as 3rd person items (see (6),
(7)), whatever person of the antecedent. They trigger 3rd person agreement
even in the cases of object camouflage. That is why the use of personal
pronouns instead of the phrases POSS + tav- is ungrammatical as, for
instance, the 1st/2nd personal pronouns will not be able to trigger 3rd
person agreement (see (7)).

But I think it has nothing to do with subject reflexives.

Sincerely,

    Nino Amiridze


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 25 10:54:12 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:54:12 -0300
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.075412.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Alan Dench wrote:
>
>
> Having written a few grammars, I know how little one should trust these,
> but that is a different issue.

I don't know that it is a different issue. People are too ready to trust
grammars, primarily because most are scared as hell of trying to do one.
Both functionalists and formalists would rather write about grammars
than write grammars, by and large. But this is the most urgent task
facing the field and one of the two most important. Those of us who have
written them know how much the field not only needs more grammars, but
revisions of extant grammars, because we know, as Paul Simon said in a
different context, that our words 'tear and strain to rhyme'. The only
way the field can really cure its empirical flaccidity is to conflate
the distinction between theoretical and field linguist - these ought to
refer to the same people. Everyone needs to try to write grammars. And
if anyone out there can write a grammar without being heavily informed
by linguistic theory (and I don't just mean what Bob Dixon calls 'Basic
Linguistic Theory' - nor do I think Dixon means this, really, either),
I'd like to meet 'em.

There *are* descriptive grammars informed
> by formal
> theory

The grammar of Hidatsa, by Hu Matthews, is still worth reading - Chomsky
(1965) said it was worth 1,000 descriptive grammars uniformed by theory.
I don't know, but it is good.

> 3. Please don't ask, as a requirement, for descriptive linguists to
> learn the languages they write descriptions of.


In fact, in a new article I already mentioned on this list, "Monolingual
Field Research", I do impose this as a desideratum on all grammars.
Everyone should learn to speak the language they write a grammar on
(unless they are co-authoring it with someone who speaks it. In 1966,
Paul Postal, in a review of Longacre's _Grammar Discovery Procedures_,
argued that Longacre left out the most important methodological
component of fieldwork - learn to speak the language. (And I know some
on this list have opinions about the quality of Postal's own fieldwork -
I have no opinion on that, nor am I saying that learning a language is a
sufficient condition for good grammars.))

Do functionalists use formalist ideas and data in their write-ups?
Probably about as much as the average westerner is influenced by Plato,
with about as much consciousness of it. The agenda of research, like it
or not, was set by Chomsky. We are maturing as a field, so that Noam is
not the only one to tell us what to work on. I think that is vital. But
let no one underestimate the power of his influence - even on those
writing on this list, deriving from the most powerful mind ever to enter
the field of linguistics. And I am not a hero-worshipper. That's just a
fact.

And while I am on non-sequiturs, I think that Chomsky's writings have
even played a role in the recent independence of East Timor. Amazing
influence, but not an influence most people are aware of. Similar in
linguistics.

DLE


From Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL  Fri Feb 25 12:07:20 2000
From: Nino.Amiridze at LET.UU.NL (Nino Amiridze)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 13:07:20 +0100
Subject: reflexives in subject position
In-Reply-To: <200002230915.KAA25473@freya.let.rug.nl>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.130720.0100.NINO.AMIRIDZE@LET.UU.NL>

            Dear Prof. Abraham,

thank you very much for your message.
>Hi, colleagues:
>Take a superficial look at the below! I am aghast and find myself
>rubbing my eyes: This has nothing to do with reflexivity in subject
>position!!! These are intensifiers with a reflexive form, but there is
>no antecedent and, consequently, no coreferentiality within local
>boundaries! In certain languages, among which German and Latin,
>this does not even have a reflexive form (Pers. pronoun-selbst;
>Pers. pronoun-ipse)!
>    What kind of conclusions do we have to draw from such awfully
>misguided contributions to the field - and, quite obviously, total
>naivete?! Werner

Please have a closer look at the examples like:
Georgian
(1) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

They have no antecedent which can c-command them but it does not mean that
the sentence has no reflexive meaning. I agree that reflexive phrase
fuctions also as an intensifies in (a) reading of the sentence but there IS
reflexive meaning there. It means the following: "The president saved
himself (no one else helped him to do so)"
In (b) reading there is no emphasis at all. I do not think we can call
those phrases (Possessive + tav-) intensifiers. But still there is a
reflexive meaning there. No matter of the fact that there is no c-command
relation.

Sincerely,

  Nino Amiridze


From jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU  Fri Feb 25 14:32:56 2000
From: jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU (Jon Aske)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:32:56 -0500
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.20000225082243.006a8e1c@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.093256.0500.JASKE@SALEM.MASS.EDU>

I must strongly object to Dick's definitions about functional and
functionalism.  I am surprised that these misconceptions still exist, even
among formalists:

> 'formal' = involving relations within language
> 'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
> 'formal grammar' = (study of) grammar where external relations are left
> unanalysed
> 'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
> explained in terms of functional patterns.

This presupposes that a functional analysis takes a formal analysis and adds
something to it (explanation, relation to language use, etc.).  That is not
what functionalism is about as I -- and as I believe most people on this
list (at least until recently) -- understand it.  Dick's functionalism is
the functionalism of formalists who sprinkle some functional notions on
their autonomous formal analyses as an afterthought.  People who believe
that on this list have joined the wrong list, as far as I am concerned.

Functionalism and functional analyses have at their core the belief that you
cannot separate form and function/meaning.  They form an inseparable unit at
every level, from the word (cf. Saussure) to the many different types of
constructions that there are at every level (from the morphological level to
the discourse level).  Sometimes the function motivates (I am not saying
predicts or explains 100%) the form in rather obvious ways, without
necessarily explaining it, and figuring out those ways is also a crucial
aspect of functionalism.  Often times, however, form takes a life of its own
and it cannot be explained or motivated by function, but the formal pole of
any linguistic unit still does not exist without the functional pole.  They
are the two sides of the coin.

Isn't that what this list is all about?  Maybe I'm wrong.  Have those who
think like me become a minority on this list?  Or is it that the other guys
are a very vocal minority.  Don't those guys have their own lists?

Note that I am not saying that anyone should leave this list, but if such an
eclectic group is going to have meaningful discussions, we should be very
clear about what our different beliefs and presuppositions are.  It seems to
me that there is an awful lot of confusion about that, as evidenced by
Dick's definitions above.

Jon
_____________________________________________________
Jon Aske
Department of Foreign Languages, Salem State College
jaske at salem.mass.edu - http://www.salem.mass.edu/~jaske/
personal: aske at basqueland.com - http://basqueland.com
_____________________________________________________
Get the facts first. You can distort them later. --Mark Twain


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Fri Feb 25 14:37:59 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:37:59 -0600
Subject: formal/functional
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.083759.0600.>

Dick Hudson says:
> Some people give the impression that they think there are no linguistic
> facts which demand a 'formal' (rather than 'pragmatic') explanation. That
> seems to imply a rejection on principle of rules such as agreement between
> a noun and its modifying adjective:

Dick, like many people, turns to agreement as the prototypical formal relation
and was obviously not expecting any argument on this score. However, I
wouldn't accept that agreement rules are "sensitive only to the
intra-linguistic relations between the words concerned" (nor would I accept
that agreement rules are semantically/pragmatically based). I have argued that
agreement should be seen as a discourse relation, and the particulars of that
approach neatly straddle Dick's formal/functional divide. But in thinking
about it, one could also perhaps argue that treatments of agreement in formal
grammars such as minimalism or HPSG are functional on Dick's definition since
they include "language in use" components, namely, co-indexing and referential
indices.

The main thrust of Dick's remark, however, is to question whether anyone would
reject a purely formal rule on principle. I suppose that many functionalists
on the list would see a formal rule as only a partial description. One central
problem here is that formal rules don't just come along with the data. There
is no formal rule in the agreement examples Dick gave; there are only
(written) forms. He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.

Michael


From dparvaz at unm.edu  Fri Feb 25 16:39:21 2000
From: dparvaz at unm.edu (Dan Parvaz)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:39:21 -0700
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.093921.0700.>

(Wondering aloud)

Caucasian languages, Turkish, Farsi... and Nepali. Is there a language
contact/Sprachbund-type connection here?

Cheers,

Dan.


From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Fri Feb 25 17:20:12 2000
From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:20:12 -0500
Subject: form, function, data, description
In-Reply-To: <38B5EE72.3DB3070A@cyllene.uwa.edu.au>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.122012.0500.DRYER@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>

In response to Alan Dench, what he says is largely consistent with what I
said, so let me repeat it and add some clarifying remarks: I said that I
was not aware of "any instance in which the descriptions provided by
formal linguists have been of value" to functionalists.  I did not say,
nor would I say, that there are no instances in which descriptive work has
been informed by work by formal linguists.  In particular, I think that
what Bob Dixon calls basic linguistic theory, the theoretical framework in
which most descriptive work has been done, has clearly been influenced by
various forms of generative theory, although I think the primary influence
in syntax has come from earlier generative theory (pre-1970).  I should
also qualify my claim so as not to exclude descriptive work by formal
linguists who use basic linguistic theory rather than current (or
then-current) formal theoretical frameworks.  For example, the descriptive
work by Dan Everett or Keren Rice's grammar of Slave are little different
in orientation from descriptive work by functional linguists, such as Li
and Thompson's grammar of Mandarin Chinese or John Haiman's grammar of
Hua, and are of equal value.  My claim is that there is very little if any
description using current or recent formal theoretical frameworks that is
of value to functional linguists.  I concede that if we go far enough back
in time, we do find partial exceptions to this, like Bob Dixon's grammar
of Dyirbal.

Matthew Dryer


From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Fri Feb 25 17:53:56 2000
From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:53:56 -0500
Subject: reflexives in subject position
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.125356.0500.>

Toba Batak provides a good example of a reflexive in subject position.
Toba Batak is VOS and has the Western Austronesian subject-only
constraint on extraction and other phenomena; only the final NP can be
questioned, omitted, etc.  Consider the following examples, from
Schachter 1984, Shugamoto 198.:

(1) a. Mang-ida    si   Ria  si      Torus.
                     ACTive-see PNM       PNM                   ?Torus sees Ria.?

           b.   Di-ida     si Torus si Ria.
                     PASS-see
                     ?Torus sees Ria.?
           c.   Mang-ida si Torus si Ria
                     ACTIVE-see
                    ?Ria sees Torus.?
           d.   Di-ida  si Ria si Torus.
                     PASS-see
                     ?Ria sees Torus.?

(2)     a.      Mang-ida   diri-na       si Torus.
                      ACTIVE-see self-3sgPOSS                            ?Torus sees himself.?

           b.   *Di-ida      diri-na      si Torus.
                      PASSIVE-see self-3sgPOSS             *?Himself sees Torus.?
            c.  Di-ida      si Torus diri-na.
                      PASSIVE-see            self-3sgPOSS   ?Torus sees himself.?

            d.  *Mang-ida si Torus diri-na.
                       ACTIVE-see        self-3sgPOSS       *?Himself sees Torus.?

The voice system, briefly illustrated in (1), signals whether the O
(internal argument) and S (external argument) are actor and undergoer,
respectively; if the prefix is mang-, the S is actor and the O undergoer,
and if the prefix is di-, the O is actor and the S is undergoer, as the
translations show.  Reflexives are illustrated in (2), the relevant
examples are (c, d): the reflexive is in subject (external argument)
position in these two examples, and when the voice is marked by di-, the
sentence is perfectly grammatical.  If one takes the ang-NP in Tagalog to
be the subject, as e.g. Kroeger argues, then it too has constructions
like (2c) in which the antecedent is marked by ng and the reflexive by
ang.

Robert Van Valin

All three accounts correctly predict the grammaticality of (9a) and the
ungrammaticality of

***************
Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.                  Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713
Professor & Chair                         Fax 716 645-3825
Department of Linguistics
609 Baldy Hall
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-1030   USA              VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Fri Feb 25 17:20:34 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:20:34 -0300
Subject: form, function, data, description
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.142034.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Matthew S Dryer wrote:
>
> My claim is that there is very little if any
> description using current or recent formal theoretical frameworks that is
> of value to functional linguists.  I concede that if we go far enough back
> in time, we do find partial exceptions to this, like Bob Dixon's grammar
> of Dyirbal.
>
> Matthew Dryer

This depends on the model. I would agree if you were referring to
Minimalism, an incipient program which is a complete jumble at this
point (or, to quote Paul Simon again, it is a "pocketful of mumbles,
such are promises"). But surely there are important insights that people
of all persuasions have received or could gain from paying careful
attention to Joan Bresnan's work, for example. Maybe not.

But I do agree that in reading the better grammars, e.g. Keren Rice's
work or Bob Dixon's Dyirbal (and his forthcoming Yarawara grammar, his
first Amazonian grammar), it matters little whether the author is a
formalist or a functionalist or, as Bob, neither really.

By the way, Tom Givon suggested to me that Hu Matthews' grammar of
Hidatsa is not the best example. I think he is probably right about
that, come to think of it. The 'grammars' of 'exotic' languages written
under the shadow of Aspects were, with several notable exceptions,
disasters.

Dan

Dan


From delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Fri Feb 25 20:19:41 2000
From: delancey at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Scott Delancey)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 12:19:41 -0800
Subject: form, function, data, description
In-Reply-To: <38B65F54.858EB7B9@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.121941.0800.DELANCEY@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Dan Everett wrote:

> The grammar of Hidatsa, by Hu Matthews, is still worth reading - Chomsky
> (1965) said it was worth 1,000 descriptive grammars uniformed by theory.
> I don't know, but it is good.

Peculiar example to choose--I've only ever heard this mentioned (by
Americanists, Siouanists in particular) as a particularly egregious
example of how useless most grammars written in an explicitly generative
framework are.  I can't claim to have read through it myself, but I
did, many years ago, try to use it as a resource for something I was
working on, and found it, to put it diplomatically, a very frustrating
experience.  "Worth", of course, is a two-argument predicate; there's
no such thing as intrinsic worth, only worth to somebody--Matthews'
grammar may well be worth a lot to Chomsky, but I honestly don't think
it would be on many people's lists of really useful grammars.

Scott DeLancey


From gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA  Fri Feb 25 10:19:15 2000
From: gthomson at GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA (Greg Thomson)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 15:49:15 +0530
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.20000225082243.006a8e1c@crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.154915.0530.GTHOMSON@GPU.SRV.UALBERTA.CA>

Dick Hudson suggests
>'formal' = involving relations within language
>'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
...
>'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
>explained in terms of functional patterns.

Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
sense)?

Greg Thomson


From dick at LING.UCL.AC.UK  Fri Feb 25 23:03:23 2000
From: dick at LING.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 23:03:23 +0000
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.230323.0000.DICK@LING.UCL.AC.UK>

Jon Aske says:
At 09:32 25/02/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>I must strongly object to Dick's definitions about functional and
>functionalism.  I am surprised that these misconceptions still exist, even
>among formalists:
>
>> 'formal' = involving relations within language
>> 'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
>> 'formal grammar' = (study of) grammar where external relations are left
>> unanalysed
>> 'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
>> explained in terms of functional patterns.
>
>This presupposes that a functional analysis takes a formal analysis and adds
>something to it (explanation, relation to language use, etc.).  That is not
>what functionalism is about as I -- and as I believe most people on this
>list (at least until recently) -- understand it.  Dick's functionalism is
>the functionalism of formalists who sprinkle some functional notions on
>their autonomous formal analyses as an afterthought.
## This comes from you, not from me. You're pushing me into a stereotype
which may make you feel comfortable and morally superior, but which doesn't
fit. I was brought up on Firth and Halliday and am just as keen to find
functional explanations as you are, I suspect. Moreover I believe (like
every other linguist, I guess), that formal categories are generally
defined in part in terms of their function; e.g. an English present tense
verb is identified partly by its suffix (zero or -s) and partly by its
function (contrasting with past tense, able to function as sentence root,
etc.). No-one would try to define it purely in terms of form - we would all
classify the same verb form (e.g. "come") sometimes as present tense,
sometimes as imperative, sometimes as infinitive, according to its form.
And the same is surely true of every category that would be recognised by
any (good) linguist, including Chomsky.

People who believe
>that on this list have joined the wrong list, as far as I am concerned.
## I deplore this attitude. I believe passionately that linguistics needs
bridges much more than barriers.

>
>Functionalism and functional analyses have at their core the belief that you
>cannot separate form and function/meaning.  They form an inseparable unit at
>every level, from the word (cf. Saussure) to the many different types of
>constructions that there are at every level (from the morphological level to
>the discourse level).  Sometimes the function motivates (I am not saying
>predicts or explains 100%) the form in rather obvious ways, without
>necessarily explaining it, and figuring out those ways is also a crucial
>aspect of functionalism.
>Often times, however, form takes a life of its own
>and it cannot be explained or motivated by function, but the formal pole of
>any linguistic unit still does not exist without the functional pole.
## Quite so - just as Pollard and Sag say in their book on HPSG, which I
imagine you'd classify as formal? (At least, that's how Michael Barlow
classifies it.)

>They are the two sides of the coin.
## But you can *distinguish* the two sides of a coin even if you can't
separate them, and you can distinguish them both from the coin itself. The
sides have a pattern, but no value or thickness; the coin has a value and
thickness, but no single pattern. Similarly you must be able to distinguish
the signifier and the signified because they have different properties.
Take Saussure's example of "tree": the form has four letters (or three
phonemes or whatever), but the meaning has a trunk and branches. And what
brings them together is the word TREE, which is defined partly in terms of
its form and partly in terms of its function - just like any other
analytical category that you can think of. (In homonymy, two words share
the same form; in synonymy they share the same function.)

>
>Isn't that what this list is all about?  Maybe I'm wrong.  Have those who
>think like me become a minority on this list?  Or is it that the other guys
>are a very vocal minority.  Don't those guys have their own lists?
## Yes, we do have our own lists, and you'd be most welcome to join at
least the one I run even if you made life a bit uncomfortable for us; it's
good for orthodoxies and slogans to be challenged.

>
>Note that I am not saying that anyone should leave this list,
## Thanks.

>but if such an
>eclectic group is going to have meaningful discussions, we should be very
>clear about what our different beliefs and presuppositions are.
## Precisely - which is why I made my suggestion.

It seems to
>me that there is an awful lot of confusion about that, as evidenced by
>Dick's definitions above.
## You may prefer to use the terms in different ways, but you haven't shown
that my definitions were confused.

Then Michael Barlow says:

>The main thrust of Dick's remark, however, is to question whether anyone
would
>reject a purely formal rule on principle. I suppose that many functionalists
>on the list would see a formal rule as only a partial description.
## Exactly what my proposed definitions say: a functional analysis is a
formal analysis with explicit attention to function.

>One central problem here is that formal rules don't just come along with
the data. There
>is no formal rule in the agreement examples Dick gave; there are only
(written) forms.
## Yes, that's why I labelled the data "Data A"!!

>He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's now
over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun, Adjective
and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
better analysis than Rule A.

Dick Hudson



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/home.htm


From dparvaz at UNM.EDU  Fri Feb 25 23:32:21 2000
From: dparvaz at UNM.EDU (Dan Parvaz)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 16:32:21 -0700
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <l03102800b4dbe2b1611f@[129.128.237.16]>
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.163221.0700.DPARVAZ@UNM.EDU>

> Does anyone really believe in functionless form?

Paperwork comes to mind... :-)

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Cheers,

Dan.


From moorej at UCSD.EDU  Tue Feb 22 01:04:06 2000
From: moorej at UCSD.EDU (John Moore)
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:04:06 -0800
Subject: anaphors vs. logophors
In-Reply-To: <l03102800b4dbe2b1611f@[129.128.237.16]>
Message-ID: <MON.21.FEB.2000.170406.0800.MOOREJ@UCSD.EDU>

I'd like to comment on John Myhill's claim that no formal account of the
distribution of jibun is possible.  Since I don't know anything about
jibun, I will address a question that John didn't raise - namely whether it
is desirable to have a formal account of reflexive pronouns in English.  I
suspect that the answer to this question bears on John's original one, but
I'll leave that to people who know something about jibun to decide.

One of the big problems with the classic GB (LGB - Chomsky 1981) binding
theory was that it attempted to provide a unified account of the
distribution of `himself' in (i-ii):

(i) Patrick admires himself.
(ii) Pictures of himself embarrass Patrick.

What (i) seems to illustrate is that reflexives require local antecedents -
this can be stated quite simply in any of a number of ways, using any of a
number of formal devices (e.g., in terms of tree-theoretic concepts like
c-command, argument structure terms, grammatical relations, etc.).  (ii),
on the other hand, is problematic for these straightforward formal
approaches, and led Chomsky to introduce a host of complications, including
a disjunctive definition of SUBJECT and the notion of accessibility, which
were not independently motivated.  Even with these devices, there were
still problematic data - e.g.,

(iii) Physicists like yourself are a godsend.

It seems that the basic flaw was trying to unify uses of reflexives that
shouldn't have been unified - the desire for global parsimony often comes
at the expense of local parsimony and leads to greater abstraction.

Building on previous work by Cantrall, Kuno, and others, a number of formal
accounts emerged in the early 1990s - including Reinhart and Reuland (P&P),
Pollard and Sag (HPSG), and Dalrymple (1990).  These accounts distinguished
uses of reflexives that could be easily treated in a sentence-internal,
syntactic approach, from logophoric uses that required a discourse-based
approach.  This simplified the formal syntactic approach considerably, as
its domain of application was reduced.  Furthermore, these approaches did
provide a means to tease apart the two uses - that is, it was not the case
that recalcitrant data was simply thrown to `some theory of discourse'.
Thus, by abandoning a unified account, one gains in local parsimony.

However, there is another possibility - and I suspect this may be what John
was getting at.  Given that some uses of reflexives *require* a discourse
account, could one develop a unfied discourse-based analysis on all uses of
English reflexives.  Will such an analysis suffer from the kind of global
parsimony problems that the LGB binding theory did?

The one proposal I know about is in an excellent paper by Zribi-Hertz
(Language 1989).  She raises these questions very clearly and argues that
the putative syntactic effects in reflexive binding are essentially
manifestations of the more general discourse-based effects found
independently in their logophoric uses.  In the end, however, her analysis
becomes rather complex, involves a number of disjunctive conditions, and
eventually has to admit that there are basic differences between
clause-bounded anaphora and long-distance bounded logophora.  Trying to
achieve global parsimony, again, seems to have a cost in local parsimony.

This is not to say that Zribi-Hertz's approach is not the right one - it
could be that all of the uses of English reflexives have a functional,
discourse explanation; it could also be that the logophoric uses have
discourse explanation, while the clause-bounded cases have a formal
account, albeit with a functional motivation, or it could be that there are
discourse-based and formal accounts that are essentially unrelated.  I
suspect that one's choice among these options will have a lot to do with
one's ideological beliefs about language.  I don't think it is safe to say
that a formal analysis is impossible for these facts - plently of
formalists appreciate the need for discourse factors as explanatory devices.

In the end, however, it seems that getting the right split between global
and local parsimony is part of what makes linguistics an art.

John Moore

http://ling.ucsd.edu/~moore/


From jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU  Sat Feb 26 01:35:22 2000
From: jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 17:35:22 -0800
Subject: formal/functional flaming
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.173522.0800.JRUBBA@CALPOLY.EDU>

Why can't we all just get along?

I thought Spike made some wonderful suggestions about how to respond
politely but critically to other people's postings, but I still see a
lot of pretty unkind remarks flying around. Can't we just cool it a bit?
Count to a hundred before posting a response to a posting that riles us?
Read our own responses closely for implied offense before we hit the
'send' button?

Let's practice some of those politeness hedges. It's getting so I tense
up when I open Funknet postings ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  ? San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  ?  Fax: (805)-756-6374 ? Dept. Phone.  756-259
? E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu ?  Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
                                       **
"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank  Oppenheimer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


From ardise at HOTMAIL.COM  Sat Feb 26 01:42:37 2000
From: ardise at HOTMAIL.COM (Ardis Eschenberg)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 17:42:37 PST
Subject: Agreement as purely formal?
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.174237.PST.ARDISE@HOTMAIL.COM>

Unfortunately, I cannot comment on French, but Russian agreement has been
shown in many instances to operate on pragmatic grounds, combining both
natural and grammatical gender in utterances dependent upon situation.  For
example,

Vrac  poshla.
Doctor-M left-F.
'The doctor left.'  (The doctor is female.)

This is discussed in 'Sex , Gender and the October Revolution,' an article
which I lack a better reference to as I'm doing fieldwork and it's home.
This is a particularly nice example because most doctors in Russia are
female.  Perhaps, this is less than an argument against agreement as a
formal property, because by and large it does operate according to
grammatical gender, but any study which did not take into account pragmatic
and social factors (such agreement is more likely to occur in certain
registers/keys) would fail to account for/even look at a common pattern in
Russian. Indeed, before I understood this was going on, people thought it
funny when I told them that I wanted to be a 'lingvist-ka' (linguist +
feminine ending, retains diminuitive meaning which is inappropriate for such
a profession).
Relatedly, much interesting work has been done on gender/nominal
classification systems showing underlying cognitive motivations for such
classifications.  Others would be much more qualified than I to comment upon
this.
Even in realms thought to be easily (best?) handled by purely formal
description, the functional creeps in.  But likely this is no news to anyone
on this list.
Sincerely,
Ardis Eschenberg
State University of New York at Buffalo
Wayne State College of Nebraska



______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


From dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU  Sat Feb 26 03:36:35 2000
From: dryer at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (Matthew S Dryer)
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 22:36:35 -0500
Subject: Response to Dan Everett
Message-ID: <FRI.25.FEB.2000.223635.0500.DRYER@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>

In response to my comment
"> My claim is that there is very little if any
> description using current or recent formal theoretical frameworks that
is
> of value to functional linguists."
Dan Everett says:
"But surely there are important insights that people
of all persuasions have received or could gain from paying careful
attention to Joan Bresnan's work, for example."

Nothing in my statement says that there may not be important insights in
formal work.  My claim was in response to Edith Moravcsik's assertion that
functionalists DEPEND on formalists for their explananda, for their
description of forms.  Something can be a valuable insight without
providing explananda (things to be explained) to functionalists that they
could not do without.

Consider, for example, the (now old) insight of LFG that a variety of
phenomena that were described in tranformational grammar by means of
transformations can be (and should be) described in terms of lexical
rules.  I see this as an insight that is of clear potential value to
functionalists.  But I don't see that it provided anything new for
functionalists to explain.

Matthew Dryer


From gvk at ciaccess.com  Sat Feb 26 16:04:23 2000
From: gvk at ciaccess.com (Gerald van Koeverden)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:04:23 -0500
Subject: formal/functional
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.110423.0500.>

Is "functionality" descriptive of the interaction between "form" and
"content"??

In philosphy, there has always been a debate over form vs. content.

You can easily separate out between them in 'comprehension,' in
thought.

The problem is you can't 'apprehend' one without the other.  In order
to apprehend anything, you have to experience it as a whole, through a
union of form and content.

Arguing that one is real and the other isn't, is analogous to arguing
thatlight is wave-like not photon-like, or vice versa, as physicists did
previous to Einsteinian physics and Compton's proof of the dual nature
of
light...

Where does "functionality" fit?  I suggest it is how "form" and
"content" interact in apprehension, and how we try to explicitly define
the nature of that interaction in our comprehension of our
apprehensions!

gerald van koeverden

Greg Thomson wrote:

> Dick Hudson suggests
> >'formal' = involving relations within language
> >'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
> ...
> >'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
> >explained in terms of functional patterns.
>
> Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
> aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
> functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
> utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
> functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
> keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
> example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
> particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
> were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
> not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
> sense)?
>
> Greg Thomson


From chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU  Sat Feb 26 19:37:05 2000
From: chafe at HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU (Wallace Chafe)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 11:37:05 -0800
Subject: Form and function
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10002251219290.26589-100000@lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.113705.0800.CHAFE@HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU>

        It may be that there's been some confusion caused by the fact that
the word "formalism" contains the element "form".  It would certainly be
wrong to suppose that formalists believe that language has form and
functionalists don't.  Probably most people would agree that language
exhibits form, or structure, or patterning, although there's plenty of
room for disagreement as to the nature of the elements that enter into the
form, as to its stability, and above all as to its provenience.
        It's too simple to assign linguists to one or the other of two
camps, but there does seem to be a significant divide established by one's
beliefs and goals.  Most "functionalists", I think, believe that the
patterns found in language result from cognitive, social, and/or
historical forces, and they see it as their goal to identify those forces
and place them within larger contexts of mental functioning, social
interaction, and grammaticalization.  Being of that persuasion myself,
I find it harder to characterize the beliefs and goals of "formalists",
but they seem to believe that linguistic form has been wired into the
human brain through mysterious processes of evolution, and they see it as
their goal to invent some kind of complex machinery that will be able to
deal with (describe?) that form, independently of the cognitive, social,
and historical forces that attract functionalists.  It's evidently this
philosophical stance that seems to exempt formalists from the empirical
responsibility that's been the topic of much of this discussion.  If this
is an unfair caricature, I'd be glad to be set straight.

Wally Chafe


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Sat Feb 26 22:52:14 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:52:14 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.165214.0600.>

Dick Hudson states:

> >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's now
> over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun, Adjective
> and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> better analysis than Rule A.
>

I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I need
them too.

Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the noun,
is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where (ii)
the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from the
features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the discovery of
examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account than
by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in which
there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and, for
French, by Blinkenberg 1950).

Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something like
"multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM feature
might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a language and
are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For Dick
(and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.

If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether the
agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic and
depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
"consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends on
the properties of the referent associated with the noun.

My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and tracking of
discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is a "better
analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be shown
that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A mismatch
in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information about
the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a discourse
fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by, then
somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.

I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain of
discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated interpretations
be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of Folia
Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to send to
Dick and anyone else interested.)

I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down to
the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of commitment
or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is associated
with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the lines
of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.

Michael


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Sat Feb 26 23:43:14 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 20:43:14 -0300
Subject: Form and function
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.204314.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Wallace Chafe wrote:
>
> I find it harder to characterize the beliefs and goals of "formalists",
> but they seem to believe that linguistic form has been wired into the
> human brain through mysterious processes of evolution, and they see it as
> their goal to invent some kind of complex machinery that will be able to
> deal with (describe?) that form, independently of the cognitive, social,
> and historical forces that attract functionalists.  It's evidently this
> philosophical stance that seems to exempt formalists from the empirical
> responsibility that's been the topic of much of this discussion.  If this
> is an unfair caricature, I'd be glad to be set straight.
>
> Wally Chafe

Wally,

I cannot understand why abductive attempts to discover or propose models
of phenomena that were hardwired in by evolution would be a
'philosophical stance' conducive to empirical irresponsibility. If so,
one would think that your criticism would have also applied to the work
of Watson & Crick. It is just wrong to think that formalists have little
concern with empirical responsibility. MANY DO. But the same lack of
concern can be found across the discipline and across the social
sciences and humanities, as tendencies to 'invent' terms become more
popular than slow, careful research. No group, it seems to me, has a
monopoly on responsibility or irresponsibility. And why would belief in
evolution lead anyone towards irresponsibility?

That said, I agree with you that there are forces at work in the
formation of grammars which formalism cannot get at. But there are
always things that no theory can explain well. That doesn't make the
theory anti data.

Best,

Dan


From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Sun Feb 27 01:00:04 2000
From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 17:00:04 -0800
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.170004.0800.TGIVON@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

Dear friends,

This exchange has been skirting hilarity, or the Theater of the Absurd.
I get a verigo feeling, something like irrealis, like people not only
forget to listen to the other guy (common enough), but have stopped
listening to what they themselves are saying. Otherwise I can't imagine
why there seems to be such an abundant, recurrent, reflexive need to
jump on reasonable people (Edith Moravcsik, Dick Hudson) and try to push
them into extremist positions which realy don't fit. So how about a
simple exercise in logic, to begin with:

1. If "form correlates with function", or
      "form is iconic with function", or
      "form it motivated by function"
   are all true, them "form exists" is also true.

2. If "form correlates with function" is true,
   then, unless you wish to be tautological, you have no choice but to
   define "form" and "function" independent of each other. And unless
you
   defined structure in purely structural terms, you haven't escaped
this
   tautology. (That's *all* Edith meant).

3. Escaping tautology in (2) above does not mean that you could not or
   should not investigate the functional (semantic, pragmatic)
motivation
   of form/structure. Non sequitus.

4. In most biologically-based system, functions are not simply performed
   by themselves. They are performed by some structures. Why should
   this overwhelming fact, which has bothered no biologist since
Aristotle,
   should be such a shocking revelation to linguists?

5. The notion of "structure" is, by definition, formal and more abstract
than
   unstructured, unconstrained, unorganized reality. The only remaining
   question is -- "How formal? How abstract?" And that question must be
   resolved empirically. Different domains, in language and elsewhere,
   are structured with different degrees of formality ('generativity',
   'rule governedness').

6. When functionalists cite Sapir's famous dictum: "...all grammars
leak...",
   they often forget that Sapir did not say "all grammars leak 100% all
   the time". What he *meant*, I think, is something like this:
"Grammatical
   rules/regularities/structures often, maybe always, retain a ceretain
   measure of flex, rule-ungovernedness" Fact of life.

7. Chomsky's apriori assertion that grammars are 100% algorithmic (see
'On
   the notion 'rule of grammar'", 1961) clearly over-shoots the
empirical
   facts, and was not motivated by them. It was motivated, I suspect, by
   his background in Machine Theory. Of course, the notion of
*competence*
   allowed him to do it, by ruling out facts of natural communication as
   *performance tainted*. But the fact that Chomsky was wrong, and
grammar is
   not 100% generative, does not mean that grammar is 0% generative.
Such an
   assertion is just as much at variance with the facts as Chomsky's
assertion
   of 100% generativity (and damn the rest of the facts).

8. Grammar is just another instance of *automaticity* of processing.
   In all known cases (vision, memory, motor control, music) the
acquisition
   of complex, rhythmic-hierarchic skills entails autoimaticity. And
   automated processing is *highly* structure-dependent and category-
   dependent. That's what 'chunking' is all about in memory
organization,
   kinesiology & elsewhere.

9. Why should both evolution and history conspire to -- repeatedly --
   grammaticalize so many communicative functions if grammar was just
   a mushy affair with near-zero generativity/rule governedness or pre-
   dictability? Why this extravagant machinery that we desvcribe both
   synchronically and diachronically? All spandrells? Come on. Get real.

10. Grammar arises diachronically from pre-grammar, and has a life
trajectory
   during which the degree of 'generativity' changes drastically. At the
   very early stages of grammaticalization of paratactic constructions
with
   only 'pragmatic'('discourse') regularities, one tends to find low
   generativity. A nascent construction reveals variability of behavior,
   it is not 'well governed'. Somnewhere in mid-life of constructions,
rule-
   governedness increases, i.e. efficiency and predictability of
form-fuction
   correlations ('iconicity'). But sooner or later, what John Haiman
calls
   'ritualization' begins to creep in: Contructions and morphology
become
   nearly-100% rule-governed, indeed highly inflexible, but also slowly
   loose their iconicity. This is the *more* Chomskian, *more* arbitrary
   phase of grammatical structure.

11. It is unfortunate that, for whatever reasons, different people
choose
    to look at *only* the earliest stage of grammaticalization
('emergence',
    high motivation, low generativity), or the latest (arbitrariness &
high
    generativity). Sort of reminds you of the three blind men reporting
    on the elephant. Taking one aspect & claiming it represents the
whole.
    It would be nice if we started considering the whole.

12. In the process of early grammaticalization, constraints creep in
    rather gradually, often in a subtle way. The argument about the
    reflexive is of course a case in point. Older reflexives are much
more
    relationally governed, having severed their umbilical cord, their
    connections to old *emphatic* pronouns that were *not* relationally
    governed. Newly-emergent reflexives are a mix, the old 'discourse'
    constraints on contrast/emphasis co-exist with 'goverened true
reflexives'
    that are not emphatic anymore. But 'severing of the umbilical cord'
can
    be both gradual and subtle. And it allows coexistence of older and
    newer, emerging 'structured' or 'governed' constraints.

13. EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that REL-clauses in Japanese are
*not*
    relationally governed, since they only have zero anaphora,
presumably
    just like in main clauses governed by 'discourse'. But haven't we
    forgotrten someting? Zero anaphora in Japanese discourse is
*overwhel-
    moingly* anaphoric. But zero anaphora in Japanes REL-clauses is 100%
    cataphoric, because REL-clauses in Japanese precede their head noun.
    So something new and construction-specific has crept in here,
whatever
    its diachronic source may have been.

    EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that in Malagasy (VOS) the zeroes in
    EQUI (verb complements) are just the same as zero anaphora in
    'discourse'. But again, discourse zeroes are overwhelmingly
anaphoric,
    while the EQUI zero in complementation are 100% cataphoric, because
the
    subject of the  main clause *follows* the zero in the complement
verb.
    Again, something new is creeping in during the process of
grammatica-
    lization. Not only functions are re-analyzed and re-organized, but
    structures too.

I suppose I could go on forever, everybody who seriously studies the
process of grammaticalization probably could. So let me just suggest
that maybe it is time we bade farewell to reductionism, and to the
bizarre idea that complex systems can be described and explained by
single principles. Sure, that is the hallmark of much of what Chomsky
has been trying to do. But all of us, functionalists and formalists
alike, know language is much too complex for such reduction. And we
ought to, by now, know enough about conflicting motivation and adaptive
compromise ('OC'?) to know better. So let's get off the dime.

Cheers,  TG
=============


Michael Barlow wrote:
>
> Dick Hudson states:
>
> > >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> > ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's now
> > over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> > modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun, Adjective
> > and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> > better analysis than Rule A.
> >
>
> I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I need
> them too.
>
> Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the noun,
> is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where (ii)
> the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from the
> features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the discovery of
> examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
> than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
> formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account than
> by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in which
> there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
> Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and, for
> French, by Blinkenberg 1950).
>
> Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
> interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
> within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something like
> "multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM feature
> might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
> between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a language and
> are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For Dick
> (and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.
>
> If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether the
> agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic and
> depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
> "consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends on
> the properties of the referent associated with the noun.
>
> My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
> nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and tracking of
> discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is a "better
> analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be shown
> that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
> typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A mismatch
> in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information about
> the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
> examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a discourse
> fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by, then
> somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.
>
> I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
> conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
> conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
> interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain of
> discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated interpretations
> be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of Folia
> Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to send to
> Dick and anyone else interested.)
>
> I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down to
> the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of commitment
> or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is associated
> with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the lines
> of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.
>
> Michael


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Sun Feb 27 11:23:48 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 13:23:48 +0200
Subject: various topics
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.132348.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Wow, things certainly have gotten lively this weekend.


(1) Three cheers for Dan Everett's message on the responsibilities of those
who write reference grammars. It was

(2) I do not think that there are inherent relationships 'formalist=empirically
irresponsible' and 'functionalist=empirically responsible'. There are individual
formal linguists who are empirically responsible and there are individual
functional linguists who seem not to be. But the ATMOSPHERE of the discussions
is different. In discussions between formal linguists, it is routine for
the participants to refer to 'facts' about 'exotic languages' which no one
present knows and which no one present knows of a responsible work on, with
no one questioning this as potentially problematic; it is assumed that if
it is in print, it's true. In discussions between functional linguists,
this happens only extremely rarely. If a formalist is careful about data
from 'exotic' languages, it is because s/he personally believes that this
is the responsible thing to do. If a functionalist is careful about such
data, it is because of this but also because s/he is afraid of getting
shown up or getting a bad reputation; you just can't get away with as much.


(3) Contra Talmy, I think that the ongoing Edith Moravcsik/Matthew Dryer
and Dick Hudson/Michael Barlow arguments are indeed substantive. Please
continue! I am not sure
if Talmy's summary of Edith's position indeed accurately reflects it. Edith?

(4) Some of the discussants regarding reflexives in subject position seem to
have started including cases where they are purely emphatic (cf. Werner's
justified complaint). Nino originally made it quite clear that this is not
necessarily the case for Georgian, but some of the follow-up messages got a
little bit off the topic and started talking about emphatic usages without
emphasizing that they were changing the topic a little, hence Werner's
comment.

(5) I think that certainly English -self form usages are definitely best
explained
with a discourse account, but we definitely
need to refer to formal/structural factors as well to get the best
description. I think one would have to be kind of a fanatic one way or the
other to conclude otherwise. Contrary to what John Moore suggested, I was
NOT 'getting at' a purely discourse-based analysis for English reflexives
as well! I remember once I got excited about this for a few weeks sometime
around 1987 but after a while I decided this was just too artificial for
English. For jibun, though, this is definitely what's needed.

(6) Regarding Johanna's message: The more spontaneous mode of interaction
which has characterized recent messages on funknet makes me feel more
RELAXED. People are saying what they think in a nice straightforward way.
What makes me feel
nervous is if everyone is trying to be diplomatic, either to be polite or
to make it
appear as though functionalists really agree more than we do. Who needs to
be distracted
by this?

John Myhill


From kosam at LIBR.UG.EDU.GH  Sat Feb 26 21:08:21 2000
From: kosam at LIBR.UG.EDU.GH (Kweku Osam)
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 21:08:21 +0000
Subject: Formalism
Message-ID: <SAT.26.FEB.2000.210821.0000.KOSAM@LIBR.UG.EDU.GH>

Dick Hudson wrote:

"Maybe some people mean something different by 'formal' when they contrast
it with 'functional'?"

I suspect this is part of the problem. May be we should ask people to give
their definitions of "formal"/"formalism".

Kweku Osam


From barlow at RICE.EDU  Sun Feb 27 17:01:11 2000
From: barlow at RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 11:01:11 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.110111.0600.>

Who is going to argue with grammaticalisation, routinisation and the
complexity of language phenomena?

Immanuel Barshi wrote a paper a few years ago arguing, as I remember, that
some agreement patterns in Hebrew should really be thought of as set routines
rather than regular, analysable agreement patterns. I can accept that; I
certainly believe that routines and chunks play a large role in language use.
I assume that we are not talking about such instances.

There may be relations which, for all intents and purposes, may count as
purely formal. Here I am simply taking issue with Dicks's assumption (and the
assumption of many people) that is agreement is clearly formal in the sense
that agreement can best be described by saying that form of the agreement
target depends on the morphosyntactic form of the agreement source. If you
want to account for a range of agreement phenomena in a language (even
English), then such an approach breaks down.

If agreement morphemes exert themselves in Quirk-style examples such as "that
two weeks", "England collapse" "rain and mist is expected", "two is too many"
"the french fries at table 10 is" etc., then are we assume that something
completely different is occurring in the above examples compared to in "those
two weeks" "England collapses" etc.

A quick note from a service station on the M40 near Oxford.

Michael

In message  <38B87714.77D9F7B5 at oregon.uoregon.edu>
 tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU writes:
> Dear friends,
>
> This exchange has been skirting hilarity, or the Theater of the Absurd.
> I get a verigo feeling, something like irrealis, like people not only
> forget to listen to the other guy (common enough), but have stopped
> listening to what they themselves are saying. Otherwise I can't imagine
> why there seems to be such an abundant, recurrent, reflexive need to
> jump on reasonable people (Edith Moravcsik, Dick Hudson) and try to push
> them into extremist positions which realy don't fit. So how about a
> simple exercise in logic, to begin with:
>
> 1. If "form correlates with function", or
>       "form is iconic with function", or
>       "form it motivated by function"
>    are all true, them "form exists" is also true.
>
> 2. If "form correlates with function" is true,
>    then, unless you wish to be tautological, you have no choice but to
>    define "form" and "function" independent of each other. And unless
> you
>    defined structure in purely structural terms, you haven't escaped
> this
>    tautology. (That's *all* Edith meant).
>
> 3. Escaping tautology in (2) above does not mean that you could not or
>    should not investigate the functional (semantic, pragmatic)
> motivation
>    of form/structure. Non sequitus.
>
> 4. In most biologically-based system, functions are not simply performed
>    by themselves. They are performed by some structures. Why should
>    this overwhelming fact, which has bothered no biologist since
> Aristotle,
>    should be such a shocking revelation to linguists?
>
> 5. The notion of "structure" is, by definition, formal and more abstract
> than
>    unstructured, unconstrained, unorganized reality. The only remaining
>    question is -- "How formal? How abstract?" And that question must be
>    resolved empirically. Different domains, in language and elsewhere,
>    are structured with different degrees of formality ('generativity',
>    'rule governedness').
>
> 6. When functionalists cite Sapir's famous dictum: "...all grammars
> leak...",
>    they often forget that Sapir did not say "all grammars leak 100% all
>    the time". What he *meant*, I think, is something like this:
> "Grammatical
>    rules/regularities/structures often, maybe always, retain a ceretain
>    measure of flex, rule-ungovernedness" Fact of life.
>
> 7. Chomsky's apriori assertion that grammars are 100% algorithmic (see
> 'On
>    the notion 'rule of grammar'", 1961) clearly over-shoots the
> empirical
>    facts, and was not motivated by them. It was motivated, I suspect, by
>    his background in Machine Theory. Of course, the notion of
> *competence*
>    allowed him to do it, by ruling out facts of natural communication as
>    *performance tainted*. But the fact that Chomsky was wrong, and
> grammar is
>    not 100% generative, does not mean that grammar is 0% generative.
> Such an
>    assertion is just as much at variance with the facts as Chomsky's
> assertion
>    of 100% generativity (and damn the rest of the facts).
>
> 8. Grammar is just another instance of *automaticity* of processing.
>    In all known cases (vision, memory, motor control, music) the
> acquisition
>    of complex, rhythmic-hierarchic skills entails autoimaticity. And
>    automated processing is *highly* structure-dependent and category-
>    dependent. That's what 'chunking' is all about in memory
> organization,
>    kinesiology & elsewhere.
>
> 9. Why should both evolution and history conspire to -- repeatedly --
>    grammaticalize so many communicative functions if grammar was just
>    a mushy affair with near-zero generativity/rule governedness or pre-
>    dictability? Why this extravagant machinery that we desvcribe both
>    synchronically and diachronically? All spandrells? Come on. Get real.
>
> 10. Grammar arises diachronically from pre-grammar, and has a life
> trajectory
>    during which the degree of 'generativity' changes drastically. At the
>    very early stages of grammaticalization of paratactic constructions
> with
>    only 'pragmatic'('discourse') regularities, one tends to find low
>    generativity. A nascent construction reveals variability of behavior,
>    it is not 'well governed'. Somnewhere in mid-life of constructions,
> rule-
>    governedness increases, i.e. efficiency and predictability of
> form-fuction
>    correlations ('iconicity'). But sooner or later, what John Haiman
> calls
>    'ritualization' begins to creep in: Contructions and morphology
> become
>    nearly-100% rule-governed, indeed highly inflexible, but also slowly
>    loose their iconicity. This is the *more* Chomskian, *more* arbitrary
>    phase of grammatical structure.
>
> 11. It is unfortunate that, for whatever reasons, different people
> choose
>     to look at *only* the earliest stage of grammaticalization
> ('emergence',
>     high motivation, low generativity), or the latest (arbitrariness &
> high
>     generativity). Sort of reminds you of the three blind men reporting
>     on the elephant. Taking one aspect & claiming it represents the
> whole.
>     It would be nice if we started considering the whole.
>
> 12. In the process of early grammaticalization, constraints creep in
>     rather gradually, often in a subtle way. The argument about the
>     reflexive is of course a case in point. Older reflexives are much
> more
>     relationally governed, having severed their umbilical cord, their
>     connections to old *emphatic* pronouns that were *not* relationally
>     governed. Newly-emergent reflexives are a mix, the old 'discourse'
>     constraints on contrast/emphasis co-exist with 'goverened true
> reflexives'
>     that are not emphatic anymore. But 'severing of the umbilical cord'
> can
>     be both gradual and subtle. And it allows coexistence of older and
>     newer, emerging 'structured' or 'governed' constraints.
>
> 13. EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that REL-clauses in Japanese are
> *not*
>     relationally governed, since they only have zero anaphora,
> presumably
>     just like in main clauses governed by 'discourse'. But haven't we
>     forgotrten someting? Zero anaphora in Japanese discourse is
> *overwhel-
>     moingly* anaphoric. But zero anaphora in Japanes REL-clauses is 100%
>     cataphoric, because REL-clauses in Japanese precede their head noun.
>     So something new and construction-specific has crept in here,
> whatever
>     its diachronic source may have been.
>
>     EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that in Malagasy (VOS) the zeroes in
>     EQUI (verb complements) are just the same as zero anaphora in
>     'discourse'. But again, discourse zeroes are overwhelmingly
> anaphoric,
>     while the EQUI zero in complementation are 100% cataphoric, because
> the
>     subject of the  main clause *follows* the zero in the complement
> verb.
>     Again, something new is creeping in during the process of
> grammatica-
>     lization. Not only functions are re-analyzed and re-organized, but
>     structures too.
>
> I suppose I could go on forever, everybody who seriously studies the
> process of grammaticalization probably could. So let me just suggest
> that maybe it is time we bade farewell to reductionism, and to the
> bizarre idea that complex systems can be described and explained by
> single principles. Sure, that is the hallmark of much of what Chomsky
> has been trying to do. But all of us, functionalists and formalists
> alike, know language is much too complex for such reduction. And we
> ought to, by now, know enough about conflicting motivation and adaptive
> compromise ('OC'?) to know better. So let's get off the dime.
>
> Cheers,  TG
> =============
>
>
> Michael Barlow wrote:
> >
> > Dick Hudson states:
> >
> > > >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> > > ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's
now
> > > over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> > > modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun,
Adjective
> > > and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> > > better analysis than Rule A.
> > >
> >
> > I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I
need
> > them too.
> >
> > Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the
noun,
> > is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where
(ii)
> > the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from
the
> > features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the
discovery of
> > examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
> > than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
> > formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account
than
> > by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in
which
> > there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
> > Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and,
for
> > French, by Blinkenberg 1950).
> >
> > Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
> > interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
> > within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something
like
> > "multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM
feature
> > might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
> > between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a
language and
> > are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For
Dick
> > (and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.
> >
> > If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether
the
> > agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic
and
> > depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
> > "consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends
on
> > the properties of the referent associated with the noun.
> >
> > My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
> > nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and
tracking of
> > discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is
a "better
> > analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be
shown
> > that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
> > typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A
mismatch
> > in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information
about
> > the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
> > examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a
discourse
> > fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by,
then
> > somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.
> >
> > I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
> > conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
> > conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
> > interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain
of
> > discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated
interpretations
> > be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of
Folia
> > Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to
send to
> > Dick and anyone else interested.)
> >
> > I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down
to
> > the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of
commitment
> > or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is
associated
> > with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the
lines
> > of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.
> >
> > Michael


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Sun Feb 27 18:25:26 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 12:25:26 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.122526.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

In his message of Friday, February 25, Jon Aske wrote: "...you cannot
separate form and function/meaning... The formal pole of any linguistic
unit... does not exist without the functional pole. They are the two
sides of the coin."

There are two claims that emerge from this statement:

  (1) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot occur separately.
  (2) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot be described
      separately.

These are of course very important "foundational" issues and I am
trying to think through them carefully.

Let us first consider the two points in GENERAL terms - i.e., not
specifically in relation to language.

  (1) DISTRIBUTIONAL SEPARABILITY
      What does it mean to say that two things occur separably or that
they are occur inseparably? (In)separability claims are about the
distribution of things. If two things are said to be separable in
occurrence, that means each can occur without the other: they are not
mutually cooccurrent (i.e., they are not mutually dependent on each other
for occurrence). If, on the other hand, they are said to be inseparable in
occurrence, that means neither can occur without the other: they are
mutually coocurrent or mutually dependent on each other for occurrence.

      For example, as Jon mentioned, the two sides of a coin are
inseparable: one side cannot occur without the other.
Similarly, a living head and its living body are inseparable. A man and
his shadow are also inseparable because, under the same light conditions,
neither can occur without the other. On the other hand, two different
coins, somebody's body and someone else's head, and one person's body and
somebody else's shadow are separable.

     Inseparable occurrence thus rules out a one-to-zero relationship
between the two things (i.e., one occurring without the other).
It also rules out one-to-many relationships: if two things are
inseparable, neither can vary without the other varying. Thus, each
coin can only have ONE other side; each person can only have ONE shadow
(given that light conditions remain the same and they involve a single
light source); and bodies cannot have varying heads and vice versa.

     Thus, inseparability of two objects means there is a constant
one-to-one relation between the two. One-to-zero and one-to-many relations
(where "many" means "many alternatives") are ruled out by
inseparability.

  (2) DESCRIPTIVE SEPARABILITY

      What does it mean to say that two things are independently
describable or that they are not describable independently? The
independent describability of two objects would mean that one can describe
one without describing the other. If two objects are not independently
describable, that would mean one cannot describe one without describing
the other.

      Can one think of ANY two things that are not independently
describable? Perhaps the only things that would meet this criterion
would be things that are in a type-subtype (or type-token) relationship.
For example, if I want to describe the concept "bird" and the concept
"whooping crane", they are not independently describable because I cannot
give a full description of the whooping crane without including the
description of birds in general; and I cannot give a valid description
of birds unless I know about all the different kinds of birds including
whooping cranes.

      If two things are independently describable, that does not mean that
the two descriptions cannot jointly serve in statements, such as as terms
in an explanatory argument. For example, a man and his shadow are
independently describable but in order to EXPLAIN the shape of the shadow,
one needs to make reference to properties of the man. Similarly, each side
of a coin is independently describable but the shape of one side depends
on the shape of the other side and thus explains it. Also, the size of a
head and the size of its body may be mutually explanatory (e.g., an
insect-size body could not support an elephant-size head).  But claiming
an explanans-explanadum relationship between two things does not mean that
they are not independently describable; in fact, it PRESUPPOSES that they
are (Talmy Givo'n' point).

     More generally, almost any statement ABOUT two objects - whether it
is a statement of an explanatory relationship or simply a distributional
relationship such as that they are separable or inseparable - presupposes
that the two objects are independently describable. For example,
when we say that the two sides of a coin are inseparable, what this means
is that we operate in terms of the separate concepts of one side and
the other side. Similarly, in order for the statement according to which
the man and his shadow are inseparable to make sense, we need to have a
separate concept (a separate description) of the man and of the shadow.

     In sum:

     (A) Re descriptive separability:
         Two things are descriptively inseparable if neither can be
         described without describing the other; they are descriptively
         separable if either can be described without describing the
         other. - Almost(?) any two things seem to be separately
         describable.

     (B) Re distributional separability:
         Two things are distributionally inseparable if neither can
         occur without the other; they are distributionally separable if
         either can occur without the other. - Some things are
         distributionally separable, other things are not.

     (C) Re the relationship between descriptive and distributional
         separability:
         The statement of any distributional claim about two things,
         whether saying that they are separable or that
         they are inseparable, presupposes that the two are
         separately describable.

Let us now apply these points to FORM AND FUNCTION in LANGUAGE.
The two questions to which we are looking for answers are these:

     (1) Are form and function distributionally separable or
         or descriptively inseparable?
     (2) Are form and function descriptively separable or
         descriptively inseparable?

If the above general considerations are valid, then even just raising
the first question about distributional separability implies that we are
talking about two different things when we say "form" and "function"
(Talmy Givo'n's point again) - that is, that the two are separately
describable. Thus, if question (1) makes sense both to
formalists and functionalist to the extent that both have it on their
agenda to try to answer it, this necessarily implies that both
formalists and functionalist subscribe to form and function as being
descriptively separate concepts. Thus, the answer to question (2) about
the DESCRIPTIVE independence of form and function would need to be in the
affirmative for linguists of both persuasions.

Acknowledging that form and function are descriptively
independent leaves question (1) about their DISTRIBUTIONAL independence
entirely open: the two may or may not be distributionally separable and
in fact one could design languages where the two are separable and
languages where they are inseparable. As suggested above, we can seek the
answer to whether form and function are distributionally independent or
not in actual languages by checking whether either can occur without the
other (one-to-zero relationship) and whether forms can occur with
alternative functions and functions can occur with alternative forms
(one-to-many relationship). If any of these hold, then the relationship is
that of separability rather than inseparability.

The separability of form and function (or meaning) for functional objects
in general can be easily demonstrated. A string of beads has a
describable form regardless whether it has a meaning (such as when it is
used as a rosary, with every bead standing for a prayer) or whether it has
no meaning (such as when it is used as a necklace). Similarly, a function
can occur without form in toolmaking; for example, the inventor of the
knife must have had in mind the function before he found the right form to
perform that function. Similarly, an object with the form of a knife
can be used for different alternative purposes (to cut things, to pry
something open, etc.); and each of these functions can be served by
different alternative forms.

What about language? Is there linguistic form without function? Is there
function without linguistic form? Are there multiple alternative
functions for a form? And are there multiple alternative forms for a
function? It seems to me that the answer to at least three of these four
questions is affirmative. Linguistic form without function is a string of
words that do not make sense. The existence of meaning without linguistic
form appears to be indicated by the "groping-for-words" phenomenon. And
examples of ambiguity and synonym (IF it exists...) bear out the
one-to-many relationship between form and meaning and thus the mutual
detachability of the two. Thus, the answer to question (1) above is that
form and meaning are not only descriptively but also distributionally
separable.

What is WRONG with this train of thought? (I am somewhat tentative
about it since I feel I am treading on "dangerous" grounds - I
shudder to think how a philosophically-trained person would evaluate it.)
Exactly which are the assumptions or the logical steps that are false or
at least questionable? Exactly WHERE would a CONTRARY argument part ways
with the one above - an argument that would lead us to the opposite
conclusions which I think Jon Aske and others hold true: that form and
function are both descriptively and distributionally inseparable?

Edith M.


   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA  Sun Feb 27 19:01:14 2000
From: dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Diego Quesada)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 14:01:14 -0500
Subject: various topics
In-Reply-To: <v01540b00b4dead50e406@[132.74.19.230]>
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.140114.0500.DQUESADA@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA>

On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, John Myhill wrote:

> In discussions between formal linguists, it is routine for
> the participants to refer to 'facts' about 'exotic languages' which no one
> present knows and which no one present knows of a responsible work on, with
> no one questioning this as potentially problematic; it is assumed that if
> it is in print, it's true. In discussions between functional linguists,
> this happens only extremely rarely. If a formalist is careful about data
> from 'exotic' languages, it is because s/he personally believes that this
> is the responsible thing to do. If a functionalist is careful about such
> data, it is because of this but also because s/he is afraid of getting
> shown up or getting a bad reputation; you just can't get away with as much.


Uff!  That is a rather challengeable "slip of the fingers (on the
keyboard)". This is the sort of black-and-white judgements that have
hindered understanding in this discussion, as Givon pointed out yesterday.

At least two counterexamples can be cited that call for a softening of the
above statement: One is the much cited "impersonal, non-promotional
passive" of Spanish, which has given rise to the most fantastic theories
on the evolution of "passives", simply by paraphrasing traditional or
traditionally tainted grammars. The other is the celebrated "ergativity"
for some, "voice" for others, nature of Tagalog and sister languages,
analyses that always leak; with the most notable exception of one proposed
not precisely in the context of typological comparison, but from the
insights of a native speaker, who apparently did not feel pressed by any
straitjacket forcing him to abide to what was/is in the market:

Naylor, Paz-Buenaventura. 1995. Subject, topic and Tagalog syntax. In:
        Bennet, D. et al. 161-201. Object, Voice, and Ergativity.
        University of London: School of Oriental and African Studies.

This paper is so nice to read, especially because it puts a categorical
end to the phantasies existing on Tagalog syntax.

In view of the two counterexamples cited (and I'm sure people can come up
with more), John's above claim needs mending. I would suggest first of all
to speak in terms of tendencies rather than in terms of "discreet"
categories (the latter being an antifunctional precept).  Second, the
tendency that can be linked to the folks on the other sidewalk is that the
data are secondary to the model, while on our sidewalk the ***TENDENCY***
is to let the data speak first and then try to come up with some
explanation that need not be constrained by the structural configuration
of the phenomenon dealt with.  In other words, Chomskians (which is what
most people on this list have in mind when they say "formalists") are
deductive (a bit too much for some), while functionalists tend to be
inductive. The professional irresponsibilities incurred by either group
are not intrinsec to the approach, they simply reveal how lazy a linguist
can be when it comes to testing a retesting.

J. Diego Quesada
University of Toronto


From jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU  Sun Feb 27 20:31:26 2000
From: jaske at SALEM.MASS.EDU (Jon Aske)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 15:31:26 -0500
Subject: form and function
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.96.1000227122334.6029G-100000@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.153126.0500.JASKE@SALEM.MASS.EDU>

I thank Edith for the very thorough and clear exposition which may help us
advance in our search for an understanding of form and function.  I am not
going to be able to give a thorough reply to all the points that Edith
mentions, although I hope that others will.  But I wanted to comment on
Edith's knife metaphor, which I find very interesting.

As my old teacher George Lakoff would argue, we depend on metaphors (as well
as prototypes, stereotypes, and other types) to understand such complex and
abstract issues, or to lead our thinking about them.  I am sure that we are
all using different metaphors to lead our thinking but, also, it seems that
when we use the same metaphor we are not necessarily drawing the same
conclusions.

Actually, I think the knife metaphor is much more apt than the one about the
coin when it comes to form and function in complex linguistic units (even
though it is faulty in many respects).  Let me explain.

Surely a life form very different from us could come across a knife left by
us in space by mistake and give a very thorough description of it, including
measurements, element composition, as well as devise theories of natural
knife formation inside volcanoes, or about their divine creation.

Still, I would find those descriptions, and explanations, to be rather
unsatisfying.  Knifes are the way they are because of the functions that
they were designed to fill and because of our technical and other
limitations, including the size and shape of our hands, the types of
materials that we know how to work at a particular time, etc.

Surely, you can use a knife for functions different from those for which it
was created, and we do it all the time, and that may even lead to
innovations in the construction of knives or similar implements (machetes,
swords, etc.).  In fact, there are many specialized types of knives,
depending on their specific function (a way in which the metaphor may cease
to be helpful).

Still, I believe that the information about function and the maker's
abilities (and the history of knife-making in a particular culture, etc.)
are all crucial in any description and "explanation" of particular knives.
Why we might want to keep that functional information out of an integral
description of knives escapes me, unless of course the information was not
available (the alien example).

Equally, to try to describe the form and distribution of reflexives without
making their function and their historical source and historical changes and
adaptations an integral part of that description, not an afterthought, is
incomprehensible to me.  (Unless, of course, we were space aliens of a
different sort and we were convinced a priori that reflexives were made by
some god for our amusement.)

That doesn't mean that we cannot (and should not) to some extent describe
the form (only) of the reflexive morphemes of a certain language or talk
about the reflexive function (only) in language in general.  Still, why stop
there?  Why leave the interesting stuff for somebody else?

Jon

PS. On the topic of our recent exchanges, I agree with John and not with
Johanna that this discussion is getting exciting and I hope that someone
won't try to stop it (as it has happened in the past) because it may lead to
dissension.  As long as we remain civil about it, I think we can continue.
I also realize, of course, that we are not likely to change anybody's views,
but I find these conversations to be stimulating since they lead us to
clarify our own thoughts, and perhaps come a bit closer together, or at
least to come to understand the other side(s) better.

In reply to Dick's comments, I am sorry if I offended you.  It was not my
intention to misrepresent your beliefs.  I really thought that that was what
you were saying with your definitions.  But, again, you may be right that I
was stereotyping you.  I will try very hard to avoid stereotyping (although,
as I said above, the use stereotypes is part of our way to make sense of the
world).  Still, if I stereotyped you, I would like to think that it wasn't
in order to "make [me] feel comfortable and morally superior."


> -----Original Message-----
> From: FUNKNET -- Discussion of issues in Functional Linguistics
> [mailto:FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu]On Behalf Of Edith A Moravcsik
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 1:25 PM
> To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu
> Subject: form and function
>
>
> In his message of Friday, February 25, Jon Aske wrote: "...you cannot
> separate form and function/meaning... The formal pole of any linguistic
> unit... does not exist without the functional pole. They are the two
> sides of the coin."
>
> There are two claims that emerge from this statement:
>
>   (1) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot occur separately.
>   (2) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot be described
>       separately.
>
> These are of course very important "foundational" issues and I am
> trying to think through them carefully.
>
> Let us first consider the two points in GENERAL terms - i.e., not
> specifically in relation to language.
>
>   (1) DISTRIBUTIONAL SEPARABILITY
>       What does it mean to say that two things occur separably or that
> they are occur inseparably? (In)separability claims are about the
> distribution of things. If two things are said to be separable in
> occurrence, that means each can occur without the other: they are not
> mutually cooccurrent (i.e., they are not mutually dependent on each other
> for occurrence). If, on the other hand, they are said to be inseparable in
> occurrence, that means neither can occur without the other: they are
> mutually coocurrent or mutually dependent on each other for occurrence.
>
>       For example, as Jon mentioned, the two sides of a coin are
> inseparable: one side cannot occur without the other.
> Similarly, a living head and its living body are inseparable. A man and
> his shadow are also inseparable because, under the same light conditions,
> neither can occur without the other. On the other hand, two different
> coins, somebody's body and someone else's head, and one person's body and
> somebody else's shadow are separable.
>
>      Inseparable occurrence thus rules out a one-to-zero relationship
> between the two things (i.e., one occurring without the other).
> It also rules out one-to-many relationships: if two things are
> inseparable, neither can vary without the other varying. Thus, each
> coin can only have ONE other side; each person can only have ONE shadow
> (given that light conditions remain the same and they involve a single
> light source); and bodies cannot have varying heads and vice versa.
>
>      Thus, inseparability of two objects means there is a constant
> one-to-one relation between the two. One-to-zero and one-to-many relations
> (where "many" means "many alternatives") are ruled out by
> inseparability.
>
>   (2) DESCRIPTIVE SEPARABILITY
>
>       What does it mean to say that two things are independently
> describable or that they are not describable independently? The
> independent describability of two objects would mean that one can describe
> one without describing the other. If two objects are not independently
> describable, that would mean one cannot describe one without describing
> the other.
>
>       Can one think of ANY two things that are not independently
> describable? Perhaps the only things that would meet this criterion
> would be things that are in a type-subtype (or type-token) relationship.
> For example, if I want to describe the concept "bird" and the concept
> "whooping crane", they are not independently describable because I cannot
> give a full description of the whooping crane without including the
> description of birds in general; and I cannot give a valid description
> of birds unless I know about all the different kinds of birds including
> whooping cranes.
>
>       If two things are independently describable, that does not mean that
> the two descriptions cannot jointly serve in statements, such as as terms
> in an explanatory argument. For example, a man and his shadow are
> independently describable but in order to EXPLAIN the shape of the shadow,
> one needs to make reference to properties of the man. Similarly, each side
> of a coin is independently describable but the shape of one side depends
> on the shape of the other side and thus explains it. Also, the size of a
> head and the size of its body may be mutually explanatory (e.g., an
> insect-size body could not support an elephant-size head).  But claiming
> an explanans-explanadum relationship between two things does not mean that
> they are not independently describable; in fact, it PRESUPPOSES that they
> are (Talmy Givo'n' point).
>
>      More generally, almost any statement ABOUT two objects - whether it
> is a statement of an explanatory relationship or simply a distributional
> relationship such as that they are separable or inseparable - presupposes
> that the two objects are independently describable. For example,
> when we say that the two sides of a coin are inseparable, what this means
> is that we operate in terms of the separate concepts of one side and
> the other side. Similarly, in order for the statement according to which
> the man and his shadow are inseparable to make sense, we need to have a
> separate concept (a separate description) of the man and of the shadow.
>
>      In sum:
>
>      (A) Re descriptive separability:
>          Two things are descriptively inseparable if neither can be
>          described without describing the other; they are descriptively
>          separable if either can be described without describing the
>          other. - Almost(?) any two things seem to be separately
>          describable.
>
>      (B) Re distributional separability:
>          Two things are distributionally inseparable if neither can
>          occur without the other; they are distributionally separable if
>          either can occur without the other. - Some things are
>          distributionally separable, other things are not.
>
>      (C) Re the relationship between descriptive and distributional
>          separability:
>          The statement of any distributional claim about two things,
>          whether saying that they are separable or that
>          they are inseparable, presupposes that the two are
>          separately describable.
>
> Let us now apply these points to FORM AND FUNCTION in LANGUAGE.
> The two questions to which we are looking for answers are these:
>
>      (1) Are form and function distributionally separable or
>          or descriptively inseparable?
>      (2) Are form and function descriptively separable or
>          descriptively inseparable?
>
> If the above general considerations are valid, then even just raising
> the first question about distributional separability implies that we are
> talking about two different things when we say "form" and "function"
> (Talmy Givo'n's point again) - that is, that the two are separately
> describable. Thus, if question (1) makes sense both to
> formalists and functionalist to the extent that both have it on their
> agenda to try to answer it, this necessarily implies that both
> formalists and functionalist subscribe to form and function as being
> descriptively separate concepts. Thus, the answer to question (2) about
> the DESCRIPTIVE independence of form and function would need to be in the
> affirmative for linguists of both persuasions.
>
> Acknowledging that form and function are descriptively
> independent leaves question (1) about their DISTRIBUTIONAL independence
> entirely open: the two may or may not be distributionally separable and
> in fact one could design languages where the two are separable and
> languages where they are inseparable. As suggested above, we can seek the
> answer to whether form and function are distributionally independent or
> not in actual languages by checking whether either can occur without the
> other (one-to-zero relationship) and whether forms can occur with
> alternative functions and functions can occur with alternative forms
> (one-to-many relationship). If any of these hold, then the relationship is
> that of separability rather than inseparability.
>
> The separability of form and function (or meaning) for functional objects
> in general can be easily demonstrated. A string of beads has a
> describable form regardless whether it has a meaning (such as when it is
> used as a rosary, with every bead standing for a prayer) or whether it has
> no meaning (such as when it is used as a necklace). Similarly, a function
> can occur without form in toolmaking; for example, the inventor of the
> knife must have had in mind the function before he found the right form to
> perform that function. Similarly, an object with the form of a knife
> can be used for different alternative purposes (to cut things, to pry
> something open, etc.); and each of these functions can be served by
> different alternative forms.
>
> What about language? Is there linguistic form without function? Is there
> function without linguistic form? Are there multiple alternative
> functions for a form? And are there multiple alternative forms for a
> function? It seems to me that the answer to at least three of these four
> questions is affirmative. Linguistic form without function is a string of
> words that do not make sense. The existence of meaning without linguistic
> form appears to be indicated by the "groping-for-words" phenomenon. And
> examples of ambiguity and synonym (IF it exists...) bear out the
> one-to-many relationship between form and meaning and thus the mutual
> detachability of the two. Thus, the answer to question (1) above is that
> form and meaning are not only descriptively but also distributionally
> separable.
>
> What is WRONG with this train of thought? (I am somewhat tentative
> about it since I feel I am treading on "dangerous" grounds - I
> shudder to think how a philosophically-trained person would evaluate it.)
> Exactly which are the assumptions or the logical steps that are false or
> at least questionable? Exactly WHERE would a CONTRARY argument part ways
> with the one above - an argument that would lead us to the opposite
> conclusions which I think Jon Aske and others hold true: that form and
> function are both descriptively and distributionally inseparable?
>
> Edith M.
>
>
>
> ************************************************************************
>                          Edith A. Moravcsik
>                          Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
>                          University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
>                          Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
>                          USA
>
>                          E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
>                          Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
>                                     (414) 332-0141 /home/
>                          Fax: (414) 229-2741
>
>
>
>
>
>


From 3lfyuji at CMICH.EDU  Sun Feb 27 20:30:12 2000
From: 3lfyuji at CMICH.EDU (William C. Spruiell)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 15:30:12 -0500
Subject: Using formalist grammars
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.153012.0500.3LFYUJI@CMICH.EDU>

    There's a crucial difference between arguing that formalist grammars
aren't useful and arguing that *particular* formalist grammars aren't.
The first assertion is, as has been pointed out, fatally flawed;
probably most of us have gotten valuable information from at least one
grammar written within a formalist framework. The second assertion is,
of course true: there are relatively useless formalist grammars
(begging, for the moment, how to define "useless").  The question at
this point is why those particular grammars appear relatively useless,
and whether their condition results from something specifically
formalist or whether it results from a more general "grammar-writing
sin" that everyone, formalists and functionalists alike, are prone to. I
would argue that there are at least three problems with problematical
formalist grammars, and there are at plenty of other grammars that
suffer from at least two of these:

(1) Data bias. We all evaluate and elicit data based on large sets of
hypotheses that we operate on either consciously or unconsciously; these
sets are influence by our theoretical background. So, many formalist
grammars exclude data that would have bearing on things functionalists
are interested in. I'm sure many functionalist grammars exclude data
bearing on things formalists are interested in. One of the marks of a
good grammar is that the author tries to anticipate what the greatest
number of linguists might want to know about, and includes enough
"ground level data" (transcriptions of actual utterances with at least
some description of apparent intended meaning or context) for those with
different interests to evaluate.

(2) Jargon inflation. Both formalists and functionalists use
field-internal jargon that can render a grammar opaque to those
"outside" (especially if this is conjoined with severe data bias). In my
opinion, formalists are worse about this, partly, I think, because of
misguided attempt to rhetorically position the field more towards
computer science, where faculty get paid more and no one cares if your
teaching evals are poor. But functionalist grammars can be just as
jargon-intensive; I don't think anyone would accuse either Tagmemicists
or Systemic-Functionalists of being formalists, but there's a sizable
jargon hurdle to overcome (for those from other backgrounds) before
using their grammars.

(3) Accepting theory-internal constructs as empirical data. We all do
this to some extent of course -- every grammar I've ever read presented
data at least in some spots as "words," even though "words" are products
of analysis. I've encountered some formalist grammars, however, that
seem to feel much freer about including "zero" elements as actual
empirical data than I felt comfortable with.  Lefebvre and Muysken's
1988 examination of Quechua nominalizations, for example, bases part of
an argument on the observation that two sentences (their examples 22 and
23 on p. 174) are different -- even though the sentences are identical
if you remove their null elements. This particular problem, however, is
easily solved if the grammar simply provides an "unanalyzed" sentence
before adding whatever theory-internal constructs are needed on the next
line, and many formalist grammars do this.

In conclusion, I have also found a number of formalist grammars
relatively useless, but part of the reason for that is that I'm not
interested in what they're focussing on and I don't have time to learn
large amounts of jargon internal to a theory which, for other reasons, I
might think is misguided. I can't fault those authors very much for
that, though, since they'd react the same way to any grammar I'd write.
I think we *can,* however, propose sets of principles that any writer of
grammars should follow to make her/his work more accessible to everyone.

_______________________________
William C. Spruiell
Dept. of English Language and Literature
Central Michigan University


From mew1 at SIU.EDU  Sun Feb 27 22:59:05 2000
From: mew1 at SIU.EDU (Margaret E. Winters)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 16:59:05 -0600
Subject: Using formalist grammars
Message-ID: <SUN.27.FEB.2000.165905.0600.MEW1@SIU.EDU>

    There's a crucial difference between arguing that formalist grammars
aren't useful and arguing that *particular* formalist grammars aren't.
The first assertion is, as has been pointed out, fatally flawed;
probably most of us have gotten valuable information from at least one
grammar written within a formalist framework. The second assertion is,
of course true: there are relatively useless formalist grammars
(begging, for the moment, how to define "useless").  The question at
this point is why those particular grammars appear relatively useless,
and whether their condition results from something specifically
formalist or whether it results from a more general "grammar-writing
sin" that everyone, formalists and functionalists alike, are prone to. I
would argue that there are at least three problems with problematical
formalist grammars, and there are at plenty of other grammars that
suffer from at least two of these:

(1) Data bias. We all evaluate and elicit data based on large sets of
hypotheses that we operate on either consciously or unconsciously; these
sets are influence by our theoretical background. So, many formalist
grammars exclude data that would have bearing on things functionalists
are interested in. I'm sure many functionalist grammars exclude data
bearing on things formalists are interested in. One of the marks of a
good grammar is that the author tries to anticipate what the greatest
number of linguists might want to know about, and includes enough
"ground level data" (transcriptions of actual utterances with at least
some description of apparent intended meaning or context) for those with
different interests to evaluate.

(2) Jargon inflation. Both formalists and functionalists use
field-internal jargon that can render a grammar opaque to those
"outside" (especially if this is conjoined with severe data bias). In my
opinion, formalists are worse about this, partly, I think, because of
misguided attempt to rhetorically position the field more towards
computer science, where faculty get paid more and no one cares if your
teaching evals are poor. But functionalist grammars can be just as
jargon-intensive; I don't think anyone would accuse either Tagmemicists
or Systemic-Functionalists of being formalists, but there's a sizable
jargon hurdle to overcome (for those from other backgrounds) before
using their grammars.

(3) Accepting theory-internal constructs as empirical data. We all do
this to some extent of course -- every grammar I've ever read presented
data at least in some spots as "words," even though "words" are products
of analysis. I've encountered some formalist grammars, however, that
seem to feel much freer about including "zero" elements as actual
empirical data than I felt comfortable with.  Lefebvre and Muysken's
1988 examination of Quechua nominalizations, for example, bases part of
an argument on the observation that two sentences (their examples 22 and
23 on p. 174) are different -- even though the sentences are identical
if you remove their null elements. This particular problem, however, is
easily solved if the grammar simply provides an "unanalyzed" sentence
before adding whatever theory-internal constructs are needed on the next
line, and many formalist grammars do this.

In conclusion, I have also found a number of formalist grammars
relatively useless, but part of the reason for that is that I'm not
interested in what they're focussing on and I don't have time to learn
large amounts of jargon internal to a theory which, for other reasons, I
might think is misguided. I can't fault those authors very much for
that, though, since they'd react the same way to any grammar I'd write.
I think we *can,* however, propose sets of principles that any writer of
grammars should follow to make her/his work more accessible to everyone.

_______________________________
William C. Spruiell
Dept. of English Language and Literature
Central Michigan University

-----------------------
Dr. Margaret E. Winters
Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL  62901-4305

tel: (618) 453-5744
fax: (618) 453-1478
e-mail:  mew1 at siu.edu


From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL  Mon Feb 28 08:46:47 2000
From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:46:47 +0200
Subject: various topics
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.104647.0200.JOHN@RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL>

Regarding Diego's point:

Let me try to put this as diplomatically as I am capable while still making my
basic point.

It is certainly true that there are cases of empirically irresponsibility
among functionalists. But well-known cases such as you have cited have a
remarkable tendency to be ultimately traceable to the claims of an
extremely limited number of individuals working within the framework of
functionalism (an EXTREMELY limited number) whose claims are, shall we say,
accepted by their disciples without perhaps receiving the degree of careful
and critical scrutiny which they might receive had they been advanced by
researchers with less, shall we say, verve.

They are not the norm. In formal linguistics, they are the norm (though my
no means universal).

Incidentally, Paz Naylor is a woman.

John Myhill


FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu




>On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, John Myhill wrote:
>
>> In discussions between formal linguists, it is routine for
>> the participants to refer to 'facts' about 'exotic languages' which no one
>> present knows and which no one present knows of a responsible work on, with
>> no one questioning this as potentially problematic; it is assumed that if
>> it is in print, it's true. In discussions between functional linguists,
>> this happens only extremely rarely. If a formalist is careful about data
>> from 'exotic' languages, it is because s/he personally believes that this
>> is the responsible thing to do. If a functionalist is careful about such
>> data, it is because of this but also because s/he is afraid of getting
>> shown up or getting a bad reputation; you just can't get away with as much.
>
>
>Uff!  That is a rather challengeable "slip of the fingers (on the
>keyboard)". This is the sort of black-and-white judgements that have
>hindered understanding in this discussion, as Givon pointed out yesterday.
>
>At least two counterexamples can be cited that call for a softening of the
>above statement: One is the much cited "impersonal, non-promotional
>passive" of Spanish, which has given rise to the most fantastic theories
>on the evolution of "passives", simply by paraphrasing traditional or
>traditionally tainted grammars. The other is the celebrated "ergativity"
>for some, "voice" for others, nature of Tagalog and sister languages,
>analyses that always leak; with the most notable exception of one proposed
>not precisely in the context of typological comparison, but from the
>insights of a native speaker, who apparently did not feel pressed by any
>straitjacket forcing him to abide to what was/is in the market:
>
>Naylor, Paz-Buenaventura. 1995. Subject, topic and Tagalog syntax. In:
>        Bennet, D. et al. 161-201. Object, Voice, and Ergativity.
>        University of London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
>
>This paper is so nice to read, especially because it puts a categorical
>end to the phantasies existing on Tagalog syntax.
>
>In view of the two counterexamples cited (and I'm sure people can come up
>with more), John's above claim needs mending. I would suggest first of all
>to speak in terms of tendencies rather than in terms of "discreet"
>categories (the latter being an antifunctional precept).  Second, the
>tendency that can be linked to the folks on the other sidewalk is that the
>data are secondary to the model, while on our sidewalk the ***TENDENCY***
>is to let the data speak first and then try to come up with some
>explanation that need not be constrained by the structural configuration
>of the phenomenon dealt with.  In other words, Chomskians (which is what
>most people on this list have in mind when they say "formalists") are
>deductive (a bit too much for some), while functionalists tend to be
>inductive. The professional irresponsibilities incurred by either group
>are not intrinsec to the approach, they simply reveal how lazy a linguist
>can be when it comes to testing a retesting.
>
>J. Diego Quesada
>University of Toronto


From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK  Mon Feb 28 10:36:22 2000
From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:36:22 +0000
Subject: form and function
In-Reply-To: <200002271701.LAA27791@consulting.is.rice.edu>
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.103622.0000.DICK@LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK>

Dear Michael (Barlow) and Funknet,
Thanks for the two messages about agreement, reacting to my use of
adjective-noun agreement as an example of a purely formal relationship. I
think you may well be right, and agreement isn't anything like as good an
example as I thought it was.

>There may be relations which, for all intents and purposes, may count as
>purely formal. Here I am simply taking issue with Dicks's assumption (and the
>assumption of many people) that agreement is clearly formal in the sense
>that agreement can best be described by saying that form of the agreement
>target depends on the morphosyntactic form of the agreement source. If you
>want to account for a range of agreement phenomena in a language (even
>English), then such an approach breaks down.
## Yes, I certainly agree that in some cases it's clearly driven by
meaning, so we have to decide for each case how best to treat it. As a
matter of fact I've recently written a paper on English Subject-Verb
Agreement in which I've argued against the traditional agreement story in
terms of morphosyntactic features of person and number (English Lang and
Linguistics 3, 1999, 173-207).

>
>If agreement morphemes exert themselves in Quirk-style examples such as "that
>two weeks", "England collapse" "rain and mist is expected", "two is too many"
>"the french fries at table 10 is" etc., then are we assume that something
>completely different is occurring in the above examples compared to in "those
>two weeks" "England collapses" etc.
## Yes, precisely. These examples are strong evidence against a purely
formal account.


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/home.htm


From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK  Mon Feb 28 10:48:20 2000
From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:48:20 +0000
Subject: formal/functional
In-Reply-To: <l03102800b4dbe2b1611f@[129.128.237.16]>
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.104820.0000.DICK@LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK>

Thanks to Greg Thomson for this, which I found helpful. Just for the record
(and a bit late), I'd like to say that I agree with him. What I meant to
say in my earlier postings, but didn't, was that I see the difference
between 'formal grammar' and 'functional grammar' as simply a matter of
focus, where we decide to put our research effort. We all pay attention to
both form and function in defining the structures we recognise - that's
what linguistic 'structure' is, as we've all recognised since Saussure -
and that includes extralinguistic functions (whether to do with semantics,
pragmatics, discourse, sociolinguistics or processing). Where we differ is
the kind of analysis we enjoy doing and think we do well; but not
surprisingly, perhaps, there's a certain tendency to be a bit
over-enthusiastic about our own favourite area, which I suspect we could
all find examples of in our own work.

     Dick

>Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
>aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
>functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
>utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
>functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
>keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
>example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
>particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
>were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
>not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
>sense)?
>
>Greg Thomson


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/home.htm


From piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR  Mon Feb 28 11:43:46 2000
From: piraha at CANAL-1.COM.BR (Dan Everett)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 08:43:46 -0300
Subject: formal/functional: a commercial
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.084346.0300.PIRAHA@CANAL1.COM.BR>

Responding partially to Dick Hudson, partially to myself:

There is a serious problem, however, with formal accounts, especially
Chomskyan, though, which renders the issue of what to study a bit more
serious than 'where to put our research effort', as Dick puts it. This
will not be news to many readers of this list, but the light has just
come on for me, so let me say how it did.

The problem is just this: Formal linguistics, at least of the straight
Chomskyan pedigree, has no intensionally definable object of study. It
claims to study "I-Language". But what is I-Language, really? It is just
grammar. But what kind of grammar? It is the grammar of an individual
speaker, abstracting away from historical, functional, and sociological
properties of that grammar. However, how can we know, a priori, what
aspects of the grammar fall into these three categories? The answer is,
we cannot. Therefore, one cannot define the object of the study of
I-Language grammars a priori. There are no properties which can pick it
out except, perhaps (and I doubt this for most cases) empirical
properties. But if this is so, then I-Language can only be defined
extensionally. What would that mean? It would mean that I-Language must
be reduced to the grammar of a set of sentences. Which? Those the
researcher chooses to study. What happens if these sentences turn out to
be products of functional, historical, or sociological forces? Move on
to another set of sentences.

I have ceased to be sanguine about the possibility of building an
interesting research program on such an elusive object of study.

Functionalists do a little bit better. They are willing to study
everything related to language. One can give an intensional definition
of this. But it would be a bit, uh, broad.

Neither of these two approaches has a lot to cheer about when it comes
to define what it is studying. But I think functionalism does better.

In any case, although I still am working on some formalist phonology,
this is why, more and more I have come to believe that the best activity
for the linguist to engage in is writing grammars and *from these
efforts* offering 'explanations' of what we find important, puzzling, or
just interesting. And this is why I have come to be convinced, finally,
that any serious theory of grammar must allow non-formal information to
be part of its architecture. Semantics and pragmatics must be causally
implicated in the theoretical constructs of a good theory of grammar.
Yet, at the same time, formalist discoveries must be accounted for. The
most important empirical findings of formal grammar were made in 1967 by
Ross, following a 1964 lead of Chomsky's: the island-constraints.

Any theory of grammar ought to be able to handle these, yet avoid the
problems I have just mentioned about the object of study. I only know of
one theory of grammar that meets this requirement, RRG. So it is my
growing disquiet with the disappearing object of study of formal
grammars, what I call in a paper in progress, "The shrinking Chomskyan
corner", coupled with my concern for accounting for the semantics,
structure, and pragmatics of natural language that have led me to RRG as
the best port in the storm.

On the other hand, none of this changes my belief that we ought to all
be asking for NSF money to get into the field and describe languages.

End of commercial.

What I would like to hear (and this isn't, I know, the best list on
which to pose the question) is if anyone can think of how one might go
about defining the object of study for a formal theory.

Dan Everett


From iadimly at USC.ES  Mon Feb 28 13:50:30 2000
From: iadimly at USC.ES (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Mar=EDa_de_los_=C1ngeles_G=F3mez?=)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 14:50:30 +0100
Subject: TITLES
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.145030.0100.IADIMLY@USC.ES>

I would appreciate some bibliographic information
on the following research field:
TITLES: ASPECTS OF COHERENCE, COHESION AND POINT OF VIEW.
Thank you in advance

Dr Mar?a ?ngeles G?mez-Gonz?lez
Department of English Philology
Facultade de Filoloxia
University of Santiago de Compostela
Avda. de Castelao, s/n
E-15704 Compostela.  Spain
Fax.: 981-574646
Tel: 981-563100 Ext.: 11856
email: iadimly at usc.es


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Mon Feb 28 14:35:36 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 08:35:36 -0600
Subject: response to a small point
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.083536.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

This is in response to a question by John Myhill. He asked whether I
thought Tom Givo'n had correctly paraphrased my point that statements
about form presupposed the acknowledgment of the existence of form. Yes,
he did.

Edith


   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741


From clements at INDIANA.EDU  Mon Feb 28 21:34:41 2000
From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 15:34:41 -0600
Subject: Stats on Linguistic Groups
In-Reply-To: <38BA5F72.4BF294B9@canal-1.com.br>
Message-ID: <MON.28.FEB.2000.153441.0600.CLEMENTS@INDIANA.EDU>

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 17:31:51 +0800
From: Linguistic Studies <linguistic.studies at insead.edu.sg>

Subject: Stats on Linguistic Groups

 In a recent monograph on linguistic cultures I have published
over 130,000 stats covering 460+ language groups worldwide
(demographics, economics, geography, etc.).*  I have recently
created a spreadsheet of the database which is complementary to
researchers/scholars.  If you or a colleague might find this useful
for your research, please let me know and I can send you a zip or XLS file
of the data.

Yours,

Phil Parker
Professor of Economics and International Studies
UCSD & INSEAD

*Source: Parker, Philip M., Linguistic Cultures of the World: A Statistical
Reference, Greenwood Press, 1997.





J. Clancy Clements
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese
Ballantine Hall 844 / IU
Bloomington, IN 47405
USA
Tel. (812) 855-6141
Fax: (812) 855-4526


From matmies at ling.helsinki.fi  Tue Feb 29 10:41:45 2000
From: matmies at ling.helsinki.fi (Matti Miestamo)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:41:45 +0200
Subject: New Book: The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.124145.0200.MATMIES@LING.HELSINKI.FI>

                 *** New book ***

The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries
                         by
          Even Hovdhaugen, University of Oslo
         Fred Karlsson, University of Helsinki
        Carol Henriksen, University of Roskilde
           Bengt Sigurd, University of Lund

Publisher: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki

            appeared on February 28, 2000

Hardback, 672 pages.
Price: 130 FIM (162 DKK, 175 NOK, 185 SEK, 22 euros, 21 USD) + postage.

At http://www.ling.Helsinki.FI/~fkarlsso/nordhist.htm
you find the Preface and Table of Contents of the book
as well as a presentation of the authors.

Mail orders to: Bookstore Tiedekirja, Mariankatu 5, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland
FAX orders to: +358 9 635 017
E-mail orders: tiedekirja at tsv.fi
Further information:
please call the Bookstore at +358 9 635177,
or Fred Karlsson at +358 9 19123512 (fkarlsso at ling.helsinki.fi)


From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE  Tue Feb 29 12:42:47 2000
From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:42:47 +0100
Subject: Sprachbund and A-reflexives
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.134247.0100.W.SCHULZE@LRZ.UNIMUENCHEN.DE>

Dan is [w]ondering aloud:

> Caucasian languages, Turkish, Farsi... and Nepali. Is there a language
> contact/Sprachbund-type connection here?

I don't think that A-reflexives (or reflexives in subject position) in
the languages you mentioned have something to do with sprachbund
phenomena. Sure, we have some hints at a certain communcative style that
share in Farsi, Turkish, and some esp. southeast Caucasian languages.
This 'style' is based on loan words, chalques populaires, and a
restricted number of phenomena in morphsyntax as well as in pragmatics
(another important feature may be sentence intonation). As for
A-reflexives, we cannot refer to this technique neither in the sense of
a specific inter-communicative style nor to a sprachbund at least with
respect to the Caucasus/Turkey/Iran etc. connection [note that the
notion of 'sprachbund' is not applicable for the Caucasian languages,
see Kevin Tuite' excellent article in Lingua 1999 (108,1):-1-29 ('The
myth of the Caucasian Sprachbund: The case of ergativity")].

Just in those 'Caucasian' areas that have the closest contact with
Iranian and Turkic languages (i.e., in Southeast Caucasian (Lezgian)) we
do not find cataphoric A-reflexives that have a referential 'postcedent'
in O-function (the type: 'REFL(i):A (PRO)NOUN(i):O VERB). I claimed in
in earlier posting that A-reflexivization is perhaps based on (and
restricted to?) de-nominal reflexives (such as body-part terms) which
maintain parts of their nominal (and referential?) semantics in
A-function. This is true for Georgian _tavi_ ('head'), but not for the
South East Caucasian reflexives (*_VchwV_ or something the like).
Persian _xod_ stems from the IE reflexive *su- (Old Persian _uva:-_,
Avesta xvato:, Pehlevi _xvat(i:h)_, Sanskrit _sv?tas_ etc.), Turkish
_kendi_ is nothing but a reflexives pronoun already in Old Turkish
(_kend?_ in the sense of '-self', cf. _ol kend? aidy_ 'he himself said'
etc.). I did not check the history of Nepali _aaphii_ but my guess it
that it has another grammaticalization background. To my knowledge
neither _kendi_ nor _xod_ allow A-reflexivization with co-referential
'postcedent'...

That fact that many of the languages in question allow A-reflexives (as
well as S-reflexives) in the sense of emphatic pronouns (Udi _ich
tanesa_ 'self:ABS go:3SG:PRES' '(s)he go(es)') [no 'postcedent' in
O-function] may belong to that kind of (polite/emphatic) communicative
style that I alluded to above...

Hence, sorry to say: No sprachbund phenomenon at all.

Wolfgang

*****************************
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet M?nchen
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 M?nchen
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
*****************************


From wolters at IKP.UNI-BONN.DE  Tue Feb 29 17:19:15 2000
From: wolters at IKP.UNI-BONN.DE (Maria Wolters)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:19:15 +0100
Subject: English vs. Spanish vs. Italian pronouns
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.181915.0100.WOLTERS@IKP.UNIBONN.DE>

Dear list,

I am looking for contrastive functional
studies of the Spanish and Italian pronoun
system as compared to English stressed
vs. unstressed pronouns.

I have a set of discourses that were
previously used in a production experiment
conducted by David Beaver and myself,
and I'm wondering how those items
would fare if they were to be translated into
Spanish or Italian, which pronouns speakers
would use (if any).

In order to be able to interpret the results from
our informants from a functional perspective,
I would like to know about relevant literature
from the field. (Since there is no particularly
strong functionalist community at my university,
I need to resort to the Net).

I will post a summary of responses to the list.

Thank you very much in advance for your help,

Maria Wolters
(wolters at ikp.uni-bonn.de)

(P.S.: In case anybody is wondering about the background of this study:
I'm interested in prosodic correlates of givenness, more
specifically discourse referent information status.
Hence the interest in those odd animals, the "stressed pronouns" ...)


From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU  Tue Feb 29 17:02:48 2000
From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik)
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:02:48 -0600
Subject: form and function
Message-ID: <TUE.29.FEB.2000.110248.0600.EDITH@CSD.UWM.EDU>

This is in response to Jon Aske's interesting message on form and
function. I agree with each of his four main points.

First, Jon pointed out that the description of function should not be
left out of integral accounts of functional objects since function serves
(or may serve) to explain form, such as in the case of knives.
I believe that this point is uncontroversial: both functionalists and
formalists would subscribe to it, with the exception that
functionalists believe that MORE of form is explainable in terms of
meaning than formalists do.

Jon's second point is that, once function is included in descriptions
of functional objects, the description of function should not be seen as
secondary to that of form - a kind of add-on, or afterthought. I agree
that function should not be seen as second to form _in significance_.
As far as _logical_ ranking is concerned, it depends on what exactly
one wants to do. Here are two scenarios:

   (a) If the immediate goal is to _describe the relationship between form
and function_, then form and function are logically on a par - that is,
neither is secondary to the other: the descriptions of both are logically
primary to (i.e., presupposed by) statements about the relationship
between the two.

   (b) If the goal is to _explain form in terms of function_, then
function is logically secondary to form since form needs to be described
before any explanation can be looked for it. But "logically secondary"
does not mean "second in importance".

Thirdly, Jon argued that there was no reason to describe form separately
from function, rather than describing the two together, without a clear
separation of the two concepts. I basically agree on this, too:
traditional descriptive grammars often proceed in this manner. Describing
form and function as two distinct entities is imperative ONLY if our goal
is to study the relationships between the two; such as how form conveys
meaning and how meaning explains form. If the goal of linguistic
description is formulated differently so that "form" and "function" do not
figure as terms, then separate descriptions of form and meaning are not
called for.

I think, however, that one can argue for the usefulness of accounting for
meaning-form relations in language chosen as the goal of descriptive
linguistics. First, there are some interesting linguistic patterns that we
could not talk about otherwise. Such are intra-language and cross-language
synonymy and ambiguity and the existence of formally well-formed but
semantically ill-formed sentences, or formally ill-formed but semantically
well-formed ones. Second, by looking at sentences as relating form
and meaning, we also manage to link language to many extralinguistic
phenomena. These  include other semiotic objects which, by definition,
provide a link between some form and some meaning (such as body language,
road signs etc.). More broadly, they also include things that share form
properties with language even if there is no meaning attached (such as any
temporal activity whether it conveys meaning or not; or for that matter,
any complex object that consists of classifiable parts).

Fourthly, Jon raised the question of why there should be different people
to describe form and to describe function. As he said, if you describe
form, why would you stop there and leave "the interesting stuff" to
others? I'd say linguists should be free to focus on one or more aspects
of the total endeavor.

Edith



   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741