From Ariovistus at GMX.CH Sat Jan 1 12:29:14 2000 From: Ariovistus at GMX.CH (Christian Preuß) Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 13:29:14 +0100 Subject: OT-Grammar Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sstraigh at BINGHAMTON.EDU Fri Jan 7 23:38:17 2000 From: sstraigh at BINGHAMTON.EDU (H Stephen Straight) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 18:38:17 -0500 Subject: autonomy of syntax In-Reply-To: <38659539.1B65@ucinet.com> Message-ID: Noel Rude says: > Probably I don't understand what Prof Straight is saying. Or maybe we > can agree to disagree, perhaps mostly in what Science is. For it seems > to me that theories can be very abstract and "supernatural" (if you > will). If they are predictive-refutable--as our grammars and Grammar > should be--they are "scientific". Also it seems to me that the > messiness of linguistic data, rather than refuting an underlying system, > actually suggests it, whatever flaws there might be in Saussure's langue > et parole and Chomsky's competence-performance models. > > Is this just an esoteric argument where in practice we come down to the > same thing? Will we both draw up verbal and nominal paradigm charts, > describe grammatical relations, posit functions, etc., and some of us > will call it "grammar" and "rules" and others will call it something > else? > > Aren't we all looking for regularities--whatever we might call them? The disagreement between us is not about the nature of Science but rather about the predictive power and refutability of Grammar. Significantly, Saussure did not posit Grammar but rather Langue, which he specifically defined as the central component in the neuropsychology of _receptive_ language processing, rather than as an abstract entity mediating both reception and production. The evidence of several generations of research on language leads me to conclude that grammars have no predictive value or meaningful refutability because the events they putatively predict, judgments of grammaticality, (1) fail to predict what people say and can understand, which I would think is what we want a theory of language to do, and (2) lack empirical stability, being subject to endless second-guessing. This is a slim and slippery kind of "regularity" to accept as the standard for the scientific study of language. Where Noel and I appear to agree is that work on Grammar provides heuristic analytical guidance, in the form of categories, relations, functions, etc., for the study of language processes. However, to posit the rules of a grammar as entities that are active during the process of language use makes no more sense than to posit the formula e=mc2 as an entity that operates during the process of nuclear fission, even though the things referred to in the rules (nouns, verbs, subjects, instruments, etc.) and in the formula (energy, mass, the speed of light) clearly DO play critical roles in these processes. To use Chomskyan terminology, there is no empirical evidence that Competence, as defined in generative grammar, plays any role in even the most idealized models of Performance, even if (at least some of) the elements referred to in models of competence do undoubtedly play essential roles in models of performance. Indeed, to posit Chomskyan competence as playing any role whatever in Chomskyan performance is to commit a fundamental category error, though it's an error introduced and frequently reiterated by Chomsky himself. Best. 'Bye. Steve From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat Jan 8 00:44:57 2000 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 16:44:57 -0800 Subject: Problems with Chomsky Message-ID: 1-7-2000 (wow) Dear FUNK people, I had the best intention of staying away from the wonderful recent exchange y'all ran in December, about Noam Chomsky & what not. For one thing, I thought I had nothing to add to it. For another, it was a crowded field. So, while you can count the following missive as certainly related, it was actually triggered by an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the most recent issue of The New Yorker. In his article, Gladwell reviews three recent books, by a neurologist, three developmental psychologists, and another psychologist, resp.: (i) John Bruer "The myth of the first three years" (Free Press) (ii) Alison Gopnik *et al* "The scientist in the crib" (Morrow) (iii) Jerome Kagan "Three seductive ideas" (Oxford) But the thing that caught my attention was a quote from our national expert oin children issues, Hillary Rodham Clinton, taken out of her welcoming address to a White House Conference entitled: "What new research on the brain tells us about our youngest children" (April 1997). To wit: "...Fifteen years ago, we thought that a baby's brain structure was virtually complete at birth... Now we understand that it is a work in progress, and that everything that we do with a child has some kind of potential physical influence on the rapidly forming brain. A child's earliest experiences--their relation- ships with parents and caregivers, the sights and sounds and smells and feelings they encounter, the challenges they meet-- determine how their brains are wired..." What struck me about this quote is the hopeless reductionism about child learning/development, the same reductionism that struck me on first reading Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior": The absolute extremism -- or, if I may be forgiven, the *intellectual Stalinism* -- of it all: "You are either with me (and Descartes and Plato) in the Innate Ideas camp, or you are with Skinner (and Bloomfield and Hume and Aristotle) in the S-R camp. No room in the middle". The three books (and the more minor studies) that Gladwell reviews actually, all suggest that the action is right in the middle. That the child and its brain are *interactive* from the word 'go' and to a ripe old age; that innate biases & pre-wired structure interact with input, are pre-wired to seek input, to form hypotheses about the input, and to evaluate the empirical evidence that is or isn't compatible with the hypothese -- and in the latter case re-formulate and come up with new hypotheses (and then test them). So, maybe Chomsky's intemperedness is only alive and well as Hillary's Choice (oops, couldn't resist that 'n). But then I recalled the tenor of many of the contributions to the December FUNK-exchange, how reductionist they were, how they followed Chomsky's line of either/or reductionism but not -- God forbid -- the more complex, more realistic, more sophisticated *middle*. You are either a rabid functionalist ("Grammars are not really really REALLY real"... Well, by the way, Chomsky also things that grammatical *constructions* are not real, as of 1992, in case you are looking for company...), or you are a died-in-the-wool structuralist ("Functions are mushy speculations"). No room in the middle... And likewise with methodology: Either you do only "competence" sentences, (as Chomsky clearely insisted in 1965), or you do only "live" communication data (as many functionalists insist). But God forbid that you should try to be be multi-methodological (as most complex sciences are). So I wanted to ask a simple minded question: How can you be a functionalist without automatically also being a structuralist? The function of WHAT are you going to study? Because in all biologically-based systems (sorry guys, we're included, kicking or screaming...), functions are carried out by paired *structures*. Have you ever met a pulmonary physiologist who is NOT interested in the anatomy of the heart & lungs & circulatory system? Or a brain physiologist/cognitivist NOT interested in cerebral anatomy? In the rather disorienting context of some of the discussion, it also struck me that two people I have respected for many years in spite of severe local disagreements on occasion -- Fritz Newmeyer and Joan Bresnan -- have been making honest attempts to be just that, functionalist cum structuralists. So you may quibble with some of their specific conclusions, as I sometimes do; but you've got to respect their honest attemp to escape the stranglehold of *reductionism* that Chomsky has saddled us with. The correlate, of course, is that just because Chomsky was (and still is, alas) an extremist, we need not ignore the *many* things that we did learn from him. So I wanted to enumerate just a few, some of which I shared previously (and privately) with Wally Chafe & Brian MacWhinney. This business of all of us trying to find as many ways of saying either I love you, NC or I hate you, NC, sure reminds my of the funeral oration in Julius Caesar ("We have not come to praise you, NC, but to bury..."). Sure, we all know the many ways in which NC made linguistics a rather miserable morass. But at least for my generation, he also saved us from the Bloomfieldians, who were in some ways just as bad, in others even deadlier and even more dogmatic about the irrelevance of meaning, function & mind. Perhaps it would also help to mention that NC, rather paradoxically, engineered our generation's return to functionalism: Aspects (1965) fairly reeked with semantics, both propositional & lexical. Sure, it is all couched in obfuscatory structuralist jargon, but it's still there. Sure, the 'format' was licenced by Fillmore (1962) and Katz & Postal (1964); nothing really original (but the jargon...). But still, NC embraced it, to his great eventual sorrow -- since Ross & Lakoff's paper (1967) "Is [syntactic!] deep structure necessary?" was a direct consequence of the 'semanticism' of Aspects, simply drawing it to its ultimate conclusions & exposing its incompatibility with the rest of the structuralist machinery. I know that was the point that licensed me to bolt. And if I am not mistaken, Generative Semantics was directly licenced by it. And maybe even Wally's 1970 book "Meaning & the Structure of Language"? Though Wally was probably old enough by then to have harboured those ideas earlier... Sapir? Whorf? Common sense? Even the much-maligned notion of "deep structure" had its salutary consequences -- given its historical context. It focused attention on the semantic correlates of syntactic constructions. Those stock sentences -- "Sally is easy/eager to please" and "Flying planes can be dangerous", etc. etc. -- played an important role in demonstrating that syntax had semantic correlates. And in fact, many of NC's (and Pstal's) arguments agains the IC analysis prevalent at the time actually hinged on semantics (even if he didn't say so), as did R.B. Lees' arguments in "The grammar of English nominalizations", even if he didn't say so himself. And, for that matter, even Harris's original 1956 paper ("Co-occurrence and transformations..."), where semantics was hiding under the forbidding, empiricist/structuralist moniker "co-occurrences". Which brings me to *transformations*: One of Noel Rude's contributions misrepresented what I think/said/thought about this issue, so here is the real thing: True, transformations obfuscated a lot of issues. But if you read Aspects carefully (which I do, with my grad students, once a year), a curious thing may strike you: As a "process" T-rules surely *are* a mess. But as RELATIONS between structures they are most revealing: The very same propositional-semantic contents persists, as leitmotif, through multiple syntactic structures ("transforms"). With NC reminding us (following Fillmore's 1962 paper in WORD...) that "transformations don't change meanings". But -- we asked ourselves in the late 1960s, if they don't change meaning, what do we use them for? What is their FUNCTION? And the obvious answer was (with some help from Joe Emond's dissertation, another structuralist classic that contributed to my development as a functionalist... and with some help from a WONDERFUL paper by Joan Hooper/Bybee and Sandy Thompson with supplied a functionalist interpretation of Emonds) -- they must be there to code discourse-pragmatic (communicative, interactional, etc.) function. And so, I am almost tempted to say, NC licensed semantics quite in spite of himself, to his own eventual sorrow. Which brings to (the wandering) mind the Pythia's warning to Xenophon (when he tried to cheat on going to join the rebellion of Cyrus against the Persian empire): "Invoked ot uninvoked, the God will be there". Finally, there is one more area that NC should get (grudgin) credit for -- the more sophisticated notion of *syntactic constructions*. Bloomfieldian syntax was a veritable mess, mostly morphology and non-hierarchic IC. The notion of constructions, with constituency AND hierarchy AND embedding -- clearly isomorphic to what I see as grammar-coded *functional domains* (communicative pragmatics) -- was really not easy to derive from from Bloomfieldian IC analysis. It is, in my humble estimate, NC's pairing of deep structures with propositional-semantic interpretations that licensed the next move by *functionalists*; or at least by functionalists who grew up in NC's incubator... It is of course ironic that by 1992 NC denounced this very notion, for which SS (1957) and Aspects (1965) were largely responsible, in effect calling constructions figments of our methodological imagination. To wit: "...The notion of grammatical construction is eliminated, and with it, construction-particular rules. Constructions such as verb-phrase, relative clause, passive, etc. are taken to be *taxonomic artifacts*, collections of phenomena explained through the interaction of of principles of UG, with the values of parameters fixed..." ("A minimalist program for linguistic theory" (1992), p. 3; emphases added) This is truly bizare, granted, me coming to the rescue of REAL *structure* from NC, who has decided to finally dump them, 'cause they kept sticking in his craw, couldn't swallow them, couldn't spit them out. Major bummer dude. But still, have a heart, y'guys: For those of us who believe that grammar is cognitively real, (and neurologically real, if you don't mind, Liz & George...); and that it involves not only morphology; for us, Aspects was never a total waste of time. At the very least, it gave us something to work from, build on, transcend, bounce off (as George & Haj did in 1967), eventually escape from (boy, those strictures...). Well, actually, there was one giant around, and we could have learned from him about REAL grammar -- Otto Jespersen. But nobody told us about him, and Bloomfield dismissed him together with his (and B.'s) teacher Herman Paul, as speculative philosophers, not *real* scientists. And yes, Dwight Bolinger was around, but we didn't know he existed (most of us found him in the 1970s). So who else was round (in the US) to teach us about the semantic/pragmatic correlates of grammar? Perversely, we got it from Chomsky, tho we had to escape his strictures to get it straight. But I don't see how we could have gotten it without Aspects. I do go back every so often to the high shelf, in the left corner, and pull out & re-read the Joost collection (1962), as a refresher, just to remind myself how truly deadly, indeed suffocating, and above all smug, the atmosphere was in US linguistics in 1956... I apologize for taking so much of your time. Happy New Millenium, y'all, Brave New World! TG From wleman at mcn.net Sat Jan 8 05:00:19 2000 From: wleman at mcn.net (Wayne Leman) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:00:19 -0700 Subject: Problems with Chomsky Message-ID: No need to apologize for taking *my* time on this one, Tom. Brought back memories of the old IULC papers and more, and helped put things in perspective. Thanks for the ride. Happy Y2K, Wayne From MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU Sat Jan 8 17:26:31 2000 From: MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU (Mills, Carl (MILLSCR)) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 12:26:31 -0500 Subject: Problems with Chomsky Message-ID: Tom, >From a stone reductionist, but not, I hope, a "greedy reductionist," who also believes we owe a lot to Chomsky, thanks for making clear a lot of things I have tried to say, much less clearly, to my grad students in sociolinguistics over the years. Carl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Sun Jan 9 01:53:06 2000 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 17:53:06 -0800 Subject: Problems with Chomsky In-Reply-To: <38768889.BDE68752@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: There is absolutely nothing in Hillary Clinton's quote below (as provided by Talmy Givon) that is inconsistent with or any way incompatible with an interactionist view. She does not deny innate contributions, she merely says that experience continues to contribute to the structure of the brain after birth. That is an ENTIRELY accurate statement from the point of view of current evidence in developmental neurobiology. The developing brain is indeed a "work in progress", and experience plays a powerful role in structuring the brain before and after birth (yes, before birth, when the same mechanisms that are used for learning later on are used for brain maturation, as the body "instructs" the brain in utero through activity dependent processes). Hillary Clinton's position as expressed below is not in any way the same thing as a "tabula rasa", and it is CERTAINLY not Stalinist in any way that I can see! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparently "absolute extremism" and "intellectual Stalinism" are in the eye of the beholder as well. Donna Thal, Barbara Finlay, Barbara Clancy and I have just completed a review chapter (an update of a 1992 chapter, extensively updated I should add) called "Early language development and its neural correlates". Our coauthors Finlay and Clancy are development neurobiologists, and they are the ones who extensively rewrote the section on brain development -- it is very up to date, I'm proud to be associated with it, and would be happy to send a copy of the chapter to anyone who is interested in a recent review of the facts regarding early brain development and the contribution of experience. I would also recommend a recent "primer" on human brain development by Mark Johnson (of Birkbeck College, London -- not the same Mark Johnson who publishes with George Lakoff). And of course, Chapter 5 in "Rethinking innateness". The fact of the matter is that today's neuroscience is very bad news for yesterday's nativists. That doesn't mean that "nothing is innate', it just means that it is interactions ALL THE WAY DOWN, with experience playing a massive role at every level, to the point where it is virtually impossible to decompose things into "innate" vs. "learned". The 1997 White House Conference underscored these facts. To be sure, the conference was a political event, designed to highlight findings that the Clintons believe are compatible with their agenda. But the facts cited by the developmental neuroscientists at that conference are entirely accurate. -liz bates > > "...Fifteen years ago, we thought that a baby's brain structure > was virtually complete at birth... Now we understand that it is > a work in progress, and that everything that we do with a child > has some kind of potential physical influence on the rapidly > forming brain. A child's earliest experiences--their relation- > ships with parents and caregivers, the sights and sounds and > smells and feelings they encounter, the challenges they meet-- > determine how their brains are wired..." > >What struck me about this quote is the hopeless reductionism about child >learning/development, the same reductionism that struck me on first >reading Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior": The >absolute extremism -- or, if I may be forgiven, the *intellectual >Stalinism* -- of it all: "You are either with me (and Descartes and >Plato) in the Innate Ideas camp, or you are with Skinner (and Bloomfield >and Hume and Aristotle) in the S-R camp. No room in the middle". > >The three books (and the more minor studies) that Gladwell reviews >actually, all suggest that the action is right in the middle. That the >child and its brain are *interactive* from the word 'go' and to a ripe >old age; that innate biases & pre-wired structure interact with input, >are pre-wired to seek input, to form hypotheses about the input, and to >evaluate the empirical evidence that is or isn't compatible with the >hypothese -- and in the latter case re-formulate and come up with new >hypotheses (and then test them). > >So, maybe Chomsky's intemperedness is only alive and well as Hillary's >Choice (oops, couldn't resist that 'n). But then I recalled the tenor of >many of the contributions to the December FUNK-exchange, how >reductionist they were, how they followed Chomsky's line of either/or >reductionism but not -- God forbid -- the more complex, more realistic, >more sophisticated *middle*. You are either a rabid functionalist >("Grammars are not really really REALLY real"... Well, by the way, >Chomsky also things that grammatical *constructions* are not real, as of >1992, in case you are looking for company...), or you are a >died-in-the-wool structuralist ("Functions are mushy speculations"). No >room in the middle... > >And likewise with methodology: Either you do only "competence" >sentences, (as Chomsky clearely insisted in 1965), or you do only "live" >communication data (as many functionalists insist). But God forbid that >you should try to be be multi-methodological (as most complex sciences >are). > >So I wanted to ask a simple minded question: How can you be a >functionalist without automatically also being a structuralist? The >function of WHAT are you going to study? Because in all >biologically-based systems (sorry guys, we're included, kicking or >screaming...), functions are carried out by paired *structures*. Have >you ever met a pulmonary physiologist who is NOT interested in the >anatomy of the heart & lungs & circulatory system? Or a brain >physiologist/cognitivist NOT interested in cerebral anatomy? > >In the rather disorienting context of some of the discussion, it also >struck me that two people I have respected for many years in spite of >severe local disagreements on occasion -- Fritz Newmeyer and Joan >Bresnan -- have been making honest attempts to be just that, >functionalist cum structuralists. So you may quibble with some of their >specific conclusions, as I sometimes do; but you've got to respect their >honest attemp to escape the stranglehold of *reductionism* that Chomsky >has saddled us with. > >The correlate, of course, is that just because Chomsky was (and still >is, alas) an extremist, we need not ignore the *many* things that we did >learn from him. So I wanted to enumerate just a few, some of which I >shared previously (and privately) with Wally Chafe & Brian MacWhinney. > >This business of all of us trying to find as many ways of saying either >I love you, NC or I hate you, NC, sure reminds my of the funeral oration >in Julius Caesar ("We have not come to praise you, NC, but to bury..."). >Sure, we all know the many ways in which NC made linguistics a rather >miserable morass. But at least for my generation, he also saved us from >the Bloomfieldians, who were in some ways just as bad, in others even >deadlier and even more dogmatic about the irrelevance of meaning, >function & mind. > >Perhaps it would also help to mention that NC, rather paradoxically, >engineered our generation's return to functionalism: Aspects (1965) >fairly reeked with semantics, both propositional & lexical. Sure, it is >all couched in obfuscatory structuralist jargon, but it's still there. >Sure, the 'format' was licenced by Fillmore (1962) and Katz & Postal >(1964); nothing really original (but the jargon...). > >But still, NC embraced it, to his great eventual sorrow -- since Ross & >Lakoff's paper (1967) "Is [syntactic!] deep structure necessary?" was a >direct consequence of the 'semanticism' of Aspects, simply drawing it to >its ultimate conclusions & exposing its incompatibility with the rest of >the structuralist machinery. I know that was the point that licensed me >to bolt. And if I am not mistaken, Generative Semantics was directly >licenced by it. And maybe even Wally's 1970 book "Meaning & the >Structure of Language"? Though Wally was probably old enough by then to >have harboured those ideas earlier... Sapir? Whorf? Common sense? > >Even the much-maligned notion of "deep structure" had its salutary >consequences -- given its historical context. It focused attention on >the semantic correlates of syntactic constructions. Those stock >sentences -- "Sally is easy/eager to please" and "Flying planes can be >dangerous", etc. etc. -- played an important role in demonstrating that >syntax had semantic correlates. And in fact, many of NC's (and Pstal's) >arguments agains the IC analysis prevalent at the time actually hinged >on semantics (even if he didn't say so), as did R.B. Lees' arguments in >"The grammar of English nominalizations", even if he didn't say so >himself. > >And, for that matter, even Harris's original 1956 paper ("Co-occurrence >and transformations..."), where semantics was hiding under the >forbidding, empiricist/structuralist moniker "co-occurrences". > >Which brings me to *transformations*: One of Noel Rude's contributions >misrepresented what I think/said/thought about this issue, so here is >the real thing: True, transformations obfuscated a lot of issues. But if >you read Aspects carefully (which I do, with my grad students, once a >year), a curious thing may strike you: As a "process" T-rules surely >*are* a mess. But as RELATIONS between structures they are most >revealing: The very same propositional-semantic contents persists, as >leitmotif, through multiple syntactic structures ("transforms"). With NC >reminding us (following Fillmore's 1962 paper in WORD...) that >"transformations don't change meanings". But -- we asked ourselves in >the late 1960s, if they don't change meaning, what do we use them for? >What is their FUNCTION? And the obvious answer was (with some help from >Joe Emond's dissertation, another structuralist classic that contributed >to my development as a functionalist... and with some help from a >WONDERFUL paper by Joan Hooper/Bybee and Sandy Thompson with supplied a >functionalist interpretation of Emonds) -- they must be there to code >discourse-pragmatic (communicative, interactional, etc.) function. > >And so, I am almost tempted to say, NC licensed semantics quite in spite >of >himself, to his own eventual sorrow. Which brings to (the wandering) >mind the Pythia's warning to Xenophon (when he tried to cheat on going >to join the rebellion of Cyrus against the Persian empire): > > "Invoked ot uninvoked, the God will be there". > >Finally, there is one more area that NC should get (grudgin) credit for >-- the more sophisticated notion of *syntactic constructions*. >Bloomfieldian >syntax was a veritable mess, mostly morphology and non-hierarchic IC. >The notion of constructions, with constituency AND hierarchy AND >embedding -- clearly isomorphic to what I see as grammar-coded >*functional domains* (communicative pragmatics) -- was really not easy >to derive from from Bloomfieldian IC analysis. It is, in my humble >estimate, NC's pairing of deep structures with propositional-semantic >interpretations that licensed the next move by *functionalists*; or at >least by functionalists who grew up in NC's incubator... > >It is of course ironic that by 1992 NC denounced this very notion, for >which SS (1957) and Aspects (1965) were largely responsible, in effect >calling constructions figments of our methodological imagination. To >wit: > > "...The notion of grammatical construction is eliminated, and with >it, > construction-particular rules. Constructions such as verb-phrase, > relative clause, passive, etc. are taken to be *taxonomic >artifacts*, > collections of phenomena explained through the interaction of > of principles of UG, with the values of parameters fixed..." > > ("A minimalist program for linguistic theory" (1992), p. 3; > emphases added) > >This is truly bizare, granted, me coming to the rescue of REAL >*structure* from NC, who has decided to finally dump them, 'cause they >kept sticking in his craw, couldn't swallow them, couldn't spit them >out. Major bummer dude. > >But still, have a heart, y'guys: For those of us who believe that >grammar is cognitively real, (and neurologically real, if you don't >mind, Liz & George...); and that it involves not only morphology; for >us, Aspects was never a total waste of time. At the very least, it gave >us something to work from, build on, transcend, bounce off (as George & >Haj did in 1967), eventually escape from (boy, those strictures...). > >Well, actually, there was one giant around, and we could have learned >from him about REAL grammar -- Otto Jespersen. But nobody told us about >him, and Bloomfield dismissed him together with his (and B.'s) teacher >Herman Paul, as speculative philosophers, not *real* scientists. And >yes, Dwight Bolinger was around, but we didn't know he existed (most of >us found him in the 1970s). So who else was round (in the US) to teach >us about the semantic/pragmatic correlates of grammar? Perversely, we >got it from Chomsky, tho we had to escape his strictures to get it >straight. But I don't see how we could have gotten it without Aspects. I >do go back every so often to the high shelf, in the left corner, and >pull out & re-read the Joost collection (1962), as a refresher, just to >remind myself how truly deadly, indeed suffocating, and above all smug, >the atmosphere was in US linguistics in 1956... > >I apologize for taking so much of your time. > >Happy New Millenium, y'all, Brave New World! TG From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Sun Jan 9 03:39:22 2000 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 20:39:22 -0700 Subject: Problems with Chomsky In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Liz is right. George From jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU Mon Jan 10 06:45:59 2000 From: jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 22:45:59 -0800 Subject: 2 queries for discourse analysts Message-ID: Hi, all. I am educating myself in the syntax/discourse connection, and have two questions: (1) I have several long texts that I would like to analyze, but they need to be parsed. In spite of a query to LINGUIST a while ago, I never found a parser that I could use -- one that would render a parse using either traditional grammar terminology or something that an American-educated general linguist would understand (that is, not particularly theory-driven, as in HPSG, LFG, or dependency grammar, etc.) I have a student assistant who is willing (phew!) to parse them 'by hand', but obviously a machine parse would be more efficient. (2) I've done some (not adequate at this point) reading in syntax & discourse, but not enough to get clear on how to unproblematically recognize given/old information in a text. If someone could guide me to a reading that would help me with this, or give me guidelines, I would be most grateful. It seems very often to be either a judgment call, or circular (if marked definite, it's given; therefore if it's given, it will be marked definite ... ) Also, can given and new information be mixed within a constituent such as a prepositional phrase or a noun phrase? Pardon me if these are ignorant questions. Just trying to fill out my bottom-up Cognitive Grammar training ;-) . Jo Rubba ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Tue Jan 11 11:51:50 2000 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 12:51:50 +0100 Subject: SCE X, final call Message-ID: Dear colleagues, As the organizers of the 10th Caucasian Colloquium (2-5 August, Munich, Germany) Wolfgang Schulze and Helma van den Berg would like to remind you of the dead-line of February 1st 2000 for the pre-registration and submission of abstracts. You can send the registration form and two copies of your abstract (one with and one without name and affiliation) to: SCE 2000 Programme Committee Helma van den Berg Dept. of Comparative Linguistics University of Leiden P.O. Box 9515 NL- 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands You can also send your abstract by email; we would appreciate a hard copy at the same time for refereeing and publication. The website of the conference is regularly updated: visit us at http://www.lrz-meunchen.de/~wschulze/sce_10.htm We are looking forward to seeing you in Munich, Best wishes, Helma van den Berg, Wolfgang Schulze ***************************** 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 W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Thu Jan 13 09:35:48 2000 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:35:48 +0100 Subject: Defining 'Cognitive Typology' Message-ID: [sorry for any cross posting...] Dear colleagues, as some of you will probably know there will be a conference held in Antwerp in April entitled 'International Cognitive Typology Conference'. The purpose of this conference is to > ... is to bring together researchers from the > field of linguistic typology and from the domain of cognitive approaches > to language (broadly defined) to reflect on how the typological and the > cognitive enterprises in language research interrelate, what they have to > offer each other, and/or how they can join forces in view of their shared > goal of achieving an explanatory account of language. > If I understand the wordings correctly the term 'Cognitive Typology' is used in a rather informal and undefined way: In this sense, 'Cognitive Typology' (CT) seems to refer to a possible interface between typological and cognitive enterprises. As far as I know, the term CT hasn't been used before. My question now is twofold: a) Does anyone know of the use of the term CT prior to the announcement of the Antwerp conference? If yes: How is the term defined in this source? b) In my eyes, CT still lacks a programmatic specification that goes beyond the above mentioned quote from the Antwerp announcement (I myself have tried to contextualize the term CT in a book prospectus which you can look up under http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/gss_main.html). This situation could give us the chance to scientifically define a research program CT _before_ the term acquires a popular (and fuzzy) reading. So I would be very thankful, if you could provide me with a tentative definition of the term CT just as it comes into your mind (definitions should not exceed two sentences; they can simply circumscribe what you think CT is or what connotations are activated when reading/hearing this term). I would collect the proposals and would post them on the list in case there is a sufficient number of reactions. Best regards 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 matmies at ling.helsinki.fi Thu Jan 13 12:15:43 2000 From: matmies at ling.helsinki.fi (Matti Miestamo) Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 14:15:43 +0200 Subject: TOC: SKY Journal of Linguistics Message-ID: (Apologies for any cross-postings) NOW AVAILABLE!! SKY Journal of Linguistics vol.12:1999 (edited by Timo Haukioja, Ilona Herlin and Matti Miestamo, 232 pp, ISSN 1456-8438) Table of Contents: Articles: C. CORCOLL, M. FORCADELL, J.M. FONTANA, M.T. TURELL, and E. VALLDUVI: Variation in Language Interaction Phenomena: A Global Approach Kimmo GRANQVIST: Vowel Harmony in Finnish and Finnish Romani Esa ITKONEN: Remarks on Polysynthesis Hanna LAPPALAINEN: Young Adults and the Functions of the Standard Timo LAUTTAMUS: Fuzzy Switch and Loan Types in the Languages of Finnish Americans Henna MAKKONEN-CRAIG: Speech Quotations in Newspapers as a Form of Language Use Dennis R. PRESTON: Discourse Interaction and Content: A Test Case Raija VAINIO: Correct Use of Language according to Roman Grammarians Greg WATSON: Sveitsi's ja Tenoris: Code-Switching and Borrowing in the English of First Generation, Non-Fluent Bilingual Finnish-Australians Book reviews: Peter AUER (ed.), Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity, Reviewed by Magdolna KOVACS Pekka SAMMALLAHTI: The Saami Languages: An Introduction, Reviewed by Ida TOIVONEN **************************** SKY Journal of Linguistics is published by the Linguistic Association of Finland. Until 1998 it was called SKY - Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland. **************************** Also available: SKY - Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, ISSN 0785-3157. SKY1998 (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 139pp.) Elizabeth COUPER-KUHLEN: Prosody in Interactional Discourse Shengli FENG: Prosodically Motivated Passive bei Constructions in Classical Chinese Antti IIVONEN: Functional Interpretation of Prosody within the Linguistic System Esa ITKONEN: On (Sign) Language, Music, and Anti-Modularity Tarja LEPPA"AHO: On the Margins: Interpreting as an Object of Linguistic Inquiry Jussi NIEMI, Marja NENONEN, Esa PENTTILA" and Helka RIIONHEIMO: Is the Order of Adverbs Predictable on Lexical Grounds? SKY 1997 (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 188pp.) Scott DELANCEY: What an Innatist Argument should look like Geoffrey K. PULLUM & Barbara C. SCHOLZ: Theoretical Linguistics and the Ontology of Linguistic Structure Esa ITKONEN: The Social Ontology of Linguistic Meaning Urpo NIKANNE: Lexical Conceptual Structure and Syntactic Arguments Esa PENTTILA": Holistic Meaning and Cognition Jarno RAUKKO: The Status of Polysemy in Linguistics: From Discrete Meanings to Default Flexibility Anna SOLIN: Debating Theoretical Assumptions: Readings of Critical Linguistics The tables of contents of earlier SKY Yearbooks can be found at: ****************************** Prices: SKY Journal of Linguistics vol. 12:1999 FIM 100 (approx. EUR17/USD17) plus postage Earlier issues (SKY Yearbooks): FIM 70 (approx. EUR12/USD12) plus postage Orders: Bookstore Tiedekirja address: Kirkkokatu 14, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358 9 635177 fax +358 9 635017 e-mail Tiedekirja at pp.kolumbus.fi For Standing orders, please contact our secretary Please visit our WWW-pages at ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel. ) From ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Sun Jan 16 20:04:00 2000 From: ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Paul T. Barthmaier) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 12:04:00 -0800 Subject: Second WAIL call Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES - SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS Santa Barbara, CA April 14-16, 2000 The linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its third annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in Native American linguistics. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and can submitted by hard copy or e-mail. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) e-mail address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 E-mail submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the e-mail message, with the anonymous abstract as an attachment. Send e-mail submissions to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: January 30, 2000 Notification of acceptance will be by e-mail by February 15, 2000. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our web site at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/wail/wail.html From nordquis at UNM.EDU Tue Jan 18 05:41:26 2000 From: nordquis at UNM.EDU (nordquis at UNM.EDU) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 21:41:26 -0800 Subject: Second Call for Papers Message-ID: The third annual High Desert Linguistics Conference will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, April 7-9, 2000. Keynote speakers: Colette Grinevald and John Haiman We invite submissions of proposals for 20-minute talks and 10 minute discussion sessions in any area of linguistics from any theoretical perspective. Papers in the following areas are especially welcome: language change and variation, grammaticization, signed languages, applied linguistics, Native American languages, and computational linguistics. Please note that selected papers from this conference will be published. Submissions must include 2 copies of an anonymous abstract and an index card including the following information: *Name *Title of Abstract and area (phonology, syntax etc.) *Affiliation(s) *Mailing address *e-mail address Abstracts must be at most one page with one-inch margins and typed in at least 11-point font. An optional second page is permitted for data and citations. Submissions are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per author. Abstracts by e-mail are accepted. Abstracts must be received no later than January 31, 2000. We will only consider submissions that conform to the above guidelines. ABSTRACTS SHOULD BE SENT TO: HDLS Department of Linguistics, 526 Humanities Bldg. University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 or kaaron at unm.edu From ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Tue Jan 18 18:26:00 2000 From: ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Paul T. Barthmaier) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 10:26:00 -0800 Subject: Second WAIL Call Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES ***SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS*** Santa Barbara, CA April 14-16, 2000 The linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its third annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in Native American linguistics. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and can submitted by hard copy or e-mail. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) e-mail address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 E-mail submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the e-mail message, with the anonymous abstract as an attachment. Send e-mail submissions to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: January 30, 2000 Notification of acceptance will be by e-mail by February 15, 2000. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our web site at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/wail/wail.html From edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK Thu Jan 20 10:56:39 2000 From: edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK (Prior Gareth) Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 10:56:39 -0000 Subject: Online access Message-ID: > ONLINE ACCESS TO THE LATEST LINGUISTICS RESEARCH VIA THE WORLD-WIDE WEB > > Apologies for cross-posting. Many members of the list belong to > institutions whose libraries subscribe to one or more of the Blackwell > Publishers journals listed below. We wanted to make sure you know that > online access to the full-text articles in these journals is available to > you FREE if your library subscribes to the print edition. FREE > photocopying for non-commercial course packs and teaching materials is > also available. > > If your library does subscribe to any of these linguistics journals, you > can access the articles through third party providers (talk to your > librarian about which provider they use). > > Visit the individual journal's website below for contents listings, > article abstracts, and for more information about subscribing. > > Syntax (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/syntax) > Journal of Sociolinguistics > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/josl) > Language Learning (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/ll) > Studia Linguistica (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/stul) > Transactions of the Philological Society > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/trps) > World Englishes (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/weng) > Mind and Language (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/mila) > Journal of Research in Reading > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/jrir) > Reading (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/read) > Computational Intelligence > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/coin) > German Life and Letters > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/glal) > > - - Linguistics Abstracts Online - - > Designed to revolutionize research and teaching, Linguistics Abstracts > Online gives immediate access via the internet to more than 15,000 > abstracts from nearly 300 linguistics journals published since 1985. We > are currently offering libraries a free 30-day trial link to Linguistics > Abstracts Online. Please check with your librarian whether you have > access to the service now. > > Also Available from Blackwell Publishers is Modern Language Journal (not > currently available electronically). > http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/mlj > > > For more information on how to subscribe, or to request Blackwell > Publishers' latest linguistics books and journals catalogue, contact > egilling at blackwellpublishers.co.uk > > From gvk at ciaccess.com Thu Jan 20 14:38:14 2000 From: gvk at ciaccess.com (Gerald van Koeverden) Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 09:38:14 -0500 Subject: the verb Message-ID: I have simple question. I feel embarrased to ask it, because after lurking in the shaodows of this list-serve for sometime, it definitely rates very low compared to the level of academic discussion. I hope that there is a spirit here of promoting interest in the field of linguistics, even if only in the coffee claches of us lay men...and lay women of course. In the sentence "Ice is less dense than water," we both agree that "ice" and "water" are the subject and object. But what is the verb? My friend argues that the verb is "is". I argue that it is "is less dense than". She argues that those other three words "less", "dense" and "than" aren't listed as verbs in the dictionary. I say that it doesn't matter, that the verb is what expresses the relationship between the subject and the object, and since it takes all four words to do it, then so be it. Even though that collection is not "a" verb, it is acting as "the" verb. Looking forward to any comments you might have. gerald From edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK Thu Jan 20 17:26:10 2000 From: edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK (Prior Gareth) Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 17:26:10 -0000 Subject: the verb Message-ID: The verb is "is", which is the third person singular indicative present of the verb "to be" The words "less dense than water" form an adjectival clause attached to the subject "ice" The confusion is due to the fact that English is no longer an inflected language. If it were, then it would immediately be obvious that "less dense" would agree with "ice", and "than water" is completing a simple comparative clause. Just one little argument to show that the Anglo-Saxons (and indeed the Romans, Greeks and countless others) did have some linguistic advantages over us "more advanced" modern types, at least in terms of grammatical clarity. "Water", incidentally, cannot be the object, because the verb "to be" doesn't take an object but (where necessary) a "complement" in the same case. In this sentence no such complement is necessary because the act of being is sufficient unto itself and qualified by the adjectival clause. Thje function of "water" in the sentence is governed by "than", in that it is not an object but a part of the comparative. Again, this would be clear in an inflected language because it would not take the accusative of the object, but either a convenient nominative or (more correctly) a genitive of comparison. > -----Original Message----- > From: Gerald van Koeverden [SMTP:gvk at CIACCESS.COM] > Sent: 20 January 2000 14:38 > To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu > Subject: the verb > > > > In the sentence "Ice is less dense than water," we both agree that "ice" > and "water" > are the subject and object. But what is the verb? > > From lieven at EVA.MPG.DE Fri Jan 21 15:24:53 2000 From: lieven at EVA.MPG.DE (Elena Lieven) Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 16:24:53 +0100 Subject: Postdoctoral position available Message-ID: POSTDOCTORAL POSITION AVAILABLE The Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has a postdoctoral position available for 2 years from Summer-Fall, 2000. The position will be at the Institute's Child Study Laboratory for the acquisition of English, located at the Department of Psychology, Manchester University, Manchester, England. The succesful candidate will be expected to contribute to a working group investigating various aspects of first language acquisition from a cross-linguistic and psycholinguistic perspective. The group is headed by Michael Tomasello and Elena Lieven. Ongoing research is conducted both through experiments and the analysis of rich databases and focuses on the cognitive and pragmatic bases of language; the development of syntactic constructions; and the roles of frequency and entrenchment in that development. Requirements for the position: (a) PhD by the starting date; and (b) research experience in first language acquisition and/or cognitive/functional linguistics. Salary competitive. Interested candidates should send a CV, reprints, and the names of 3 references to Dr. Elena Lieven; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Inselstrasse 22-26; D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail applications (and requests for information) may be sent to lieven at eva.mpg.de. Applications will be reviewed beginning February 21st, 2000, with a decision soon after that. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: vcard.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 198 bytes Desc: Card for elena lieven URL: From gvk at ciaccess.com Fri Jan 21 18:01:59 2000 From: gvk at ciaccess.com (Gerald van Koeverden) Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 13:01:59 -0500 Subject: the verb Message-ID: gladney frank y wrote: > But how about _Ice is something I prefer not to have in my water_? Would > you consider the middle eight or nine words in this sentence the verb? Yes and no. NO, if I take the sentence itself as an object to be dissected in and of itself as an entity separate from its meaning. I was flabbergasted and most appreciative of the complexity of the answers several people sent posted. I thought it was a simple question which would have simple answer. Looks like we both get to keep our 20; we were both wrong in this sense. YES, if I want to understand the meaning of the sentence and separate it out into the three components- from which it was derived in someone's head-the universal sense of subject, verb and object. At this point I'm not interested in the hard-core 'grammatical' interpretation of those three terms, except as how they help me get to the meaning. In this case the speaker is describing the relationship of ice and water in his preferences for how he likes his water: he wants them keep separately. I'm interested in how the speaker or listener relates to a sentence and makes meaning of it. And so far, I've discovered this particular relationship in all sentences I've explored. Does this kind of approach ring any good bells??? Or does all this that sound like "Why does ice dissolve in water?" [ I'm obviously not a 'linguist'. I'm a philospher, doing a little cross-disciplinary exploring, though some of you might feel that I'm trespassing....What's a philospher to do? He is a very nosey person, sticking his nose into everybody else's business....trying to make connections where there aren't any...yet. But our skins are as thick as a rhinoceros. It comes with the job. And we are very polite too, though somewhat persistent.] gerald van koeverden From dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca Sun Jan 23 16:12:06 2000 From: dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca (Diego Quesada) Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 11:12:06 -0500 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 10:04:16 -0500 From: "G.F.W." Reply-To: Latin American Linguistics and Languages Discussion List To: LATAMLIN at MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) Favor circular entre amigos de la causa. Favor firmar y enviar a: Muchas gracias desde ya! ************************************************************************ NEW PINOCHET SIGN ON LETTER ************************************************************************ Produced by the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C. LETTER TO SPANISH PRESIDENT JOSE MARIA AZNAR: Sign On Now! ************************************************************************ We encourage you to add your name as a representative of an organization or as an individual to the following letter that will be sent to Spanish President Jos� Mar�a Aznar and cc to Spanish Foreign Minister Abel Matutes. Unfortunately, we do not know when Jack Straw will announce his final decision, although he has said that he will give parties to the case 24-hour notice. We apologize for the short notice, but must ask that signatures be received no later than Monday, January 24, 2000. Excmo. Sr. D. Jos� Mar�a Aznar Presidente del Gobierno Espa�ol Complejo de La Moncloa 28071 - Madrid ESPA�A/SPAIN Fax numbers: 011-34-91-390-0356, 011-34-91-390-0329, 011-34-91-583-7519 Dear President Aznar, We are writing to urge you to allow justice to take its course in the ongoing proceedings against Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. We commend your government for transmitting the representation submitted by Judge Baltasar Garz�n to British Home Secretary Jack Straw earlier this week. We are concerned, however, by the statement made by your Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sr. Abel Matutes, that his office will not transmit Judge Garz�n�s appeal, should Minister Straw decide to end extradition proceedings. As you know, Judge Garz�n has requested that the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), representing Spain, pursue all possible avenues for ensuring Gen. Pinochet�s extradition, including an appeal for judicial review of the Home Secretary�s decision. The CPS has indicated that irregularities surrounding recent medical exams could serve as clear grounds for judicial review, but will only pursue the appeal if so instructed by the Spanish government. Home Secretary Straw himself acknowledged yesterday that the Kingdom of Spain has the right to file for judicial review because he considers his judgement to be �quasi-judicial� rather than discretional. Given that there is currently a criminal legal case pending in the Spanish tribunals, the decision to appeal belongs exclusively to the courts, and in this particular case, to Judge Garz�n, the magistrate overseeing the case against Pinochet. We urge you to respect the constitutional independence of the judicial branch of the Kingdom of Spain and formaly transmit Judge Garzon�s request to the British authorities immediately. Sincerely, NAME: TITLE: ORGANIZATION: CITY/STATE: PLEASE RETURN TO STACIE JONAS or by fax at 202- 387-7915 NO LATER THAN MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2000) ************************************************************************* For more information on Pinochet Watch,� contact Stacie Jonas, Institute for Policy Studies, 733 15th St. NW, #1020, Washington, DC 20005. Tel: 202-234-9382, Fax: 202-387-7915. Email: s-jonas at mindspring.com. The Institute for Policy Studies is an independent center for research and education founded in 1963. IPS has worked to bring Pinochet to justice since the murders of two IPS colleagues, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, at the hands of Pinochet's agents, in 1976 From nrude at ucinet.com Mon Jan 24 13:55:12 2000 From: nrude at ucinet.com (Noel Rude) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 05:55:12 -0800 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) Message-ID: SIR: Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! Noel From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Mon Jan 24 17:27:00 2000 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 18:27:00 +0100 Subject: junk mail Message-ID: N. Rude wrote: >SIR: > > Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled >and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even >fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: >This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the >very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! > > Noel Please, SIR: Stop this junk email!!! Jose Luis. From clements at INDIANA.EDU Mon Jan 24 19:20:54 2000 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 13:20:54 -0600 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) In-Reply-To: <388C59BE.63C5@ucinet.com> Message-ID: >SIR: > > Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled >and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even >fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: >This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the >very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! If the letter regarding Pinochet has no place on this list, the above inflammatory remarks have even less of a place. Go somewhere else to pedal your cheap ideology. 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 Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Mon Jan 24 19:41:09 2000 From: Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony Wright) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 13:41:09 -0600 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000124142715.00a51d80@hamlet.ucs.indiana.edu> Message-ID: At 01:20 PM 1/24/00 -0600, J. Clancy Clements wrote: >If the letter regarding Pinochet has no place on this list, the above >inflammatory remarks have even less of a place. Go somewhere else to >pedal your cheap ideology. Ideologies are bicycles? I don't remember that one from "Metaphors we Live By"! --Tony From dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca Mon Jan 24 19:46:41 2000 From: dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca (Diego Quesada) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 14:46:41 -0500 Subject: Dear Funknetters In-Reply-To: <388C59BE.63C5@ucinet.com> Message-ID: I wish to apologize for having used the list for a purpose other than linguistic discussions, especially if that hurt some list members' sensibilities (sensibilities that, I must say, I have not encountered elsewhere). Perhaps naively, I thought that since the forwarded menssage was a matter of volunteering a signature, those who wanted to sign would simply sign and those who did not would not, and life would go on, period. Well, it was not like that. Hence my apologies to all colleagues, especially those who in a civilized way (both on line and off-list) made me realize that it is not funknetly correct to do what I did. Needless to say, excluded from my apology are those cavemen ractions and their embodiments, which a. leave much to be desired both in terms of manners as well as in terms of intellectual endowment; b. show how certain (animate) creatures that have names can live up to them; c. provide living evidence for a Spanish saying that roughly translates into English as "Show me your way of talk and I will tell your brain" Dogs (especially strays) generally bark at the unknown out of fear of it; that is their way of acknowledging and channelling it. It's their nature; it cannot be changed. Once more, my sincere and civilized apologies, J. Diego Quesada University of Toronto P.S. I am repeating a message sent to me via FUNKNET; out of respect to the list members I do not repeat one received off-list. On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Noel Rude wrote: > SIR: > > Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled > and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even > fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: > This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the > very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! > > Noel > From aristar at LINGUISTLIST.ORG Mon Jan 24 20:15:07 2000 From: aristar at LINGUISTLIST.ORG (Anthony Aristar) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:15:07 -0500 Subject: Dear Funknetters Message-ID: My mind is spinning. What just went by me? Is this an apology or the first round in a new flame-war? Ah, well. I'll just leave it up to the discourse analysts among us to decide. ********************* >From: Diego Quesada >Subject: Dear Funknetters >To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu >In-Reply-To: <388C59BE.63C5 at ucinet.com> > >I wish to apologize for having used the list for a purpose other than >linguistic discussions, especially if that hurt some list members' >sensibilities (sensibilities that, I must say, I have not encountered >elsewhere). Perhaps naively, I thought that since the forwarded menssage >was a matter of volunteering a signature, those who wanted to sign would >simply sign and those who did not would not, and life would go on, >period. Well, it was not like that. Hence my apologies to all colleagues, >especially those who in a civilized way (both on line and off-list) made >me realize that it is not funknetly correct to do what I did. > >Needless to say, excluded from my apology are those cavemen ractions >and their embodiments, which a. leave much to be desired both in >terms of manners as well as in terms of intellectual endowment; b. show >how certain (animate) creatures that have names can live up to them; >c. provide living evidence for a Spanish saying that roughly translates >into English as > "Show me your way of talk and I will tell your brain" > > Dogs (especially strays) generally bark at the unknown out of fear >of it; that is their way of acknowledging and channelling it. It's their >nature; it cannot be changed. > >Once more, my sincere and civilized apologies, > >J. Diego Quesada >University of Toronto > > >P.S. I am repeating a message sent to me via FUNKNET; out of respect to > the list members I do not repeat one received off-list. > > >On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Noel Rude wrote: > >> SIR: >> >> Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled >> and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even >> fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: >> This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the >> very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! >> >> Noel >> > From barlow at RUF.RICE.EDU Mon Jan 24 22:10:29 2000 From: barlow at RUF.RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 16:10:29 -0600 Subject: Apologies and flames Message-ID: Funknetters, >My mind is spinning. What just went by me? Is this an apology or the >first round in a new flame-war? I was wondering too, but let me suggest (as one of the two list-owners) that whatever it was, we treat it as a kind of closure and move on to other topics. It has been my experience that political discussions on non-political lists always end up in tears. Michael ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Barlow, Department of Linguistics, Rice University barlow at rice.edu www.ruf.rice.edu/~barlow Athelstan barlow at athel.com www.athel.com (U.S.) www.athelstan.com (UK) From dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Mon Jan 24 22:39:50 2000 From: dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Diego Quesada) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:39:50 -0500 Subject: Apologies WITHOUT flames In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I honestly want to bring this situation to an end; so please receive my apologies once more and let us move on. J. Diego Quesada From Ariovistus at GMX.CH Sat Jan 1 12:29:14 2000 From: Ariovistus at GMX.CH (Christian Preuß) Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 13:29:14 +0100 Subject: OT-Grammar Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sstraigh at BINGHAMTON.EDU Fri Jan 7 23:38:17 2000 From: sstraigh at BINGHAMTON.EDU (H Stephen Straight) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 18:38:17 -0500 Subject: autonomy of syntax In-Reply-To: <38659539.1B65@ucinet.com> Message-ID: Noel Rude says: > Probably I don't understand what Prof Straight is saying. Or maybe we > can agree to disagree, perhaps mostly in what Science is. For it seems > to me that theories can be very abstract and "supernatural" (if you > will). If they are predictive-refutable--as our grammars and Grammar > should be--they are "scientific". Also it seems to me that the > messiness of linguistic data, rather than refuting an underlying system, > actually suggests it, whatever flaws there might be in Saussure's langue > et parole and Chomsky's competence-performance models. > > Is this just an esoteric argument where in practice we come down to the > same thing? Will we both draw up verbal and nominal paradigm charts, > describe grammatical relations, posit functions, etc., and some of us > will call it "grammar" and "rules" and others will call it something > else? > > Aren't we all looking for regularities--whatever we might call them? The disagreement between us is not about the nature of Science but rather about the predictive power and refutability of Grammar. Significantly, Saussure did not posit Grammar but rather Langue, which he specifically defined as the central component in the neuropsychology of _receptive_ language processing, rather than as an abstract entity mediating both reception and production. The evidence of several generations of research on language leads me to conclude that grammars have no predictive value or meaningful refutability because the events they putatively predict, judgments of grammaticality, (1) fail to predict what people say and can understand, which I would think is what we want a theory of language to do, and (2) lack empirical stability, being subject to endless second-guessing. This is a slim and slippery kind of "regularity" to accept as the standard for the scientific study of language. Where Noel and I appear to agree is that work on Grammar provides heuristic analytical guidance, in the form of categories, relations, functions, etc., for the study of language processes. However, to posit the rules of a grammar as entities that are active during the process of language use makes no more sense than to posit the formula e=mc2 as an entity that operates during the process of nuclear fission, even though the things referred to in the rules (nouns, verbs, subjects, instruments, etc.) and in the formula (energy, mass, the speed of light) clearly DO play critical roles in these processes. To use Chomskyan terminology, there is no empirical evidence that Competence, as defined in generative grammar, plays any role in even the most idealized models of Performance, even if (at least some of) the elements referred to in models of competence do undoubtedly play essential roles in models of performance. Indeed, to posit Chomskyan competence as playing any role whatever in Chomskyan performance is to commit a fundamental category error, though it's an error introduced and frequently reiterated by Chomsky himself. Best. 'Bye. Steve From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat Jan 8 00:44:57 2000 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 16:44:57 -0800 Subject: Problems with Chomsky Message-ID: 1-7-2000 (wow) Dear FUNK people, I had the best intention of staying away from the wonderful recent exchange y'all ran in December, about Noam Chomsky & what not. For one thing, I thought I had nothing to add to it. For another, it was a crowded field. So, while you can count the following missive as certainly related, it was actually triggered by an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the most recent issue of The New Yorker. In his article, Gladwell reviews three recent books, by a neurologist, three developmental psychologists, and another psychologist, resp.: (i) John Bruer "The myth of the first three years" (Free Press) (ii) Alison Gopnik *et al* "The scientist in the crib" (Morrow) (iii) Jerome Kagan "Three seductive ideas" (Oxford) But the thing that caught my attention was a quote from our national expert oin children issues, Hillary Rodham Clinton, taken out of her welcoming address to a White House Conference entitled: "What new research on the brain tells us about our youngest children" (April 1997). To wit: "...Fifteen years ago, we thought that a baby's brain structure was virtually complete at birth... Now we understand that it is a work in progress, and that everything that we do with a child has some kind of potential physical influence on the rapidly forming brain. A child's earliest experiences--their relation- ships with parents and caregivers, the sights and sounds and smells and feelings they encounter, the challenges they meet-- determine how their brains are wired..." What struck me about this quote is the hopeless reductionism about child learning/development, the same reductionism that struck me on first reading Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior": The absolute extremism -- or, if I may be forgiven, the *intellectual Stalinism* -- of it all: "You are either with me (and Descartes and Plato) in the Innate Ideas camp, or you are with Skinner (and Bloomfield and Hume and Aristotle) in the S-R camp. No room in the middle". The three books (and the more minor studies) that Gladwell reviews actually, all suggest that the action is right in the middle. That the child and its brain are *interactive* from the word 'go' and to a ripe old age; that innate biases & pre-wired structure interact with input, are pre-wired to seek input, to form hypotheses about the input, and to evaluate the empirical evidence that is or isn't compatible with the hypothese -- and in the latter case re-formulate and come up with new hypotheses (and then test them). So, maybe Chomsky's intemperedness is only alive and well as Hillary's Choice (oops, couldn't resist that 'n). But then I recalled the tenor of many of the contributions to the December FUNK-exchange, how reductionist they were, how they followed Chomsky's line of either/or reductionism but not -- God forbid -- the more complex, more realistic, more sophisticated *middle*. You are either a rabid functionalist ("Grammars are not really really REALLY real"... Well, by the way, Chomsky also things that grammatical *constructions* are not real, as of 1992, in case you are looking for company...), or you are a died-in-the-wool structuralist ("Functions are mushy speculations"). No room in the middle... And likewise with methodology: Either you do only "competence" sentences, (as Chomsky clearely insisted in 1965), or you do only "live" communication data (as many functionalists insist). But God forbid that you should try to be be multi-methodological (as most complex sciences are). So I wanted to ask a simple minded question: How can you be a functionalist without automatically also being a structuralist? The function of WHAT are you going to study? Because in all biologically-based systems (sorry guys, we're included, kicking or screaming...), functions are carried out by paired *structures*. Have you ever met a pulmonary physiologist who is NOT interested in the anatomy of the heart & lungs & circulatory system? Or a brain physiologist/cognitivist NOT interested in cerebral anatomy? In the rather disorienting context of some of the discussion, it also struck me that two people I have respected for many years in spite of severe local disagreements on occasion -- Fritz Newmeyer and Joan Bresnan -- have been making honest attempts to be just that, functionalist cum structuralists. So you may quibble with some of their specific conclusions, as I sometimes do; but you've got to respect their honest attemp to escape the stranglehold of *reductionism* that Chomsky has saddled us with. The correlate, of course, is that just because Chomsky was (and still is, alas) an extremist, we need not ignore the *many* things that we did learn from him. So I wanted to enumerate just a few, some of which I shared previously (and privately) with Wally Chafe & Brian MacWhinney. This business of all of us trying to find as many ways of saying either I love you, NC or I hate you, NC, sure reminds my of the funeral oration in Julius Caesar ("We have not come to praise you, NC, but to bury..."). Sure, we all know the many ways in which NC made linguistics a rather miserable morass. But at least for my generation, he also saved us from the Bloomfieldians, who were in some ways just as bad, in others even deadlier and even more dogmatic about the irrelevance of meaning, function & mind. Perhaps it would also help to mention that NC, rather paradoxically, engineered our generation's return to functionalism: Aspects (1965) fairly reeked with semantics, both propositional & lexical. Sure, it is all couched in obfuscatory structuralist jargon, but it's still there. Sure, the 'format' was licenced by Fillmore (1962) and Katz & Postal (1964); nothing really original (but the jargon...). But still, NC embraced it, to his great eventual sorrow -- since Ross & Lakoff's paper (1967) "Is [syntactic!] deep structure necessary?" was a direct consequence of the 'semanticism' of Aspects, simply drawing it to its ultimate conclusions & exposing its incompatibility with the rest of the structuralist machinery. I know that was the point that licensed me to bolt. And if I am not mistaken, Generative Semantics was directly licenced by it. And maybe even Wally's 1970 book "Meaning & the Structure of Language"? Though Wally was probably old enough by then to have harboured those ideas earlier... Sapir? Whorf? Common sense? Even the much-maligned notion of "deep structure" had its salutary consequences -- given its historical context. It focused attention on the semantic correlates of syntactic constructions. Those stock sentences -- "Sally is easy/eager to please" and "Flying planes can be dangerous", etc. etc. -- played an important role in demonstrating that syntax had semantic correlates. And in fact, many of NC's (and Pstal's) arguments agains the IC analysis prevalent at the time actually hinged on semantics (even if he didn't say so), as did R.B. Lees' arguments in "The grammar of English nominalizations", even if he didn't say so himself. And, for that matter, even Harris's original 1956 paper ("Co-occurrence and transformations..."), where semantics was hiding under the forbidding, empiricist/structuralist moniker "co-occurrences". Which brings me to *transformations*: One of Noel Rude's contributions misrepresented what I think/said/thought about this issue, so here is the real thing: True, transformations obfuscated a lot of issues. But if you read Aspects carefully (which I do, with my grad students, once a year), a curious thing may strike you: As a "process" T-rules surely *are* a mess. But as RELATIONS between structures they are most revealing: The very same propositional-semantic contents persists, as leitmotif, through multiple syntactic structures ("transforms"). With NC reminding us (following Fillmore's 1962 paper in WORD...) that "transformations don't change meanings". But -- we asked ourselves in the late 1960s, if they don't change meaning, what do we use them for? What is their FUNCTION? And the obvious answer was (with some help from Joe Emond's dissertation, another structuralist classic that contributed to my development as a functionalist... and with some help from a WONDERFUL paper by Joan Hooper/Bybee and Sandy Thompson with supplied a functionalist interpretation of Emonds) -- they must be there to code discourse-pragmatic (communicative, interactional, etc.) function. And so, I am almost tempted to say, NC licensed semantics quite in spite of himself, to his own eventual sorrow. Which brings to (the wandering) mind the Pythia's warning to Xenophon (when he tried to cheat on going to join the rebellion of Cyrus against the Persian empire): "Invoked ot uninvoked, the God will be there". Finally, there is one more area that NC should get (grudgin) credit for -- the more sophisticated notion of *syntactic constructions*. Bloomfieldian syntax was a veritable mess, mostly morphology and non-hierarchic IC. The notion of constructions, with constituency AND hierarchy AND embedding -- clearly isomorphic to what I see as grammar-coded *functional domains* (communicative pragmatics) -- was really not easy to derive from from Bloomfieldian IC analysis. It is, in my humble estimate, NC's pairing of deep structures with propositional-semantic interpretations that licensed the next move by *functionalists*; or at least by functionalists who grew up in NC's incubator... It is of course ironic that by 1992 NC denounced this very notion, for which SS (1957) and Aspects (1965) were largely responsible, in effect calling constructions figments of our methodological imagination. To wit: "...The notion of grammatical construction is eliminated, and with it, construction-particular rules. Constructions such as verb-phrase, relative clause, passive, etc. are taken to be *taxonomic artifacts*, collections of phenomena explained through the interaction of of principles of UG, with the values of parameters fixed..." ("A minimalist program for linguistic theory" (1992), p. 3; emphases added) This is truly bizare, granted, me coming to the rescue of REAL *structure* from NC, who has decided to finally dump them, 'cause they kept sticking in his craw, couldn't swallow them, couldn't spit them out. Major bummer dude. But still, have a heart, y'guys: For those of us who believe that grammar is cognitively real, (and neurologically real, if you don't mind, Liz & George...); and that it involves not only morphology; for us, Aspects was never a total waste of time. At the very least, it gave us something to work from, build on, transcend, bounce off (as George & Haj did in 1967), eventually escape from (boy, those strictures...). Well, actually, there was one giant around, and we could have learned from him about REAL grammar -- Otto Jespersen. But nobody told us about him, and Bloomfield dismissed him together with his (and B.'s) teacher Herman Paul, as speculative philosophers, not *real* scientists. And yes, Dwight Bolinger was around, but we didn't know he existed (most of us found him in the 1970s). So who else was round (in the US) to teach us about the semantic/pragmatic correlates of grammar? Perversely, we got it from Chomsky, tho we had to escape his strictures to get it straight. But I don't see how we could have gotten it without Aspects. I do go back every so often to the high shelf, in the left corner, and pull out & re-read the Joost collection (1962), as a refresher, just to remind myself how truly deadly, indeed suffocating, and above all smug, the atmosphere was in US linguistics in 1956... I apologize for taking so much of your time. Happy New Millenium, y'all, Brave New World! TG From wleman at mcn.net Sat Jan 8 05:00:19 2000 From: wleman at mcn.net (Wayne Leman) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:00:19 -0700 Subject: Problems with Chomsky Message-ID: No need to apologize for taking *my* time on this one, Tom. Brought back memories of the old IULC papers and more, and helped put things in perspective. Thanks for the ride. Happy Y2K, Wayne From MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU Sat Jan 8 17:26:31 2000 From: MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU (Mills, Carl (MILLSCR)) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 12:26:31 -0500 Subject: Problems with Chomsky Message-ID: Tom, >From a stone reductionist, but not, I hope, a "greedy reductionist," who also believes we owe a lot to Chomsky, thanks for making clear a lot of things I have tried to say, much less clearly, to my grad students in sociolinguistics over the years. Carl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Sun Jan 9 01:53:06 2000 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Elizabeth Bates) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 17:53:06 -0800 Subject: Problems with Chomsky In-Reply-To: <38768889.BDE68752@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: There is absolutely nothing in Hillary Clinton's quote below (as provided by Talmy Givon) that is inconsistent with or any way incompatible with an interactionist view. She does not deny innate contributions, she merely says that experience continues to contribute to the structure of the brain after birth. That is an ENTIRELY accurate statement from the point of view of current evidence in developmental neurobiology. The developing brain is indeed a "work in progress", and experience plays a powerful role in structuring the brain before and after birth (yes, before birth, when the same mechanisms that are used for learning later on are used for brain maturation, as the body "instructs" the brain in utero through activity dependent processes). Hillary Clinton's position as expressed below is not in any way the same thing as a "tabula rasa", and it is CERTAINLY not Stalinist in any way that I can see! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparently "absolute extremism" and "intellectual Stalinism" are in the eye of the beholder as well. Donna Thal, Barbara Finlay, Barbara Clancy and I have just completed a review chapter (an update of a 1992 chapter, extensively updated I should add) called "Early language development and its neural correlates". Our coauthors Finlay and Clancy are development neurobiologists, and they are the ones who extensively rewrote the section on brain development -- it is very up to date, I'm proud to be associated with it, and would be happy to send a copy of the chapter to anyone who is interested in a recent review of the facts regarding early brain development and the contribution of experience. I would also recommend a recent "primer" on human brain development by Mark Johnson (of Birkbeck College, London -- not the same Mark Johnson who publishes with George Lakoff). And of course, Chapter 5 in "Rethinking innateness". The fact of the matter is that today's neuroscience is very bad news for yesterday's nativists. That doesn't mean that "nothing is innate', it just means that it is interactions ALL THE WAY DOWN, with experience playing a massive role at every level, to the point where it is virtually impossible to decompose things into "innate" vs. "learned". The 1997 White House Conference underscored these facts. To be sure, the conference was a political event, designed to highlight findings that the Clintons believe are compatible with their agenda. But the facts cited by the developmental neuroscientists at that conference are entirely accurate. -liz bates > > "...Fifteen years ago, we thought that a baby's brain structure > was virtually complete at birth... Now we understand that it is > a work in progress, and that everything that we do with a child > has some kind of potential physical influence on the rapidly > forming brain. A child's earliest experiences--their relation- > ships with parents and caregivers, the sights and sounds and > smells and feelings they encounter, the challenges they meet-- > determine how their brains are wired..." > >What struck me about this quote is the hopeless reductionism about child >learning/development, the same reductionism that struck me on first >reading Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior": The >absolute extremism -- or, if I may be forgiven, the *intellectual >Stalinism* -- of it all: "You are either with me (and Descartes and >Plato) in the Innate Ideas camp, or you are with Skinner (and Bloomfield >and Hume and Aristotle) in the S-R camp. No room in the middle". > >The three books (and the more minor studies) that Gladwell reviews >actually, all suggest that the action is right in the middle. That the >child and its brain are *interactive* from the word 'go' and to a ripe >old age; that innate biases & pre-wired structure interact with input, >are pre-wired to seek input, to form hypotheses about the input, and to >evaluate the empirical evidence that is or isn't compatible with the >hypothese -- and in the latter case re-formulate and come up with new >hypotheses (and then test them). > >So, maybe Chomsky's intemperedness is only alive and well as Hillary's >Choice (oops, couldn't resist that 'n). But then I recalled the tenor of >many of the contributions to the December FUNK-exchange, how >reductionist they were, how they followed Chomsky's line of either/or >reductionism but not -- God forbid -- the more complex, more realistic, >more sophisticated *middle*. You are either a rabid functionalist >("Grammars are not really really REALLY real"... Well, by the way, >Chomsky also things that grammatical *constructions* are not real, as of >1992, in case you are looking for company...), or you are a >died-in-the-wool structuralist ("Functions are mushy speculations"). No >room in the middle... > >And likewise with methodology: Either you do only "competence" >sentences, (as Chomsky clearely insisted in 1965), or you do only "live" >communication data (as many functionalists insist). But God forbid that >you should try to be be multi-methodological (as most complex sciences >are). > >So I wanted to ask a simple minded question: How can you be a >functionalist without automatically also being a structuralist? The >function of WHAT are you going to study? Because in all >biologically-based systems (sorry guys, we're included, kicking or >screaming...), functions are carried out by paired *structures*. Have >you ever met a pulmonary physiologist who is NOT interested in the >anatomy of the heart & lungs & circulatory system? Or a brain >physiologist/cognitivist NOT interested in cerebral anatomy? > >In the rather disorienting context of some of the discussion, it also >struck me that two people I have respected for many years in spite of >severe local disagreements on occasion -- Fritz Newmeyer and Joan >Bresnan -- have been making honest attempts to be just that, >functionalist cum structuralists. So you may quibble with some of their >specific conclusions, as I sometimes do; but you've got to respect their >honest attemp to escape the stranglehold of *reductionism* that Chomsky >has saddled us with. > >The correlate, of course, is that just because Chomsky was (and still >is, alas) an extremist, we need not ignore the *many* things that we did >learn from him. So I wanted to enumerate just a few, some of which I >shared previously (and privately) with Wally Chafe & Brian MacWhinney. > >This business of all of us trying to find as many ways of saying either >I love you, NC or I hate you, NC, sure reminds my of the funeral oration >in Julius Caesar ("We have not come to praise you, NC, but to bury..."). >Sure, we all know the many ways in which NC made linguistics a rather >miserable morass. But at least for my generation, he also saved us from >the Bloomfieldians, who were in some ways just as bad, in others even >deadlier and even more dogmatic about the irrelevance of meaning, >function & mind. > >Perhaps it would also help to mention that NC, rather paradoxically, >engineered our generation's return to functionalism: Aspects (1965) >fairly reeked with semantics, both propositional & lexical. Sure, it is >all couched in obfuscatory structuralist jargon, but it's still there. >Sure, the 'format' was licenced by Fillmore (1962) and Katz & Postal >(1964); nothing really original (but the jargon...). > >But still, NC embraced it, to his great eventual sorrow -- since Ross & >Lakoff's paper (1967) "Is [syntactic!] deep structure necessary?" was a >direct consequence of the 'semanticism' of Aspects, simply drawing it to >its ultimate conclusions & exposing its incompatibility with the rest of >the structuralist machinery. I know that was the point that licensed me >to bolt. And if I am not mistaken, Generative Semantics was directly >licenced by it. And maybe even Wally's 1970 book "Meaning & the >Structure of Language"? Though Wally was probably old enough by then to >have harboured those ideas earlier... Sapir? Whorf? Common sense? > >Even the much-maligned notion of "deep structure" had its salutary >consequences -- given its historical context. It focused attention on >the semantic correlates of syntactic constructions. Those stock >sentences -- "Sally is easy/eager to please" and "Flying planes can be >dangerous", etc. etc. -- played an important role in demonstrating that >syntax had semantic correlates. And in fact, many of NC's (and Pstal's) >arguments agains the IC analysis prevalent at the time actually hinged >on semantics (even if he didn't say so), as did R.B. Lees' arguments in >"The grammar of English nominalizations", even if he didn't say so >himself. > >And, for that matter, even Harris's original 1956 paper ("Co-occurrence >and transformations..."), where semantics was hiding under the >forbidding, empiricist/structuralist moniker "co-occurrences". > >Which brings me to *transformations*: One of Noel Rude's contributions >misrepresented what I think/said/thought about this issue, so here is >the real thing: True, transformations obfuscated a lot of issues. But if >you read Aspects carefully (which I do, with my grad students, once a >year), a curious thing may strike you: As a "process" T-rules surely >*are* a mess. But as RELATIONS between structures they are most >revealing: The very same propositional-semantic contents persists, as >leitmotif, through multiple syntactic structures ("transforms"). With NC >reminding us (following Fillmore's 1962 paper in WORD...) that >"transformations don't change meanings". But -- we asked ourselves in >the late 1960s, if they don't change meaning, what do we use them for? >What is their FUNCTION? And the obvious answer was (with some help from >Joe Emond's dissertation, another structuralist classic that contributed >to my development as a functionalist... and with some help from a >WONDERFUL paper by Joan Hooper/Bybee and Sandy Thompson with supplied a >functionalist interpretation of Emonds) -- they must be there to code >discourse-pragmatic (communicative, interactional, etc.) function. > >And so, I am almost tempted to say, NC licensed semantics quite in spite >of >himself, to his own eventual sorrow. Which brings to (the wandering) >mind the Pythia's warning to Xenophon (when he tried to cheat on going >to join the rebellion of Cyrus against the Persian empire): > > "Invoked ot uninvoked, the God will be there". > >Finally, there is one more area that NC should get (grudgin) credit for >-- the more sophisticated notion of *syntactic constructions*. >Bloomfieldian >syntax was a veritable mess, mostly morphology and non-hierarchic IC. >The notion of constructions, with constituency AND hierarchy AND >embedding -- clearly isomorphic to what I see as grammar-coded >*functional domains* (communicative pragmatics) -- was really not easy >to derive from from Bloomfieldian IC analysis. It is, in my humble >estimate, NC's pairing of deep structures with propositional-semantic >interpretations that licensed the next move by *functionalists*; or at >least by functionalists who grew up in NC's incubator... > >It is of course ironic that by 1992 NC denounced this very notion, for >which SS (1957) and Aspects (1965) were largely responsible, in effect >calling constructions figments of our methodological imagination. To >wit: > > "...The notion of grammatical construction is eliminated, and with >it, > construction-particular rules. Constructions such as verb-phrase, > relative clause, passive, etc. are taken to be *taxonomic >artifacts*, > collections of phenomena explained through the interaction of > of principles of UG, with the values of parameters fixed..." > > ("A minimalist program for linguistic theory" (1992), p. 3; > emphases added) > >This is truly bizare, granted, me coming to the rescue of REAL >*structure* from NC, who has decided to finally dump them, 'cause they >kept sticking in his craw, couldn't swallow them, couldn't spit them >out. Major bummer dude. > >But still, have a heart, y'guys: For those of us who believe that >grammar is cognitively real, (and neurologically real, if you don't >mind, Liz & George...); and that it involves not only morphology; for >us, Aspects was never a total waste of time. At the very least, it gave >us something to work from, build on, transcend, bounce off (as George & >Haj did in 1967), eventually escape from (boy, those strictures...). > >Well, actually, there was one giant around, and we could have learned >from him about REAL grammar -- Otto Jespersen. But nobody told us about >him, and Bloomfield dismissed him together with his (and B.'s) teacher >Herman Paul, as speculative philosophers, not *real* scientists. And >yes, Dwight Bolinger was around, but we didn't know he existed (most of >us found him in the 1970s). So who else was round (in the US) to teach >us about the semantic/pragmatic correlates of grammar? Perversely, we >got it from Chomsky, tho we had to escape his strictures to get it >straight. But I don't see how we could have gotten it without Aspects. I >do go back every so often to the high shelf, in the left corner, and >pull out & re-read the Joost collection (1962), as a refresher, just to >remind myself how truly deadly, indeed suffocating, and above all smug, >the atmosphere was in US linguistics in 1956... > >I apologize for taking so much of your time. > >Happy New Millenium, y'all, Brave New World! TG From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Sun Jan 9 03:39:22 2000 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 20:39:22 -0700 Subject: Problems with Chomsky In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Liz is right. George From jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU Mon Jan 10 06:45:59 2000 From: jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 22:45:59 -0800 Subject: 2 queries for discourse analysts Message-ID: Hi, all. I am educating myself in the syntax/discourse connection, and have two questions: (1) I have several long texts that I would like to analyze, but they need to be parsed. In spite of a query to LINGUIST a while ago, I never found a parser that I could use -- one that would render a parse using either traditional grammar terminology or something that an American-educated general linguist would understand (that is, not particularly theory-driven, as in HPSG, LFG, or dependency grammar, etc.) I have a student assistant who is willing (phew!) to parse them 'by hand', but obviously a machine parse would be more efficient. (2) I've done some (not adequate at this point) reading in syntax & discourse, but not enough to get clear on how to unproblematically recognize given/old information in a text. If someone could guide me to a reading that would help me with this, or give me guidelines, I would be most grateful. It seems very often to be either a judgment call, or circular (if marked definite, it's given; therefore if it's given, it will be marked definite ... ) Also, can given and new information be mixed within a constituent such as a prepositional phrase or a noun phrase? Pardon me if these are ignorant questions. Just trying to fill out my bottom-up Cognitive Grammar training ;-) . Jo Rubba ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Tue Jan 11 11:51:50 2000 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 12:51:50 +0100 Subject: SCE X, final call Message-ID: Dear colleagues, As the organizers of the 10th Caucasian Colloquium (2-5 August, Munich, Germany) Wolfgang Schulze and Helma van den Berg would like to remind you of the dead-line of February 1st 2000 for the pre-registration and submission of abstracts. You can send the registration form and two copies of your abstract (one with and one without name and affiliation) to: SCE 2000 Programme Committee Helma van den Berg Dept. of Comparative Linguistics University of Leiden P.O. Box 9515 NL- 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands You can also send your abstract by email; we would appreciate a hard copy at the same time for refereeing and publication. The website of the conference is regularly updated: visit us at http://www.lrz-meunchen.de/~wschulze/sce_10.htm We are looking forward to seeing you in Munich, Best wishes, Helma van den Berg, Wolfgang Schulze ***************************** 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 W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Thu Jan 13 09:35:48 2000 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:35:48 +0100 Subject: Defining 'Cognitive Typology' Message-ID: [sorry for any cross posting...] Dear colleagues, as some of you will probably know there will be a conference held in Antwerp in April entitled 'International Cognitive Typology Conference'. The purpose of this conference is to > ... is to bring together researchers from the > field of linguistic typology and from the domain of cognitive approaches > to language (broadly defined) to reflect on how the typological and the > cognitive enterprises in language research interrelate, what they have to > offer each other, and/or how they can join forces in view of their shared > goal of achieving an explanatory account of language. > If I understand the wordings correctly the term 'Cognitive Typology' is used in a rather informal and undefined way: In this sense, 'Cognitive Typology' (CT) seems to refer to a possible interface between typological and cognitive enterprises. As far as I know, the term CT hasn't been used before. My question now is twofold: a) Does anyone know of the use of the term CT prior to the announcement of the Antwerp conference? If yes: How is the term defined in this source? b) In my eyes, CT still lacks a programmatic specification that goes beyond the above mentioned quote from the Antwerp announcement (I myself have tried to contextualize the term CT in a book prospectus which you can look up under http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/gss_main.html). This situation could give us the chance to scientifically define a research program CT _before_ the term acquires a popular (and fuzzy) reading. So I would be very thankful, if you could provide me with a tentative definition of the term CT just as it comes into your mind (definitions should not exceed two sentences; they can simply circumscribe what you think CT is or what connotations are activated when reading/hearing this term). I would collect the proposals and would post them on the list in case there is a sufficient number of reactions. Best regards 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 matmies at ling.helsinki.fi Thu Jan 13 12:15:43 2000 From: matmies at ling.helsinki.fi (Matti Miestamo) Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 14:15:43 +0200 Subject: TOC: SKY Journal of Linguistics Message-ID: (Apologies for any cross-postings) NOW AVAILABLE!! SKY Journal of Linguistics vol.12:1999 (edited by Timo Haukioja, Ilona Herlin and Matti Miestamo, 232 pp, ISSN 1456-8438) Table of Contents: Articles: C. CORCOLL, M. FORCADELL, J.M. FONTANA, M.T. TURELL, and E. VALLDUVI: Variation in Language Interaction Phenomena: A Global Approach Kimmo GRANQVIST: Vowel Harmony in Finnish and Finnish Romani Esa ITKONEN: Remarks on Polysynthesis Hanna LAPPALAINEN: Young Adults and the Functions of the Standard Timo LAUTTAMUS: Fuzzy Switch and Loan Types in the Languages of Finnish Americans Henna MAKKONEN-CRAIG: Speech Quotations in Newspapers as a Form of Language Use Dennis R. PRESTON: Discourse Interaction and Content: A Test Case Raija VAINIO: Correct Use of Language according to Roman Grammarians Greg WATSON: Sveitsi's ja Tenoris: Code-Switching and Borrowing in the English of First Generation, Non-Fluent Bilingual Finnish-Australians Book reviews: Peter AUER (ed.), Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity, Reviewed by Magdolna KOVACS Pekka SAMMALLAHTI: The Saami Languages: An Introduction, Reviewed by Ida TOIVONEN **************************** SKY Journal of Linguistics is published by the Linguistic Association of Finland. Until 1998 it was called SKY - Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland. **************************** Also available: SKY - Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, ISSN 0785-3157. SKY1998 (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 139pp.) Elizabeth COUPER-KUHLEN: Prosody in Interactional Discourse Shengli FENG: Prosodically Motivated Passive bei Constructions in Classical Chinese Antti IIVONEN: Functional Interpretation of Prosody within the Linguistic System Esa ITKONEN: On (Sign) Language, Music, and Anti-Modularity Tarja LEPPA"AHO: On the Margins: Interpreting as an Object of Linguistic Inquiry Jussi NIEMI, Marja NENONEN, Esa PENTTILA" and Helka RIIONHEIMO: Is the Order of Adverbs Predictable on Lexical Grounds? SKY 1997 (ed. by Timo Haukioja, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Matti Miestamo, 188pp.) Scott DELANCEY: What an Innatist Argument should look like Geoffrey K. PULLUM & Barbara C. SCHOLZ: Theoretical Linguistics and the Ontology of Linguistic Structure Esa ITKONEN: The Social Ontology of Linguistic Meaning Urpo NIKANNE: Lexical Conceptual Structure and Syntactic Arguments Esa PENTTILA": Holistic Meaning and Cognition Jarno RAUKKO: The Status of Polysemy in Linguistics: From Discrete Meanings to Default Flexibility Anna SOLIN: Debating Theoretical Assumptions: Readings of Critical Linguistics The tables of contents of earlier SKY Yearbooks can be found at: ****************************** Prices: SKY Journal of Linguistics vol. 12:1999 FIM 100 (approx. EUR17/USD17) plus postage Earlier issues (SKY Yearbooks): FIM 70 (approx. EUR12/USD12) plus postage Orders: Bookstore Tiedekirja address: Kirkkokatu 14, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland tel. +358 9 635177 fax +358 9 635017 e-mail Tiedekirja at pp.kolumbus.fi For Standing orders, please contact our secretary Please visit our WWW-pages at ( " stands for two dots on the preceding vowel. ) From ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Sun Jan 16 20:04:00 2000 From: ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Paul T. Barthmaier) Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 12:04:00 -0800 Subject: Second WAIL call Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES - SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS Santa Barbara, CA April 14-16, 2000 The linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its third annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in Native American linguistics. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and can submitted by hard copy or e-mail. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) e-mail address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 E-mail submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the e-mail message, with the anonymous abstract as an attachment. Send e-mail submissions to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: January 30, 2000 Notification of acceptance will be by e-mail by February 15, 2000. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our web site at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/wail/wail.html From nordquis at UNM.EDU Tue Jan 18 05:41:26 2000 From: nordquis at UNM.EDU (nordquis at UNM.EDU) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 21:41:26 -0800 Subject: Second Call for Papers Message-ID: The third annual High Desert Linguistics Conference will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, April 7-9, 2000. Keynote speakers: Colette Grinevald and John Haiman We invite submissions of proposals for 20-minute talks and 10 minute discussion sessions in any area of linguistics from any theoretical perspective. Papers in the following areas are especially welcome: language change and variation, grammaticization, signed languages, applied linguistics, Native American languages, and computational linguistics. Please note that selected papers from this conference will be published. Submissions must include 2 copies of an anonymous abstract and an index card including the following information: *Name *Title of Abstract and area (phonology, syntax etc.) *Affiliation(s) *Mailing address *e-mail address Abstracts must be at most one page with one-inch margins and typed in at least 11-point font. An optional second page is permitted for data and citations. Submissions are limited to 1 individual and 1 joint abstract per author. Abstracts by e-mail are accepted. Abstracts must be received no later than January 31, 2000. We will only consider submissions that conform to the above guidelines. ABSTRACTS SHOULD BE SENT TO: HDLS Department of Linguistics, 526 Humanities Bldg. University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 or kaaron at unm.edu From ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Tue Jan 18 18:26:00 2000 From: ptb0 at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Paul T. Barthmaier) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 10:26:00 -0800 Subject: Second WAIL Call Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES ***SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS*** Santa Barbara, CA April 14-16, 2000 The linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its third annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in Native American linguistics. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and can submitted by hard copy or e-mail. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) e-mail address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 E-mail submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the e-mail message, with the anonymous abstract as an attachment. Send e-mail submissions to: wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: January 30, 2000 Notification of acceptance will be by e-mail by February 15, 2000. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at humanitas.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our web site at http://linguistics.ucsb.edu/events/wail/wail.html From edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK Thu Jan 20 10:56:39 2000 From: edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK (Prior Gareth) Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 10:56:39 -0000 Subject: Online access Message-ID: > ONLINE ACCESS TO THE LATEST LINGUISTICS RESEARCH VIA THE WORLD-WIDE WEB > > Apologies for cross-posting. Many members of the list belong to > institutions whose libraries subscribe to one or more of the Blackwell > Publishers journals listed below. We wanted to make sure you know that > online access to the full-text articles in these journals is available to > you FREE if your library subscribes to the print edition. FREE > photocopying for non-commercial course packs and teaching materials is > also available. > > If your library does subscribe to any of these linguistics journals, you > can access the articles through third party providers (talk to your > librarian about which provider they use). > > Visit the individual journal's website below for contents listings, > article abstracts, and for more information about subscribing. > > Syntax (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/syntax) > Journal of Sociolinguistics > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/josl) > Language Learning (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/ll) > Studia Linguistica (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/stul) > Transactions of the Philological Society > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/trps) > World Englishes (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/weng) > Mind and Language (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/mila) > Journal of Research in Reading > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/jrir) > Reading (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/read) > Computational Intelligence > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/coin) > German Life and Letters > (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/glal) > > - - Linguistics Abstracts Online - - > Designed to revolutionize research and teaching, Linguistics Abstracts > Online gives immediate access via the internet to more than 15,000 > abstracts from nearly 300 linguistics journals published since 1985. We > are currently offering libraries a free 30-day trial link to Linguistics > Abstracts Online. Please check with your librarian whether you have > access to the service now. > > Also Available from Blackwell Publishers is Modern Language Journal (not > currently available electronically). > http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/mlj > > > For more information on how to subscribe, or to request Blackwell > Publishers' latest linguistics books and journals catalogue, contact > egilling at blackwellpublishers.co.uk > > From gvk at ciaccess.com Thu Jan 20 14:38:14 2000 From: gvk at ciaccess.com (Gerald van Koeverden) Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 09:38:14 -0500 Subject: the verb Message-ID: I have simple question. I feel embarrased to ask it, because after lurking in the shaodows of this list-serve for sometime, it definitely rates very low compared to the level of academic discussion. I hope that there is a spirit here of promoting interest in the field of linguistics, even if only in the coffee claches of us lay men...and lay women of course. In the sentence "Ice is less dense than water," we both agree that "ice" and "water" are the subject and object. But what is the verb? My friend argues that the verb is "is". I argue that it is "is less dense than". She argues that those other three words "less", "dense" and "than" aren't listed as verbs in the dictionary. I say that it doesn't matter, that the verb is what expresses the relationship between the subject and the object, and since it takes all four words to do it, then so be it. Even though that collection is not "a" verb, it is acting as "the" verb. Looking forward to any comments you might have. gerald From edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK Thu Jan 20 17:26:10 2000 From: edonoghue at BLACKWELLPUBLISHERS.CO.UK (Prior Gareth) Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 17:26:10 -0000 Subject: the verb Message-ID: The verb is "is", which is the third person singular indicative present of the verb "to be" The words "less dense than water" form an adjectival clause attached to the subject "ice" The confusion is due to the fact that English is no longer an inflected language. If it were, then it would immediately be obvious that "less dense" would agree with "ice", and "than water" is completing a simple comparative clause. Just one little argument to show that the Anglo-Saxons (and indeed the Romans, Greeks and countless others) did have some linguistic advantages over us "more advanced" modern types, at least in terms of grammatical clarity. "Water", incidentally, cannot be the object, because the verb "to be" doesn't take an object but (where necessary) a "complement" in the same case. In this sentence no such complement is necessary because the act of being is sufficient unto itself and qualified by the adjectival clause. Thje function of "water" in the sentence is governed by "than", in that it is not an object but a part of the comparative. Again, this would be clear in an inflected language because it would not take the accusative of the object, but either a convenient nominative or (more correctly) a genitive of comparison. > -----Original Message----- > From: Gerald van Koeverden [SMTP:gvk at CIACCESS.COM] > Sent: 20 January 2000 14:38 > To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu > Subject: the verb > > > > In the sentence "Ice is less dense than water," we both agree that "ice" > and "water" > are the subject and object. But what is the verb? > > From lieven at EVA.MPG.DE Fri Jan 21 15:24:53 2000 From: lieven at EVA.MPG.DE (Elena Lieven) Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 16:24:53 +0100 Subject: Postdoctoral position available Message-ID: POSTDOCTORAL POSITION AVAILABLE The Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has a postdoctoral position available for 2 years from Summer-Fall, 2000. The position will be at the Institute's Child Study Laboratory for the acquisition of English, located at the Department of Psychology, Manchester University, Manchester, England. The succesful candidate will be expected to contribute to a working group investigating various aspects of first language acquisition from a cross-linguistic and psycholinguistic perspective. The group is headed by Michael Tomasello and Elena Lieven. Ongoing research is conducted both through experiments and the analysis of rich databases and focuses on the cognitive and pragmatic bases of language; the development of syntactic constructions; and the roles of frequency and entrenchment in that development. Requirements for the position: (a) PhD by the starting date; and (b) research experience in first language acquisition and/or cognitive/functional linguistics. Salary competitive. Interested candidates should send a CV, reprints, and the names of 3 references to Dr. Elena Lieven; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Inselstrasse 22-26; D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail applications (and requests for information) may be sent to lieven at eva.mpg.de. Applications will be reviewed beginning February 21st, 2000, with a decision soon after that. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: vcard.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 198 bytes Desc: Card for elena lieven URL: From gvk at ciaccess.com Fri Jan 21 18:01:59 2000 From: gvk at ciaccess.com (Gerald van Koeverden) Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 13:01:59 -0500 Subject: the verb Message-ID: gladney frank y wrote: > But how about _Ice is something I prefer not to have in my water_? Would > you consider the middle eight or nine words in this sentence the verb? Yes and no. NO, if I take the sentence itself as an object to be dissected in and of itself as an entity separate from its meaning. I was flabbergasted and most appreciative of the complexity of the answers several people sent posted. I thought it was a simple question which would have simple answer. Looks like we both get to keep our 20; we were both wrong in this sense. YES, if I want to understand the meaning of the sentence and separate it out into the three components- from which it was derived in someone's head-the universal sense of subject, verb and object. At this point I'm not interested in the hard-core 'grammatical' interpretation of those three terms, except as how they help me get to the meaning. In this case the speaker is describing the relationship of ice and water in his preferences for how he likes his water: he wants them keep separately. I'm interested in how the speaker or listener relates to a sentence and makes meaning of it. And so far, I've discovered this particular relationship in all sentences I've explored. Does this kind of approach ring any good bells??? Or does all this that sound like "Why does ice dissolve in water?" [ I'm obviously not a 'linguist'. I'm a philospher, doing a little cross-disciplinary exploring, though some of you might feel that I'm trespassing....What's a philospher to do? He is a very nosey person, sticking his nose into everybody else's business....trying to make connections where there aren't any...yet. But our skins are as thick as a rhinoceros. It comes with the job. And we are very polite too, though somewhat persistent.] gerald van koeverden From dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca Sun Jan 23 16:12:06 2000 From: dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca (Diego Quesada) Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 11:12:06 -0500 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 10:04:16 -0500 From: "G.F.W." Reply-To: Latin American Linguistics and Languages Discussion List To: LATAMLIN at MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) Favor circular entre amigos de la causa. Favor firmar y enviar a: Muchas gracias desde ya! ************************************************************************ NEW PINOCHET SIGN ON LETTER ************************************************************************ Produced by the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C. LETTER TO SPANISH PRESIDENT JOSE MARIA AZNAR: Sign On Now! ************************************************************************ We encourage you to add your name as a representative of an organization or as an individual to the following letter that will be sent to Spanish President Jos? Mar?a Aznar and cc to Spanish Foreign Minister Abel Matutes. Unfortunately, we do not know when Jack Straw will announce his final decision, although he has said that he will give parties to the case 24-hour notice. We apologize for the short notice, but must ask that signatures be received no later than Monday, January 24, 2000. Excmo. Sr. D. Jos? Mar?a Aznar Presidente del Gobierno Espa?ol Complejo de La Moncloa 28071 - Madrid ESPA?A/SPAIN Fax numbers: 011-34-91-390-0356, 011-34-91-390-0329, 011-34-91-583-7519 Dear President Aznar, We are writing to urge you to allow justice to take its course in the ongoing proceedings against Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. We commend your government for transmitting the representation submitted by Judge Baltasar Garz?n to British Home Secretary Jack Straw earlier this week. We are concerned, however, by the statement made by your Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sr. Abel Matutes, that his office will not transmit Judge Garz?n?s appeal, should Minister Straw decide to end extradition proceedings. As you know, Judge Garz?n has requested that the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), representing Spain, pursue all possible avenues for ensuring Gen. Pinochet?s extradition, including an appeal for judicial review of the Home Secretary?s decision. The CPS has indicated that irregularities surrounding recent medical exams could serve as clear grounds for judicial review, but will only pursue the appeal if so instructed by the Spanish government. Home Secretary Straw himself acknowledged yesterday that the Kingdom of Spain has the right to file for judicial review because he considers his judgement to be ?quasi-judicial? rather than discretional. Given that there is currently a criminal legal case pending in the Spanish tribunals, the decision to appeal belongs exclusively to the courts, and in this particular case, to Judge Garz?n, the magistrate overseeing the case against Pinochet. We urge you to respect the constitutional independence of the judicial branch of the Kingdom of Spain and formaly transmit Judge Garzon?s request to the British authorities immediately. Sincerely, NAME: TITLE: ORGANIZATION: CITY/STATE: PLEASE RETURN TO STACIE JONAS or by fax at 202- 387-7915 NO LATER THAN MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2000) ************************************************************************* For more information on Pinochet Watch,? contact Stacie Jonas, Institute for Policy Studies, 733 15th St. NW, #1020, Washington, DC 20005. Tel: 202-234-9382, Fax: 202-387-7915. Email: s-jonas at mindspring.com. The Institute for Policy Studies is an independent center for research and education founded in 1963. IPS has worked to bring Pinochet to justice since the murders of two IPS colleagues, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, at the hands of Pinochet's agents, in 1976 From nrude at ucinet.com Mon Jan 24 13:55:12 2000 From: nrude at ucinet.com (Noel Rude) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 05:55:12 -0800 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) Message-ID: SIR: Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! Noel From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Mon Jan 24 17:27:00 2000 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 18:27:00 +0100 Subject: junk mail Message-ID: N. Rude wrote: >SIR: > > Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled >and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even >fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: >This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the >very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! > > Noel Please, SIR: Stop this junk email!!! Jose Luis. From clements at INDIANA.EDU Mon Jan 24 19:20:54 2000 From: clements at INDIANA.EDU (J. Clancy Clements) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 13:20:54 -0600 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) In-Reply-To: <388C59BE.63C5@ucinet.com> Message-ID: >SIR: > > Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled >and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even >fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: >This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the >very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! If the letter regarding Pinochet has no place on this list, the above inflammatory remarks have even less of a place. Go somewhere else to pedal your cheap ideology. 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 Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU Mon Jan 24 19:41:09 2000 From: Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU (Tony Wright) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 13:41:09 -0600 Subject: NEW SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT AZNAR (fwd) In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000124142715.00a51d80@hamlet.ucs.indiana.edu> Message-ID: At 01:20 PM 1/24/00 -0600, J. Clancy Clements wrote: >If the letter regarding Pinochet has no place on this list, the above >inflammatory remarks have even less of a place. Go somewhere else to >pedal your cheap ideology. Ideologies are bicycles? I don't remember that one from "Metaphors we Live By"! --Tony From dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca Mon Jan 24 19:46:41 2000 From: dquesada at chass.utoronto.ca (Diego Quesada) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 14:46:41 -0500 Subject: Dear Funknetters In-Reply-To: <388C59BE.63C5@ucinet.com> Message-ID: I wish to apologize for having used the list for a purpose other than linguistic discussions, especially if that hurt some list members' sensibilities (sensibilities that, I must say, I have not encountered elsewhere). Perhaps naively, I thought that since the forwarded menssage was a matter of volunteering a signature, those who wanted to sign would simply sign and those who did not would not, and life would go on, period. Well, it was not like that. Hence my apologies to all colleagues, especially those who in a civilized way (both on line and off-list) made me realize that it is not funknetly correct to do what I did. Needless to say, excluded from my apology are those cavemen ractions and their embodiments, which a. leave much to be desired both in terms of manners as well as in terms of intellectual endowment; b. show how certain (animate) creatures that have names can live up to them; c. provide living evidence for a Spanish saying that roughly translates into English as "Show me your way of talk and I will tell your brain" Dogs (especially strays) generally bark at the unknown out of fear of it; that is their way of acknowledging and channelling it. It's their nature; it cannot be changed. Once more, my sincere and civilized apologies, J. Diego Quesada University of Toronto P.S. I am repeating a message sent to me via FUNKNET; out of respect to the list members I do not repeat one received off-list. On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Noel Rude wrote: > SIR: > > Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled > and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even > fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: > This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the > very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! > > Noel > From aristar at LINGUISTLIST.ORG Mon Jan 24 20:15:07 2000 From: aristar at LINGUISTLIST.ORG (Anthony Aristar) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:15:07 -0500 Subject: Dear Funknetters Message-ID: My mind is spinning. What just went by me? Is this an apology or the first round in a new flame-war? Ah, well. I'll just leave it up to the discourse analysts among us to decide. ********************* >From: Diego Quesada >Subject: Dear Funknetters >To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu >In-Reply-To: <388C59BE.63C5 at ucinet.com> > >I wish to apologize for having used the list for a purpose other than >linguistic discussions, especially if that hurt some list members' >sensibilities (sensibilities that, I must say, I have not encountered >elsewhere). Perhaps naively, I thought that since the forwarded menssage >was a matter of volunteering a signature, those who wanted to sign would >simply sign and those who did not would not, and life would go on, >period. Well, it was not like that. Hence my apologies to all colleagues, >especially those who in a civilized way (both on line and off-list) made >me realize that it is not funknetly correct to do what I did. > >Needless to say, excluded from my apology are those cavemen ractions >and their embodiments, which a. leave much to be desired both in >terms of manners as well as in terms of intellectual endowment; b. show >how certain (animate) creatures that have names can live up to them; >c. provide living evidence for a Spanish saying that roughly translates >into English as > "Show me your way of talk and I will tell your brain" > > Dogs (especially strays) generally bark at the unknown out of fear >of it; that is their way of acknowledging and channelling it. It's their >nature; it cannot be changed. > >Once more, my sincere and civilized apologies, > >J. Diego Quesada >University of Toronto > > >P.S. I am repeating a message sent to me via FUNKNET; out of respect to > the list members I do not repeat one received off-list. > > >On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Noel Rude wrote: > >> SIR: >> >> Stop this junk email!!! Many, many, many of our countrymen have bled >> and died fighting the menace of marx--several of our tribesmen even >> fought in Siberia during the Bolshevist terror. The irony of it all: >> This little Spanish judge trying to extradite President Pinochet the >> very day that Dictator Castrito was was in Spain!!! >> >> Noel >> > From barlow at RUF.RICE.EDU Mon Jan 24 22:10:29 2000 From: barlow at RUF.RICE.EDU (Michael Barlow) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 16:10:29 -0600 Subject: Apologies and flames Message-ID: Funknetters, >My mind is spinning. What just went by me? Is this an apology or the >first round in a new flame-war? I was wondering too, but let me suggest (as one of the two list-owners) that whatever it was, we treat it as a kind of closure and move on to other topics. It has been my experience that political discussions on non-political lists always end up in tears. Michael ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Barlow, Department of Linguistics, Rice University barlow at rice.edu www.ruf.rice.edu/~barlow Athelstan barlow at athel.com www.athel.com (U.S.) www.athelstan.com (UK) From dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA Mon Jan 24 22:39:50 2000 From: dquesada at CHASS.UTORONTO.CA (Diego Quesada) Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:39:50 -0500 Subject: Apologies WITHOUT flames In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I honestly want to bring this situation to an end; so please receive my apologies once more and let us move on. J. Diego Quesada