From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wilcox at UNM.EDU Sun Feb 3 18:48:19 2002 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 11:48:19 -0700 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Uncle!!! -- Sherman Wilcox University of New Mexico From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 19:01:36 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 19:01:36 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 20:28:51 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 20:28:51 +0000 Subject: SORRY! for multiple messages; computer glitch! Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 19:37:32 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 19:37:32 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wilcox at UNM.EDU Sun Feb 3 22:07:02 2002 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 15:07:02 -0700 Subject: Oh, now I get it! In-Reply-To: <200202032156.g13Ludj14431@central.cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: On 2/3/02 2:56 PM, Ellen F. Prince said: > Is this a subtle way of saying that there's nothing beyond Chomsky? Wonderful! -- Sherman From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sun Feb 3 21:56:39 2002 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 16:56:39 EST Subject: Oh, now I get it! Message-ID: Is this a subtle way of saying that there's nothing beyond Chomsky? ;) ------- Forwarded Message Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 From: bruce richman To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003
   


Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: Click Here
------- End of Forwarded Message From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Feb 4 17:28:33 2002 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 09:28:33 -0800 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: Dear FUNK people,] Having received, courtesy of Bruce Richman, 22 commerial messaages from the hustlers at Hotmail, and having been over the past few months subjected to his repeated announcements of the "Beyond Chomsky" agenda, I am finally moved to say the following: Hey, you may be a terrific guy, Bruce, I have no way of knowing. But---even you Hotmail caper aside--I think you stand in grave danger of alienating a substantial number of the FUNK folk. So I though I'd maybe take a minute to tell you why. Vigorous alternative approaches to Chomsky sprang all over the countryside beginning with Ross & Lajoff (1967) "Is deep structure necessary?". Chuck Fillmore (1966) "The case for the case" was an implicit challenge already. Wally Chafe's (1970) "Meanning & the structure of language" was right-on and right there. The early CLS years (1968-1975) gave vent to a large & unruly collection of 'alternatives'. The Greenberg/Bolinger-inspired typological-cum-functional explosion of the 1970s was another case in point, as was Langacker/Lakoff's "Cognitive Grammar". Joan Bresnan, another ex-student of Chomsky, has certainly counted herself as an alternative to nthe Master since the late 1970s. And there are many more whom space does not permit to enumerate. But still, Bruce-- Even if you grant all this, there is something a bit bizarre about the "Beyond Chomsk" agenda. Certainly to me. You see, I count myself as Chomsky's student. I rebelled very early, even before I finished my dissertation (1969). For how could someone interested in typological diversity, meaning/function and diachrony abide by Aspects for very long? But Aspects was my first Syntax textbook, fresh off the press (1965). And to this day, having spent I think a considerable portion--perhaps too much--of my professional life trying to articulate where the Generative agenda went wrong--I still must go on record and say that I owe my career in syntax (and linguistics) to Noam Chomsky. And that even when I find him least helpful, most arcane, most infuriating, I must nonetheless credit him with raising some of the most interesting questions that still haunt us in the study of grammar/syntax. Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner extreme empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, memory, immitation and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have challenged Bloomfield's anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would have raised the possibility that beyond the surface item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield urge us to catalogue, classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system that 'supported semantic interpretation'? That accounted for meaning paraphrases? That accounter for 'syntactic' (but perforce also semantic, given Chomsky's very definition of Deep Structure) ambiguity? Ross and Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in Ch. 2 of Aspects. Sure, we have many reasons for choosing to disagree with Chomsky. But before we/you go beyond him, perhaps it would behoove us all to acknowledge what--and how much--we owe him. And perhaps it would be useful to remind ourselves that however infuriating he may be at times, and however 'wrong' posterity may eventually deem him (yeah, that fickle lady of whom none of us could ever take for granted...), his reasons for doing things the way he does are neither haphazard nor fickle nor incoherent. They spring from, and are dictated by, an agenda that has certain--indeed rather consistent--philosophical & methodological roots, ones that may be traced back to both Plato and Saussure and, somewhat paradoxically, also to Russell and Carnap (tho here Chomsky might disagree most violently). What is more, Chomsky's historical position--as the person who almost single-handedly deposed the dogmatic, philosophically-constrained, methodologically bizarre Bloomfieldians at the worst stage of their convoluted, garrulous decay in the 1950s--is something all of us benefitted from, and should be therefore generous enough to acknowledge. The fact that Chomsky's Generativism soon became just as extreme and reductive as the dogma Empiricist that preceded it is indeed sad. It reflects a certain dynamics of our historical community, of swinging like a wild pendulum from one extreme to the other. It is indeed this very reductionism that impelled many of us, I contend for valid philosophical and methodological reasons, to dissent and strike out on our own. But let us (in this departing from Chosky's own occasionally-infuriating coups of revisionist historicism and self-invention) try to keep in mind where we come from. It has, just maybe, a huge bearing on where we're headed. Y'all be good y'hear, TG ========================= bruce richman wrote: > Beyond Chomsky 2003: The Real Study of Real > Language A conference to be held on April > 26 and 27, 2003 at Carnegie Mellon > University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania For the past 40 years > progress in the study of language has been set back by the huge > influence of Chomsky's model of studying language. Linguists, > language scholars, people in other fields, and the general public have > concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery about > language of great scientific importance. (See the pro-Chomsky > article that appeared in the Science News section of the New York > Times on Jan. 15, 2002 for an example of this.) The time has come > for those of us who know better, to announce to the world that > Chomsky's great "discovery" about language is basically empty and > irrelevant. Rather than being a real study of real language, > Chomsky's method involves the rhetorical invention of a made-up > subject matter that has little relation to language and little > relevance for it. It started out supposedly being an explanation > about the discourse relations of sentences. Then it changed to an > explanation of the psychological reality of sentences. When this > proved impossible, Chomsky's method retreated to being an explanation > of biology; a biology that was impossible to study -- but great for > speculation. For 40 years, it has retreated further and further away > from the reality of language. Chomsky's model remains just an > ingenious explanation in search of something to explain. Once we > renounce this irrelevant "method," we can go forward with the hard > work of the empirical study of real language in real life. > Chomsky's biggest mistake from the beginning was to hold on > tenaciously to the belief in the basic principle of traditional > grammar that the basic organizing force of grammar is meaningless, > mechanical "agreement." This mistaken view of grammar as meaningless > and mechanical goes back to the theories of ancient grammarians, who > were unable to explain the actual distribution of grammatical cases, > and consequently invented the notion of grammatical "agreement" as a > way to "explain" their ignorance of why forms were distributed as they > were. (The late William Diver and his followers have done great work > on this subject.) Chomsky and his followers have taken this > crucial mistaken view of grammar and kicked it upstairs and enshrined > it, making meaningless, mechanical grammar the be all and end all of > all accounts of language. All the complicated grammatical stuff > that Chomskyans expend so much ingenious efforts on "explaining" are > about aspects of grammar that are entirely irrelevant to what most > adults and all children actually deal with. All the complicated > grammatical "calculations" that Chomskyans waste so much effort on are > about phenomena that do not occur at all in spontaneous spoken > language and are really the kind of stuff that only some college > trained people sometimes encounter in written form. Real spontaneous > spoken language is quite free of much of the "grammar" so dear to > Chomskyans hearts. (See Jim Miller and Regina Weinart's work on > this.) This is another reason to agree with Esa Itkonen that > Chomsky's theory is an explanation in search of something to > explain. We want people from a wide range of areas related to > language present papers and join in our discussions. Only by having > people from many different areas can we build up an overall picture of > where language study should go. At the end of the conference we will > try to put together a collective statement of the findings of the > conference which we will make public. If you are interested in > participating, please contact Bruce Richman at > brucerichman at hotmail.com or Alexander Gross at > language at sprynet.com > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Join the worldÂ’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. Click Here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kees.hengeveld at HUM.UVA.NL Mon Feb 4 19:33:09 2002 From: kees.hengeveld at HUM.UVA.NL (Kees Hengeveld) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 20:33:09 +0100 Subject: International MA and MPhil in Linguistics at U Amsterdam Message-ID: As of September 2002, the University of Amsterdam offers a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and a Master of Arts (MA) Programme in Linguistics. Both programmes are taught in English or, in the case of language-specific courses, in the target language. The MPhil Programme in Linguistics is a one-year research oriented programme which offers the opportunity to specialize in a wide range of linguistic subdisciplines. The programme is open to a maximum of fifteen students and is offered to selected, highly qualified students with an MA in the field of Linguistics or an equivalent programme of at least four years of full-time study at university level. The Master of Arts (MA) Programme in Linguistics offers the same range of specializations, but aims at students with a BA in Linguistics or an equivalent programme of at least three years of full-time study at university level who wish to continue their studies at the University of Amsterdam. The University of Amsterdam is interested in attracting talented researchers, and offers a number of partial tuition waivers to students wishing to participate in the MPhil programme. Further partial tuition waivers are available for qualified students from EU-countries who wish to participate in the MA-programme. Further information about the programmes may be found at www.hum.uva.nl/graduateschool or requested from . From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Mon Feb 4 20:10:57 2002 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 12:10:57 -0800 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: Like Talmy, I have mixed feelings about Bruce Ricman's "Beyond Chomsky" initiative, although my concerns are a bit different from Talmy's. I agree that this proposed initiative seems to be quite naive regarding the long list of linguists who have provided critical alternatives, for many years, to Chomsky's particular variants of generative grammar. So my response to each of these mailings has been "Good idea, but hasn't it already been done?" But I have to disagree with Talmy about the magnitude of Chomsky's contribution in bringing down the hated behaviorists. Talmy seems to be quite naive regarding the long list of psychologists who have provided critical alternatives to behaviorism, for many years, before and during and after Chomsky's own contributions. The truth is that radical, "black box", Watson/Skinner behaviorism was a flash in the pan. Its primary role in history (it now seems) has been to serve as a scarecrow for generations of generative linguists. I think it would be useful for functionalists and generativists alike to understand this a little bit better. It is deeply human to want to look inside any box that is placed before us. There were physiological psychologists trying to look inside that box throughout the 20th century, and experimental psychology has never been without a high proportion of influential mentalists. Donald Hebb comes to mind: his 1949 book "The organization of behavior" was really about the organization of the mind/brain, and if there is one psychologist in the history of our field who has been proven SOUNDLY AND FULLY right, it was Donald Hebb (in case you have ever heard the term "Hebbian learning", it comes from Hebb's conjecture that "the neurons that fire together wire together", an unabashedly associationist principle that has been repeatedly confirmed and elaborated in neuroscience since his time -- Eric Kandel's Nobel Prize two years ago in many respects represents an acknowledgment of Hebb's victory). And then of course there was Edward Tolman, the Berkeley psychologist for whom the Berkeley Psychology building is named. Tolman believed that the rat presses the bar because he EXPECTS to be reinforced -- rats have expectations, hopes, dreams and aspirations, and psychologists have to deal with those facts and build a theory that contains them. If you would like to take a look at his classic paper "Cognitive maps in rats and men", here is a URL that will take you right to it... http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Tolman/Maps/maps.htm But the list goes on. Do you know when the term "psycholinguistics" was first applied to a conference? It was in 1952, five years before Chomsky's first influential book appeared. The conference was organized by Charles Osgood, to put linguists and psychologists together to talk about similarities and differences in their mental models of language as well as their empirical methods. To be sure, there was a big non-linear acceleration in ideas and works of this kind after 1957, but I get a bit tired of hearing people say that Chomsky started the Cognitive Revolution. The return to mentalism was inevitable, for two reasons: (1) accelerating progress in neuroscience brought with it a renewed hope that a mechanistic base could be found for mental phenomena, and (2) the birth of computing machines (symbolic and connectionist, born around the same time) meant that we now had a truly mechanistic (as in 'machines') set of metaphors for exploring mental phenomena. If you look at fields like ethology, developmental psychology and physiological psychology, you will find that the same big non-linear blip was happening everywhere. There was a return to mentalism all across the behavioral and neural sciences (that would eventually become the cognitive sciences), promulgated in many cases by people who had never heard of Chomsky, or if they had, they knew that he was an influential linguist who ALSO (like them) thought that we could investigate the contents of mind. It is no coincidence that Piaget's works were translated into English or widely read by developmental psychologists in the 1960's (many years after they were written). Piaget's influence on developmental psychology after that point was one more sign of the return to mentalism that characterized the Cognitive Revolution. But here is where Chomsky and his followers hijacked the mentalist movement (or at least their sector of it): mentalism does not have to go hand in hand with (a) nativism, or (b) autonomy of domains, but Chomsky's particular version of mentalism contained (then and now) strong assumptions about the innateness and autonomy of language. And in the "take no prisoners" atmosphere that flourished in that particular community, anyone who did not buy the *WHOLE PACKAGE* was roundly denounced as a behaviorist. Piaget is the best case in point: as nativists got more and more control of the agenda in developmental psychology, Piaget was pilloried for his belief in construction and emergence (neither innate, nor learned, a category unto itself). Piatelli-Palmarini's edited book "The Piaget-Chomsky Debate" was a high water mark (and low point in my own career, it was such a depressing patricidal moment). And yet Piaget was the consummate mentalist, someone who deeply believed that mind is rooted in biology, and can be studied with experimental methods like any other biological phenomenon. His crimes, it seems, were his belief in emergence (as opposed to a strictly deterministic form of innateness, one that takes the form of a priori representations/knowledge), and his belief in the fundamental unity of cognitive phenomena (as opposed to domain specificity and autonomy). Those beliefs were and are unacceptable to card-carrying members of the Chomskian orthodoxy. We live in an era today in which the vast majority of neurobiologists are convinced that cortex is largely constructed, the result of plastic and bidirectional processes that include genes-->structure but also experience-->structure. Activity dependence and plasticity are acknowledged as primary processes in setting up the brain, including forms of experience that are going on in utero, with the body teaching the brain via exactly the same mechanisms that mediate what we have to call 'learning' later on. The emergentist approach is clearly on the rise in biology, and in computational neuroscience (in the various branches of neural network research). Unfortunately, I think that Chomsky's strong insistence on a preformationist kind of nativism and a compartmentalization of the mind are now obstacles to change. At one time he was an important part of the cognitive revolution (though he did not do it alone, and it would have happened anyway even if he had not been around). Right now, I think we do need to move beyond those aspects of his views that have been eclipsed in neuroscience but are still embraced in linguistics. But it is hard to make that point, because there is still a very strong sociological tendency in generative grammar to belittle anyone who promotes emergence, plasticity, or (God forbid) the kind of complex, rich and neurally valid associationism that Hebb understood long ago. If you don't buy the whole package, you are a behaviorist. Talmy indicates in the following quote that he is indeed still Chomsky's student in that particular sense: >Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner extreme >empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, memory, immitation >and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have challenged Bloomfield's >anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would have raised the possibility >that beyond the surface item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield >urge us to catalogue, classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system >that 'supported semantic interpretation'? Who indeed? My answer is: a whole lot of people, in linguistics and psychology and neuroscience and computer science, people were challenging the Watson/Skinner extreme for many many years. Give up on that scarecrow. It doesn't exist, and in reality, it was never more than a kind of radical-chic stance taken by a handful of psychologists just to see how far they could go. In some respects, I think that Bruce Richman's call for us to move "Beyond Chomsky" has come in a little late. Many of us already did that a long time ago. What we need to do now is to sort through a complex landscape of beliefs (emergence vs. learning vs. unfolding of innate knowledge; modularity vs. interactionism; autonomous syntax vs. embodied grammar) and figure out how they can be reconfigured and recombined for a new era. -liz bates From kfeld at CITRUS.UCR.EDU Mon Feb 4 21:02:38 2002 From: kfeld at CITRUS.UCR.EDU (David B. Kronenfeld) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 13:02:38 -0800 Subject: moving beyond In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Amen. With maybe a little add to the effect that Bloomfield himself, in his actual practice, as nowhere near as bad as he himself made himself out to be (in what he said should be done)--to cover what then, at the time, looked to be his science flank. The "taxonomic" charge against Bloomfield sort of sticks; the "radical behaviorist" one is, to my mind, a much harder sell. David At 12:10 PM 2/4/02 -0800, Liz Bates wrote: >Like Talmy, I have mixed feelings about Bruce Ricman's "Beyond Chomsky" >initiative, although my concerns are a bit different from Talmy's. I agree >that this proposed initiative seems to be quite naive regarding the long >list of linguists who have provided critical alternatives, for many years, >to Chomsky's particular variants of generative grammar. So my response to >each of these mailings has been "Good idea, but hasn't it already been >done?" But I have to disagree with Talmy about the magnitude of Chomsky's >contribution in bringing down the hated behaviorists. Talmy seems to be >quite naive regarding the long list of psychologists who have provided >critical alternatives to behaviorism, for many years, before and during and >after Chomsky's own contributions. > >The truth is that radical, "black box", Watson/Skinner behaviorism was a >flash in the pan. Its primary role in history (it now seems) has been to >serve as a scarecrow for generations of generative linguists. I think it >would be useful for functionalists and generativists alike to understand >this a little bit better. It is deeply human to want to look inside any >box that is placed before us. There were physiological psychologists >trying to look inside that box throughout the 20th century, and >experimental psychology has never been without a high proportion of >influential mentalists. Donald Hebb comes to mind: his 1949 book "The >organization of behavior" was really about the organization of the >mind/brain, and if there is one psychologist in the history of our field >who has been proven SOUNDLY AND FULLY right, it was Donald Hebb (in case >you have ever heard the term "Hebbian learning", it comes from Hebb's >conjecture that "the neurons that fire together wire together", an >unabashedly associationist principle that has been repeatedly confirmed and >elaborated in neuroscience since his time -- Eric Kandel's Nobel Prize two >years ago in many respects represents an acknowledgment of Hebb's victory). >And then of course there was Edward Tolman, the Berkeley psychologist for >whom the Berkeley Psychology building is named. Tolman believed that the >rat presses the bar because he EXPECTS to be reinforced -- rats have >expectations, hopes, dreams and aspirations, and psychologists have to deal >with those facts and build a theory that contains them. If you would like >to take a look at his classic paper "Cognitive maps in rats and men", here >is a URL that will take you right to it... > >http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Tolman/Maps/maps.htm > >But the list goes on. Do you know when the term "psycholinguistics" was >first applied to a conference? It was in 1952, five years before Chomsky's >first influential book appeared. The conference was organized by Charles >Osgood, to put linguists and psychologists together to talk about >similarities and differences in their mental models of language as well as >their empirical methods. > >To be sure, there was a big non-linear acceleration in ideas and works of >this kind after 1957, but I get a bit tired of hearing people say that >Chomsky started the Cognitive Revolution. The return to mentalism was >inevitable, for two reasons: (1) accelerating progress in neuroscience >brought with it a renewed hope that a mechanistic base could be found for >mental phenomena, and (2) the birth of computing machines (symbolic and >connectionist, born around the same time) meant that we now had a truly >mechanistic (as in 'machines') set of metaphors for exploring mental >phenomena. If you look at fields like ethology, developmental psychology >and physiological psychology, you will find that the same big non-linear >blip was happening everywhere. There was a return to mentalism all across >the behavioral and neural sciences (that would eventually become the >cognitive sciences), promulgated in many cases by people who had never >heard of Chomsky, or if they had, they knew that he was an influential >linguist who ALSO (like them) thought that we could investigate the >contents of mind. It is no coincidence that Piaget's works were translated >into English or widely read by developmental psychologists in the 1960's >(many years after they were written). Piaget's influence on developmental >psychology after that point was one more sign of the return to mentalism >that characterized the Cognitive Revolution. But here is where Chomsky and >his followers hijacked the mentalist movement (or at least their sector of >it): mentalism does not have to go hand in hand with (a) nativism, or (b) >autonomy of domains, but Chomsky's particular version of mentalism >contained (then and now) strong assumptions about the innateness and >autonomy of language. And in the "take no prisoners" atmosphere that >flourished in that particular community, anyone who did not buy the *WHOLE >PACKAGE* was roundly denounced as a behaviorist. Piaget is the best case >in point: as nativists got more and more control of the agenda in >developmental psychology, Piaget was pilloried for his belief in >construction and emergence (neither innate, nor learned, a category unto >itself). Piatelli-Palmarini's edited book "The Piaget-Chomsky Debate" was >a high water mark (and low point in my own career, it was such a depressing >patricidal moment). And yet Piaget was the consummate mentalist, someone >who deeply believed that mind is rooted in biology, and can be studied with >experimental methods like any other biological phenomenon. His crimes, it >seems, were his belief in emergence (as opposed to a strictly deterministic >form of innateness, one that takes the form of a priori >representations/knowledge), and his belief in the fundamental unity of >cognitive phenomena (as opposed to domain specificity and autonomy). Those >beliefs were and are unacceptable to card-carrying members of the Chomskian >orthodoxy. > >We live in an era today in which the vast majority of neurobiologists are >convinced that cortex is largely constructed, the result of plastic and >bidirectional processes that include genes-->structure but also >experience-->structure. Activity dependence and plasticity are >acknowledged as primary processes in setting up the brain, including forms >of experience that are going on in utero, with the body teaching the brain >via exactly the same mechanisms that mediate what we have to call >'learning' later on. The emergentist approach is clearly on the rise in >biology, and in computational neuroscience (in the various branches of >neural network research). Unfortunately, I think that Chomsky's strong >insistence on a preformationist kind of nativism and a compartmentalization >of the mind are now obstacles to change. At one time he was an important >part of the cognitive revolution (though he did not do it alone, and it >would have happened anyway even if he had not been around). Right now, I >think we do need to move beyond those aspects of his views that have been >eclipsed in neuroscience but are still embraced in linguistics. But it is >hard to make that point, because there is still a very strong sociological >tendency in generative grammar to belittle anyone who promotes emergence, >plasticity, or (God forbid) the kind of complex, rich and neurally valid >associationism that Hebb understood long ago. If you don't buy the whole >package, you are a behaviorist. Talmy indicates in the following quote >that he is indeed still Chomsky's student in that particular sense: > > >Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner extreme > >empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, memory, immitation > >and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have challenged Bloomfield's > >anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would have raised the possibility > >that beyond the surface item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield > >urge us to catalogue, classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system > >that 'supported semantic interpretation'? > >Who indeed? My answer is: a whole lot of people, in linguistics and >psychology and neuroscience and computer science, people were challenging >the Watson/Skinner extreme for many many years. Give up on that scarecrow. >It doesn't exist, and in reality, it was never more than a kind of >radical-chic stance taken by a handful of psychologists just to see how far >they could go. In some respects, I think that Bruce Richman's call for us >to move "Beyond Chomsky" has come in a little late. Many of us already did >that a long time ago. What we need to do now is to sort through a complex >landscape of beliefs (emergence vs. learning vs. unfolding of innate >knowledge; modularity vs. interactionism; autonomous syntax vs. embodied >grammar) and figure out how they can be reconfigured and recombined for a >new era. -liz bates David B. Kronenfeld Phone Office 909/787-4340 Department of Anthropology Message 909/787-5524 University of California Fax 909/787-5409 Riverside, CA 92521 email kfeld at citrus.ucr.edu Department: http://Anthropology.ucr.edu/ Personal: http://pweb.netcom.com/~fanti/david.html From lexes at MINDSPRING.COM Mon Feb 4 21:39:30 2002 From: lexes at MINDSPRING.COM (Clifford Lutton) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 16:39:30 -0500 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: There is a point of diminishing returns in most endeavors. The perpetuation of activities producing diminishing returns eventually produces negative returns. The good that Chomsky's "revolution" brought long ago began to produce diminishing returns. IMNSHO, "moving beyond" Chomsky should not become a substitute for actually engaging in activities that produce positive returns. The best way to move beyond Chomsky is to give him his due and then, simply, move on. BTW, has anyone recently produced, or is anyone working on a compendium of the contributions of linguistics to the cognitive sciences? Cliff Lutton contraricus at mindspring.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ivy.gif Type: image/gif Size: 5665 bytes Desc: not available URL: From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Tue Feb 5 07:03:23 2002 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:03:23 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 In-Reply-To: <3C5EC4C1.2B2FB274@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Well put, Talmy! John > >Dear FUNK people,] > >Having received, courtesy of Bruce Richman, 22 commerial messaages >from the hustlers at Hotmail, and having been over the past few >months subjected to his repeated announcements of the "Beyond >Chomsky" agenda, I am finally moved to say the following: Hey, you >may be a terrific guy, Bruce, I have no way of knowing. But---even >you Hotmail caper aside--I think you stand in grave danger of >alienating a substantial number of the FUNK folk. So I though I'd >maybe take a minute to tell you why. > >Vigorous alternative approaches to Chomsky sprang all over the >countryside beginning with Ross & Lajoff (1967) "Is deep structure >necessary?". Chuck Fillmore (1966) "The case for the case" was an >implicit challenge already. Wally Chafe's (1970) "Meanning & the >structure of language" was right-on and right there. The early CLS >years (1968-1975) gave vent to a large & unruly collection of >'alternatives'. The Greenberg/Bolinger-inspired >typological-cum-functional explosion of the 1970s was another case >in point, as was Langacker/Lakoff's "Cognitive Grammar". Joan >Bresnan, another ex-student of Chomsky, has certainly counted >herself as an alternative to nthe Master since the late 1970s. And >there are many more whom space does not permit to enumerate. But >still, Bruce-- > >Even if you grant all this, there is something a bit bizarre about >the "Beyond Chomsk" agenda. Certainly to me. You see, I count myself >as Chomsky's student. I rebelled very early, even before I finished >my dissertation (1969). For how could someone interested in >typological diversity, meaning/function and diachrony abide by >Aspects for very long? But Aspects was my first Syntax textbook, >fresh off the press (1965). And to this day, having spent I think a >considerable portion--perhaps too much--of my professional life >trying to articulate where the Generative agenda went wrong--I still >must go on record and say that I owe my career in syntax (and >linguistics) to Noam Chomsky. And that even when I find him least >helpful, most arcane, most infuriating, I must nonetheless credit >him with raising some of the most interesting questions that still >haunt us in the study of grammar/syntax. > >Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner >extreme empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, >memory, immitation and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have >challenged Bloomfield's anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would >have raised the possibility that beyond the surface >item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield urge us to catalogue, >classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system that 'supported >semantic interpretation'? That accounted for meaning paraphrases? >That accounter for 'syntactic' (but perforce also semantic, given >Chomsky's very definition of Deep Structure) ambiguity? Ross and >Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the >logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was >either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The >Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct >consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in >Ch. 2 of Aspects. > >Sure, we have many reasons for choosing to disagree with Chomsky. >But before we/you go beyond him, perhaps it would behoove us all to >acknowledge what--and how much--we owe him. And perhaps it would be >useful to remind ourselves that however infuriating he may be at >times, and however 'wrong' posterity may eventually deem him >(yeah, that fickle lady of whom none of us could ever take for >granted...), his reasons for doing things the way he does are >neither haphazard nor fickle nor incoherent. They spring from, and >are dictated by, an agenda that has certain--indeed rather >consistent--philosophical & methodological roots, ones that may be >traced back to both Plato and Saussure and, somewhat paradoxically, >also to Russell and Carnap (tho here Chomsky might disagree most >violently). What is more, Chomsky's historical position--as the >person who almost single-handedly deposed the dogmatic, >philosophically-constrained, methodologically bizarre Bloomfieldians >at the worst stage of their convoluted, garrulous decay in the >1950s--is something all of us benefitted from, and should be >therefore generous enough to acknowledge. > >The fact that Chomsky's Generativism soon became just as extreme and >reductive as the dogma Empiricist that preceded it is indeed sad. It >reflects a certain dynamics of our historical community, of swinging >like a wild pendulum from one extreme to the other. It is indeed >this very reductionism that impelled many of us, I contend for >valid philosophical and methodological reasons, to dissent and >strike out on our own. But let us (in this departing from Chosky's >own occasionally-infuriating coups of revisionist historicism and >self-invention) try to keep in mind where we come from. It has, just >maybe, a huge bearing on where we're headed. > > >Y'all be good y'hear, TG > >========================= > > > >bruce richman wrote: > >> Beyond Chomsky 2003: The Real Study of Real >>Language A conference to be held on >>April 26 and 27, 2003 at Carnegie >>Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania For the past 40 >>years progress in the study of language has been set back by the >>huge influence of Chomsky's model of studying language. Linguists, >>language scholars, people in other fields, and the general public >>have concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery >>about language of great scientific importance. (See the >>pro-Chomsky article that appeared in the Science News section of >>the New York Times on Jan. 15, 2002 for an example of this.) >>The time has come for those of us who know better, to announce to >>the world that Chomsky's great "discovery" about language is >>basically empty and irrelevant. Rather than being a real study of >>real language, Chomsky's method involves the rhetorical invention >>of a made-up subject matter that has little relation to language >>and little relevance for it. It started out supposedly being an >>explanation about the discourse relations of sentences. Then it >>changed to an explanation of the psychological reality of >>sentences. When this proved impossible, Chomsky's method retreated >>to being an explanation of biology; a biology that was impossible >>to study -- but great for speculation. For 40 years, it has >>retreated further and further away from the reality of language. >>Chomsky's model remains just an ingenious explanation in search of >>something to explain. Once we renounce this irrelevant >>"method," we can go forward with the hard work of the empirical >>study of real language in real life. Chomsky's biggest mistake >>from the beginning was to hold on tenaciously to the belief in the >>basic principle of traditional grammar that the basic organizing >>force of grammar is meaningless, mechanical "agreement." This >>mistaken view of grammar as meaningless and mechanical goes back to >>the theories of ancient grammarians, who were unable to explain the >>actual distribution of grammatical cases, and consequently invented >>the notion of grammatical "agreement" as a way to "explain" their >>ignorance of why forms were distributed as they were. (The late >>William Diver and his followers have done great work on this >>subject.) Chomsky and his followers have taken this crucial >>mistaken view of grammar and kicked it upstairs and enshrined it, >>making meaningless, mechanical grammar the be all and end all of >>all accounts of language. All the complicated grammatical >>stuff that Chomskyans expend so much ingenious efforts on >>"explaining" are about aspects of grammar that are entirely >>irrelevant to what most adults and all children actually deal with. >>All the complicated grammatical "calculations" that Chomskyans >>waste so much effort on are about phenomena that do not occur at >>all in spontaneous spoken language and are really the kind of stuff >>that only some college trained people sometimes encounter in >>written form. Real spontaneous spoken language is quite free of >>much of the "grammar" so dear to Chomskyans hearts. (See Jim >>Miller and Regina Weinart's work on this.) This is another >>reason to agree with Esa Itkonen that Chomsky's theory is an >>explanation in search of something to explain. We want people >>from a wide range of areas related to language present papers and >>join in our discussions. Only by having people from many different >>areas can we build up an overall picture of where language study >>should go. At the end of the conference we will try to put >>together a collective statement of the findings of the conference >>which we will make public. If you are interested in >>participating, please contact Bruce Richman at >>brucerichman at hotmail.com or >>Alexander Gross at >>language at sprynet.com >> >> >> >>Join the worldÂ’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. >>Click Here -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU Tue Feb 5 14:48:45 2002 From: MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU (Mills, Carl (MILLSCR)) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:48:45 -0500 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: I was contemplating a long reply to TG's comments, most of which are quite cogent, when Cliff's remarks came in. What he said, y'all. Chairs Carl Carl Mills Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of English and Comparative Literature University of Cincinnati > ---------- > From: Clifford Lutton > Reply To: lexes at MINDSPRING.COM > Sent: Tuesday, February 5, 2002 5:39 AM > To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU > Subject: Re: moving beyond > > <> > There is a point of diminishing returns in most endeavors. The > perpetuation of activities producing diminishing returns eventually > produces negative returns. > The good that Chomsky's "revolution" brought long ago began to produce > diminishing returns. IMNSHO, "moving beyond" Chomsky should not become a > substitute for actually engaging in activities that produce positive > returns. > The best way to move beyond Chomsky is to give him his due and then, > simply, move on. > BTW, has anyone recently produced, or is anyone working on a > compendium of the contributions of linguistics to the cognitive sciences? > Cliff Lutton > contraricus at mindspring.com > > From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Tue Feb 5 17:19:23 2002 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (W. Schulze) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 18:19:23 +0100 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: Undoubtedly, Liz's contribution to the 'Moving Beyond' debate helps very much to understand *why* there is in fact nothing to 'move beyond'. 'Beyond' (in my humble opinion) implies that there is a more or less monolithic structure which we are used to treat as 'our world', furnished with guarded boundaries and a (restricted and well defined) number of passages that allow people 'to move beyond' in case they are equipped with visa emitted by the world's administration. Passing these borderlines without such a visa (i.e, without a private history that is related to the 'world's paradigm') would be denounced as 'revolt of against the world'. Liz has clearly shown that such a monolithic (Chomskian) 'world' did not exist, nor does it today. However, things are a bit different if we think of the Chomskian world as a construction of scientific (and sometimes) personal cognition. It may well be that some people feel to be absurbed by the Chomskian paradigm both in a scientific and a personal way (I mean in terms of getting a job, or just because the paradigm fit into their general needs to get around in the world). Many of them feel good in the MIT orthodoxy, and undoubtedly, they make considerable progress in elaborating 'their world'. Others, perhaps, feel the need to get out of this 'world' because of various reasons, some of them of private nature, some of them resulting from scientific insights and experience. All this reminds me of the Freudian 'Vater-Komplex' which may become the more relevant in science the more there is a 'father' who 'represents' *the* world (or scientific paradigm in question). A 'revolt' against the 'father(s)' would then mean to 'move beyond' by declaring the fathers world as "basically empty and irrelevant" (to quote Bruce Richman). Such a revolt, however, is basically a 'personal revolt' (perhaps fed by some kind of envie against the father ["the general public have concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery about language of great scientific importance" (Bruce Richman)]). The act of 'revolting' (and thus gaining public attention) resembles more an act of 'self-liberation' and is blind towards the fact that there already exists a world 'out there' which is (more or less) 'different' from the world of the revolutionary's father. Also, the revolting one should bear in mind that the Menon paradoxon not only is fundamental for the understanding of human cognition, but also for the evolution of scientific paradigms: "Even those transcendent parts of new knowledge cannot be completely unrelated to old knowledge, for otherwise they could never be grasped, at least by human beings" [in a reformulation by Miller 1987]. In Europe (esp. in Germany), we have faced the same 'problem' many times. The history of e.g. Indeoeuropean studies is full of (nearly always) 'fathers' who from time to time provoked some kind of more or less 'personal' rebellion [in general, these rebellions failed, also because there always was the option for the 'rebels' to finally end up in the father's system (and to acquire the same role boldly fought against before). It also was Europe (in its broadest sense) that hosted many of those who have developed scientific paradigms etc. that (earlier or later) competed with the Chomskian world. The reluctance, however, that is often observed regarding the reception of European thinking in the US (and that has many reasons) [see e.g. the fate of Vygostkij, the Neolinguistica school (Bartoli, Bertoni), even Functional Grammar in terms of Simon Dik [a Chomskian, before!] or European Cognitivism in a non-US standard - I know what I'm talking about :-)) has - for many of 'us' - created a 'new' father (or mother): The US tradition of linguistics, disregarding whether Chomskian or not. Some people in Europe would gladly opt for 'Moving Beyond the US', out of the same reasons Bruce Richman wants to move beyond Chomsky. All we learn from this is that linguistics (just as any other scientific paradigm) takes part in the dialectal process of paradigms. It simply is a matter of condition, of personal experience and training whether someone lives 'on one side' of this dialectal structure (sometimes revolting against it) or whether (s)he knows to handle both (or more) sides. That is why I dare to be end by quoting Liz's final words: > What we need to do now is to sort through a complex > landscape of beliefs (emergence vs. learning vs. unfolding of innate > knowledge; modularity vs. interactionism; autonomous syntax vs. embodied > grammar) and figure out how they can be reconfigured and recombined for a > new era. This is, how science should be! Wolfgang Prof. Dr. Wolfgang M. Schulze IATS - Institute for General Linguistics and Language Typology [Institut fuer Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft] Dept. II [Communication and Languages - Kommunikation und Sprachen] F 13/14 - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 Muenchen Tel.: ++49-(0)89-21802484 (Secretary) ++49-(0)89-21805343 (Office) Fax: ++49-(0)89-21805345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/ats_eng.html From mserra at PSI.UB.ES Wed Feb 6 10:55:53 2002 From: mserra at PSI.UB.ES (Miquel Serra) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 11:55:53 +0100 Subject: Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: Well put, Liz! But also the oblivion of the rich euro-russian tradition in psychology and linguistics is of concern in the evolution of our disciplines. The magnet of the US style and its diffusion does not correspond to the value of many contributions. There is an intriguing question about Chomsky that may be someone can clarify to me: the apparent contradiction, between his theoretical postulates and his courageous political ideas and compromise - his contribution at the Porto Alegre conference and the other over the years have my deepest admiration and gratitude -. But it is difficult for me to understand, from the european political frame of ideologies, when he confesses, for exemple, that he is "nativist because he is anarchist". I have never well understood this association. Has someone? Miquel ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Miquel Serra i Raventos Departament de Psicologia Basica Divisio de Ciencies de la Salut, Universitat de Barcelona P. de la Vall d'Hebron 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain Tel. +34 - 93 3125136, Fax. +34 - 93 402 13 63 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Wed Feb 6 11:42:59 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 12:42:59 +0100 Subject: Chomsky 2003 In-Reply-To: <3C610BB9.140CD7AF@psi.ub.es> Message-ID: At 11:55 +0100 6/2/02, Miquel Serra wrote: >There is an intriguing question about Chomsky that may be someone >can clarify to me: the apparent contradiction, between his >theoretical postulates and his courageous political ideas and >compromise - his contribution at the Porto Alegre conference and >the other over the years have my deepest admiration and gratitude -. >But it is difficult for me to understand, from the european >political frame of ideologies, when he confesses, for exemple, >that he is "nativist because he is anarchist". I have never well >understood this association. Has someone? Hi, Miquel and all: To begin with, I must confess that I consider myself generativist (i.e. I think that Chomsky's "method" of inquiry is essentially right and that Richman's pamphlet is essentially wrong) and that I admire Chomsky's compromise and political ideas too. But I also belive that the causal association between both Chomsky's facets (scientific and political) is always 'a posteriori' and untenable (Barsky's biography is a good example of a weak and unsuccessful attempt to establish that connection). You can believe that there is an UG as a biological property of the species and simultaneously you can prefer the Davos Forum to the Porto Alegre conference. Of course, if there is not a necessary connection, there is not an apparent contradiction either. Best regards, Jose-Luis. From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Wed Feb 6 12:08:14 2002 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 13:08:14 +0100 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics Message-ID: Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without coming to a conclusive answer: What is the role of functionality in language change? Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated (e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must arise in language change, but how exactly? Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson 2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle ("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, not just because they are socially attractive. So in brief, the two positions are: (i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) (Croft), (ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation ("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, Haspelmath, and no doubt others). Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE Wed Feb 6 14:29:12 2002 From: dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE (Dirk Geeraerts) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 15:29:12 +0100 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics In-Reply-To: <3C611C92.1725E817@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: Is Martin's question one that can be answered empirically, i.e. what would we need to answer it on the basis of empirical evidence? To begin with, keep in mind that changes can spread in other ways than through social imitation alone. Innovations may occur independently and in parallel (as when, for instance, a loanword is borrowed simultaneously by many different language users); in such a case, the dissemination of the innovation is not due to social imitation. Suppose we were then to formulate the Haspelmathian hypothesis: "Functionality supports dissemination. An innovation that is functionally useful spreads more rapidly than one that is not". In order to test this, we would first have to filter out all the cases in which the dissemination is due to simultaneous and independent innovations rather than imitation, and next, we would have to compare the speed of dissemination of different innovations (functional and non-functional) in which social factors and imitation do play a role. But if you want to test that, you would have to know quite a lot about the language community that you are investigating. Because you need to quantify the speed of dissemination, you would need a very good record, at usage level, of the actual utterances of the language users that contribute to the spread of the innovation. And even more importantly, you would have to judge for each user whether he is influenced by others or whether he is innovating independently. Linguists usually do not have the kind of material that would enable them to answer this type of question, so my guess is that it may take us a while before Martin's question can be answered empirically. Or would there be other ways of testing the hypothesis ? Dirk Dirk Geeraerts Departement Linguïstiek KULeuven Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 B-3000 Leuven, België [++32] 16 324815 e-mail: dirk.geeraerts at arts.kuleuven.ac.be website: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/gling/ At 6-2-2002 13:08, Martin Haspelmath wrote: >Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It >would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues >to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. > >In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here >is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without >coming to a conclusive answer: > >What is the role of functionality in language change? > >Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted >structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when >we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated >(e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly >overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is >because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this >is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English >speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have >acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such >as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So >economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must >arise in language change, but how exactly? > >Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson >2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the >actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, >which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally >adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the >diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. >Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in >the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle >("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic >adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional >adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new >features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, >not just because they are socially attractive. > >So in brief, the two positions are: > >(i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional >innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) >(Croft), > >(ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation >("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, >Haspelmath, and no doubt others). > >Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very >sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? > >Martin > >-- >Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) >Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 >D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From gd116 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Wed Feb 6 17:04:05 2002 From: gd116 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Guy Deutscher) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 17:04:05 +0000 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020206143924.0233dec0@onyx.arts.kuleuven.ac.b e> Message-ID: At 15:29 06/02/2002 +0100, Dirk Geeraerts wrote: >Is Martin's question one that can be answered empirically, i.e. what would >we need to answer it on the basis of empirical evidence? Maybe Martin's question could be reformulated in a simpler way, or at least a way which will make it easier to decide whether or not it can be answered empirically. Isn't the real question this: are there any non-functional innovations? If all innovations are functionally driven, then the question about the role of propagation becomes a non-question, or at least one that cannot be answered empirically. If innovations are already selected for being functional, there will be no obvious way of deciding whether propagation adds further functional selection, given our famous 'conflicting motivations'. But if innovations can be non-functional, then the question of whether propagation exercises functional selection becomes meaningful and perhaps even empirically testable. When asked about the causes of innovations, the standard motives we usually invoke can all be seen as functional: economy/ease of production, simplification/ease of processing, need to extend expressive range, and so on. (Perhaps the only exception is borrowing?) In any case, if anyone can come up with an innovation which is clearly non-functional, that is, which has no functional motivation whatsoever, then the discussion could become more meaningful. (Of course, a 'non-functional innovation' is not the same as an innovation that introduces dysfunctionality into the language - we all know there are plenty of innovations that simplify one thing but make something else more complex. 'Non-functional innovations' are those that don't have any functional motivation in the first place.) Guy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed Feb 6 18:35:20 2002 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 10:35:20 -0800 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics Message-ID: Apropo's Martin's question, perhaps it might be useful to review both the parallels & differences between linguistic/diachronic change and biological/evolutionary change. Broadly, we concede that they are both adaptive ('functional'). But there is more to it than broad parallels. First, there is no either-or dichotomy between random mutation and adaptive selection.. In biological adaptation in general (evolution), there are distinct roles in the mechanism for *both* of these mechanisms. As it is acknowledged since Darwin, selection is largely adapotive/functional process But within the selection mechanism itself, there is a (large) role for the purposive *behavior* of individual members of the population. True, selection is most commonly discussed as a population-aggregate process, the mere "consequences" of brute-force mutation. But such discussion is over-simplified, in that it disregards what Ernst Mayr calls "behavior as the pacemaker in evolutionary change" (Mayr 1982, p. 611) Very broadly, I think, you can find analogues to all three components of bio-evolution in diachronic change. *Innovations* are individual events that occur spontaneously during individual speech acts. Most of them will never spread to the population, just like most biochemical mutations have no evoilutionary consequences. *Selection* is a social-transmission mechanism, within which individual adaptive behavior is obviously the fine-grained mechanism. But there is one obvious caveat here: "Random mutation" in biology is really a random biochemical event, not a behavioral event. The vast majority of such events do not reach biochemical viability, let alone behavioral viability (survival). In diachronic change, on the other hand, we don't have the equivalent distinction between genome (biochemical events) and phenome (behavioral events). A random event in diachrony is always behavioral (i.e. phenome), and thus in principle functional-adaptive. One may argue, tho, about how *conscious* functional-adaptive innovations are in linguistic diachrony. And one suspects that some of them are rather unconscious (phonetically-conditioned assimimations?), while others may be perhaps (potentially) conscious (a well-turned metaphor? a striving for better expressive power?). Yes, this is certainly a more substantive cluster of issues. But I still see nothing wrong in talking just a bit about poor Noam. Whether you like him or not (and whether you know it or not), he still looms rather large over y'all's collective horizon. From our perspective (as Wally says) one must admit that maybe he casts more shadow than light. But it sure is a giant shadow... Y'all be good, TG ========================= Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It > would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues > to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. > > In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here > is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without > coming to a conclusive answer: > > What is the role of functionality in language change? > > Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted > structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when > we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated > (e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly > overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is > because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this > is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English > speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have > acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such > as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So > economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must > arise in language change, but how exactly? > > Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson > 2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the > actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, > which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally > adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the > diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. > Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in > the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle > ("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic > adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional > adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new > features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, > not just because they are socially attractive. > > So in brief, the two positions are: > > (i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional > innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) > (Croft), > > (ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation > ("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, > Haspelmath, and no doubt others). > > Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very > sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? > > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 > D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From bill_mann at SIL.ORG Wed Feb 6 21:13:14 2002 From: bill_mann at SIL.ORG (William Mann) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 16:13:14 -0500 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics Message-ID: Dear Martin and all: It seems to me that one of the premises of this discussion should be that innovation and variation are extremely abundant. Noisy environments, memory lapses and listening to children all lead speakers to create items that are novel to the hearer. That suggests that the problem is not explaining innovation but rather explaining what few innovations are retained, a selectivity explanation problem. Also, we might have a problem if we, in our terminology, use that phrase from below: functional > innovation ("mutation") That presumes that innovations are functionally motivated, caused, given expression or some such. But the relationship between innovations or mutations and function are really under discussion here. It is quite possible that mutations are not initially functional in any sense. So I suggest this editorial restatement of the two positions: (i) Individuals begin to use novel structures in their language because they tacitly or consciously find some advantage in the novel structures as they use them. (call this Individual Functional adaptation.) (Croft, restated), (ii) Languages change, in large part because speakers begin to use novel structures which they have heard and which they tacitly or consciously find some advantage in the novel structures as they use them. (Call this Functional propagation.)(Nettle, Haspelmath, and no doubt others, restated). Notice that (ii) still needs to have a few original sources. I hope that this clarifies either the positions or my misunderstandings. We shall see. Bill Mann ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Haspelmath" To: Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:08 AM Subject: changing FUNKNET topics > Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It > would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues > to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. > > In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here > is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without > coming to a conclusive answer: > > What is the role of functionality in language change? > > Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted > structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when > we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated > (e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly > overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is > because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this > is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English > speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have > acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such > as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So > economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must > arise in language change, but how exactly? > > Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson > 2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the > actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, > which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally > adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the > diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. > Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in > the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle > ("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic > adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional > adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new > features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, > not just because they are socially attractive. > > So in brief, the two positions are: > > (i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional > innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) > (Croft), > > (ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation > ("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, > Haspelmath, and no doubt others). > > Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very > sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? > > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 > D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) ============================= William C. Mann SIL in USA 6739 Cross Creek Estates Road Lancaster, SC 29720 USA (803) 286-6461 bill_mann at sil.org From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Wed Feb 6 21:46:21 2002 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 21:46:21 +0000 Subject: functionality Message-ID: Dear Martin et al, You contrast functionality with social pressures to conform. I know why you do it, but in the long run I think it may be misleading. I also like Guy Deutscher's reformulation of the question, because it highlights the functional role of social differentiation - see below. After all, social-group differentiation is an important function of language. It's at least imaginable (and I think Daniel Nettle has actually argued this) that languages differentiate in part "in order to" act as good distinguishers of social groups. Most obviously, teenagers seize on new anti-language in order to distinguish themselves from adults, but we all enjoy local features that help to make us feel different from other groups. That's as much of a "function" of language as preventing misunderstanding or making words easy to pronounce. The reverse side of the same coin is the pressure to conform within the group, which is also a functional pressure - the more homogeneous the group with respect to a particular pattern, the better that pattern is as a signal of membership for that group. So, following Guy, we can ask whether there are any innovations which are purely dysfunctional in terms of the traditional functional motivations - i.e. whose ONLY function is to identify a social group. It's surely very easy to think of such examples: loan words for concepts that already have names in the borrowing language, or more generally any kind of neologism which produces a synonym of an existing word. Typically there's no benefit in terms of length or ease of use, and the result is one more word to hold in memory; so there's no processing or storage benefit, but usually the reason for preferring the new form is that it links the speaker more or less closely with some social group. Dick Richard (= Dick) Hudson Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. +44(0)20 7679 3152; fax +44(0)20 7383 4108; http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm From Zylogy at AOL.COM Wed Feb 6 22:35:51 2002 From: Zylogy at AOL.COM (Jess Tauber) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 17:35:51 EST Subject: functionality Message-ID: I remember reading several years ago a piece which introduced me to the notion that adapting to one's social group(s) ranked nicely with distancing oneself from others. >From this perspective, the ultimate result of differentiation is a form of encryption preventing out-group members from fully exploiting the in-group's resources. Maturation increasingly marks one permanently as a member of the out-group, even if one tries to adapt. Given the obvious natural advantage an unidentifiable infiltrator might have in inter-group competition, one wonders then if the timing and completeness of group-differentiating maturation become variables that may be acted upon by local evolutionary forces. Perhaps this happened already a long time ago? The ability to fend off unwanted communication may be just as important as the ability to achieve desired communication. Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE Thu Feb 7 09:15:24 2002 From: David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE (David Palfreyman) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:15:24 +0400 Subject: Functionality Message-ID: Interesting discussion. As someone recently steeped in the ideas of Geertz and Foucault among others, two things struck me as particularly interesting as I read through my last FUNKNET digest: a) The interpretative dimension of "functionality" which seems to come into the later messages: e.g. Bill's idea of language users "tacitly or consciously *find[ing]* some advantage in" an innovation (my emphasis), as opposed to the innovation being *objectively* functional or not. b) The emphasis in Bill's and Dick's messages on social groups rather than discourses. To take the first loanword that comes to mind, I might use the term "passe'" rather than "old-fashioned" because it forms part of a discourse that I want to align myself with - or even to use ironically - rather than because it is associated with a social *group* (unless it's a social group defined just by those who use the word "passe'". The same goes for choosing between "student" and "learner" in education... Cheers, David Palfreyman Zayed University, Dubai :-D From jaakko.leino at HELSINKI.FI Thu Feb 7 11:37:49 2002 From: jaakko.leino at HELSINKI.FI (Jaakko Leino) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:37:49 +0200 Subject: 2nd International Conference on Construction Grammar Message-ID: THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR (ICCG2) September 6-8, 2002 Helsinki, Finland Second Call for Papers The Second International Conference on Construction Grammar will take place at the University of Helsinki, Finland, September 6-8, 2002. The conference is a follow-up on the First International Conference on Construction Grammar held in Berkeley in April 2001. In line with the aim of the first conference, we hope that ICCG2 will continue to serve as a forum for promoting discussion and collaboration among linguists interested in Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics, as well as in related constructional research in its various models and applications. Plenary speakers: Hans C. Boas William Croft Charles J. Fillmore Mirjam Fried Adele E. Goldberg Paul Kay Sandra A. Thompson Michael Tomasello Regular conference papers (20-min. talk plus 10-min. discussion) are invited on any aspect of linguistic analysis that is concerned with constructions and/or frames. We welcome work on issues in syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, language acquisition, corpus linguistics, language variation/change, etc. SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS Abstracts of 500 words, with an additional page for graphs, data, and/or references if necessary, should be submitted by March 1st, 2002. If you are submitting your abstract electronically, please send it to iccg2-2002 at helsinki.fi and include the following information as part of your message: author's name and affiliation, title of paper, mailing address, and e-mail address. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. If submitting by regular mail, please provide 5 copies of your anonymous abstract with the title of the paper at the top, and the author information listed above on a separate sheet of paper. In this case, please use the following address: Jaakko Leino Department of Finnish University of Helsinki P.O. Box 13 (Meritullinkatu 1 B) FIN-00014 Helsingin yliopisto Finland Upon acceptance, the abstract will be published in a conference booklet to be distributed among the conference participants. DEADLINES and IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for abstracts: March 1st, 2002 Authors notified of acceptance: May 1st, 2002 Registration fee: 100 euro before June 1, 2002; after this date, 120 euro Students (student status verification required): 75 euro; 90 euro after June 1 The conference is organized by Jan-Ola Östman and Jaakko Leino, and an organizing committee consisting of Fred Karlsson, Pentti Leino, and Mirja Saari. For more information about the conference please check the website http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/janola/iccg2.htm or direct your inquiries to the conference organizers at iccg2-2002 at helsinki.fi From bill_mann at SIL.ORG Thu Feb 7 13:04:50 2002 From: bill_mann at SIL.ORG (William Mann) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 08:04:50 -0500 Subject: Functionality Message-ID: Lets amplify the remarks of David Palfreyman. We are talking about a socially important collection of processes here. In legal practice, honorific use of "The Court" to mean the judge, seems to derive from this sort of thing. The tendentious bickering over terms such as pro-life, pro-choice, pro-abortion etc., the distinctions between terrorist, revolutionary, freedom-fighter etc., the use in the family of Daddy vs. Father, all seem to be at least tangentially involved here. If we come to understand these processes, both in fleeting occurrence and in retention, it may be enlightening out of our linguistics and into our general living. Bill Mann ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Palfreyman" To: Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 4:15 AM Subject: Functionality > Interesting discussion. As someone recently steeped in the ideas of Geertz and Foucault among others, two things struck me as particularly interesting as I read through my last FUNKNET digest: > > a) The interpretative dimension of "functionality" which seems to come into the later messages: e.g. Bill's idea of language users "tacitly or consciously *find[ing]* some advantage in" an innovation (my emphasis), as opposed to the innovation being *objectively* functional or not. > > b) The emphasis in Bill's and Dick's messages on social groups rather than discourses. To take the first loanword that comes to mind, I might use the term "passe'" rather than "old-fashioned" because it forms part of a discourse that I want to align myself with - or even to use ironically - rather than because it is associated with a social *group* (unless it's a social group defined just by those who use the word "passe'". The same goes for choosing between "student" and "learner" in education... > > Cheers, > David Palfreyman > Zayed University, Dubai > > :-D From MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU Thu Feb 7 14:07:28 2002 From: MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU (Mills, Carl (MILLSCR)) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 09:07:28 -0500 Subject: Sorry Message-ID: I apologize for posting administrative matters to the entire list, but some recent e-mail problems make it necessary to talk to the owner of the list. Will the owner or moderator please contact me? Sorry again. Chairs Carl Carl Mills Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of English and Comparative Literature University of Cincinnati From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Feb 7 20:08:03 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 15:08:03 -0500 Subject: New book of Functional interest: HELINGER/ =?iso-8859-1?Q?BU=DFMANN?= Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of functional relevance: Gender Across Languages. The linguistic representation of women and men. Volume I Marlis HELLINGER and Hadumod BUßMANN (University of Frankfurt) (eds.) IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 9 2001. xiv, 329 pp. Hardcover: US & Canada: 1 58811 082 6 / USD 75.00 Rest of world: 90 272 1840 4 / EUR 83.00 Paperback: US & Canada: 1 58811 083 4 / USD 29.95 Rest of world: 90 272 1841 2 / EUR 33.00 This is the first of a three-volume comprehensive reference work on "Gender across Languages", which provides systematic descriptions of various categories of gender (grammatical, lexical, referential, social) in 30 languages of diverse genetic, typological and socio-cultural backgrounds. Among the issues discussed for each language are the following: What are the structural properties of the language that have an impact on the relations between language and gender? What are the consequences for areas such as agreement, pronominalization and word-formation? How is specification of and abstraction from (referential) gender achieved in language? Is empirical evidence available for the assumption that masculine/male expressions are interpreted as generics? Can tendencies of variation and change be observed, and have alternatives been proposed for a more equal linguistic treatment of women and men? This volume (and its follow-up volumes) will provide the much-needed basis for explicitly comparative analyses of gender across languages. All chapters are original contributions and follow a common general outline developed by the editors. The book contains rich bibliographical and indexical material. Languages of Volume I: Arabic, Belizean Creole, Eastern Maroon Creole, English (American, New Zealand, Australian), Hebrew, Indonesian, Romanian, Russian, Turkish. Contributions by: Friederike Braun; Hadumod Bußmann; Ursula Doleschal; Geneviève Escure; Atiqa Hachimi; Marlis Hellinger; Janet Holmes; Esther Kuntjara; Florence Maurice; Bettina Migge; Suzanne Romaine; Anne Pauwels; Sonja Schmid, and Yishai Tobin. John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Feb 8 09:52:04 2002 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 01:52:04 -0800 Subject: conferences Message-ID: Dear Funknetters: It will soon be announced that next October 12-14, Rice University in Houston will be hosting the regular CSDL (Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language) Conference, which alternates with the biennial ICLC (International Cognitive Linguistics Conference) that will next be held in July, 2003 in La Rioja, Spain. If you want to know what is going in contemporary cognitive, functional, and neural linguistics - the most innovative and interesting work these days- these are the conferences to attend. Both have been swamped in recent years. Many more good papers than can be accepted. The papers accepted at past conferences have on the whole been superb! I mention this in response to Bruce Richman's proposed conference. At CSDL and ICLC, all the papers happen to be "beyond Chomsky" and have been for years. But they are positive in character, raising real issues, and are not defined by and limited to going "beyond" anything or anyone. If Richman doesn't like Chomskyan linguistics, he can start reading the vast literature in these fields - including papers coming from these conferences. Indeed, he ought to be going to these conferences. One day in the early 1970's, I came up with the idea of writing a book called "After Chomsky" which would detail hundreds of pages of evidence that required a linguistic theory beyond his - a theory of the kind being worked on by the many fine linguists of the day. But I realized after a few minutes of thought that such a book would be self-defeating. The reason comes from elementary frame semantics. You don't argue against a frame by negating it; that just reinforces the frame. Like when Nixon said, "I am not a crook" - which made everyone think of him as a crook. A "Beyond Chomsky" conference would simply reinforce the idea of Chomsky as the latest in linguistics. This is just elementary cognitive semantics. That's why Martin said to give it up and talk about a real issue. Martin, I, and other linguists throughout the world have been talking about real issues for decades. The result has been real progress, reported on at real conferences. If you want to talk about Chomsky fondly in the past tense, organize a conference called "Remembering Chomsky." Best to all, George P.S. For the record, John Myhill got a couple of historical details wrong in his discussion of generative semantics. John said, "Ross and Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in Ch. 2 of Aspects." I wrote the first generative semantics paper in summer 1963 - two years before Aspects and before there even was an idea of "deep structure." At that time, there were no "complex symbols" and no Aspects. Complex symbols, as I recall, were a combination of two earlier ideas: Jakobsonian features and Bar Hillel's categorial grammars. Ah, nostalgia! Why not have a "Remembering Chomsky" conference? I have such nice memories of the days, 35 years ago, when I still thought that that work was relevant. We can get our bell bottoms and afro shirts out of mothballs, bring a copy of the white album, and go to banks of the Charles where we can argue about such issues of the day as lexical decomposition, logical form, case roles, the coordinate structure constraint, crossover, and all those old issues. But for contemporary linguistics, I go to CSDL and ICLC. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Feb 8 22:42:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 22:42:52 +0000 Subject: Why I left out "BC" work of many people Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wilcox at UNM.EDU Fri Feb 8 23:38:51 2002 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 16:38:51 -0700 Subject: Why I left out "BC" work of many people In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 2/8/02 3:42 PM, bruce richman said: > > > > > > Oh lord, this isn't starting again, is it? -- Sherman From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Feb 9 14:39:54 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:39:54 +0000 Subject: Sorry for empty message; computer mistake! Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From language at SPRYNET.COM Sat Feb 9 22:14:59 2002 From: language at SPRYNET.COM (Alexander Gross) Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:14:59 -0800 Subject: Sorry for empty message; computer mistake! Message-ID: I can't imagine how anyone could claim a shortage of Beyond Chomsky literature. You'll find plenty on three different websites, including numerous papers, articles, polemics. And also three different bibliographies and "webographies" of this material. The first is Bruce's own at: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~bps/beyondChomsky/home.html The second, from France, is "Could Chomsky Be Wrong?" at: http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/LangTeach/CounterChomsky.htm And the third is my own, under the Chomskyan section of the Linguistics menu on my website, at: http://language.home.sprynet.com very best to all! alex gross ___________________________ original message: Sorry for the empty message last night! My computer screwed up again! Here's what I wanted to say: I did not include the names of many, many people who have done great work over the years, that are definitely "Beyond Chomsky," mainly for reasons of space. I also wanted to take a somewhat new approach to the reasons that I am opposed to the entire Chomskyan paradigm. I'm sorry I left out discussing a lot of great work. Bruce Richman -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. Click Here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thuumo at UTU.FI Wed Feb 13 13:44:34 2002 From: thuumo at UTU.FI (Tuomas Huumo) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 15:44:34 +0200 Subject: Call for papers Message-ID: Call for papers Cognitive Linguistics East of Eden A joint conference organized by the Finnish Cognitive Linguistics Association (FiCLA) and the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA) will take place in Turku, Finland, on September 13 to 15, 2002. Starring (as plenary speakers): Mirjam Fried (Princeton University) Marja-Liisa Helasvuo (University of Turku) Laura Janda (University of North Carolina) Helena Leheckova (University of Helsinki) Ekaterina Rakhilina (Moscow State University) The aim of the conference is to bring together cognitive linguists from the East and the West, and to offer a forum for collaboration and discussion on current developments in Cognitive Linguistics. We welcome abstracts for oral presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion) and for posters on all cognitive linguistic topics, including syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, metaphor, pragmatics, discourse, etc. We especially welcome papers on Slavic and/or Finno-Ugric languages. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2002. Please submit a one-page abstract (max. 500 words), with an additional page for tabels, graphs and references, if necessary. We strongly encourage e-mail submissions. For speakers with topics related to the Slavic languages: Please send your abstract to janda at unc.edu. For speakers with topics related to other languages: Please send your abstract as an attachment file (plain text or rtf) to aairola at ling.helsinki.fi, with your name, affiliation, e-mail address and the title of your paper included in the message. If you wish to submit a paper version, then please send 5 anonymous copies of your abstract, and your author information on a separate sheet of paper. In this case, please use the following address: Anu Airola Department of General Linguistics P.O.Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 20 A) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Finland The participation fee will be 70 euros (35 euros for students, including graduate students), to be paid at the conference site in cash (please observe that we cannot accept credit cards). For members of the FiCLA, SCLA or ICLA the fee will be 50 euros (25 euros for students). Participants from economically disadvantaged countries may be allowed a free participation upon application. In such a case, please include an application for free participation in your abstract. The participation fee will cover the abstract booklet, other conference materials, coffee and a get-together with snacks. From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Feb 13 17:51:53 2002 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 11:51:53 -0600 Subject: 6th Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Lg Conf Message-ID: CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS *********************************************************** *********************************************************** ** ** ** 6th CONFERENCE ON ** ** ** ** CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE ** ** ** ** ** *********************************************************** *********************************************************** RICE UNIVERSITY Houston, Texas OCTOBER 12-14, 2002 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: RONALD LANGACKER, University of Californa, San Diego SUSANNA CUMMING, University of California, Santa Barbara CSDL 6 welcomes papers in the fields of Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse, Functional Linguistics, and Speech and Language Processing, dealing with all aspects of language (structure, acquisition, variation, change) and all levels of language (phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, discourse, and neural processing). There will be a general session and a poster session. Instructions for abstracts submissions will be posted soon. We plan to take email submissions. ABSTRACTS DEADLINE: May 1, 2002 (submission info TBA) ACCEPTANCE DATE: ca. June 15, 2002 PREREGISTRATION DEADLINE: September 1, 2002 CONTACT INFO: Michel Achard (achard at rice.edu) and Suzanne Kemmer (kemmer at rice.edu) From samantha716 at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Feb 14 02:13:04 2002 From: samantha716 at HOTMAIL.COM (samantha wilson) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 02:13:04 +0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Why has the study of semiotics been largely ignored by today's linguistic community? It would appear from my early and introductory readings that semiotics, especially work done by the American scholar Charles Peirce, would have a lot to contribute to the study of human lanaguge and communication. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From philologist at SOCAL.RR.COM Thu Feb 14 08:54:53 2002 From: philologist at SOCAL.RR.COM (Damon Allen Davison) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 00:54:53 -0800 Subject: No Subject In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 2002-02-13 at 18:13, samantha wilson wrote: > Why has the study of semiotics been largely ignored by today's linguistic > community? It would appear from my early and introductory readings that > semiotics, especially work done by the American scholar Charles Peirce, > would have a lot to contribute to the study of human lanaguge and > communication. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. > Dear Samantha, I don't think that semiotics has been ignored by modern linguists. In fact, I think most people associated with Cognitive Linguistics--- especially in semantics/pragmatics---would give semioticians in general, and particularly C.S. Pierce, their due. They mainly concentrate on the anatomy of the linguistic sign and reference ("When you talk about a tree, you are not invoking the tree itself, but rather a symbolic link/reference to it.") Bilyana Martinovski, for example, makes reference to him on a page she made for an introductory course on Cognitive Semantics: http://www.ling.gu.se/~biljana/st1-97/pragmalect2.html You might take a look at her page. It seems like a good place to start for early and introductory reading. Damon -- Damon Allen Davison http://home.socal.rr.com/linguist/ PGP ID: 067E933C491815EAE From mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK Thu Feb 14 12:50:42 2002 From: mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:50:42 +0000 Subject: [semiotics and linguistics] Message-ID: Samantha Wilson wrote: >Why has the study of semiotics been largely ignored by today's linguistic >community? It would appear from my early and introductory readings that >semiotics, especially work done by the American scholar Charles Peirce, >would have a lot to contribute to the study of human lanaguge and >communication. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Has it? It's just that it seems to me that the work of people like Gunther Kress very much bridges the fields and this work is familiar to many linguists in the UK. Perhaps you mean "the dominant US linguistic community", where, it is true, there doesn't seem to be a lot of such cross-pollination (pace Professor Davis' useful references). mm -- Miriam Meyerhoff Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics University of Edinburgh 40 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LL Scotland, UK ph (131) 651-1836 fax (131) 650-3962 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ From mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK Thu Feb 14 16:52:09 2002 From: mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 16:52:09 +0000 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: LECTURER IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS / STYLISTICS / PRAGMATICS The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics seeks to appoint a teacher and researcher with world-class potential to join our challenging and supportive research community. We pride ourselves on the strength of our postgraduate programmes, on the breadth of our undergraduate teaching, and the success of our active collaborations with other parts of the university. For more information on the Department please visit http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk. The successful candidate will have a research focus in discourse analysis, stylistics, pragmatics, or some other area involving language in context and language use, and an interest in relating research findings in these areas to formal or functional linguistic theories as appropriate. Expertise in dealing with texts in languages other than English, or texts produced by speakers of English as a second language, would be an advantage. We also expect that the person appointed will have an interdisciplinary outlook and an interest in building on existing links with closely related departments in the university, which include informatics, education, philosophy, psychology, and English language. A completed PhD (or imminent date for completion), evidence of research potential, and teaching experience at least as tutor or TA are essential. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to teaching on our developing set of cross-disciplinary MSc degrees, especially the MSc in Applied Linguistics. They will also undertake postgraduate supervision and develop courses in their areas of interest. Ability to teach undergraduate courses in language pedagogy, semantics, sociolinguistics, and/or syntax would be an advantage. Further details of the post will shortly be posted on http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk. Filling of this post is subject to budgetary approval. In any case the appointment will be made on the Lecturer A scale (currently GBP 20,470 - 24,435 per annum). We will begin reviewing applications on 25 March 2002. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. The principal contact person for enquiries is Professor John Joseph From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Feb 14 20:52:22 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:52:22 -0500 Subject: New Books of interest to functionalists Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new 2-volume set: Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 1: Past and Present. Östen DAHL and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA TAMM (Stockholm University) (eds.) Studies in Language Companion Series 54 2001. xx, 382 pp. Hardcover US & Canada: 1 58811 020 6 / USD 118.00 Rest of world: 90 272 3057 9 / EUR 130.00 The area around the Baltic Sea has for millennia been a meeting-place for people of different origin. Among the circum-Baltic languages, we find three major branches of Indo-European -- Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic, the Baltic-Finnic languages from the Uralic phylum and several others. The circum-Baltic area is an ideal place to study areal and contact phenomena in languages. The present set of two volumes look at the circum-Baltic languages from a typological, areal and historical perspective, trying to relate the intricate patterns of similarities and dissimilarities to the societal background. In volume I, surveys of dialect areas and language groups bear witness to the immense linguistic diversity in the area with special attention to less well-known languages and language varieties and their contacts. Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology Östen DAHL and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA TAMM (Stockholm University) (eds.) Studies in Language Companion Series 55 2001. xx, 423 pp. Hardcover US & Canada: 1 58811 042 7 / USD 127.00 Rest of world: 90 272 3059 5 / EUR 140.00 The area around the Baltic Sea has for millennia been a meeting-place for people of different origin. Among the circum-Baltic languages, we find three major branches of Indo-European -- Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic, the Baltic-Finnic languages from the Uralic phylum and several others. The circum-Baltic area is an ideal place to study areal and contact phenomena in languages. The present set of two volumes look at the circum-Baltic languages from a typological, areal and historical perspective, trying to relate the intricate patterns of similarities and dissimilarities to the societal background. In volume II, selected phenomena in the grammars of the circum-Baltic languages are studied in a cross-linguistic perspective. Contributions by: V. Ambrazas; K. Boiko; S. Christen; A. Holvoet; M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm; H. Metslang; B. Metuzale-Kangere; L. Stassen; T. Stolz; B. Wälchli. John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Thu Feb 14 23:10:28 2002 From: jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Jeanie Castillo) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:10:28 -0800 Subject: Workshop Announcement-WAIL Message-ID: WAIL 2002 The Fifth Annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages April 26-28, 2002 University of California, Santa Barbara McCune Conference Room Humanities and Social Sciences (HSSB) 6020 Keynote speaker: Spike Gildea University of Oregon Invited speaker: Wallace Chafe University of California, Santa Barbara Registration fee: $25 before April 1 (checks payable to WAIL) $35 after April 1 or at the door send to: WAIL Department of Linguistics University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 For more information, including registration form, workshop schedule and list of speakers, please visit http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/nailsg/ or write to wail at linguistics.ucsb.edu -- Jeanie Castillo jeaniec at umail.ucsb.edu From rreyno1 at UIC.EDU Fri Feb 15 12:15:07 2002 From: rreyno1 at UIC.EDU (Rachel Reynolds) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 06:15:07 -0600 Subject: VIRUS?!?!? -- DELETE "ENTENDERSE" Message-ID: Hi everyone. I just got a file accompanied by a note in Spanish (on the FUNKNET listserver) called "entenderse.bat." My Norton anti-virus program tagged that file as a potential virus. Just to be safe, I would advise deleting it from your e-mail and from your harddrive right now. Don't open it. Rachel Reynolds From mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK Fri Feb 15 09:38:12 2002 From: mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 09:38:12 +0000 Subject: job announcement: amended Message-ID: LECTURER IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS / STYLISTICS / PRAGMATICS The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh seeks to appoint a teacher and researcher with world-class potential to join our challenging and supportive research community. We pride ourselves on the strength of our postgraduate programmes, on the breadth of our undergraduate teaching, and the success of our active collaborations with other parts of the university. For more information on the Department please visit http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk. The successful candidate will have a research focus in discourse analysis, stylistics, pragmatics, or some other area involving language in context and language use, and an interest in relating research findings in these areas to formal or functional linguistic theories as appropriate. Expertise in dealing with texts in languages other than English, or texts produced by speakers of English as a second language, would be an advantage. We also expect that the person appointed will have an interdisciplinary outlook and an interest in building on existing links with closely related departments in the university, which include informatics, education, philosophy, psychology, and English language. A completed PhD (or imminent date for completion), evidence of research potential, and teaching experience at least as tutor or TA are essential. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to teaching on our developing set of cross-disciplinary MSc degrees, especially the MSc in Applied Linguistics. They will also undertake postgraduate supervision and develop courses in their areas of interest. Ability to teach undergraduate courses in language pedagogy, semantics, sociolinguistics, and/or syntax would be an advantage. Further details of the post will shortly be posted on http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk. Filling of this post is subject to budgetary approval. In any case the appointment will be made on the Lecturer A scale (currently GBP 20,470 - 24,435 per annum). We will begin reviewing applications on 25 March 2002. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. The principal contact person for enquiries is Professor John Joseph From fetmoure at USC.ES Fri Feb 15 09:56:01 2002 From: fetmoure at USC.ES (Teresa Moure) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:56:01 +0100 Subject: En medio de semejante confusión. Message-ID: Así, poco a poco se convencionaliza un criollo. Pero lo curioso del caso, es que se ha pensado que el contexto en que se originan estas lenguas pidgin es, en buena medida, el contexto en que se origina cualquier lengua humana, de modo que, además de su interés sociolingüístico, los pidgins tenían notable interés para el tema de los orígenes del lenguaje (Bickerton 1988, 1994). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: entenderse.bat Type: application/octet-stream Size: 61440 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eitkonen at UTU.FI Mon Feb 18 13:52:44 2002 From: eitkonen at UTU.FI (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 15:52:44 +0200 Subject: two questions Message-ID: First: Are there such (relatively recent) EXPERIMENTAL studies on the understanding of the English passive that do not hide the amount of individual variation? Second: Are there EXPERIMENTAL studies on how people understand the logic of (or entailment relations between) deontic notions (like 'if you MUST do x, then you MAY do x, but not vice versa')? (It is a different matter that, according to one view, ordinary non-deontic inferences may contain an implicit use of some deontic notions.) - Any help is greatly appreciated. Esa Itkonen From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Tue Feb 19 06:40:29 2002 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 22:40:29 -0800 Subject: FUNKNET administration Message-ID: Dear FUNKNET subscribers, As some of you may recall, a few years ago I passed the administrative responsibility for FUNKNET to Spike Gildea, who at the time was teaching at Rice University. When in the fall of 2000 Spike moved back to Oregon, he was originally going to bring FUNKNET back with him to the University of Oregon. Alas, Spike's responsibilities as Dept. Head at Oregon seem to have made such an arrangement somewhat too taxing for him. Fortunately, we have a volunteer who has stepped in, just in the nick of time. As some of you may know, Matt (Masayoshi) Shibatani has accepted a position at the Linguistics Dept. at Rice University. Matt is only too well known in our community to require much of an introduction, having received his MA and PhD at Berkeley, taught (and received tenure) at USC, and then moved back home to Kobe; though for all intent and purpose he has never really left these shores. His work on causative constructions, grammatical relations, and voice remains a beacon of functional and typological scholarship. In an exemplary spirit of community service, Matt has agreed to take over the responsibility for running FUNKNET. This is, needless to say, a most felicitous disposition of the matter. On behalf of all of us, I would like to thank Matt for stepping into the breach, as well as congratulate him on his new professional (ad)venture. For all FUNKNET business as well as for other matters, he may be reached at . Cheers, Tomás From matt at RICE.EDU Thu Feb 21 15:44:07 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:44:07 -0600 Subject: Funknet administration Message-ID: Dear Funknetters: Tom's is right about the Funknet affiliation (if informal) with the Linguistics Department at Rice University since the administrative responsibility was passed onto Spike Gildea while he was teaching here. After Spike left Rice for Oregon in the fall of 2000, Michael Barlow, who was co-owner of Funknet with Spike, has been running the list. I know Tom appreciates Michael's activities on behalf of Funknet over the years and would want to join me in thanking him for his service in maintaining the list. Now that the Rice Linguistics Department is willing to provide the official, permanent home to Funknet, I am going to meet with Michael and other members of the Rice Linguistics Department to work out how we can handle the future administration of the list at Rice and how best we can serve the community of functional linguists. You will be hearing from us shortly. All the best, Matt From matt at RICE.EDU Tue Feb 26 16:05:23 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 10:05:23 -0600 Subject: Akio Kamio Message-ID: To members of Funknet: We are deeply sorry that we must confirm the information that several members of our community had read in the news: A funknet member has been officially notified by Kyoko Suzuki of Dokkyo University in Japan that Prof. Akio Kamio and his wife Noriko committed suicide Sunday. He had been suffering from depression for a long while. Prof. Kamio was noted for his ability to work productively in both functional and formal frameworks, and on both normal and aphasic language. He was among the leading senior linguists in Japan with numerous important roles in that linguistic community, including a member of the editorial board of Gengo Kenkyu, the journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan. Being kind-hearted and considerate, Akio also had a large circle of friends in the U.S., having been a visiting scholar at Harvard and at the University of Colorado. His books include Territory of Information (1997), and the edited/co-edited volumes Function and Structure (1998, festschrift for Susumu Kuno) and Directions in Functional Linguistics (1997), all published by John Benjamins. Lise Menn, Brian MacWhinney, Matt Shibatani From matt at RICE.EDU Tue Feb 26 16:26:19 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 10:26:19 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear Fuknetters: I am pleased to confirm the continued affiliation of Funknet with the Linguistics Department at Rice University, which promises continued support to our efforts toward lively and fruitful discussion on the matters of functionalist interest. Best, Matt From hilaryy at RUF.RICE.EDU Thu Feb 28 04:41:19 2002 From: hilaryy at RUF.RICE.EDU (Hilary Young) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 22:41:19 -0600 Subject: speech perception symposium Message-ID: CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT *********************************************************** *********************************************************** ** ** ** RICE UNIVERSITY'S ** ** NINTH BIENNIAL LINGUISTICS SYMPOSIUM ** ** ** ** SPEECH PERCEPTION IN CONTEXT: ** ** BEYOND ACOUSTIC PATTERN MATCHING ** ** ** *********************************************************** *********************************************************** RICE UNIVERSITY Houston, Texas March 14-16, 2002 This symposium brings together researchers who investigate the knowledge systems that are involved in the speech perception process, and how these systems interact. Although they are from a variety of different fields, they share in interest in examining speech perception as a phenomenon that moves beyond acoustic pattern matching, and instead appeal to the entire range of cognitive systems involved in perceiving speech in natural contexts. PARTICIPANTS: PETER CARIANI, Harvard University SUZANNE CURTIN, U. of British Columbia and U. of Pittsburgh KEITH JOHNSON, The Ohio State University SYD LAMB, Rice University NANCY NIEDZIELSKI, Rice University HOWARD NUSBAUM, University of Chicago DAVID PISONI AND CYNTHIA CLOPPER, Indiana University BARTEK PLICHTA, Michigan State University DENNIS PRESTON, Michigan State University MIKKO SAMS, Helsinki University RICHARD WRIGHT and GABRIEL WEBSTER, University of Washington FOR INFORMATION, email us at niedz at rice.edu, call us at 713-348-6010, or visit us at www.linguistics.rice.edu/symposium From matt at RICE.EDU Thu Feb 28 19:58:04 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 13:58:04 -0600 Subject: Fwd: Professor Akio Kamio Message-ID: >To the members of Funknet: > >I would like to express my sorrow at hearing about the deaths of Professor >Kamio Akio and his wife. Professor Kamio and I once co-wrote a paper >("Factivity: 25 years later" CLS 1996). He was also a careful reader of >several of my manuscripts on complementizers. He was always thorough and >very supportive. As Professor Shibatani wrote, his works were influential >in various fields. His professional contributions as well as his kind, warm >personality will be greatly missed. > >Satoko Suzuki > > > >Satoko Suzuki >Associate Professor >Japanese Language Program >Macalester College >1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105 >phone: 651-696-6723 >fax: 651-696-6689 > >$BF|K\8l$G$b$I$&$>!#(B > >suzuki at macalester.edu From matt at RICE.EDU Thu Feb 28 21:37:00 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 15:37:00 -0600 Subject: Fwd: Message-ID: Dear Teresa: Now the voided (I believe) check sent to Kobe has been forwarded to me. Do you want it back? Has the replacement check been issued yet? Thanks, Matt >Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 12:29:51 -0600 >To: disbmt at rice.edu >From: Matt Shibatani > >Dear Teresa: > > I am requesting that you reissue a new check for the following one > sent to Japan by mistake. > >Thanks, >Masayoshi Shibatani > > >1. check number - 561567 >2. check amount - $757.76 >3. travel statement number - TV 006331 >- mailed to Kobe University on January 24, 2002 From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 17:56:53 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 17:56:53 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wilcox at UNM.EDU Sun Feb 3 18:48:19 2002 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 11:48:19 -0700 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Uncle!!! -- Sherman Wilcox University of New Mexico From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 19:01:36 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 19:01:36 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 20:28:51 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 20:28:51 +0000 Subject: SORRY! for multiple messages; computer glitch! Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sun Feb 3 19:37:32 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 19:37:32 +0000 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wilcox at UNM.EDU Sun Feb 3 22:07:02 2002 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 15:07:02 -0700 Subject: Oh, now I get it! In-Reply-To: <200202032156.g13Ludj14431@central.cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: On 2/3/02 2:56 PM, Ellen F. Prince said: > Is this a subtle way of saying that there's nothing beyond Chomsky? Wonderful! -- Sherman From ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU Sun Feb 3 21:56:39 2002 From: ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 16:56:39 EST Subject: Oh, now I get it! Message-ID: Is this a subtle way of saying that there's nothing beyond Chomsky? ;) ------- Forwarded Message Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2002 17:56:52 +0000 From: bruce richman To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003
   


Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: Click Here
------- End of Forwarded Message From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon Feb 4 17:28:33 2002 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 09:28:33 -0800 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: Dear FUNK people,] Having received, courtesy of Bruce Richman, 22 commerial messaages from the hustlers at Hotmail, and having been over the past few months subjected to his repeated announcements of the "Beyond Chomsky" agenda, I am finally moved to say the following: Hey, you may be a terrific guy, Bruce, I have no way of knowing. But---even you Hotmail caper aside--I think you stand in grave danger of alienating a substantial number of the FUNK folk. So I though I'd maybe take a minute to tell you why. Vigorous alternative approaches to Chomsky sprang all over the countryside beginning with Ross & Lajoff (1967) "Is deep structure necessary?". Chuck Fillmore (1966) "The case for the case" was an implicit challenge already. Wally Chafe's (1970) "Meanning & the structure of language" was right-on and right there. The early CLS years (1968-1975) gave vent to a large & unruly collection of 'alternatives'. The Greenberg/Bolinger-inspired typological-cum-functional explosion of the 1970s was another case in point, as was Langacker/Lakoff's "Cognitive Grammar". Joan Bresnan, another ex-student of Chomsky, has certainly counted herself as an alternative to nthe Master since the late 1970s. And there are many more whom space does not permit to enumerate. But still, Bruce-- Even if you grant all this, there is something a bit bizarre about the "Beyond Chomsk" agenda. Certainly to me. You see, I count myself as Chomsky's student. I rebelled very early, even before I finished my dissertation (1969). For how could someone interested in typological diversity, meaning/function and diachrony abide by Aspects for very long? But Aspects was my first Syntax textbook, fresh off the press (1965). And to this day, having spent I think a considerable portion--perhaps too much--of my professional life trying to articulate where the Generative agenda went wrong--I still must go on record and say that I owe my career in syntax (and linguistics) to Noam Chomsky. And that even when I find him least helpful, most arcane, most infuriating, I must nonetheless credit him with raising some of the most interesting questions that still haunt us in the study of grammar/syntax. Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner extreme empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, memory, immitation and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have challenged Bloomfield's anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would have raised the possibility that beyond the surface item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield urge us to catalogue, classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system that 'supported semantic interpretation'? That accounted for meaning paraphrases? That accounter for 'syntactic' (but perforce also semantic, given Chomsky's very definition of Deep Structure) ambiguity? Ross and Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in Ch. 2 of Aspects. Sure, we have many reasons for choosing to disagree with Chomsky. But before we/you go beyond him, perhaps it would behoove us all to acknowledge what--and how much--we owe him. And perhaps it would be useful to remind ourselves that however infuriating he may be at times, and however 'wrong' posterity may eventually deem him (yeah, that fickle lady of whom none of us could ever take for granted...), his reasons for doing things the way he does are neither haphazard nor fickle nor incoherent. They spring from, and are dictated by, an agenda that has certain--indeed rather consistent--philosophical & methodological roots, ones that may be traced back to both Plato and Saussure and, somewhat paradoxically, also to Russell and Carnap (tho here Chomsky might disagree most violently). What is more, Chomsky's historical position--as the person who almost single-handedly deposed the dogmatic, philosophically-constrained, methodologically bizarre Bloomfieldians at the worst stage of their convoluted, garrulous decay in the 1950s--is something all of us benefitted from, and should be therefore generous enough to acknowledge. The fact that Chomsky's Generativism soon became just as extreme and reductive as the dogma Empiricist that preceded it is indeed sad. It reflects a certain dynamics of our historical community, of swinging like a wild pendulum from one extreme to the other. It is indeed this very reductionism that impelled many of us, I contend for valid philosophical and methodological reasons, to dissent and strike out on our own. But let us (in this departing from Chosky's own occasionally-infuriating coups of revisionist historicism and self-invention) try to keep in mind where we come from. It has, just maybe, a huge bearing on where we're headed. Y'all be good y'hear, TG ========================= bruce richman wrote: > Beyond Chomsky 2003: The Real Study of Real > Language A conference to be held on April > 26 and 27, 2003 at Carnegie Mellon > University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania For the past 40 years > progress in the study of language has been set back by the huge > influence of Chomsky's model of studying language. Linguists, > language scholars, people in other fields, and the general public have > concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery about > language of great scientific importance. (See the pro-Chomsky > article that appeared in the Science News section of the New York > Times on Jan. 15, 2002 for an example of this.) The time has come > for those of us who know better, to announce to the world that > Chomsky's great "discovery" about language is basically empty and > irrelevant. Rather than being a real study of real language, > Chomsky's method involves the rhetorical invention of a made-up > subject matter that has little relation to language and little > relevance for it. It started out supposedly being an explanation > about the discourse relations of sentences. Then it changed to an > explanation of the psychological reality of sentences. When this > proved impossible, Chomsky's method retreated to being an explanation > of biology; a biology that was impossible to study -- but great for > speculation. For 40 years, it has retreated further and further away > from the reality of language. Chomsky's model remains just an > ingenious explanation in search of something to explain. Once we > renounce this irrelevant "method," we can go forward with the hard > work of the empirical study of real language in real life. > Chomsky's biggest mistake from the beginning was to hold on > tenaciously to the belief in the basic principle of traditional > grammar that the basic organizing force of grammar is meaningless, > mechanical "agreement." This mistaken view of grammar as meaningless > and mechanical goes back to the theories of ancient grammarians, who > were unable to explain the actual distribution of grammatical cases, > and consequently invented the notion of grammatical "agreement" as a > way to "explain" their ignorance of why forms were distributed as they > were. (The late William Diver and his followers have done great work > on this subject.) Chomsky and his followers have taken this > crucial mistaken view of grammar and kicked it upstairs and enshrined > it, making meaningless, mechanical grammar the be all and end all of > all accounts of language. All the complicated grammatical stuff > that Chomskyans expend so much ingenious efforts on "explaining" are > about aspects of grammar that are entirely irrelevant to what most > adults and all children actually deal with. All the complicated > grammatical "calculations" that Chomskyans waste so much effort on are > about phenomena that do not occur at all in spontaneous spoken > language and are really the kind of stuff that only some college > trained people sometimes encounter in written form. Real spontaneous > spoken language is quite free of much of the "grammar" so dear to > Chomskyans hearts. (See Jim Miller and Regina Weinart's work on > this.) This is another reason to agree with Esa Itkonen that > Chomsky's theory is an explanation in search of something to > explain. We want people from a wide range of areas related to > language present papers and join in our discussions. Only by having > people from many different areas can we build up an overall picture of > where language study should go. At the end of the conference we will > try to put together a collective statement of the findings of the > conference which we will make public. If you are interested in > participating, please contact Bruce Richman at > brucerichman at hotmail.com or Alexander Gross at > language at sprynet.com > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. Click Here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kees.hengeveld at HUM.UVA.NL Mon Feb 4 19:33:09 2002 From: kees.hengeveld at HUM.UVA.NL (Kees Hengeveld) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 20:33:09 +0100 Subject: International MA and MPhil in Linguistics at U Amsterdam Message-ID: As of September 2002, the University of Amsterdam offers a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and a Master of Arts (MA) Programme in Linguistics. Both programmes are taught in English or, in the case of language-specific courses, in the target language. The MPhil Programme in Linguistics is a one-year research oriented programme which offers the opportunity to specialize in a wide range of linguistic subdisciplines. The programme is open to a maximum of fifteen students and is offered to selected, highly qualified students with an MA in the field of Linguistics or an equivalent programme of at least four years of full-time study at university level. The Master of Arts (MA) Programme in Linguistics offers the same range of specializations, but aims at students with a BA in Linguistics or an equivalent programme of at least three years of full-time study at university level who wish to continue their studies at the University of Amsterdam. The University of Amsterdam is interested in attracting talented researchers, and offers a number of partial tuition waivers to students wishing to participate in the MPhil programme. Further partial tuition waivers are available for qualified students from EU-countries who wish to participate in the MA-programme. Further information about the programmes may be found at www.hum.uva.nl/graduateschool or requested from . From bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU Mon Feb 4 20:10:57 2002 From: bates at CRL.UCSD.EDU (Liz Bates) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 12:10:57 -0800 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: Like Talmy, I have mixed feelings about Bruce Ricman's "Beyond Chomsky" initiative, although my concerns are a bit different from Talmy's. I agree that this proposed initiative seems to be quite naive regarding the long list of linguists who have provided critical alternatives, for many years, to Chomsky's particular variants of generative grammar. So my response to each of these mailings has been "Good idea, but hasn't it already been done?" But I have to disagree with Talmy about the magnitude of Chomsky's contribution in bringing down the hated behaviorists. Talmy seems to be quite naive regarding the long list of psychologists who have provided critical alternatives to behaviorism, for many years, before and during and after Chomsky's own contributions. The truth is that radical, "black box", Watson/Skinner behaviorism was a flash in the pan. Its primary role in history (it now seems) has been to serve as a scarecrow for generations of generative linguists. I think it would be useful for functionalists and generativists alike to understand this a little bit better. It is deeply human to want to look inside any box that is placed before us. There were physiological psychologists trying to look inside that box throughout the 20th century, and experimental psychology has never been without a high proportion of influential mentalists. Donald Hebb comes to mind: his 1949 book "The organization of behavior" was really about the organization of the mind/brain, and if there is one psychologist in the history of our field who has been proven SOUNDLY AND FULLY right, it was Donald Hebb (in case you have ever heard the term "Hebbian learning", it comes from Hebb's conjecture that "the neurons that fire together wire together", an unabashedly associationist principle that has been repeatedly confirmed and elaborated in neuroscience since his time -- Eric Kandel's Nobel Prize two years ago in many respects represents an acknowledgment of Hebb's victory). And then of course there was Edward Tolman, the Berkeley psychologist for whom the Berkeley Psychology building is named. Tolman believed that the rat presses the bar because he EXPECTS to be reinforced -- rats have expectations, hopes, dreams and aspirations, and psychologists have to deal with those facts and build a theory that contains them. If you would like to take a look at his classic paper "Cognitive maps in rats and men", here is a URL that will take you right to it... http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Tolman/Maps/maps.htm But the list goes on. Do you know when the term "psycholinguistics" was first applied to a conference? It was in 1952, five years before Chomsky's first influential book appeared. The conference was organized by Charles Osgood, to put linguists and psychologists together to talk about similarities and differences in their mental models of language as well as their empirical methods. To be sure, there was a big non-linear acceleration in ideas and works of this kind after 1957, but I get a bit tired of hearing people say that Chomsky started the Cognitive Revolution. The return to mentalism was inevitable, for two reasons: (1) accelerating progress in neuroscience brought with it a renewed hope that a mechanistic base could be found for mental phenomena, and (2) the birth of computing machines (symbolic and connectionist, born around the same time) meant that we now had a truly mechanistic (as in 'machines') set of metaphors for exploring mental phenomena. If you look at fields like ethology, developmental psychology and physiological psychology, you will find that the same big non-linear blip was happening everywhere. There was a return to mentalism all across the behavioral and neural sciences (that would eventually become the cognitive sciences), promulgated in many cases by people who had never heard of Chomsky, or if they had, they knew that he was an influential linguist who ALSO (like them) thought that we could investigate the contents of mind. It is no coincidence that Piaget's works were translated into English or widely read by developmental psychologists in the 1960's (many years after they were written). Piaget's influence on developmental psychology after that point was one more sign of the return to mentalism that characterized the Cognitive Revolution. But here is where Chomsky and his followers hijacked the mentalist movement (or at least their sector of it): mentalism does not have to go hand in hand with (a) nativism, or (b) autonomy of domains, but Chomsky's particular version of mentalism contained (then and now) strong assumptions about the innateness and autonomy of language. And in the "take no prisoners" atmosphere that flourished in that particular community, anyone who did not buy the *WHOLE PACKAGE* was roundly denounced as a behaviorist. Piaget is the best case in point: as nativists got more and more control of the agenda in developmental psychology, Piaget was pilloried for his belief in construction and emergence (neither innate, nor learned, a category unto itself). Piatelli-Palmarini's edited book "The Piaget-Chomsky Debate" was a high water mark (and low point in my own career, it was such a depressing patricidal moment). And yet Piaget was the consummate mentalist, someone who deeply believed that mind is rooted in biology, and can be studied with experimental methods like any other biological phenomenon. His crimes, it seems, were his belief in emergence (as opposed to a strictly deterministic form of innateness, one that takes the form of a priori representations/knowledge), and his belief in the fundamental unity of cognitive phenomena (as opposed to domain specificity and autonomy). Those beliefs were and are unacceptable to card-carrying members of the Chomskian orthodoxy. We live in an era today in which the vast majority of neurobiologists are convinced that cortex is largely constructed, the result of plastic and bidirectional processes that include genes-->structure but also experience-->structure. Activity dependence and plasticity are acknowledged as primary processes in setting up the brain, including forms of experience that are going on in utero, with the body teaching the brain via exactly the same mechanisms that mediate what we have to call 'learning' later on. The emergentist approach is clearly on the rise in biology, and in computational neuroscience (in the various branches of neural network research). Unfortunately, I think that Chomsky's strong insistence on a preformationist kind of nativism and a compartmentalization of the mind are now obstacles to change. At one time he was an important part of the cognitive revolution (though he did not do it alone, and it would have happened anyway even if he had not been around). Right now, I think we do need to move beyond those aspects of his views that have been eclipsed in neuroscience but are still embraced in linguistics. But it is hard to make that point, because there is still a very strong sociological tendency in generative grammar to belittle anyone who promotes emergence, plasticity, or (God forbid) the kind of complex, rich and neurally valid associationism that Hebb understood long ago. If you don't buy the whole package, you are a behaviorist. Talmy indicates in the following quote that he is indeed still Chomsky's student in that particular sense: >Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner extreme >empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, memory, immitation >and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have challenged Bloomfield's >anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would have raised the possibility >that beyond the surface item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield >urge us to catalogue, classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system >that 'supported semantic interpretation'? Who indeed? My answer is: a whole lot of people, in linguistics and psychology and neuroscience and computer science, people were challenging the Watson/Skinner extreme for many many years. Give up on that scarecrow. It doesn't exist, and in reality, it was never more than a kind of radical-chic stance taken by a handful of psychologists just to see how far they could go. In some respects, I think that Bruce Richman's call for us to move "Beyond Chomsky" has come in a little late. Many of us already did that a long time ago. What we need to do now is to sort through a complex landscape of beliefs (emergence vs. learning vs. unfolding of innate knowledge; modularity vs. interactionism; autonomous syntax vs. embodied grammar) and figure out how they can be reconfigured and recombined for a new era. -liz bates From kfeld at CITRUS.UCR.EDU Mon Feb 4 21:02:38 2002 From: kfeld at CITRUS.UCR.EDU (David B. Kronenfeld) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 13:02:38 -0800 Subject: moving beyond In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Amen. With maybe a little add to the effect that Bloomfield himself, in his actual practice, as nowhere near as bad as he himself made himself out to be (in what he said should be done)--to cover what then, at the time, looked to be his science flank. The "taxonomic" charge against Bloomfield sort of sticks; the "radical behaviorist" one is, to my mind, a much harder sell. David At 12:10 PM 2/4/02 -0800, Liz Bates wrote: >Like Talmy, I have mixed feelings about Bruce Ricman's "Beyond Chomsky" >initiative, although my concerns are a bit different from Talmy's. I agree >that this proposed initiative seems to be quite naive regarding the long >list of linguists who have provided critical alternatives, for many years, >to Chomsky's particular variants of generative grammar. So my response to >each of these mailings has been "Good idea, but hasn't it already been >done?" But I have to disagree with Talmy about the magnitude of Chomsky's >contribution in bringing down the hated behaviorists. Talmy seems to be >quite naive regarding the long list of psychologists who have provided >critical alternatives to behaviorism, for many years, before and during and >after Chomsky's own contributions. > >The truth is that radical, "black box", Watson/Skinner behaviorism was a >flash in the pan. Its primary role in history (it now seems) has been to >serve as a scarecrow for generations of generative linguists. I think it >would be useful for functionalists and generativists alike to understand >this a little bit better. It is deeply human to want to look inside any >box that is placed before us. There were physiological psychologists >trying to look inside that box throughout the 20th century, and >experimental psychology has never been without a high proportion of >influential mentalists. Donald Hebb comes to mind: his 1949 book "The >organization of behavior" was really about the organization of the >mind/brain, and if there is one psychologist in the history of our field >who has been proven SOUNDLY AND FULLY right, it was Donald Hebb (in case >you have ever heard the term "Hebbian learning", it comes from Hebb's >conjecture that "the neurons that fire together wire together", an >unabashedly associationist principle that has been repeatedly confirmed and >elaborated in neuroscience since his time -- Eric Kandel's Nobel Prize two >years ago in many respects represents an acknowledgment of Hebb's victory). >And then of course there was Edward Tolman, the Berkeley psychologist for >whom the Berkeley Psychology building is named. Tolman believed that the >rat presses the bar because he EXPECTS to be reinforced -- rats have >expectations, hopes, dreams and aspirations, and psychologists have to deal >with those facts and build a theory that contains them. If you would like >to take a look at his classic paper "Cognitive maps in rats and men", here >is a URL that will take you right to it... > >http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Tolman/Maps/maps.htm > >But the list goes on. Do you know when the term "psycholinguistics" was >first applied to a conference? It was in 1952, five years before Chomsky's >first influential book appeared. The conference was organized by Charles >Osgood, to put linguists and psychologists together to talk about >similarities and differences in their mental models of language as well as >their empirical methods. > >To be sure, there was a big non-linear acceleration in ideas and works of >this kind after 1957, but I get a bit tired of hearing people say that >Chomsky started the Cognitive Revolution. The return to mentalism was >inevitable, for two reasons: (1) accelerating progress in neuroscience >brought with it a renewed hope that a mechanistic base could be found for >mental phenomena, and (2) the birth of computing machines (symbolic and >connectionist, born around the same time) meant that we now had a truly >mechanistic (as in 'machines') set of metaphors for exploring mental >phenomena. If you look at fields like ethology, developmental psychology >and physiological psychology, you will find that the same big non-linear >blip was happening everywhere. There was a return to mentalism all across >the behavioral and neural sciences (that would eventually become the >cognitive sciences), promulgated in many cases by people who had never >heard of Chomsky, or if they had, they knew that he was an influential >linguist who ALSO (like them) thought that we could investigate the >contents of mind. It is no coincidence that Piaget's works were translated >into English or widely read by developmental psychologists in the 1960's >(many years after they were written). Piaget's influence on developmental >psychology after that point was one more sign of the return to mentalism >that characterized the Cognitive Revolution. But here is where Chomsky and >his followers hijacked the mentalist movement (or at least their sector of >it): mentalism does not have to go hand in hand with (a) nativism, or (b) >autonomy of domains, but Chomsky's particular version of mentalism >contained (then and now) strong assumptions about the innateness and >autonomy of language. And in the "take no prisoners" atmosphere that >flourished in that particular community, anyone who did not buy the *WHOLE >PACKAGE* was roundly denounced as a behaviorist. Piaget is the best case >in point: as nativists got more and more control of the agenda in >developmental psychology, Piaget was pilloried for his belief in >construction and emergence (neither innate, nor learned, a category unto >itself). Piatelli-Palmarini's edited book "The Piaget-Chomsky Debate" was >a high water mark (and low point in my own career, it was such a depressing >patricidal moment). And yet Piaget was the consummate mentalist, someone >who deeply believed that mind is rooted in biology, and can be studied with >experimental methods like any other biological phenomenon. His crimes, it >seems, were his belief in emergence (as opposed to a strictly deterministic >form of innateness, one that takes the form of a priori >representations/knowledge), and his belief in the fundamental unity of >cognitive phenomena (as opposed to domain specificity and autonomy). Those >beliefs were and are unacceptable to card-carrying members of the Chomskian >orthodoxy. > >We live in an era today in which the vast majority of neurobiologists are >convinced that cortex is largely constructed, the result of plastic and >bidirectional processes that include genes-->structure but also >experience-->structure. Activity dependence and plasticity are >acknowledged as primary processes in setting up the brain, including forms >of experience that are going on in utero, with the body teaching the brain >via exactly the same mechanisms that mediate what we have to call >'learning' later on. The emergentist approach is clearly on the rise in >biology, and in computational neuroscience (in the various branches of >neural network research). Unfortunately, I think that Chomsky's strong >insistence on a preformationist kind of nativism and a compartmentalization >of the mind are now obstacles to change. At one time he was an important >part of the cognitive revolution (though he did not do it alone, and it >would have happened anyway even if he had not been around). Right now, I >think we do need to move beyond those aspects of his views that have been >eclipsed in neuroscience but are still embraced in linguistics. But it is >hard to make that point, because there is still a very strong sociological >tendency in generative grammar to belittle anyone who promotes emergence, >plasticity, or (God forbid) the kind of complex, rich and neurally valid >associationism that Hebb understood long ago. If you don't buy the whole >package, you are a behaviorist. Talmy indicates in the following quote >that he is indeed still Chomsky's student in that particular sense: > > >Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner extreme > >empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, memory, immitation > >and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have challenged Bloomfield's > >anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would have raised the possibility > >that beyond the surface item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield > >urge us to catalogue, classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system > >that 'supported semantic interpretation'? > >Who indeed? My answer is: a whole lot of people, in linguistics and >psychology and neuroscience and computer science, people were challenging >the Watson/Skinner extreme for many many years. Give up on that scarecrow. >It doesn't exist, and in reality, it was never more than a kind of >radical-chic stance taken by a handful of psychologists just to see how far >they could go. In some respects, I think that Bruce Richman's call for us >to move "Beyond Chomsky" has come in a little late. Many of us already did >that a long time ago. What we need to do now is to sort through a complex >landscape of beliefs (emergence vs. learning vs. unfolding of innate >knowledge; modularity vs. interactionism; autonomous syntax vs. embodied >grammar) and figure out how they can be reconfigured and recombined for a >new era. -liz bates David B. Kronenfeld Phone Office 909/787-4340 Department of Anthropology Message 909/787-5524 University of California Fax 909/787-5409 Riverside, CA 92521 email kfeld at citrus.ucr.edu Department: http://Anthropology.ucr.edu/ Personal: http://pweb.netcom.com/~fanti/david.html From lexes at MINDSPRING.COM Mon Feb 4 21:39:30 2002 From: lexes at MINDSPRING.COM (Clifford Lutton) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 16:39:30 -0500 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: There is a point of diminishing returns in most endeavors. The perpetuation of activities producing diminishing returns eventually produces negative returns. The good that Chomsky's "revolution" brought long ago began to produce diminishing returns. IMNSHO, "moving beyond" Chomsky should not become a substitute for actually engaging in activities that produce positive returns. The best way to move beyond Chomsky is to give him his due and then, simply, move on. BTW, has anyone recently produced, or is anyone working on a compendium of the contributions of linguistics to the cognitive sciences? Cliff Lutton contraricus at mindspring.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ivy.gif Type: image/gif Size: 5665 bytes Desc: not available URL: From john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL Tue Feb 5 07:03:23 2002 From: john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL (John Myhill) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:03:23 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003 In-Reply-To: <3C5EC4C1.2B2FB274@oregon.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Well put, Talmy! John > >Dear FUNK people,] > >Having received, courtesy of Bruce Richman, 22 commerial messaages >from the hustlers at Hotmail, and having been over the past few >months subjected to his repeated announcements of the "Beyond >Chomsky" agenda, I am finally moved to say the following: Hey, you >may be a terrific guy, Bruce, I have no way of knowing. But---even >you Hotmail caper aside--I think you stand in grave danger of >alienating a substantial number of the FUNK folk. So I though I'd >maybe take a minute to tell you why. > >Vigorous alternative approaches to Chomsky sprang all over the >countryside beginning with Ross & Lajoff (1967) "Is deep structure >necessary?". Chuck Fillmore (1966) "The case for the case" was an >implicit challenge already. Wally Chafe's (1970) "Meanning & the >structure of language" was right-on and right there. The early CLS >years (1968-1975) gave vent to a large & unruly collection of >'alternatives'. The Greenberg/Bolinger-inspired >typological-cum-functional explosion of the 1970s was another case >in point, as was Langacker/Lakoff's "Cognitive Grammar". Joan >Bresnan, another ex-student of Chomsky, has certainly counted >herself as an alternative to nthe Master since the late 1970s. And >there are many more whom space does not permit to enumerate. But >still, Bruce-- > >Even if you grant all this, there is something a bit bizarre about >the "Beyond Chomsk" agenda. Certainly to me. You see, I count myself >as Chomsky's student. I rebelled very early, even before I finished >my dissertation (1969). For how could someone interested in >typological diversity, meaning/function and diachrony abide by >Aspects for very long? But Aspects was my first Syntax textbook, >fresh off the press (1965). And to this day, having spent I think a >considerable portion--perhaps too much--of my professional life >trying to articulate where the Generative agenda went wrong--I still >must go on record and say that I owe my career in syntax (and >linguistics) to Noam Chomsky. And that even when I find him least >helpful, most arcane, most infuriating, I must nonetheless credit >him with raising some of the most interesting questions that still >haunt us in the study of grammar/syntax. > >Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner >extreme empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote, >memory, immitation and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have >challenged Bloomfield's anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would >have raised the possibility that beyond the surface >item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield urge us to catalogue, >classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system that 'supported >semantic interpretation'? That accounted for meaning paraphrases? >That accounter for 'syntactic' (but perforce also semantic, given >Chomsky's very definition of Deep Structure) ambiguity? Ross and >Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the >logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was >either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The >Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct >consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in >Ch. 2 of Aspects. > >Sure, we have many reasons for choosing to disagree with Chomsky. >But before we/you go beyond him, perhaps it would behoove us all to >acknowledge what--and how much--we owe him. And perhaps it would be >useful to remind ourselves that however infuriating he may be at >times, and however 'wrong' posterity may eventually deem him >(yeah, that fickle lady of whom none of us could ever take for >granted...), his reasons for doing things the way he does are >neither haphazard nor fickle nor incoherent. They spring from, and >are dictated by, an agenda that has certain--indeed rather >consistent--philosophical & methodological roots, ones that may be >traced back to both Plato and Saussure and, somewhat paradoxically, >also to Russell and Carnap (tho here Chomsky might disagree most >violently). What is more, Chomsky's historical position--as the >person who almost single-handedly deposed the dogmatic, >philosophically-constrained, methodologically bizarre Bloomfieldians >at the worst stage of their convoluted, garrulous decay in the >1950s--is something all of us benefitted from, and should be >therefore generous enough to acknowledge. > >The fact that Chomsky's Generativism soon became just as extreme and >reductive as the dogma Empiricist that preceded it is indeed sad. It >reflects a certain dynamics of our historical community, of swinging >like a wild pendulum from one extreme to the other. It is indeed >this very reductionism that impelled many of us, I contend for >valid philosophical and methodological reasons, to dissent and >strike out on our own. But let us (in this departing from Chosky's >own occasionally-infuriating coups of revisionist historicism and >self-invention) try to keep in mind where we come from. It has, just >maybe, a huge bearing on where we're headed. > > >Y'all be good y'hear, TG > >========================= > > > >bruce richman wrote: > >> Beyond Chomsky 2003: The Real Study of Real >>Language A conference to be held on >>April 26 and 27, 2003 at Carnegie >>Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania For the past 40 >>years progress in the study of language has been set back by the >>huge influence of Chomsky's model of studying language. Linguists, >>language scholars, people in other fields, and the general public >>have concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery >>about language of great scientific importance. (See the >>pro-Chomsky article that appeared in the Science News section of >>the New York Times on Jan. 15, 2002 for an example of this.) >>The time has come for those of us who know better, to announce to >>the world that Chomsky's great "discovery" about language is >>basically empty and irrelevant. Rather than being a real study of >>real language, Chomsky's method involves the rhetorical invention >>of a made-up subject matter that has little relation to language >>and little relevance for it. It started out supposedly being an >>explanation about the discourse relations of sentences. Then it >>changed to an explanation of the psychological reality of >>sentences. When this proved impossible, Chomsky's method retreated >>to being an explanation of biology; a biology that was impossible >>to study -- but great for speculation. For 40 years, it has >>retreated further and further away from the reality of language. >>Chomsky's model remains just an ingenious explanation in search of >>something to explain. Once we renounce this irrelevant >>"method," we can go forward with the hard work of the empirical >>study of real language in real life. Chomsky's biggest mistake >>from the beginning was to hold on tenaciously to the belief in the >>basic principle of traditional grammar that the basic organizing >>force of grammar is meaningless, mechanical "agreement." This >>mistaken view of grammar as meaningless and mechanical goes back to >>the theories of ancient grammarians, who were unable to explain the >>actual distribution of grammatical cases, and consequently invented >>the notion of grammatical "agreement" as a way to "explain" their >>ignorance of why forms were distributed as they were. (The late >>William Diver and his followers have done great work on this >>subject.) Chomsky and his followers have taken this crucial >>mistaken view of grammar and kicked it upstairs and enshrined it, >>making meaningless, mechanical grammar the be all and end all of >>all accounts of language. All the complicated grammatical >>stuff that Chomskyans expend so much ingenious efforts on >>"explaining" are about aspects of grammar that are entirely >>irrelevant to what most adults and all children actually deal with. >>All the complicated grammatical "calculations" that Chomskyans >>waste so much effort on are about phenomena that do not occur at >>all in spontaneous spoken language and are really the kind of stuff >>that only some college trained people sometimes encounter in >>written form. Real spontaneous spoken language is quite free of >>much of the "grammar" so dear to Chomskyans hearts. (See Jim >>Miller and Regina Weinart's work on this.) This is another >>reason to agree with Esa Itkonen that Chomsky's theory is an >>explanation in search of something to explain. We want people >>from a wide range of areas related to language present papers and >>join in our discussions. Only by having people from many different >>areas can we build up an overall picture of where language study >>should go. At the end of the conference we will try to put >>together a collective statement of the findings of the conference >>which we will make public. If you are interested in >>participating, please contact Bruce Richman at >>brucerichman at hotmail.com or >>Alexander Gross at >>language at sprynet.com >> >> >> >>Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. >>Click Here -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU Tue Feb 5 14:48:45 2002 From: MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU (Mills, Carl (MILLSCR)) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:48:45 -0500 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: I was contemplating a long reply to TG's comments, most of which are quite cogent, when Cliff's remarks came in. What he said, y'all. Chairs Carl Carl Mills Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of English and Comparative Literature University of Cincinnati > ---------- > From: Clifford Lutton > Reply To: lexes at MINDSPRING.COM > Sent: Tuesday, February 5, 2002 5:39 AM > To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU > Subject: Re: moving beyond > > <> > There is a point of diminishing returns in most endeavors. The > perpetuation of activities producing diminishing returns eventually > produces negative returns. > The good that Chomsky's "revolution" brought long ago began to produce > diminishing returns. IMNSHO, "moving beyond" Chomsky should not become a > substitute for actually engaging in activities that produce positive > returns. > The best way to move beyond Chomsky is to give him his due and then, > simply, move on. > BTW, has anyone recently produced, or is anyone working on a > compendium of the contributions of linguistics to the cognitive sciences? > Cliff Lutton > contraricus at mindspring.com > > From W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE Tue Feb 5 17:19:23 2002 From: W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE (W. Schulze) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 18:19:23 +0100 Subject: moving beyond Message-ID: Undoubtedly, Liz's contribution to the 'Moving Beyond' debate helps very much to understand *why* there is in fact nothing to 'move beyond'. 'Beyond' (in my humble opinion) implies that there is a more or less monolithic structure which we are used to treat as 'our world', furnished with guarded boundaries and a (restricted and well defined) number of passages that allow people 'to move beyond' in case they are equipped with visa emitted by the world's administration. Passing these borderlines without such a visa (i.e, without a private history that is related to the 'world's paradigm') would be denounced as 'revolt of against the world'. Liz has clearly shown that such a monolithic (Chomskian) 'world' did not exist, nor does it today. However, things are a bit different if we think of the Chomskian world as a construction of scientific (and sometimes) personal cognition. It may well be that some people feel to be absurbed by the Chomskian paradigm both in a scientific and a personal way (I mean in terms of getting a job, or just because the paradigm fit into their general needs to get around in the world). Many of them feel good in the MIT orthodoxy, and undoubtedly, they make considerable progress in elaborating 'their world'. Others, perhaps, feel the need to get out of this 'world' because of various reasons, some of them of private nature, some of them resulting from scientific insights and experience. All this reminds me of the Freudian 'Vater-Komplex' which may become the more relevant in science the more there is a 'father' who 'represents' *the* world (or scientific paradigm in question). A 'revolt' against the 'father(s)' would then mean to 'move beyond' by declaring the fathers world as "basically empty and irrelevant" (to quote Bruce Richman). Such a revolt, however, is basically a 'personal revolt' (perhaps fed by some kind of envie against the father ["the general public have concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery about language of great scientific importance" (Bruce Richman)]). The act of 'revolting' (and thus gaining public attention) resembles more an act of 'self-liberation' and is blind towards the fact that there already exists a world 'out there' which is (more or less) 'different' from the world of the revolutionary's father. Also, the revolting one should bear in mind that the Menon paradoxon not only is fundamental for the understanding of human cognition, but also for the evolution of scientific paradigms: "Even those transcendent parts of new knowledge cannot be completely unrelated to old knowledge, for otherwise they could never be grasped, at least by human beings" [in a reformulation by Miller 1987]. In Europe (esp. in Germany), we have faced the same 'problem' many times. The history of e.g. Indeoeuropean studies is full of (nearly always) 'fathers' who from time to time provoked some kind of more or less 'personal' rebellion [in general, these rebellions failed, also because there always was the option for the 'rebels' to finally end up in the father's system (and to acquire the same role boldly fought against before). It also was Europe (in its broadest sense) that hosted many of those who have developed scientific paradigms etc. that (earlier or later) competed with the Chomskian world. The reluctance, however, that is often observed regarding the reception of European thinking in the US (and that has many reasons) [see e.g. the fate of Vygostkij, the Neolinguistica school (Bartoli, Bertoni), even Functional Grammar in terms of Simon Dik [a Chomskian, before!] or European Cognitivism in a non-US standard - I know what I'm talking about :-)) has - for many of 'us' - created a 'new' father (or mother): The US tradition of linguistics, disregarding whether Chomskian or not. Some people in Europe would gladly opt for 'Moving Beyond the US', out of the same reasons Bruce Richman wants to move beyond Chomsky. All we learn from this is that linguistics (just as any other scientific paradigm) takes part in the dialectal process of paradigms. It simply is a matter of condition, of personal experience and training whether someone lives 'on one side' of this dialectal structure (sometimes revolting against it) or whether (s)he knows to handle both (or more) sides. That is why I dare to be end by quoting Liz's final words: > What we need to do now is to sort through a complex > landscape of beliefs (emergence vs. learning vs. unfolding of innate > knowledge; modularity vs. interactionism; autonomous syntax vs. embodied > grammar) and figure out how they can be reconfigured and recombined for a > new era. This is, how science should be! Wolfgang Prof. Dr. Wolfgang M. Schulze IATS - Institute for General Linguistics and Language Typology [Institut fuer Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft] Dept. II [Communication and Languages - Kommunikation und Sprachen] F 13/14 - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 Muenchen Tel.: ++49-(0)89-21802484 (Secretary) ++49-(0)89-21805343 (Office) Fax: ++49-(0)89-21805345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/ats_eng.html From mserra at PSI.UB.ES Wed Feb 6 10:55:53 2002 From: mserra at PSI.UB.ES (Miquel Serra) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 11:55:53 +0100 Subject: Chomsky 2003 Message-ID: Well put, Liz! But also the oblivion of the rich euro-russian tradition in psychology and linguistics is of concern in the evolution of our disciplines. The magnet of the US style and its diffusion does not correspond to the value of many contributions. There is an intriguing question about Chomsky that may be someone can clarify to me: the apparent contradiction, between his theoretical postulates and his courageous political ideas and compromise - his contribution at the Porto Alegre conference and the other over the years have my deepest admiration and gratitude -. But it is difficult for me to understand, from the european political frame of ideologies, when he confesses, for exemple, that he is "nativist because he is anarchist". I have never well understood this association. Has someone? Miquel ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Miquel Serra i Raventos Departament de Psicologia Basica Divisio de Ciencies de la Salut, Universitat de Barcelona P. de la Vall d'Hebron 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain Tel. +34 - 93 3125136, Fax. +34 - 93 402 13 63 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Wed Feb 6 11:42:59 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 12:42:59 +0100 Subject: Chomsky 2003 In-Reply-To: <3C610BB9.140CD7AF@psi.ub.es> Message-ID: At 11:55 +0100 6/2/02, Miquel Serra wrote: >There is an intriguing question about Chomsky that may be someone >can clarify to me: the apparent contradiction, between his >theoretical postulates and his courageous political ideas and >compromise - his contribution at the Porto Alegre conference and >the other over the years have my deepest admiration and gratitude -. >But it is difficult for me to understand, from the european >political frame of ideologies, when he confesses, for exemple, >that he is "nativist because he is anarchist". I have never well >understood this association. Has someone? Hi, Miquel and all: To begin with, I must confess that I consider myself generativist (i.e. I think that Chomsky's "method" of inquiry is essentially right and that Richman's pamphlet is essentially wrong) and that I admire Chomsky's compromise and political ideas too. But I also belive that the causal association between both Chomsky's facets (scientific and political) is always 'a posteriori' and untenable (Barsky's biography is a good example of a weak and unsuccessful attempt to establish that connection). You can believe that there is an UG as a biological property of the species and simultaneously you can prefer the Davos Forum to the Porto Alegre conference. Of course, if there is not a necessary connection, there is not an apparent contradiction either. Best regards, Jose-Luis. From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Wed Feb 6 12:08:14 2002 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 13:08:14 +0100 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics Message-ID: Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without coming to a conclusive answer: What is the role of functionality in language change? Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated (e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must arise in language change, but how exactly? Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson 2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle ("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, not just because they are socially attractive. So in brief, the two positions are: (i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) (Croft), (ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation ("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, Haspelmath, and no doubt others). Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE Wed Feb 6 14:29:12 2002 From: dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE (Dirk Geeraerts) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 15:29:12 +0100 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics In-Reply-To: <3C611C92.1725E817@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: Is Martin's question one that can be answered empirically, i.e. what would we need to answer it on the basis of empirical evidence? To begin with, keep in mind that changes can spread in other ways than through social imitation alone. Innovations may occur independently and in parallel (as when, for instance, a loanword is borrowed simultaneously by many different language users); in such a case, the dissemination of the innovation is not due to social imitation. Suppose we were then to formulate the Haspelmathian hypothesis: "Functionality supports dissemination. An innovation that is functionally useful spreads more rapidly than one that is not". In order to test this, we would first have to filter out all the cases in which the dissemination is due to simultaneous and independent innovations rather than imitation, and next, we would have to compare the speed of dissemination of different innovations (functional and non-functional) in which social factors and imitation do play a role. But if you want to test that, you would have to know quite a lot about the language community that you are investigating. Because you need to quantify the speed of dissemination, you would need a very good record, at usage level, of the actual utterances of the language users that contribute to the spread of the innovation. And even more importantly, you would have to judge for each user whether he is influenced by others or whether he is innovating independently. Linguists usually do not have the kind of material that would enable them to answer this type of question, so my guess is that it may take us a while before Martin's question can be answered empirically. Or would there be other ways of testing the hypothesis ? Dirk Dirk Geeraerts Departement Lingu?stiek KULeuven Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 B-3000 Leuven, Belgi? [++32] 16 324815 e-mail: dirk.geeraerts at arts.kuleuven.ac.be website: http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/gling/ At 6-2-2002 13:08, Martin Haspelmath wrote: >Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It >would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues >to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. > >In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here >is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without >coming to a conclusive answer: > >What is the role of functionality in language change? > >Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted >structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when >we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated >(e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly >overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is >because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this >is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English >speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have >acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such >as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So >economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must >arise in language change, but how exactly? > >Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson >2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the >actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, >which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally >adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the >diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. >Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in >the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle >("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic >adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional >adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new >features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, >not just because they are socially attractive. > >So in brief, the two positions are: > >(i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional >innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) >(Croft), > >(ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation >("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, >Haspelmath, and no doubt others). > >Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very >sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? > >Martin > >-- >Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) >Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 >D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From gd116 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK Wed Feb 6 17:04:05 2002 From: gd116 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK (Guy Deutscher) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 17:04:05 +0000 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020206143924.0233dec0@onyx.arts.kuleuven.ac.b e> Message-ID: At 15:29 06/02/2002 +0100, Dirk Geeraerts wrote: >Is Martin's question one that can be answered empirically, i.e. what would >we need to answer it on the basis of empirical evidence? Maybe Martin's question could be reformulated in a simpler way, or at least a way which will make it easier to decide whether or not it can be answered empirically. Isn't the real question this: are there any non-functional innovations? If all innovations are functionally driven, then the question about the role of propagation becomes a non-question, or at least one that cannot be answered empirically. If innovations are already selected for being functional, there will be no obvious way of deciding whether propagation adds further functional selection, given our famous 'conflicting motivations'. But if innovations can be non-functional, then the question of whether propagation exercises functional selection becomes meaningful and perhaps even empirically testable. When asked about the causes of innovations, the standard motives we usually invoke can all be seen as functional: economy/ease of production, simplification/ease of processing, need to extend expressive range, and so on. (Perhaps the only exception is borrowing?) In any case, if anyone can come up with an innovation which is clearly non-functional, that is, which has no functional motivation whatsoever, then the discussion could become more meaningful. (Of course, a 'non-functional innovation' is not the same as an innovation that introduces dysfunctionality into the language - we all know there are plenty of innovations that simplify one thing but make something else more complex. 'Non-functional innovations' are those that don't have any functional motivation in the first place.) Guy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed Feb 6 18:35:20 2002 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 10:35:20 -0800 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics Message-ID: Apropo's Martin's question, perhaps it might be useful to review both the parallels & differences between linguistic/diachronic change and biological/evolutionary change. Broadly, we concede that they are both adaptive ('functional'). But there is more to it than broad parallels. First, there is no either-or dichotomy between random mutation and adaptive selection.. In biological adaptation in general (evolution), there are distinct roles in the mechanism for *both* of these mechanisms. As it is acknowledged since Darwin, selection is largely adapotive/functional process But within the selection mechanism itself, there is a (large) role for the purposive *behavior* of individual members of the population. True, selection is most commonly discussed as a population-aggregate process, the mere "consequences" of brute-force mutation. But such discussion is over-simplified, in that it disregards what Ernst Mayr calls "behavior as the pacemaker in evolutionary change" (Mayr 1982, p. 611) Very broadly, I think, you can find analogues to all three components of bio-evolution in diachronic change. *Innovations* are individual events that occur spontaneously during individual speech acts. Most of them will never spread to the population, just like most biochemical mutations have no evoilutionary consequences. *Selection* is a social-transmission mechanism, within which individual adaptive behavior is obviously the fine-grained mechanism. But there is one obvious caveat here: "Random mutation" in biology is really a random biochemical event, not a behavioral event. The vast majority of such events do not reach biochemical viability, let alone behavioral viability (survival). In diachronic change, on the other hand, we don't have the equivalent distinction between genome (biochemical events) and phenome (behavioral events). A random event in diachrony is always behavioral (i.e. phenome), and thus in principle functional-adaptive. One may argue, tho, about how *conscious* functional-adaptive innovations are in linguistic diachrony. And one suspects that some of them are rather unconscious (phonetically-conditioned assimimations?), while others may be perhaps (potentially) conscious (a well-turned metaphor? a striving for better expressive power?). Yes, this is certainly a more substantive cluster of issues. But I still see nothing wrong in talking just a bit about poor Noam. Whether you like him or not (and whether you know it or not), he still looms rather large over y'all's collective horizon. From our perspective (as Wally says) one must admit that maybe he casts more shadow than light. But it sure is a giant shadow... Y'all be good, TG ========================= Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It > would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues > to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. > > In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here > is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without > coming to a conclusive answer: > > What is the role of functionality in language change? > > Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted > structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when > we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated > (e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly > overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is > because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this > is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English > speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have > acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such > as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So > economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must > arise in language change, but how exactly? > > Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson > 2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the > actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, > which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally > adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the > diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. > Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in > the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle > ("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic > adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional > adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new > features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, > not just because they are socially attractive. > > So in brief, the two positions are: > > (i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional > innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) > (Croft), > > (ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation > ("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, > Haspelmath, and no doubt others). > > Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very > sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? > > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 > D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) From bill_mann at SIL.ORG Wed Feb 6 21:13:14 2002 From: bill_mann at SIL.ORG (William Mann) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 16:13:14 -0500 Subject: changing FUNKNET topics Message-ID: Dear Martin and all: It seems to me that one of the premises of this discussion should be that innovation and variation are extremely abundant. Noisy environments, memory lapses and listening to children all lead speakers to create items that are novel to the hearer. That suggests that the problem is not explaining innovation but rather explaining what few innovations are retained, a selectivity explanation problem. Also, we might have a problem if we, in our terminology, use that phrase from below: functional > innovation ("mutation") That presumes that innovations are functionally motivated, caused, given expression or some such. But the relationship between innovations or mutations and function are really under discussion here. It is quite possible that mutations are not initially functional in any sense. So I suggest this editorial restatement of the two positions: (i) Individuals begin to use novel structures in their language because they tacitly or consciously find some advantage in the novel structures as they use them. (call this Individual Functional adaptation.) (Croft, restated), (ii) Languages change, in large part because speakers begin to use novel structures which they have heard and which they tacitly or consciously find some advantage in the novel structures as they use them. (Call this Functional propagation.)(Nettle, Haspelmath, and no doubt others, restated). Notice that (ii) still needs to have a few original sources. I hope that this clarifies either the positions or my misunderstandings. We shall see. Bill Mann ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Haspelmath" To: Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:08 AM Subject: changing FUNKNET topics > Could we please stop discussing Chomsky all the time on Funknet? It > would be a sad sign for functionalism if we had no more burning issues > to discuss than Chomsky's place in history. > > In case you cannot think of any other worthy topic at the moment, here > is a question that I've been asking myself in recent months, without > coming to a conclusive answer: > > What is the role of functionality in language change? > > Many functionalists have recently stressed that functionally adapted > structures come to be functional through language change. That is, when > we say that some synchronic structure is, say, economically motivated > (e.g. the fact that singulars are mostly zero and plurals are mostly > overt), this doesn't mean that language structure is the way it is > because it's economical. My English plurals are overt not because this > is economical, but because I learned to speak like other English > speakers -- if they had overt singulars and zero plurals, I would have > acquired such a perverse system as well (i.e. markedness universals such > as this one are not due to innate restrictions on acquisition). So > economical structures (and more generally, functional structures) must > arise in language change, but how exactly? > > Bill Croft has argued ("Explaining language change", Longman/Pearson > 2000) that functional motivation comes in exclusively through the > actuation of language change, i.e. innovations of individual speakers, > which are (or may be) functionally based. The spread of functionally > adapted structures plays no role, acording to Croft, because the > diffusion/propagation of new features is exclusively socially based. > Using biological terminology, we can say that functionality resides in > the mutations, not in the selection. On the other hand, Daniel Nettle > ("Linguistic diversity", OUP 1999) and I ("Optimality and diachronic > adaptation", Zs. f. Sprachwissenschaft 1999) have argued that functional > adaptation also comes about through selection, i.e. speakers adopt new > features from other speakers also because they seem structurally useful, > not just because they are socially attractive. > > So in brief, the two positions are: > > (i) Functional adaptation comes about exclusively through functional > innovation ("mutation") (and social selection is non-functional) > (Croft), > > (ii) functional adaptation comes about through functional propagation > ("functional selection"), in addition to functional innovation (Nettle, > Haspelmath, and no doubt others). > > Although I have argued in print for the second position, I'm not very > sure that Bill Croft is wrong. What do you all think? > > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Inselstr. 22 > D-04103 Leipzig (Tel. (MPI) +49-341-9952 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616) ============================= William C. Mann SIL in USA 6739 Cross Creek Estates Road Lancaster, SC 29720 USA (803) 286-6461 bill_mann at sil.org From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Wed Feb 6 21:46:21 2002 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 21:46:21 +0000 Subject: functionality Message-ID: Dear Martin et al, You contrast functionality with social pressures to conform. I know why you do it, but in the long run I think it may be misleading. I also like Guy Deutscher's reformulation of the question, because it highlights the functional role of social differentiation - see below. After all, social-group differentiation is an important function of language. It's at least imaginable (and I think Daniel Nettle has actually argued this) that languages differentiate in part "in order to" act as good distinguishers of social groups. Most obviously, teenagers seize on new anti-language in order to distinguish themselves from adults, but we all enjoy local features that help to make us feel different from other groups. That's as much of a "function" of language as preventing misunderstanding or making words easy to pronounce. The reverse side of the same coin is the pressure to conform within the group, which is also a functional pressure - the more homogeneous the group with respect to a particular pattern, the better that pattern is as a signal of membership for that group. So, following Guy, we can ask whether there are any innovations which are purely dysfunctional in terms of the traditional functional motivations - i.e. whose ONLY function is to identify a social group. It's surely very easy to think of such examples: loan words for concepts that already have names in the borrowing language, or more generally any kind of neologism which produces a synonym of an existing word. Typically there's no benefit in terms of length or ease of use, and the result is one more word to hold in memory; so there's no processing or storage benefit, but usually the reason for preferring the new form is that it links the speaker more or less closely with some social group. Dick Richard (= Dick) Hudson Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. +44(0)20 7679 3152; fax +44(0)20 7383 4108; http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm From Zylogy at AOL.COM Wed Feb 6 22:35:51 2002 From: Zylogy at AOL.COM (Jess Tauber) Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 17:35:51 EST Subject: functionality Message-ID: I remember reading several years ago a piece which introduced me to the notion that adapting to one's social group(s) ranked nicely with distancing oneself from others. >From this perspective, the ultimate result of differentiation is a form of encryption preventing out-group members from fully exploiting the in-group's resources. Maturation increasingly marks one permanently as a member of the out-group, even if one tries to adapt. Given the obvious natural advantage an unidentifiable infiltrator might have in inter-group competition, one wonders then if the timing and completeness of group-differentiating maturation become variables that may be acted upon by local evolutionary forces. Perhaps this happened already a long time ago? The ability to fend off unwanted communication may be just as important as the ability to achieve desired communication. Jess Tauber zylogy at aol.com From David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE Thu Feb 7 09:15:24 2002 From: David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE (David Palfreyman) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:15:24 +0400 Subject: Functionality Message-ID: Interesting discussion. As someone recently steeped in the ideas of Geertz and Foucault among others, two things struck me as particularly interesting as I read through my last FUNKNET digest: a) The interpretative dimension of "functionality" which seems to come into the later messages: e.g. Bill's idea of language users "tacitly or consciously *find[ing]* some advantage in" an innovation (my emphasis), as opposed to the innovation being *objectively* functional or not. b) The emphasis in Bill's and Dick's messages on social groups rather than discourses. To take the first loanword that comes to mind, I might use the term "passe'" rather than "old-fashioned" because it forms part of a discourse that I want to align myself with - or even to use ironically - rather than because it is associated with a social *group* (unless it's a social group defined just by those who use the word "passe'". The same goes for choosing between "student" and "learner" in education... Cheers, David Palfreyman Zayed University, Dubai :-D From jaakko.leino at HELSINKI.FI Thu Feb 7 11:37:49 2002 From: jaakko.leino at HELSINKI.FI (Jaakko Leino) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:37:49 +0200 Subject: 2nd International Conference on Construction Grammar Message-ID: THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR (ICCG2) September 6-8, 2002 Helsinki, Finland Second Call for Papers The Second International Conference on Construction Grammar will take place at the University of Helsinki, Finland, September 6-8, 2002. The conference is a follow-up on the First International Conference on Construction Grammar held in Berkeley in April 2001. In line with the aim of the first conference, we hope that ICCG2 will continue to serve as a forum for promoting discussion and collaboration among linguists interested in Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics, as well as in related constructional research in its various models and applications. Plenary speakers: Hans C. Boas William Croft Charles J. Fillmore Mirjam Fried Adele E. Goldberg Paul Kay Sandra A. Thompson Michael Tomasello Regular conference papers (20-min. talk plus 10-min. discussion) are invited on any aspect of linguistic analysis that is concerned with constructions and/or frames. We welcome work on issues in syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, language acquisition, corpus linguistics, language variation/change, etc. SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS Abstracts of 500 words, with an additional page for graphs, data, and/or references if necessary, should be submitted by March 1st, 2002. If you are submitting your abstract electronically, please send it to iccg2-2002 at helsinki.fi and include the following information as part of your message: author's name and affiliation, title of paper, mailing address, and e-mail address. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. If submitting by regular mail, please provide 5 copies of your anonymous abstract with the title of the paper at the top, and the author information listed above on a separate sheet of paper. In this case, please use the following address: Jaakko Leino Department of Finnish University of Helsinki P.O. Box 13 (Meritullinkatu 1 B) FIN-00014 Helsingin yliopisto Finland Upon acceptance, the abstract will be published in a conference booklet to be distributed among the conference participants. DEADLINES and IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for abstracts: March 1st, 2002 Authors notified of acceptance: May 1st, 2002 Registration fee: 100 euro before June 1, 2002; after this date, 120 euro Students (student status verification required): 75 euro; 90 euro after June 1 The conference is organized by Jan-Ola ?stman and Jaakko Leino, and an organizing committee consisting of Fred Karlsson, Pentti Leino, and Mirja Saari. For more information about the conference please check the website http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/janola/iccg2.htm or direct your inquiries to the conference organizers at iccg2-2002 at helsinki.fi From bill_mann at SIL.ORG Thu Feb 7 13:04:50 2002 From: bill_mann at SIL.ORG (William Mann) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 08:04:50 -0500 Subject: Functionality Message-ID: Lets amplify the remarks of David Palfreyman. We are talking about a socially important collection of processes here. In legal practice, honorific use of "The Court" to mean the judge, seems to derive from this sort of thing. The tendentious bickering over terms such as pro-life, pro-choice, pro-abortion etc., the distinctions between terrorist, revolutionary, freedom-fighter etc., the use in the family of Daddy vs. Father, all seem to be at least tangentially involved here. If we come to understand these processes, both in fleeting occurrence and in retention, it may be enlightening out of our linguistics and into our general living. Bill Mann ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Palfreyman" To: Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 4:15 AM Subject: Functionality > Interesting discussion. As someone recently steeped in the ideas of Geertz and Foucault among others, two things struck me as particularly interesting as I read through my last FUNKNET digest: > > a) The interpretative dimension of "functionality" which seems to come into the later messages: e.g. Bill's idea of language users "tacitly or consciously *find[ing]* some advantage in" an innovation (my emphasis), as opposed to the innovation being *objectively* functional or not. > > b) The emphasis in Bill's and Dick's messages on social groups rather than discourses. To take the first loanword that comes to mind, I might use the term "passe'" rather than "old-fashioned" because it forms part of a discourse that I want to align myself with - or even to use ironically - rather than because it is associated with a social *group* (unless it's a social group defined just by those who use the word "passe'". The same goes for choosing between "student" and "learner" in education... > > Cheers, > David Palfreyman > Zayed University, Dubai > > :-D From MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU Thu Feb 7 14:07:28 2002 From: MILLSCR at UCMAIL.UC.EDU (Mills, Carl (MILLSCR)) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 09:07:28 -0500 Subject: Sorry Message-ID: I apologize for posting administrative matters to the entire list, but some recent e-mail problems make it necessary to talk to the owner of the list. Will the owner or moderator please contact me? Sorry again. Chairs Carl Carl Mills Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of English and Comparative Literature University of Cincinnati From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Feb 7 20:08:03 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 15:08:03 -0500 Subject: New book of Functional interest: HELINGER/ =?iso-8859-1?Q?BU=DFMANN?= Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of functional relevance: Gender Across Languages. The linguistic representation of women and men. Volume I Marlis HELLINGER and Hadumod BU?MANN (University of Frankfurt) (eds.) IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 9 2001. xiv, 329 pp. Hardcover: US & Canada: 1 58811 082 6 / USD 75.00 Rest of world: 90 272 1840 4 / EUR 83.00 Paperback: US & Canada: 1 58811 083 4 / USD 29.95 Rest of world: 90 272 1841 2 / EUR 33.00 This is the first of a three-volume comprehensive reference work on "Gender across Languages", which provides systematic descriptions of various categories of gender (grammatical, lexical, referential, social) in 30 languages of diverse genetic, typological and socio-cultural backgrounds. Among the issues discussed for each language are the following: What are the structural properties of the language that have an impact on the relations between language and gender? What are the consequences for areas such as agreement, pronominalization and word-formation? How is specification of and abstraction from (referential) gender achieved in language? Is empirical evidence available for the assumption that masculine/male expressions are interpreted as generics? Can tendencies of variation and change be observed, and have alternatives been proposed for a more equal linguistic treatment of women and men? This volume (and its follow-up volumes) will provide the much-needed basis for explicitly comparative analyses of gender across languages. All chapters are original contributions and follow a common general outline developed by the editors. The book contains rich bibliographical and indexical material. Languages of Volume I: Arabic, Belizean Creole, Eastern Maroon Creole, English (American, New Zealand, Australian), Hebrew, Indonesian, Romanian, Russian, Turkish. Contributions by: Friederike Braun; Hadumod Bu?mann; Ursula Doleschal; Genevi?ve Escure; Atiqa Hachimi; Marlis Hellinger; Janet Holmes; Esther Kuntjara; Florence Maurice; Bettina Migge; Suzanne Romaine; Anne Pauwels; Sonja Schmid, and Yishai Tobin. John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU Fri Feb 8 09:52:04 2002 From: lakoff at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (George Lakoff) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 01:52:04 -0800 Subject: conferences Message-ID: Dear Funknetters: It will soon be announced that next October 12-14, Rice University in Houston will be hosting the regular CSDL (Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language) Conference, which alternates with the biennial ICLC (International Cognitive Linguistics Conference) that will next be held in July, 2003 in La Rioja, Spain. If you want to know what is going in contemporary cognitive, functional, and neural linguistics - the most innovative and interesting work these days- these are the conferences to attend. Both have been swamped in recent years. Many more good papers than can be accepted. The papers accepted at past conferences have on the whole been superb! I mention this in response to Bruce Richman's proposed conference. At CSDL and ICLC, all the papers happen to be "beyond Chomsky" and have been for years. But they are positive in character, raising real issues, and are not defined by and limited to going "beyond" anything or anyone. If Richman doesn't like Chomskyan linguistics, he can start reading the vast literature in these fields - including papers coming from these conferences. Indeed, he ought to be going to these conferences. One day in the early 1970's, I came up with the idea of writing a book called "After Chomsky" which would detail hundreds of pages of evidence that required a linguistic theory beyond his - a theory of the kind being worked on by the many fine linguists of the day. But I realized after a few minutes of thought that such a book would be self-defeating. The reason comes from elementary frame semantics. You don't argue against a frame by negating it; that just reinforces the frame. Like when Nixon said, "I am not a crook" - which made everyone think of him as a crook. A "Beyond Chomsky" conference would simply reinforce the idea of Chomsky as the latest in linguistics. This is just elementary cognitive semantics. That's why Martin said to give it up and talk about a real issue. Martin, I, and other linguists throughout the world have been talking about real issues for decades. The result has been real progress, reported on at real conferences. If you want to talk about Chomsky fondly in the past tense, organize a conference called "Remembering Chomsky." Best to all, George P.S. For the record, John Myhill got a couple of historical details wrong in his discussion of generative semantics. John said, "Ross and Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in Ch. 2 of Aspects." I wrote the first generative semantics paper in summer 1963 - two years before Aspects and before there even was an idea of "deep structure." At that time, there were no "complex symbols" and no Aspects. Complex symbols, as I recall, were a combination of two earlier ideas: Jakobsonian features and Bar Hillel's categorial grammars. Ah, nostalgia! Why not have a "Remembering Chomsky" conference? I have such nice memories of the days, 35 years ago, when I still thought that that work was relevant. We can get our bell bottoms and afro shirts out of mothballs, bring a copy of the white album, and go to banks of the Charles where we can argue about such issues of the day as lexical decomposition, logical form, case roles, the coordinate structure constraint, crossover, and all those old issues. But for contemporary linguistics, I go to CSDL and ICLC. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Feb 8 22:42:52 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 22:42:52 +0000 Subject: Why I left out "BC" work of many people Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wilcox at UNM.EDU Fri Feb 8 23:38:51 2002 From: wilcox at UNM.EDU (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 16:38:51 -0700 Subject: Why I left out "BC" work of many people In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 2/8/02 3:42 PM, bruce richman said: > > > > > > Oh lord, this isn't starting again, is it? -- Sherman From brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM Sat Feb 9 14:39:54 2002 From: brucerichman at HOTMAIL.COM (bruce richman) Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:39:54 +0000 Subject: Sorry for empty message; computer mistake! Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From language at SPRYNET.COM Sat Feb 9 22:14:59 2002 From: language at SPRYNET.COM (Alexander Gross) Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:14:59 -0800 Subject: Sorry for empty message; computer mistake! Message-ID: I can't imagine how anyone could claim a shortage of Beyond Chomsky literature. You'll find plenty on three different websites, including numerous papers, articles, polemics. And also three different bibliographies and "webographies" of this material. The first is Bruce's own at: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~bps/beyondChomsky/home.html The second, from France, is "Could Chomsky Be Wrong?" at: http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/LangTeach/CounterChomsky.htm And the third is my own, under the Chomskyan section of the Linguistics menu on my website, at: http://language.home.sprynet.com very best to all! alex gross ___________________________ original message: Sorry for the empty message last night! My computer screwed up again! Here's what I wanted to say: I did not include the names of many, many people who have done great work over the years, that are definitely "Beyond Chomsky," mainly for reasons of space. I also wanted to take a somewhat new approach to the reasons that I am opposed to the entire Chomskyan paradigm. I'm sorry I left out discussing a lot of great work. Bruce Richman -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. Click Here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thuumo at UTU.FI Wed Feb 13 13:44:34 2002 From: thuumo at UTU.FI (Tuomas Huumo) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 15:44:34 +0200 Subject: Call for papers Message-ID: Call for papers Cognitive Linguistics East of Eden A joint conference organized by the Finnish Cognitive Linguistics Association (FiCLA) and the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA) will take place in Turku, Finland, on September 13 to 15, 2002. Starring (as plenary speakers): Mirjam Fried (Princeton University) Marja-Liisa Helasvuo (University of Turku) Laura Janda (University of North Carolina) Helena Leheckova (University of Helsinki) Ekaterina Rakhilina (Moscow State University) The aim of the conference is to bring together cognitive linguists from the East and the West, and to offer a forum for collaboration and discussion on current developments in Cognitive Linguistics. We welcome abstracts for oral presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion) and for posters on all cognitive linguistic topics, including syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, metaphor, pragmatics, discourse, etc. We especially welcome papers on Slavic and/or Finno-Ugric languages. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2002. Please submit a one-page abstract (max. 500 words), with an additional page for tabels, graphs and references, if necessary. We strongly encourage e-mail submissions. For speakers with topics related to the Slavic languages: Please send your abstract to janda at unc.edu. For speakers with topics related to other languages: Please send your abstract as an attachment file (plain text or rtf) to aairola at ling.helsinki.fi, with your name, affiliation, e-mail address and the title of your paper included in the message. If you wish to submit a paper version, then please send 5 anonymous copies of your abstract, and your author information on a separate sheet of paper. In this case, please use the following address: Anu Airola Department of General Linguistics P.O.Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 20 A) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Finland The participation fee will be 70 euros (35 euros for students, including graduate students), to be paid at the conference site in cash (please observe that we cannot accept credit cards). For members of the FiCLA, SCLA or ICLA the fee will be 50 euros (25 euros for students). Participants from economically disadvantaged countries may be allowed a free participation upon application. In such a case, please include an application for free participation in your abstract. The participation fee will cover the abstract booklet, other conference materials, coffee and a get-together with snacks. From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Feb 13 17:51:53 2002 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 11:51:53 -0600 Subject: 6th Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Lg Conf Message-ID: CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS *********************************************************** *********************************************************** ** ** ** 6th CONFERENCE ON ** ** ** ** CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE ** ** ** ** ** *********************************************************** *********************************************************** RICE UNIVERSITY Houston, Texas OCTOBER 12-14, 2002 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: RONALD LANGACKER, University of Californa, San Diego SUSANNA CUMMING, University of California, Santa Barbara CSDL 6 welcomes papers in the fields of Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse, Functional Linguistics, and Speech and Language Processing, dealing with all aspects of language (structure, acquisition, variation, change) and all levels of language (phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, discourse, and neural processing). There will be a general session and a poster session. Instructions for abstracts submissions will be posted soon. We plan to take email submissions. ABSTRACTS DEADLINE: May 1, 2002 (submission info TBA) ACCEPTANCE DATE: ca. June 15, 2002 PREREGISTRATION DEADLINE: September 1, 2002 CONTACT INFO: Michel Achard (achard at rice.edu) and Suzanne Kemmer (kemmer at rice.edu) From samantha716 at HOTMAIL.COM Thu Feb 14 02:13:04 2002 From: samantha716 at HOTMAIL.COM (samantha wilson) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 02:13:04 +0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Why has the study of semiotics been largely ignored by today's linguistic community? It would appear from my early and introductory readings that semiotics, especially work done by the American scholar Charles Peirce, would have a lot to contribute to the study of human lanaguge and communication. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From philologist at SOCAL.RR.COM Thu Feb 14 08:54:53 2002 From: philologist at SOCAL.RR.COM (Damon Allen Davison) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 00:54:53 -0800 Subject: No Subject In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 2002-02-13 at 18:13, samantha wilson wrote: > Why has the study of semiotics been largely ignored by today's linguistic > community? It would appear from my early and introductory readings that > semiotics, especially work done by the American scholar Charles Peirce, > would have a lot to contribute to the study of human lanaguge and > communication. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. > Dear Samantha, I don't think that semiotics has been ignored by modern linguists. In fact, I think most people associated with Cognitive Linguistics--- especially in semantics/pragmatics---would give semioticians in general, and particularly C.S. Pierce, their due. They mainly concentrate on the anatomy of the linguistic sign and reference ("When you talk about a tree, you are not invoking the tree itself, but rather a symbolic link/reference to it.") Bilyana Martinovski, for example, makes reference to him on a page she made for an introductory course on Cognitive Semantics: http://www.ling.gu.se/~biljana/st1-97/pragmalect2.html You might take a look at her page. It seems like a good place to start for early and introductory reading. Damon -- Damon Allen Davison http://home.socal.rr.com/linguist/ PGP ID: 067E933C491815EAE From mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK Thu Feb 14 12:50:42 2002 From: mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:50:42 +0000 Subject: [semiotics and linguistics] Message-ID: Samantha Wilson wrote: >Why has the study of semiotics been largely ignored by today's linguistic >community? It would appear from my early and introductory readings that >semiotics, especially work done by the American scholar Charles Peirce, >would have a lot to contribute to the study of human lanaguge and >communication. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Has it? It's just that it seems to me that the work of people like Gunther Kress very much bridges the fields and this work is familiar to many linguists in the UK. Perhaps you mean "the dominant US linguistic community", where, it is true, there doesn't seem to be a lot of such cross-pollination (pace Professor Davis' useful references). mm -- Miriam Meyerhoff Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics University of Edinburgh 40 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LL Scotland, UK ph (131) 651-1836 fax (131) 650-3962 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ From mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK Thu Feb 14 16:52:09 2002 From: mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 16:52:09 +0000 Subject: job announcement Message-ID: LECTURER IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS / STYLISTICS / PRAGMATICS The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics seeks to appoint a teacher and researcher with world-class potential to join our challenging and supportive research community. We pride ourselves on the strength of our postgraduate programmes, on the breadth of our undergraduate teaching, and the success of our active collaborations with other parts of the university. For more information on the Department please visit http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk. The successful candidate will have a research focus in discourse analysis, stylistics, pragmatics, or some other area involving language in context and language use, and an interest in relating research findings in these areas to formal or functional linguistic theories as appropriate. Expertise in dealing with texts in languages other than English, or texts produced by speakers of English as a second language, would be an advantage. We also expect that the person appointed will have an interdisciplinary outlook and an interest in building on existing links with closely related departments in the university, which include informatics, education, philosophy, psychology, and English language. A completed PhD (or imminent date for completion), evidence of research potential, and teaching experience at least as tutor or TA are essential. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to teaching on our developing set of cross-disciplinary MSc degrees, especially the MSc in Applied Linguistics. They will also undertake postgraduate supervision and develop courses in their areas of interest. Ability to teach undergraduate courses in language pedagogy, semantics, sociolinguistics, and/or syntax would be an advantage. Further details of the post will shortly be posted on http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk. Filling of this post is subject to budgetary approval. In any case the appointment will be made on the Lecturer A scale (currently GBP 20,470 - 24,435 per annum). We will begin reviewing applications on 25 March 2002. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. The principal contact person for enquiries is Professor John Joseph From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Feb 14 20:52:22 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:52:22 -0500 Subject: New Books of interest to functionalists Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new 2-volume set: Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 1: Past and Present. ?sten DAHL and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA TAMM (Stockholm University) (eds.) Studies in Language Companion Series 54 2001. xx, 382 pp. Hardcover US & Canada: 1 58811 020 6 / USD 118.00 Rest of world: 90 272 3057 9 / EUR 130.00 The area around the Baltic Sea has for millennia been a meeting-place for people of different origin. Among the circum-Baltic languages, we find three major branches of Indo-European -- Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic, the Baltic-Finnic languages from the Uralic phylum and several others. The circum-Baltic area is an ideal place to study areal and contact phenomena in languages. The present set of two volumes look at the circum-Baltic languages from a typological, areal and historical perspective, trying to relate the intricate patterns of similarities and dissimilarities to the societal background. In volume I, surveys of dialect areas and language groups bear witness to the immense linguistic diversity in the area with special attention to less well-known languages and language varieties and their contacts. Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology ?sten DAHL and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA TAMM (Stockholm University) (eds.) Studies in Language Companion Series 55 2001. xx, 423 pp. Hardcover US & Canada: 1 58811 042 7 / USD 127.00 Rest of world: 90 272 3059 5 / EUR 140.00 The area around the Baltic Sea has for millennia been a meeting-place for people of different origin. Among the circum-Baltic languages, we find three major branches of Indo-European -- Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic, the Baltic-Finnic languages from the Uralic phylum and several others. The circum-Baltic area is an ideal place to study areal and contact phenomena in languages. The present set of two volumes look at the circum-Baltic languages from a typological, areal and historical perspective, trying to relate the intricate patterns of similarities and dissimilarities to the societal background. In volume II, selected phenomena in the grammars of the circum-Baltic languages are studied in a cross-linguistic perspective. Contributions by: V. Ambrazas; K. Boiko; S. Christen; A. Holvoet; M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm; H. Metslang; B. Metuzale-Kangere; L. Stassen; T. Stolz; B. W?lchli. John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Thu Feb 14 23:10:28 2002 From: jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Jeanie Castillo) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:10:28 -0800 Subject: Workshop Announcement-WAIL Message-ID: WAIL 2002 The Fifth Annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages April 26-28, 2002 University of California, Santa Barbara McCune Conference Room Humanities and Social Sciences (HSSB) 6020 Keynote speaker: Spike Gildea University of Oregon Invited speaker: Wallace Chafe University of California, Santa Barbara Registration fee: $25 before April 1 (checks payable to WAIL) $35 after April 1 or at the door send to: WAIL Department of Linguistics University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 For more information, including registration form, workshop schedule and list of speakers, please visit http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/nailsg/ or write to wail at linguistics.ucsb.edu -- Jeanie Castillo jeaniec at umail.ucsb.edu From rreyno1 at UIC.EDU Fri Feb 15 12:15:07 2002 From: rreyno1 at UIC.EDU (Rachel Reynolds) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 06:15:07 -0600 Subject: VIRUS?!?!? -- DELETE "ENTENDERSE" Message-ID: Hi everyone. I just got a file accompanied by a note in Spanish (on the FUNKNET listserver) called "entenderse.bat." My Norton anti-virus program tagged that file as a potential virus. Just to be safe, I would advise deleting it from your e-mail and from your harddrive right now. Don't open it. Rachel Reynolds From mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK Fri Feb 15 09:38:12 2002 From: mhoff at LING.ED.AC.UK (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 09:38:12 +0000 Subject: job announcement: amended Message-ID: LECTURER IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS / STYLISTICS / PRAGMATICS The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh seeks to appoint a teacher and researcher with world-class potential to join our challenging and supportive research community. We pride ourselves on the strength of our postgraduate programmes, on the breadth of our undergraduate teaching, and the success of our active collaborations with other parts of the university. For more information on the Department please visit http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk. The successful candidate will have a research focus in discourse analysis, stylistics, pragmatics, or some other area involving language in context and language use, and an interest in relating research findings in these areas to formal or functional linguistic theories as appropriate. Expertise in dealing with texts in languages other than English, or texts produced by speakers of English as a second language, would be an advantage. We also expect that the person appointed will have an interdisciplinary outlook and an interest in building on existing links with closely related departments in the university, which include informatics, education, philosophy, psychology, and English language. A completed PhD (or imminent date for completion), evidence of research potential, and teaching experience at least as tutor or TA are essential. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to teaching on our developing set of cross-disciplinary MSc degrees, especially the MSc in Applied Linguistics. They will also undertake postgraduate supervision and develop courses in their areas of interest. Ability to teach undergraduate courses in language pedagogy, semantics, sociolinguistics, and/or syntax would be an advantage. Further details of the post will shortly be posted on http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk. Filling of this post is subject to budgetary approval. In any case the appointment will be made on the Lecturer A scale (currently GBP 20,470 - 24,435 per annum). We will begin reviewing applications on 25 March 2002. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. The principal contact person for enquiries is Professor John Joseph From fetmoure at USC.ES Fri Feb 15 09:56:01 2002 From: fetmoure at USC.ES (Teresa Moure) Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:56:01 +0100 Subject: En medio de semejante confusión. Message-ID: As?, poco a poco se convencionaliza un criollo. Pero lo curioso del caso, es que se ha pensado que el contexto en que se originan estas lenguas pidgin es, en buena medida, el contexto en que se origina cualquier lengua humana, de modo que, adem?s de su inter?s socioling??stico, los pidgins ten?an notable inter?s para el tema de los or?genes del lenguaje (Bickerton 1988, 1994). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: entenderse.bat Type: application/octet-stream Size: 61440 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eitkonen at UTU.FI Mon Feb 18 13:52:44 2002 From: eitkonen at UTU.FI (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 15:52:44 +0200 Subject: two questions Message-ID: First: Are there such (relatively recent) EXPERIMENTAL studies on the understanding of the English passive that do not hide the amount of individual variation? Second: Are there EXPERIMENTAL studies on how people understand the logic of (or entailment relations between) deontic notions (like 'if you MUST do x, then you MAY do x, but not vice versa')? (It is a different matter that, according to one view, ordinary non-deontic inferences may contain an implicit use of some deontic notions.) - Any help is greatly appreciated. Esa Itkonen From tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Tue Feb 19 06:40:29 2002 From: tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 22:40:29 -0800 Subject: FUNKNET administration Message-ID: Dear FUNKNET subscribers, As some of you may recall, a few years ago I passed the administrative responsibility for FUNKNET to Spike Gildea, who at the time was teaching at Rice University. When in the fall of 2000 Spike moved back to Oregon, he was originally going to bring FUNKNET back with him to the University of Oregon. Alas, Spike's responsibilities as Dept. Head at Oregon seem to have made such an arrangement somewhat too taxing for him. Fortunately, we have a volunteer who has stepped in, just in the nick of time. As some of you may know, Matt (Masayoshi) Shibatani has accepted a position at the Linguistics Dept. at Rice University. Matt is only too well known in our community to require much of an introduction, having received his MA and PhD at Berkeley, taught (and received tenure) at USC, and then moved back home to Kobe; though for all intent and purpose he has never really left these shores. His work on causative constructions, grammatical relations, and voice remains a beacon of functional and typological scholarship. In an exemplary spirit of community service, Matt has agreed to take over the responsibility for running FUNKNET. This is, needless to say, a most felicitous disposition of the matter. On behalf of all of us, I would like to thank Matt for stepping into the breach, as well as congratulate him on his new professional (ad)venture. For all FUNKNET business as well as for other matters, he may be reached at . Cheers, Tom?s From matt at RICE.EDU Thu Feb 21 15:44:07 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:44:07 -0600 Subject: Funknet administration Message-ID: Dear Funknetters: Tom's is right about the Funknet affiliation (if informal) with the Linguistics Department at Rice University since the administrative responsibility was passed onto Spike Gildea while he was teaching here. After Spike left Rice for Oregon in the fall of 2000, Michael Barlow, who was co-owner of Funknet with Spike, has been running the list. I know Tom appreciates Michael's activities on behalf of Funknet over the years and would want to join me in thanking him for his service in maintaining the list. Now that the Rice Linguistics Department is willing to provide the official, permanent home to Funknet, I am going to meet with Michael and other members of the Rice Linguistics Department to work out how we can handle the future administration of the list at Rice and how best we can serve the community of functional linguists. You will be hearing from us shortly. All the best, Matt From matt at RICE.EDU Tue Feb 26 16:05:23 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 10:05:23 -0600 Subject: Akio Kamio Message-ID: To members of Funknet: We are deeply sorry that we must confirm the information that several members of our community had read in the news: A funknet member has been officially notified by Kyoko Suzuki of Dokkyo University in Japan that Prof. Akio Kamio and his wife Noriko committed suicide Sunday. He had been suffering from depression for a long while. Prof. Kamio was noted for his ability to work productively in both functional and formal frameworks, and on both normal and aphasic language. He was among the leading senior linguists in Japan with numerous important roles in that linguistic community, including a member of the editorial board of Gengo Kenkyu, the journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan. Being kind-hearted and considerate, Akio also had a large circle of friends in the U.S., having been a visiting scholar at Harvard and at the University of Colorado. His books include Territory of Information (1997), and the edited/co-edited volumes Function and Structure (1998, festschrift for Susumu Kuno) and Directions in Functional Linguistics (1997), all published by John Benjamins. Lise Menn, Brian MacWhinney, Matt Shibatani From matt at RICE.EDU Tue Feb 26 16:26:19 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 10:26:19 -0600 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear Fuknetters: I am pleased to confirm the continued affiliation of Funknet with the Linguistics Department at Rice University, which promises continued support to our efforts toward lively and fruitful discussion on the matters of functionalist interest. Best, Matt From hilaryy at RUF.RICE.EDU Thu Feb 28 04:41:19 2002 From: hilaryy at RUF.RICE.EDU (Hilary Young) Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 22:41:19 -0600 Subject: speech perception symposium Message-ID: CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT *********************************************************** *********************************************************** ** ** ** RICE UNIVERSITY'S ** ** NINTH BIENNIAL LINGUISTICS SYMPOSIUM ** ** ** ** SPEECH PERCEPTION IN CONTEXT: ** ** BEYOND ACOUSTIC PATTERN MATCHING ** ** ** *********************************************************** *********************************************************** RICE UNIVERSITY Houston, Texas March 14-16, 2002 This symposium brings together researchers who investigate the knowledge systems that are involved in the speech perception process, and how these systems interact. Although they are from a variety of different fields, they share in interest in examining speech perception as a phenomenon that moves beyond acoustic pattern matching, and instead appeal to the entire range of cognitive systems involved in perceiving speech in natural contexts. PARTICIPANTS: PETER CARIANI, Harvard University SUZANNE CURTIN, U. of British Columbia and U. of Pittsburgh KEITH JOHNSON, The Ohio State University SYD LAMB, Rice University NANCY NIEDZIELSKI, Rice University HOWARD NUSBAUM, University of Chicago DAVID PISONI AND CYNTHIA CLOPPER, Indiana University BARTEK PLICHTA, Michigan State University DENNIS PRESTON, Michigan State University MIKKO SAMS, Helsinki University RICHARD WRIGHT and GABRIEL WEBSTER, University of Washington FOR INFORMATION, email us at niedz at rice.edu, call us at 713-348-6010, or visit us at www.linguistics.rice.edu/symposium From matt at RICE.EDU Thu Feb 28 19:58:04 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 13:58:04 -0600 Subject: Fwd: Professor Akio Kamio Message-ID: >To the members of Funknet: > >I would like to express my sorrow at hearing about the deaths of Professor >Kamio Akio and his wife. Professor Kamio and I once co-wrote a paper >("Factivity: 25 years later" CLS 1996). He was also a careful reader of >several of my manuscripts on complementizers. He was always thorough and >very supportive. As Professor Shibatani wrote, his works were influential >in various fields. His professional contributions as well as his kind, warm >personality will be greatly missed. > >Satoko Suzuki > > > >Satoko Suzuki >Associate Professor >Japanese Language Program >Macalester College >1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105 >phone: 651-696-6723 >fax: 651-696-6689 > >$BF|K\8l$G$b$I$&$>!#(B > >suzuki at macalester.edu From matt at RICE.EDU Thu Feb 28 21:37:00 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 15:37:00 -0600 Subject: Fwd: Message-ID: Dear Teresa: Now the voided (I believe) check sent to Kobe has been forwarded to me. Do you want it back? Has the replacement check been issued yet? Thanks, Matt >Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 12:29:51 -0600 >To: disbmt at rice.edu >From: Matt Shibatani > >Dear Teresa: > > I am requesting that you reissue a new check for the following one > sent to Japan by mistake. > >Thanks, >Masayoshi Shibatani > > >1. check number - 561567 >2. check amount - $757.76 >3. travel statement number - TV 006331 >- mailed to Kobe University on January 24, 2002