From auwera at UIA.UA.AC.BE Mon Jul 3 11:48:05 2000 From: auwera at UIA.UA.AC.BE (Johan van der Auwera) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 13:48:05 +0200 Subject: ALT IV Message-ID: Call for papers Fourth International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT IV) The fourth International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT IV) will be held at the University of California at Santa Barbara, from Thursday July 19 to Sunday July 22, 2001. The conference will be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Institute, sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America, and directly precede the meeting of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. The local organizer for ALT IV will be Marianne Mithun. Members and non-members wishing to present a paper at ALT IV are asked to send six copies of a one-page abstract to the chair of the program committee, Casper de Groot, to reach him no later than January 1, 2001. A second page (six copies) may be attached to the abstract listing data. The abstract itself should contain no identification of the author. A separate sheet should be included which contains the title of the abstract, the name(s) of the author(s), and one mailing address, with telephone, fax, and email address as available. The committee accepts submission via fax or e-mail (with the abstract as part of the message rather than by attachment), but abstracts may be sent by regular mail as well. The time allotted for presentation and discussion is 30 minutes. Members may also submit abstracts for symposia, including the names of participants and the amount of time requested. Participants may not be involved in more than two abstracts, of which at most one may be single-authored. English is the preferred language at the conference. Address for mailing ALT abstracts: Casper de Groot Chair, Program Committee, ALT Leerstoelgroep Theoretische taalwetenschap Universiteit van Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 NL-1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands Fax: 31-20-5253052 casper.de.groot at hum.uva.nl The program committee will, by February 15, 2001 convey its decision on acceptance of papers to those submitting abstracts. The committee consists of Casper de Groot, Zlatka Guentcheva, Maria Polinsky, Oesten Dahl, Walter Bisang and Vera Podlesskaya. Details concerning registration and accommodation for the conference will follow. *** On Thursday, July 19, the first day of ALT IV, there will be a workshop on California Languages. The languages indigenous to California present considerable typological diversity among themselves and contrast in many ways with languages found in other parts of the world. Papers are welcome on any topic of interest to typologists. Each paper will be 20 minutes in length plus 10 minutes for discussion. Anyone wishing to present a paper at this workshop is invited to send an abstract (max 400 words) before January 15 to the address given below. Those sending their abstract by email should include it as part of their message (i.e. not append it as an attachment). Address for workshop abstracts: Marianne Mithun ALT Workshop on California Languages Department of Linguistics UCSB University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA email: mithun at humanitas.ucsb.edu fax: 1-805-563-1948 *** For more information on the Association for Linguistic Typology, consult: http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/alt From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Mon Jul 3 13:14:17 2000 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 15:14:17 +0200 Subject: Confs: SCE final program Message-ID: 10th International Colloquium Societas Caucasologica Europaea University of Munich - August 2 - 5, 2000 The final program of the Colloquium is now available under http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/sce_10.htm. This page also informs about the conference site, registration policy, social events and other related items. Wolfgang Schulze SCE President -- ***************************** 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 ldc at UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU Thu Jul 6 15:00:29 2000 From: ldc at UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU (LDC Office) Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 11:00:29 EDT Subject: New Corpus from LDC Message-ID: ******************************************************** Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English - Part I ******************************************************** LDC is pleased to announce the availability of the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English - Part I. This CD-ROM release contains 14 speech files from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, which was collected by the University of California, Santa Barbara Center for the Study of Discourse under the direction of John W. Du Bois. Associate Editors were Wallace L. Chafe (UCSB), Charles Meyer (UMass, Boston), and Sandra A. Thompson (UCSB). The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English is part of the International Corpus of English (Charles W. Meyer, Director), representing the American Component. The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English is based on hundreds of recordings of natural speech from all over the United States, representing a wide variety of people of different regional origins, ages, occupations, and ethnic and social backgrounds. It reflects many ways that people use language in their lives: conversation, gossip, arguments, on-the-job talk, card games, city council meetings, sales pitches, classroom lectures, political speeches, bedtime stories, sermons, weddings, and more. Each speech file is accompanied by a transcript in which phrases are time stamped with respect to the audio recording. Personal names, place names, phone numbers, etc, in the transcripts have been altered to preserve the anonymity of the speakers and their acquaintances and the audio files have been filtered to make these portions of the recordings unrecognizable. For the latest information on this corpus, please refer to the UCSB and Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) web sites devoted to it: http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/depts/linguistics/research/csae/ http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Publications/SBC/ These sites may also contain software or revised versions of data which may be downloaded. Institutions that have membership in the LDC during the 2000 Membership Year will be able to receive this corpus free of charge. Nonmembers may purchase the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English - Part I for $75. If you would like to order a copy of this corpus, please email your request to . If you need additional information before placing your order, or would like to inquire about membership in the LDC, please send email or call (215) 573-1275. From crubino at ANSWERLOGIC.COM Thu Jul 6 22:03:10 2000 From: crubino at ANSWERLOGIC.COM (Carl Rubino) Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:03:10 -0400 Subject: Linguist positions in NLP and Lexicography Message-ID: AnswerLogic.com, a question-answering software company in downtown Washington DC is hiring a few more linguists and lexicographers to join its staff. Functional orientation is a plus. To browse available positions, please visit: http://www.answerlogic.com/careers.html Information on the Core Linguist position follows, feel free to distribute this to your favorite students: We are seeking applicants with a B.A./B.S. in linguistics (or comparable background); a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) is a plus. Qualified persons will have a solid understanding of English grammar - including the ability to categorize words (part of speech) and identify their functions - as well as an excellent vocabulary. Familiarity with Princeton University's WordNet project is a plus. Experience with information or computer science is desirable. Please note that currently we are not looking for translators or translation services. Qualified candidates please send resume and cover letter to languagelover at answerlogic.com and note that you are applying from the FUNKNET list. Please note that applications without a detailed cover letter will not be considered. AnswerLogic offers benefits that surpass the traditional. In addition to paid vacation and a first-rate healthcare plan, we offer stock options, flexible hours, casual dress, a transportation allowance, diverse and bright coworkers, dinner if you work late and a fully-stocked fridge. What's more, we're always open for suggestions. We believe you should gain as much working with us as we gain from the skills and experience you offer. Our goal is to provide you with an environment conducive to getting results. <<...>> From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Fri Jul 7 20:30:16 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 15:30:16 -0500 Subject: adjectival phrases in English Message-ID: In English, the ordering of adjectival phrases within the noun phrase seems to vary with the composition of the adjectival phrase. First, the order of the adjectival phrase and the indefinite article varies: (1) INDEF.ARTICLE + ADJECT.PHRASE: (a) Peter ate a big apple. (b) Peter ate a very big apple. (c) *Peter ate a too big apple. (d) *Peter ate a this big apple. (2) ADJECT.PHRASE + INDEF.ARTICLE: (a) *Peter ate big an apple. (b) *Peter ate very big an apple. (c) Peter ate too big an apple. (d) Peter ate this big an apple. In other words, "ADJ" and "very + ADJ" follow the indefinite article while "too + ADJ" and "this + ADJ" precede it. Second, the order of the adjectival phrase and the noun itself also varies: "this big" can follow the noun while neither "big" nor "very big" or "too big" can: (3) (a) *Peter ate an apple big. (b) *Peter ate an apple very big. (c) *Peter ate an apple too big. (d) Peter ate an apple this big. What is the explanation of this order variation? A cursory check of Quirk and Greenbaum's "A concise grammar of Contemporary English" did not yield anything. ************************************************************************ Edith A. Moravcsik Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA E-mail: edith at uwm.edu Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/ (414) 332-0141 /home/ Fax: (414) 229-2741 From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Sun Jul 9 20:06:31 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 15:06:31 -0500 Subject: adjectival phrases in English Message-ID: Thanks to Bingfu Lu for his comments regarding the ordering of adjectival phrases in English noun phrases, according to which it depends on the the degree of referentiality or definiteness of the adjectival phrase. - The operative constraint is one specifically on English: both in German and in Hungarian, "this big"- and "too big"-type adjectival expressions are ordered as all others - i.e., they are not exceptional in their ordering. Arnold Zwicky has just informed me that he has a relevant paper: "Exceptional degree markers: a puzzle in internal and external syntax", OSU WPL 47. 111-123, l995. Edith ************************************************************************ Edith A. Moravcsik Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA E-mail: edith at uwm.edu Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/ (414) 332-0141 /home/ Fax: (414) 229-2741 From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Jul 18 22:50:20 2000 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 15:50:20 PDT Subject: schedule Alternatives to Chomsky Message-ID: The following is the schedule for the Alternatives to Chomsky meeting on Sept.4th. This meeting should bring up some highly controversial topics. Everyone is invited to attend and join in the discussion. Bruce Richman ALTERNATIVES TO CHOMSKY: A NEW PARADIGM FOR LANGUAGE STUDIES FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM. A meeting that will be held on Monday Sept. 4 at the University Inn and Conference Center of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in association with the Language Origins Society 2000 annual`meeting. The fee for the one-day meeting will be $20. Registration fee for the LOS 2000 is $75. 9 AM to 12 Noon -- Earl Anderson "Native-speaker Intuition and Folk-linguistics: 'Cratyline Fantasies' as Allegories of the Nature of Language" Bruce Richman "Chomsky's Theory of Innate Language Structure: The Theory Has No Clothes!" Talbot Taylor "The Reflexive Character of Language" 1 PM to 5:30 PM -- Par Segerdahl "On the Distinction Between Language and Its Formal Representation" Jeff Wollock "Language as Animate Motion: on the History of an Idea" Victor Yngve "The Hard Science Alternative" R. Narasinhan "A Suggested New Paradigm for Studying Language Behaviour" Paul Cant "Guidelines for Post-Chomskyan Linguistic Theory" ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From matmies at ling.helsinki.fi Wed Jul 19 14:59:20 2000 From: matmies at ling.helsinki.fi (Matti Miestamo) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 17:59:20 +0300 Subject: Confs: Parts of speech in and across languages Message-ID: Dear All, The program and the abstracts for the symposium Parts of speech in and across languages, organized by the Linguistic Association of Finland at the University of Helsinki, August 17-19, 2000, are available at . For registration and further information, please contact . Organizers From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Tue Jul 25 20:36:51 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:36:51 -0500 Subject: "this big" and "too big" Message-ID: On July 7, I posted some questions regarding the ordering of a subtype of adjectival phrases in English. This is a summary of the responses, most of which came to me directly rather than to FUNKNET. The respondents were Michael Darnell, Deborah DuBartell, Richard Hudson, Bingfu Lu, Carl Mills, Peter, whose last name was not given in his message, and Arnold Zwicky. Thank you for your contributions! The original query pertained to the exceptional ordering of English adjectival phrases such as "this big" and "too bright". The majority of other adjectival phrases take an internal position within the noun phrase: they follow the article and precede the noun, as in a big apple a very big apple. This internal position is not available for "this big", "too big" and some others: *a this big apple *a too big apple; instead, they are ordered on the peripheries of the noun phrase, either preceding the article or, some of them, following the noun: this big an apple too big an apple an apple this big *an apple too big. The question is why these adjectival phrases differ from other adjectival phrases in this manner. Below, I will refer to "this big", "too big", etc. as "exceptional adjectival phrases" and to their positions as "pre-article position" and "post-noun position". I will summarize the responses in two groups: those pertaining to data and those pertaining to analysis. The outline of this report will thus be the following: l. Data (A) Selection (B) Order (C) Variation (a) The pre-article position (b) The post-noun position 2. Analyses (A) The pre-article position (a) Lu's account (b) Zwicky's account (B) The post-noun position (a) Other post-nominal adjectival phrases in English (b) Ellipsis 3. Conclusions References and additional bibliography l. DATA (A) SELECTION First, let us consider selectional constraints INTERNAL to exceptional adjectival phrases. Such phrases consist of an adjective and a modifier of that adjective. While there do not appear to be any constraints on what the adjective can be as long as it is semantically compatible wit the modifier, the possible modifiers form a limited set. Hudson and Zwicky list several of them. The emerging list is this: (Zwicky 1995: 114) "so...that S", "SO(emphatic), that", "as...as S/NP", "too (...(for NP) to VP)" "more (...than NP) (in negative contexts) "how", "however" Second, let us look at the CONTEXT which which exceptional adjectival phrases can be placed. The rest of the noun phrase within which they occur is strictly limited: as pointed out by Hudson and by Zwicky (1995: 115, 118), the article must be "a(n)" and the noun must be singular and countable. Thus, the definite article is ungrammatical (*"this big the apple") and so are plural nouns. For example, as noted by Hudson, "How big a car does your neighbor have?" is OK but "How big cars do the people in your road have?" is not and this fact presents a communication gap: there is no simple way to convey the intended meaning. Notice, however, that the singular-noun requirement holds for only one of the two exceptional orders of the adjectival phrases - in particular, for the pre-article position but not for the post-noun position. Thus, "I don't like this shiny cars." (where "this" is intended as a modifier of "shiny" rather than a determiner of "cars") is ungrammatical but "I don't like cars this shiny." is OK. This suggests that the two exceptional peripheral positions - pre-article and post-noun - form different constructions. The loosening of selectional constraints in the case of postposed adjectival phrases may be a manifestation of the generally less tight connection between noun and postposed attributes manifested in many languages. In other ways, however, exceptional adjectival phrases are selectionally like "normal" ones. Zwicky (1995: 116) points out that in that they can occur predicatively ("The table is very wide." "The table is this wide.") and in "though-fronting" constructions ("Rather big though the box was...", "Too big though the box was...") just as other adjectival phrases can. (B) ORDER The PHRASE-INTERNAL order in exceptional adjectival phrases is regular: modifier followed by adjective. It is their order RELATIVE TO THE REST OF THE NOUN PHRASE that makes them linearly exceptional: as seen above, they are peripherally, rather than internally, placed within the noun phrase. The two peripheral positions in question - pre-article and post-noun - are not on a par. First, as we just saw, the rest of the noun phrase is selectionally more constrained if the adjectival phrase precedes than when it follows. Second, not all exceptional adjectival phrases that can occur in pre-article position can also occur in post-noun position. Thus, "this Adj" can occur in either position but "too Adj", "how Adj" etc. see to be restricted to the pre-article position; cf. this ornate a building a building this ornate too ornate a building *a building too ornate how ornate a building *a building how ornate Zwicky's judgment differs, however. According to him (1995: 122), "too Adj" can also be postposed: he gives the example "any candidate too tired". While a sentence such as "Any candidate too tired can leave the room." does indeed sound good, "I didn't see any candidate too tired." sounds much worse, at least to my non-native ears, than "I didn't see any candidate this tired." Multiple native-speaker judgments would be needed to decide whether "this Adj" and "too Adj" are equally postposable. Thus, the two kinds of adjectival phrases - exceptional ones and (most) normal ones - form subclasses of a single class in terms of both their selectional and their linear properties. The two phrase types are selectionally and linearly alike in their internal sctructure and in that they can both occur in predicative position and in "though"-fronting" constructions occupying the same position. However, exceptional adjectival phrases are linearly different from normal ones in that within the noun phrase, the regular internal position is not available to them; instead, they are ordered peripherally. They in turn fall into two selectionally and linearly significant subclasses: all of them can occur preceding the article, in which case they must occur with indefinite singular nouns, but some of them may also follow the noun, in which case these selectional restrictions are relaxed. (C) VARIATION (a) THE PRE-ARTICLE POSITION The pre-article position of exceptional adjectival phrases is subject to varying grammaticality judgments. Carl Mills made two relevant points relative to his home dialect identified as white, working class, rural, and mostly south midland American. First, he says exceptional adjectival phrases can show non-exceptional order in that they may occur in the regular, noun-phrase internal position. Thus, sentences as "Peter ate a this/too big apple.", he says, are not likely but nonetheless possible in this dialect. His second comment is that, while the pre-article position is possible, it is equally likely that "of" will intervene between modifier and adjective. Thus, in addition to "Peter ate this/too big an apple.", there is the equally likely "Peter ate this/too big of an apple." The "of"-construction was also noted by Darnell and Hudson and it is discussed in Zwicky 1995: 113, 116-117 in the context of other "grammatical" (rather than semantic) uses of "of". This construction may in fact be a legitimate alternative to the "of-less" version in all dialects of English. In addition to differences in how dialects of English evaluate the ordering options of exceptional adjectival phrases, it should be noted that entire languages, too, also differ in this regard. Thus, German "ein so grosses Klavier" "a so big piano" and "ein zu grosses Klavier" "a too big piano" are fine (and the English-like orders "so gross(es) ein Klavier" and "zu gross(es) ein Klavier" are ungrammatical I suspect; but this needs to be checked). Hungarian, too, orders the semantic equivalents of the English exceptional adjectival phrases as all others; i.e., after the article: "egy ilyen nagy zongora" "a so big piano" 'so big a piano' and "egy tu'l nagy zongora" 'too big a piano' are fine but the English-type pre-article order of the adjectival phrase, as in "ilyen nagy egy zongora" "so big a piano" and "tu'l nagy egy zongora" "too big a piano", is ungrammatical. Nonetheless, in exclamations, the deictic adjective "ekkora" 'this big', when used disapprovingly, can occur in either order: "Egy ekkora diszno'sa'g!" "a such mess" or "Ekkora egy diszno'sa'g!" "such a mess", both meaning 'What a mess!'. Furthermore, it is not only that Hungarian does not treat the equivalents of English exceptional adjectival phrases as positional exceptions: their specific selectional properties also do not show up in Hungarian. Thus, unlike in English, "ilyen nagy" 'so big' can cooccur with plural nouns and with the definite article; e.g. - ilyen nagy asztalok "such big tables" 'tables so big' - az ilyen nagy asztal "the such big table" 'the table this big' (b) THE POST-NOUN POSITION No dialectal variation has been evidenced in the responses regarding the post-noun position of exceptional adjectives (e.g. "a book this interesting"). Thus, this order may be universal across English dialects. Whether in other languages where the equivalents of English exceptional adjectives are not exceptional in their prenominal ordering (i.e., they take any article and noun and they occur after the article rather than, as in English, before it) they are nonetheless exceptional in that they can also occur after the noun while other adjectival phrases cannot, remains to be seen. In Hungarian, the equivalents of English adjectival phrases are entirely regular not only in pre-nominal position, occurring after, rather than before, the article, but also in that, just as other adjectival phrases, they cannot occur after the noun. Thus, the equivalents of English exceptional adjectives are not exceptional in Hungarian in any way, be it selection or ordering before or after the noun. Whether in German, noun phrases such as "ein Klavier so gross" and "ein Klavier zu gross" are grammatical or not remains to be checked. 2. ANALYSES (A) THE PRE-ARTICLE POSITION Two analyses have been proposed, one by Bingfu Lu and one in Arnold Zwicky's 1995 article which he referred me to in his response. (a) LU'S ACCOUNT Bingfu Lu suggests that both "this Adj" and "too Adj" occur in front of the article because in noun phrases, modifiers contributing more referentiality to their mother NP tend to precede modifiers that contribute less. As supporting evidence, he cites examples of English adjectives which precede the numeral rather than, as usual for adjectives, follow them: "the next three lanes", "the longest three lanes", "the left three lanes", "the following three lanes" (cf. *"the three next lanes", *"the three following lanes" (although "the three longest lanes" and "the three left lanes" are, for some reason, OK)). Thus, he suggests, if we assume that the indefinite article "a(n)" patterns with numerals, the pre-numeral position of "this/too Adj" is covered by the same generalization as the pre-numeral position of "next", "longest" etc. because "this/too..." also contribute to the referentiality or definiteness of the noun phrase. The principle or referential precedence is laid out in more detail in Lu 1998, especially sections 4.2, 4.5 and 6.5 (e.g. pages 85-86, 99, 111, 104-105, and 173-174 in the hard copy). My concern with Lu's explanation is that I do not see clearly in what way the modifiers "this/too/so Adj" etc. contribute to making the noun phrase more referential or more definite. The fact that "this/so/too... Adj" occurs only with indefinite nouns militates against this idea. A phrase like "this student" is referential and definite; but "this bright a student" is neither definite nor necessarily referential. (b) ZWICKY'S ACCOUNT Zwicky's highly interesting paper is concerned with the general issue of selectional relations in syntax and in particular, with constraints on the proximity and hierarchic relation that can hold between selector and selectee. The "this/too... Adj" construction is discussed on account of two oddnesses. The first thing that is strange about it is that, while "this big" is like a normal adjectival phrase in its internal composition, its external syntax - both selection and order - is different from that of other adjectival phrases, along the lines discussed above. Second, such phrases select a particular determiner ("a(n)") in the NP they combine with even though the determiner is not a sister constituent - which is the normal relation between selector and selectee - but a "niece". The point of the paper is to show that, while "this/too... Adj" phrases are exceptional, their patterning nonetheless has parallels in other phenomena both in English and in other languages (122). For example, the indefinite article of the noun phrase is also selected by an "aunt" in "What a good day!" (117). The pre-article "this/too... Adj" construction thus emerges from Zwicky's discussion as exceptional and unexplained in its detail but not unparalleled in type. (B) THE POST-NOUN POSITION Three relevant ideas have been offered. (a) OTHER POST-NOMINAL ADJECTIVAL PHRASES IN ENGLISH Both Zwicky and Hudson noted that, just as the pre-article position is not unique to exceptional adjectival phrases (there is also "what a day", "such a day", etc.), the post-noun position is also not unique to them. Zwicky (l995) proposes that a necessary - but not sufficient - condition for such postposable adjectival phrases is that they should also be capable of standing as predicates (thus "late" or "former" do not qualify). Within the bounds of this constraint, postposability is OBLIGATORY - if the adjectival phrase contains a complement (e.g., "many faces bright with joy"; cf. *"bright with joy many faces"); and - if the head is an indefinite pronoun (e.g. "something useful"; cf. ?"useful something"), and it is POSSIBLE with "this/(too?)... Adj"-type adjectival phrases (121-122). A sufficient condition for postposability - i.e. a possible common denominator of the constructions just mentioned, is yet to be identified. Richard Hudson cites a subtype of complemented adjectival phrases which are postposable: measure expressions such as "two inches long"; cf. the equal grammaticality of "a two-inches-long line" and "a line two inches long" (although note the "compactness" of the preposed adjectival modifier in comparison to the post-posed one). Since both "two inches long" and "this big" include a noun modifier: "two inches" and "this", Hudson suggests that this may be a common denominator between the two equally postposable adjectival phrases and a sufficient condition for postposability. This account would explain a fact noted above: that "this Adj" and "that Adj" are postposable to the noun but "too Adj" is not or at least not always. The explanation would be that "this" is a noun but "too" is not. However, the problem is that this explanation is its lack of generality: it would account for the postposability of only some exceptional adjectival phrases: for example, "so Adj" is also postposable just as "this Adj" ("A piano this/so big cannot fit into this room.") even though "so" is not a noun and thus not covered by the generalization. However, a related point comes to mind. Whether the fact that the noun "this" occurs as a modifier in one of the exceptional adjectival phrases is relevant or not, remains to be seen; but note, however, that the entire exceptional adjective phrase has something of a nominal character. This is borne out by two facts: its peripheral - pre-article and apposition-like - position within the noun phrase; and the option of cooccurring with "of", a preposition which primarily occurs after nouns. (b) ELLIPSIS Several responents - Darnell, DuBartell, Lu, and Peter - related the fact that "this Adj" can occur after the noun to the fact that such constructions are synonymous with the corresponding relative clause construction - "a book this good" with "a book that is this good"; and they were considering a derivation of the former from the latter. However, as Darnell points out, the fact that "N this Adj" is paraphrasable with a noun plus a relative clause whose predicate is "this Adj" is not a distinguishing feature of the "N this Adj" construction: many other adjectival phrases are paraphrasable the same way; yet, many of those cannot occur post-nominally. Compare "the big table", "the table that is big", *"the table big". 3. CONCLUSIONS What emerges from the above regarding English exceptional adjectival phrases is the following. (a) SELECTION - Phrase-internal selection: While the adjective of an exceptional adjectival phrase is freely selectable, the modifier must come from a small set including "this", "too", etc. - Phrase-external selection: Exceptional adjectival phrases form a proper subclass of adjectival phrases from the point of view of their external syntax. They are selectionally and positionally like many other adjectives in that they can be used and ordered predicatively and in "though-fronting" constructions just as other adjectives; but they differ from the others in that, when preposed to the article, they cooccur only with singular indefinite countable nouns. (b) LINEAR CONSTRAINTS Exceptional adjectival phrases must not be in the regular adjectival post-article position in at least some dialects: instead, they are ordered peripherally to the noun phrase. In particular, all of them must occur in pre-article position if the precede the noun and some of them also have an alternative post-nominal position. (c) VARIATION English dialects differ in whether they do or do not treat exceptional adjectives as linearly exceptional when they occur before the noun - i.e., whether they need to be in pre-article position or not; and languages differ the same way as well. In perhaps all English dialects, however, exceptional adjectival phrases in pre-article position have an alternative expression: in addition to AdjP ART N, there is also AdjP of ART N. This account raises a number of why-questions. l. SELECTIONAL CONSTRAINTS (a) Exactly why do just those modifiers - "this", "too" and the others - figure in selectionally and positionally exceptional adjectival phrases, and not others? If referentiality, definiteness, or being noun-like have anything to do with this, the exact conditions are yet to be spelled out. (b) Exactly why are the selectional constraints of exceptional adjectival phrases relative to their context the way they are? In particular, why are exceptional adjectival phrases LIKE other adjectival phrases in some of their contexts (occurrence in predicate position and in "though-fronting") but UNLIKE them in that in prenominal position, they cooccur with indefinite singular count nouns only? 2. LINEAR CONSTRAINTS Why do exceptional adjectival phrases require or allow for just the positions that they do; and why do they differ among each other in whether they can be post-nominal or not? 3. VARIATION - Why is there both an "of-less" and an "of-full" variety when exceptional adjectival phrases stand before the article? - Why is it that these adjectival phrases are exceptional in some dialects of English but less exceptional in other dialects? - Why are the equivalents of English exceptional articles not exceptional in some other languages? Regarding this last issue, there are four possibilities. First, exceptional adjectival phrases may be a random characteristic of English, similar to any lexical feature such as that 'table' is "table" and not "stol". Second, their presence may be predictable from some other property of English grammar, just as the presence of /k/ is predictable from the fact that English has a /p/ if a universal implication holds according to which languages with /p/ always have a /k/. Or the presence of exceptional adjectives may be it like the /p/, so that it predicts some other characteristic of English grammar. And, fourthly, this feature may be in a bidirectional implicational relationship with some other feature both predicted by it and predicting it. As things now stand, the first, least desirable option holds, according to which the presence and particular properties of exceptional adjectival phrases are an isolated and thus accidental - rather than a systemic, or integrated - property of English. REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY The following relevant titles have been mentioned in the responses. I have not been able to consult Abney 1987 (324), Baker 1989 (327), and Hudson 1990 (370-371). Abney, Steven P. 1987. _The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect._ Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Baker, C.L. 1989. _English syntax._ Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hudson, Richard. 1990. _English word grammar._ Lu, Bingfu. 1998. _Left-right assymmetries of word order variation: a functional explanation_ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California. Available at http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/ealc/chinling/articles/lup.pdf Radford, Andrew. 1993. "Head-hunting: on the trail of the nominal Janus" In Greville G. Corbett, Norman M. Fraser, and Scott McGlashan, ed., _Heads in grammatical theory_. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. 73-113. Zwicky, Arnold. 1995. "Exceptional degree markers: A puzzle in internal and external syntax" _Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics_ 47, 111-123. ************************************************************************ Edith A. Moravcsik Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA E-mail: edith at uwm.edu Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/ (414) 332-0141 /home/ Fax: (414) 229-2741 From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Jul 28 17:54:45 2000 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU) Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 13:54:45 -0400 Subject: Conference: Syntax & Semantics in Dubrovnik (Final ann.) Message-ID: FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT CSSCC-2000 ­ NEW THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE September 2 to 10, 2000 DUBROVNIK, CROATIA COURSES AND CONFERENCE Participants attending both events are expected to arrive on Saturday, Sept 2. Registration will be on Saturday, Sept 2 and on Sunday, Sept 3 at the courses and conference site: International Center of Croatian Universities ­ ICCU, Don Frane Buli_a 4, Dubrovnik LIST OF COURSES: Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen) ŒCrosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition¹ Daniel Everett (SIL International, Brazil) ŒLexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory¹ Ranko Matasovi_ (University of Zagreb) ŒSynchronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures¹ James Pustejovsky (Brandeis University, Massachussets) ŒGenerative Lexicon¹ Robert D. Van Valin (SUNY at Buffalo) ŒSyntactic Theory¹ COURSE SCHEDULE: September 3 ­ 7 SUNDAY, Sept 3 11:00 ­ 12:30 J. Pustejovsky: Generative Lexicon 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch 14:30 ­ 16:00 D. Everett: Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory 16:00 ­ 16:30 coffee break 16:30 ­ 18:00 R.D. Van Valin: Syntactic Theory MONDAY, Sept 4 9:00 ­ 10:30 M. Bowerman: Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 12:30 R. Matasovi_: Synchronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch 14:30 ­ 16:00 D. Everett: Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory 16:00 ­ 16:30 coffee break 16:30 ­ 18:00 J. Pustejovsky: Generative Lexicon TUESDAY, Sept 5 9:00 ­ 10:30 M. Bowerman: Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 12:30 R.D. Van Valin: Syntactic Theory 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch WEDNESDAY, Sept 6 9:00 ­ 10:30 R. Matasovi_: Sychronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 12:30 D. Everett: Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch 14:30 ­ 16:00 J. Pustejovsky: Generative Lexicon 16:00 ­ 16:30 coffee break 16:30 ­ 18:00 R.D. Van Valin: Syntactic Theory THURSDAY, Sept 7 9:00 ­ 10:30 R. Matasovi_: Sychronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 12:30 M. Bowerman: Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch CONFERENCE SCHEDULE: September 8 - 10 FRIDAY, September 8 Section 1 9:00 ­ 9:30 S. Fulgosi & N. Tu_man-Vukovi_: A New View of Frequency and Prototypes 9:30 ­ 10:00 E. Haman: Why Word Formation is Underestimated in Child Language Research 10:00 ­ 10:30 M. Medved-Krajnovi_: Early Lexical Acquisition ­ A Croatian Example 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 11:30 M. Kova_evi_: (tba) 11:30 ­ 12:00 B. Pavelin: Speech Gestures and Cognitive Development 12:00 ­ 12:30 Z. Jelaska: Synonymic Words Figured out Alone 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch Section 2 15:00 ­ 15:30 I. Zovko: Dative Shift in Croatian 15:30 ­ 16:00 T. Ohori: Some RRG Predictions on the Diachrony of Clause Linkage 16:00 ­ 16:30 N. Grishina: Focus Constructions in Ket 16:30 ­ 17:00 coffee break 17:00 ­ 17:30 A. Maltseva: The Morphosyntactic Mechanisms of Argument Adjusting in the Chukotkan Languages 17:30 ­ 18:00 B. Belaj: Nominalization as a Strategy of Passivization 18:00 ­ 18:30 N. Winther-Nielsen & G. Yaeger: A Semi-Automatic Tool for the Assignment of Verb Argument Structures in a Role and Reference Grammar Framework SATURDAY, September 9 Section 3 9:00 ­ 9:30 B. Yang: Split Intransitivity in Japanese and Korean: a Role and Reference Grammar Account 9:30 ­ 10:00 A. Ozonova: Analytic Constructions with Semantics of Possibility in Altai-Kizhi 10:00 ­ 10:30 A. Jensen: Sentence Intertwining in Danish 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 11:30 N. Sagaan: Spatial Constructions in Tuvan 11:30 ­ 12:00 N. Koshkaryova: Sentences with Ditransitive Verbs in Khanty 12:00 ­ 12:30 R. D. Van Valin: Some remarks on the nature of universal grammar 12:30 ­ 14:30 lunch Section 4 15:00 ­ 15:30 R. Eckardt: Reanalysing selbst 15:30 ­ 16:00 K. Kor_yk: Lexical Representations within the Model of "Communicative Grammar" 16:00 ­ 16:30 E. Petroska: The Categories of Quantity in Macedonian 16:30 ­ 17:00 coffee break 17:00 ­ 17:30 I. Raffaelli: Some Thoughts on the Typology of Adjectives 17:30 ­ 18:00 N. Winther-Nielsen: How to do Role and Reference Grammar in Ancient Hebrew: exploring the challenges of Judges 1-24. 18:00 ­ 18:30 D. _kara: The Poetics of Mind: Interpreting Metaphors and Idioms SUNDAY, September 10 Section 5 9:00 ­ 9:30 A. M. Di Sciullo: Layers in Words 9:30 ­ 10:00 M. M. Brala: Decomposing English, Croatian and Italian Prepositions on a Cognitive Basis 10:00 ­ 10:30 M. Shimojo: A Cognitive Theory of Island Phenomena: The Case of an "Island-Free" Language 10:30 ­ 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ­ 11:30 R. Wilbur: The Cognitive-Semantic-Syntactic (and Prosodic) Interface: Focus in ASL 11:30 ­ 12:00 M. _ic-Fuchs: (tba) 12:00 ­ 12:30 M. Yamamoto: Cognitive Meaning of Japanese tense morphemes: [-ta] and [-ru] Based on Mental Space Model You will have slide and over-head projectors at your disposal, as well as other equipment necessary for the presentation of your course and/or paper. SOCIAL EVENTS: Sunday, Sept 3 ­ opening reception in the morning Monday, Sept 4 ­ concert in the evening Tuesday, Sept 5 ­ sightseeing tour with a guide in the afternoon Thursday, Sept 7 ­ boat trip in the afternoon Saturday, Sept 9 ­ farewell dinner in the evening Please note that ALL social events (as well as lunches [which are full meals, not snacks] and coffees during coffee breaks) are covered by your fee and do not demand extra paying (tickets to museums and other sites visited during the sightseeing tour are not included). TRAVEL Participants arriving to Dubrovnik by plane will be met at the airport by our students who will provide them with information and help in getting to their hotels. The airport is not far from the town, so it is convenient to use regular bus lines or taxis. CURRENCY The current exchange rate for the Croatian currency ­ kuna (short: Kn or HRK) ­ is 1 USD = 8.2 Kn, or 1 DM = 3.9 Kn. It would be useful to change a certain amount of money into kunas when you arrive at the airport. The following credit cards are accepted in practically all places: American Express, Mastercard/Eurocard, Visa and Diners, and you can easily change money in exchange offices, banks and on ATMs. FEE If you have not yet paid your fee, you can do so upon arrival, either by credit card (American Express or Mastercard/Eurocard), or in cash. FOOD If you are vegetarian or vegan, please let us know so we can make arrangements for your meals. OFFICE Our office in Zagreb will be closed from August 1, to August 20. We will be back in the office from August 21 onwards to answer any possible questions anyone might have. Please note that you will still be able to make your hotel reservations at any time till September 1. LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU IN DUBROVNIK! CSSCC-2000 Organizing Committee From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Sat Jul 29 13:08:03 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 08:08:03 -0500 Subject: exceptional adjectives (fwd) Message-ID: Bingfu Lu has asked me to forward the following message to FUNKNET. Edith **************************************************************************** ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 16:11:54 -0700 From: Bingfu Lu To: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Cc: binfu at usc.edu Subject: exceptional adjectives Thanks for Moravcsik's very instructive summary. I would like to add some related data to the phenomenon. In Chinese, we have almost the same paradigm: (1) Zheme congming yi-ge haizi! So/this smart one-CL boy! "So/this smart a boy!" (2) Hao/duo congming yi-ge haizi! How smart one-CL boy! "How smart a boy!" Chinese does not have the indefinite article, thus, yi-ge (one-classifier) serves the function of the indefinite article in most cases. However, "tai Adj" (too Adj) cannot precede 'yi-ge'.(this really puzzles me) (3) *Tai congming yi-ge haizi! too smart yi-ge haizi "Too big an apple!" Anyway, the above near-parallel paradigm suggests that the English 'exceptional' adjectival phrases are not totally exceptional. There must be some universals behind. My previous guess that the indefinite article patterns with numerals is not precise, in the sense that the indefinite article cannot be replaced by numerals. The crucial fact here is that the indefinite article patterns with neither numeral nor the definite article/determiners (this, that). Thus, "pre-article position" seems to be a misleading term, since these adjectives cannot precede the definite article. Moravcsik points out: My concern with Lu's explanation is that I do not see clearly in what way the modifiers "this/too/so Adj" etc. contribute to making the noun phrase more referential or more definite. The fact that "this/so/too... Adj" occurs only with indefinite nouns militates against this idea. A phrase like "this student" is referential and definite; but "this bright a student" is neither definite nor necessarily referential. Based on Moravcsic's observation, I would like revise my previous assumption that 'modifiers contributing more referentiality to their mother NP tend to precede' as 'modifiers that contribute more referentiality to their mother NP or that themselves are more referential tend to precede'. In fact, my previous suggestion is derived from the assumption that more referential units tend to precede. I take it as the unmarked/default correlation between referential units and the units that contribute referentiality. My new assumption covers both the derived assumption and the source universal. I now can answer Moravcsik's concern. 'This' in 'this bright a student' precedes because it is itself more referential, as Moravcsik's term 'deictic adjective' suggests. Adjectives that can occure before the indefinite article includes: too Adj, this Adj, such, how, what, That 'such' and 'this Adj.' are more identifiable/deictic is clear. 'Too Adj' is deictic in the sense that it implies the meaning of 'outstaning' This is true of 'how' and 'what', which are not used intorrogatively, but exclamational, which implies that the related NP is likely at least a specific entity. From gd116 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Mon Jul 31 16:08:05 2000 From: gd116 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (Guy Deutscher) Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 17:08:05 +0100 Subject: rel. pron. agreeing in case with head in main clause Message-ID: Dear all, I wonder if someone could help me with information on any language which has embedded relative clauses and a relative marker that declines for *case*, and in which the relative marker agrees in case with the role of its head in the *main* clause, not in the relative clause. In such a language, a sentence like 'I know the man who died', should have the structure 'I know the man REL.ACC (he) died'. Similarly, 'the son of the man who died', should be something like 'the son of the man REL.GEN (he) died'. And 'the man whom I saw died', should be 'the man REL.NOM I saw (him) died'. Such a system exists in the early stage of ancient Akkadian, and has some sporadic vestiges in other Semitic languages. There are also some similar cases in older Indo-European languages (in Greek and Latin they are called 'case-attraction'). But in the Indo-European cases, the examples of this structure seem to be 'exceptions', i.e. deviations from the more normal formation (where the relative pronoun marks the case of the head in the relative clause). I am looking for languages in which this system is the 'normal' one, and in which it is fully functional. Many thanks, Guy Deutscher. ======================================= Dr Guy Deutscher St John's College Cambridge CB2 1TP England E-mail: gd116 at cam.ac.uk Tel: 01223 - 338741 Fax: 01223 - 740540 From jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU Mon Jul 31 22:34:08 2000 From: jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 14:34:08 -0800 Subject: Review of Pinker? Message-ID: Hi all, I just finished reading Pinker's "Words and Rules" and, after a short search, have found no reviews. Too early? Does anyone know of a review, or perhaps want to put their 2 cents in on the book? I'd love to know what functionalists think of it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 auwera at UIA.UA.AC.BE Mon Jul 3 11:48:05 2000 From: auwera at UIA.UA.AC.BE (Johan van der Auwera) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 13:48:05 +0200 Subject: ALT IV Message-ID: Call for papers Fourth International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT IV) The fourth International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT IV) will be held at the University of California at Santa Barbara, from Thursday July 19 to Sunday July 22, 2001. The conference will be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Institute, sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America, and directly precede the meeting of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. The local organizer for ALT IV will be Marianne Mithun. Members and non-members wishing to present a paper at ALT IV are asked to send six copies of a one-page abstract to the chair of the program committee, Casper de Groot, to reach him no later than January 1, 2001. A second page (six copies) may be attached to the abstract listing data. The abstract itself should contain no identification of the author. A separate sheet should be included which contains the title of the abstract, the name(s) of the author(s), and one mailing address, with telephone, fax, and email address as available. The committee accepts submission via fax or e-mail (with the abstract as part of the message rather than by attachment), but abstracts may be sent by regular mail as well. The time allotted for presentation and discussion is 30 minutes. Members may also submit abstracts for symposia, including the names of participants and the amount of time requested. Participants may not be involved in more than two abstracts, of which at most one may be single-authored. English is the preferred language at the conference. Address for mailing ALT abstracts: Casper de Groot Chair, Program Committee, ALT Leerstoelgroep Theoretische taalwetenschap Universiteit van Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 NL-1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands Fax: 31-20-5253052 casper.de.groot at hum.uva.nl The program committee will, by February 15, 2001 convey its decision on acceptance of papers to those submitting abstracts. The committee consists of Casper de Groot, Zlatka Guentcheva, Maria Polinsky, Oesten Dahl, Walter Bisang and Vera Podlesskaya. Details concerning registration and accommodation for the conference will follow. *** On Thursday, July 19, the first day of ALT IV, there will be a workshop on California Languages. The languages indigenous to California present considerable typological diversity among themselves and contrast in many ways with languages found in other parts of the world. Papers are welcome on any topic of interest to typologists. Each paper will be 20 minutes in length plus 10 minutes for discussion. Anyone wishing to present a paper at this workshop is invited to send an abstract (max 400 words) before January 15 to the address given below. Those sending their abstract by email should include it as part of their message (i.e. not append it as an attachment). Address for workshop abstracts: Marianne Mithun ALT Workshop on California Languages Department of Linguistics UCSB University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA email: mithun at humanitas.ucsb.edu fax: 1-805-563-1948 *** For more information on the Association for Linguistic Typology, consult: http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/alt From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Mon Jul 3 13:14:17 2000 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 15:14:17 +0200 Subject: Confs: SCE final program Message-ID: 10th International Colloquium Societas Caucasologica Europaea University of Munich - August 2 - 5, 2000 The final program of the Colloquium is now available under http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/sce_10.htm. This page also informs about the conference site, registration policy, social events and other related items. Wolfgang Schulze SCE President -- ***************************** 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 ldc at UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU Thu Jul 6 15:00:29 2000 From: ldc at UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU (LDC Office) Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 11:00:29 EDT Subject: New Corpus from LDC Message-ID: ******************************************************** Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English - Part I ******************************************************** LDC is pleased to announce the availability of the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English - Part I. This CD-ROM release contains 14 speech files from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, which was collected by the University of California, Santa Barbara Center for the Study of Discourse under the direction of John W. Du Bois. Associate Editors were Wallace L. Chafe (UCSB), Charles Meyer (UMass, Boston), and Sandra A. Thompson (UCSB). The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English is part of the International Corpus of English (Charles W. Meyer, Director), representing the American Component. The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English is based on hundreds of recordings of natural speech from all over the United States, representing a wide variety of people of different regional origins, ages, occupations, and ethnic and social backgrounds. It reflects many ways that people use language in their lives: conversation, gossip, arguments, on-the-job talk, card games, city council meetings, sales pitches, classroom lectures, political speeches, bedtime stories, sermons, weddings, and more. Each speech file is accompanied by a transcript in which phrases are time stamped with respect to the audio recording. Personal names, place names, phone numbers, etc, in the transcripts have been altered to preserve the anonymity of the speakers and their acquaintances and the audio files have been filtered to make these portions of the recordings unrecognizable. For the latest information on this corpus, please refer to the UCSB and Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) web sites devoted to it: http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/depts/linguistics/research/csae/ http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Publications/SBC/ These sites may also contain software or revised versions of data which may be downloaded. Institutions that have membership in the LDC during the 2000 Membership Year will be able to receive this corpus free of charge. Nonmembers may purchase the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English - Part I for $75. If you would like to order a copy of this corpus, please email your request to . If you need additional information before placing your order, or would like to inquire about membership in the LDC, please send email or call (215) 573-1275. From crubino at ANSWERLOGIC.COM Thu Jul 6 22:03:10 2000 From: crubino at ANSWERLOGIC.COM (Carl Rubino) Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:03:10 -0400 Subject: Linguist positions in NLP and Lexicography Message-ID: AnswerLogic.com, a question-answering software company in downtown Washington DC is hiring a few more linguists and lexicographers to join its staff. Functional orientation is a plus. To browse available positions, please visit: http://www.answerlogic.com/careers.html Information on the Core Linguist position follows, feel free to distribute this to your favorite students: We are seeking applicants with a B.A./B.S. in linguistics (or comparable background); a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) is a plus. Qualified persons will have a solid understanding of English grammar - including the ability to categorize words (part of speech) and identify their functions - as well as an excellent vocabulary. Familiarity with Princeton University's WordNet project is a plus. Experience with information or computer science is desirable. Please note that currently we are not looking for translators or translation services. Qualified candidates please send resume and cover letter to languagelover at answerlogic.com and note that you are applying from the FUNKNET list. Please note that applications without a detailed cover letter will not be considered. AnswerLogic offers benefits that surpass the traditional. In addition to paid vacation and a first-rate healthcare plan, we offer stock options, flexible hours, casual dress, a transportation allowance, diverse and bright coworkers, dinner if you work late and a fully-stocked fridge. What's more, we're always open for suggestions. We believe you should gain as much working with us as we gain from the skills and experience you offer. Our goal is to provide you with an environment conducive to getting results. <<...>> From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Fri Jul 7 20:30:16 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 15:30:16 -0500 Subject: adjectival phrases in English Message-ID: In English, the ordering of adjectival phrases within the noun phrase seems to vary with the composition of the adjectival phrase. First, the order of the adjectival phrase and the indefinite article varies: (1) INDEF.ARTICLE + ADJECT.PHRASE: (a) Peter ate a big apple. (b) Peter ate a very big apple. (c) *Peter ate a too big apple. (d) *Peter ate a this big apple. (2) ADJECT.PHRASE + INDEF.ARTICLE: (a) *Peter ate big an apple. (b) *Peter ate very big an apple. (c) Peter ate too big an apple. (d) Peter ate this big an apple. In other words, "ADJ" and "very + ADJ" follow the indefinite article while "too + ADJ" and "this + ADJ" precede it. Second, the order of the adjectival phrase and the noun itself also varies: "this big" can follow the noun while neither "big" nor "very big" or "too big" can: (3) (a) *Peter ate an apple big. (b) *Peter ate an apple very big. (c) *Peter ate an apple too big. (d) Peter ate an apple this big. What is the explanation of this order variation? A cursory check of Quirk and Greenbaum's "A concise grammar of Contemporary English" did not yield anything. ************************************************************************ Edith A. Moravcsik Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA E-mail: edith at uwm.edu Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/ (414) 332-0141 /home/ Fax: (414) 229-2741 From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Sun Jul 9 20:06:31 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 15:06:31 -0500 Subject: adjectival phrases in English Message-ID: Thanks to Bingfu Lu for his comments regarding the ordering of adjectival phrases in English noun phrases, according to which it depends on the the degree of referentiality or definiteness of the adjectival phrase. - The operative constraint is one specifically on English: both in German and in Hungarian, "this big"- and "too big"-type adjectival expressions are ordered as all others - i.e., they are not exceptional in their ordering. Arnold Zwicky has just informed me that he has a relevant paper: "Exceptional degree markers: a puzzle in internal and external syntax", OSU WPL 47. 111-123, l995. Edith ************************************************************************ Edith A. Moravcsik Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA E-mail: edith at uwm.edu Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/ (414) 332-0141 /home/ Fax: (414) 229-2741 From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Tue Jul 18 22:50:20 2000 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 15:50:20 PDT Subject: schedule Alternatives to Chomsky Message-ID: The following is the schedule for the Alternatives to Chomsky meeting on Sept.4th. This meeting should bring up some highly controversial topics. Everyone is invited to attend and join in the discussion. Bruce Richman ALTERNATIVES TO CHOMSKY: A NEW PARADIGM FOR LANGUAGE STUDIES FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM. A meeting that will be held on Monday Sept. 4 at the University Inn and Conference Center of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in association with the Language Origins Society 2000 annual`meeting. The fee for the one-day meeting will be $20. Registration fee for the LOS 2000 is $75. 9 AM to 12 Noon -- Earl Anderson "Native-speaker Intuition and Folk-linguistics: 'Cratyline Fantasies' as Allegories of the Nature of Language" Bruce Richman "Chomsky's Theory of Innate Language Structure: The Theory Has No Clothes!" Talbot Taylor "The Reflexive Character of Language" 1 PM to 5:30 PM -- Par Segerdahl "On the Distinction Between Language and Its Formal Representation" Jeff Wollock "Language as Animate Motion: on the History of an Idea" Victor Yngve "The Hard Science Alternative" R. Narasinhan "A Suggested New Paradigm for Studying Language Behaviour" Paul Cant "Guidelines for Post-Chomskyan Linguistic Theory" ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From matmies at ling.helsinki.fi Wed Jul 19 14:59:20 2000 From: matmies at ling.helsinki.fi (Matti Miestamo) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 17:59:20 +0300 Subject: Confs: Parts of speech in and across languages Message-ID: Dear All, The program and the abstracts for the symposium Parts of speech in and across languages, organized by the Linguistic Association of Finland at the University of Helsinki, August 17-19, 2000, are available at . For registration and further information, please contact . Organizers From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Tue Jul 25 20:36:51 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:36:51 -0500 Subject: "this big" and "too big" Message-ID: On July 7, I posted some questions regarding the ordering of a subtype of adjectival phrases in English. This is a summary of the responses, most of which came to me directly rather than to FUNKNET. The respondents were Michael Darnell, Deborah DuBartell, Richard Hudson, Bingfu Lu, Carl Mills, Peter, whose last name was not given in his message, and Arnold Zwicky. Thank you for your contributions! The original query pertained to the exceptional ordering of English adjectival phrases such as "this big" and "too bright". The majority of other adjectival phrases take an internal position within the noun phrase: they follow the article and precede the noun, as in a big apple a very big apple. This internal position is not available for "this big", "too big" and some others: *a this big apple *a too big apple; instead, they are ordered on the peripheries of the noun phrase, either preceding the article or, some of them, following the noun: this big an apple too big an apple an apple this big *an apple too big. The question is why these adjectival phrases differ from other adjectival phrases in this manner. Below, I will refer to "this big", "too big", etc. as "exceptional adjectival phrases" and to their positions as "pre-article position" and "post-noun position". I will summarize the responses in two groups: those pertaining to data and those pertaining to analysis. The outline of this report will thus be the following: l. Data (A) Selection (B) Order (C) Variation (a) The pre-article position (b) The post-noun position 2. Analyses (A) The pre-article position (a) Lu's account (b) Zwicky's account (B) The post-noun position (a) Other post-nominal adjectival phrases in English (b) Ellipsis 3. Conclusions References and additional bibliography l. DATA (A) SELECTION First, let us consider selectional constraints INTERNAL to exceptional adjectival phrases. Such phrases consist of an adjective and a modifier of that adjective. While there do not appear to be any constraints on what the adjective can be as long as it is semantically compatible wit the modifier, the possible modifiers form a limited set. Hudson and Zwicky list several of them. The emerging list is this: (Zwicky 1995: 114) "so...that S", "SO(emphatic), that", "as...as S/NP", "too (...(for NP) to VP)" "more (...than NP) (in negative contexts) "how", "however" Second, let us look at the CONTEXT which which exceptional adjectival phrases can be placed. The rest of the noun phrase within which they occur is strictly limited: as pointed out by Hudson and by Zwicky (1995: 115, 118), the article must be "a(n)" and the noun must be singular and countable. Thus, the definite article is ungrammatical (*"this big the apple") and so are plural nouns. For example, as noted by Hudson, "How big a car does your neighbor have?" is OK but "How big cars do the people in your road have?" is not and this fact presents a communication gap: there is no simple way to convey the intended meaning. Notice, however, that the singular-noun requirement holds for only one of the two exceptional orders of the adjectival phrases - in particular, for the pre-article position but not for the post-noun position. Thus, "I don't like this shiny cars." (where "this" is intended as a modifier of "shiny" rather than a determiner of "cars") is ungrammatical but "I don't like cars this shiny." is OK. This suggests that the two exceptional peripheral positions - pre-article and post-noun - form different constructions. The loosening of selectional constraints in the case of postposed adjectival phrases may be a manifestation of the generally less tight connection between noun and postposed attributes manifested in many languages. In other ways, however, exceptional adjectival phrases are selectionally like "normal" ones. Zwicky (1995: 116) points out that in that they can occur predicatively ("The table is very wide." "The table is this wide.") and in "though-fronting" constructions ("Rather big though the box was...", "Too big though the box was...") just as other adjectival phrases can. (B) ORDER The PHRASE-INTERNAL order in exceptional adjectival phrases is regular: modifier followed by adjective. It is their order RELATIVE TO THE REST OF THE NOUN PHRASE that makes them linearly exceptional: as seen above, they are peripherally, rather than internally, placed within the noun phrase. The two peripheral positions in question - pre-article and post-noun - are not on a par. First, as we just saw, the rest of the noun phrase is selectionally more constrained if the adjectival phrase precedes than when it follows. Second, not all exceptional adjectival phrases that can occur in pre-article position can also occur in post-noun position. Thus, "this Adj" can occur in either position but "too Adj", "how Adj" etc. see to be restricted to the pre-article position; cf. this ornate a building a building this ornate too ornate a building *a building too ornate how ornate a building *a building how ornate Zwicky's judgment differs, however. According to him (1995: 122), "too Adj" can also be postposed: he gives the example "any candidate too tired". While a sentence such as "Any candidate too tired can leave the room." does indeed sound good, "I didn't see any candidate too tired." sounds much worse, at least to my non-native ears, than "I didn't see any candidate this tired." Multiple native-speaker judgments would be needed to decide whether "this Adj" and "too Adj" are equally postposable. Thus, the two kinds of adjectival phrases - exceptional ones and (most) normal ones - form subclasses of a single class in terms of both their selectional and their linear properties. The two phrase types are selectionally and linearly alike in their internal sctructure and in that they can both occur in predicative position and in "though"-fronting" constructions occupying the same position. However, exceptional adjectival phrases are linearly different from normal ones in that within the noun phrase, the regular internal position is not available to them; instead, they are ordered peripherally. They in turn fall into two selectionally and linearly significant subclasses: all of them can occur preceding the article, in which case they must occur with indefinite singular nouns, but some of them may also follow the noun, in which case these selectional restrictions are relaxed. (C) VARIATION (a) THE PRE-ARTICLE POSITION The pre-article position of exceptional adjectival phrases is subject to varying grammaticality judgments. Carl Mills made two relevant points relative to his home dialect identified as white, working class, rural, and mostly south midland American. First, he says exceptional adjectival phrases can show non-exceptional order in that they may occur in the regular, noun-phrase internal position. Thus, sentences as "Peter ate a this/too big apple.", he says, are not likely but nonetheless possible in this dialect. His second comment is that, while the pre-article position is possible, it is equally likely that "of" will intervene between modifier and adjective. Thus, in addition to "Peter ate this/too big an apple.", there is the equally likely "Peter ate this/too big of an apple." The "of"-construction was also noted by Darnell and Hudson and it is discussed in Zwicky 1995: 113, 116-117 in the context of other "grammatical" (rather than semantic) uses of "of". This construction may in fact be a legitimate alternative to the "of-less" version in all dialects of English. In addition to differences in how dialects of English evaluate the ordering options of exceptional adjectival phrases, it should be noted that entire languages, too, also differ in this regard. Thus, German "ein so grosses Klavier" "a so big piano" and "ein zu grosses Klavier" "a too big piano" are fine (and the English-like orders "so gross(es) ein Klavier" and "zu gross(es) ein Klavier" are ungrammatical I suspect; but this needs to be checked). Hungarian, too, orders the semantic equivalents of the English exceptional adjectival phrases as all others; i.e., after the article: "egy ilyen nagy zongora" "a so big piano" 'so big a piano' and "egy tu'l nagy zongora" 'too big a piano' are fine but the English-type pre-article order of the adjectival phrase, as in "ilyen nagy egy zongora" "so big a piano" and "tu'l nagy egy zongora" "too big a piano", is ungrammatical. Nonetheless, in exclamations, the deictic adjective "ekkora" 'this big', when used disapprovingly, can occur in either order: "Egy ekkora diszno'sa'g!" "a such mess" or "Ekkora egy diszno'sa'g!" "such a mess", both meaning 'What a mess!'. Furthermore, it is not only that Hungarian does not treat the equivalents of English exceptional adjectival phrases as positional exceptions: their specific selectional properties also do not show up in Hungarian. Thus, unlike in English, "ilyen nagy" 'so big' can cooccur with plural nouns and with the definite article; e.g. - ilyen nagy asztalok "such big tables" 'tables so big' - az ilyen nagy asztal "the such big table" 'the table this big' (b) THE POST-NOUN POSITION No dialectal variation has been evidenced in the responses regarding the post-noun position of exceptional adjectives (e.g. "a book this interesting"). Thus, this order may be universal across English dialects. Whether in other languages where the equivalents of English exceptional adjectives are not exceptional in their prenominal ordering (i.e., they take any article and noun and they occur after the article rather than, as in English, before it) they are nonetheless exceptional in that they can also occur after the noun while other adjectival phrases cannot, remains to be seen. In Hungarian, the equivalents of English adjectival phrases are entirely regular not only in pre-nominal position, occurring after, rather than before, the article, but also in that, just as other adjectival phrases, they cannot occur after the noun. Thus, the equivalents of English exceptional adjectives are not exceptional in Hungarian in any way, be it selection or ordering before or after the noun. Whether in German, noun phrases such as "ein Klavier so gross" and "ein Klavier zu gross" are grammatical or not remains to be checked. 2. ANALYSES (A) THE PRE-ARTICLE POSITION Two analyses have been proposed, one by Bingfu Lu and one in Arnold Zwicky's 1995 article which he referred me to in his response. (a) LU'S ACCOUNT Bingfu Lu suggests that both "this Adj" and "too Adj" occur in front of the article because in noun phrases, modifiers contributing more referentiality to their mother NP tend to precede modifiers that contribute less. As supporting evidence, he cites examples of English adjectives which precede the numeral rather than, as usual for adjectives, follow them: "the next three lanes", "the longest three lanes", "the left three lanes", "the following three lanes" (cf. *"the three next lanes", *"the three following lanes" (although "the three longest lanes" and "the three left lanes" are, for some reason, OK)). Thus, he suggests, if we assume that the indefinite article "a(n)" patterns with numerals, the pre-numeral position of "this/too Adj" is covered by the same generalization as the pre-numeral position of "next", "longest" etc. because "this/too..." also contribute to the referentiality or definiteness of the noun phrase. The principle or referential precedence is laid out in more detail in Lu 1998, especially sections 4.2, 4.5 and 6.5 (e.g. pages 85-86, 99, 111, 104-105, and 173-174 in the hard copy). My concern with Lu's explanation is that I do not see clearly in what way the modifiers "this/too/so Adj" etc. contribute to making the noun phrase more referential or more definite. The fact that "this/so/too... Adj" occurs only with indefinite nouns militates against this idea. A phrase like "this student" is referential and definite; but "this bright a student" is neither definite nor necessarily referential. (b) ZWICKY'S ACCOUNT Zwicky's highly interesting paper is concerned with the general issue of selectional relations in syntax and in particular, with constraints on the proximity and hierarchic relation that can hold between selector and selectee. The "this/too... Adj" construction is discussed on account of two oddnesses. The first thing that is strange about it is that, while "this big" is like a normal adjectival phrase in its internal composition, its external syntax - both selection and order - is different from that of other adjectival phrases, along the lines discussed above. Second, such phrases select a particular determiner ("a(n)") in the NP they combine with even though the determiner is not a sister constituent - which is the normal relation between selector and selectee - but a "niece". The point of the paper is to show that, while "this/too... Adj" phrases are exceptional, their patterning nonetheless has parallels in other phenomena both in English and in other languages (122). For example, the indefinite article of the noun phrase is also selected by an "aunt" in "What a good day!" (117). The pre-article "this/too... Adj" construction thus emerges from Zwicky's discussion as exceptional and unexplained in its detail but not unparalleled in type. (B) THE POST-NOUN POSITION Three relevant ideas have been offered. (a) OTHER POST-NOMINAL ADJECTIVAL PHRASES IN ENGLISH Both Zwicky and Hudson noted that, just as the pre-article position is not unique to exceptional adjectival phrases (there is also "what a day", "such a day", etc.), the post-noun position is also not unique to them. Zwicky (l995) proposes that a necessary - but not sufficient - condition for such postposable adjectival phrases is that they should also be capable of standing as predicates (thus "late" or "former" do not qualify). Within the bounds of this constraint, postposability is OBLIGATORY - if the adjectival phrase contains a complement (e.g., "many faces bright with joy"; cf. *"bright with joy many faces"); and - if the head is an indefinite pronoun (e.g. "something useful"; cf. ?"useful something"), and it is POSSIBLE with "this/(too?)... Adj"-type adjectival phrases (121-122). A sufficient condition for postposability - i.e. a possible common denominator of the constructions just mentioned, is yet to be identified. Richard Hudson cites a subtype of complemented adjectival phrases which are postposable: measure expressions such as "two inches long"; cf. the equal grammaticality of "a two-inches-long line" and "a line two inches long" (although note the "compactness" of the preposed adjectival modifier in comparison to the post-posed one). Since both "two inches long" and "this big" include a noun modifier: "two inches" and "this", Hudson suggests that this may be a common denominator between the two equally postposable adjectival phrases and a sufficient condition for postposability. This account would explain a fact noted above: that "this Adj" and "that Adj" are postposable to the noun but "too Adj" is not or at least not always. The explanation would be that "this" is a noun but "too" is not. However, the problem is that this explanation is its lack of generality: it would account for the postposability of only some exceptional adjectival phrases: for example, "so Adj" is also postposable just as "this Adj" ("A piano this/so big cannot fit into this room.") even though "so" is not a noun and thus not covered by the generalization. However, a related point comes to mind. Whether the fact that the noun "this" occurs as a modifier in one of the exceptional adjectival phrases is relevant or not, remains to be seen; but note, however, that the entire exceptional adjective phrase has something of a nominal character. This is borne out by two facts: its peripheral - pre-article and apposition-like - position within the noun phrase; and the option of cooccurring with "of", a preposition which primarily occurs after nouns. (b) ELLIPSIS Several responents - Darnell, DuBartell, Lu, and Peter - related the fact that "this Adj" can occur after the noun to the fact that such constructions are synonymous with the corresponding relative clause construction - "a book this good" with "a book that is this good"; and they were considering a derivation of the former from the latter. However, as Darnell points out, the fact that "N this Adj" is paraphrasable with a noun plus a relative clause whose predicate is "this Adj" is not a distinguishing feature of the "N this Adj" construction: many other adjectival phrases are paraphrasable the same way; yet, many of those cannot occur post-nominally. Compare "the big table", "the table that is big", *"the table big". 3. CONCLUSIONS What emerges from the above regarding English exceptional adjectival phrases is the following. (a) SELECTION - Phrase-internal selection: While the adjective of an exceptional adjectival phrase is freely selectable, the modifier must come from a small set including "this", "too", etc. - Phrase-external selection: Exceptional adjectival phrases form a proper subclass of adjectival phrases from the point of view of their external syntax. They are selectionally and positionally like many other adjectives in that they can be used and ordered predicatively and in "though-fronting" constructions just as other adjectives; but they differ from the others in that, when preposed to the article, they cooccur only with singular indefinite countable nouns. (b) LINEAR CONSTRAINTS Exceptional adjectival phrases must not be in the regular adjectival post-article position in at least some dialects: instead, they are ordered peripherally to the noun phrase. In particular, all of them must occur in pre-article position if the precede the noun and some of them also have an alternative post-nominal position. (c) VARIATION English dialects differ in whether they do or do not treat exceptional adjectives as linearly exceptional when they occur before the noun - i.e., whether they need to be in pre-article position or not; and languages differ the same way as well. In perhaps all English dialects, however, exceptional adjectival phrases in pre-article position have an alternative expression: in addition to AdjP ART N, there is also AdjP of ART N. This account raises a number of why-questions. l. SELECTIONAL CONSTRAINTS (a) Exactly why do just those modifiers - "this", "too" and the others - figure in selectionally and positionally exceptional adjectival phrases, and not others? If referentiality, definiteness, or being noun-like have anything to do with this, the exact conditions are yet to be spelled out. (b) Exactly why are the selectional constraints of exceptional adjectival phrases relative to their context the way they are? In particular, why are exceptional adjectival phrases LIKE other adjectival phrases in some of their contexts (occurrence in predicate position and in "though-fronting") but UNLIKE them in that in prenominal position, they cooccur with indefinite singular count nouns only? 2. LINEAR CONSTRAINTS Why do exceptional adjectival phrases require or allow for just the positions that they do; and why do they differ among each other in whether they can be post-nominal or not? 3. VARIATION - Why is there both an "of-less" and an "of-full" variety when exceptional adjectival phrases stand before the article? - Why is it that these adjectival phrases are exceptional in some dialects of English but less exceptional in other dialects? - Why are the equivalents of English exceptional articles not exceptional in some other languages? Regarding this last issue, there are four possibilities. First, exceptional adjectival phrases may be a random characteristic of English, similar to any lexical feature such as that 'table' is "table" and not "stol". Second, their presence may be predictable from some other property of English grammar, just as the presence of /k/ is predictable from the fact that English has a /p/ if a universal implication holds according to which languages with /p/ always have a /k/. Or the presence of exceptional adjectives may be it like the /p/, so that it predicts some other characteristic of English grammar. And, fourthly, this feature may be in a bidirectional implicational relationship with some other feature both predicted by it and predicting it. As things now stand, the first, least desirable option holds, according to which the presence and particular properties of exceptional adjectival phrases are an isolated and thus accidental - rather than a systemic, or integrated - property of English. REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY The following relevant titles have been mentioned in the responses. I have not been able to consult Abney 1987 (324), Baker 1989 (327), and Hudson 1990 (370-371). Abney, Steven P. 1987. _The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect._ Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Baker, C.L. 1989. _English syntax._ Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hudson, Richard. 1990. _English word grammar._ Lu, Bingfu. 1998. _Left-right assymmetries of word order variation: a functional explanation_ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California. Available at http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/ealc/chinling/articles/lup.pdf Radford, Andrew. 1993. "Head-hunting: on the trail of the nominal Janus" In Greville G. Corbett, Norman M. Fraser, and Scott McGlashan, ed., _Heads in grammatical theory_. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. 73-113. Zwicky, Arnold. 1995. "Exceptional degree markers: A puzzle in internal and external syntax" _Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics_ 47, 111-123. ************************************************************************ Edith A. Moravcsik Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA E-mail: edith at uwm.edu Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/ (414) 332-0141 /home/ Fax: (414) 229-2741 From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Jul 28 17:54:45 2000 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU) Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 13:54:45 -0400 Subject: Conference: Syntax & Semantics in Dubrovnik (Final ann.) Message-ID: FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT CSSCC-2000 ? NEW THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE September 2 to 10, 2000 DUBROVNIK, CROATIA COURSES AND CONFERENCE Participants attending both events are expected to arrive on Saturday, Sept 2. Registration will be on Saturday, Sept 2 and on Sunday, Sept 3 at the courses and conference site: International Center of Croatian Universities ? ICCU, Don Frane Buli_a 4, Dubrovnik LIST OF COURSES: Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen) ?Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition? Daniel Everett (SIL International, Brazil) ?Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory? Ranko Matasovi_ (University of Zagreb) ?Synchronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures? James Pustejovsky (Brandeis University, Massachussets) ?Generative Lexicon? Robert D. Van Valin (SUNY at Buffalo) ?Syntactic Theory? COURSE SCHEDULE: September 3 ? 7 SUNDAY, Sept 3 11:00 ? 12:30 J. Pustejovsky: Generative Lexicon 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch 14:30 ? 16:00 D. Everett: Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory 16:00 ? 16:30 coffee break 16:30 ? 18:00 R.D. Van Valin: Syntactic Theory MONDAY, Sept 4 9:00 ? 10:30 M. Bowerman: Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 12:30 R. Matasovi_: Synchronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch 14:30 ? 16:00 D. Everett: Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory 16:00 ? 16:30 coffee break 16:30 ? 18:00 J. Pustejovsky: Generative Lexicon TUESDAY, Sept 5 9:00 ? 10:30 M. Bowerman: Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 12:30 R.D. Van Valin: Syntactic Theory 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch WEDNESDAY, Sept 6 9:00 ? 10:30 R. Matasovi_: Sychronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 12:30 D. Everett: Lexical Integrity and Word-formation in Optimality Theory 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch 14:30 ? 16:00 J. Pustejovsky: Generative Lexicon 16:00 ? 16:30 coffee break 16:30 ? 18:00 R.D. Van Valin: Syntactic Theory THURSDAY, Sept 7 9:00 ? 10:30 R. Matasovi_: Sychronic and Diachronic Typology of Syntactic Structures 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 12:30 M. Bowerman: Crosslinguistic perspectives on first language acquisition 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch CONFERENCE SCHEDULE: September 8 - 10 FRIDAY, September 8 Section 1 9:00 ? 9:30 S. Fulgosi & N. Tu_man-Vukovi_: A New View of Frequency and Prototypes 9:30 ? 10:00 E. Haman: Why Word Formation is Underestimated in Child Language Research 10:00 ? 10:30 M. Medved-Krajnovi_: Early Lexical Acquisition ? A Croatian Example 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 11:30 M. Kova_evi_: (tba) 11:30 ? 12:00 B. Pavelin: Speech Gestures and Cognitive Development 12:00 ? 12:30 Z. Jelaska: Synonymic Words Figured out Alone 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch Section 2 15:00 ? 15:30 I. Zovko: Dative Shift in Croatian 15:30 ? 16:00 T. Ohori: Some RRG Predictions on the Diachrony of Clause Linkage 16:00 ? 16:30 N. Grishina: Focus Constructions in Ket 16:30 ? 17:00 coffee break 17:00 ? 17:30 A. Maltseva: The Morphosyntactic Mechanisms of Argument Adjusting in the Chukotkan Languages 17:30 ? 18:00 B. Belaj: Nominalization as a Strategy of Passivization 18:00 ? 18:30 N. Winther-Nielsen & G. Yaeger: A Semi-Automatic Tool for the Assignment of Verb Argument Structures in a Role and Reference Grammar Framework SATURDAY, September 9 Section 3 9:00 ? 9:30 B. Yang: Split Intransitivity in Japanese and Korean: a Role and Reference Grammar Account 9:30 ? 10:00 A. Ozonova: Analytic Constructions with Semantics of Possibility in Altai-Kizhi 10:00 ? 10:30 A. Jensen: Sentence Intertwining in Danish 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 11:30 N. Sagaan: Spatial Constructions in Tuvan 11:30 ? 12:00 N. Koshkaryova: Sentences with Ditransitive Verbs in Khanty 12:00 ? 12:30 R. D. Van Valin: Some remarks on the nature of universal grammar 12:30 ? 14:30 lunch Section 4 15:00 ? 15:30 R. Eckardt: Reanalysing selbst 15:30 ? 16:00 K. Kor_yk: Lexical Representations within the Model of "Communicative Grammar" 16:00 ? 16:30 E. Petroska: The Categories of Quantity in Macedonian 16:30 ? 17:00 coffee break 17:00 ? 17:30 I. Raffaelli: Some Thoughts on the Typology of Adjectives 17:30 ? 18:00 N. Winther-Nielsen: How to do Role and Reference Grammar in Ancient Hebrew: exploring the challenges of Judges 1-24. 18:00 ? 18:30 D. _kara: The Poetics of Mind: Interpreting Metaphors and Idioms SUNDAY, September 10 Section 5 9:00 ? 9:30 A. M. Di Sciullo: Layers in Words 9:30 ? 10:00 M. M. Brala: Decomposing English, Croatian and Italian Prepositions on a Cognitive Basis 10:00 ? 10:30 M. Shimojo: A Cognitive Theory of Island Phenomena: The Case of an "Island-Free" Language 10:30 ? 11:00 coffee break 11:00 ? 11:30 R. Wilbur: The Cognitive-Semantic-Syntactic (and Prosodic) Interface: Focus in ASL 11:30 ? 12:00 M. _ic-Fuchs: (tba) 12:00 ? 12:30 M. Yamamoto: Cognitive Meaning of Japanese tense morphemes: [-ta] and [-ru] Based on Mental Space Model You will have slide and over-head projectors at your disposal, as well as other equipment necessary for the presentation of your course and/or paper. SOCIAL EVENTS: Sunday, Sept 3 ? opening reception in the morning Monday, Sept 4 ? concert in the evening Tuesday, Sept 5 ? sightseeing tour with a guide in the afternoon Thursday, Sept 7 ? boat trip in the afternoon Saturday, Sept 9 ? farewell dinner in the evening Please note that ALL social events (as well as lunches [which are full meals, not snacks] and coffees during coffee breaks) are covered by your fee and do not demand extra paying (tickets to museums and other sites visited during the sightseeing tour are not included). TRAVEL Participants arriving to Dubrovnik by plane will be met at the airport by our students who will provide them with information and help in getting to their hotels. The airport is not far from the town, so it is convenient to use regular bus lines or taxis. CURRENCY The current exchange rate for the Croatian currency ? kuna (short: Kn or HRK) ? is 1 USD = 8.2 Kn, or 1 DM = 3.9 Kn. It would be useful to change a certain amount of money into kunas when you arrive at the airport. The following credit cards are accepted in practically all places: American Express, Mastercard/Eurocard, Visa and Diners, and you can easily change money in exchange offices, banks and on ATMs. FEE If you have not yet paid your fee, you can do so upon arrival, either by credit card (American Express or Mastercard/Eurocard), or in cash. FOOD If you are vegetarian or vegan, please let us know so we can make arrangements for your meals. OFFICE Our office in Zagreb will be closed from August 1, to August 20. We will be back in the office from August 21 onwards to answer any possible questions anyone might have. Please note that you will still be able to make your hotel reservations at any time till September 1. LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU IN DUBROVNIK! CSSCC-2000 Organizing Committee From edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Sat Jul 29 13:08:03 2000 From: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 08:08:03 -0500 Subject: exceptional adjectives (fwd) Message-ID: Bingfu Lu has asked me to forward the following message to FUNKNET. Edith **************************************************************************** ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 16:11:54 -0700 From: Bingfu Lu To: edith at CSD.UWM.EDU Cc: binfu at usc.edu Subject: exceptional adjectives Thanks for Moravcsik's very instructive summary. I would like to add some related data to the phenomenon. In Chinese, we have almost the same paradigm: (1) Zheme congming yi-ge haizi! So/this smart one-CL boy! "So/this smart a boy!" (2) Hao/duo congming yi-ge haizi! How smart one-CL boy! "How smart a boy!" Chinese does not have the indefinite article, thus, yi-ge (one-classifier) serves the function of the indefinite article in most cases. However, "tai Adj" (too Adj) cannot precede 'yi-ge'.(this really puzzles me) (3) *Tai congming yi-ge haizi! too smart yi-ge haizi "Too big an apple!" Anyway, the above near-parallel paradigm suggests that the English 'exceptional' adjectival phrases are not totally exceptional. There must be some universals behind. My previous guess that the indefinite article patterns with numerals is not precise, in the sense that the indefinite article cannot be replaced by numerals. The crucial fact here is that the indefinite article patterns with neither numeral nor the definite article/determiners (this, that). Thus, "pre-article position" seems to be a misleading term, since these adjectives cannot precede the definite article. Moravcsik points out: My concern with Lu's explanation is that I do not see clearly in what way the modifiers "this/too/so Adj" etc. contribute to making the noun phrase more referential or more definite. The fact that "this/so/too... Adj" occurs only with indefinite nouns militates against this idea. A phrase like "this student" is referential and definite; but "this bright a student" is neither definite nor necessarily referential. Based on Moravcsic's observation, I would like revise my previous assumption that 'modifiers contributing more referentiality to their mother NP tend to precede' as 'modifiers that contribute more referentiality to their mother NP or that themselves are more referential tend to precede'. In fact, my previous suggestion is derived from the assumption that more referential units tend to precede. I take it as the unmarked/default correlation between referential units and the units that contribute referentiality. My new assumption covers both the derived assumption and the source universal. I now can answer Moravcsik's concern. 'This' in 'this bright a student' precedes because it is itself more referential, as Moravcsik's term 'deictic adjective' suggests. Adjectives that can occure before the indefinite article includes: too Adj, this Adj, such, how, what, That 'such' and 'this Adj.' are more identifiable/deictic is clear. 'Too Adj' is deictic in the sense that it implies the meaning of 'outstaning' This is true of 'how' and 'what', which are not used intorrogatively, but exclamational, which implies that the related NP is likely at least a specific entity. From gd116 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK Mon Jul 31 16:08:05 2000 From: gd116 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK (Guy Deutscher) Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 17:08:05 +0100 Subject: rel. pron. agreeing in case with head in main clause Message-ID: Dear all, I wonder if someone could help me with information on any language which has embedded relative clauses and a relative marker that declines for *case*, and in which the relative marker agrees in case with the role of its head in the *main* clause, not in the relative clause. In such a language, a sentence like 'I know the man who died', should have the structure 'I know the man REL.ACC (he) died'. Similarly, 'the son of the man who died', should be something like 'the son of the man REL.GEN (he) died'. And 'the man whom I saw died', should be 'the man REL.NOM I saw (him) died'. Such a system exists in the early stage of ancient Akkadian, and has some sporadic vestiges in other Semitic languages. There are also some similar cases in older Indo-European languages (in Greek and Latin they are called 'case-attraction'). But in the Indo-European cases, the examples of this structure seem to be 'exceptions', i.e. deviations from the more normal formation (where the relative pronoun marks the case of the head in the relative clause). I am looking for languages in which this system is the 'normal' one, and in which it is fully functional. Many thanks, Guy Deutscher. ======================================= Dr Guy Deutscher St John's College Cambridge CB2 1TP England E-mail: gd116 at cam.ac.uk Tel: 01223 - 338741 Fax: 01223 - 740540 From jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU Mon Jul 31 22:34:08 2000 From: jrubba at CALPOLY.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 14:34:08 -0800 Subject: Review of Pinker? Message-ID: Hi all, I just finished reading Pinker's "Words and Rules" and, after a short search, have found no reviews. Too early? Does anyone know of a review, or perhaps want to put their 2 cents in on the book? I'd love to know what functionalists think of it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~