From mg246 at CORNELL.EDU Sun Nov 3 18:17:56 2002 From: mg246 at CORNELL.EDU (monica gonzalez-marquez) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 13:17:56 -0500 Subject: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics Workshop Message-ID: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (EMCL) Workshop Cornell University Ithaca, New York, USA May 2-4, 2003 http://cerebro.psych.cornell.edu/emcl *** Call for Graduate Student Participants Application deadline: January 31, 2003 Notification of acceptance by: March 15, 2003 *** Introduction: Recent years have witnessed a virtual explosion of theory about the relationship between language and cognition in work on cognitive grammar (Langacker), cognitive semantics (Talmy), conceptual integration (Fauconnier & Turner), and conceptual metaphor (Lakoff, Sweetser). However, most of the empirical support for these theories lies in the linguistic judgments and intuitions of their proponents. While this is a powerful form of empirical support, the wide-ranging nature of the claims in cognitive linguistics creates a particular need for converging evidence from other techniques in cognitive science in order to assess both its assumptions and its conclusions about cognitive phenomena. The Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics Workshop is motivated by the idea that experimental and observational work can help substantiate the claims of cognitive linguistics, and to further develop an empirically valid account of the connection between language and cognition. This interdisciplinary workshop is intended to provide a forum where people doing experimental and observational research in cognitive linguistics can come together to obtain a comprehensive picture of progress in this endeavor, and to identify areas for future investigation. During the workshop, we will explore the use of various experimental and observational methods to address particular issues relevant to language and cognition. To this end, the goals of the workshop are: -to evaluate experimental and empirical support for various claims in cognitive linguistics; -to address practical and methodological issues such as experimental design, data collection and analysis (including audio/video corpora, eye-tracking, gesture, fMRI/EEG, image schemas, etc.) -to explore how data from natural language corpora can be fruitfully incorporated in experimental work; -to create a network of researchers with common interests and concerns for continued collaboration. Workshop format: The weekend will kick off with a plenary lecture followed by a question and answer session with the audience.Aside from this initiating lecture, however, the event will be organized around parallel workshop sessions of two types, those led by faculty members and those organized around student presentations. All sessions are intended to be highly interactive. In the first sort of workshop, a faculty member will work with a small group of students to solve a problem or set of problems that might arise in her area of expertise. For example, in a workshop on the use of metaphor in gesture, the group might jointly analyze a videotape of face-to-face interaction. In a workshop on eye-tracking, the group might be asked to analyze data collected from a single subject in a particular experiment. In a workshop on behavioral measures, the group might begin with a theoretical issue in cognitive linguistics and design an experiment to test it. These workshops will be ‘recycled’ in that each faculty member will hold the same workshop twice, so that most participants will get a chance to participate in most workshops. In the student-led sessions, graduate students will make 15-minute presentations about their work, followed by extensive discussion about the theoretical and methodological issues raised by the students’ research. The event will end with a roundtable discussion session in which participants synthesize the contents of the workshop and talk about future directions. Graduate Students: Participants will be graduate students undertaking empirical/experimental work relevant to language and cognition. Applicants should be familiar with current ideas in cognitive linguistics and be prepared to critically discuss various aspects of the theory. Participants will be expected to present their ongoing research to the group for constructive feedback. Interested graduate students are invited to submit their applications by following the instructions given at the workshop website: http://cerebro.psych.cornell.edu/emcl Application deadline: January 31, 2003 Notification of acceptance by: March 15, 2003 Accommodation will be provided for all accepted students. In addition, it is likely that modest travel grants will be available to students traveling long distances. Faculty: Seana Coulson (UCSD, Cognitive Science) Chris Sinha (University of Portsmouth, Developmental Psychology) Michael J. Spivey (Cornell University, Psycholinguistics) 5 additional faculty members will be added over the course of the next few weeks. Organizing Committee: Seana Coulson (UCSD, Cognitive Science) Richard Dale (Cornell, Psychology) Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Chair (Cornell, Psychology) Irene Mittelberg (Cornell, Linguistics) Michael J. Spivey (Cornell, Psycholinguistics) Contact information: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez -- mg246 at cornell.edu http://cerebro.psych.cornell.edu/emcl Application deadline: January 31, 2003 Notification of acceptance by: March 15, 2003 This event is sponsored and generously funded by the Cognitive Studies Program at Cornell University. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5870 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Mon Nov 4 22:09:02 2002 From: jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Jeanie Castillo) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 14:09:02 -0800 Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Message-ID: **** APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE POSTINGS **** Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Santa Barbara, CA April 25-27, 2003 The Linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its sixth annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), which provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in linguistics. In addition, we will be hosting a special session on language revitalization, therefore we encourage the submission of abstracts in this area. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and can be submitted by hard copy or email. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) email address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Email submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the email message with the abstract as an attachment. Please limit your abstracts to the following formats: PDF, RTF, or Microsoft Word document. Send email submissions to: wail at linguistics.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: January 15, 2003 Notification of acceptance will be by email by February 15, 2003. General Information: Santa Barbara is situated on the Pacific Ocean near the Santa Ynez mountains. The UCSB campus is located near the Santa Barbara airport. Participants may also choose to fly into LAX airport in Los Angeles which is approximately 90 miles south of the campus. Shuttle buses run between LAX and Santa Barbara. Information about hotel accommodations will be posted on the web. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at linguistics.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our website at http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/nailsg/ -- Jeanie Castillo jeaniec at umail.ucsb.edu From lise.menn at COLORADO.EDU Thu Nov 7 00:03:29 2002 From: lise.menn at COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 17:03:29 -0700 Subject: Object-initial languages - data, a bit late Message-ID: Funknet colleagues: In response to Dianne Patterson's note of 29 October, repeated below, I asked my former student Andrea Feldman to share her diary data with us, because it contains some very interesting word order errors. Here are Feldman's Ph.D. dissertation data (University of Colorado 1998, p. 127) exemplifying her son's use of non-English word orders. I think the real issue in these constructions is not that the child is unsettled about English being an SVO language, but that the semantic roles of the particular verb's arguments are differently construed by the child: e.g. 'carry' is regularly construed as if it meant something like 'ride'. Have fun making hypotheses about the others here; as Feldman points out, some of the errors are not verb argument errors but rather the typical early deictic pronoun reversals (e.g. 'pick you up'). However, early misconstrual of 2nd and 1st person pronouns might be important in explaining the origin of some of the incorrect mappings from verb argument to semantic role. Lise Menn Feldman's data: "I'm carrying Steven" (Steven is being held by father) (1:11.6) "Big lambie has blue car" (Steven sees toy lamb in his blue car)(2;0.6) "Mama need Laura?" (Mother has been holding Laura)((2;1.1) "Mommy need key" (Steven wanted to play with mother's keys) (2;2.16) "Give me Tadi" (child's name for himself) (Steven wanted to be picked up by babysitter) (2;3.6) "Laura take dada" (Father is holding Laura) (2;3.21) "He take out" (Steven takes doll out of toy bus) (2;3.26) "I don't like Laura to pick Daddy up." (Steven does not want father to pick up sister.) (2;8.0) "I wanna pick you up" (reaches arms outward to father) (2;8.3) "maybe she can have Michelle" (Laura is in mother's arms) (2;8.6) "Laurie can't carry" (=X can't carry Laura) (2;10.26) (Note that some of these are clearly deictic errors.) > >Comments: To: Brian MacWhinney > >To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu > >Status: RO > > > >Just once, in watching my child (Josh) acquire language, did I hear > >him produce > >an object initial sentence: "Pepsi want Josh"...he was probably 2.5 years > >old (roughly...I could dig up my notes if anyone really cares...he's > >17 now)...since > >he was with either myself or my husband all the time, this is probably the > >only word order violation of such magnitude that he produced > >outloud...probably > >supporting your hypothesis that that this stuff is very rare and disappears > >quickly once the mistake is realized. > > > >Dianne Patterson, Ph.D. > >University of Arizona "I'm carrying Steven" (Steven is being held by father) (1:11.6) "Big lambie has blue car" (Steven sees toy lamb in his blue car)(2;0.6) "Mama need Laura?" (Mother has been holding Laura)((2;1.1) "Mommy need key" (Steven wanted to play with mother's keys) (2;2.16) "Give me Tadi" (child's name for himself) (Steven wanted to be picked up by babysitter) (2;3.6) "Laura take dada" (Father is holding Laura) (2;3.21) "He take out" (Steven takes doll out of toy bus) (2;3.26) "I don't like Laura to pick Daddy up." (Steven does not want father to pick up sister.) (2;8.0) "I wanna pick you up" (reaches arms outward to father) (2;8.3) "maybe she can have Michelle" (Laura is in mother's arms) (2;8.6) "Laurie can't carry" (=X can't carry Laura) (2;10.26) (Note that some of these are clearly deictic errors.) -- Lise Menn 303-492-1609 Professor Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado 295 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309 Adjunct Professor, University of Hunan, 2001-2005 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: http://www.bayget.com/inpaku/kinen9.htm From kemmer at RICE.EDU Wed Nov 13 23:35:30 2002 From: kemmer at RICE.EDU (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:35:30 -0600 Subject: Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Rice University Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics at Rice University invites applications for a one-year post-doctoral fellowship for the 2003-2004 academic year. The successful candidate will have an active research program in an area of linguistics that complements the strengths of current departmental faculty. Preferred areas are psycholinguistics (language acquisition, neurolinguistics, and/or laboratory phonology) or anthropological linguistics (Native American languages or endangered languages more generally). The Post-Doctoral Fellow will interact with faculty and graduate students and with programs outside the department where appropriate, e.g. Cognitive Sciences. Teaching duties will include one course per semester: a general course in linguistics and a graduate seminar in his/her area of specialization. Salary: $35,000. For full consideration, reply by January 31, 2003 with three letters of recommendation to: Chair Department of Linguistics, MS 23 6100 Main St. Rice University Houston, TX 77005 E-mail: ling at rice.edu URL: http://www.linguistics.rice.edu From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Nov 14 17:14:29 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:14:29 -0500 Subject: New Book: Feigenbaum/Kurzon Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of interest to functional linguistics. Title: Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context Series Title: Typological Studies in Language 50 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl Editor: Susanne Feigenbaum Editor: Dennis Kurzon (University of Haifa, Israel) US & Canada: Hardback: ISBN: 1588111725, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: USD 90.00 Everywhere else: Hardback: ISBN: 9027229562, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: EUR 100.00 Abstract: The growing interest in prepositions is reflected by this impressive collection of papers from leading scholars of various fields. The selected contributions of Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context focus on the local and temporal semantics of prepositions in relation to their context, too. Following an introduction which puts this new approach into a thematical and historical perspective, the volume presents fifteen studies in the following areas: The semantics of space dynamics (mainly on French prepositions); Language acquisition (aphasia and code-switching); Artificial intelligence (mainly of English prepositions); Specific languages: Hebrew (from a number of perspectives -- syntax, semiotics, and sociolinguistic impact on morphology), Maltese, the Melanesian English-based Creole Bislama, and Biblical translations into Judeo-Greek. Table of Contents Preface Susanne Feigenbaum and Dennis Kurzon 1 Instability and the theory of semantic forms: Starting from the case of prepositions Yves-Marie Visetti and Pierre Cadiot 9 Schematics and motifs in the semantics of prepositions Pierre Cadiot 41 The theoretical status of prepositions: The case of the "prospective use" of in Franck Lebas 59 Temporal semantics of prepositions in context David S. Brée and Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann 75 Prepositions and context Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann and Nissim Francez 115 Prepositional phrases as noun modifiers in contemporary Hebrew: Grammatical, semantic and pragmatic motivations Esther Borochovsky and Hava Reppen 127 The Hebrew prepositions mi-/min "from, of": Same or different? Yishai Tobin 145 A contrastive analysis of French and Hebrew prepositions: The case of sans, bli-belo and lelo Susanne Feigenbaum 171 A language in change: Declined prepositions in spoken Modern Hebrew as a case study Inbar Kimchi-Angert 193 The French preposition in contact with Hebrew Miriam Ben-Rafael 209 "Preposition" as functor: The case of long in Bislama Dennis Kurzon 231 Prepositions in modern Judeo-Greek (JG) Biblical translations Julia G. Krivoruchko 249 Quddiem and some remarks on grammatical aspects of Maltese prepositions Rami Saari 269 Locative prepositions in language acquisition and aphasia Mark Leikin 283 Index 299 Lingfield(s): Typology Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) 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 paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Nov 14 18:17:53 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 13:17:53 -0500 Subject: New Book: Gueldemann/von Roncador Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of interest to functional linguistics: Title: Reported Discourse Subtitle: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains Series Title: Typological Studies in Language 52 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl Editor: Tom Güldemann (University of Leipzig) Editor: Manfred von Roncador (University of Bayreuth) US & Canada: Hardback: ISBN: 1588112276, Pages: xii, 425 pp., Price: USD 117.00 Everywhere else: Hardback: ISBN: 9027229589, Pages: xii, 425 pp., Price: EUR 130.00 Abstract: The present volume unites 15 papers on reported discourse from a wide genetic and geographical variety of languages. Besides the treatment of traditional problems of reported discourse like the classification of its intermediate categories, the book reflects in particular how its grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic properties have repercussions in other linguistic domains like tense-aspect-modality, evidentiality, reference tracking and pronominal categories, and the grammaticalization history of quotative constructions. Almost all papers present a major shift away from analyzing reported discourse with the help of abstract transformational principles toward embedding it in functional and pragmatic aspects of language. Another central methodological approach pervading this collection consists in the discourse-oriented examination of reported discourse based on large corpora of spoken or written texts which is increasingly replacing analyses of constructed de-contextualized utterances prevalent in many earlier treatments. The book closes with a comprehensive bibliography on reported discourse of about 1.000 entries. Table of Contents Preface Tom Güldemann and Manfred von Roncador vii Abbreviations x Part I. Categories of reported discourse and their use 1. Speech and thought representation in the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages Winfred Boeder 3 2. Self-quotation in German: Reporting on past decisions Andrea Golato 49 3. Direct and indirect speech in Cerma narrative Ivan-Margaret Lowe and Ruth Hurlimann 71 4. Direct and indirect discourse in Tamil Sanford B. Steever 91 5. The acceptance of "free indirect discourse": A change of the representation of thought in Japanese Yasushi Suzuki 109 6. Direct, indirect and other discourse in Bengali newspapers Wim van der Wurff 121 Part II. Tense- aspect and evidentiality 7. Evidentiality and reported speech in Romance languages Gerda Hassler 143 8. Discourse perspectives on tense choice in spoken-English reporting discourse Tomoko I. Sakita 173 Part III. Logophoricity 9. The logophoric hierarchy and variation in Dogon Chris Culy 201 10. Logophoric marking in East Asian languages Yan Huang 211 Part IV. Form and history of quotative constructions 11. The grammaticalization of "say" and "do": An areal phenomenon in East Africa David Cohen, Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle and Martine Vanhove 227 12. When "say" is not say: The functional versatility of the Bantu quotative marker ti with special reference to Shona Tom Güldemann 253 13. Reported speech in Egyptian: Forms, types and history Frank Kammerzell and Carsten Peust 289 14. "Report" constructions in Kambera (Austronesian) Marian Klamer 323 15. All the same? The emergence of complementizers in Bislama Miriam Meyerhoff 341 Part V. A comprehensive bibliography of reported discourse 16. A comprehensive bibliography of reported discourse Tom Güldemann, Manfred von Roncador and Wim van der Wurff 363 Language index 417 Name index 419 Lingfield(s): Functional & Systemic Ling (Linguistic Theories) Linguistic Theories Written In: English (Language Code: English) 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 bernd.heine at UNI-KOELN.DE Fri Nov 15 09:37:43 2002 From: bernd.heine at UNI-KOELN.DE (Bernd Heine) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:37:43 +0100 Subject: Typology of African Languages Message-ID: I'd like to ask for your cooperation. It seems that on the basis of the eleven linguistic properties listed below it is somehow possible to define African languages as against the rest of the world. A survey of 70 African languages suggests that any given African language can be expected to have between five and ten of the properties (Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic languages are an exception, having roughly between three and five properties). My question is: Is this a valid hypothesis? I would be grateful if you could help to answer this question by filling the questionnaire below for "your" language(s). I know that filling questionnaires is not among your favorite activities; still, since you know "your language()s" it would be a job of less than five minutes. Thanks! Bernd Heine _____________________________ Language (sub-family, family): Expert's name: The language has the following properties (e.g., "(1) +, (2) -, (3) + A/B", etc.): (1) Labiovelar stops (2) Implosive stops (3) Lexical (A) and/or grammatical tones (B) (4) Vowel harmony based on an advanced tongue root position (ATR) (5) Verbal derivational suffixes (passive, middle, causative, benefactive, etc.) (6) Nominal modifiers follow the noun (7) Semantic polysemy 'drink (A)/pull (B), smoke' (8) Semantic polysemy 'hear (A)/see (B), understand' (9) Semantic polysemy 'animal, meat' (10) Comparative construction of inequality based on a schema of the type 'X is big exceeds/(sur)passes Y' (11) Noun 'child' used productively to express diminutive meaning ___________________________________________________ Bernd Heine Institut für Afrikanistik Universität zu Köln 50923 Köln, GERMANY Phone: (0049) 221 470 2708 Fax: (0049) 221 470 5158 From Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU Sat Nov 16 03:31:16 2002 From: Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU (Gary Holton) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 18:31:16 -0900 Subject: Tenure-Track Position at Alaska Native Language Center Message-ID: JOB ANNOUNCEMENT Tenure-Track Position in Athabascan Languages and Linguistics The Alaska Native Language Center invites applications for a tenure-track position in Athabascan languages and linguistics at the Assistant Professor level, effective August 2003. TYPICAL DUTIES: Research in Alaska Athabascan languages, especially in the fields of language documentation, language revitalization, language acquisition and second language pedagogy. Compilation of grammars, dictionaries and texts. Support for Native language revitalization efforts throughout the state of Alaska, including coordination with community-based organizations. Curriculum and materials development for Alaska Native languages. Teaching in the field of Alaska Native languages and linguistics (including distance delivery). MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: Advanced degree in Linguistics or a related field (Ph.D. preferred). Experience working in endangered language communities and knowledge of Athabascan languages preferred. APPLICATION: Please provide an Applicant Form, letter of interest, curriculum vitae, sample of recent work, and names and contact information for three references. Submit application materials to: Dr. Lawrence Kaplan, Search Committee c/o UAF Human Resources 3295 College Road, Room 108 PO Box 757860 Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7860 A complete job vacancy announcement can be found at http://www.uaf.edu/uafhr/jobs/Job1102-472.html For more information contact Lawrence Kaplan at (907) 474-6582 or ffldk at uaf.edu, or visit the ANLC website at http://www.uaf.edu/anlc From David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE Sat Nov 16 07:06:55 2002 From: David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE (David Palfreyman) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 11:06:55 +0400 Subject: FUNKNET Digest - 14 Nov 2002 to 15 Nov 2002 (#2002-116) Message-ID: Bernd, You mentioned "defining African languages as against the rest of the world". Does this mean that you'd like us to respond to the questions also in relation to *non-African* languages, to provide evidence relating to a hypothesis that these features are *peculiar* to African languages? David Palfreyman Zayed University, Dubai :-D >>> LISTSERV at listserv.rice.edu 16-Nov-02 10:03:49 AM >>> Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:37:43 +0100 From: Bernd Heine Subject: Typology of African Languages I'd like to ask for your cooperation. It seems that on the basis of the eleven linguistic properties listed below it is somehow possible to define African languages as against the rest of the world. A survey of 70 African languages suggests that any given African language can be expected to have between five and ten of the properties (Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic languages are an exception, having roughly between three and five properties). My question is: Is this a valid hypothesis? I would be grateful if you could help to answer this question by filling the questionnaire below for "your" language(s). From w.croft at MAN.AC.UK Tue Nov 19 13:39:48 2002 From: w.croft at MAN.AC.UK (Bill Croft) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:39:48 +0000 Subject: Functional and social factors in language (change) Message-ID: This message picks up a thread begun by Martin Haspelmath some months ago, on a hypothesis about factors in language change proposed in my book "Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach" (Longman, 2000). The hypothesis is: Mechanisms of innovation are functional, mechanisms of propagation are social. [By 'functional' I mean 'pertaining to the mapping between morphosyntactic form and semantic-pragmatic substance, and between phonological form and phonetic substance'. By 'social' I mean 'pertaining to language in social interaction and social organization'.] The chief objection to this hypothesis that I have encountered (in the thread and elsewhere) is the belief that mechanisms of propagation can be functional as well as social. I have just come across a reference to another line of evidence supporting my hypothesis, having to do with borrowing patterns. The reference is Cecil Brown's "Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages" (Oxford, 1999), p. 9: "The findings of these studies [he cites Brown 1987b, 1989b, 1994; Voegelin & Hymes 1953; Bright 1960a, Dozier 1956] and of others (e.g. Diebold 1962, Spencer 1947; Scotton & Okeju 1973; Mixco 1977) challenge the long-held assumption of linguists that structural features of some languages make them more inclined than others to adopt loanwords for introduced items (e.g., Sapir 1921:205-10; Herzog 1941:74; Haugen 1956:66; Bonvillain 1978:32). For example, Haugen writes that 'loanwords are easily accepted by languages with unified, unanalyzed words, but not by languages with active methods of word compounding' (p. 66). Thomason and Kaufman (1988) assemble considerable evidence that indicates - reminiscent of Bright (1960a) - that sociolinguistic factors, such as the degree of bilingualism, rather than language structure, significantly affect the extent of borowing, especially when grammatical features are involved." What Brown calls "structural features" falls under the definition of 'functional' given above, since a feature such as "unanalyzed words" refers to the form-meaning mapping in the language. The adoption of loanwords by a language is the propagation of the novel (borrowed) form in the speech community. Hence the research Brown summarizes indicates that propagation of borrowed words and grammatical features is driven by social, not functional, factors. I am reviving this thread not simply because of this further evidence for the hypothesis I proposed. There is a bigger issue here which I think functionalists must address. A truly comprehensive alternative theory of language to the Chomskyan one must integrate functionalist and sociolinguistic theories and empirical results. After all, like functionalism, sociolinguistics is fundamentally usage- based, variationist, and in fact functional, in that the function of language is to facilitate social interaction in social groups. Bill Croft From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Tue Nov 19 13:52:58 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:52:58 +0000 Subject: Functional and social factors in language (change) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bill, I could just walk down the hall and tell you this, but it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal said something years ago about language change that still seems about right to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said it). He said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of grammar per se. Several years ago, I heard Sally Thomason give a talk on the impossibility of predicting linguistic/historical change. If I recall correctly, such social considerations were part of her reasoning. So your idea has some diverse (and, I would say, quite good) company. To the degree that Chomskyan theories recognize that change actuation is largely a social matter and that change locus is structurally constrained, there is a degree of compatibility here. Of course, the Chomskyan view makes no attempt to 'integrate' functional/structural and social factors at all. So the alternative kind of theory you advocate would indeed be quite different from that view. Dan On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 01:39 pm, Bill Croft wrote: > This message picks up a thread begun by Martin > Haspelmath some months ago, on a hypothesis about factors in > language change proposed in my book "Explaining Language > Change: An Evolutionary Approach" (Longman, 2000). The > hypothesis is: > > Mechanisms of innovation are functional, mechanisms of > propagation are social. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2227 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Bert.Peeters at UTAS.EDU.AU Wed Nov 20 01:53:49 2002 From: Bert.Peeters at UTAS.EDU.AU (Bert Peeters) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 12:53:49 +1100 Subject: Postal quote Message-ID: Daniel Everett wrote: > it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal said something years ago about language change that still seems about right to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said it). He said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of grammar per se. Postal made this claim in his 1968 book *Aspects of phonological theory* (New York: Harper & Row) - I do not have a copy handy to check on which page. Bert Peeters -- Dr Bert Peeters School of English, Journalism & European Languages University of Tasmania GPO Box 252-82 (as of 1 Jan: Private Bag 82) Hobart TAS 7001 Australia Tel.: +61 (0)3 6226 2344 Fax.: +61 (0)3 6226 7631 E-mail: Bert.Peeters at utas.edu.au http://www.arts.utas.edu.au/efgj/french/index.htm http://www.arts.utas.edu.au/efgj/french/staff/peeters/peeters.htm CRICOS Provider No (University of Tasmania): 00586B From chafe at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU Wed Nov 20 04:41:28 2002 From: chafe at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU (Wallace Chafe) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:41:28 -0800 Subject: Postal quote In-Reply-To: <3DDAEB2D.258D768D@utas.edu.au> Message-ID: It's on page 283: "Of course there are some scholars who hold that all linguistic change is the result of language contact, but this position seems too radically improbable to demand serious consideration today. Assuming then that some if not all phonological changes are independent of contact, what is their basis? It seems clear to the present writer that there is no more reason for languages to change than there is for automobiles to add fins one year and remove them the next, for jackets to have three buttons one year and two the next, etc. That is, it seems evident within the framework of sound change as grammar change that the 'causes' of sound change without language contact lie in the general tendency of human cultural products to undergo 'nonfunctional' stylistic change." Wally Chafe > Daniel Everett wrote: > >> it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal said >> something years ago about language change that still seems about right >> to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said it). He >> said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as >> why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social >> questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of >> grammar per se. > > Postal made this claim in his 1968 book *Aspects of phonological theory* > (New York: Harper & Row) - I do not have a copy handy to check on which > page. > > Bert Peeters From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Wed Nov 20 08:02:10 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:02:10 +0000 Subject: Postal quote In-Reply-To: <38391557.1037738488@[192.168.2.36]> Message-ID: Wally's speed and organization in finding and posting this quote for the rest of us is quite impressive (and to Bert Peeters, thanks as well). Looking at it now, after all these years, I can see that I do not agree with all of it, but the basic idea, that change actuation is a social phenomenon, seems right. Dan On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 04:41 am, Wallace Chafe wrote: > It's on page 283: > > "Of course there are some scholars who hold that all linguistic change > is > the result of language contact, but this position seems too radically > improbable to demand serious consideration today. Assuming then that > some > if not all phonological changes are independent of contact, what is > their > basis? It seems clear to the present writer that there is no more > reason > for languages to change than there is for automobiles to add fins one > year > and remove them the next, for jackets to have three buttons one year > and > two the next, etc. That is, it seems evident within the framework of > sound > change as grammar change that the 'causes' of sound change without > language > contact lie in the general tendency of human cultural products to > undergo > 'nonfunctional' stylistic change." > > Wally Chafe > >> Daniel Everett wrote: >> >>> it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal >>> said >>> something years ago about language change that still seems about >>> right >>> to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said >>> it). He >>> said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as >>> why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social >>> questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of >>> grammar per se. >> >> Postal made this claim in his 1968 book *Aspects of phonological >> theory* >> (New York: Harper & Row) - I do not have a copy handy to check on >> which >> page. >> >> Bert Peeters > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2547 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Wed Nov 20 08:09:16 2002 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:09:16 +0000 Subject: Functional and social factors in language (change) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Bill, I agree that a decent theory of language should combine insights from functionalism with those of sociolinguistics, but we shouldn't assume that this will be a harmonious marriage of compatibles because Bill Labov has explicitly rejected functionalism (Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors, Chapter 19: "The overestimation of functionalism"). However I think Labov is only rejecting one kind of functionalism - in which the function of language is determined by the need of the hearer for unambiguous input - and as you say, the need to facilitate social interaction is an equally important function. So is the need to be easy to produce, easy to store and easy to learn. Dick > I am reviving this thread not simply because of this >further evidence for the hypothesis I proposed. There is a >bigger issue here which I think functionalists must address. >A truly comprehensive alternative theory of language to the >Chomskyan one must integrate functionalist and >sociolinguistic theories and empirical results. After all, >like functionalism, sociolinguistics is fundamentally usage- >based, variationist, and in fact functional, in that the >function of language is to facilitate social interaction in >social groups. > >Bill Croft > > 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 matt at RICE.EDU Wed Nov 20 16:11:24 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:11:24 -0600 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure Message-ID: Hi folks, In connection to the recent posting by Bill Croft and the recent interest in a usage-based explanation of language change-frequency inter alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know how Zipf's early work on frequency and language structure has been (re)assessed, if at all. I know Jack Hawkins is trying to formalize Zipf's insights and to connect them with the processing theory. We also recall Haiman's (1983) utilization of Zipf's economic motivation in his discussion of reflexives/middles and reciprocals. The following is the quote from the relevant sections from Zipf, G. (1935) THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. Thanks, Matt Shibatani "In view of the evidence of the stream of speech we may say that the length of a word tends to bear an inverse relationship to its relative frequency; and in view of the influence of high frequency on the shortenings from truncation and from durable and temporary abbreviatory substitution, it seems a plausible deduction that, as the relative frequency of a word increases, it tends to diminish in magnitude. This tendency of a decreasing magnitude to result from an increase in relative frequency, maybe tentatively named the Law of Abbreviation." (38) "The law of abbreviation seems to reflect on the one hand an impulse in language toward the maintenance of an equilibrium between length and frequency, and on the other hand an underlying law of economy as the causa causans of this impulse toward equilibrium." (38) "The magnitude of complexity of speech-configuration which bears an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) relationship to its relative frequency, reflects also in an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) way the extent to which the category is familiar in common usage." (272) "The degree of distinctness of meaning.seem[s] to bear an inverse relationship to F[requency] and C[rystalization] [of the configuration]." (157) "the minimal degree of complexity necessary for comprehensible speech between persons reflects the degree of unusualness (in their group) of the experiences spoken of, or, somewhat more precisely stated, the unusualness of speech about those experiences." (273) From bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Wed Nov 20 17:15:47 2002 From: bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Joan Bresnan) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 09:15:47 -0800 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:11:24 CST. <003a01c290af$791a2bb0$c9b42a80@ad.rice.edu> Message-ID: Matt, there is a relevant, up-to-date discussion of Zipf's law(s) in Chapter 1 of Christopher D. Manning and Hnrich Schuetze (1999) _Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing_, The MIT Press. In addition to discussing Zipf's work and subsequent work by Mandelbrot (1954) which provides an improved fit to texts over Zipf's law, they make the following observation (pp. 28-9): "As a final remark on Zipf's law, we note that there is a debate on how surprising and interesting Zipf's law and `power laws' in general are as a description of natural phenomena. It has been argued that randomly generated text exhibits Zipf's law (Li 1992). To show this, we construct a generator that randomly produces characters from the 26 characters of the alphabet and the blank (that is, each of these 27 symbols has an equal chance of being generated next.) ... One can show that the words generated by such a generator obey a power law of the form Mandelbrot suggested. The key insights are (i) that there are 27 times more words of length n + 1 than length n, and (ii) that there is a constant ratio by which words of length n are more frequent than words of length n + 1. These two opposing trends combine into the regularity of Mandelbrot's law. ... "There is in fact a broad class of probability distributions that obey power laws when the same procedure is applied to them that is used to compute the Zipf distribution: first counting events, then ranking them according to their frequency (Guenter et al. 1996). Seen from this angle, Zipf's law seems less valuable as a characterization of language. But the basic insight remains: what makes frequency-based approaches to language hard is that almost all words are rare. Zipf's law is a good way to encapsulate this insight." Best wishes, Joan > Hi folks, > > In connection to the recent posting by Bill Croft and the recent > interest in a usage-based explanation of language change-frequency inter > alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know how Zipf's early work on > frequency and language structure has been (re)assessed, if at all. I know > Jack Hawkins is trying to formalize Zipf's insights and to connect them with > the processing theory. We also recall Haiman's (1983) utilization of Zipf's > economic motivation in his discussion of reflexives/middles and reciprocals. > > The following is the quote from the relevant sections from Zipf, G. > (1935) THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. > > > > Thanks, > > Matt Shibatani > > > > "In view of the evidence of the stream of speech we may say that the length > of a word tends to bear an inverse relationship to its relative frequency; > and in view of the influence of high frequency on the shortenings from > truncation and from durable and temporary abbreviatory substitution, it > seems a plausible deduction that, as the relative frequency of a word > increases, it tends to diminish in magnitude. This tendency of a decreasing > magnitude to result from an increase in relative frequency, maybe > tentatively named the Law of Abbreviation." (38) > > "The law of abbreviation seems to reflect on the one hand an impulse in > language toward the maintenance of an equilibrium between length and > frequency, and on the other hand an underlying law of economy as the causa > causans of this impulse toward equilibrium." (38) > > > > "The magnitude of complexity of speech-configuration which bears an > > inverse (not necessarily proportionate) relationship to its relative > frequency, > > reflects also in an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) way the extent > to > > which the category is familiar in common usage." (272) > > > > "The degree of distinctness of meaning.seem[s] to bear an inverse > relationship to > > F[requency] and C[rystalization] [of the configuration]." (157) > > > > "the minimal degree of complexity necessary for comprehensible speech > > between persons reflects the degree of unusualness (in their group) of the > > experiences spoken of, or, somewhat more precisely stated, the unusualness > > of speech about those experiences." (273) From dparvaz at UNM.EDU Wed Nov 20 17:35:18 2002 From: dparvaz at UNM.EDU (Dan Parvaz) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:35:18 -0700 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: <200211201715.gAKHFmL16563@hypatia.Stanford.EDU> Message-ID: In my own work on highly frequent N-grams, it would appear that human memory (Miller's famous 7 +/- 2) acts as an additional constraint on Zipf-Mandelbrot, even in written text. I'm still crunching the numbers... Back to work, Dan. From macw at CMU.EDU Wed Nov 20 18:31:18 2002 From: macw at CMU.EDU (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 13:31:18 -0500 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: <200211201715.gAKHFmL16563@hypatia.Stanford.EDU> Message-ID: Matt et al., In a Science paper from about 1970, Herb Simon shows how Zipf's law applies to about four very different frequency distributions. I don't remember the details, but one was in meteorology and one in architecture. Recently Joshua Tenenbaum has been developing extensions of Zipf's law for various language corpora. A major issue in psychology has been whether it is best to model these data with power laws (following Newell and Rosenbloom) or exponential laws. This article argues for the latter: Anderson, J., & Schooler, L. (1991). Reflections of the environment in memory. Psychological Science, 2, 396-408. However, I believe one can also argue that exponential functions soak up more degrees of freedom than power functions. Of course, if the only goal of the analysis is to argue that high-token types are rare, then either function works. --Brian MacWhinney From matt at RICE.EDU Wed Nov 20 18:45:55 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 12:45:55 -0600 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure Message-ID: Noel, yes Givon's idea is highly similar to Zipf's on the correlation between the magnitude of a linguistic expression and the familiarity of the situation. However, I am more inclined to go for the semantic distinctness/explicitness line than (simple) structural complexity for unexpected/unfamiliar situations. Best, Matt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Noel Rude" To: "Matt Shibatani" Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 11:39 AM Subject: Re: Zipf on language change/structure > Interesting! > > Wonder how Zipf's "Law of Abbreviation" relates to (Givon's?) > observation that the unexpected requires more coding than the expected? > Wouldn't it seem that the expected would be mentioned less frequently and > the unexpected more frequently? Interesting. > > Noel > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Matt Shibatani" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 8:11 AM > Subject: Zipf on language change/structure > > > Hi folks, > > In connection to the recent posting by Bill Croft and the recent > interest in a usage-based explanation of language change-frequency inter > alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know how Zipf's early work on > frequency and language structure has been (re)assessed, if at all. I know > Jack Hawkins is trying to formalize Zipf's insights and to connect them with > the processing theory. We also recall Haiman's (1983) utilization of Zipf's > economic motivation in his discussion of reflexives/middles and reciprocals. > > The following is the quote from the relevant sections from Zipf, G. > (1935) THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. > > > > Thanks, > > Matt Shibatani > > > > "In view of the evidence of the stream of speech we may say that the length > of a word tends to bear an inverse relationship to its relative frequency; > and in view of the influence of high frequency on the shortenings from > truncation and from durable and temporary abbreviatory substitution, it > seems a plausible deduction that, as the relative frequency of a word > increases, it tends to diminish in magnitude. This tendency of a decreasing > magnitude to result from an increase in relative frequency, maybe > tentatively named the Law of Abbreviation." (38) > > "The law of abbreviation seems to reflect on the one hand an impulse in > language toward the maintenance of an equilibrium between length and > frequency, and on the other hand an underlying law of economy as the causa > causans of this impulse toward equilibrium." (38) > > > > "The magnitude of complexity of speech-configuration which bears an > > inverse (not necessarily proportionate) relationship to its relative > frequency, > > reflects also in an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) way the extent > to > > which the category is familiar in common usage." (272) > > > > "The degree of distinctness of meaning.seem[s] to bear an inverse > relationship to > > F[requency] and C[rystalization] [of the configuration]." (157) > > > > "the minimal degree of complexity necessary for comprehensible speech > > between persons reflects the degree of unusualness (in their group) of the > > experiences spoken of, or, somewhat more precisely stated, the unusualness > > of speech about those experiences." (273) > > From pustetrm at YAHOO.COM Wed Nov 20 22:06:23 2002 From: pustetrm at YAHOO.COM (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 14:06:23 -0800 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: <003a01c290af$791a2bb0$c9b42a80@ad.rice.edu> Message-ID: --- Matt Shibatani wrote: > Hi folks, > > In connection to the recent posting by Bill > Croft and the recent > interest in a usage-based explanation of language > change-frequency inter > alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know > how Zipf's early work on > frequency and language structure has been > (re)assessed, if at all. Dear Matt: You might want to have a look at the following materials: Pustet, R. (forthcoming). "Zipf and his heirs." Language Sciences Pustet, R. (2002). "Discourse frequency and language change." Paper presented at CSDL 6, Houston, TX, Oct 2002 Since these papers are not published (yet), I could send them to you as attachments, if you like. Best, Regina __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Thu Nov 21 13:56:18 2002 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 08:56:18 -0500 Subject: 2003 RRG Conference-First Announcement Message-ID: First Announcement The 2003 International Course and Conference on Role and Reference Grammar: São Paulo State University at São José do Rio Preto, Brazil 14-20th July 2003 Exploring the interfaces among meaning, function and morphosyntactic form Organization The organizing committee for RRG2003 consists of Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Roberto Gomes Camacho (São Paulo State University), Marize M. Dall'Aglio Hattnher. (São Paulo State University), Ricardo Mairal (UNED, Madrid) and Toshio Ohori (Tokyo University). Event Programme A four-day international course will be followed by a three-day international conference. The course will include lecture sessions at three levels: introductory, post-graduate and specialized. Introductory sessions will present 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. There will also be a workshop on Amazonian languages headed by Daniel Everett on July 18-20 as part of the conference. The title is 'Autochthonous languages in Brazil and syntactic theory: functional and formal considerations'. Contact Daniel Everett (Dan.Everett at man.ac.uk) for more details. Teaching and Discussion Topics RRG2003 will deal with issues in linguistic theory related to the theory of RRG as presented 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, information structure, and lexical semantics. Parallel Session on FG During the conference, there will be a parallel session on FG. 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 course and conference include Anna Siewierska (Lancaster University), Balthasar Bickel (University of Leipzig), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo). Abstracts The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and workshops is March 15, 2003. 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 last forty-five minutes, followed by another fifteen minutes of discussion. The selection of papers for presentation will have been communicated by April 15, 2003. Conference/Course Fee and Further information A web page is under construction at the moment. Further information on RRG2003, including a detailed programme, accommodation information, payment, social events, etc., will be enclosed in subsequent announcements. Anyone interested in receiving further information should send a message to the e-mail address for RRG2003: RRG2003 at ibilce.unesp.br From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Fri Nov 22 10:13:09 2002 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:13:09 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality Message-ID: Postal's view of language change as fashion-like and entirely non-functional overlooks one important property of language change: its overwhelming DIRECTIONALITY. In phonological change, we get p > f s > h ke > ce u > y ii > ai tata > tada > taa, etc. but the reverse changes hardly ever occur. Similarly, in syntactic change, we get N > P V > Aux V > C S+S > S P > case-marker, etc. but the reverse changes never occur. This overwhelming directionality has not been sufficiently emphasized by historical linguists, I feel, and its true extent can only be seen from a broad cross-linguistic perspective (which Labov doesn't have, which may explain his skepticism of functional explanations). I am not aware of a similar directionality in fashion changes. For a Chomskyan who thinks of the language system as largely determined by arbitrary innate principles, with functional principles playing hardly a role, they must be quite puzzling, and indeed I have not seen an attempt to reconcile these observations with the traditional generative ideology. (Optimality Theory is a different matter.) So functional principles do play an important role in language change, but they are not sufficient to explain it, because after all languages do not improve globally by changing. Thus, I agree with Bill Croft that both the functional perspective and the social perspective are equally important, and neglecting either one can lead to serious errors. 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 dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Fri Nov 22 10:19:37 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 10:19:37 +0000 Subject: Postal quote/directionality In-Reply-To: <3DDE0335.709B2AF1@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: Martin, I agree with you and with Bill. But I think that Postal does too. There are two aspects of change, as you know. (i) Where is it likely to occur in language structures? Here is where directionality and functional & structural constraints are crucial. (ii) When is it likely to occur? This is what Weinrich called the 'actuation problem'. And this is social, as Postal, among many others has said. Postal was not intending, I do not believe, to summarize all of linguistic change in that quote. Dan ******************** Dan Everett Professor of Phonetics and Phonology Department of Linguistics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, UK M13 9PL Phone: 44-161-275-3158 Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187 http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 848 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Fri Nov 22 13:23:55 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:23:55 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At 10:19 +0000 22/11/02, Daniel Everett wrote: >Martin, > >I agree with you and with Bill. But I think that Postal does too. >There are two aspects of change, as you know. > (i) Where is it likely to occur in language structures? >Here is where directionality and functional & structural constraints >are crucial. > (ii) When is it likely to occur? This is what Weinrich >called the 'actuation problem'. And this is social, as Postal, among >many others has said. > >Postal was not intending, I do not believe, to summarize all of >linguistic change in that quote. Although this could sound paradoxical, I agree with Everett, but not with Haspelmath or Croft. If 'actuation' (and diffusion) is (are) social and not functional, then the explanation of lg change is not really functional, unless we interchange wrongly causes and effects, as argued cleverly in Lass' final chapter (1997: Historical Linguistics and Language Change, Cambridge University Press) and in Sihler's recent Handbook (2000: Language History. An Introduction, John Benjamins). Best regards, Jose-Luis Mendivil From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Fri Nov 22 16:38:01 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:38:01 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 8:26:51 AM, jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES writes: << Although this could sound paradoxical, I agree with Everett, but not with Haspelmath or Croft. If 'actuation' (and diffusion) is (are) social and not functional, then the explanation of lg change is not really functional >> The problem here I think is in viewing "social" as somehow opposite to functional. Martin Haspelmath's original point was that linguistic change has "directionality", something that apparently does not occur in "fashion" - and therefore that such change must be functional. The difficulty in separating fashion from function is old one. In anthropology, it was addressed a while ago by Bronislaw Malinowski's "Structural-Functionalism" where some rational sense was given to the interaction between the two factors. And it's worth noting that even random, arbitrary change can be viewed in this context as "functional", in that it provides a mechanism for structural growth -- much in the same way that random genetic mutations supplies the raw material for biological diversity. Random linguistic change is in essence "experimental" -- it supplies new functionality and there-in lies its function. On the other hand, conservative preservation of apparently "functionless" fashion also serves the function of providing predictability and stability in social interactions. Predictability - even arbitrary predictability - has a parallel function in language. Martin's example of "f > p" sound change does show directionality, to the extent that "p > f" is not regularly observable. But it may be important to remember that how a sound change happens is a very different question than how a sound change spreads. "p > f" may well happen, but it does not become part of a language system -- it does not spread and is not preserved. Perhaps it is always a isolated failed experiment, whenever it happens. At the base of all this is the fact that language is fundamentally a social event. If a person who has never learned a language from someone else talks to himself, what language does he use? And when he speaks to someone else, can he use truly "arbitrary" sounds? Isn't the understanding of the listener a "functional" consideration? Doesn't the objective of communication make language ALWAYS a functional matter? -- Unless of course one is content with only babbling to one's self? Steve Long From geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU Fri Nov 22 16:49:36 2002 From: geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU (Geoff Nathan) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:49:36 -0500 Subject: Postal quote/directionality Message-ID: At 11:13 AM 11/22/2002 +0100, Martin Haspelmath wrote: >This overwhelming directionality >has not been sufficiently emphasized by historical linguists, I feel, >and its true extent can only be seen from a broad cross-linguistic >perspective (which Labov doesn't have, which may explain his skepticism >of functional explanations). > >I am not aware of a similar directionality in fashion changes While Dan is correct to point out the distinction between actuation and spread, we can note that a similar directionality in clothing fashion would lead to cycles of nudity followed by reimposition of elaborate, totally-covering clothing. Life might be more interesting that way, but clothes don't seem to follow the p > f > h > 0, or N > P > Case ending > schwa > 0 cycles. Geoff Geoffrey S. Nathan Computing and Information Technology/Linguistics Program (snailmail) Department of English Wayne State University Detroit, MI, 48202 Phone Numbers Linguistics (English): (313) 577-8621 Computing and Information Technology: (313) 577-1259 Home: (313) 417-8406 From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Fri Nov 22 17:43:00 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 18:43:00 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <5b.31b5cd95.2b0fb769@aol.com> Message-ID: At 11:38 -0500 22/11/02, Steve Long wrote: >The problem here I think is in viewing "social" as somehow opposite to >functional. Of course, we are not using 'functional' in the same sense. Adopting a linguistic innovation may be functional in social terms, but it needn't be linguistically or structurally functional. >Martin Haspelmath's original point was that linguistic change has >"directionality", something that apparently does not occur in "fashion" - and >therefore that such change must be functional. The problem lies in the 'therefore'. Certain directionality (i.e. some 'paths' open to change based on structural patterns, phonetic conditions, economy, etc.) does not imply that the cause of the change was functional. What's the matter then when p does not change into f and remains as it is for hundreds or thousands of years? Is this functional inclination waiting for his opportunity to be satisfied? If the motivation for the spread of a change is social, it is not (linguistically) functional; otherwise changes should not propagate following social factors such as sex, prestige, etc. As Lass puts it: "Because unless a motivation is arbitrary, its implementation ought not to be subject to contingent factors like age, sex, prestige, etc." (1997: 364). He is even more radical: "Say a change starts in one speaker, or a very small group, and moves from that focus along networks (...) This must mean that the 'reasons' for the change can't be functional, because in fact they are different for the initiator(s) and the followers; the motivations for the latter are functional. Or did they pick up the original motivations as well, suddenly discovering under the pressure of prestige that they really had the same motivations all along?" (Lass, 1997: 364). Jose-Luis Mendivil From w.croft at MAN.AC.UK Fri Nov 22 17:56:23 2002 From: w.croft at MAN.AC.UK (Bill Croft) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 17:56:23 +0000 Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' Message-ID: As Dan Everett observes, one must distinguish between innovation (actuation) and propagation for evolutionary change (those that occur by replication), such as language change. For that reason, there is no incompatibility between Labov's critique of functionalism and what I proposed (pace Dick Hudson). Only innovation is 'functional'; propagation is social. Labov and I agree on that point. But I'm not sure who has said actuation/innovation is 'social', as Dan has stated in his posts. (Actually, I am too hasty in equating 'actuation' with 'innovation' here. As far as I understand Weinreich, Labov & Herzog 1968, the actuation question is both the question of how innovation occurs and the question of when & where it occurs. The latter question is tantamount to deterministic prediction. This doesn't really have a place in a probabilistic model such as evolutionary change, as several here and elsewhere have noted.) Also, the apparent incompatibility of sociolinguistics and functionalism depends on one's definition of 'functional'. Labov was objecting to teleological functional models of the sort proposed by Martinet, where a change occurs "in order to" alter the language system. Change occurs in the process of trying to socially interact via communication, as Rudi Keller has argued. But the mechanisms of innovation (or altered replication, to use the more abstract terminology of the evolutionists) and propagation (selection) are domain-specific. So the analogy with fashion is probably not helpful. Fashion, like cultural change, is an example of evolutionary change, and so there is both innovation and propagation of changes of fashion. But one shouldn't expect the mechanisms of fashion innovation and propagation to be the same as those for linguistic innovation and propagation. They certainly aren't for language change and biological evolution. In particular, as Martin Haspelmath points out, language change is (locally) directional or directed; the fact that fashion change is not directed is irrelevant. I believe that language change is (locally) directed because functional innovation is directed (pace Steve Long). Again, some linguists have assumed that an evolutionary model of language change requires innovation to be random because the mechanism of altered replication in biology, mutation, is random. But the mechanisms of altered replication in language change and biological evolution don't have to be the same either; and they are not. Bill Croft From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Fri Nov 22 17:58:12 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 12:58:12 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 12:04:14 PM, geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU writes: << we can note that a similar directionality in clothing fashion would lead to cycles of nudity followed by reimposition of elaborate, totally-covering clothing. Life might be more interesting that way, but clothes don't seem to follow the p > f > h > 0, or N > P > Case ending > schwa > 0 cycles. >> But there is functionality in clothing. In fact, it is hard to see how humans could have migrated to northern climes without an extreme appreciation of not only the utility of clothing but the functional consequences of being naked in a snowstorm. Going back to Malinowski, the functionality of a war helmet preceded its ceremonial meaning. Boat shoes, ties, buttons and bows pass back and forth between functional and "structural". Push-up bras have multitude of eternal functions, though the social acceptibility of the consequences may ebb and flow. As far as p > f (I just noticed my dyslexia kicked in my last post -- sorry about that), I have a video tape of a six year old Jordan R. losing patience with the off-camera questioner as he names his favorite movie. Frustrated that the adult doesn't recognize the name, Jordan articulates it emphatically -- "Fedator!". The movie he is referring to "Predator". Jordan has since "corrected" his fricatives, so that his relatives can joke about "Fedetor!" whenever a promotion for the Arnold film is on tv. But at least in this tiny micocosm, one can observe f > p. And of course -- in the majority of IndoEuropean languages, outside of Germanic and Armenian, where p > p -- the temptation to adopt the "directionality" of p > f has never taken hold. And perhaps the basic reason is the need to be understood (Fedator!). One might conclude that there are different functions dictating what direction change goes in, not that any changes are without direction. Steve Long From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Fri Nov 22 18:42:07 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 13:42:07 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 12:47:54 PM, jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES writes: << Of course, we are not using 'functional' in the same sense. Adopting a linguistic innovation may be functional in social terms, but it needn't be linguistically or structurally functional... Certain directionality (i.e. some 'paths' open to change based on structural patterns, phonetic conditions, economy, etc.) does not imply that the cause of the change was functional. What's the matter then when p does not change into f and remains as it is for hundreds or thousands of years? Is this functional inclination waiting for his opportunity to be satisfied? >> My point was that this is an impossible analysis. Separating "linguistic or structural" functionality from social functionality is like separating the function of automobile from the function of motion. If it is easier or more "linguistically" economical to slur a word than to articulate it, than the mechanical directionality should be towards slurring. But "linguistically" the resulting sounds must approximate the sounds a listener can recognize or the slurring will be ineffective as communication. The listener will not respond with understanding. Is this social or is this linguistic? You can only change sounds so far before you become incomprehensible and that alone should prevent the spread of your sound change. <<"Say a change starts in one speaker, or a very small group, and moves from that focus along networks (...) This must mean that the 'reasons' for the change can't be functional, because in fact they are different for the initiator(s) and the followers; the motivations for the latter are functional. Or did they pick up the original motivations as well, suddenly discovering under the pressure of prestige that they really had the same motivations all along?">> And again I think what Lass is not taking account of here is that the change is first of all totally dependent on comprehension. This is a totally social function. And it is the only way that a spread can happen. Incomprehensibility is the ever-present functional guard at the door of any kind of change and I find it impossible to classify it it as "non-linguistic." As far as what motivates the sound change in the first place, we can assume it can't be incomprehensibility. Prestige is a pretty useless concept, but if it means that listeners find some value ("linguistic" or "non-linguistic") in imitating a new form of speech, we should really assume that value was also there for the original innovator. I don't understand why one would think otherwise. <> The answer is, of course, is that retaining the p is linguistically functional in the first place. The primary directionality is NOT change. The primary directionality is consistency between speakers and listeners. To the extent that change works against mutual comprehensibilty, it is dysfunctional. To the extent that change eventually adds comprehensibity, we should expect it to happen. The fact that linguistics cannot identify the functual value of every single change does not mean it is not there. Steve Long From hhalmari at UFL.EDU Fri Nov 22 20:46:55 2002 From: hhalmari at UFL.EDU (Helena Halmari) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 15:46:55 -0500 Subject: AAAL Graduate Student Travel Grant Message-ID: THIS IS A REMINDER OF THE APPROACHING DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 2003 AAAL GRADUATE STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS Purpose To help support travel (and some expenses) of 4 graduate student members of the American Association for Applied Linguistics to the 2003 annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia. Eligibility Applicants must be current members of AAAL (at time of application) who are in a university Master's or Ph.D. program in applied linguistics or a related field. Amount A maximum of 4 awards will be given: $800.00 each for up to two Ph.D. student awards and $600.00 each for up to two Master's student awards. In addition, the awards include the waiving of conference registration fees. Application Procedure 1. Send five copies of a letter of introduction to Professor Helena Halmari. The contents of the letter must state*: (a) institution and program of study (b) current contribution to the field of applied linguistics (c) career plans after completion of degree program (d) current financial situation, including your university's contribution to conference travel (e) how conference attendance will benefit you and others (f) a biographical statement of no longer than 50 words, suitable for publication (g) contact information (address, telephone, fax, and e-mail) 2. Send a sealed letter of recommendation (do not send via fax!) from a professor in your graduate program who is familiar with your work. The letter should state your professor's estimation of: (a) your academic work and promise in the field of applied linguistics (b) personal attributes relevant to a career in applied linguistics (c) your level of need for financial assistance as provided for by this grant *Each of the categories listed must be addressed for your application to receive full consideration. Deadline for receipt of application is December 3, 2002. Send all materials to: 2003 AAAL Graduate Student Travel Grant Helena Halmari Program in Linguistics P.O. Box 115454 (Turlington Hall 4127) University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611-5454 If you have further questions, please contact: Helena Halmari Email: hhalmari at ufl.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 08:25:01 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:25:01 +0000 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <5b.31b5cd95.2b0fb769@aol.com> Message-ID: On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 04:38 pm, Steve Long wrote: > In a message dated 11/22/02 8:26:51 AM, jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES writes: > << Although this could sound paradoxical, I agree with Everett, but > not with > Haspelmath or Croft. If 'actuation' (and diffusion) is (are) social > and not > functional, then the explanation of lg change is not really functional > >> > > The problem here I think is in viewing "social" as somehow opposite to > functional. > > Martin Haspelmath's original point was that linguistic change has > "directionality", something that apparently does not occur in > "fashion" - and > therefore that such change must be functional. Hmm. This misses the point. Functionality constrains where change will occur and, let us say, in what direction. But lots of languages have the same functional/structural points in their grammar which would, under some views, favor change. Yet not all do. That is, two languages have the same structure favoring change, yet one changes and the other doesn't. Why not? The reason is likely to be social. Or in other cases, there is no functional/structural pressure to change, yet change nonetheless occurs. For example, Piraha (Amazonian) seems to have had a perfectly good pronominal system, with tones and clitics, yet it borrowed its current pronominal system from Tupi-Guarani (probably Nheengatu, possibly Tenharim - see Thomason and Everett 2001, in the penultimate (?) BLS proceedings and on Thomason's website at U of Michigan). Social and functional are not necessarily in competition, though they seem to be much of the time. But they *are* different. -- Dan Everett -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2294 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 08:31:15 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:31:15 +0000 Subject: Postal quote/directionality In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20021122114932.00abeec0@mail.wayne.edu> Message-ID: On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 04:49 pm, Geoff Nathan wrote: > > While Dan is correct to point out the distinction between actuation and > spread, we can note that a similar directionality in clothing fashion > would > lead to cycles of nudity followed by reimposition of elaborate, > totally-covering clothing. Life might be more interesting that way, > but > clothes don't seem to follow the p > f > h > 0, or N > P > Case ending > > > schwa > 0 cycles. > > Geoff > > Geoffrey S. Nathan > Well, I just watched some music videos and I am not sure that we don't go through such cycles in some subcultures. Anyway, the fact that not all things change that could simply reinforces the point that there is a difference between where a change is likely to take place in a structural system and when such changes take place. Theologians of Church Growth have long studied the social forces behind religious conversions, for example, showing that when people are likely to convert is often a social question, whereas the 'structural' problems that pressure some people towards religious change underdetermine conversion. Dan -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1798 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 08:34:26 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:34:26 +0000 Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 05:56 pm, Bill Croft wrote: > As Dan Everett observes, one must distinguish between > innovation (actuation) and propagation for evolutionary change > (those that occur by replication), such as language change. For > that reason, there is no incompatibility between Labov's > critique of functionalism and what I proposed (pace Dick > Hudson). Only innovation is 'functional'; propagation is social. > Labov and I agree on that point. But I'm not sure who has said > actuation/innovation is 'social', as Dan has stated in his > posts. > > (Actually, I am too hasty in equating 'actuation' with > 'innovation' here. As far as I understand Weinreich, Labov & > Herzog 1968, the actuation question is both the question of how > innovation occurs and the question of when & where it occurs. > The latter question is tantamount to deterministic prediction. > This doesn't really have a place in a probabilistic model such > as evolutionary change, as several here and elsewhere have > noted.) My definition of 'actuation' is the point (social/temporal) at which an idiolectical change begins to propagate. It was influenced by Weinrich, Labov, and Herzog, but is not identical to their view. -- Dan ******************** Dan Everett Professor of Phonetics and Phonology Department of Linguistics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, UK M13 9PL Phone: 44-161-275-3158 Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187 http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2141 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE Sat Nov 23 11:29:40 2002 From: dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE (Dirk Geeraerts) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 12:29:40 +0100 Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' In-Reply-To: <60080EA8-FEBE-11D6-A4E9-000393D73F38@man.ac.uk> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Sat Nov 23 13:59:14 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 14:59:14 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <29.31c42b7a.2b0fd47f@aol.com> Message-ID: First of all, I must apologise for a critical mistake quoting Lass' words. Where I wrote **functional** in the following paragraph, I should have written **social**: >"Say a change starts in one speaker, or a very small group, and moves from >that focus along networks (...) This must mean that the 'reasons' for the >change can't be functional, because in fact they are different for the >initiator(s) and the followers; the motivations for the latter are **functional** Steve Long wrote: ><for hundreds or thousands of years? Is this functional inclination waiting >for his opportunity to be satisfied?>> > >The answer is, of course, is that retaining the p is linguistically >functional in the first place. The primary directionality is NOT change. I agree. >The primary directionality is consistency between speakers and listeners. To >the extent that change works against mutual comprehensibilty, it is >dysfunctional. To the extent that change eventually adds comprehensibity, >we should expect it to happen. But all states of a language are functional. Otherwise, they would not exist. So, a linguistic change (apart from the introduction of new words for new concepts or things) cannot properly add comprehensibility. Let's assume that the change of [p] into [f] is a natural tendency of lenition (a minor degree of obstruction of the airflow, etc.), i.e., a tendency towards the easiness of articulation. (This assumption would explain why p > f is more frequent and regular than f>p). Even in that case, only if the use of [f] instead of [p] has some 'social' value added, it will diffuse across the language and across the speakers, following social networks. As a consequence, the *cause* of the change is neither functional nor natural, but social (i.e. contingent from a linguistic point of view). > The fact that linguistics cannot identify the >functual value of every single change does not mean it is not there. This sounds to me not only circular and unfalsifiable, but even (as the late Gould would have said) 'panglossian'. Steve, thanks for taking into account my opinions despite my poor English. Jose-Luis Mendivil. From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 14:22:09 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 14:22:09 +0000 Subject: Spelling Uriel Weinreich In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I just noticed that I have been spelling Uriel Weinreich as Uriel Weinrich in previous posts. In addition to my battological bavardage, I am sorry to have added a spelling error. Dan ******************** Dan Everett Professor of Phonetics and Phonology Department of Linguistics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, UK M13 9PL Phone: 44-161-275-3158 Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187 http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 570 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au Sun Nov 24 01:24:42 2002 From: ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au (Matthew Anstey) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 12:24:42 +1100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <29.31c42b7a.2b0fd47f@aol.com> Message-ID: Hi Steve, > The answer is, of course, is that retaining the p is > linguistically functional in the first place. The primary > directionality is NOT change. The primary directionality is > consistency between speakers and listeners. To the extent > that change works against mutual comprehensibilty, it is > dysfunctional. To the extent that change eventually adds > comprehensibity, I think there is a danger here of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is posited THE primary cause of language change. Paul Boersma (Functional Phonology, 1998, phd Amsterdam) suggests that just for phonology there are five functional principles at work, often in conflict with one another. They are (1) speakers minimise articulartory effort; (2) speakers minimise perceptual confusion between utterances with different meanings; (3) listeners minimise effort needed for perceptual classification; (4) listeners maximise use of acoustic information; (5) speaker and listener maximise the information flow. Principle (5) is akin to your comment above. There are other principles we can add to this mix. For example, Gertraud Fenk-Oczlon and August Fenk, from the University of Klagenfurt, have considered neurological constraints such as the 3-second activity interval in which much human activity, speech included, occurs. This is biologically fixed. Undoubtedly, others have suggested numerous other factors at work. Boersma goes on to show how "functional optimality theory" can describe and explain the forms of phonology when these five principles are quantified. (For example, the constraint *REPLACE states "do not implement a perceptual coronal place specification as something that will be heard as labial place, for a nasal, before a consonant.") His is an interesting example of functional and social principles at work,--often in conflict--translated into a linguistic model. His phd work can be found in journal articles. In Functional Grammar (Dik, et alia), many competing functional constraints have been suggested for word ordering principles. Again, the result is a matter of which principle wins out at any given time. With regards, Matthew Anstey Matthew Anstey Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid Residence: Kambah, ACT, Australia ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au +61 (0)2 6296 4044 From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Mon Nov 25 07:12:53 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 02:12:53 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/23/02 8:25:40 PM, ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au writes: << I think there is a danger here of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is posited THE primary cause of language change. Paul Boersma (Functional Phonology, 1998, phd Amsterdam) suggests that just for phonology there are five functional principles at work, often in conflict with one another. They are (1) speakers minimise articulartory effort; (2) speakers minimise perceptual confusion between utterances with different meanings; (3) listeners minimise effort needed for perceptual classification; (4) listeners maximise use of acoustic information; (5) speaker and listener maximise the information flow. Principle (5) is akin to your comment above. >> It can't be accurate to lump these "principles" causing phonological change together, as if "information flow" were merely a subcategory. Consider a situation where Principle (5) is totally absent. Neither speaker nor listener has the slightest interest in "information flow." Don't the other four principles become totally irrelevant? Why would a speaker be interested in minimizing the "confusion between utterances with different meanings?" Why would a listener care at all about "perceptual classification"? Putting the need to maximize information flow at zero, the speaker has nothing to say and the listener is not listening. What Principles 1-4 above are actually describing are various methods for maximizing "information flow" -- if we want to use those words. Even when "speakers minimise articulartory effort", they are doing nothing more than seeking to move information more efficiently, more "economically" -- subject to the threshold of comprehensibilty and given that they are speaking to someone who may not understand them if they are too economical. But there's not much point in worrying about too much or too little "articulatory effort" if no one is listening. All of these "principles" basically are created by the need for communication. As far as the danger "of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is posited THE primary cause of language change", let me just be clear about what I was saying. I wrote that "the primary directionality is NOT change." This seems blatantly apparent to me. Comprehensibility demands that speakers speak much the same most of the time, with the same sounds coresponding to the same meanings. If that's true, then can INCOMPREHENSIBITY can ever be the objective when sounds or grammar change in a language? Do speakers ever actuate or adopt sound changes so that absolutely no one else will understand them when they are speaking out loud? I think that it is more plausible to believe that changes are adopted when they aid in some way in communication or listener comprehension -- perhaps often selectively. Even the Labovian speaker who adopts a more "prestigious" dialect is trying to communicate something new in his new way of speaking. As to why sound changes follow a p > f type directionality, when they occur -- that's like asking why all chairs have a place to put our bottoms. The reason is we all biologically have bottoms, but it definitely does not tell us why there are such things as chairs. BTW, I wrote as to why some languages did not adopt the p > f sound shift: "The answer is, of course, that retaining the p is linguistically functional in the first place." It's interesting that one explanation sometimes offered for the historic p > f shift in Germanic is that non-indo-european language speakers adopted the new language but retained the phonotactics of their old pre-IE language, i.e., spoke with an "accent". Whether or not that is true, it suggests that even in that kind of "sound change" it is possible to look for a conservative motivation. So that some changes might even be seen as nothing more than an adjustment to keep some other things the same. Steve Long From ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au Wed Nov 27 04:14:58 2002 From: ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au (Matthew Anstey) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:14:58 +1100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Steve, > >> In a message dated 11/23/02 8:25:40 PM, >> ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au writes: << I think there is a >> danger here of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is >> posited THE primary cause of language change. Paul Boersma >> (Functional Phonology, 1998, phd Amsterdam) suggests that >> just for phonology there are five functional principles at >> work, often in conflict with one another. They are (1) >> speakers minimise articulartory effort; (2) speakers minimise >> perceptual confusion between utterances with different >> meanings; (3) listeners minimise effort needed for perceptual >> classification; (4) listeners maximise use of acoustic >> information; (5) speaker and listener maximise the >> information flow. Principle (5) is akin to your comment above. >> > > It can't be accurate to lump these "principles" causing > phonological change together, as if "information flow" were > merely a subcategory. I agree. The various principles at work in language change are, as you point out, sub-principles of the general functional principle of communicative efficacy. My point is simply that in practice such a principle results in a variety of pressures on the language system that are often in conflict with one another. Nevertheless, I am still wary about the idea that "information flow" is the only purpose for which language is used, ie, the only functional principle. It would depend on what is meant by information. Wouldn't sociolinguists observe many uses of language where information flow would appear to be minimal? With regards, Matthew Anstey Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid Residence: Kambah, ACT, Australia ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au +61 (0)2 6296 4044 From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Wed Nov 27 04:49:16 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 23:49:16 EST Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 12:59:14 PM, w.croft at MAN.AC.UK writes: << I believe that language change is (locally) directed because functional innovation is directed (pace Steve Long). Again, some linguists have assumed that an evolutionary model of language change requires innovation to be random because the mechanism of altered replication in biology, mutation, is random. But the mechanisms of altered replication in language change and biological evolution don't have to be the same either; and they are not. >> Some things that are worth pointing out here: 1) Naturalistic science assumes that to a certain point language arose as a result of natural selection (biological evolution). (This does not address a non-naturalistic, supernatural cause of language -- precisely because it is not naturalistic.) So I know of no other scientific position than that biological evolution gave rise to language . And that therefore that the changes that brought language to some point 'X' were identical to natural selection and biological evolution and diversity. And, to this extent, I know of no other scientific means of accounting for the changes which brought about language (to some point X) -- particularly basic brain-to-speech functionality -- than natural selection. 2) Beyond that certain X point, the phenomena of language in all its shapes and forms may no longer have been subject to the processes of "undirected" biological evolution. But its important to take a closer look at the distinction that Bill Croft seems to make between change in biological evolution versus language -- the distinction between directed and random change. ("...some linguists have assumed that an evolutionary model of language change requires innovation to be random because the mechanism of altered replication in biology, mutation, is random.") It should be pointed out that not all plant or animal forms (not all "altered replications") are the result of "un-directed" change. In fact, horses, cows, dogs, corn and carrots are all products of a definite sort of directed change. Probably most large non-human mammals on this planet are the result of a "directed" change. Some are the result of selective breeding, others are the result of induced mutation -- but their current forms were all guided towards a certain utility, certainly "directed" in any sense of the word. So it is not easy to see the distinction between that particular process -- where humans intervene to re-direct natural selection in plant and animal breeding -- and "directed" change in language. 3) It would also be a mistake to think that natural selection represents "random change" in the sense that evolution represents true randomness. It does not. There are extreme constraints on biological change. The key concept is selection. No change is preserved unless it conforms to the demands of the local environment. What I would suggest is crucially missing in evaluating the comparison of biological evolution and language change is that concept -- selection. No matter how or where a linguistic change may "begin", its survival should be dependent on some kind of selectivity. But what or who is doing the selection? No matter how constrained or directed changes in human speech may be, it seems it is the listener who decides whether that change will survive. Once again, speech that consistently has no effect on the listener will neither spread or be called change by linguists. If no one understands what you are saying, it is highly unlikely that any one will begin to talk like you. Linguistics doesn't call the repetition of meaningless sounds "language." That even should apply if the only listener is the person speaking. So it seems it is the response of the listener that should logically be the main cause of change and the directionality of change. Of course this is subject to a certain degree to biological constraints -- we don't expect sounds beyond human vocal cords or human hearing, or p's for f's. But whether we look at the regularity that is language or any change in that language, we must have a priori both a speaker and a listener. Even if they are the same person. 5.) Natural selection is functional -- in a scientifically observable sense -- because biological structure, change and diversity is dictated by outcome. If language is functional, the outcome of speech should logically dictate the structure, change and diversity of speech. To what extent is language change dictated by something other than outcome? What would be the other source, if there is one? 6.) And finally if language did not evolve, either "biologically" or "culturally" or both, because of its value in communication, what was its value? Does anyone really believe that at one time we humans all spoke our own personal languages out loud and eventually we got around to adapting them to speak to one another? That would probably be the only scenario where one could plausibly see language as having a non-social function. Steve Long From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Wed Nov 27 16:38:54 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:38:54 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/26/02 11:16:14 PM, Matthew Anstey writes: << Nevertheless, I am still wary about the idea that "information flow" is the only purpose for which language is used, ie, the only functional principle. It would depend on what is meant by information. Wouldn't sociolinguists observe many uses of language where information flow would appear to be minimal? >> The problem is that "information" is such a ubiquitous event. In theory, the smallest change in state can create an "information flow" to an observer. You don't need human language. Prairie dogs, bees and deer in mating seasons use sounds to exchange information. Humans whistle, hoot and scream. If I do nothing more than stand when a lady enters the room, I've conveyed information. Language is a much smaller subset than information flow. And that means that any use of human language between individuals is of necessity going to create "information flow". Every word is a change of state when a listener "observes" it. Why would humans use language otherwise? What purpose, intent or function -- conscious or unconsious -- can ascribe to the use of language besides the exchange of information BETWEEN individuals? This brings us back to talking to oneself. This seems to be the only circumstance where language is not overtly social. Whether we do it silently or out loud, the apparent outcome is not a flow of information between individuals. My own strong suspicion is that when we talk to ourselves, we simulate the social use of language. We are ourselves both speaker and listener. And this happens I think because speech without a listener is simply not language. It takes two to tango or to use language. When I remind myself to throw out the garbage or work out a math problem, I am speaking (out loud or in my head) and I am listening. So there is "information flow" in the sense that talking to myself should otherwise be unnecessary -- the information is after all already there in my brain -- why do I need to repeat it?. What I am actually doing is manipulating information -- moving it around, "flowing" it -- by simulating an interpersonal exchange. The best indication I have of this is that I cannot talk to myself in a language that I do not already know. I am bi-lingual enough to be able to talk to myself in multiple languages. But I cannot talk to myself in a private unknown language. The phonology, grammar, morphology and syntax of self-talk all follow precisely how I learned to talk socially. (Luckily I don't hear other voices in my head, but if I did my bet would be they would be in English -- or maybe a ponderous, foreboding Latin.) An obvious conclusion from this -- to the extent it is true -- would be that there is really no instance where the basic function of language is not involved in conveying information (even where speaker and listener are one) - functionally dictating that language should first all of be structured to serve interpersonal communication. The physiological structure of the language organs should follow that function. Constraints should simply mark the limitations placed on language by the physical world and the biological and physiological limitations of the organs that evolution (and a million years of human culture) have given us to achieve that function. Going back to the reason that all p's don't always become f's in human speech. The basic reason would be that listeners are less likely to understand words where p's have been turned into f's. And so communication would be the primary reason why p's stay p's. And conversely the main reason some p's become f's. Regards, Steve Long From bill_mann at SIL.ORG Wed Nov 27 17:42:57 2002 From: bill_mann at SIL.ORG (William Mann) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:42:57 -0500 Subject: new website for Dialogue Macrogame Theory (DMT) Message-ID: Announcing a website for Dialogue Macrogame Theory (DMT) Dialogue Macrogame Theory (DMT) is a method for systematic description of human dialogues. It is organized around a distinction between collaborative and non collaborative parts of dialogues. Collaborative parts are described using "dialogue macrogames." These are two-party constructs which are sometimes used to regulate long intervals of interactions. At other times, using the same constructs, the intervals may be very short. Macrogames make it possible for both parties to fully control the course of the dialogue, because intentions for both parties are accepted and dismissed in a coordinated, negotiated fashion. Non collaborative parts of dialogues are describe using "unilaterals." Currently 12 macrogames and 12 unilaterals are defined. The website includes an introduction to DMT, definitions for the DMT entities, 19 fully analyzed dialogues (over 800 turns) and instructions for analysts. These dialogues (along with other analyses not on the website) represent a wide range of situations and individual goals or tasks. The types of situations include: · Apollo 13 spacecraft emergency radio · An excerpt of "hostage negotiation" · Mathematics tutoring · Electronics tutoring · Physician - Patient interaction · Travel agent working · Administrative telephone interaction · On line human to human help with computers · Laboratory interaction from Maptask and other sources · Airline pre-crash radio interaction · Courtroom questioning of witnesses. The website, titled "Dialogue Resources" is at the following URL: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~billmann/dialogue Please excuse multiple copies. Bill Mann -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From iwasaki at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU Thu Nov 28 06:00:18 2002 From: iwasaki at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU (Iwasaki, Shoichi) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 22:00:18 -0800 Subject: Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS - First Announcement The 13th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) University of California at Los Angeles May 2-4, 2003 Guest Speakers: Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice University) "Middle voice in Balinese" Pranee Kullavanijaya (Chulalongkorn University) "A historical study of Time Markers in Thai" ***ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*** Abstract Deadline: February 3, 2003 Notification of acceptance: March 3, 2003 Presented papers are published in the proceedings. Presentations are allotted 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. An author may submit at most one single and one joint abstract. In case of joint authorship, one author should be designated for communication with the organizing committee. The following three items must be sent to the organizer: (1) 3 hard copies of an anonymous one-page abstract (8.5"x11", or A4) with 500 words or less. The second page may be used for data and references only. Abstracts should be as specific as possible, with a statement of topic, approach and conclusions. (2) an email attachment (Microsoft Word strongly preferred) of your abstract to . (3) a 3"x5" card listing the following: (a) paper title (b) sub-field (functional, discourse, sociolinguistics, phonology, formal syntax, semantics, historical, language contact etc.) (c) name(s) of author(s) (d) affiliation(s) of author(s) (e) mailing address (in January through May) (f) contact phone number for each author (in January through May) (g) email address for each author (in January through May) *SEND ABSTRACTS TO* Shoichi Iwasaki University of California, Los Angeles South and Southeast Asian Languages & Cultures (c/o EALC) 290 Royce Hall Los Angeles CA 90095 (seal2003 at humnet.ucla.edu) From w.croft at MAN.AC.UK Fri Nov 29 16:56:04 2002 From: w.croft at MAN.AC.UK (Bill Croft) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 16:56:04 +0000 Subject: Evolution, and 'functional' + 'social' Message-ID: One must distinguish between the evolution of language and the evolution of languages. The former is the evolution of human cognition and social behavior that permitted the rise of modern human language. This is of course an instance of biological evolution, of human beings. The latter is the process by which linguistic elements change over time. This is an evolutionary process, that is it involves change by replication; but it is not the same evolutionary process as biological evolution. The evolving populations are different: not genes and organisms, but tokens of linguistic structure (called 'linguemes' in "Explaining language change") and speakers. I agree that selection is a central aspect of language change; it usually goes under the name of propagation in sociohistorical linguistics. But change by replication involves both innovation (altered replication) and propagation (selection). Change doesn't happen without both steps of the process taking place. They are equally necessary. When I hypothesized that innovation/altered replication in language change is functional and propagation/selection is social, I had specific definitions of 'functional' and 'social' in mind. Both terms have been used to cover many different phenomena, within linguistics and without. One can construe innovation as social in some sense - after all, anything to do with language is social - and propagation as functional in some sense - after all, any social behavior which is successful (by some criterion) is functional in a way. My hypothesis applies only to the notion of 'functional' as 'pertaining to the mapping between morphosyntactic form and semantic-pragmatic substance, and between phonological form and phonetic substance', and 'social' as 'pertaining to language in social interaction and social organization'. In fact the latter is still too vague; I should perhaps have said just 'social organization' (see "Explaining language change", chapter 7). Also, when I wrote about the prospect of a fruitful marriage between functional and sociolinguistic approaches to language, I had these particular definitions in mind. The link between the two is, of course, social interaction: function only makes sense with respect to social interaction, and social organization is the result of social interaction. Bill Croft From mg246 at CORNELL.EDU Sun Nov 3 18:17:56 2002 From: mg246 at CORNELL.EDU (monica gonzalez-marquez) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 13:17:56 -0500 Subject: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics Workshop Message-ID: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (EMCL) Workshop Cornell University Ithaca, New York, USA May 2-4, 2003 http://cerebro.psych.cornell.edu/emcl *** Call for Graduate Student Participants Application deadline: January 31, 2003 Notification of acceptance by: March 15, 2003 *** Introduction: Recent years have witnessed a virtual explosion of theory about the relationship between language and cognition in work on cognitive grammar (Langacker), cognitive semantics (Talmy), conceptual integration (Fauconnier & Turner), and conceptual metaphor (Lakoff, Sweetser). However, most of the empirical support for these theories lies in the linguistic judgments and intuitions of their proponents. While this is a powerful form of empirical support, the wide-ranging nature of the claims in cognitive linguistics creates a particular need for converging evidence from other techniques in cognitive science in order to assess both its assumptions and its conclusions about cognitive phenomena. The Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics Workshop is motivated by the idea that experimental and observational work can help substantiate the claims of cognitive linguistics, and to further develop an empirically valid account of the connection between language and cognition. This interdisciplinary workshop is intended to provide a forum where people doing experimental and observational research in cognitive linguistics can come together to obtain a comprehensive picture of progress in this endeavor, and to identify areas for future investigation. During the workshop, we will explore the use of various experimental and observational methods to address particular issues relevant to language and cognition. To this end, the goals of the workshop are: -to evaluate experimental and empirical support for various claims in cognitive linguistics; -to address practical and methodological issues such as experimental design, data collection and analysis (including audio/video corpora, eye-tracking, gesture, fMRI/EEG, image schemas, etc.) -to explore how data from natural language corpora can be fruitfully incorporated in experimental work; -to create a network of researchers with common interests and concerns for continued collaboration. Workshop format: The weekend will kick off with a plenary lecture followed by a question and answer session with the audience.Aside from this initiating lecture, however, the event will be organized around parallel workshop sessions of two types, those led by faculty members and those organized around student presentations. All sessions are intended to be highly interactive. In the first sort of workshop, a faculty member will work with a small group of students to solve a problem or set of problems that might arise in her area of expertise. For example, in a workshop on the use of metaphor in gesture, the group might jointly analyze a videotape of face-to-face interaction. In a workshop on eye-tracking, the group might be asked to analyze data collected from a single subject in a particular experiment. In a workshop on behavioral measures, the group might begin with a theoretical issue in cognitive linguistics and design an experiment to test it. These workshops will be ?recycled? in that each faculty member will hold the same workshop twice, so that most participants will get a chance to participate in most workshops. In the student-led sessions, graduate students will make 15-minute presentations about their work, followed by extensive discussion about the theoretical and methodological issues raised by the students? research. The event will end with a roundtable discussion session in which participants synthesize the contents of the workshop and talk about future directions. Graduate Students: Participants will be graduate students undertaking empirical/experimental work relevant to language and cognition. Applicants should be familiar with current ideas in cognitive linguistics and be prepared to critically discuss various aspects of the theory. Participants will be expected to present their ongoing research to the group for constructive feedback. Interested graduate students are invited to submit their applications by following the instructions given at the workshop website: http://cerebro.psych.cornell.edu/emcl Application deadline: January 31, 2003 Notification of acceptance by: March 15, 2003 Accommodation will be provided for all accepted students. In addition, it is likely that modest travel grants will be available to students traveling long distances. Faculty: Seana Coulson (UCSD, Cognitive Science) Chris Sinha (University of Portsmouth, Developmental Psychology) Michael J. Spivey (Cornell University, Psycholinguistics) 5 additional faculty members will be added over the course of the next few weeks. Organizing Committee: Seana Coulson (UCSD, Cognitive Science) Richard Dale (Cornell, Psychology) Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Chair (Cornell, Psychology) Irene Mittelberg (Cornell, Linguistics) Michael J. Spivey (Cornell, Psycholinguistics) Contact information: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez -- mg246 at cornell.edu http://cerebro.psych.cornell.edu/emcl Application deadline: January 31, 2003 Notification of acceptance by: March 15, 2003 This event is sponsored and generously funded by the Cognitive Studies Program at Cornell University. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5870 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU Mon Nov 4 22:09:02 2002 From: jeaniec at UMAIL.UCSB.EDU (Jeanie Castillo) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 14:09:02 -0800 Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Message-ID: **** APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE POSTINGS **** Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Santa Barbara, CA April 25-27, 2003 The Linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its sixth annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), which provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies of indigenous languages of the Americas. Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic in linguistics. In addition, we will be hosting a special session on language revitalization, therefore we encourage the submission of abstracts in this area. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Individuals may submit abstracts for one single and one co-authored paper. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and can be submitted by hard copy or email. For hard copy submissions, please send five copies of your abstract and a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) email address; (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to: Workshop on American Indigenous Languages Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Email submissions are encouraged. Include the information from the 3x5 card (above) in the body of the email message with the abstract as an attachment. Please limit your abstracts to the following formats: PDF, RTF, or Microsoft Word document. Send email submissions to: wail at linguistics.ucsb.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: January 15, 2003 Notification of acceptance will be by email by February 15, 2003. General Information: Santa Barbara is situated on the Pacific Ocean near the Santa Ynez mountains. The UCSB campus is located near the Santa Barbara airport. Participants may also choose to fly into LAX airport in Los Angeles which is approximately 90 miles south of the campus. Shuttle buses run between LAX and Santa Barbara. Information about hotel accommodations will be posted on the web. For further information contact the conference coordinator at wail at linguistics.ucsb.edu or (805) 893-3776 or check out our website at http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/nailsg/ -- Jeanie Castillo jeaniec at umail.ucsb.edu From lise.menn at COLORADO.EDU Thu Nov 7 00:03:29 2002 From: lise.menn at COLORADO.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 17:03:29 -0700 Subject: Object-initial languages - data, a bit late Message-ID: Funknet colleagues: In response to Dianne Patterson's note of 29 October, repeated below, I asked my former student Andrea Feldman to share her diary data with us, because it contains some very interesting word order errors. Here are Feldman's Ph.D. dissertation data (University of Colorado 1998, p. 127) exemplifying her son's use of non-English word orders. I think the real issue in these constructions is not that the child is unsettled about English being an SVO language, but that the semantic roles of the particular verb's arguments are differently construed by the child: e.g. 'carry' is regularly construed as if it meant something like 'ride'. Have fun making hypotheses about the others here; as Feldman points out, some of the errors are not verb argument errors but rather the typical early deictic pronoun reversals (e.g. 'pick you up'). However, early misconstrual of 2nd and 1st person pronouns might be important in explaining the origin of some of the incorrect mappings from verb argument to semantic role. Lise Menn Feldman's data: "I'm carrying Steven" (Steven is being held by father) (1:11.6) "Big lambie has blue car" (Steven sees toy lamb in his blue car)(2;0.6) "Mama need Laura?" (Mother has been holding Laura)((2;1.1) "Mommy need key" (Steven wanted to play with mother's keys) (2;2.16) "Give me Tadi" (child's name for himself) (Steven wanted to be picked up by babysitter) (2;3.6) "Laura take dada" (Father is holding Laura) (2;3.21) "He take out" (Steven takes doll out of toy bus) (2;3.26) "I don't like Laura to pick Daddy up." (Steven does not want father to pick up sister.) (2;8.0) "I wanna pick you up" (reaches arms outward to father) (2;8.3) "maybe she can have Michelle" (Laura is in mother's arms) (2;8.6) "Laurie can't carry" (=X can't carry Laura) (2;10.26) (Note that some of these are clearly deictic errors.) > >Comments: To: Brian MacWhinney > >To: FUNKNET at listserv.rice.edu > >Status: RO > > > >Just once, in watching my child (Josh) acquire language, did I hear > >him produce > >an object initial sentence: "Pepsi want Josh"...he was probably 2.5 years > >old (roughly...I could dig up my notes if anyone really cares...he's > >17 now)...since > >he was with either myself or my husband all the time, this is probably the > >only word order violation of such magnitude that he produced > >outloud...probably > >supporting your hypothesis that that this stuff is very rare and disappears > >quickly once the mistake is realized. > > > >Dianne Patterson, Ph.D. > >University of Arizona "I'm carrying Steven" (Steven is being held by father) (1:11.6) "Big lambie has blue car" (Steven sees toy lamb in his blue car)(2;0.6) "Mama need Laura?" (Mother has been holding Laura)((2;1.1) "Mommy need key" (Steven wanted to play with mother's keys) (2;2.16) "Give me Tadi" (child's name for himself) (Steven wanted to be picked up by babysitter) (2;3.6) "Laura take dada" (Father is holding Laura) (2;3.21) "He take out" (Steven takes doll out of toy bus) (2;3.26) "I don't like Laura to pick Daddy up." (Steven does not want father to pick up sister.) (2;8.0) "I wanna pick you up" (reaches arms outward to father) (2;8.3) "maybe she can have Michelle" (Laura is in mother's arms) (2;8.6) "Laurie can't carry" (=X can't carry Laura) (2;10.26) (Note that some of these are clearly deictic errors.) -- Lise Menn 303-492-1609 Professor Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado 295 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309 Adjunct Professor, University of Hunan, 2001-2005 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: http://www.bayget.com/inpaku/kinen9.htm From kemmer at RICE.EDU Wed Nov 13 23:35:30 2002 From: kemmer at RICE.EDU (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:35:30 -0600 Subject: Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Rice University Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics at Rice University invites applications for a one-year post-doctoral fellowship for the 2003-2004 academic year. The successful candidate will have an active research program in an area of linguistics that complements the strengths of current departmental faculty. Preferred areas are psycholinguistics (language acquisition, neurolinguistics, and/or laboratory phonology) or anthropological linguistics (Native American languages or endangered languages more generally). The Post-Doctoral Fellow will interact with faculty and graduate students and with programs outside the department where appropriate, e.g. Cognitive Sciences. Teaching duties will include one course per semester: a general course in linguistics and a graduate seminar in his/her area of specialization. Salary: $35,000. For full consideration, reply by January 31, 2003 with three letters of recommendation to: Chair Department of Linguistics, MS 23 6100 Main St. Rice University Houston, TX 77005 E-mail: ling at rice.edu URL: http://www.linguistics.rice.edu From paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Nov 14 17:14:29 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:14:29 -0500 Subject: New Book: Feigenbaum/Kurzon Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of interest to functional linguistics. Title: Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context Series Title: Typological Studies in Language 50 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl Editor: Susanne Feigenbaum Editor: Dennis Kurzon (University of Haifa, Israel) US & Canada: Hardback: ISBN: 1588111725, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: USD 90.00 Everywhere else: Hardback: ISBN: 9027229562, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: EUR 100.00 Abstract: The growing interest in prepositions is reflected by this impressive collection of papers from leading scholars of various fields. The selected contributions of Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context focus on the local and temporal semantics of prepositions in relation to their context, too. Following an introduction which puts this new approach into a thematical and historical perspective, the volume presents fifteen studies in the following areas: The semantics of space dynamics (mainly on French prepositions); Language acquisition (aphasia and code-switching); Artificial intelligence (mainly of English prepositions); Specific languages: Hebrew (from a number of perspectives -- syntax, semiotics, and sociolinguistic impact on morphology), Maltese, the Melanesian English-based Creole Bislama, and Biblical translations into Judeo-Greek. Table of Contents Preface Susanne Feigenbaum and Dennis Kurzon 1 Instability and the theory of semantic forms: Starting from the case of prepositions Yves-Marie Visetti and Pierre Cadiot 9 Schematics and motifs in the semantics of prepositions Pierre Cadiot 41 The theoretical status of prepositions: The case of the "prospective use" of in Franck Lebas 59 Temporal semantics of prepositions in context David S. Br?e and Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann 75 Prepositions and context Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann and Nissim Francez 115 Prepositional phrases as noun modifiers in contemporary Hebrew: Grammatical, semantic and pragmatic motivations Esther Borochovsky and Hava Reppen 127 The Hebrew prepositions mi-/min "from, of": Same or different? Yishai Tobin 145 A contrastive analysis of French and Hebrew prepositions: The case of sans, bli-belo and lelo Susanne Feigenbaum 171 A language in change: Declined prepositions in spoken Modern Hebrew as a case study Inbar Kimchi-Angert 193 The French preposition in contact with Hebrew Miriam Ben-Rafael 209 "Preposition" as functor: The case of long in Bislama Dennis Kurzon 231 Prepositions in modern Judeo-Greek (JG) Biblical translations Julia G. Krivoruchko 249 Quddiem and some remarks on grammatical aspects of Maltese prepositions Rami Saari 269 Locative prepositions in language acquisition and aphasia Mark Leikin 283 Index 299 Lingfield(s): Typology Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) 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 paul at BENJAMINS.COM Thu Nov 14 18:17:53 2002 From: paul at BENJAMINS.COM (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 13:17:53 -0500 Subject: New Book: Gueldemann/von Roncador Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of interest to functional linguistics: Title: Reported Discourse Subtitle: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains Series Title: Typological Studies in Language 52 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl Editor: Tom G?ldemann (University of Leipzig) Editor: Manfred von Roncador (University of Bayreuth) US & Canada: Hardback: ISBN: 1588112276, Pages: xii, 425 pp., Price: USD 117.00 Everywhere else: Hardback: ISBN: 9027229589, Pages: xii, 425 pp., Price: EUR 130.00 Abstract: The present volume unites 15 papers on reported discourse from a wide genetic and geographical variety of languages. Besides the treatment of traditional problems of reported discourse like the classification of its intermediate categories, the book reflects in particular how its grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic properties have repercussions in other linguistic domains like tense-aspect-modality, evidentiality, reference tracking and pronominal categories, and the grammaticalization history of quotative constructions. Almost all papers present a major shift away from analyzing reported discourse with the help of abstract transformational principles toward embedding it in functional and pragmatic aspects of language. Another central methodological approach pervading this collection consists in the discourse-oriented examination of reported discourse based on large corpora of spoken or written texts which is increasingly replacing analyses of constructed de-contextualized utterances prevalent in many earlier treatments. The book closes with a comprehensive bibliography on reported discourse of about 1.000 entries. Table of Contents Preface Tom G?ldemann and Manfred von Roncador vii Abbreviations x Part I. Categories of reported discourse and their use 1. Speech and thought representation in the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages Winfred Boeder 3 2. Self-quotation in German: Reporting on past decisions Andrea Golato 49 3. Direct and indirect speech in Cerma narrative Ivan-Margaret Lowe and Ruth Hurlimann 71 4. Direct and indirect discourse in Tamil Sanford B. Steever 91 5. The acceptance of "free indirect discourse": A change of the representation of thought in Japanese Yasushi Suzuki 109 6. Direct, indirect and other discourse in Bengali newspapers Wim van der Wurff 121 Part II. Tense- aspect and evidentiality 7. Evidentiality and reported speech in Romance languages Gerda Hassler 143 8. Discourse perspectives on tense choice in spoken-English reporting discourse Tomoko I. Sakita 173 Part III. Logophoricity 9. The logophoric hierarchy and variation in Dogon Chris Culy 201 10. Logophoric marking in East Asian languages Yan Huang 211 Part IV. Form and history of quotative constructions 11. The grammaticalization of "say" and "do": An areal phenomenon in East Africa David Cohen, Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle and Martine Vanhove 227 12. When "say" is not say: The functional versatility of the Bantu quotative marker ti with special reference to Shona Tom G?ldemann 253 13. Reported speech in Egyptian: Forms, types and history Frank Kammerzell and Carsten Peust 289 14. "Report" constructions in Kambera (Austronesian) Marian Klamer 323 15. All the same? The emergence of complementizers in Bislama Miriam Meyerhoff 341 Part V. A comprehensive bibliography of reported discourse 16. A comprehensive bibliography of reported discourse Tom G?ldemann, Manfred von Roncador and Wim van der Wurff 363 Language index 417 Name index 419 Lingfield(s): Functional & Systemic Ling (Linguistic Theories) Linguistic Theories Written In: English (Language Code: English) 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 bernd.heine at UNI-KOELN.DE Fri Nov 15 09:37:43 2002 From: bernd.heine at UNI-KOELN.DE (Bernd Heine) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:37:43 +0100 Subject: Typology of African Languages Message-ID: I'd like to ask for your cooperation. It seems that on the basis of the eleven linguistic properties listed below it is somehow possible to define African languages as against the rest of the world. A survey of 70 African languages suggests that any given African language can be expected to have between five and ten of the properties (Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic languages are an exception, having roughly between three and five properties). My question is: Is this a valid hypothesis? I would be grateful if you could help to answer this question by filling the questionnaire below for "your" language(s). I know that filling questionnaires is not among your favorite activities; still, since you know "your language()s" it would be a job of less than five minutes. Thanks! Bernd Heine _____________________________ Language (sub-family, family): Expert's name: The language has the following properties (e.g., "(1) +, (2) -, (3) + A/B", etc.): (1) Labiovelar stops (2) Implosive stops (3) Lexical (A) and/or grammatical tones (B) (4) Vowel harmony based on an advanced tongue root position (ATR) (5) Verbal derivational suffixes (passive, middle, causative, benefactive, etc.) (6) Nominal modifiers follow the noun (7) Semantic polysemy 'drink (A)/pull (B), smoke' (8) Semantic polysemy 'hear (A)/see (B), understand' (9) Semantic polysemy 'animal, meat' (10) Comparative construction of inequality based on a schema of the type 'X is big exceeds/(sur)passes Y' (11) Noun 'child' used productively to express diminutive meaning ___________________________________________________ Bernd Heine Institut f?r Afrikanistik Universit?t zu K?ln 50923 K?ln, GERMANY Phone: (0049) 221 470 2708 Fax: (0049) 221 470 5158 From Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU Sat Nov 16 03:31:16 2002 From: Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU (Gary Holton) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 18:31:16 -0900 Subject: Tenure-Track Position at Alaska Native Language Center Message-ID: JOB ANNOUNCEMENT Tenure-Track Position in Athabascan Languages and Linguistics The Alaska Native Language Center invites applications for a tenure-track position in Athabascan languages and linguistics at the Assistant Professor level, effective August 2003. TYPICAL DUTIES: Research in Alaska Athabascan languages, especially in the fields of language documentation, language revitalization, language acquisition and second language pedagogy. Compilation of grammars, dictionaries and texts. Support for Native language revitalization efforts throughout the state of Alaska, including coordination with community-based organizations. Curriculum and materials development for Alaska Native languages. Teaching in the field of Alaska Native languages and linguistics (including distance delivery). MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: Advanced degree in Linguistics or a related field (Ph.D. preferred). Experience working in endangered language communities and knowledge of Athabascan languages preferred. APPLICATION: Please provide an Applicant Form, letter of interest, curriculum vitae, sample of recent work, and names and contact information for three references. Submit application materials to: Dr. Lawrence Kaplan, Search Committee c/o UAF Human Resources 3295 College Road, Room 108 PO Box 757860 Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7860 A complete job vacancy announcement can be found at http://www.uaf.edu/uafhr/jobs/Job1102-472.html For more information contact Lawrence Kaplan at (907) 474-6582 or ffldk at uaf.edu, or visit the ANLC website at http://www.uaf.edu/anlc From David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE Sat Nov 16 07:06:55 2002 From: David.Palfreyman at ZU.AC.AE (David Palfreyman) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 11:06:55 +0400 Subject: FUNKNET Digest - 14 Nov 2002 to 15 Nov 2002 (#2002-116) Message-ID: Bernd, You mentioned "defining African languages as against the rest of the world". Does this mean that you'd like us to respond to the questions also in relation to *non-African* languages, to provide evidence relating to a hypothesis that these features are *peculiar* to African languages? David Palfreyman Zayed University, Dubai :-D >>> LISTSERV at listserv.rice.edu 16-Nov-02 10:03:49 AM >>> Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:37:43 +0100 From: Bernd Heine Subject: Typology of African Languages I'd like to ask for your cooperation. It seems that on the basis of the eleven linguistic properties listed below it is somehow possible to define African languages as against the rest of the world. A survey of 70 African languages suggests that any given African language can be expected to have between five and ten of the properties (Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic languages are an exception, having roughly between three and five properties). My question is: Is this a valid hypothesis? I would be grateful if you could help to answer this question by filling the questionnaire below for "your" language(s). From w.croft at MAN.AC.UK Tue Nov 19 13:39:48 2002 From: w.croft at MAN.AC.UK (Bill Croft) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:39:48 +0000 Subject: Functional and social factors in language (change) Message-ID: This message picks up a thread begun by Martin Haspelmath some months ago, on a hypothesis about factors in language change proposed in my book "Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach" (Longman, 2000). The hypothesis is: Mechanisms of innovation are functional, mechanisms of propagation are social. [By 'functional' I mean 'pertaining to the mapping between morphosyntactic form and semantic-pragmatic substance, and between phonological form and phonetic substance'. By 'social' I mean 'pertaining to language in social interaction and social organization'.] The chief objection to this hypothesis that I have encountered (in the thread and elsewhere) is the belief that mechanisms of propagation can be functional as well as social. I have just come across a reference to another line of evidence supporting my hypothesis, having to do with borrowing patterns. The reference is Cecil Brown's "Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages" (Oxford, 1999), p. 9: "The findings of these studies [he cites Brown 1987b, 1989b, 1994; Voegelin & Hymes 1953; Bright 1960a, Dozier 1956] and of others (e.g. Diebold 1962, Spencer 1947; Scotton & Okeju 1973; Mixco 1977) challenge the long-held assumption of linguists that structural features of some languages make them more inclined than others to adopt loanwords for introduced items (e.g., Sapir 1921:205-10; Herzog 1941:74; Haugen 1956:66; Bonvillain 1978:32). For example, Haugen writes that 'loanwords are easily accepted by languages with unified, unanalyzed words, but not by languages with active methods of word compounding' (p. 66). Thomason and Kaufman (1988) assemble considerable evidence that indicates - reminiscent of Bright (1960a) - that sociolinguistic factors, such as the degree of bilingualism, rather than language structure, significantly affect the extent of borowing, especially when grammatical features are involved." What Brown calls "structural features" falls under the definition of 'functional' given above, since a feature such as "unanalyzed words" refers to the form-meaning mapping in the language. The adoption of loanwords by a language is the propagation of the novel (borrowed) form in the speech community. Hence the research Brown summarizes indicates that propagation of borrowed words and grammatical features is driven by social, not functional, factors. I am reviving this thread not simply because of this further evidence for the hypothesis I proposed. There is a bigger issue here which I think functionalists must address. A truly comprehensive alternative theory of language to the Chomskyan one must integrate functionalist and sociolinguistic theories and empirical results. After all, like functionalism, sociolinguistics is fundamentally usage- based, variationist, and in fact functional, in that the function of language is to facilitate social interaction in social groups. Bill Croft From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Tue Nov 19 13:52:58 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:52:58 +0000 Subject: Functional and social factors in language (change) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bill, I could just walk down the hall and tell you this, but it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal said something years ago about language change that still seems about right to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said it). He said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of grammar per se. Several years ago, I heard Sally Thomason give a talk on the impossibility of predicting linguistic/historical change. If I recall correctly, such social considerations were part of her reasoning. So your idea has some diverse (and, I would say, quite good) company. To the degree that Chomskyan theories recognize that change actuation is largely a social matter and that change locus is structurally constrained, there is a degree of compatibility here. Of course, the Chomskyan view makes no attempt to 'integrate' functional/structural and social factors at all. So the alternative kind of theory you advocate would indeed be quite different from that view. Dan On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 01:39 pm, Bill Croft wrote: > This message picks up a thread begun by Martin > Haspelmath some months ago, on a hypothesis about factors in > language change proposed in my book "Explaining Language > Change: An Evolutionary Approach" (Longman, 2000). The > hypothesis is: > > Mechanisms of innovation are functional, mechanisms of > propagation are social. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2227 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Bert.Peeters at UTAS.EDU.AU Wed Nov 20 01:53:49 2002 From: Bert.Peeters at UTAS.EDU.AU (Bert Peeters) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 12:53:49 +1100 Subject: Postal quote Message-ID: Daniel Everett wrote: > it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal said something years ago about language change that still seems about right to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said it). He said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of grammar per se. Postal made this claim in his 1968 book *Aspects of phonological theory* (New York: Harper & Row) - I do not have a copy handy to check on which page. Bert Peeters -- Dr Bert Peeters School of English, Journalism & European Languages University of Tasmania GPO Box 252-82 (as of 1 Jan: Private Bag 82) Hobart TAS 7001 Australia Tel.: +61 (0)3 6226 2344 Fax.: +61 (0)3 6226 7631 E-mail: Bert.Peeters at utas.edu.au http://www.arts.utas.edu.au/efgj/french/index.htm http://www.arts.utas.edu.au/efgj/french/staff/peeters/peeters.htm CRICOS Provider No (University of Tasmania): 00586B From chafe at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU Wed Nov 20 04:41:28 2002 From: chafe at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU (Wallace Chafe) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:41:28 -0800 Subject: Postal quote In-Reply-To: <3DDAEB2D.258D768D@utas.edu.au> Message-ID: It's on page 283: "Of course there are some scholars who hold that all linguistic change is the result of language contact, but this position seems too radically improbable to demand serious consideration today. Assuming then that some if not all phonological changes are independent of contact, what is their basis? It seems clear to the present writer that there is no more reason for languages to change than there is for automobiles to add fins one year and remove them the next, for jackets to have three buttons one year and two the next, etc. That is, it seems evident within the framework of sound change as grammar change that the 'causes' of sound change without language contact lie in the general tendency of human cultural products to undergo 'nonfunctional' stylistic change." Wally Chafe > Daniel Everett wrote: > >> it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal said >> something years ago about language change that still seems about right >> to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said it). He >> said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as >> why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social >> questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of >> grammar per se. > > Postal made this claim in his 1968 book *Aspects of phonological theory* > (New York: Harper & Row) - I do not have a copy handy to check on which > page. > > Bert Peeters From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Wed Nov 20 08:02:10 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:02:10 +0000 Subject: Postal quote In-Reply-To: <38391557.1037738488@[192.168.2.36]> Message-ID: Wally's speed and organization in finding and posting this quote for the rest of us is quite impressive (and to Bert Peeters, thanks as well). Looking at it now, after all these years, I can see that I do not agree with all of it, but the basic idea, that change actuation is a social phenomenon, seems right. Dan On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 04:41 am, Wallace Chafe wrote: > It's on page 283: > > "Of course there are some scholars who hold that all linguistic change > is > the result of language contact, but this position seems too radically > improbable to demand serious consideration today. Assuming then that > some > if not all phonological changes are independent of contact, what is > their > basis? It seems clear to the present writer that there is no more > reason > for languages to change than there is for automobiles to add fins one > year > and remove them the next, for jackets to have three buttons one year > and > two the next, etc. That is, it seems evident within the framework of > sound > change as grammar change that the 'causes' of sound change without > language > contact lie in the general tendency of human cultural products to > undergo > 'nonfunctional' stylistic change." > > Wally Chafe > >> Daniel Everett wrote: >> >>> it may be worth mentioning to readers of this list that Paul Postal >>> said >>> something years ago about language change that still seems about >>> right >>> to me (though I cannot for the life of me remember where he said >>> it). He >>> said that change actuation likely has the same kind of explanation as >>> why cars have 'fins' some years and not others, based on social >>> questions of style and taste (etc.) that fall outside of the study of >>> grammar per se. >> >> Postal made this claim in his 1968 book *Aspects of phonological >> theory* >> (New York: Harper & Row) - I do not have a copy handy to check on >> which >> page. >> >> Bert Peeters > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2547 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK Wed Nov 20 08:09:16 2002 From: dick at LINGUISTICS.UCL.AC.UK (Dick Hudson) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:09:16 +0000 Subject: Functional and social factors in language (change) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Bill, I agree that a decent theory of language should combine insights from functionalism with those of sociolinguistics, but we shouldn't assume that this will be a harmonious marriage of compatibles because Bill Labov has explicitly rejected functionalism (Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors, Chapter 19: "The overestimation of functionalism"). However I think Labov is only rejecting one kind of functionalism - in which the function of language is determined by the need of the hearer for unambiguous input - and as you say, the need to facilitate social interaction is an equally important function. So is the need to be easy to produce, easy to store and easy to learn. Dick > I am reviving this thread not simply because of this >further evidence for the hypothesis I proposed. There is a >bigger issue here which I think functionalists must address. >A truly comprehensive alternative theory of language to the >Chomskyan one must integrate functionalist and >sociolinguistic theories and empirical results. After all, >like functionalism, sociolinguistics is fundamentally usage- >based, variationist, and in fact functional, in that the >function of language is to facilitate social interaction in >social groups. > >Bill Croft > > 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 matt at RICE.EDU Wed Nov 20 16:11:24 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:11:24 -0600 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure Message-ID: Hi folks, In connection to the recent posting by Bill Croft and the recent interest in a usage-based explanation of language change-frequency inter alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know how Zipf's early work on frequency and language structure has been (re)assessed, if at all. I know Jack Hawkins is trying to formalize Zipf's insights and to connect them with the processing theory. We also recall Haiman's (1983) utilization of Zipf's economic motivation in his discussion of reflexives/middles and reciprocals. The following is the quote from the relevant sections from Zipf, G. (1935) THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. Thanks, Matt Shibatani "In view of the evidence of the stream of speech we may say that the length of a word tends to bear an inverse relationship to its relative frequency; and in view of the influence of high frequency on the shortenings from truncation and from durable and temporary abbreviatory substitution, it seems a plausible deduction that, as the relative frequency of a word increases, it tends to diminish in magnitude. This tendency of a decreasing magnitude to result from an increase in relative frequency, maybe tentatively named the Law of Abbreviation." (38) "The law of abbreviation seems to reflect on the one hand an impulse in language toward the maintenance of an equilibrium between length and frequency, and on the other hand an underlying law of economy as the causa causans of this impulse toward equilibrium." (38) "The magnitude of complexity of speech-configuration which bears an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) relationship to its relative frequency, reflects also in an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) way the extent to which the category is familiar in common usage." (272) "The degree of distinctness of meaning.seem[s] to bear an inverse relationship to F[requency] and C[rystalization] [of the configuration]." (157) "the minimal degree of complexity necessary for comprehensible speech between persons reflects the degree of unusualness (in their group) of the experiences spoken of, or, somewhat more precisely stated, the unusualness of speech about those experiences." (273) From bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU Wed Nov 20 17:15:47 2002 From: bresnan at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU (Joan Bresnan) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 09:15:47 -0800 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:11:24 CST. <003a01c290af$791a2bb0$c9b42a80@ad.rice.edu> Message-ID: Matt, there is a relevant, up-to-date discussion of Zipf's law(s) in Chapter 1 of Christopher D. Manning and Hnrich Schuetze (1999) _Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing_, The MIT Press. In addition to discussing Zipf's work and subsequent work by Mandelbrot (1954) which provides an improved fit to texts over Zipf's law, they make the following observation (pp. 28-9): "As a final remark on Zipf's law, we note that there is a debate on how surprising and interesting Zipf's law and `power laws' in general are as a description of natural phenomena. It has been argued that randomly generated text exhibits Zipf's law (Li 1992). To show this, we construct a generator that randomly produces characters from the 26 characters of the alphabet and the blank (that is, each of these 27 symbols has an equal chance of being generated next.) ... One can show that the words generated by such a generator obey a power law of the form Mandelbrot suggested. The key insights are (i) that there are 27 times more words of length n + 1 than length n, and (ii) that there is a constant ratio by which words of length n are more frequent than words of length n + 1. These two opposing trends combine into the regularity of Mandelbrot's law. ... "There is in fact a broad class of probability distributions that obey power laws when the same procedure is applied to them that is used to compute the Zipf distribution: first counting events, then ranking them according to their frequency (Guenter et al. 1996). Seen from this angle, Zipf's law seems less valuable as a characterization of language. But the basic insight remains: what makes frequency-based approaches to language hard is that almost all words are rare. Zipf's law is a good way to encapsulate this insight." Best wishes, Joan > Hi folks, > > In connection to the recent posting by Bill Croft and the recent > interest in a usage-based explanation of language change-frequency inter > alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know how Zipf's early work on > frequency and language structure has been (re)assessed, if at all. I know > Jack Hawkins is trying to formalize Zipf's insights and to connect them with > the processing theory. We also recall Haiman's (1983) utilization of Zipf's > economic motivation in his discussion of reflexives/middles and reciprocals. > > The following is the quote from the relevant sections from Zipf, G. > (1935) THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. > > > > Thanks, > > Matt Shibatani > > > > "In view of the evidence of the stream of speech we may say that the length > of a word tends to bear an inverse relationship to its relative frequency; > and in view of the influence of high frequency on the shortenings from > truncation and from durable and temporary abbreviatory substitution, it > seems a plausible deduction that, as the relative frequency of a word > increases, it tends to diminish in magnitude. This tendency of a decreasing > magnitude to result from an increase in relative frequency, maybe > tentatively named the Law of Abbreviation." (38) > > "The law of abbreviation seems to reflect on the one hand an impulse in > language toward the maintenance of an equilibrium between length and > frequency, and on the other hand an underlying law of economy as the causa > causans of this impulse toward equilibrium." (38) > > > > "The magnitude of complexity of speech-configuration which bears an > > inverse (not necessarily proportionate) relationship to its relative > frequency, > > reflects also in an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) way the extent > to > > which the category is familiar in common usage." (272) > > > > "The degree of distinctness of meaning.seem[s] to bear an inverse > relationship to > > F[requency] and C[rystalization] [of the configuration]." (157) > > > > "the minimal degree of complexity necessary for comprehensible speech > > between persons reflects the degree of unusualness (in their group) of the > > experiences spoken of, or, somewhat more precisely stated, the unusualness > > of speech about those experiences." (273) From dparvaz at UNM.EDU Wed Nov 20 17:35:18 2002 From: dparvaz at UNM.EDU (Dan Parvaz) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:35:18 -0700 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: <200211201715.gAKHFmL16563@hypatia.Stanford.EDU> Message-ID: In my own work on highly frequent N-grams, it would appear that human memory (Miller's famous 7 +/- 2) acts as an additional constraint on Zipf-Mandelbrot, even in written text. I'm still crunching the numbers... Back to work, Dan. From macw at CMU.EDU Wed Nov 20 18:31:18 2002 From: macw at CMU.EDU (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 13:31:18 -0500 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: <200211201715.gAKHFmL16563@hypatia.Stanford.EDU> Message-ID: Matt et al., In a Science paper from about 1970, Herb Simon shows how Zipf's law applies to about four very different frequency distributions. I don't remember the details, but one was in meteorology and one in architecture. Recently Joshua Tenenbaum has been developing extensions of Zipf's law for various language corpora. A major issue in psychology has been whether it is best to model these data with power laws (following Newell and Rosenbloom) or exponential laws. This article argues for the latter: Anderson, J., & Schooler, L. (1991). Reflections of the environment in memory. Psychological Science, 2, 396-408. However, I believe one can also argue that exponential functions soak up more degrees of freedom than power functions. Of course, if the only goal of the analysis is to argue that high-token types are rare, then either function works. --Brian MacWhinney From matt at RICE.EDU Wed Nov 20 18:45:55 2002 From: matt at RICE.EDU (Matt Shibatani) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 12:45:55 -0600 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure Message-ID: Noel, yes Givon's idea is highly similar to Zipf's on the correlation between the magnitude of a linguistic expression and the familiarity of the situation. However, I am more inclined to go for the semantic distinctness/explicitness line than (simple) structural complexity for unexpected/unfamiliar situations. Best, Matt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Noel Rude" To: "Matt Shibatani" Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 11:39 AM Subject: Re: Zipf on language change/structure > Interesting! > > Wonder how Zipf's "Law of Abbreviation" relates to (Givon's?) > observation that the unexpected requires more coding than the expected? > Wouldn't it seem that the expected would be mentioned less frequently and > the unexpected more frequently? Interesting. > > Noel > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Matt Shibatani" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 8:11 AM > Subject: Zipf on language change/structure > > > Hi folks, > > In connection to the recent posting by Bill Croft and the recent > interest in a usage-based explanation of language change-frequency inter > alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know how Zipf's early work on > frequency and language structure has been (re)assessed, if at all. I know > Jack Hawkins is trying to formalize Zipf's insights and to connect them with > the processing theory. We also recall Haiman's (1983) utilization of Zipf's > economic motivation in his discussion of reflexives/middles and reciprocals. > > The following is the quote from the relevant sections from Zipf, G. > (1935) THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. > > > > Thanks, > > Matt Shibatani > > > > "In view of the evidence of the stream of speech we may say that the length > of a word tends to bear an inverse relationship to its relative frequency; > and in view of the influence of high frequency on the shortenings from > truncation and from durable and temporary abbreviatory substitution, it > seems a plausible deduction that, as the relative frequency of a word > increases, it tends to diminish in magnitude. This tendency of a decreasing > magnitude to result from an increase in relative frequency, maybe > tentatively named the Law of Abbreviation." (38) > > "The law of abbreviation seems to reflect on the one hand an impulse in > language toward the maintenance of an equilibrium between length and > frequency, and on the other hand an underlying law of economy as the causa > causans of this impulse toward equilibrium." (38) > > > > "The magnitude of complexity of speech-configuration which bears an > > inverse (not necessarily proportionate) relationship to its relative > frequency, > > reflects also in an inverse (not necessarily proportionate) way the extent > to > > which the category is familiar in common usage." (272) > > > > "The degree of distinctness of meaning.seem[s] to bear an inverse > relationship to > > F[requency] and C[rystalization] [of the configuration]." (157) > > > > "the minimal degree of complexity necessary for comprehensible speech > > between persons reflects the degree of unusualness (in their group) of the > > experiences spoken of, or, somewhat more precisely stated, the unusualness > > of speech about those experiences." (273) > > From pustetrm at YAHOO.COM Wed Nov 20 22:06:23 2002 From: pustetrm at YAHOO.COM (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 14:06:23 -0800 Subject: Zipf on language change/structure In-Reply-To: <003a01c290af$791a2bb0$c9b42a80@ad.rice.edu> Message-ID: --- Matt Shibatani wrote: > Hi folks, > > In connection to the recent posting by Bill > Croft and the recent > interest in a usage-based explanation of language > change-frequency inter > alia (Bybee and Hopper 2001)-I would like to know > how Zipf's early work on > frequency and language structure has been > (re)assessed, if at all. Dear Matt: You might want to have a look at the following materials: Pustet, R. (forthcoming). "Zipf and his heirs." Language Sciences Pustet, R. (2002). "Discourse frequency and language change." Paper presented at CSDL 6, Houston, TX, Oct 2002 Since these papers are not published (yet), I could send them to you as attachments, if you like. Best, Regina __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com From vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Thu Nov 21 13:56:18 2002 From: vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (vanvalin at ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 08:56:18 -0500 Subject: 2003 RRG Conference-First Announcement Message-ID: First Announcement The 2003 International Course and Conference on Role and Reference Grammar: S?o Paulo State University at S?o Jos? do Rio Preto, Brazil 14-20th July 2003 Exploring the interfaces among meaning, function and morphosyntactic form Organization The organizing committee for RRG2003 consists of Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Roberto Gomes Camacho (S?o Paulo State University), Marize M. Dall'Aglio Hattnher. (S?o Paulo State University), Ricardo Mairal (UNED, Madrid) and Toshio Ohori (Tokyo University). Event Programme A four-day international course will be followed by a three-day international conference. The course will include lecture sessions at three levels: introductory, post-graduate and specialized. Introductory sessions will present 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. There will also be a workshop on Amazonian languages headed by Daniel Everett on July 18-20 as part of the conference. The title is 'Autochthonous languages in Brazil and syntactic theory: functional and formal considerations'. Contact Daniel Everett (Dan.Everett at man.ac.uk) for more details. Teaching and Discussion Topics RRG2003 will deal with issues in linguistic theory related to the theory of RRG as presented 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, information structure, and lexical semantics. Parallel Session on FG During the conference, there will be a parallel session on FG. 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 course and conference include Anna Siewierska (Lancaster University), Balthasar Bickel (University of Leipzig), Dan Everett (University of Manchester), Robert Van Valin (University at Buffalo). Abstracts The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and workshops is March 15, 2003. 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 last forty-five minutes, followed by another fifteen minutes of discussion. The selection of papers for presentation will have been communicated by April 15, 2003. Conference/Course Fee and Further information A web page is under construction at the moment. Further information on RRG2003, including a detailed programme, accommodation information, payment, social events, etc., will be enclosed in subsequent announcements. Anyone interested in receiving further information should send a message to the e-mail address for RRG2003: RRG2003 at ibilce.unesp.br From haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE Fri Nov 22 10:13:09 2002 From: haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:13:09 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality Message-ID: Postal's view of language change as fashion-like and entirely non-functional overlooks one important property of language change: its overwhelming DIRECTIONALITY. In phonological change, we get p > f s > h ke > ce u > y ii > ai tata > tada > taa, etc. but the reverse changes hardly ever occur. Similarly, in syntactic change, we get N > P V > Aux V > C S+S > S P > case-marker, etc. but the reverse changes never occur. This overwhelming directionality has not been sufficiently emphasized by historical linguists, I feel, and its true extent can only be seen from a broad cross-linguistic perspective (which Labov doesn't have, which may explain his skepticism of functional explanations). I am not aware of a similar directionality in fashion changes. For a Chomskyan who thinks of the language system as largely determined by arbitrary innate principles, with functional principles playing hardly a role, they must be quite puzzling, and indeed I have not seen an attempt to reconcile these observations with the traditional generative ideology. (Optimality Theory is a different matter.) So functional principles do play an important role in language change, but they are not sufficient to explain it, because after all languages do not improve globally by changing. Thus, I agree with Bill Croft that both the functional perspective and the social perspective are equally important, and neglecting either one can lead to serious errors. 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 dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Fri Nov 22 10:19:37 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 10:19:37 +0000 Subject: Postal quote/directionality In-Reply-To: <3DDE0335.709B2AF1@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: Martin, I agree with you and with Bill. But I think that Postal does too. There are two aspects of change, as you know. (i) Where is it likely to occur in language structures? Here is where directionality and functional & structural constraints are crucial. (ii) When is it likely to occur? This is what Weinrich called the 'actuation problem'. And this is social, as Postal, among many others has said. Postal was not intending, I do not believe, to summarize all of linguistic change in that quote. Dan ******************** Dan Everett Professor of Phonetics and Phonology Department of Linguistics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, UK M13 9PL Phone: 44-161-275-3158 Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187 http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 848 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Fri Nov 22 13:23:55 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:23:55 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality In-Reply-To: Message-ID: At 10:19 +0000 22/11/02, Daniel Everett wrote: >Martin, > >I agree with you and with Bill. But I think that Postal does too. >There are two aspects of change, as you know. > (i) Where is it likely to occur in language structures? >Here is where directionality and functional & structural constraints >are crucial. > (ii) When is it likely to occur? This is what Weinrich >called the 'actuation problem'. And this is social, as Postal, among >many others has said. > >Postal was not intending, I do not believe, to summarize all of >linguistic change in that quote. Although this could sound paradoxical, I agree with Everett, but not with Haspelmath or Croft. If 'actuation' (and diffusion) is (are) social and not functional, then the explanation of lg change is not really functional, unless we interchange wrongly causes and effects, as argued cleverly in Lass' final chapter (1997: Historical Linguistics and Language Change, Cambridge University Press) and in Sihler's recent Handbook (2000: Language History. An Introduction, John Benjamins). Best regards, Jose-Luis Mendivil From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Fri Nov 22 16:38:01 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:38:01 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 8:26:51 AM, jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES writes: << Although this could sound paradoxical, I agree with Everett, but not with Haspelmath or Croft. If 'actuation' (and diffusion) is (are) social and not functional, then the explanation of lg change is not really functional >> The problem here I think is in viewing "social" as somehow opposite to functional. Martin Haspelmath's original point was that linguistic change has "directionality", something that apparently does not occur in "fashion" - and therefore that such change must be functional. The difficulty in separating fashion from function is old one. In anthropology, it was addressed a while ago by Bronislaw Malinowski's "Structural-Functionalism" where some rational sense was given to the interaction between the two factors. And it's worth noting that even random, arbitrary change can be viewed in this context as "functional", in that it provides a mechanism for structural growth -- much in the same way that random genetic mutations supplies the raw material for biological diversity. Random linguistic change is in essence "experimental" -- it supplies new functionality and there-in lies its function. On the other hand, conservative preservation of apparently "functionless" fashion also serves the function of providing predictability and stability in social interactions. Predictability - even arbitrary predictability - has a parallel function in language. Martin's example of "f > p" sound change does show directionality, to the extent that "p > f" is not regularly observable. But it may be important to remember that how a sound change happens is a very different question than how a sound change spreads. "p > f" may well happen, but it does not become part of a language system -- it does not spread and is not preserved. Perhaps it is always a isolated failed experiment, whenever it happens. At the base of all this is the fact that language is fundamentally a social event. If a person who has never learned a language from someone else talks to himself, what language does he use? And when he speaks to someone else, can he use truly "arbitrary" sounds? Isn't the understanding of the listener a "functional" consideration? Doesn't the objective of communication make language ALWAYS a functional matter? -- Unless of course one is content with only babbling to one's self? Steve Long From geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU Fri Nov 22 16:49:36 2002 From: geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU (Geoff Nathan) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:49:36 -0500 Subject: Postal quote/directionality Message-ID: At 11:13 AM 11/22/2002 +0100, Martin Haspelmath wrote: >This overwhelming directionality >has not been sufficiently emphasized by historical linguists, I feel, >and its true extent can only be seen from a broad cross-linguistic >perspective (which Labov doesn't have, which may explain his skepticism >of functional explanations). > >I am not aware of a similar directionality in fashion changes While Dan is correct to point out the distinction between actuation and spread, we can note that a similar directionality in clothing fashion would lead to cycles of nudity followed by reimposition of elaborate, totally-covering clothing. Life might be more interesting that way, but clothes don't seem to follow the p > f > h > 0, or N > P > Case ending > schwa > 0 cycles. Geoff Geoffrey S. Nathan Computing and Information Technology/Linguistics Program (snailmail) Department of English Wayne State University Detroit, MI, 48202 Phone Numbers Linguistics (English): (313) 577-8621 Computing and Information Technology: (313) 577-1259 Home: (313) 417-8406 From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Fri Nov 22 17:43:00 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 18:43:00 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <5b.31b5cd95.2b0fb769@aol.com> Message-ID: At 11:38 -0500 22/11/02, Steve Long wrote: >The problem here I think is in viewing "social" as somehow opposite to >functional. Of course, we are not using 'functional' in the same sense. Adopting a linguistic innovation may be functional in social terms, but it needn't be linguistically or structurally functional. >Martin Haspelmath's original point was that linguistic change has >"directionality", something that apparently does not occur in "fashion" - and >therefore that such change must be functional. The problem lies in the 'therefore'. Certain directionality (i.e. some 'paths' open to change based on structural patterns, phonetic conditions, economy, etc.) does not imply that the cause of the change was functional. What's the matter then when p does not change into f and remains as it is for hundreds or thousands of years? Is this functional inclination waiting for his opportunity to be satisfied? If the motivation for the spread of a change is social, it is not (linguistically) functional; otherwise changes should not propagate following social factors such as sex, prestige, etc. As Lass puts it: "Because unless a motivation is arbitrary, its implementation ought not to be subject to contingent factors like age, sex, prestige, etc." (1997: 364). He is even more radical: "Say a change starts in one speaker, or a very small group, and moves from that focus along networks (...) This must mean that the 'reasons' for the change can't be functional, because in fact they are different for the initiator(s) and the followers; the motivations for the latter are functional. Or did they pick up the original motivations as well, suddenly discovering under the pressure of prestige that they really had the same motivations all along?" (Lass, 1997: 364). Jose-Luis Mendivil From w.croft at MAN.AC.UK Fri Nov 22 17:56:23 2002 From: w.croft at MAN.AC.UK (Bill Croft) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 17:56:23 +0000 Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' Message-ID: As Dan Everett observes, one must distinguish between innovation (actuation) and propagation for evolutionary change (those that occur by replication), such as language change. For that reason, there is no incompatibility between Labov's critique of functionalism and what I proposed (pace Dick Hudson). Only innovation is 'functional'; propagation is social. Labov and I agree on that point. But I'm not sure who has said actuation/innovation is 'social', as Dan has stated in his posts. (Actually, I am too hasty in equating 'actuation' with 'innovation' here. As far as I understand Weinreich, Labov & Herzog 1968, the actuation question is both the question of how innovation occurs and the question of when & where it occurs. The latter question is tantamount to deterministic prediction. This doesn't really have a place in a probabilistic model such as evolutionary change, as several here and elsewhere have noted.) Also, the apparent incompatibility of sociolinguistics and functionalism depends on one's definition of 'functional'. Labov was objecting to teleological functional models of the sort proposed by Martinet, where a change occurs "in order to" alter the language system. Change occurs in the process of trying to socially interact via communication, as Rudi Keller has argued. But the mechanisms of innovation (or altered replication, to use the more abstract terminology of the evolutionists) and propagation (selection) are domain-specific. So the analogy with fashion is probably not helpful. Fashion, like cultural change, is an example of evolutionary change, and so there is both innovation and propagation of changes of fashion. But one shouldn't expect the mechanisms of fashion innovation and propagation to be the same as those for linguistic innovation and propagation. They certainly aren't for language change and biological evolution. In particular, as Martin Haspelmath points out, language change is (locally) directional or directed; the fact that fashion change is not directed is irrelevant. I believe that language change is (locally) directed because functional innovation is directed (pace Steve Long). Again, some linguists have assumed that an evolutionary model of language change requires innovation to be random because the mechanism of altered replication in biology, mutation, is random. But the mechanisms of altered replication in language change and biological evolution don't have to be the same either; and they are not. Bill Croft From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Fri Nov 22 17:58:12 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 12:58:12 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 12:04:14 PM, geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU writes: << we can note that a similar directionality in clothing fashion would lead to cycles of nudity followed by reimposition of elaborate, totally-covering clothing. Life might be more interesting that way, but clothes don't seem to follow the p > f > h > 0, or N > P > Case ending > schwa > 0 cycles. >> But there is functionality in clothing. In fact, it is hard to see how humans could have migrated to northern climes without an extreme appreciation of not only the utility of clothing but the functional consequences of being naked in a snowstorm. Going back to Malinowski, the functionality of a war helmet preceded its ceremonial meaning. Boat shoes, ties, buttons and bows pass back and forth between functional and "structural". Push-up bras have multitude of eternal functions, though the social acceptibility of the consequences may ebb and flow. As far as p > f (I just noticed my dyslexia kicked in my last post -- sorry about that), I have a video tape of a six year old Jordan R. losing patience with the off-camera questioner as he names his favorite movie. Frustrated that the adult doesn't recognize the name, Jordan articulates it emphatically -- "Fedator!". The movie he is referring to "Predator". Jordan has since "corrected" his fricatives, so that his relatives can joke about "Fedetor!" whenever a promotion for the Arnold film is on tv. But at least in this tiny micocosm, one can observe f > p. And of course -- in the majority of IndoEuropean languages, outside of Germanic and Armenian, where p > p -- the temptation to adopt the "directionality" of p > f has never taken hold. And perhaps the basic reason is the need to be understood (Fedator!). One might conclude that there are different functions dictating what direction change goes in, not that any changes are without direction. Steve Long From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Fri Nov 22 18:42:07 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 13:42:07 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 12:47:54 PM, jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES writes: << Of course, we are not using 'functional' in the same sense. Adopting a linguistic innovation may be functional in social terms, but it needn't be linguistically or structurally functional... Certain directionality (i.e. some 'paths' open to change based on structural patterns, phonetic conditions, economy, etc.) does not imply that the cause of the change was functional. What's the matter then when p does not change into f and remains as it is for hundreds or thousands of years? Is this functional inclination waiting for his opportunity to be satisfied? >> My point was that this is an impossible analysis. Separating "linguistic or structural" functionality from social functionality is like separating the function of automobile from the function of motion. If it is easier or more "linguistically" economical to slur a word than to articulate it, than the mechanical directionality should be towards slurring. But "linguistically" the resulting sounds must approximate the sounds a listener can recognize or the slurring will be ineffective as communication. The listener will not respond with understanding. Is this social or is this linguistic? You can only change sounds so far before you become incomprehensible and that alone should prevent the spread of your sound change. <<"Say a change starts in one speaker, or a very small group, and moves from that focus along networks (...) This must mean that the 'reasons' for the change can't be functional, because in fact they are different for the initiator(s) and the followers; the motivations for the latter are functional. Or did they pick up the original motivations as well, suddenly discovering under the pressure of prestige that they really had the same motivations all along?">> And again I think what Lass is not taking account of here is that the change is first of all totally dependent on comprehension. This is a totally social function. And it is the only way that a spread can happen. Incomprehensibility is the ever-present functional guard at the door of any kind of change and I find it impossible to classify it it as "non-linguistic." As far as what motivates the sound change in the first place, we can assume it can't be incomprehensibility. Prestige is a pretty useless concept, but if it means that listeners find some value ("linguistic" or "non-linguistic") in imitating a new form of speech, we should really assume that value was also there for the original innovator. I don't understand why one would think otherwise. <> The answer is, of course, is that retaining the p is linguistically functional in the first place. The primary directionality is NOT change. The primary directionality is consistency between speakers and listeners. To the extent that change works against mutual comprehensibilty, it is dysfunctional. To the extent that change eventually adds comprehensibity, we should expect it to happen. The fact that linguistics cannot identify the functual value of every single change does not mean it is not there. Steve Long From hhalmari at UFL.EDU Fri Nov 22 20:46:55 2002 From: hhalmari at UFL.EDU (Helena Halmari) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 15:46:55 -0500 Subject: AAAL Graduate Student Travel Grant Message-ID: THIS IS A REMINDER OF THE APPROACHING DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 2003 AAAL GRADUATE STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS Purpose To help support travel (and some expenses) of 4 graduate student members of the American Association for Applied Linguistics to the 2003 annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia. Eligibility Applicants must be current members of AAAL (at time of application) who are in a university Master's or Ph.D. program in applied linguistics or a related field. Amount A maximum of 4 awards will be given: $800.00 each for up to two Ph.D. student awards and $600.00 each for up to two Master's student awards. In addition, the awards include the waiving of conference registration fees. Application Procedure 1. Send five copies of a letter of introduction to Professor Helena Halmari. The contents of the letter must state*: (a) institution and program of study (b) current contribution to the field of applied linguistics (c) career plans after completion of degree program (d) current financial situation, including your university's contribution to conference travel (e) how conference attendance will benefit you and others (f) a biographical statement of no longer than 50 words, suitable for publication (g) contact information (address, telephone, fax, and e-mail) 2. Send a sealed letter of recommendation (do not send via fax!) from a professor in your graduate program who is familiar with your work. The letter should state your professor's estimation of: (a) your academic work and promise in the field of applied linguistics (b) personal attributes relevant to a career in applied linguistics (c) your level of need for financial assistance as provided for by this grant *Each of the categories listed must be addressed for your application to receive full consideration. Deadline for receipt of application is December 3, 2002. Send all materials to: 2003 AAAL Graduate Student Travel Grant Helena Halmari Program in Linguistics P.O. Box 115454 (Turlington Hall 4127) University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611-5454 If you have further questions, please contact: Helena Halmari Email: hhalmari at ufl.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 08:25:01 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:25:01 +0000 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <5b.31b5cd95.2b0fb769@aol.com> Message-ID: On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 04:38 pm, Steve Long wrote: > In a message dated 11/22/02 8:26:51 AM, jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES writes: > << Although this could sound paradoxical, I agree with Everett, but > not with > Haspelmath or Croft. If 'actuation' (and diffusion) is (are) social > and not > functional, then the explanation of lg change is not really functional > >> > > The problem here I think is in viewing "social" as somehow opposite to > functional. > > Martin Haspelmath's original point was that linguistic change has > "directionality", something that apparently does not occur in > "fashion" - and > therefore that such change must be functional. Hmm. This misses the point. Functionality constrains where change will occur and, let us say, in what direction. But lots of languages have the same functional/structural points in their grammar which would, under some views, favor change. Yet not all do. That is, two languages have the same structure favoring change, yet one changes and the other doesn't. Why not? The reason is likely to be social. Or in other cases, there is no functional/structural pressure to change, yet change nonetheless occurs. For example, Piraha (Amazonian) seems to have had a perfectly good pronominal system, with tones and clitics, yet it borrowed its current pronominal system from Tupi-Guarani (probably Nheengatu, possibly Tenharim - see Thomason and Everett 2001, in the penultimate (?) BLS proceedings and on Thomason's website at U of Michigan). Social and functional are not necessarily in competition, though they seem to be much of the time. But they *are* different. -- Dan Everett -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2294 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 08:31:15 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:31:15 +0000 Subject: Postal quote/directionality In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20021122114932.00abeec0@mail.wayne.edu> Message-ID: On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 04:49 pm, Geoff Nathan wrote: > > While Dan is correct to point out the distinction between actuation and > spread, we can note that a similar directionality in clothing fashion > would > lead to cycles of nudity followed by reimposition of elaborate, > totally-covering clothing. Life might be more interesting that way, > but > clothes don't seem to follow the p > f > h > 0, or N > P > Case ending > > > schwa > 0 cycles. > > Geoff > > Geoffrey S. Nathan > Well, I just watched some music videos and I am not sure that we don't go through such cycles in some subcultures. Anyway, the fact that not all things change that could simply reinforces the point that there is a difference between where a change is likely to take place in a structural system and when such changes take place. Theologians of Church Growth have long studied the social forces behind religious conversions, for example, showing that when people are likely to convert is often a social question, whereas the 'structural' problems that pressure some people towards religious change underdetermine conversion. Dan -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1798 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 08:34:26 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:34:26 +0000 Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 05:56 pm, Bill Croft wrote: > As Dan Everett observes, one must distinguish between > innovation (actuation) and propagation for evolutionary change > (those that occur by replication), such as language change. For > that reason, there is no incompatibility between Labov's > critique of functionalism and what I proposed (pace Dick > Hudson). Only innovation is 'functional'; propagation is social. > Labov and I agree on that point. But I'm not sure who has said > actuation/innovation is 'social', as Dan has stated in his > posts. > > (Actually, I am too hasty in equating 'actuation' with > 'innovation' here. As far as I understand Weinreich, Labov & > Herzog 1968, the actuation question is both the question of how > innovation occurs and the question of when & where it occurs. > The latter question is tantamount to deterministic prediction. > This doesn't really have a place in a probabilistic model such > as evolutionary change, as several here and elsewhere have > noted.) My definition of 'actuation' is the point (social/temporal) at which an idiolectical change begins to propagate. It was influenced by Weinrich, Labov, and Herzog, but is not identical to their view. -- Dan ******************** Dan Everett Professor of Phonetics and Phonology Department of Linguistics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, UK M13 9PL Phone: 44-161-275-3158 Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187 http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2141 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE Sat Nov 23 11:29:40 2002 From: dirk.geeraerts at ARTS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE (Dirk Geeraerts) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 12:29:40 +0100 Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' In-Reply-To: <60080EA8-FEBE-11D6-A4E9-000393D73F38@man.ac.uk> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES Sat Nov 23 13:59:14 2002 From: jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES (Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 14:59:14 +0100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <29.31c42b7a.2b0fd47f@aol.com> Message-ID: First of all, I must apologise for a critical mistake quoting Lass' words. Where I wrote **functional** in the following paragraph, I should have written **social**: >"Say a change starts in one speaker, or a very small group, and moves from >that focus along networks (...) This must mean that the 'reasons' for the >change can't be functional, because in fact they are different for the >initiator(s) and the followers; the motivations for the latter are **functional** Steve Long wrote: ><for hundreds or thousands of years? Is this functional inclination waiting >for his opportunity to be satisfied?>> > >The answer is, of course, is that retaining the p is linguistically >functional in the first place. The primary directionality is NOT change. I agree. >The primary directionality is consistency between speakers and listeners. To >the extent that change works against mutual comprehensibilty, it is >dysfunctional. To the extent that change eventually adds comprehensibity, >we should expect it to happen. But all states of a language are functional. Otherwise, they would not exist. So, a linguistic change (apart from the introduction of new words for new concepts or things) cannot properly add comprehensibility. Let's assume that the change of [p] into [f] is a natural tendency of lenition (a minor degree of obstruction of the airflow, etc.), i.e., a tendency towards the easiness of articulation. (This assumption would explain why p > f is more frequent and regular than f>p). Even in that case, only if the use of [f] instead of [p] has some 'social' value added, it will diffuse across the language and across the speakers, following social networks. As a consequence, the *cause* of the change is neither functional nor natural, but social (i.e. contingent from a linguistic point of view). > The fact that linguistics cannot identify the >functual value of every single change does not mean it is not there. This sounds to me not only circular and unfalsifiable, but even (as the late Gould would have said) 'panglossian'. Steve, thanks for taking into account my opinions despite my poor English. Jose-Luis Mendivil. From dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK Sat Nov 23 14:22:09 2002 From: dan.everett at MAN.AC.UK (Daniel Everett) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 14:22:09 +0000 Subject: Spelling Uriel Weinreich In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I just noticed that I have been spelling Uriel Weinreich as Uriel Weinrich in previous posts. In addition to my battological bavardage, I am sorry to have added a spelling error. Dan ******************** Dan Everett Professor of Phonetics and Phonology Department of Linguistics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, UK M13 9PL Phone: 44-161-275-3158 Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187 http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 570 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au Sun Nov 24 01:24:42 2002 From: ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au (Matthew Anstey) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 12:24:42 +1100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: <29.31c42b7a.2b0fd47f@aol.com> Message-ID: Hi Steve, > The answer is, of course, is that retaining the p is > linguistically functional in the first place. The primary > directionality is NOT change. The primary directionality is > consistency between speakers and listeners. To the extent > that change works against mutual comprehensibilty, it is > dysfunctional. To the extent that change eventually adds > comprehensibity, I think there is a danger here of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is posited THE primary cause of language change. Paul Boersma (Functional Phonology, 1998, phd Amsterdam) suggests that just for phonology there are five functional principles at work, often in conflict with one another. They are (1) speakers minimise articulartory effort; (2) speakers minimise perceptual confusion between utterances with different meanings; (3) listeners minimise effort needed for perceptual classification; (4) listeners maximise use of acoustic information; (5) speaker and listener maximise the information flow. Principle (5) is akin to your comment above. There are other principles we can add to this mix. For example, Gertraud Fenk-Oczlon and August Fenk, from the University of Klagenfurt, have considered neurological constraints such as the 3-second activity interval in which much human activity, speech included, occurs. This is biologically fixed. Undoubtedly, others have suggested numerous other factors at work. Boersma goes on to show how "functional optimality theory" can describe and explain the forms of phonology when these five principles are quantified. (For example, the constraint *REPLACE states "do not implement a perceptual coronal place specification as something that will be heard as labial place, for a nasal, before a consonant.") His is an interesting example of functional and social principles at work,--often in conflict--translated into a linguistic model. His phd work can be found in journal articles. In Functional Grammar (Dik, et alia), many competing functional constraints have been suggested for word ordering principles. Again, the result is a matter of which principle wins out at any given time. With regards, Matthew Anstey Matthew Anstey Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid Residence: Kambah, ACT, Australia ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au +61 (0)2 6296 4044 From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Mon Nov 25 07:12:53 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 02:12:53 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/23/02 8:25:40 PM, ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au writes: << I think there is a danger here of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is posited THE primary cause of language change. Paul Boersma (Functional Phonology, 1998, phd Amsterdam) suggests that just for phonology there are five functional principles at work, often in conflict with one another. They are (1) speakers minimise articulartory effort; (2) speakers minimise perceptual confusion between utterances with different meanings; (3) listeners minimise effort needed for perceptual classification; (4) listeners maximise use of acoustic information; (5) speaker and listener maximise the information flow. Principle (5) is akin to your comment above. >> It can't be accurate to lump these "principles" causing phonological change together, as if "information flow" were merely a subcategory. Consider a situation where Principle (5) is totally absent. Neither speaker nor listener has the slightest interest in "information flow." Don't the other four principles become totally irrelevant? Why would a speaker be interested in minimizing the "confusion between utterances with different meanings?" Why would a listener care at all about "perceptual classification"? Putting the need to maximize information flow at zero, the speaker has nothing to say and the listener is not listening. What Principles 1-4 above are actually describing are various methods for maximizing "information flow" -- if we want to use those words. Even when "speakers minimise articulartory effort", they are doing nothing more than seeking to move information more efficiently, more "economically" -- subject to the threshold of comprehensibilty and given that they are speaking to someone who may not understand them if they are too economical. But there's not much point in worrying about too much or too little "articulatory effort" if no one is listening. All of these "principles" basically are created by the need for communication. As far as the danger "of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is posited THE primary cause of language change", let me just be clear about what I was saying. I wrote that "the primary directionality is NOT change." This seems blatantly apparent to me. Comprehensibility demands that speakers speak much the same most of the time, with the same sounds coresponding to the same meanings. If that's true, then can INCOMPREHENSIBITY can ever be the objective when sounds or grammar change in a language? Do speakers ever actuate or adopt sound changes so that absolutely no one else will understand them when they are speaking out loud? I think that it is more plausible to believe that changes are adopted when they aid in some way in communication or listener comprehension -- perhaps often selectively. Even the Labovian speaker who adopts a more "prestigious" dialect is trying to communicate something new in his new way of speaking. As to why sound changes follow a p > f type directionality, when they occur -- that's like asking why all chairs have a place to put our bottoms. The reason is we all biologically have bottoms, but it definitely does not tell us why there are such things as chairs. BTW, I wrote as to why some languages did not adopt the p > f sound shift: "The answer is, of course, that retaining the p is linguistically functional in the first place." It's interesting that one explanation sometimes offered for the historic p > f shift in Germanic is that non-indo-european language speakers adopted the new language but retained the phonotactics of their old pre-IE language, i.e., spoke with an "accent". Whether or not that is true, it suggests that even in that kind of "sound change" it is possible to look for a conservative motivation. So that some changes might even be seen as nothing more than an adjustment to keep some other things the same. Steve Long From ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au Wed Nov 27 04:14:58 2002 From: ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au (Matthew Anstey) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:14:58 +1100 Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Steve, > >> In a message dated 11/23/02 8:25:40 PM, >> ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au writes: << I think there is a >> danger here of explanatory reductionism, whereby there is >> posited THE primary cause of language change. Paul Boersma >> (Functional Phonology, 1998, phd Amsterdam) suggests that >> just for phonology there are five functional principles at >> work, often in conflict with one another. They are (1) >> speakers minimise articulartory effort; (2) speakers minimise >> perceptual confusion between utterances with different >> meanings; (3) listeners minimise effort needed for perceptual >> classification; (4) listeners maximise use of acoustic >> information; (5) speaker and listener maximise the >> information flow. Principle (5) is akin to your comment above. >> > > It can't be accurate to lump these "principles" causing > phonological change together, as if "information flow" were > merely a subcategory. I agree. The various principles at work in language change are, as you point out, sub-principles of the general functional principle of communicative efficacy. My point is simply that in practice such a principle results in a variety of pressures on the language system that are often in conflict with one another. Nevertheless, I am still wary about the idea that "information flow" is the only purpose for which language is used, ie, the only functional principle. It would depend on what is meant by information. Wouldn't sociolinguists observe many uses of language where information flow would appear to be minimal? With regards, Matthew Anstey Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid Residence: Kambah, ACT, Australia ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au +61 (0)2 6296 4044 From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Wed Nov 27 04:49:16 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 23:49:16 EST Subject: Evolutionary change, 'functional' and 'social' Message-ID: In a message dated 11/22/02 12:59:14 PM, w.croft at MAN.AC.UK writes: << I believe that language change is (locally) directed because functional innovation is directed (pace Steve Long). Again, some linguists have assumed that an evolutionary model of language change requires innovation to be random because the mechanism of altered replication in biology, mutation, is random. But the mechanisms of altered replication in language change and biological evolution don't have to be the same either; and they are not. >> Some things that are worth pointing out here: 1) Naturalistic science assumes that to a certain point language arose as a result of natural selection (biological evolution). (This does not address a non-naturalistic, supernatural cause of language -- precisely because it is not naturalistic.) So I know of no other scientific position than that biological evolution gave rise to language . And that therefore that the changes that brought language to some point 'X' were identical to natural selection and biological evolution and diversity. And, to this extent, I know of no other scientific means of accounting for the changes which brought about language (to some point X) -- particularly basic brain-to-speech functionality -- than natural selection. 2) Beyond that certain X point, the phenomena of language in all its shapes and forms may no longer have been subject to the processes of "undirected" biological evolution. But its important to take a closer look at the distinction that Bill Croft seems to make between change in biological evolution versus language -- the distinction between directed and random change. ("...some linguists have assumed that an evolutionary model of language change requires innovation to be random because the mechanism of altered replication in biology, mutation, is random.") It should be pointed out that not all plant or animal forms (not all "altered replications") are the result of "un-directed" change. In fact, horses, cows, dogs, corn and carrots are all products of a definite sort of directed change. Probably most large non-human mammals on this planet are the result of a "directed" change. Some are the result of selective breeding, others are the result of induced mutation -- but their current forms were all guided towards a certain utility, certainly "directed" in any sense of the word. So it is not easy to see the distinction between that particular process -- where humans intervene to re-direct natural selection in plant and animal breeding -- and "directed" change in language. 3) It would also be a mistake to think that natural selection represents "random change" in the sense that evolution represents true randomness. It does not. There are extreme constraints on biological change. The key concept is selection. No change is preserved unless it conforms to the demands of the local environment. What I would suggest is crucially missing in evaluating the comparison of biological evolution and language change is that concept -- selection. No matter how or where a linguistic change may "begin", its survival should be dependent on some kind of selectivity. But what or who is doing the selection? No matter how constrained or directed changes in human speech may be, it seems it is the listener who decides whether that change will survive. Once again, speech that consistently has no effect on the listener will neither spread or be called change by linguists. If no one understands what you are saying, it is highly unlikely that any one will begin to talk like you. Linguistics doesn't call the repetition of meaningless sounds "language." That even should apply if the only listener is the person speaking. So it seems it is the response of the listener that should logically be the main cause of change and the directionality of change. Of course this is subject to a certain degree to biological constraints -- we don't expect sounds beyond human vocal cords or human hearing, or p's for f's. But whether we look at the regularity that is language or any change in that language, we must have a priori both a speaker and a listener. Even if they are the same person. 5.) Natural selection is functional -- in a scientifically observable sense -- because biological structure, change and diversity is dictated by outcome. If language is functional, the outcome of speech should logically dictate the structure, change and diversity of speech. To what extent is language change dictated by something other than outcome? What would be the other source, if there is one? 6.) And finally if language did not evolve, either "biologically" or "culturally" or both, because of its value in communication, what was its value? Does anyone really believe that at one time we humans all spoke our own personal languages out loud and eventually we got around to adapting them to speak to one another? That would probably be the only scenario where one could plausibly see language as having a non-social function. Steve Long From Salinas17 at AOL.COM Wed Nov 27 16:38:54 2002 From: Salinas17 at AOL.COM (Steve Long) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:38:54 EST Subject: Postal quote/directionality/talking to oneself Message-ID: In a message dated 11/26/02 11:16:14 PM, Matthew Anstey writes: << Nevertheless, I am still wary about the idea that "information flow" is the only purpose for which language is used, ie, the only functional principle. It would depend on what is meant by information. Wouldn't sociolinguists observe many uses of language where information flow would appear to be minimal? >> The problem is that "information" is such a ubiquitous event. In theory, the smallest change in state can create an "information flow" to an observer. You don't need human language. Prairie dogs, bees and deer in mating seasons use sounds to exchange information. Humans whistle, hoot and scream. If I do nothing more than stand when a lady enters the room, I've conveyed information. Language is a much smaller subset than information flow. And that means that any use of human language between individuals is of necessity going to create "information flow". Every word is a change of state when a listener "observes" it. Why would humans use language otherwise? What purpose, intent or function -- conscious or unconsious -- can ascribe to the use of language besides the exchange of information BETWEEN individuals? This brings us back to talking to oneself. This seems to be the only circumstance where language is not overtly social. Whether we do it silently or out loud, the apparent outcome is not a flow of information between individuals. My own strong suspicion is that when we talk to ourselves, we simulate the social use of language. We are ourselves both speaker and listener. And this happens I think because speech without a listener is simply not language. It takes two to tango or to use language. When I remind myself to throw out the garbage or work out a math problem, I am speaking (out loud or in my head) and I am listening. So there is "information flow" in the sense that talking to myself should otherwise be unnecessary -- the information is after all already there in my brain -- why do I need to repeat it?. What I am actually doing is manipulating information -- moving it around, "flowing" it -- by simulating an interpersonal exchange. The best indication I have of this is that I cannot talk to myself in a language that I do not already know. I am bi-lingual enough to be able to talk to myself in multiple languages. But I cannot talk to myself in a private unknown language. The phonology, grammar, morphology and syntax of self-talk all follow precisely how I learned to talk socially. (Luckily I don't hear other voices in my head, but if I did my bet would be they would be in English -- or maybe a ponderous, foreboding Latin.) An obvious conclusion from this -- to the extent it is true -- would be that there is really no instance where the basic function of language is not involved in conveying information (even where speaker and listener are one) - functionally dictating that language should first all of be structured to serve interpersonal communication. The physiological structure of the language organs should follow that function. Constraints should simply mark the limitations placed on language by the physical world and the biological and physiological limitations of the organs that evolution (and a million years of human culture) have given us to achieve that function. Going back to the reason that all p's don't always become f's in human speech. The basic reason would be that listeners are less likely to understand words where p's have been turned into f's. And so communication would be the primary reason why p's stay p's. And conversely the main reason some p's become f's. Regards, Steve Long From bill_mann at SIL.ORG Wed Nov 27 17:42:57 2002 From: bill_mann at SIL.ORG (William Mann) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:42:57 -0500 Subject: new website for Dialogue Macrogame Theory (DMT) Message-ID: Announcing a website for Dialogue Macrogame Theory (DMT) Dialogue Macrogame Theory (DMT) is a method for systematic description of human dialogues. It is organized around a distinction between collaborative and non collaborative parts of dialogues. Collaborative parts are described using "dialogue macrogames." These are two-party constructs which are sometimes used to regulate long intervals of interactions. At other times, using the same constructs, the intervals may be very short. Macrogames make it possible for both parties to fully control the course of the dialogue, because intentions for both parties are accepted and dismissed in a coordinated, negotiated fashion. Non collaborative parts of dialogues are describe using "unilaterals." Currently 12 macrogames and 12 unilaterals are defined. The website includes an introduction to DMT, definitions for the DMT entities, 19 fully analyzed dialogues (over 800 turns) and instructions for analysts. These dialogues (along with other analyses not on the website) represent a wide range of situations and individual goals or tasks. The types of situations include: ? Apollo 13 spacecraft emergency radio ? An excerpt of "hostage negotiation" ? Mathematics tutoring ? Electronics tutoring ? Physician - Patient interaction ? Travel agent working ? Administrative telephone interaction ? On line human to human help with computers ? Laboratory interaction from Maptask and other sources ? Airline pre-crash radio interaction ? Courtroom questioning of witnesses. The website, titled "Dialogue Resources" is at the following URL: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~billmann/dialogue Please excuse multiple copies. Bill Mann -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From iwasaki at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU Thu Nov 28 06:00:18 2002 From: iwasaki at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU (Iwasaki, Shoichi) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 22:00:18 -0800 Subject: Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS - First Announcement The 13th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) University of California at Los Angeles May 2-4, 2003 Guest Speakers: Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice University) "Middle voice in Balinese" Pranee Kullavanijaya (Chulalongkorn University) "A historical study of Time Markers in Thai" ***ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*** Abstract Deadline: February 3, 2003 Notification of acceptance: March 3, 2003 Presented papers are published in the proceedings. Presentations are allotted 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. An author may submit at most one single and one joint abstract. In case of joint authorship, one author should be designated for communication with the organizing committee. The following three items must be sent to the organizer: (1) 3 hard copies of an anonymous one-page abstract (8.5"x11", or A4) with 500 words or less. The second page may be used for data and references only. Abstracts should be as specific as possible, with a statement of topic, approach and conclusions. (2) an email attachment (Microsoft Word strongly preferred) of your abstract to . (3) a 3"x5" card listing the following: (a) paper title (b) sub-field (functional, discourse, sociolinguistics, phonology, formal syntax, semantics, historical, language contact etc.) (c) name(s) of author(s) (d) affiliation(s) of author(s) (e) mailing address (in January through May) (f) contact phone number for each author (in January through May) (g) email address for each author (in January through May) *SEND ABSTRACTS TO* Shoichi Iwasaki University of California, Los Angeles South and Southeast Asian Languages & Cultures (c/o EALC) 290 Royce Hall Los Angeles CA 90095 (seal2003 at humnet.ucla.edu) From w.croft at MAN.AC.UK Fri Nov 29 16:56:04 2002 From: w.croft at MAN.AC.UK (Bill Croft) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 16:56:04 +0000 Subject: Evolution, and 'functional' + 'social' Message-ID: One must distinguish between the evolution of language and the evolution of languages. The former is the evolution of human cognition and social behavior that permitted the rise of modern human language. This is of course an instance of biological evolution, of human beings. The latter is the process by which linguistic elements change over time. This is an evolutionary process, that is it involves change by replication; but it is not the same evolutionary process as biological evolution. The evolving populations are different: not genes and organisms, but tokens of linguistic structure (called 'linguemes' in "Explaining language change") and speakers. I agree that selection is a central aspect of language change; it usually goes under the name of propagation in sociohistorical linguistics. But change by replication involves both innovation (altered replication) and propagation (selection). Change doesn't happen without both steps of the process taking place. They are equally necessary. When I hypothesized that innovation/altered replication in language change is functional and propagation/selection is social, I had specific definitions of 'functional' and 'social' in mind. Both terms have been used to cover many different phenomena, within linguistics and without. One can construe innovation as social in some sense - after all, anything to do with language is social - and propagation as functional in some sense - after all, any social behavior which is successful (by some criterion) is functional in a way. My hypothesis applies only to the notion of 'functional' as 'pertaining to the mapping between morphosyntactic form and semantic-pragmatic substance, and between phonological form and phonetic substance', and 'social' as 'pertaining to language in social interaction and social organization'. In fact the latter is still too vague; I should perhaps have said just 'social organization' (see "Explaining language change", chapter 7). Also, when I wrote about the prospect of a fruitful marriage between functional and sociolinguistic approaches to language, I had these particular definitions in mind. The link between the two is, of course, social interaction: function only makes sense with respect to social interaction, and social organization is the result of social interaction. Bill Croft