From langconf at BU.EDU Sat Mar 2 21:12:19 2002 From: langconf at BU.EDU (BU Conference on Language Development) Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 16:12:19 -0500 Subject: BUCLD Call for Papers Message-ID: *************************************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS THE 27th ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT NOVEMBER 1, 2, & 3, 2002 Keynote Speaker: Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago Plenary Speaker: Bonnie Schwartz, University of Hawai'i *************************************************************************** All topics in the fields of first and second language acquisition from all theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: Bilingualism Cognition & Language Creoles & Pidgins Discourse Exceptional Language Input & Interaction Language Disorders Linguistic Theory (Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon) Literacy & Narrative Neurolinguistics Pragmatics Pre-linguistic Development Signed Languages Sociolinguistics Speech Perception & Production Abstracts submitted must represent original, unpublished research. Presentations will be 20 minutes long followed by a question period. PLEASE SUBMIT: 1) Ten copies of an anonymous, clearly titled 450-word summary for review. Summaries longer than 450 words will be rejected without being evaluated. Please note the word count at the bottom of the summary. 2) One copy of a 150-word abstract including title, author(s)and affiliation(s). If your paper is accepted, this abstract will be scanned into the conference handbook. 3) The author information requested below, for EACH author. Although each author may submit as many abstracts as desired, we will accept for presentation by each submitter: (a) a maximum of 1 first authored paper, and (b) a maximum of 2 papers in any authorship status. Note that no changes in authorship (including deleting an author or changing author order) will be possible after the review process is completed. Acknowledgment of receipt of the abstract will be sent by email as soon as possible after receipt. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent to first authors only, in early August, by US mail. Pre-registration materials and preliminary schedule will be available in late August, 2002. All authors who present papers at the conference will be invited to contribute their papers to the Proceedings volumes. Those papers will be due in January, 2003. Note: All conference papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Although each abstract will be evaluated individually, we will attempt to honor requests to schedule accepted papers together in group sessions. DEADLINE: All submissions must be received by May 15, 2002. Late abstracts will not be considered, whatever the reason for the delay. Send submissions to: Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Suite 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 e-mail: langconf at bu.edu (We regret that we cannot accept abstract submissions by fax or e-mail.) Information regarding the conference may be accessed at http://web.bu.edu/LINGUISTICS/APPLIED/conference.html **************************************************************************** AUTHOR INFORMATION (Please include a typed sheet containing the following information for EACH author) Title: Full name: Affiliation: Current work address (for publication in handbook) Current e-mail (required): Current phone number (required): Summer address if different, and dates: Summer e-mail (required): Summer phone (required): Please indicate whether, if your paper is not one of the 90 initially selected for presentation, you would be willing to be considered as an alternate. (If you indicate that you are willing to be considered, this does not commit you to accepting alternate status if it should be offered to you.) _____ Yes, consider me as an alternate if necessary _____ No, please do not consider me as an alternate From dionysis at UCY.AC.CY Fri Mar 8 08:08:16 2002 From: dionysis at UCY.AC.CY (Dionysis Goutsos) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 10:08:16 +0200 Subject: Job announcement Message-ID: DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Two (2) tenure-track positions at the rank of Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Linguistics for the programme of English Studies: The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures announces the opening of two tenure-track positions in Linguistics at the rank of Lecturer or Assistant Professor. One post is on the syntax/grammar of English; candidates will teach Morphology of English, English Syntax, Pedagogical Grammar as well as other courses in the context of the Department/s programme in English Language and Literature. The second post is on the phonetics/phonology of English; candidates will teach Phonetics and Phonology as well as other courses in the context of the Department/s programme in English Language and Literature. Scholarly potential and publications required. Teaching Load: Two courses a semester. Deadline for submission of applications: April 19, 2002. Gross monthly salary: Lecturer: CYP£1,495; Assistant Professor: CYP£1,771 (1CYP=1.55US$). Please send: Letter of application mentioning the rank you are applying for, photocopies of credentials, c.v., representative publications, and summary of current and future research (2-3 pp). Applicants must request three academic referees to send letters of recommendation directly to the University. The names and addresses of these referees must be submitted with the application. Send to: The Registrar, University of Cyprus, PO Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus. Information. Tel: 00357 22892000, Fax: 00357 22892100. *********************************** Dionysis Goutsos Assistant Professor Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures University of Cyprus P.O. Box 20537 CY 1678 Nicosia, CYPRUS Tel: +357 -22-892109 Fax: +357 -22 -750310 e-mail: dionysis at ucy.ac.cy www.ucy.ac.cy/~dionysis From Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at COLORADO.EDU Wed Mar 13 22:33:00 2002 From: Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at COLORADO.EDU (Zygmunt Frajzyngier) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 15:33:00 -0700 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear Friends, We would like to announce an International Symposium on Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories to be held in Boulder, Colorado, May 14-17, 2003. The purpose of the Symposium is to identify hitherto unstated or understated fundamental issues in linguistic theories taking into the account the rich variation of forms and functions observed in the languages of the world. The symposium will examine the goals of both theories of language structure and theories of language evolution. One of the expected outcomes of the symposium will be a new set of questions to be addressed by language theories. For information about the symposium see our web page: http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/symposium/ Zygmunt Frajzyngier and David Rood. -- Zygmunt Frajzyngier Dept. of Linguistics, Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado 80309 Phone 303-492-6959 Fax: 303-492-4416 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From matt at RICE.EDU Mon Mar 18 13:54:38 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:54:38 -0600 Subject: phonetics and universal grammar: an open letter to Paul Smolens from Lise Menn Message-ID: Dear Paul, At the LSA meeting in January, during the question period after your talk on how the constraints of optimality might hypothetically be represented in the genome, I tried to formulate an issue for you to consider: which constraints are good candidates for an innate mental grammar and which are not? I promised you that I would e-mail you a fuller statement of what I had in mind by my question, since the issue is a complex one and raises points that you have probably not considered. Several colleagues in the audience that day, including Shelley Velleman, John and Manjari Ohala, and Diana Ohala, were also interested in the issue and encouraged me to attempt a fairly formal exposition of my point, which is: 1. that many universals of phonology are physiologically based, 2. so that while these are represented in the mind, 3. they are not good candidates for representation in an innate mental grammar, should there in fact be such an object. As always, I remain your genial and loyal opposition, with sincere hopes of seeing Optimality develop to a level where I can't find anything to complain about. Lise Below is my full statement, with lecture notes by John Ohala to make some of the aerodynamic arguments explicit. It would be better as an attachment, since it is so long, but network constraints make that problematic. Anyone who would like either my statement or the PowerPoint version of John's lecture notes is welcome to e-mail me for them. ***************************************************************** Phonetic manifesto: Cave fish are blind, or, Why many innate universals of language are not candidates for inclusion in an innate grammar Lise Menn, with Shelley Velleman & John Ohala References and acoustic physics argument provided by John Ohala Assuming (only for the sake of argument!) that some parts of phonology are determined by a genetically-controlled universal grammar (innate UG), and that 'grammar' refers to a mental language-data processing mechanism, we argue that EVEN THOUGH CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF PHONOLOGY ARE UNIVERSAL, they are poor candidates for inclusion in such an innate UG. We use optimality theory as a basis for exposition. Cave fish are blind. If natural selection maintains properties of an organism, they are either useful to survival in some way, or byproducts of something else that is useful. Natural selection typically fails to maintain characteristics that are either useless (eyes in a cave) or redundant. (Another putative example is the ability to synthesize vitamin C in primates who have good access to fruit and other sources; see article on Vitamin C in The Cambridge World History of Food.) Useless or redundant characteristics of course MAY be maintained because they are accidental by-products of some other capacity (the appendix in the human gastro-intestinal tract; 'spandrels', in a popular metaphor). If a property of language is a consequence of human (vocal tract) anatomy, auditory processing, or other non-mental circumstances, it does not need also to be part of a MENTAL grammar. For example, the constraint strongly disfavoring speech sounds made with ingressive pulmonic airflow (as in gasping, or sucking air in through the teeth) presumably is due to something about human breath control, the fact that dry air is bad for the mucous membranes of the mouth and larynx, etc. Furthermore, speakers making such sounds quickly discover the discomfort and the effort that they cause, through ordinary sensory feedback circuits, so there is no need for a pre-wired mental counterpart to the physical facts. Many violable constraints are demonstrably based on anatomy, muscle control, and other physical properties of the vocal tract. Some are rather strong, like the constraint against nasal fricatives (which demand a lot of airflow); some are very weak, like those against specific consonants - */p/, */g/, */h/, which are very common yet occasionally absent. See the appended adaptation of an Ohala power-point lecture on airflow requirements for fricatives and voicing. These constraints are indeed as innate as having a nose and mouth. But they are not MENTAL constraints, they are PHYSIOLOGICAL constraints. So the genes which control them must be genes that structure the body, not the mind. Speakers subconsciously know the constraints of their grammar, regardless of the source of the constraint. Consider the Jusczyk et al. experiments showing that infants recognize native vs. unfamiliar phonotactic patterns, not to mention the common experiences of second language learners who try to overcome their native language production patterns. In phonology, to describe language patterns as well as individual speakers' knowledge, all constraints must be represented, regardless of whether their source is transparently physiological, or perceptual, or based on general human cognitive properties, or indeed based on language-specific mental properties. Under the assumptions that some constraints might be genetically encoded as part of a mental grammar; and no constraint will be directly selected for as part of an innate mental grammar if it is redundantly a consequence of physiology & physics, and therefore both internal to and learnable by a physiologically intact child trying to make sounds, Šwhich constraints, if any, are good candidates for representation in a innate mental grammar? According to the argument above, the poor candidates include all constraints that are demonstrably physiological in origin (and therefore genetically encoded, but not in the mind). I think this includes at least the majority of common constraints. Indeed, anything that takes the tongue away from resting position would be easier not to do, from the speaker's point of view. [We also know that many constraints can demonstrably be learned by exposure to the ambient language (cf. the work of Jusczyk and colleagues, Aslin & colleagues). They would also be redundant in an innate grammar and therefore poor candidates for membership in a UG - but I suppose it could be counter-argued that the reason that children can learn them is that they are part of UG. I am not sure how to reach a testable hypothesis in this area.] Ohala Lecture notes (edited by LM from the original PowerPoint version) 1. For a fixed mass of air, pressure varies inversely with volume. (Boyle-Mariotte's Law)*; e.g., in a hand bicycle pump one pushes a plunger to reduce the volume of the air and thus increase the pressure. Pressure times Volume is constant for a fixed mass of air; P1V1 = P2V2. For a given volume, pressure varies directly with the mass of air inside. E.g., inflating or stiffening a car tire by pumping air into it. (We neglect the effects of temperature; we assume adiabatic conditions.) 2. The quantity of air passing through a channel varies proportionally with the diameter of the channel, and is positively correlated with the magnitude of the pressure differential across the channel. (Coffee flows from a large coffee urn in greater volume as (a) the tap is more open and (b) the greater the amount of coffee in the urn.) U = A (P at entrance - P at exit) to the a power, times C U is 'volume velocity', the quantity of air per unit time, typically, cm3/sec; A is the channel diameter; a varies between 0.5 and 1.0; c is a constant. 3. Air speed (particle velocity) varies directly with quantity of flow (volume velocity) and inversely with channel cross-dimension. (This is the principle exploited in carburetors.) This principle is relevant because the degree of turbulence and thus the noise produced during fricatives is dependent in part on how fast the air is moving past a constriction. The intensity and center frequency* of frication noise vary monotonically with particle velocity of the air flow. (When a strong wind is blowing around one's house, one can get an impression of its intensity by listening to the loudness.* But these parameters can also be affected by the resonances of the vocal tract of the noise and its "pitch".) The Bernoulli* effect: The pressure at right angles to flowing air is inversely correlated with the velocity of the air flow. This principle is important for understanding How airplanes fly Perfume atomizers Carburetors 4. The Aerodynamic Voicing Constraint Voicing requires: Vocal cords adducted (lightly approximated at the midline) Air flowing through the vocal cords. Certain articulations impact on airflow. Note: similar principles apply to trills Obstruents block or reduce the flow of air out of the oral cavity (by aerodynamic principle #3). Therefore, the air accumulates in the oral cavity and, by aerodynamic principle #2, the pressure behind the constriction increases. This reduces the pressure drop (DP = [P at entrance - P at exit]) across the vocal cords If DP goes below a certain minimum value (~ 1 or 2 cm H2O), the air flow falls below the level needed to maintain voicing and thus voicing will be extinguished. 5. Factors favoring voicing during supraglottal sounds: i) Shorter duration of the consonantal closure, since there is less time for Po (the oral cavity air pressure) to build up to a level that reduces DP below the critical level ii) Larger oral cavity (= more front place of articulation), since a larger cavity means more surface area to passively expand and thus accommodate more of the air accumulating in the oral cavity. iii) Active expansion of the oral cavity by larynx lowering, jaw lowering, augmenting velum elevation -- again, to accommodate more air accumulating in the oral cavity. iv) Velic leakage Related to the difficulty of maintaining voicing on back-articulated stops are the following: Even in languages that have /g/, the incidence of this phoneme -- both in the dictionary and in connected speech -- is often statistically much lower than for /b/ (Gamkrelidze; Wang & Crawford). Phonetically /g/ is often less voiced than /d/ and /b/. E.g., my English /g/ is commonly voiceless even intervocalically. The absolute absence of /g/ in some languages, the statistical infrequency of it in others, and its phonetic devoicing in others are all manifestations of the same basic universal factor. There is a "bias" among obstruents to be voiceless. Incidence of [voice] on obstruents in 706 segment inventories surveyed by Ruhlen. (For similar data, see Maddieson 1984.) Back-articulated voiced stops are more likely to be missing from languages with a voicing contrast among obstruents. Incidence of stop gaps by place and ±voice in 87 languages surveyed by Sherman 1975 (see similar data by Maddieson 1984). Labial Apical Velar Voiceless 34 0 0 Voiced 2 21 40 Familiar examples: Thai, Dutch, Czech (in native vocabulary) Fricatives have a greater bias against voicing than do stops. For optimal voicing, Po must be as low as possible (to keep DP high). For optimal voicing, Po must be as low as possible (to keep DP high). Both of these actions on Po cannot be done simultaneously. The result is that voiced fricatives with strong frication (e.g., [ z, 'ezh'] have a tendency to devoice; those with strong voicing (e.g., [v 'eth' Ÿ ] tend to have weak, if any, frication. Definition: an obstruent is a sound that substantially impedes the flow of air out of the vocal tract; everything else is a sonorant.* Default: Sonorants are voiced Obstruents are voiceless *Note: these may not always be dichotomous categories; there can be a continuum according to the degree of obstruction of the air flow. However, in a great many languages, there may be a contrast in voicing in obstruents, and in a small number of languages there may be voicing contrasts on sonorants. Moreover, in many cases the voicing contrast on obstruents hinges on the relative timing of the voicing with respect to the timing of the consonantal constriction. Also, the perceptual cues for these contrasts (as with many phonetic contrasts) are multiple and frequently involve phonetic features other than simple [ ± voice]. Although there are some general tendencies, the facts must be determined for each individual language. ********************* For an attachment with a power-point version of this Ohala lecture, please e-mail him or me. Beware Procrustes bearing Occam's razor. Lise Menn office phone 303-492-1609 Professor home fax 303-413-0017 Department of Linguistics UCB 295 University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0295 Lise Menn's home page http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/lmenn/ "Shirley Says: Living with Aphasia" http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/Shirley4.pdf Japanese version of "Shirley Says" http://www.bayget.com/inpaku/kinen9.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Wed Mar 20 22:58:40 2002 From: jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Jeanie Castillo) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 14:58:40 -0800 Subject: 2002 WAIL program Message-ID: Check out the program for this year’s Workshop on American Indigenous Languages at http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/nailsg/ And just a reminder, preregistration ends on April 1, 2002. After April 1, the registration fee will increase. -- Jeanie Castillo jeaniec at umail.ucsb.edu From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Mon Mar 25 19:36:10 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 11:36:10 -0800 Subject: THE USE OF LANGUAGE by Prashant Parikh Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: THE USE OF LANGUAGE; Prashant Parikh ;paper ISBN: 1-57586-354-5, $24.50, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-355-3, $65.00, 175 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: The Use of Language provides the first game-theoretic account of communication, speaker meaning, and interpretation, and more general types of information flow. The analysis is then extended to conversational implicature and to a new explanation of the Gricean maxims and various important properties of implicature. The book also develops game-theoretic models of illocutionary force, miscommunication, and aspects of discourse. Lastly, it offers a new account of visual representation and visual implicature. "Dr. Parikh has developed a very original way of considering communication as expressed in language or visually. He has argued that many apparently odd features of actual communication can be explained in rational terms, as minimizing communication length. The richness of his examples and results is accompanied by a high clarity of exposition." --Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel Memorial Laureate Dept. of Economics, Stanford University "Building on the writings of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, Prashant Parikh develops an original and insightful systematic account of communication in a game theoretic framework. These are the right tools for the articulation and application of Gricean ideas about speaker meaning and conversational implicature, with their emphasis on speech as rational action and on the reflective interaction of speaker and audience, and this book brings out in rich detail how fruitful the framework can be." --Robert Stalnaker Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology ---- From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Tue Mar 26 17:28:58 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:28:58 -0800 Subject: Announcing: SEMANTIC INTERFACES Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: SEMANTIC INTERFACES: REFERENCE, ANAPHORA AND ASPECT; Carlo Cecchetto (University of Siena), Gennaro Chierchia (University of Milan), and Maria Teresa Guasti (University of Milano-Bicocca), eds. ;paper ISBN: 1-57586-316-2, $25.00, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-315-4, $65.00, 388 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: This volume collects original papers - from some of the most prominent linguists in the world - on the theory of meaning (semantics) and its relation to syntax. The debate on the syntax-semantics interface, one of the liveliest in the field, is sure to be invigorated by these contributions. The contributors discuss central aspects of how meaning and form are related, by looking at a range of topics where such relations play a particularly prominent role. The topics address reference and anaphora as well as tense and aspect. The specific issues discussed include: the nature of identity statements, the referential properties of indefinites and the debate on their scopal properties, the theory of reconstruction, the proper characterization of aspectual notions and actional classes, tense in embedded, and intensional contexts. These papers offer a valuable source of the latest hypotheses being developed on the subject of syntax/semantics interface. --------------- From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Tue Mar 26 17:35:47 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:35:47 -0800 Subject: Announcing: A PARADIGM FOR PROGRAM SEMANTICS Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: A PARADIGM FOR PROGRAM SEMANTICS: POWER STRUCTURES AND DUALITY: Chris Brink (University of Wollongong and Ingrid Rewitzky (University of Cape Town); paper ISBN: 1-57586-344-8, $27.50, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-345-6, $67.50, 284 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: This book provides a synthesis of four versions of program semantics. In relational semantics a program is thought of as a binary input-output relation over some state space; in predicate transformer semantics a program is a mapping from predicates to predicates; in information systems (and Hoare logic) a program is considered as a relation between predicates; and in domain theory a program is a multifunction mapping states to sets of states. Brink and Rewitzky show, through an exhaustive case study analysis, that it is possible to do back-and-forth translation from any of these versions of program semantics from and to any of the others. They do so by invoking techniques from non-classical logics, lattice theory, topology and the calculus of binary relations. At the heart of their method is the notion of a power construction along with an invocation of duality theory. A power construction lifts a given structure from its base set to its power set (the set of all its subsets); duality theory is then used to recapture the original structure from the lifted structure. Specifcally, the duality theory at work in this book is Priestley duality, which identifies certain topological spaces (Priestley spaces) as the duals of bounded distributive lattices. In the authors' version, relational Priestley spaces are the duals of bounded distributive lattices with operators. The importance of this book lies in its demonstration that, although there are many variations of each of the four versions of program semantics, in principle they may be thought of as intertranslatable. From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Tue Mar 26 17:38:33 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:38:33 -0800 Subject: Book: RELEVANT LINGUISTICS Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: RELEVANT LINGUISTICS:AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STRUCTURE AND USE OF ENGLISH FOR TEACHERS: Paul W. Justice(San Diego State University); paper ISBN: 1-57586-358-8, $25.00, 229 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: This book addresses the growing need to familiarize classroom teachers with the structure and use of language. Teacher training programs around the country are beginning to realize the importance of linguistics in their curricula, especially as linguistic diversity in schools continues to rise. The result is that most teacher trainees find themselves in a linguistics classroom at some point during their education. Unfortunately, the vast majority of introductory linguistics texts currently available do not adequately address the needs of this particular population. These students may find that such texts provide information beyond the material relevant to their teacher training, thereby making the texts inaccessible. This book is written with teachers and future teachers in mind. It addresses the core areas they will find most relevant to their purposes, and does so in a way that they will find accessible. It introduces students to various types of linguistic analysis while covering the basics of phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. There is sufficient terminology to provide students with the vocabulary they will need for future study and professional growth, but not so much that they feel overwhelmed. Also appropriate for classroom teachers is the focus on English, their language of instruction. The final chapter brings all the material together in a discussion of language variation that directly relates to classroom issues. Nonstandard dialects are analyzed at all levels - phonetic, phonologic, morphologic and syntactic - to illustrate their systematicity. The goal is to give students the knowledge needed to approach the teaching of standard forms from an informed perspective. This book is designed to provide teachers with a foundation of linguistic knowledge and, more importantly, the skills to respond to whatever linguistic situations might arise in their classrooms. Each chapter includes numerous exercises designed to help students practice the various types of analysis using a data-driven approach. Additionally, this text can serve as a basic reference tool for future use outside of the linguistics classroom. From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Tue Mar 26 19:25:15 2002 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 14:25:15 -0500 Subject: 2002 Intl RRG Conference, Third Announcement Message-ID: Third Announcement The 2002 International Course and Conference on Role and Reference Grammar: New Topics in Functional Linguistics: The Cognitive and Discursive Dimension of Morphology, Syntax and Semantics University of La Rioja, Spain July 22-28, 2002 Organization The organizing committee for RRG2002 consists of Francisco Cortés (Universidad de La Laguna), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Kees Hengeveld (University of Amsterdam), Ricardo Mairal (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Javier Martín Arista (Universidad de La Rioja), María Jesús Pérez Quintero (Universidad de La Laguna) and Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo). Event Programme A five-day international course consisting of about forty hours will be followed by a two-day international conference. The course will include lecture sessions at three levels: pre-graduate (about one hour and a half per day), post-graduate (about three hours per day) and specialized (about four hours per day). Pre-graduate sessions will introduce the basics of the main topic of the day; post-graduate sessions will provide a detailed account of functional models, including RRG and Functional Grammar; and specialized sessions will deal with advanced topics in RRG. The conference will stage papers, workshops and plenary sessions. Teaching and Discussion Topics RRG2002 will deal with functional linguistics (including semantics, syntax and morphology) in its wider discoursive and cognitive settings. Papers, workshops and plenary sessions are expected to contribute to the theory of RRG as rendered in Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Special attention will be paid to the further elaboration of RRG in areas like morphology, language acquisition, diachrony and lexical semantics. Parallel Session on FG The organizers would be very pleased to run a parallel session on FG during the conference, provided that there are enough proposals of contribution from the FG community. Papers should be devoted to the elaboration of the theory of FG as set out in Dik 1997: The Theory of Functional Grammar. 2 Vols. Edited by Kees Hengeveld. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Workshops may bear on points of convergence and divergence between the two functional models. Invited Speakers Speakers invited to the conference include Christopher Butler (University of Swansea), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Kees Hengeveld (University of Amsterdam), Beth Levin (Stanford University), Ricardo Mairal (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Jan Nuyts (University of Antwerp) and Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo). The course lectures will be delivered by Dan Everett, Kees Hengeveld, Ricardo Mairal, Jan Nuyts and Robert Van Valin. Conference Venue The conference venue is Edificio Quintiliano, C/ La Cigüeña 60, 26.004-Logroño. Abstracts The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and workshops is February 1, 2002. Abstracts should be no longer than three hundred words, including references. The language of the conference will be English. Papers will last twenty minutes, followed by another ten minutes of discussion. Workshops will be of two types: either presentations by one author lasting longer than the average paper or presentations by more than one author offering different perspectives on a single topic. Both types of workshop will last one hour. The selection of papers for presentation will have been communicated by March 15, 2002. Conference/course Fee Before April 15, 2002, the registration fee is 200 euros for the course and 200 euros for the conference. The fee for both events is 300 euros. After April 15, 2002, an additional 50 euros will be charged: 250 euros for the course and the conference, and 350 euros for both events. The fee will include conference facilities and materials, as well as coffee, refreshments and lunches. Grant Policy A maximum of ten grants will be given. Grants will be of two types, half and full (with reference to the events for which the applicant has registered). Applicants for full grants should be unemployed and certify their status. Applicants for half grants should have a gross annual income lower than 15,000 euros, which should also be certified. Applications for grants can be sent to: Francisco Cortés Rodríguez Departamento de Filología Inglesa Facultad de Filología Universidad de La Laguna Campus de Guajara 38.071-Tenerife Spain All applicants for grants will be notified about the Organizing Committee´s decision by the end of May. Registration A registration form is enclosed. Please, send it if you intend to participate in the course, the conference or both. You may send it by ordinary mail, fax or electronic mail to: Viajes El Corte Inglés Gran Vía Juan Carlos I, 47 Bajo 26.005-Logroño Fax +34 941 209165 Telephone: +34 941 202428 E-mail: logrono_lov at viajeseci.es Conference insurance The registration form offers a conference insurance that provides participants with medical and accident assistance. Conference participants, particularly non-European Union citizens, are strongly advised to purchase this insurance. The conference organization will not accept any responsibility for illness or accident during travel or conference activities Presentations The authors of papers, workshops and plenary sessions using a handout should send a hard copy of the handout to the organizers by June 30, 2002. After that moment the conference organization will provide no photocopies. Any technical needs should also be communicated in advance. Powerpoint presentations are not encouraged due to practical problems of hardware and software compatibility. Please send copies of handouts to: Beatriz Martínez Departamento de Filologías Modernas C/ Calasanz s/n 26.004-Logroño Spain Further information The URL of the conference web page is: http://www.unirioja.es/dptos/dfm/sub/congresos/RRG/RRG2002.html Further information on RRG2002, including a detailed programme will follow shortly. Such information will be sent to the RRG discussion list and to the FG discusion list. Anyone who has not suscribed and is interested in receiving further information should send a message to the e-mail address for RRG2002: rrg2002 at unirioja.es. THE 2002 INTERNATIONAL COURSE AND CONFERENCE ON ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR University of La Rioja, Spain, July 22-28, 2002 REGISTRATION FORM NAME: ADDRESS: TELEPHONE: FAX: E-MAIL: CREDIT CARD (VISA, MASTER CARD, AMERICAN EXPRESS OR DINERS CLUB): NUMBER: HOLDER: EXPIRY DATE SIGNATURE OF HOLDER 1) Conference fee -Course (before April 15th.): 200 euros -Course (after April 15th.): 250 euros -Conference (before April 15th): 200 euros -Conference (after April 15th.): 250 euros -Course and conference (before April 15th.): 300 euros -Course and conference (after April 15th.): 350 euros Subtotal__¤________euros 2) Accomodation Reservation deadline: 1st. July Hotels in order of preference: 1)__________ 2)__________ 3)__________ Accomodation from_____ July 2002 to ______ July 2002 (_____ nights) Double room______ Single room______ Subtotal__¤________euros 3) Social events Guided tour to Logroño (evening, 23rd. July): 8 euros Half-day trip to San Millán de la Cogolla (afternoon, 25th. July): 24 euros Conference dinner (evening, 27th. July): 25 euros Vegetarian menu______ Typical bodega menu______ Subtotal__¤________euros 4) Conference insurance (accident and medical assistance): 7.5 euros Total amount to pay_¤_______euros PAYMENT WILL BE MADE BY CREDIT CARD UPON RESERVATION (BY 1ST. JULY 2002). BOOKING CANCELLATIONS AFTER 15TH. JULY WILL INCUR A CHARGE EQUIVALENT TO ONE NIGHT¹S STAY AT A HOTEL PLEASE RETURN THIS FORM BY ORDINARY MAIL, FAX OR ELECTRONIC MAIL TO: Viajes El Corte Inglés Gran Vía Juan Carlos I, 47 Bajo 26.005-Logroño Fax +34 941 209165 Telephone +34 941 202428 E-mail logrono_lov at viajeseci.es HOTEL LIST -HOTEL HUSA GRAN VÍA**** Gran Vía del Rey Juan Carlos I, 73, 26.005-Logroño Double room 105.61 euros, single room 84.21 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL NH HERENCIA RIOJA**** Marqués de Murrieta, 14, 26.005-Logroño Double room 101.65 euros, single room 92.02 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL TRYP LOS BRACOS**** Bretón de los Herreros, 29, 26.001-Logroño Double room 104.59 euros, single room 93.36 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL CIUDAD DE LOGROÑO*** Menéndez Pelayo, 7, 26.002-Logroño Double room 93.95 euros, single room 70.57 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL EXPRESS LOGROÑO*** Avenida Club Deportivo, 98, 26.007-Logroño Double room 70.62 euros, single room 64.2 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL CONDES DE HARO*** Saturnino Ulargui, 6, 26.001-Logroño Double room 90.95 euros, single room 70.62 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL MARQUÉS DE VALLEJO** Marqués de Vallejo, 8, 26.001-Logroño Double room 74.35 euros, single room 70.3 euros (breakfast and VAT included) *************** Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713 Professor & Chair Fax 716 645-3825 Department of Linguistics 609 Baldy Hall University at Buffalo The State University of New York Buffalo, NY 14260-1030 USA VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/people/vanvalin/vanvalin.shtml From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Mar 27 16:25:49 2002 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:25:49 -0600 Subject: CSDL 2002 : Call and Abstracts Guidelines Message-ID: We are now accepting abstracts for the conference on Conceptual Structures, Discourse and Language at Rice University, Oct. 12-14, 2002. The Call for Papers is posted at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~csdl/call-paper.html The abstracts are to be submitted via email, following the abstracts guidelines at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~csdl/abstract.html Apologies that our homepage is not quite done. We have posted the Call and Abstract Guidelines now because the abstracts deadline is MAY 10, 2002. --Suzanne Kemmer and Michel Achard From langconf at BU.EDU Sat Mar 2 21:12:19 2002 From: langconf at BU.EDU (BU Conference on Language Development) Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 16:12:19 -0500 Subject: BUCLD Call for Papers Message-ID: *************************************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS THE 27th ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT NOVEMBER 1, 2, & 3, 2002 Keynote Speaker: Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago Plenary Speaker: Bonnie Schwartz, University of Hawai'i *************************************************************************** All topics in the fields of first and second language acquisition from all theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: Bilingualism Cognition & Language Creoles & Pidgins Discourse Exceptional Language Input & Interaction Language Disorders Linguistic Theory (Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon) Literacy & Narrative Neurolinguistics Pragmatics Pre-linguistic Development Signed Languages Sociolinguistics Speech Perception & Production Abstracts submitted must represent original, unpublished research. Presentations will be 20 minutes long followed by a question period. PLEASE SUBMIT: 1) Ten copies of an anonymous, clearly titled 450-word summary for review. Summaries longer than 450 words will be rejected without being evaluated. Please note the word count at the bottom of the summary. 2) One copy of a 150-word abstract including title, author(s)and affiliation(s). If your paper is accepted, this abstract will be scanned into the conference handbook. 3) The author information requested below, for EACH author. Although each author may submit as many abstracts as desired, we will accept for presentation by each submitter: (a) a maximum of 1 first authored paper, and (b) a maximum of 2 papers in any authorship status. Note that no changes in authorship (including deleting an author or changing author order) will be possible after the review process is completed. Acknowledgment of receipt of the abstract will be sent by email as soon as possible after receipt. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent to first authors only, in early August, by US mail. Pre-registration materials and preliminary schedule will be available in late August, 2002. All authors who present papers at the conference will be invited to contribute their papers to the Proceedings volumes. Those papers will be due in January, 2003. Note: All conference papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Although each abstract will be evaluated individually, we will attempt to honor requests to schedule accepted papers together in group sessions. DEADLINE: All submissions must be received by May 15, 2002. Late abstracts will not be considered, whatever the reason for the delay. Send submissions to: Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Suite 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 e-mail: langconf at bu.edu (We regret that we cannot accept abstract submissions by fax or e-mail.) Information regarding the conference may be accessed at http://web.bu.edu/LINGUISTICS/APPLIED/conference.html **************************************************************************** AUTHOR INFORMATION (Please include a typed sheet containing the following information for EACH author) Title: Full name: Affiliation: Current work address (for publication in handbook) Current e-mail (required): Current phone number (required): Summer address if different, and dates: Summer e-mail (required): Summer phone (required): Please indicate whether, if your paper is not one of the 90 initially selected for presentation, you would be willing to be considered as an alternate. (If you indicate that you are willing to be considered, this does not commit you to accepting alternate status if it should be offered to you.) _____ Yes, consider me as an alternate if necessary _____ No, please do not consider me as an alternate From dionysis at UCY.AC.CY Fri Mar 8 08:08:16 2002 From: dionysis at UCY.AC.CY (Dionysis Goutsos) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 10:08:16 +0200 Subject: Job announcement Message-ID: DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Two (2) tenure-track positions at the rank of Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Linguistics for the programme of English Studies: The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures announces the opening of two tenure-track positions in Linguistics at the rank of Lecturer or Assistant Professor. One post is on the syntax/grammar of English; candidates will teach Morphology of English, English Syntax, Pedagogical Grammar as well as other courses in the context of the Department/s programme in English Language and Literature. The second post is on the phonetics/phonology of English; candidates will teach Phonetics and Phonology as well as other courses in the context of the Department/s programme in English Language and Literature. Scholarly potential and publications required. Teaching Load: Two courses a semester. Deadline for submission of applications: April 19, 2002. Gross monthly salary: Lecturer: CYP?1,495; Assistant Professor: CYP?1,771 (1CYP=1.55US$). Please send: Letter of application mentioning the rank you are applying for, photocopies of credentials, c.v., representative publications, and summary of current and future research (2-3 pp). Applicants must request three academic referees to send letters of recommendation directly to the University. The names and addresses of these referees must be submitted with the application. Send to: The Registrar, University of Cyprus, PO Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus. Information. Tel: 00357 22892000, Fax: 00357 22892100. *********************************** Dionysis Goutsos Assistant Professor Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures University of Cyprus P.O. Box 20537 CY 1678 Nicosia, CYPRUS Tel: +357 -22-892109 Fax: +357 -22 -750310 e-mail: dionysis at ucy.ac.cy www.ucy.ac.cy/~dionysis From Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at COLORADO.EDU Wed Mar 13 22:33:00 2002 From: Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at COLORADO.EDU (Zygmunt Frajzyngier) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 15:33:00 -0700 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear Friends, We would like to announce an International Symposium on Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories to be held in Boulder, Colorado, May 14-17, 2003. The purpose of the Symposium is to identify hitherto unstated or understated fundamental issues in linguistic theories taking into the account the rich variation of forms and functions observed in the languages of the world. The symposium will examine the goals of both theories of language structure and theories of language evolution. One of the expected outcomes of the symposium will be a new set of questions to be addressed by language theories. For information about the symposium see our web page: http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/symposium/ Zygmunt Frajzyngier and David Rood. -- Zygmunt Frajzyngier Dept. of Linguistics, Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado 80309 Phone 303-492-6959 Fax: 303-492-4416 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From matt at RICE.EDU Mon Mar 18 13:54:38 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:54:38 -0600 Subject: phonetics and universal grammar: an open letter to Paul Smolens from Lise Menn Message-ID: Dear Paul, At the LSA meeting in January, during the question period after your talk on how the constraints of optimality might hypothetically be represented in the genome, I tried to formulate an issue for you to consider: which constraints are good candidates for an innate mental grammar and which are not? I promised you that I would e-mail you a fuller statement of what I had in mind by my question, since the issue is a complex one and raises points that you have probably not considered. Several colleagues in the audience that day, including Shelley Velleman, John and Manjari Ohala, and Diana Ohala, were also interested in the issue and encouraged me to attempt a fairly formal exposition of my point, which is: 1. that many universals of phonology are physiologically based, 2. so that while these are represented in the mind, 3. they are not good candidates for representation in an innate mental grammar, should there in fact be such an object. As always, I remain your genial and loyal opposition, with sincere hopes of seeing Optimality develop to a level where I can't find anything to complain about. Lise Below is my full statement, with lecture notes by John Ohala to make some of the aerodynamic arguments explicit. It would be better as an attachment, since it is so long, but network constraints make that problematic. Anyone who would like either my statement or the PowerPoint version of John's lecture notes is welcome to e-mail me for them. ***************************************************************** Phonetic manifesto: Cave fish are blind, or, Why many innate universals of language are not candidates for inclusion in an innate grammar Lise Menn, with Shelley Velleman & John Ohala References and acoustic physics argument provided by John Ohala Assuming (only for the sake of argument!) that some parts of phonology are determined by a genetically-controlled universal grammar (innate UG), and that 'grammar' refers to a mental language-data processing mechanism, we argue that EVEN THOUGH CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF PHONOLOGY ARE UNIVERSAL, they are poor candidates for inclusion in such an innate UG. We use optimality theory as a basis for exposition. Cave fish are blind. If natural selection maintains properties of an organism, they are either useful to survival in some way, or byproducts of something else that is useful. Natural selection typically fails to maintain characteristics that are either useless (eyes in a cave) or redundant. (Another putative example is the ability to synthesize vitamin C in primates who have good access to fruit and other sources; see article on Vitamin C in The Cambridge World History of Food.) Useless or redundant characteristics of course MAY be maintained because they are accidental by-products of some other capacity (the appendix in the human gastro-intestinal tract; 'spandrels', in a popular metaphor). If a property of language is a consequence of human (vocal tract) anatomy, auditory processing, or other non-mental circumstances, it does not need also to be part of a MENTAL grammar. For example, the constraint strongly disfavoring speech sounds made with ingressive pulmonic airflow (as in gasping, or sucking air in through the teeth) presumably is due to something about human breath control, the fact that dry air is bad for the mucous membranes of the mouth and larynx, etc. Furthermore, speakers making such sounds quickly discover the discomfort and the effort that they cause, through ordinary sensory feedback circuits, so there is no need for a pre-wired mental counterpart to the physical facts. Many violable constraints are demonstrably based on anatomy, muscle control, and other physical properties of the vocal tract. Some are rather strong, like the constraint against nasal fricatives (which demand a lot of airflow); some are very weak, like those against specific consonants - */p/, */g/, */h/, which are very common yet occasionally absent. See the appended adaptation of an Ohala power-point lecture on airflow requirements for fricatives and voicing. These constraints are indeed as innate as having a nose and mouth. But they are not MENTAL constraints, they are PHYSIOLOGICAL constraints. So the genes which control them must be genes that structure the body, not the mind. Speakers subconsciously know the constraints of their grammar, regardless of the source of the constraint. Consider the Jusczyk et al. experiments showing that infants recognize native vs. unfamiliar phonotactic patterns, not to mention the common experiences of second language learners who try to overcome their native language production patterns. In phonology, to describe language patterns as well as individual speakers' knowledge, all constraints must be represented, regardless of whether their source is transparently physiological, or perceptual, or based on general human cognitive properties, or indeed based on language-specific mental properties. Under the assumptions that some constraints might be genetically encoded as part of a mental grammar; and no constraint will be directly selected for as part of an innate mental grammar if it is redundantly a consequence of physiology & physics, and therefore both internal to and learnable by a physiologically intact child trying to make sounds, ?which constraints, if any, are good candidates for representation in a innate mental grammar? According to the argument above, the poor candidates include all constraints that are demonstrably physiological in origin (and therefore genetically encoded, but not in the mind). I think this includes at least the majority of common constraints. Indeed, anything that takes the tongue away from resting position would be easier not to do, from the speaker's point of view. [We also know that many constraints can demonstrably be learned by exposure to the ambient language (cf. the work of Jusczyk and colleagues, Aslin & colleagues). They would also be redundant in an innate grammar and therefore poor candidates for membership in a UG - but I suppose it could be counter-argued that the reason that children can learn them is that they are part of UG. I am not sure how to reach a testable hypothesis in this area.] Ohala Lecture notes (edited by LM from the original PowerPoint version) 1. For a fixed mass of air, pressure varies inversely with volume. (Boyle-Mariotte's Law)*; e.g., in a hand bicycle pump one pushes a plunger to reduce the volume of the air and thus increase the pressure. Pressure times Volume is constant for a fixed mass of air; P1V1 = P2V2. For a given volume, pressure varies directly with the mass of air inside. E.g., inflating or stiffening a car tire by pumping air into it. (We neglect the effects of temperature; we assume adiabatic conditions.) 2. The quantity of air passing through a channel varies proportionally with the diameter of the channel, and is positively correlated with the magnitude of the pressure differential across the channel. (Coffee flows from a large coffee urn in greater volume as (a) the tap is more open and (b) the greater the amount of coffee in the urn.) U = A (P at entrance - P at exit) to the a power, times C U is 'volume velocity', the quantity of air per unit time, typically, cm3/sec; A is the channel diameter; a varies between 0.5 and 1.0; c is a constant. 3. Air speed (particle velocity) varies directly with quantity of flow (volume velocity) and inversely with channel cross-dimension. (This is the principle exploited in carburetors.) This principle is relevant because the degree of turbulence and thus the noise produced during fricatives is dependent in part on how fast the air is moving past a constriction. The intensity and center frequency* of frication noise vary monotonically with particle velocity of the air flow. (When a strong wind is blowing around one's house, one can get an impression of its intensity by listening to the loudness.* But these parameters can also be affected by the resonances of the vocal tract of the noise and its "pitch".) The Bernoulli* effect: The pressure at right angles to flowing air is inversely correlated with the velocity of the air flow. This principle is important for understanding How airplanes fly Perfume atomizers Carburetors 4. The Aerodynamic Voicing Constraint Voicing requires: Vocal cords adducted (lightly approximated at the midline) Air flowing through the vocal cords. Certain articulations impact on airflow. Note: similar principles apply to trills Obstruents block or reduce the flow of air out of the oral cavity (by aerodynamic principle #3). Therefore, the air accumulates in the oral cavity and, by aerodynamic principle #2, the pressure behind the constriction increases. This reduces the pressure drop (DP = [P at entrance - P at exit]) across the vocal cords If DP goes below a certain minimum value (~ 1 or 2 cm H2O), the air flow falls below the level needed to maintain voicing and thus voicing will be extinguished. 5. Factors favoring voicing during supraglottal sounds: i) Shorter duration of the consonantal closure, since there is less time for Po (the oral cavity air pressure) to build up to a level that reduces DP below the critical level ii) Larger oral cavity (= more front place of articulation), since a larger cavity means more surface area to passively expand and thus accommodate more of the air accumulating in the oral cavity. iii) Active expansion of the oral cavity by larynx lowering, jaw lowering, augmenting velum elevation -- again, to accommodate more air accumulating in the oral cavity. iv) Velic leakage Related to the difficulty of maintaining voicing on back-articulated stops are the following: Even in languages that have /g/, the incidence of this phoneme -- both in the dictionary and in connected speech -- is often statistically much lower than for /b/ (Gamkrelidze; Wang & Crawford). Phonetically /g/ is often less voiced than /d/ and /b/. E.g., my English /g/ is commonly voiceless even intervocalically. The absolute absence of /g/ in some languages, the statistical infrequency of it in others, and its phonetic devoicing in others are all manifestations of the same basic universal factor. There is a "bias" among obstruents to be voiceless. Incidence of [voice] on obstruents in 706 segment inventories surveyed by Ruhlen. (For similar data, see Maddieson 1984.) Back-articulated voiced stops are more likely to be missing from languages with a voicing contrast among obstruents. Incidence of stop gaps by place and ?voice in 87 languages surveyed by Sherman 1975 (see similar data by Maddieson 1984). Labial Apical Velar Voiceless 34 0 0 Voiced 2 21 40 Familiar examples: Thai, Dutch, Czech (in native vocabulary) Fricatives have a greater bias against voicing than do stops. For optimal voicing, Po must be as low as possible (to keep DP high). For optimal voicing, Po must be as low as possible (to keep DP high). Both of these actions on Po cannot be done simultaneously. The result is that voiced fricatives with strong frication (e.g., [ z, 'ezh'] have a tendency to devoice; those with strong voicing (e.g., [v 'eth' ? ] tend to have weak, if any, frication. Definition: an obstruent is a sound that substantially impedes the flow of air out of the vocal tract; everything else is a sonorant.* Default: Sonorants are voiced Obstruents are voiceless *Note: these may not always be dichotomous categories; there can be a continuum according to the degree of obstruction of the air flow. However, in a great many languages, there may be a contrast in voicing in obstruents, and in a small number of languages there may be voicing contrasts on sonorants. Moreover, in many cases the voicing contrast on obstruents hinges on the relative timing of the voicing with respect to the timing of the consonantal constriction. Also, the perceptual cues for these contrasts (as with many phonetic contrasts) are multiple and frequently involve phonetic features other than simple [ ? voice]. Although there are some general tendencies, the facts must be determined for each individual language. ********************* For an attachment with a power-point version of this Ohala lecture, please e-mail him or me. Beware Procrustes bearing Occam's razor. Lise Menn office phone 303-492-1609 Professor home fax 303-413-0017 Department of Linguistics UCB 295 University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0295 Lise Menn's home page http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/lmenn/ "Shirley Says: Living with Aphasia" http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/Shirley4.pdf Japanese version of "Shirley Says" http://www.bayget.com/inpaku/kinen9.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Wed Mar 20 22:58:40 2002 From: jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Jeanie Castillo) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 14:58:40 -0800 Subject: 2002 WAIL program Message-ID: Check out the program for this year?s Workshop on American Indigenous Languages at http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/nailsg/ And just a reminder, preregistration ends on April 1, 2002. After April 1, the registration fee will increase. -- Jeanie Castillo jeaniec at umail.ucsb.edu From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Mon Mar 25 19:36:10 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 11:36:10 -0800 Subject: THE USE OF LANGUAGE by Prashant Parikh Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: THE USE OF LANGUAGE; Prashant Parikh ;paper ISBN: 1-57586-354-5, $24.50, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-355-3, $65.00, 175 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: The Use of Language provides the first game-theoretic account of communication, speaker meaning, and interpretation, and more general types of information flow. The analysis is then extended to conversational implicature and to a new explanation of the Gricean maxims and various important properties of implicature. The book also develops game-theoretic models of illocutionary force, miscommunication, and aspects of discourse. Lastly, it offers a new account of visual representation and visual implicature. "Dr. Parikh has developed a very original way of considering communication as expressed in language or visually. He has argued that many apparently odd features of actual communication can be explained in rational terms, as minimizing communication length. The richness of his examples and results is accompanied by a high clarity of exposition." --Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel Memorial Laureate Dept. of Economics, Stanford University "Building on the writings of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, Prashant Parikh develops an original and insightful systematic account of communication in a game theoretic framework. These are the right tools for the articulation and application of Gricean ideas about speaker meaning and conversational implicature, with their emphasis on speech as rational action and on the reflective interaction of speaker and audience, and this book brings out in rich detail how fruitful the framework can be." --Robert Stalnaker Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology ---- From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Tue Mar 26 17:28:58 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:28:58 -0800 Subject: Announcing: SEMANTIC INTERFACES Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: SEMANTIC INTERFACES: REFERENCE, ANAPHORA AND ASPECT; Carlo Cecchetto (University of Siena), Gennaro Chierchia (University of Milan), and Maria Teresa Guasti (University of Milano-Bicocca), eds. ;paper ISBN: 1-57586-316-2, $25.00, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-315-4, $65.00, 388 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: This volume collects original papers - from some of the most prominent linguists in the world - on the theory of meaning (semantics) and its relation to syntax. The debate on the syntax-semantics interface, one of the liveliest in the field, is sure to be invigorated by these contributions. The contributors discuss central aspects of how meaning and form are related, by looking at a range of topics where such relations play a particularly prominent role. The topics address reference and anaphora as well as tense and aspect. The specific issues discussed include: the nature of identity statements, the referential properties of indefinites and the debate on their scopal properties, the theory of reconstruction, the proper characterization of aspectual notions and actional classes, tense in embedded, and intensional contexts. These papers offer a valuable source of the latest hypotheses being developed on the subject of syntax/semantics interface. --------------- From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Tue Mar 26 17:35:47 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:35:47 -0800 Subject: Announcing: A PARADIGM FOR PROGRAM SEMANTICS Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: A PARADIGM FOR PROGRAM SEMANTICS: POWER STRUCTURES AND DUALITY: Chris Brink (University of Wollongong and Ingrid Rewitzky (University of Cape Town); paper ISBN: 1-57586-344-8, $27.50, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-345-6, $67.50, 284 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: This book provides a synthesis of four versions of program semantics. In relational semantics a program is thought of as a binary input-output relation over some state space; in predicate transformer semantics a program is a mapping from predicates to predicates; in information systems (and Hoare logic) a program is considered as a relation between predicates; and in domain theory a program is a multifunction mapping states to sets of states. Brink and Rewitzky show, through an exhaustive case study analysis, that it is possible to do back-and-forth translation from any of these versions of program semantics from and to any of the others. They do so by invoking techniques from non-classical logics, lattice theory, topology and the calculus of binary relations. At the heart of their method is the notion of a power construction along with an invocation of duality theory. A power construction lifts a given structure from its base set to its power set (the set of all its subsets); duality theory is then used to recapture the original structure from the lifted structure. Specifcally, the duality theory at work in this book is Priestley duality, which identifies certain topological spaces (Priestley spaces) as the duals of bounded distributive lattices. In the authors' version, relational Priestley spaces are the duals of bounded distributive lattices with operators. The importance of this book lies in its demonstration that, although there are many variations of each of the four versions of program semantics, in principle they may be thought of as intertranslatable. From sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Tue Mar 26 17:38:33 2002 From: sosa at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Christine Sosa) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:38:33 -0800 Subject: Book: RELEVANT LINGUISTICS Message-ID: CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of: RELEVANT LINGUISTICS:AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STRUCTURE AND USE OF ENGLISH FOR TEACHERS: Paul W. Justice(San Diego State University); paper ISBN: 1-57586-358-8, $25.00, 229 pages. CSLI Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: pubs at csli.stanford.edu. To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search feature to locate the book, then order). Book description: This book addresses the growing need to familiarize classroom teachers with the structure and use of language. Teacher training programs around the country are beginning to realize the importance of linguistics in their curricula, especially as linguistic diversity in schools continues to rise. The result is that most teacher trainees find themselves in a linguistics classroom at some point during their education. Unfortunately, the vast majority of introductory linguistics texts currently available do not adequately address the needs of this particular population. These students may find that such texts provide information beyond the material relevant to their teacher training, thereby making the texts inaccessible. This book is written with teachers and future teachers in mind. It addresses the core areas they will find most relevant to their purposes, and does so in a way that they will find accessible. It introduces students to various types of linguistic analysis while covering the basics of phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. There is sufficient terminology to provide students with the vocabulary they will need for future study and professional growth, but not so much that they feel overwhelmed. Also appropriate for classroom teachers is the focus on English, their language of instruction. The final chapter brings all the material together in a discussion of language variation that directly relates to classroom issues. Nonstandard dialects are analyzed at all levels - phonetic, phonologic, morphologic and syntactic - to illustrate their systematicity. The goal is to give students the knowledge needed to approach the teaching of standard forms from an informed perspective. This book is designed to provide teachers with a foundation of linguistic knowledge and, more importantly, the skills to respond to whatever linguistic situations might arise in their classrooms. Each chapter includes numerous exercises designed to help students practice the various types of analysis using a data-driven approach. Additionally, this text can serve as a basic reference tool for future use outside of the linguistics classroom. From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Tue Mar 26 19:25:15 2002 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 14:25:15 -0500 Subject: 2002 Intl RRG Conference, Third Announcement Message-ID: Third Announcement The 2002 International Course and Conference on Role and Reference Grammar: New Topics in Functional Linguistics: The Cognitive and Discursive Dimension of Morphology, Syntax and Semantics University of La Rioja, Spain July 22-28, 2002 Organization The organizing committee for RRG2002 consists of Francisco Cort?s (Universidad de La Laguna), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Kees Hengeveld (University of Amsterdam), Ricardo Mairal (Universidad Nacional de Educaci?n a Distancia), Javier Mart?n Arista (Universidad de La Rioja), Mar?a Jes?s P?rez Quintero (Universidad de La Laguna) and Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo). Event Programme A five-day international course consisting of about forty hours will be followed by a two-day international conference. The course will include lecture sessions at three levels: pre-graduate (about one hour and a half per day), post-graduate (about three hours per day) and specialized (about four hours per day). Pre-graduate sessions will introduce the basics of the main topic of the day; post-graduate sessions will provide a detailed account of functional models, including RRG and Functional Grammar; and specialized sessions will deal with advanced topics in RRG. The conference will stage papers, workshops and plenary sessions. Teaching and Discussion Topics RRG2002 will deal with functional linguistics (including semantics, syntax and morphology) in its wider discoursive and cognitive settings. Papers, workshops and plenary sessions are expected to contribute to the theory of RRG as rendered in Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Special attention will be paid to the further elaboration of RRG in areas like morphology, language acquisition, diachrony and lexical semantics. Parallel Session on FG The organizers would be very pleased to run a parallel session on FG during the conference, provided that there are enough proposals of contribution from the FG community. Papers should be devoted to the elaboration of the theory of FG as set out in Dik 1997: The Theory of Functional Grammar. 2 Vols. Edited by Kees Hengeveld. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Workshops may bear on points of convergence and divergence between the two functional models. Invited Speakers Speakers invited to the conference include Christopher Butler (University of Swansea), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Kees Hengeveld (University of Amsterdam), Beth Levin (Stanford University), Ricardo Mairal (Universidad Nacional de Educaci?n a Distancia), Jan Nuyts (University of Antwerp) and Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo). The course lectures will be delivered by Dan Everett, Kees Hengeveld, Ricardo Mairal, Jan Nuyts and Robert Van Valin. Conference Venue The conference venue is Edificio Quintiliano, C/ La Cig?e?a 60, 26.004-Logro?o. Abstracts The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and workshops is February 1, 2002. Abstracts should be no longer than three hundred words, including references. The language of the conference will be English. Papers will last twenty minutes, followed by another ten minutes of discussion. Workshops will be of two types: either presentations by one author lasting longer than the average paper or presentations by more than one author offering different perspectives on a single topic. Both types of workshop will last one hour. The selection of papers for presentation will have been communicated by March 15, 2002. Conference/course Fee Before April 15, 2002, the registration fee is 200 euros for the course and 200 euros for the conference. The fee for both events is 300 euros. After April 15, 2002, an additional 50 euros will be charged: 250 euros for the course and the conference, and 350 euros for both events. The fee will include conference facilities and materials, as well as coffee, refreshments and lunches. Grant Policy A maximum of ten grants will be given. Grants will be of two types, half and full (with reference to the events for which the applicant has registered). Applicants for full grants should be unemployed and certify their status. Applicants for half grants should have a gross annual income lower than 15,000 euros, which should also be certified. Applications for grants can be sent to: Francisco Cort?s Rodr?guez Departamento de Filolog?a Inglesa Facultad de Filolog?a Universidad de La Laguna Campus de Guajara 38.071-Tenerife Spain All applicants for grants will be notified about the Organizing Committee?s decision by the end of May. Registration A registration form is enclosed. Please, send it if you intend to participate in the course, the conference or both. You may send it by ordinary mail, fax or electronic mail to: Viajes El Corte Ingl?s Gran V?a Juan Carlos I, 47 Bajo 26.005-Logro?o Fax +34 941 209165 Telephone: +34 941 202428 E-mail: logrono_lov at viajeseci.es Conference insurance The registration form offers a conference insurance that provides participants with medical and accident assistance. Conference participants, particularly non-European Union citizens, are strongly advised to purchase this insurance. The conference organization will not accept any responsibility for illness or accident during travel or conference activities Presentations The authors of papers, workshops and plenary sessions using a handout should send a hard copy of the handout to the organizers by June 30, 2002. After that moment the conference organization will provide no photocopies. Any technical needs should also be communicated in advance. Powerpoint presentations are not encouraged due to practical problems of hardware and software compatibility. Please send copies of handouts to: Beatriz Mart?nez Departamento de Filolog?as Modernas C/ Calasanz s/n 26.004-Logro?o Spain Further information The URL of the conference web page is: http://www.unirioja.es/dptos/dfm/sub/congresos/RRG/RRG2002.html Further information on RRG2002, including a detailed programme will follow shortly. Such information will be sent to the RRG discussion list and to the FG discusion list. Anyone who has not suscribed and is interested in receiving further information should send a message to the e-mail address for RRG2002: rrg2002 at unirioja.es. THE 2002 INTERNATIONAL COURSE AND CONFERENCE ON ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR University of La Rioja, Spain, July 22-28, 2002 REGISTRATION FORM NAME: ADDRESS: TELEPHONE: FAX: E-MAIL: CREDIT CARD (VISA, MASTER CARD, AMERICAN EXPRESS OR DINERS CLUB): NUMBER: HOLDER: EXPIRY DATE SIGNATURE OF HOLDER 1) Conference fee -Course (before April 15th.): 200 euros -Course (after April 15th.): 250 euros -Conference (before April 15th): 200 euros -Conference (after April 15th.): 250 euros -Course and conference (before April 15th.): 300 euros -Course and conference (after April 15th.): 350 euros Subtotal__?________euros 2) Accomodation Reservation deadline: 1st. July Hotels in order of preference: 1)__________ 2)__________ 3)__________ Accomodation from_____ July 2002 to ______ July 2002 (_____ nights) Double room______ Single room______ Subtotal__?________euros 3) Social events Guided tour to Logro?o (evening, 23rd. July): 8 euros Half-day trip to San Mill?n de la Cogolla (afternoon, 25th. July): 24 euros Conference dinner (evening, 27th. July): 25 euros Vegetarian menu______ Typical bodega menu______ Subtotal__?________euros 4) Conference insurance (accident and medical assistance): 7.5 euros Total amount to pay_?_______euros PAYMENT WILL BE MADE BY CREDIT CARD UPON RESERVATION (BY 1ST. JULY 2002). BOOKING CANCELLATIONS AFTER 15TH. JULY WILL INCUR A CHARGE EQUIVALENT TO ONE NIGHT?S STAY AT A HOTEL PLEASE RETURN THIS FORM BY ORDINARY MAIL, FAX OR ELECTRONIC MAIL TO: Viajes El Corte Ingl?s Gran V?a Juan Carlos I, 47 Bajo 26.005-Logro?o Fax +34 941 209165 Telephone +34 941 202428 E-mail logrono_lov at viajeseci.es HOTEL LIST -HOTEL HUSA GRAN V?A**** Gran V?a del Rey Juan Carlos I, 73, 26.005-Logro?o Double room 105.61 euros, single room 84.21 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL NH HERENCIA RIOJA**** Marqu?s de Murrieta, 14, 26.005-Logro?o Double room 101.65 euros, single room 92.02 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL TRYP LOS BRACOS**** Bret?n de los Herreros, 29, 26.001-Logro?o Double room 104.59 euros, single room 93.36 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL CIUDAD DE LOGRO?O*** Men?ndez Pelayo, 7, 26.002-Logro?o Double room 93.95 euros, single room 70.57 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL EXPRESS LOGRO?O*** Avenida Club Deportivo, 98, 26.007-Logro?o Double room 70.62 euros, single room 64.2 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL CONDES DE HARO*** Saturnino Ulargui, 6, 26.001-Logro?o Double room 90.95 euros, single room 70.62 euros (breakfast and VAT included) -HOTEL MARQU?S DE VALLEJO** Marqu?s de Vallejo, 8, 26.001-Logro?o Double room 74.35 euros, single room 70.3 euros (breakfast and VAT included) *************** Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Tel 716 645-2177, ext. 713 Professor & Chair Fax 716 645-3825 Department of Linguistics 609 Baldy Hall University at Buffalo The State University of New York Buffalo, NY 14260-1030 USA VANVALIN at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics/people/vanvalin/vanvalin.shtml From kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU Wed Mar 27 16:25:49 2002 From: kemmer at RUF.RICE.EDU (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:25:49 -0600 Subject: CSDL 2002 : Call and Abstracts Guidelines Message-ID: We are now accepting abstracts for the conference on Conceptual Structures, Discourse and Language at Rice University, Oct. 12-14, 2002. The Call for Papers is posted at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~csdl/call-paper.html The abstracts are to be submitted via email, following the abstracts guidelines at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~csdl/abstract.html Apologies that our homepage is not quite done. We have posted the Call and Abstract Guidelines now because the abstracts deadline is MAY 10, 2002. --Suzanne Kemmer and Michel Achard