From clements at indiana.edu Sun Feb 1 19:00:27 2004 From: clements at indiana.edu (clements) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 14:00:27 -0500 Subject: question In-Reply-To: <3FCC5632.8030304@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: Professor Tomasello, Did you receive any interesting responses from your query? Clancy Clements On Tue, 2 Dec 2003, Michael Tomasello wrote: > I am interested in specific proposals about precisely what is in > Universal Grammar - like a list or inventory (Jackendoff's new book > provides one example). Please send references to me directly, and I > will share results if there are interesting responses. > > Thanks in advance, > > Mike Tomasello > > > ************************************************* J. Clancy Clements Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BH844, IU-B 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue Bloomington, IN 47401 USA Tel 812-855-8612 Fax 812-855-4526 Email clements at indiana.edu Webpage http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/clements.html ************************************************* From Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se Mon Feb 2 06:44:09 2004 From: Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se (Henrik Rosenkvist) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 07:44:09 +0100 Subject: unless Message-ID: Some time ago I asked for grams that may mean both 'except' and 'unless'. I thank all contributors! The list I have compiled is: (Old) English: but, except German: ausser (wenn) Spanish: salvo (que) Old Swedish: utan, num Old Norse, Icel.: nema Arabic: 'illa Latin nisi Of these grams, utan, but and ausser seem to be developed from grams meaning 'outside'. Henrik R. -- Henrik Rosenkvist Dep. of Scandinavian Languages Helgonabacken 14 223 62 Lund SWEDEN tel: 046-222 87 13 fax: 046-222 42 41 From Elise.Karkkainen at oulu.fi Wed Feb 4 07:16:27 2004 From: Elise.Karkkainen at oulu.fi (Elise =?iso-8859-1?Q?K=E4rkk=E4inen?=) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 09:16:27 +0200 Subject: Book on epistemic stance Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, I would like to bring to your attention my book, published at the end of last year. Thanks, Elise Kärkkäinen Epistemic Stance in English Conversation A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think Elise Kärkkäinen University of Oulu This book is the first corpus-based description of epistemic stance in conversational American English. It argues for epistemic stance as a pragmatic rather than semantic notion: showing commitment to the status of information is an emergent interactive activity, rooted in the interaction between conversational co-participants. The first major part of the book establishes the highly regular and routinized nature of such stance marking in the data. The second part offers a micro-analysis of I think, the prototypical stance marker, in its sequential and activity contexts. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and paying serious attention to the manifold prosodic cues attendant in the speakers’ utterances, the study offers novel situated interpretations of I think. The author also argues for intonation units as a unit of social interaction and makes observations about the grammaticization patterns of the most frequent epistemic markers, notably the status of I think as a discourse marker. John Benjamins Publishing Company Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 115 2003. Hb xii, 213 pp. 90 272 5357 9 EUR 85.00 1 58811 444 9 USD 85.00 Table of contents Acknowledgements List of tables 1. Introduction 2. Expression of epistemic stance: Preliminaries 3. The intonation unit as analytical unit 4. Routinization of stance marking at the linguistic and interactional level 5. Stance-taking as an interactive activity: The case of I think 6. Concluding remarks References; Appendix; Name index; Subject index Elise Kärkkäinen PhD, Academy Research Fellow Department of English Box 1000 FIN - 90014 University of Oulu FINLAND From remlingk at gvsu.edu Wed Feb 4 13:03:33 2004 From: remlingk at gvsu.edu (Kathryn Remlinger) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 08:03:33 -0500 Subject: Call for Papers: ADS at MMLA Message-ID: Call for Papers: Fall meeting of ADS at MMLA (With apologies for cross-posting.) American Dialect Society at the 46th Annual Midwest Modern Language Association Convention; November 4-7, 2004; St. Louis, Missouri; Hyatt Regency. Topic: "Language Variation and Change in the United States" Papers dealing with varieties of English or other languages spoken in the United States will be considered. Presentations may be based in traditional dialectology, or in other areas of language variation and change, including sociolinguistics, historical, anthropological, folk linguistics, language and gender, critical discourse analysis, or narratology. April 15 is the deadline for 300-word abstracts. Send abstracts to the meeting chair, Kathryn Remlinger, Associate Professor, Department of English, Grand Valley State University, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI 49401; tel: 616-331-3122; fax: 1-616-331-3430; remlingk at gvsu.edu. Email submissions are preferred. Membership to MMLA is $35 full and associate professors, $30 assistant professors and school teachers, $20 adjunct and part-time faculty, $15 students, retired, and unemployed. Write MMLA, 302 English-Philosophy Bldg, U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1408, tel: 319-335-0331. For more information about ADS at MMLA, see the MMLA website, www.uiowa.edu/~mmla, go to "Call for Papers", scroll down to "Associated Organizations", then to "American Dialect Society." Many thanks, Kathryn Remlinger Midwest Regional Secretary, ADS Associate Professor of English: Linguistics Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI 49401 remlingk at gvsu.edu 1-616-331-3122 From Adam.Kilgarriff at itri.brighton.ac.uk Wed Feb 4 13:45:26 2004 From: Adam.Kilgarriff at itri.brighton.ac.uk (Adam Kilgarriff) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 13:45:26 -0000 Subject: Resource for teaching and studying Lexical Semantics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Resource for teaching and studying Lexical Semantics ==================================================== For: students of linguistics and language technology Open Mind Word Expert is a teaching tool and free online word game. The user identifies what meaning of a word applies in example sentences. It is a way of getting students engaged in issues of word meaning (which, as a by-product, provides the organisers with a resource for evaluating computers doing the same job.) Try it out today, and be the one to make the highest contribution in any given day to receive a $10 gift certificate redeemable at Amazon, Borders, or Target. This give-away will close on February 22, 2004, so hurry up! http://teach-computers.org/word-expert/english Your or your students' input will contribute towards SENSEVAL http://www.senseval.org Adam Kilgarriff University of Brighton From yoshikom at stanford.edu Fri Feb 6 00:36:17 2004 From: yoshikom at stanford.edu (Yoshiko Matsumoto) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 16:36:17 -0800 Subject: Conference - announcement and call for papers Message-ID: Announcing a conference on: "Diversity and Universals in Language: The Consequences of Variation" sponsored by the Division of Languages, Cultures and Literatures, Stanford University. Pigott Hall Stanford University May 21-23, 2004 Theme: Diversity in language is ubiquitous: typological studies have identified many degrees of variation in every system of grammar (e.g., lexical category systems, systems of pronominal anaphora, (non-)configurational structure, degrees of inflection, to mention just a few), and studies within a given "language" have also identified many kinds of variation, only some of which are correlated with social groups, communities, or communicative styles. We welcome abstracts for papers which address any of these kinds of variation in the context of consequences for notions of linguistic universals, of a "standard language", or even what it means to "speak language X", and for language teaching (e.g., how far can the grammatical properties of one language be used to elucidate the properties of another, or, what variety of language X does one teach as the "standard language"?). Invited speakers: Barbara Johnstone, Carnegie Mellon University Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley Marianne Mithun, University of California, Santa Barbara Toshio Ohori, Tokyo University Abstract Guidelines: We are soliciting abstracts for 20-minute talks relevant to any of the topics mentioned above. Abstracts should be in 11pt font, or larger, consisting of one text page with a second page (only) for data, examples, charts, and references. Abstracts should be submitted electronically in Word (.doc) or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format to: div-in-lang-conf at stanford.edu. The author(s) of the abstract should not be identified in the abstract itself; the body of the submission message should include the title of the abstract, the names(s) of the author(s), the(ir) affiliation, and e-mail address(es). *Deadline* for submission: March 8th, 2004. The conference program will be announced as early as possible in later March. We plan to collect as many papers from the conference as possible for publication with a major publisher on the theme of linguistic diversity. Organizing Committee: Eve V. Clark, Linguistics Yoshiko Matsumoto, Asian Languages Alice A. Miano, Language Center Orrin W. Robinson, German Studies David Oshima, Linguistics Peter Sells, Linguistics Chaofen Sun, Asian Languages For further information please contact: div-in-lang-conf at stanford.edu. From n.chipere at reading.ac.uk Wed Feb 11 16:54:49 2004 From: n.chipere at reading.ac.uk (Ngoni Chipere) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 16:54:49 -0000 Subject: Hanna Pishwa Message-ID: Dear colleagues I'm trying to contact Hanna Pishwa. I'd be grateful if someone who knows her could send me her email address or email my query to her. Thanks Ngoni Chipere From ph1u at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Feb 11 18:17:47 2004 From: ph1u at andrew.cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 13:17:47 -0500 Subject: Hanna Pishwa Message-ID: Ngoni, Hanna's e-mail address is . - Paul --On Wednesday, February 11, 2004 4:54 PM +0000 n.chipere at reading.ac.uk wrote: > Dear colleagues > > I'm trying to contact Hanna Pishwa. I'd be grateful if someone who knows > her could send me her email address or email my query to her. > > Thanks > > Ngoni Chipere > Paul Hopper Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities College of Humanities and Social Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA Phone: (USA) 412-683-1109 Fax: (USA) 412-268-7989 From kibrik at comtv.ru Wed Feb 11 22:33:29 2004 From: kibrik at comtv.ru (Andrej Kibrik) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 01:33:29 +0300 Subject: 1st Russian Conference on Cognitive Science, Second call for papers Message-ID: FIRST RUSSIAN CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE SCIENCE October 9-12, 2004, Kazan Second Call for Papers The goal of the conference is to create a joint forum for representatives from various disciplines exploring cognition and its evolution, intellect, thinking, perception, consciousness, knowledge representation and acquisition, language as a means of cognition and communication, brain mechanisms of cognition, emotion and higher forms of behavior. Psychologists, linguists, neurophysiologists, specialists in artificial intelligence and neuroinformatics, computer scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, as well as other scientists interested in interdisciplinary issues in cognitive studies, are invited to take part in the conference. The organizers believe it is important for specialists from all these kinds of background to develop a common interdisciplinary language. The conference will be held in one of the major university cities of Russia, Kazan. It will be organized by Kazan State University that is going to turn 200 years old this year. The conference program will include several one-hour overview lectures by leading experts in cognitive research. Among the invited speakers will be: Konstantin V. Anokhin (Moscow) "The language genes" and the "Korsakoff mouse": What can we learn about cognition from transgenic animals? Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara, California) The roles of observation, experimentation, and introspection in understanding the mind Tatiana V. Chernigovskaya (Saint-Petersburg) To be announced Sandro V. Kodzasov (Moscow) Intonation as the marker of an utterance's informational environment Michael Posner (Eugene, Oregon) The development of neural network related to attention and self regulation Helge Ritter (Bielefeld) Artificial attention as a basis for cognitive robots Michael Tomasello (Leipzig and Atlanta, Georgia) The cultural origins of human cognition Boris M. Velichkovsky (Dresden and Moscow) Cognitive science applied Besides the invited lectures, central to the conference will be 30-minutes section talks by other participants. These talks will be given most of the time, since the main goal of the conference is informational exchange among the widest possible range of specialists. In addition, a poster session and a junior researchers' session are planned. All interested individuals are encouraged to propose abstracts of their papers, based on completed, high-quality, original unpublished research. Cognitive science is by definition interdisciplinary. The conference can be successful only if all of its participants, first, will be interested in the research of their colleagues from the neighboring fields and open to unfamiliar mode of thinking and communicating, and, second, will do their best to make their presentations clear to the people from other disciplines. For this reason, the organizers encourage papers that are of an interdisciplinary rather than narrowly specialized interest. The criterion of interdisciplinary intelligibility will be among the crucial ones in the selection process. The working languages of the conference will be Russian and English. Decisions on the acceptance of proposed papers will be made on the basis of the abstracts that must arrive no later than March 15, 2004. Please submit the abstract of your paper, in Russian or in English, by e-mail to the address cogsci04 at s2s.msu.ru as a MS Word or LaTeX file attached to an e-mail message. Please don't include more than one abstract in one message. The maximal size of an abstract is 2 pages (single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 type sizem, 2 cm margins on all sides), including illustrations and references. At the beginning of an abstract please indicate the following pieces of information: * the title of the paper (in caps) * the author's (authors') initials and last name(s), followed by affiliation in parentheses * e-mail address * 3 to 5 keywords The message to which an abstract is attached is supposed to contain exclusively the following information: 1. the title of the paper 2a. full name (including last name, first name, and middle name/patronymic, if applicable) of the author (or the first author, in the case of a group of authors) 3a. affiliation of the author (or the first author) 4a. educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D., etc.) of the author (or the first author) 2b. full name (including last name, first name, and middle name/patronymic, if applicable) of the second author 3b. affiliation of the second author 4b. educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D., etc.) of the second author --------likewise, for the third etc. author(s), if applicable------------------ 5. postal address at which the author(s) can be reached 6. phone number at which the author(s) can be reached 7. email address at which the author(s) can be reached 8. the preferred form of presentation (oral or poster) Please follow the given format, the order and numbering of items. So far, the organizers have received a vast response to the first call for papers. 340 abstracts have been submitted from 19 different countries, which many times exceeds the feasible amount of papers at the conference. For this reason, please keep in mind the following limitation: one author can participate in maximally one indvidual paper, and maximally two coauthored papers. You can submit abstracts irrespective of whether you have sent a preliminary informational message. Each abstract will be reviewed by minimally two members of the program committee representing different disciplines. The program committee will inform the authors of its decisions on the acceptance of proposals by June 15, 2004. The accepted abstracts will be published by the beginning of the conference. Publication of selected presentations is planned after the conference. During the conference, the question of establishing the Russian Cognitive Science Association may be discussed. The conference will be held at a resort located in a pine forest, on the bank of the Volga river, in a suburb of Kazan. The expected price of accommodations, including meals, is 700 to 1000 rubles (ca. $25 to $35) per day. A registration fee of 500 rubles (student discount 300 rubles) is expected (to cover publication costs and minor organizational needs). Visa support for international participants, provided by the University, will cost extra (about $10 for early processing of visa support, about $45 for urgent visa support; these amounts do not include the visa fee). Chairman of the Program Committee: Boris M. Velichkovsky (Dresden University and Federal Center of Speech Pathology and Neurorehabilitation; psychology). Vice-chairs: Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Moscow State University; linguistics) and Tatiana V. Chernigovskaya (St.Petersburg State University; linguistics and neurobiology) Chairman of the Organizing Committee: Valery D. Solovyev (Kazan State University; computer science and linguistics). Vice-chair: Aleksey N. Gusev (Moscow State University; psychology). Additional information on the conference is available at http://www.ksu.ru/cogsci04, in particular in the text of the First Call for Papers, or by e-mail at: cogsci04 at s2s.msu.ru. From vanvalin at buffalo.edu Thu Feb 12 17:58:59 2004 From: vanvalin at buffalo.edu (Robert VanValin) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 12:58:59 -0500 Subject: Reminder: Abstract deadline for RRG 2004 Message-ID: 2004 International Role and Reference Grammar Conference July 21-25, 2004 Dublin, Ireland Institute of Technology Blanchardstown Linguistic theory and practice: description, implementation and processing Themes: The lexicon and lexical decomposition in RRG. The RRG approach to morphology RRG and neurocognitive models of language processing Computational approaches to RRG Celtic Linguistics Lectures and workshops will be held on July 21-23. The conference will be July 24-25. Lectures: Introduction to RRG Delia Bentley (Univ. of Salford, UK) Lexical representation and lexical semantics in RRG Ricardo Mairal (UNED, Spain) Workshops and organizers: Computational implementation of RRG Elizabeth Guest (Leeds Metro Univ.) & Rolf Kailuweit (Univ. of Heidelberg) RRG and Neurocognitive models of language processing Ina Bornkessel (MPI Cognitive Neuroscience) & Matthias Schlesewsky (Univ. of Marburg) RRG and morphological theory Daniel Everett (Univ. of Manchester) Celtic linguistics and RRG Cecil Ward (Sabhal Ostaig, Scotland) & Brian Nolan (ITB) Additional workshops are possible Conference Guest Speaker: Prof. John Saeed (Trinity College, Dublin) Call for papers: The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and workshops is March 15, 2004. Abstracts for papers should be no longer than one page of text, with a second page for data and references. Abstracts for workshops should be no longer than three pages total. The language of the conference will be English. Papers will last twenty minutes, followed by another ten minutes of discussion. Workshops will last ninety minutes, which includes both presentations and discussion. The selection of papers for presentation and workshops will be communicated by April 15, 2004. Fees: The conference/course fee is EURO 220 for registrations with payments before May 1 2004; after that date it will be EURO 250. This is an all inclusive fee that includes the following —All workshops — All lectures — Full conference facilities — Full proceedings — Lunch on each of the 5 days — Coffee in AM and PM — Internet access for email — Conference dinner (vegetarians and special diets catered for) — Dublin city cultural events Grants Policy A maximum of 6 grants will be given to cover the RRG2004 conference/course fees which include the items noted above. Applications should be unemployed or PhD research students and will need to provide written and documented certification of their status. All applications for grants will be notified about the organizing committee's decisions by the end of May 2004. Applications for grants can be sent to: Dr. Brian Nolan Institute of Technology Blanchardstown School of Informatics and Engineering Blanchardstown Road North Blanchardstown Dublin 15 IRELAND Information about accommodations can be found on the conference website. Conference website: http://www.itb.ie/events/rrg2004.html Conference e-mail address: rrg2004 at itb.ie Head of local organizing committee: Dr. Brian Nolan=20 Institute of Technology Blanchardstown e-mail: Brian.Nolan at itb.ie Conference organizing committee: Daniel Everett (U Manchester), Rolf Kailuweit (U Heidelberg), Ricardo Mairal (UNED), Brian Nolan (ITB), Toshio Ohori (U Tokyo), Robert Van Valin (U Buffalo) From torgrim.solstad at german.uio.no Mon Feb 16 19:00:49 2004 From: torgrim.solstad at german.uio.no (Torgrim Solstad) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:00:49 +0100 Subject: General Ling/Oslo: Demoting the agent: passive and other voice-related phenomena Message-ID: Demoting the Agent: Passive and other Voice-related phenomena 1st Call for Papers Workshop at the University of Oslo November 25-27, 2004 Invited Speakers Elisabet Engdahl, Göteborg University Suzanne Kemmer, Rice University Anneliese Pitz, University of Oslo Sten Vikner, University of Aarhus The passive has constituted an important area of research in modern linguistics since the introduction of transformational grammar. Though there is little controversy of what constitutes the relevant data, several quite different perspectives on passive constructions have been developed. Whereas formal syntacticians and semanticist have focused on the contrast in argument structure concerning the active-passive diathesis, functionalist approaches have mostly dealt with differences in discourse participant prominence and other distinctions related to what one might term as information structure. There has also been an increasing interest in more typologically diverse data which has lead to research in other voice-related phenomena such as medium constructions and antipassives. No general agreement has been reached on the treatment of any of these phenomena, either. This workshop aims at bringing together researchers representing different perspectives on passives and other voice-related phenomena. Unifying theoretical approaches will be especially appreciated. Some of the diversity in the research in the field can be seen as related to, but not limited to the following: - formal linguistic perspectives - functional linguistic perspectives - syntax-semantics: compositionality - pragmatics: non-explicitness concerning agentivity - information structure We want to encourage multi-language perspectives, especially those contrasting two or more languages. Papers dealing with data from parallel corpora are welcome. Partial reimbursement may be possible for those speakers who cannot attend the workshop otherwise. Submission Procedure All authors should submit an anonymous abstract. The length of abstracts for talks should be at most 2 single-column pages, including examples and references. All submissions should also include a separate cover page specifying the author's name, affiliation, address, and e-mail address and title of the paper. The abstracts should be submitted electronically in one of the following formats: Word/RTF, ASCII, Postscript or PDF. They should be sent to the following e-mail-address: torgrim.solstad at german.uio.no All submitted papers that are received in time will be refereed by the programme committee and may be accepted for full presentation (45 min + 15 min for discussion) at the workshop and publication in the pre-workshop proceedings, or for a poster presentation. Important Dates Abstracts due: May 15 Acceptance notice: June 15 Final versions due for proceedings: October 15 Workshop dates: November 25-27 Program committee Elisabet Engdahl, Benjamin Lyngfelt, Anneliese Pitz, Torgrim Solstad, Kjell Johan Sæbø Organisation The workshop is organised by Torgrim Solstad, University of Oslo and Benjamin Lyngfelt, Göteborg University Funding: Research project "Languages in contrast" Torgrim Solstad, University of Oslo, PO Box 1004 Blindern, NO-0315 OSLO, NORWAY From jrubba at calpoly.edu Sat Feb 28 01:16:42 2004 From: jrubba at calpoly.edu (Johanna Rubba) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:16:42 -0800 Subject: 'like' Message-ID: Hi folks, Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any discourse-marker functions it has. Thanks! Jo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics English Department, California Polytechnic State University One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-2596 • E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu • Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From reng at ruf.rice.edu Wed Feb 18 16:17:29 2004 From: reng at ruf.rice.edu (Robert Englebretson) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 10:17:29 -0600 Subject: Symposium Announcement Message-ID: "Stancetaking in Discourse: subjectivity in interaction" the 10th biennial Rice Linguistics Symposium March 31-April 3, 2004, Rice University, Houston, TX. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/symposium_2004.html The Department of Linguistics at Rice University is pleased to announce the 10th Biennial Rice Linguistics symposium: "Stancetaking in Discourse: subjectivity in interaction". Presenters have been invited from linguistics and related disciplines to address stancetaking in naturally-occurring spoken and/or written discourse. Stance--broadly construed as the expression of emotion, attitude, subjectivity, and perspective--permeates language use at all levels. The symposium seeks to explore the interrelationship of stancetaking with language form and function, cultural construction, and social interaction. Invited speakers will address these issues from a range of approaches, including quantitative methodologies of discourse/corpus linguistics and qualitative methodologies of ethnography and Conversation Analysis. There is no registration fee to attend the symposium, but you will need to pre-register by e-mailing Robert Englebretson at reng at rice.edu. For further details, including the list of invited speakers and abstracts, see the symposium web page: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/symposium_2004.html From ellen at central.cis.upenn.edu Wed Feb 18 20:05:31 2004 From: ellen at central.cis.upenn.edu (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 15:05:31 EST Subject: 'like' In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:16:42 PST." <403FEBFA.770FEAB2@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: Johanna Rubba asks: >Hi folks, > >Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current >youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if >anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any >discourse-marker functions it has. > >Thanks! >Jo A splendid paper is: Siegel, Muffy. 2002. Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics. J. of Semantics 19(1). From davpark at microsoft.com Wed Feb 18 20:22:03 2004 From: davpark at microsoft.com (David Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:22:03 -0800 Subject: 'like' Message-ID: Interestingly (or otherwise), this appeared in today's Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/A rticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1076973009917&call_pageid=968332188492&col=96 8793972154 In case the link goes stale, here is the full text: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Like wow! That L-word is taking over teen lingo LOUISE BROWN EDUCATION REPORTER It's the new, like, grammar - like it or not. Canadian teens are sprinkling their speech with the word "like" at a soaring rate, new research shows - with some 16-year-olds using it even more often than the word "and." More than 20 years after the first Valley Girl, (popularized in a 1982 Frank Zappa song) swapped "like" for "said" - I'm like, `Gag me with a spoon' and she's like, `Oh my God!' - the four-letter word has worked its way into teen lingo at unprecedented speed. In Toronto, the "like" fad seems to peak at age 16, when one in every 20 words now spoken is "like," according to a recent study. The study was done by University of Toronto linguist Sali Tagliamonte, who will run a three-hour workshop today for high school students on teen slang. "Parents and teachers get on kids' cases for talking in a way they think sounds stupid - but `like' isn't really a heinous crime against English," said Tagliamonte, one of dozens of U of T professors speaking at a conference run by the Toronto Catholic District School Board for 600 students labelled `gifted.' "Language changes. We don't talk like Shakespeare any more, and it's usually young people who push the language forward." In the past seven years, Tagliamonte has tracked a four-fold jump in the use of "like" in setting up quotations (He's, like, `Go ahead.') In a recent study of 1,240 quotations by Toronto teens, 60 per cent used the word "like" to indicate a quote, up from 13 per cent in a similar study Tagliamonte conducted in 1995 in Ottawa. "It's unprecedented to find a feature of language increasing in frequency this rapidly," she said yesterday. "It used to take millennia for language to change, but timelines have telescoped with the advent of mass media." Still, linguists can't agree on why the word has become so popular. Some think people unwittingly use the word "like" as a stall tactic when they're not confident about what they're saying, she said. "What would that say about Canadians if that were true? That we're less confident about everything? That would be scary," scoffs Tagliamonte. Nor does she think it indicates a lack of specifics. "I've heard people use it in very specific references, as in, `The heat was, like, 467 degrees.'" And she insists it is not a sign of a poor vocabulary. "Some of my brightest students use `like' all the time, and they have very strong vocabularies. "So there is definitely something going on in the underlying grammar. But the jury's still out as to what that is." While the "l" word as a verb and adjective dates back to the 1200s, its new use as a "quotative" (I'm, like, `wow') was first spotted by linguist Ronald Butters of Duke University in 1982. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ David -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Ellen F. Prince Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:06 PM To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] 'like' Johanna Rubba asks: >Hi folks, > >Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current >youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if >anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any >discourse-marker functions it has. > >Thanks! >Jo A splendid paper is: Siegel, Muffy. 2002. Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics. J. of Semantics 19(1). From Salinas17 at aol.com Wed Feb 18 20:54:36 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 15:54:36 EST Subject: 'like' Message-ID: In a message dated 2/18/04 3:23:04 PM, davpark at microsoft.com writes: << While the "l" word as a verb and adjective dates back to the 1200s, its new use as a "quotative" (I'm, like, `wow') was first spotted by linguist Ronald Butters of Duke University in 1982. >> Anyone familiar with the likes of Cheech and Chong (or rather willing to admit it) might suggest that the use of "like" in the 60's and 70's was actually and logically to signal a simile. ("I mean, this weed is, like, atomic powered." versus the metaphorical "I mean, this weed is atomic powered." Compare "my love is, like, a red, red rose.") From there it traveled to a emphatic device. (...like, far out...) The use as a quotative (He's, like, "Go ahead.") is a further evolution that still nevertheless conveys some sense of the characteristic approximation of the simile. (He's [saying something] like, "Go ahead.") Steve Long From jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl Wed Feb 18 23:21:28 2004 From: jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl (Lachlan Mackenzie) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:21:28 +0000 Subject: Like in Scottish English Message-ID: For a quite different use of "like" as a discourse marker in Scottish English, see: Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 306-334. Lachlan Mackenzie From kemmer at rice.edu Thu Feb 19 04:00:54 2004 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:00:54 -0600 Subject: like Message-ID: Robert Underhill discussed the discourse uses of 'like' in a paper in the early 90s. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember it in Language. From carlosn at alumni.rice.edu Thu Feb 19 05:00:47 2004 From: carlosn at alumni.rice.edu (Carlos M Nash) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 21:00:47 -0800 Subject: like In-Reply-To: <3742DEE6-6290-11D8-977A-000A959C2E22@rice.edu> Message-ID: As a follow up to Suzanne's e-mail, I think she meant the following. Like Is, like, Focus Robert Underhill American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 234-246. -- Cheers, Carlos ------------------------------------------------------------ Carlos M Nash, BA and MA in Linguistics (Rice University) PhD student in Linguistics (UCSB) carlosn at alumni.rice.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in _Carry on Cleo_. From J.F.Crocker at newcastle.ac.uk Thu Feb 19 10:20:24 2004 From: J.F.Crocker at newcastle.ac.uk (Jean Crocker) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:20:24 -0000 Subject: Like in Scottish English Message-ID: It's used in on Tyneside in the north-east of England too, perhaps in the same way as in Scotland? Example: Do you not want to, like? Jean -----Original Message----- From: Lachlan Mackenzie [mailto:jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl] Sent: Wed 18/02/2004 23:21 To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Cc: Subject: [FUNKNET] Like in Scottish English For a quite different use of "like" as a discourse marker in Scottish English, see: Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 306-334. Lachlan Mackenzie From jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl Thu Feb 19 15:11:36 2004 From: jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl (Lachlan Mackenzie) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 15:11:36 +0000 Subject: Like in Scottish English In-Reply-To: <991B359C499D0240B8C66AF38A4101BB01B35B86@pinewood.ncl.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:20:24 -0000 "Jean Crocker" wrote: > It's used in on Tyneside in the north-east of England > too, perhaps in the same way as in Scotland? Example: > > Do you not want to, like? > > > Jean Dear Jean, That seems very likely. Here's a summary I've made of Miller and Weinert's (1998) main points: They see LIKE as a particle, and within their typology of focus constructions, more specifically as 'a non-introducing, non-contrastive focuser which may focus on new or given information'. They distinguish clause-initial LIKE, 'concerned with the elucidation of previous comments' and clause-final LIKE, 'concerned with countering objections and assumptions' (all quotes p. 334). They deny that, at least in their corpus of Scottish English, LIKE is a 'filler item that helps speakers to hold the floor or to avoid awkward silence' (p. 306); rather they show that it is integrated in speech with the following or preceding clause (p. 313). In favour of the view that LIKE is a focus particle, they claim that 82% of the occurrences in the corpus can be paraphrased by a wh-cleft or it-cleft (p. 318-321), but conclude (p. 319) that LIKE is a less 'powerful', but more 'flexible' focuser than a cleft. Their corpus includes dialogues by 13-year-olds: these dialogues show a lack of the focuser LIKE, whereas it is frequent in the speech of undergraduates, suggesting to M&W that LIKE 'seems to be acquired relatively late. This may be caused, not by an instrinic difficulty with the construction, but by the late acquisition of discourse management skills' (p. 320). Examples Clause-initial LIKE: p. 331, after some dialogue about whether young people question university entrance requirements: .. like I knew that I couldnae apply for Edinburgh because I didnae have an O level language -- so I just didnae do it Clause-final LIKE: p. 331, where the phrase "she has her wings like" 'dispels any notion the listener might entertain that [the speaker's] daughter can swim properly': .. there's a wee kiddies' pool you know where my wee girl can swim you know / she has her wings like // she jumps right in you know ... M&W are critical but respectful of the following book, which apparently distinguishes 5 uses of LIKE: Schourup, L.C. (1985). Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation. New York: Garland. I hope this is helpful. (I reviewed M&W's book in Journal of Linguistics 37:1. 225-229 (2001).) Here's the reference once again: Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Clarendon. Best wishes, Lachlan From clements at indiana.edu Thu Feb 19 14:36:36 2004 From: clements at indiana.edu (clements) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 09:36:36 -0500 Subject: sociolinguistic studies on like In-Reply-To: <403442FF.7010506@alumni.rice.edu> Message-ID: Does anyone know of sociolinguistic studies on 'like', especially taking into consideration gender and frequency of use? Clancy On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Carlos M Nash wrote: > As a follow up to Suzanne's e-mail, I think > she meant the following. > > Like Is, like, Focus > Robert Underhill > American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 234-246. > > -- > > Cheers, > Carlos > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Carlos M Nash, BA and MA in Linguistics (Rice University) > PhD student in Linguistics (UCSB) > carlosn at alumni.rice.edu > ------------------------------------------------------------ > 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' > Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in _Carry on Cleo_. > > ************************************************* J. Clancy Clements Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP Director of the Hispanic Linguistics Program Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BH844, IU-B 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue Bloomington, IN 47401 USA Tel 812-855-8612 Fax 812-855-4526 Email clements at indiana.edu Webpage http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/clements.html ************************************************* From a.foolen at let.kun.nl Thu Feb 19 15:29:39 2004 From: a.foolen at let.kun.nl (Ad Foolen) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 16:29:39 +0100 Subject: Fw: [FUNKNET] sociolinguistic studies on like Message-ID: Clancy, Here are two recent sociolinguistic studies on 'like': Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain (2000) The sociolinguistic distribution of and attitutes toward focuser 'like' and' quotative 'like'. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4:1, 60-80. Joanne Winter (2002) Discourse quotatives in Australian English: Adolescents performing voices. Australian Journal of Linguistics 22:1, 5-21. In the References of these papers, there is more to find, back till 1990, when the classical study of Carl Blyth et al. (1990) appeared in American Speech 65. Ad Foolen ----- Original Message ----- From: "clements" To: Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 3:36 PM Subject: [FUNKNET] sociolinguistic studies on like > Does anyone know of sociolinguistic studies on 'like', especially taking > into consideration gender and frequency of use? > > > Clancy > > On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Carlos M Nash wrote: > > > As a follow up to Suzanne's e-mail, I think > > she meant the following. > > > > Like Is, like, Focus > > Robert Underhill > > American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 234-246. > > > > -- > > > > Cheers, > > Carlos > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > Carlos M Nash, BA and MA in Linguistics (Rice University) > > PhD student in Linguistics (UCSB) > > carlosn at alumni.rice.edu > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' > > Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in _Carry on Cleo_. > > > > > > ************************************************* > J. Clancy Clements > Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP > Director of the Hispanic Linguistics Program > Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BH844, IU-B > 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue > Bloomington, IN 47401 USA > Tel 812-855-8612 > Fax 812-855-4526 > Email clements at indiana.edu > Webpage http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/clements.html > ************************************************* > > From Salinas17 at aol.com Thu Feb 19 19:22:16 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:22:16 EST Subject: sociolinguistic studies on like Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/04 9:37:05 AM, clements at indiana.edu writes: << Does anyone know of sociolinguistic studies on 'like', especially taking into consideration gender and frequency of use? >> The gender perception is addressed specifically in: Dailey O’Cain J. (2000). The sociolinguistic distribution and attitudes towards focuser like and quotative like. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/1: 60-80 But see: Isabelle Buchstaller, Putting perception to the reality test: The case of go and like, delivered at NWAVE 32: www.ling.upenn.edu/NWAVE/abs-pdf/buchstaller.pdf I'd like to suggest again that analysis of "like" would be helped by seeing its evolution from earlier forms where it was neither focal, quotative or a stall. Functionally its new uses may be seen as being rooted in old uses. The functional load may have been modified, but probably is understandable by the track it follows from older conventions. In fact, uses like "he goes ~" are far older than any of the studies cited here and are probably a logical extension of more transparent language structures. As to function beyond social signaling, see Buchstaller, I. (2001). He goes and I’m like: The new Quotatives re-visited. Paper presented at NWAV 30, Raleigh, N.C., 11-14 Oct. Some other references: Cukor-Avila, Patricia. 2002. She Say, She Go, She Be Like: Verbs of Quotation over Time in African American Vernacular English. American Speech 77 ( 1): 3-31. Ferrara, Kathleen, and Barbara Bell. 1995. Sociolinguistic Variation and Discourse Function of Constructed Dialogue Introducers: The Case of Be + Like. American Speech 70:265-290. Macaulay, Ronald. 2001. You’re Like ‘Why Not?’ the Quotative Expressions of Glasgow Adolescents. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (1):3-21. Romaine, Suzanne, and Deborah. Lange. 1991. The Use of Like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress. American Speech 66 (3):227-279. Tagliamonte, Sali, and Rachel Hudson. 1999. Be Like Et Al. Beyond America: The Quotative System in British and Canadian Youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3 (2):147-172. From language at sprynet.com Sat Feb 21 23:24:54 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 18:24:54 -0500 Subject: like Message-ID: "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard British English and/or criminal cant. I would love to tell you the title, but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100 miles north of here. What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching "science" but merely my own speculations: I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb or an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on its way to becoming an adverb. Just as the basic forms of life are continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment? After all, where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway? And why do we find the adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch? Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their adjectives double as adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among speakers that something might be missing? Could the explanation for this be found in a lost ancestor of several related languages? This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it seems interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of languages. But why an adverb? I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification should take. And this comes out as "like." A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes claimed as an Americanism. As in "How are we doing supply wise?" This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack a two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and adjectives," namely "-weise" or "-erweise." Thus, the following structure: Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass... Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as: He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that... I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk like this, his example was "the owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise." best to all, alex From hstahlke at bsu.edu Sun Feb 22 01:10:11 2004 From: hstahlke at bsu.edu (Stahlke, Herbert F.W.) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 20:10:11 -0500 Subject: like Message-ID: -ly and 'like' both come from Old English li:c 'body', a word that is preserved in 'lychgate', a covered gate into a churchyard where the pall bearers rest a body on the way from the church to the burial site. It shows up pretty early in English as a derivational suffix meaning "in the manner of". During Middle English the final consonant was lost resulting in the form now spelled -ly. Modern 'like' in 'childlike' is a doublet with -ly, but it forms compounds rather than derivative forms. German -lich and Dutch -lijk have a similar history. English 'wise' has largely lost the meaning of 'manner', except in the rare, perhaps 'in this wise'. Ingo Plag (Word Formation in English, Cambridge 2003) argues that it's no longer a compound element but a combining form. Whether it's a combining form or a noun used to form compounds depends on how one treats 'in this wise', as archaic or not. Herb Stahlke "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard British English and/or criminal cant. I would love to tell you the title, but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100 miles north of here. What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching "science" but merely my own speculations: I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb or an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on its way to becoming an adverb. Just as the basic forms of life are continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment? After all, where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway? And why do we find the adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch? Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their adjectives double as adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among speakers that something might be missing? Could the explanation for this be found in a lost ancestor of several related languages? This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it seems interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of languages. But why an adverb? I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification should take. And this comes out as "like." A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes claimed as an Americanism. As in "How are we doing supply wise?" This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack a two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and adjectives," namely "-weise" or "-erweise." Thus, the following structure: Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass... Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as: He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that... I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk like this, his example was "the owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise." best to all, alex From language at sprynet.com Sun Feb 22 09:48:36 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 04:48:36 -0500 Subject: like Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." To: "Alexander Gross" ; Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 8:10 PM Subject: RE: [FUNKNET] Re: like > -ly and 'like' both come from Old English li:c 'body', a word that is preserved in 'lychgate', a covered gate into a churchyard where the pall bearers rest a body on the way from the church to the burial site. Thanks. As you've no doubt noted, perfectly cognate with German Leiche, for "body." And the German 'gleich,' meaning among other things..."like," seems to be lurking in the background. > It shows up pretty early in English as a derivational suffix meaning "in the manner of". During Middle English the final consonant was lost resulting in the form now spelled -ly. Modern 'like' in 'childlike' is a doublet with -ly, but it forms compounds rather than derivative forms. German -lich and Dutch -lijk have a similar history. > > English 'wise' has largely lost the meaning of 'manner', except in the rare, perhaps 'in this wise'. Ingo Plag (Word Formation in English, Cambridge 2003) argues that it's no longer a compound element but a combining form. Whether it's a combining form or a noun used to form compounds depends on how one treats 'in this wise', as archaic or not. > Thanks again. > Herb Stahlke > > > "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, > where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard > British English and/or criminal cant. I would love to tell you the title, > but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100 > miles north of here. > > What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching > "science" but merely my own speculations: > > I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb or > an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on > its way to becoming an adverb. Just as the basic forms of life are > continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of > evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment? After all, > where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway? And why do we find the > adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch? > > Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their adjectives > double as adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among > speakers that something might be missing? Could the explanation for this be > found in a lost ancestor of several related languages? > > This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic > advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would > exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it seems > interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of > languages. > > But why an adverb? I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full > confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of > qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification should > take. And this comes out as "like." > > A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes > claimed as an Americanism. As in "How are we doing supply wise?" > > This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack a > two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and adjectives," > namely "-weise" or "-erweise." Thus, the following structure: > > Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass... > > Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as: > > He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that... > > I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk > like this, his example was "the owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise." > > best to all, > > alex > > > > > From Salinas17 at aol.com Mon Feb 23 05:00:48 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:00:48 EST Subject: like Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/04 6:25:35 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: << "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard British English and/or criminal cant. >> "Like" appeared in all kinds of old idiomatic expressions where it can be read as abbreviations of longer forms. E.g., "I feel like going home" (1863) "looking for you like anything." (1665), "...the broad heath looked like rabbits." (1868)" "What is he like?" (1878), "So, it's like that, is it?", etc. When we take the use of "like" as signaling approximation ("something like"), a lot of modern uses can be connected to earlier uses. The quotative, of course, also ought to be seen as part of a narrative voice -- "He's like, 'go ahead!'" uses the storyteller's present tense, qualifies the exactness of the quote and drops narrative redundacies. (So then he says something like.../So then he acts as if he were saying...) Similarly, "He goes~" may be seen as not different in sense from "he goes on and on and on..." or the formal narrative device, "he proceeds to say..." When we heard "he goes, like, 'forget it'" on the streets of Brooklyn many years ago, it was in the course of a narrative and was understood to mean "he then goes on to say something like, 'forget it'." Regards, Steve Long From mliu at cc.nctu.edu.tw Thu Feb 26 09:54:01 2004 From: mliu at cc.nctu.edu.tw (Mei-chun Liu) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:54:01 +0800 Subject: Linguistics position Message-ID: Tenure Track Position in LINGUISTICS Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures & Institute of Linguistics and Cultural Studies National Chiao Tung university Hsinchu, Taiwan The Institute of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University invite applications for a full-time tenure-track position in LINGUISTICS at all possible levels, with a starting date of August 1st, 2004. We seek applications with a Ph. D degree and strong record of research in the following areas: 1) Computational or Corpus Linguistics (Speech-related research is preferred); 2) Cognitive Linguistics or Neurolinguistics; 3) Interface between Syntax, Semantics and Prosody. Strong consideration will be given to applicants whose research is corpus-based and can be integrated with the existing strengths of the Institute. Regular duties include graduate and undergraduate teaching, research, graduate student advising, as well as Institute, Departmental, and College service assignment as required for university faculty members. Applicants should send 1) curriculum vitae, 2) copies of representative publications, 3) copy of diploma, 4) research summary and teaching portfolio, 5) Names of three referees by April 15, 2004 to: Dr. Meichun Liu, Professor and Chair Department of Foreign languages and Literatures & Institute of Linguistics and Cultural Studies National Chiao Tung University 1001 Ta Hsueh Rd. Hsinchu 300, Taiwan E-mail inquiries may be sent to : hclo at mail.nctu.edu.tw Tel: 886-3-5731660~1 Fax: 886-3-5726037 From clements at indiana.edu Sun Feb 1 19:00:27 2004 From: clements at indiana.edu (clements) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 14:00:27 -0500 Subject: question In-Reply-To: <3FCC5632.8030304@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: Professor Tomasello, Did you receive any interesting responses from your query? Clancy Clements On Tue, 2 Dec 2003, Michael Tomasello wrote: > I am interested in specific proposals about precisely what is in > Universal Grammar - like a list or inventory (Jackendoff's new book > provides one example). Please send references to me directly, and I > will share results if there are interesting responses. > > Thanks in advance, > > Mike Tomasello > > > ************************************************* J. Clancy Clements Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BH844, IU-B 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue Bloomington, IN 47401 USA Tel 812-855-8612 Fax 812-855-4526 Email clements at indiana.edu Webpage http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/clements.html ************************************************* From Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se Mon Feb 2 06:44:09 2004 From: Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se (Henrik Rosenkvist) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 07:44:09 +0100 Subject: unless Message-ID: Some time ago I asked for grams that may mean both 'except' and 'unless'. I thank all contributors! The list I have compiled is: (Old) English: but, except German: ausser (wenn) Spanish: salvo (que) Old Swedish: utan, num Old Norse, Icel.: nema Arabic: 'illa Latin nisi Of these grams, utan, but and ausser seem to be developed from grams meaning 'outside'. Henrik R. -- Henrik Rosenkvist Dep. of Scandinavian Languages Helgonabacken 14 223 62 Lund SWEDEN tel: 046-222 87 13 fax: 046-222 42 41 From Elise.Karkkainen at oulu.fi Wed Feb 4 07:16:27 2004 From: Elise.Karkkainen at oulu.fi (Elise =?iso-8859-1?Q?K=E4rkk=E4inen?=) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 09:16:27 +0200 Subject: Book on epistemic stance Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, I would like to bring to your attention my book, published at the end of last year. Thanks, Elise K?rkk?inen Epistemic Stance in English Conversation A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think Elise K?rkk?inen University of Oulu This book is the first corpus-based description of epistemic stance in conversational American English. It argues for epistemic stance as a pragmatic rather than semantic notion: showing commitment to the status of information is an emergent interactive activity, rooted in the interaction between conversational co-participants. The first major part of the book establishes the highly regular and routinized nature of such stance marking in the data. The second part offers a micro-analysis of I think, the prototypical stance marker, in its sequential and activity contexts. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and paying serious attention to the manifold prosodic cues attendant in the speakers? utterances, the study offers novel situated interpretations of I think. The author also argues for intonation units as a unit of social interaction and makes observations about the grammaticization patterns of the most frequent epistemic markers, notably the status of I think as a discourse marker. John Benjamins Publishing Company Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 115 2003. Hb xii, 213 pp. 90 272 5357 9 EUR 85.00 1 58811 444 9 USD 85.00 Table of contents Acknowledgements List of tables 1. Introduction 2. Expression of epistemic stance: Preliminaries 3. The intonation unit as analytical unit 4. Routinization of stance marking at the linguistic and interactional level 5. Stance-taking as an interactive activity: The case of I think 6. Concluding remarks References; Appendix; Name index; Subject index Elise K?rkk?inen PhD, Academy Research Fellow Department of English Box 1000 FIN - 90014 University of Oulu FINLAND From remlingk at gvsu.edu Wed Feb 4 13:03:33 2004 From: remlingk at gvsu.edu (Kathryn Remlinger) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 08:03:33 -0500 Subject: Call for Papers: ADS at MMLA Message-ID: Call for Papers: Fall meeting of ADS at MMLA (With apologies for cross-posting.) American Dialect Society at the 46th Annual Midwest Modern Language Association Convention; November 4-7, 2004; St. Louis, Missouri; Hyatt Regency. Topic: "Language Variation and Change in the United States" Papers dealing with varieties of English or other languages spoken in the United States will be considered. Presentations may be based in traditional dialectology, or in other areas of language variation and change, including sociolinguistics, historical, anthropological, folk linguistics, language and gender, critical discourse analysis, or narratology. April 15 is the deadline for 300-word abstracts. Send abstracts to the meeting chair, Kathryn Remlinger, Associate Professor, Department of English, Grand Valley State University, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI 49401; tel: 616-331-3122; fax: 1-616-331-3430; remlingk at gvsu.edu. Email submissions are preferred. Membership to MMLA is $35 full and associate professors, $30 assistant professors and school teachers, $20 adjunct and part-time faculty, $15 students, retired, and unemployed. Write MMLA, 302 English-Philosophy Bldg, U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1408, tel: 319-335-0331. For more information about ADS at MMLA, see the MMLA website, www.uiowa.edu/~mmla, go to "Call for Papers", scroll down to "Associated Organizations", then to "American Dialect Society." Many thanks, Kathryn Remlinger Midwest Regional Secretary, ADS Associate Professor of English: Linguistics Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI 49401 remlingk at gvsu.edu 1-616-331-3122 From Adam.Kilgarriff at itri.brighton.ac.uk Wed Feb 4 13:45:26 2004 From: Adam.Kilgarriff at itri.brighton.ac.uk (Adam Kilgarriff) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 13:45:26 -0000 Subject: Resource for teaching and studying Lexical Semantics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Resource for teaching and studying Lexical Semantics ==================================================== For: students of linguistics and language technology Open Mind Word Expert is a teaching tool and free online word game. The user identifies what meaning of a word applies in example sentences. It is a way of getting students engaged in issues of word meaning (which, as a by-product, provides the organisers with a resource for evaluating computers doing the same job.) Try it out today, and be the one to make the highest contribution in any given day to receive a $10 gift certificate redeemable at Amazon, Borders, or Target. This give-away will close on February 22, 2004, so hurry up! http://teach-computers.org/word-expert/english Your or your students' input will contribute towards SENSEVAL http://www.senseval.org Adam Kilgarriff University of Brighton From yoshikom at stanford.edu Fri Feb 6 00:36:17 2004 From: yoshikom at stanford.edu (Yoshiko Matsumoto) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 16:36:17 -0800 Subject: Conference - announcement and call for papers Message-ID: Announcing a conference on: "Diversity and Universals in Language: The Consequences of Variation" sponsored by the Division of Languages, Cultures and Literatures, Stanford University. Pigott Hall Stanford University May 21-23, 2004 Theme: Diversity in language is ubiquitous: typological studies have identified many degrees of variation in every system of grammar (e.g., lexical category systems, systems of pronominal anaphora, (non-)configurational structure, degrees of inflection, to mention just a few), and studies within a given "language" have also identified many kinds of variation, only some of which are correlated with social groups, communities, or communicative styles. We welcome abstracts for papers which address any of these kinds of variation in the context of consequences for notions of linguistic universals, of a "standard language", or even what it means to "speak language X", and for language teaching (e.g., how far can the grammatical properties of one language be used to elucidate the properties of another, or, what variety of language X does one teach as the "standard language"?). Invited speakers: Barbara Johnstone, Carnegie Mellon University Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley Marianne Mithun, University of California, Santa Barbara Toshio Ohori, Tokyo University Abstract Guidelines: We are soliciting abstracts for 20-minute talks relevant to any of the topics mentioned above. Abstracts should be in 11pt font, or larger, consisting of one text page with a second page (only) for data, examples, charts, and references. Abstracts should be submitted electronically in Word (.doc) or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format to: div-in-lang-conf at stanford.edu. The author(s) of the abstract should not be identified in the abstract itself; the body of the submission message should include the title of the abstract, the names(s) of the author(s), the(ir) affiliation, and e-mail address(es). *Deadline* for submission: March 8th, 2004. The conference program will be announced as early as possible in later March. We plan to collect as many papers from the conference as possible for publication with a major publisher on the theme of linguistic diversity. Organizing Committee: Eve V. Clark, Linguistics Yoshiko Matsumoto, Asian Languages Alice A. Miano, Language Center Orrin W. Robinson, German Studies David Oshima, Linguistics Peter Sells, Linguistics Chaofen Sun, Asian Languages For further information please contact: div-in-lang-conf at stanford.edu. From n.chipere at reading.ac.uk Wed Feb 11 16:54:49 2004 From: n.chipere at reading.ac.uk (Ngoni Chipere) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 16:54:49 -0000 Subject: Hanna Pishwa Message-ID: Dear colleagues I'm trying to contact Hanna Pishwa. I'd be grateful if someone who knows her could send me her email address or email my query to her. Thanks Ngoni Chipere From ph1u at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Feb 11 18:17:47 2004 From: ph1u at andrew.cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 13:17:47 -0500 Subject: Hanna Pishwa Message-ID: Ngoni, Hanna's e-mail address is . - Paul --On Wednesday, February 11, 2004 4:54 PM +0000 n.chipere at reading.ac.uk wrote: > Dear colleagues > > I'm trying to contact Hanna Pishwa. I'd be grateful if someone who knows > her could send me her email address or email my query to her. > > Thanks > > Ngoni Chipere > Paul Hopper Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities College of Humanities and Social Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA Phone: (USA) 412-683-1109 Fax: (USA) 412-268-7989 From kibrik at comtv.ru Wed Feb 11 22:33:29 2004 From: kibrik at comtv.ru (Andrej Kibrik) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 01:33:29 +0300 Subject: 1st Russian Conference on Cognitive Science, Second call for papers Message-ID: FIRST RUSSIAN CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE SCIENCE October 9-12, 2004, Kazan Second Call for Papers The goal of the conference is to create a joint forum for representatives from various disciplines exploring cognition and its evolution, intellect, thinking, perception, consciousness, knowledge representation and acquisition, language as a means of cognition and communication, brain mechanisms of cognition, emotion and higher forms of behavior. Psychologists, linguists, neurophysiologists, specialists in artificial intelligence and neuroinformatics, computer scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, as well as other scientists interested in interdisciplinary issues in cognitive studies, are invited to take part in the conference. The organizers believe it is important for specialists from all these kinds of background to develop a common interdisciplinary language. The conference will be held in one of the major university cities of Russia, Kazan. It will be organized by Kazan State University that is going to turn 200 years old this year. The conference program will include several one-hour overview lectures by leading experts in cognitive research. Among the invited speakers will be: Konstantin V. Anokhin (Moscow) "The language genes" and the "Korsakoff mouse": What can we learn about cognition from transgenic animals? Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara, California) The roles of observation, experimentation, and introspection in understanding the mind Tatiana V. Chernigovskaya (Saint-Petersburg) To be announced Sandro V. Kodzasov (Moscow) Intonation as the marker of an utterance's informational environment Michael Posner (Eugene, Oregon) The development of neural network related to attention and self regulation Helge Ritter (Bielefeld) Artificial attention as a basis for cognitive robots Michael Tomasello (Leipzig and Atlanta, Georgia) The cultural origins of human cognition Boris M. Velichkovsky (Dresden and Moscow) Cognitive science applied Besides the invited lectures, central to the conference will be 30-minutes section talks by other participants. These talks will be given most of the time, since the main goal of the conference is informational exchange among the widest possible range of specialists. In addition, a poster session and a junior researchers' session are planned. All interested individuals are encouraged to propose abstracts of their papers, based on completed, high-quality, original unpublished research. Cognitive science is by definition interdisciplinary. The conference can be successful only if all of its participants, first, will be interested in the research of their colleagues from the neighboring fields and open to unfamiliar mode of thinking and communicating, and, second, will do their best to make their presentations clear to the people from other disciplines. For this reason, the organizers encourage papers that are of an interdisciplinary rather than narrowly specialized interest. The criterion of interdisciplinary intelligibility will be among the crucial ones in the selection process. The working languages of the conference will be Russian and English. Decisions on the acceptance of proposed papers will be made on the basis of the abstracts that must arrive no later than March 15, 2004. Please submit the abstract of your paper, in Russian or in English, by e-mail to the address cogsci04 at s2s.msu.ru as a MS Word or LaTeX file attached to an e-mail message. Please don't include more than one abstract in one message. The maximal size of an abstract is 2 pages (single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 type sizem, 2 cm margins on all sides), including illustrations and references. At the beginning of an abstract please indicate the following pieces of information: * the title of the paper (in caps) * the author's (authors') initials and last name(s), followed by affiliation in parentheses * e-mail address * 3 to 5 keywords The message to which an abstract is attached is supposed to contain exclusively the following information: 1. the title of the paper 2a. full name (including last name, first name, and middle name/patronymic, if applicable) of the author (or the first author, in the case of a group of authors) 3a. affiliation of the author (or the first author) 4a. educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D., etc.) of the author (or the first author) 2b. full name (including last name, first name, and middle name/patronymic, if applicable) of the second author 3b. affiliation of the second author 4b. educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D., etc.) of the second author --------likewise, for the third etc. author(s), if applicable------------------ 5. postal address at which the author(s) can be reached 6. phone number at which the author(s) can be reached 7. email address at which the author(s) can be reached 8. the preferred form of presentation (oral or poster) Please follow the given format, the order and numbering of items. So far, the organizers have received a vast response to the first call for papers. 340 abstracts have been submitted from 19 different countries, which many times exceeds the feasible amount of papers at the conference. For this reason, please keep in mind the following limitation: one author can participate in maximally one indvidual paper, and maximally two coauthored papers. You can submit abstracts irrespective of whether you have sent a preliminary informational message. Each abstract will be reviewed by minimally two members of the program committee representing different disciplines. The program committee will inform the authors of its decisions on the acceptance of proposals by June 15, 2004. The accepted abstracts will be published by the beginning of the conference. Publication of selected presentations is planned after the conference. During the conference, the question of establishing the Russian Cognitive Science Association may be discussed. The conference will be held at a resort located in a pine forest, on the bank of the Volga river, in a suburb of Kazan. The expected price of accommodations, including meals, is 700 to 1000 rubles (ca. $25 to $35) per day. A registration fee of 500 rubles (student discount 300 rubles) is expected (to cover publication costs and minor organizational needs). Visa support for international participants, provided by the University, will cost extra (about $10 for early processing of visa support, about $45 for urgent visa support; these amounts do not include the visa fee). Chairman of the Program Committee: Boris M. Velichkovsky (Dresden University and Federal Center of Speech Pathology and Neurorehabilitation; psychology). Vice-chairs: Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Moscow State University; linguistics) and Tatiana V. Chernigovskaya (St.Petersburg State University; linguistics and neurobiology) Chairman of the Organizing Committee: Valery D. Solovyev (Kazan State University; computer science and linguistics). Vice-chair: Aleksey N. Gusev (Moscow State University; psychology). Additional information on the conference is available at http://www.ksu.ru/cogsci04, in particular in the text of the First Call for Papers, or by e-mail at: cogsci04 at s2s.msu.ru. From vanvalin at buffalo.edu Thu Feb 12 17:58:59 2004 From: vanvalin at buffalo.edu (Robert VanValin) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 12:58:59 -0500 Subject: Reminder: Abstract deadline for RRG 2004 Message-ID: 2004 International Role and Reference Grammar Conference July 21-25, 2004 Dublin, Ireland Institute of Technology Blanchardstown Linguistic theory and practice: description, implementation and processing Themes: The lexicon and lexical decomposition in RRG. The RRG approach to morphology RRG and neurocognitive models of language processing Computational approaches to RRG Celtic Linguistics Lectures and workshops will be held on July 21-23. The conference will be July 24-25. Lectures: Introduction to RRG Delia Bentley (Univ. of Salford, UK) Lexical representation and lexical semantics in RRG Ricardo Mairal (UNED, Spain) Workshops and organizers: Computational implementation of RRG Elizabeth Guest (Leeds Metro Univ.) & Rolf Kailuweit (Univ. of Heidelberg) RRG and Neurocognitive models of language processing Ina Bornkessel (MPI Cognitive Neuroscience) & Matthias Schlesewsky (Univ. of Marburg) RRG and morphological theory Daniel Everett (Univ. of Manchester) Celtic linguistics and RRG Cecil Ward (Sabhal Ostaig, Scotland) & Brian Nolan (ITB) Additional workshops are possible Conference Guest Speaker: Prof. John Saeed (Trinity College, Dublin) Call for papers: The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and workshops is March 15, 2004. Abstracts for papers should be no longer than one page of text, with a second page for data and references. Abstracts for workshops should be no longer than three pages total. The language of the conference will be English. Papers will last twenty minutes, followed by another ten minutes of discussion. Workshops will last ninety minutes, which includes both presentations and discussion. The selection of papers for presentation and workshops will be communicated by April 15, 2004. Fees: The conference/course fee is EURO 220 for registrations with payments before May 1 2004; after that date it will be EURO 250. This is an all inclusive fee that includes the following ?All workshops ? All lectures ? Full conference facilities ? Full proceedings ? Lunch on each of the 5 days ? Coffee in AM and PM ? Internet access for email ? Conference dinner (vegetarians and special diets catered for) ? Dublin city cultural events Grants Policy A maximum of 6 grants will be given to cover the RRG2004 conference/course fees which include the items noted above. Applications should be unemployed or PhD research students and will need to provide written and documented certification of their status. All applications for grants will be notified about the organizing committee's decisions by the end of May 2004. Applications for grants can be sent to: Dr. Brian Nolan Institute of Technology Blanchardstown School of Informatics and Engineering Blanchardstown Road North Blanchardstown Dublin 15 IRELAND Information about accommodations can be found on the conference website. Conference website: http://www.itb.ie/events/rrg2004.html Conference e-mail address: rrg2004 at itb.ie Head of local organizing committee: Dr. Brian Nolan=20 Institute of Technology Blanchardstown e-mail: Brian.Nolan at itb.ie Conference organizing committee: Daniel Everett (U Manchester), Rolf Kailuweit (U Heidelberg), Ricardo Mairal (UNED), Brian Nolan (ITB), Toshio Ohori (U Tokyo), Robert Van Valin (U Buffalo) From torgrim.solstad at german.uio.no Mon Feb 16 19:00:49 2004 From: torgrim.solstad at german.uio.no (Torgrim Solstad) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:00:49 +0100 Subject: General Ling/Oslo: Demoting the agent: passive and other voice-related phenomena Message-ID: Demoting the Agent: Passive and other Voice-related phenomena 1st Call for Papers Workshop at the University of Oslo November 25-27, 2004 Invited Speakers Elisabet Engdahl, G?teborg University Suzanne Kemmer, Rice University Anneliese Pitz, University of Oslo Sten Vikner, University of Aarhus The passive has constituted an important area of research in modern linguistics since the introduction of transformational grammar. Though there is little controversy of what constitutes the relevant data, several quite different perspectives on passive constructions have been developed. Whereas formal syntacticians and semanticist have focused on the contrast in argument structure concerning the active-passive diathesis, functionalist approaches have mostly dealt with differences in discourse participant prominence and other distinctions related to what one might term as information structure. There has also been an increasing interest in more typologically diverse data which has lead to research in other voice-related phenomena such as medium constructions and antipassives. No general agreement has been reached on the treatment of any of these phenomena, either. This workshop aims at bringing together researchers representing different perspectives on passives and other voice-related phenomena. Unifying theoretical approaches will be especially appreciated. Some of the diversity in the research in the field can be seen as related to, but not limited to the following: - formal linguistic perspectives - functional linguistic perspectives - syntax-semantics: compositionality - pragmatics: non-explicitness concerning agentivity - information structure We want to encourage multi-language perspectives, especially those contrasting two or more languages. Papers dealing with data from parallel corpora are welcome. Partial reimbursement may be possible for those speakers who cannot attend the workshop otherwise. Submission Procedure All authors should submit an anonymous abstract. The length of abstracts for talks should be at most 2 single-column pages, including examples and references. All submissions should also include a separate cover page specifying the author's name, affiliation, address, and e-mail address and title of the paper. The abstracts should be submitted electronically in one of the following formats: Word/RTF, ASCII, Postscript or PDF. They should be sent to the following e-mail-address: torgrim.solstad at german.uio.no All submitted papers that are received in time will be refereed by the programme committee and may be accepted for full presentation (45 min + 15 min for discussion) at the workshop and publication in the pre-workshop proceedings, or for a poster presentation. Important Dates Abstracts due: May 15 Acceptance notice: June 15 Final versions due for proceedings: October 15 Workshop dates: November 25-27 Program committee Elisabet Engdahl, Benjamin Lyngfelt, Anneliese Pitz, Torgrim Solstad, Kjell Johan S?b? Organisation The workshop is organised by Torgrim Solstad, University of Oslo and Benjamin Lyngfelt, G?teborg University Funding: Research project "Languages in contrast" Torgrim Solstad, University of Oslo, PO Box 1004 Blindern, NO-0315 OSLO, NORWAY From jrubba at calpoly.edu Sat Feb 28 01:16:42 2004 From: jrubba at calpoly.edu (Johanna Rubba) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:16:42 -0800 Subject: 'like' Message-ID: Hi folks, Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any discourse-marker functions it has. Thanks! Jo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics English Department, California Polytechnic State University One Grand Avenue ? San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Tel. (805)-756-2184 ? Fax: (805)-756-6374 ? Dept. Phone. 756-2596 ? E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu ? Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From reng at ruf.rice.edu Wed Feb 18 16:17:29 2004 From: reng at ruf.rice.edu (Robert Englebretson) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 10:17:29 -0600 Subject: Symposium Announcement Message-ID: "Stancetaking in Discourse: subjectivity in interaction" the 10th biennial Rice Linguistics Symposium March 31-April 3, 2004, Rice University, Houston, TX. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/symposium_2004.html The Department of Linguistics at Rice University is pleased to announce the 10th Biennial Rice Linguistics symposium: "Stancetaking in Discourse: subjectivity in interaction". Presenters have been invited from linguistics and related disciplines to address stancetaking in naturally-occurring spoken and/or written discourse. Stance--broadly construed as the expression of emotion, attitude, subjectivity, and perspective--permeates language use at all levels. The symposium seeks to explore the interrelationship of stancetaking with language form and function, cultural construction, and social interaction. Invited speakers will address these issues from a range of approaches, including quantitative methodologies of discourse/corpus linguistics and qualitative methodologies of ethnography and Conversation Analysis. There is no registration fee to attend the symposium, but you will need to pre-register by e-mailing Robert Englebretson at reng at rice.edu. For further details, including the list of invited speakers and abstracts, see the symposium web page: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~reng/symposium_2004.html From ellen at central.cis.upenn.edu Wed Feb 18 20:05:31 2004 From: ellen at central.cis.upenn.edu (Ellen F. Prince) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 15:05:31 EST Subject: 'like' In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:16:42 PST." <403FEBFA.770FEAB2@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: Johanna Rubba asks: >Hi folks, > >Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current >youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if >anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any >discourse-marker functions it has. > >Thanks! >Jo A splendid paper is: Siegel, Muffy. 2002. Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics. J. of Semantics 19(1). From davpark at microsoft.com Wed Feb 18 20:22:03 2004 From: davpark at microsoft.com (David Parkinson) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:22:03 -0800 Subject: 'like' Message-ID: Interestingly (or otherwise), this appeared in today's Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/A rticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1076973009917&call_pageid=968332188492&col=96 8793972154 In case the link goes stale, here is the full text: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Like wow! That L-word is taking over teen lingo LOUISE BROWN EDUCATION REPORTER It's the new, like, grammar - like it or not. Canadian teens are sprinkling their speech with the word "like" at a soaring rate, new research shows - with some 16-year-olds using it even more often than the word "and." More than 20 years after the first Valley Girl, (popularized in a 1982 Frank Zappa song) swapped "like" for "said" - I'm like, `Gag me with a spoon' and she's like, `Oh my God!' - the four-letter word has worked its way into teen lingo at unprecedented speed. In Toronto, the "like" fad seems to peak at age 16, when one in every 20 words now spoken is "like," according to a recent study. The study was done by University of Toronto linguist Sali Tagliamonte, who will run a three-hour workshop today for high school students on teen slang. "Parents and teachers get on kids' cases for talking in a way they think sounds stupid - but `like' isn't really a heinous crime against English," said Tagliamonte, one of dozens of U of T professors speaking at a conference run by the Toronto Catholic District School Board for 600 students labelled `gifted.' "Language changes. We don't talk like Shakespeare any more, and it's usually young people who push the language forward." In the past seven years, Tagliamonte has tracked a four-fold jump in the use of "like" in setting up quotations (He's, like, `Go ahead.') In a recent study of 1,240 quotations by Toronto teens, 60 per cent used the word "like" to indicate a quote, up from 13 per cent in a similar study Tagliamonte conducted in 1995 in Ottawa. "It's unprecedented to find a feature of language increasing in frequency this rapidly," she said yesterday. "It used to take millennia for language to change, but timelines have telescoped with the advent of mass media." Still, linguists can't agree on why the word has become so popular. Some think people unwittingly use the word "like" as a stall tactic when they're not confident about what they're saying, she said. "What would that say about Canadians if that were true? That we're less confident about everything? That would be scary," scoffs Tagliamonte. Nor does she think it indicates a lack of specifics. "I've heard people use it in very specific references, as in, `The heat was, like, 467 degrees.'" And she insists it is not a sign of a poor vocabulary. "Some of my brightest students use `like' all the time, and they have very strong vocabularies. "So there is definitely something going on in the underlying grammar. But the jury's still out as to what that is." While the "l" word as a verb and adjective dates back to the 1200s, its new use as a "quotative" (I'm, like, `wow') was first spotted by linguist Ronald Butters of Duke University in 1982. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ David -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Ellen F. Prince Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:06 PM To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] 'like' Johanna Rubba asks: >Hi folks, > >Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current >youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if >anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any >discourse-marker functions it has. > >Thanks! >Jo A splendid paper is: Siegel, Muffy. 2002. Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics. J. of Semantics 19(1). From Salinas17 at aol.com Wed Feb 18 20:54:36 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 15:54:36 EST Subject: 'like' Message-ID: In a message dated 2/18/04 3:23:04 PM, davpark at microsoft.com writes: << While the "l" word as a verb and adjective dates back to the 1200s, its new use as a "quotative" (I'm, like, `wow') was first spotted by linguist Ronald Butters of Duke University in 1982. >> Anyone familiar with the likes of Cheech and Chong (or rather willing to admit it) might suggest that the use of "like" in the 60's and 70's was actually and logically to signal a simile. ("I mean, this weed is, like, atomic powered." versus the metaphorical "I mean, this weed is atomic powered." Compare "my love is, like, a red, red rose.") From there it traveled to a emphatic device. (...like, far out...) The use as a quotative (He's, like, "Go ahead.") is a further evolution that still nevertheless conveys some sense of the characteristic approximation of the simile. (He's [saying something] like, "Go ahead.") Steve Long From jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl Wed Feb 18 23:21:28 2004 From: jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl (Lachlan Mackenzie) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:21:28 +0000 Subject: Like in Scottish English Message-ID: For a quite different use of "like" as a discourse marker in Scottish English, see: Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 306-334. Lachlan Mackenzie From kemmer at rice.edu Thu Feb 19 04:00:54 2004 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:00:54 -0600 Subject: like Message-ID: Robert Underhill discussed the discourse uses of 'like' in a paper in the early 90s. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember it in Language. From carlosn at alumni.rice.edu Thu Feb 19 05:00:47 2004 From: carlosn at alumni.rice.edu (Carlos M Nash) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 21:00:47 -0800 Subject: like In-Reply-To: <3742DEE6-6290-11D8-977A-000A959C2E22@rice.edu> Message-ID: As a follow up to Suzanne's e-mail, I think she meant the following. Like Is, like, Focus Robert Underhill American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 234-246. -- Cheers, Carlos ------------------------------------------------------------ Carlos M Nash, BA and MA in Linguistics (Rice University) PhD student in Linguistics (UCSB) carlosn at alumni.rice.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in _Carry on Cleo_. From J.F.Crocker at newcastle.ac.uk Thu Feb 19 10:20:24 2004 From: J.F.Crocker at newcastle.ac.uk (Jean Crocker) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:20:24 -0000 Subject: Like in Scottish English Message-ID: It's used in on Tyneside in the north-east of England too, perhaps in the same way as in Scotland? Example: Do you not want to, like? Jean -----Original Message----- From: Lachlan Mackenzie [mailto:jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl] Sent: Wed 18/02/2004 23:21 To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Cc: Subject: [FUNKNET] Like in Scottish English For a quite different use of "like" as a discourse marker in Scottish English, see: Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 306-334. Lachlan Mackenzie From jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl Thu Feb 19 15:11:36 2004 From: jl.mackenzie at let.vu.nl (Lachlan Mackenzie) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 15:11:36 +0000 Subject: Like in Scottish English In-Reply-To: <991B359C499D0240B8C66AF38A4101BB01B35B86@pinewood.ncl.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:20:24 -0000 "Jean Crocker" wrote: > It's used in on Tyneside in the north-east of England > too, perhaps in the same way as in Scotland? Example: > > Do you not want to, like? > > > Jean Dear Jean, That seems very likely. Here's a summary I've made of Miller and Weinert's (1998) main points: They see LIKE as a particle, and within their typology of focus constructions, more specifically as 'a non-introducing, non-contrastive focuser which may focus on new or given information'. They distinguish clause-initial LIKE, 'concerned with the elucidation of previous comments' and clause-final LIKE, 'concerned with countering objections and assumptions' (all quotes p. 334). They deny that, at least in their corpus of Scottish English, LIKE is a 'filler item that helps speakers to hold the floor or to avoid awkward silence' (p. 306); rather they show that it is integrated in speech with the following or preceding clause (p. 313). In favour of the view that LIKE is a focus particle, they claim that 82% of the occurrences in the corpus can be paraphrased by a wh-cleft or it-cleft (p. 318-321), but conclude (p. 319) that LIKE is a less 'powerful', but more 'flexible' focuser than a cleft. Their corpus includes dialogues by 13-year-olds: these dialogues show a lack of the focuser LIKE, whereas it is frequent in the speech of undergraduates, suggesting to M&W that LIKE 'seems to be acquired relatively late. This may be caused, not by an instrinic difficulty with the construction, but by the late acquisition of discourse management skills' (p. 320). Examples Clause-initial LIKE: p. 331, after some dialogue about whether young people question university entrance requirements: .. like I knew that I couldnae apply for Edinburgh because I didnae have an O level language -- so I just didnae do it Clause-final LIKE: p. 331, where the phrase "she has her wings like" 'dispels any notion the listener might entertain that [the speaker's] daughter can swim properly': .. there's a wee kiddies' pool you know where my wee girl can swim you know / she has her wings like // she jumps right in you know ... M&W are critical but respectful of the following book, which apparently distinguishes 5 uses of LIKE: Schourup, L.C. (1985). Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation. New York: Garland. I hope this is helpful. (I reviewed M&W's book in Journal of Linguistics 37:1. 225-229 (2001).) Here's the reference once again: Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert (1998). Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Clarendon. Best wishes, Lachlan From clements at indiana.edu Thu Feb 19 14:36:36 2004 From: clements at indiana.edu (clements) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 09:36:36 -0500 Subject: sociolinguistic studies on like In-Reply-To: <403442FF.7010506@alumni.rice.edu> Message-ID: Does anyone know of sociolinguistic studies on 'like', especially taking into consideration gender and frequency of use? Clancy On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Carlos M Nash wrote: > As a follow up to Suzanne's e-mail, I think > she meant the following. > > Like Is, like, Focus > Robert Underhill > American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 234-246. > > -- > > Cheers, > Carlos > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Carlos M Nash, BA and MA in Linguistics (Rice University) > PhD student in Linguistics (UCSB) > carlosn at alumni.rice.edu > ------------------------------------------------------------ > 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' > Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in _Carry on Cleo_. > > ************************************************* J. Clancy Clements Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP Director of the Hispanic Linguistics Program Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BH844, IU-B 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue Bloomington, IN 47401 USA Tel 812-855-8612 Fax 812-855-4526 Email clements at indiana.edu Webpage http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/clements.html ************************************************* From a.foolen at let.kun.nl Thu Feb 19 15:29:39 2004 From: a.foolen at let.kun.nl (Ad Foolen) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 16:29:39 +0100 Subject: Fw: [FUNKNET] sociolinguistic studies on like Message-ID: Clancy, Here are two recent sociolinguistic studies on 'like': Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain (2000) The sociolinguistic distribution of and attitutes toward focuser 'like' and' quotative 'like'. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4:1, 60-80. Joanne Winter (2002) Discourse quotatives in Australian English: Adolescents performing voices. Australian Journal of Linguistics 22:1, 5-21. In the References of these papers, there is more to find, back till 1990, when the classical study of Carl Blyth et al. (1990) appeared in American Speech 65. Ad Foolen ----- Original Message ----- From: "clements" To: Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 3:36 PM Subject: [FUNKNET] sociolinguistic studies on like > Does anyone know of sociolinguistic studies on 'like', especially taking > into consideration gender and frequency of use? > > > Clancy > > On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Carlos M Nash wrote: > > > As a follow up to Suzanne's e-mail, I think > > she meant the following. > > > > Like Is, like, Focus > > Robert Underhill > > American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 234-246. > > > > -- > > > > Cheers, > > Carlos > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > Carlos M Nash, BA and MA in Linguistics (Rice University) > > PhD student in Linguistics (UCSB) > > carlosn at alumni.rice.edu > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' > > Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in _Carry on Cleo_. > > > > > > ************************************************* > J. Clancy Clements > Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP > Director of the Hispanic Linguistics Program > Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BH844, IU-B > 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue > Bloomington, IN 47401 USA > Tel 812-855-8612 > Fax 812-855-4526 > Email clements at indiana.edu > Webpage http://www.indiana.edu/~spanport/clements.html > ************************************************* > > From Salinas17 at aol.com Thu Feb 19 19:22:16 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:22:16 EST Subject: sociolinguistic studies on like Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/04 9:37:05 AM, clements at indiana.edu writes: << Does anyone know of sociolinguistic studies on 'like', especially taking into consideration gender and frequency of use? >> The gender perception is addressed specifically in: Dailey O?Cain J. (2000). The sociolinguistic distribution and attitudes towards focuser like and quotative like. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/1: 60-80 But see: Isabelle Buchstaller, Putting perception to the reality test: The case of go and like, delivered at NWAVE 32: www.ling.upenn.edu/NWAVE/abs-pdf/buchstaller.pdf I'd like to suggest again that analysis of "like" would be helped by seeing its evolution from earlier forms where it was neither focal, quotative or a stall. Functionally its new uses may be seen as being rooted in old uses. The functional load may have been modified, but probably is understandable by the track it follows from older conventions. In fact, uses like "he goes ~" are far older than any of the studies cited here and are probably a logical extension of more transparent language structures. As to function beyond social signaling, see Buchstaller, I. (2001). He goes and I?m like: The new Quotatives re-visited. Paper presented at NWAV 30, Raleigh, N.C., 11-14 Oct. Some other references: Cukor-Avila, Patricia. 2002. She Say, She Go, She Be Like: Verbs of Quotation over Time in African American Vernacular English. American Speech 77 ( 1): 3-31. Ferrara, Kathleen, and Barbara Bell. 1995. Sociolinguistic Variation and Discourse Function of Constructed Dialogue Introducers: The Case of Be + Like. American Speech 70:265-290. Macaulay, Ronald. 2001. You?re Like ?Why Not?? the Quotative Expressions of Glasgow Adolescents. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (1):3-21. Romaine, Suzanne, and Deborah. Lange. 1991. The Use of Like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress. American Speech 66 (3):227-279. Tagliamonte, Sali, and Rachel Hudson. 1999. Be Like Et Al. Beyond America: The Quotative System in British and Canadian Youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3 (2):147-172. From language at sprynet.com Sat Feb 21 23:24:54 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 18:24:54 -0500 Subject: like Message-ID: "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard British English and/or criminal cant. I would love to tell you the title, but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100 miles north of here. What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching "science" but merely my own speculations: I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb or an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on its way to becoming an adverb. Just as the basic forms of life are continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment? After all, where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway? And why do we find the adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch? Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their adjectives double as adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among speakers that something might be missing? Could the explanation for this be found in a lost ancestor of several related languages? This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it seems interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of languages. But why an adverb? I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification should take. And this comes out as "like." A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes claimed as an Americanism. As in "How are we doing supply wise?" This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack a two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and adjectives," namely "-weise" or "-erweise." Thus, the following structure: Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass... Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as: He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that... I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk like this, his example was "the owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise." best to all, alex From hstahlke at bsu.edu Sun Feb 22 01:10:11 2004 From: hstahlke at bsu.edu (Stahlke, Herbert F.W.) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 20:10:11 -0500 Subject: like Message-ID: -ly and 'like' both come from Old English li:c 'body', a word that is preserved in 'lychgate', a covered gate into a churchyard where the pall bearers rest a body on the way from the church to the burial site. It shows up pretty early in English as a derivational suffix meaning "in the manner of". During Middle English the final consonant was lost resulting in the form now spelled -ly. Modern 'like' in 'childlike' is a doublet with -ly, but it forms compounds rather than derivative forms. German -lich and Dutch -lijk have a similar history. English 'wise' has largely lost the meaning of 'manner', except in the rare, perhaps 'in this wise'. Ingo Plag (Word Formation in English, Cambridge 2003) argues that it's no longer a compound element but a combining form. Whether it's a combining form or a noun used to form compounds depends on how one treats 'in this wise', as archaic or not. Herb Stahlke "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard British English and/or criminal cant. I would love to tell you the title, but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100 miles north of here. What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching "science" but merely my own speculations: I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb or an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on its way to becoming an adverb. Just as the basic forms of life are continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment? After all, where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway? And why do we find the adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch? Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their adjectives double as adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among speakers that something might be missing? Could the explanation for this be found in a lost ancestor of several related languages? This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it seems interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of languages. But why an adverb? I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification should take. And this comes out as "like." A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes claimed as an Americanism. As in "How are we doing supply wise?" This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack a two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and adjectives," namely "-weise" or "-erweise." Thus, the following structure: Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass... Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as: He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that... I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk like this, his example was "the owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise." best to all, alex From language at sprynet.com Sun Feb 22 09:48:36 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 04:48:36 -0500 Subject: like Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." To: "Alexander Gross" ; Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 8:10 PM Subject: RE: [FUNKNET] Re: like > -ly and 'like' both come from Old English li:c 'body', a word that is preserved in 'lychgate', a covered gate into a churchyard where the pall bearers rest a body on the way from the church to the burial site. Thanks. As you've no doubt noted, perfectly cognate with German Leiche, for "body." And the German 'gleich,' meaning among other things..."like," seems to be lurking in the background. > It shows up pretty early in English as a derivational suffix meaning "in the manner of". During Middle English the final consonant was lost resulting in the form now spelled -ly. Modern 'like' in 'childlike' is a doublet with -ly, but it forms compounds rather than derivative forms. German -lich and Dutch -lijk have a similar history. > > English 'wise' has largely lost the meaning of 'manner', except in the rare, perhaps 'in this wise'. Ingo Plag (Word Formation in English, Cambridge 2003) argues that it's no longer a compound element but a combining form. Whether it's a combining form or a noun used to form compounds depends on how one treats 'in this wise', as archaic or not. > Thanks again. > Herb Stahlke > > > "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, > where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard > British English and/or criminal cant. I would love to tell you the title, > but I either left the book in England or have it sitting in an attic 100 > miles north of here. > > What follows is not a "sociolinguistic study" or anything approaching > "science" but merely my own speculations: > > I've sometimes wondered whether this use of "like," whether after a verb or > an adjective, could be something like an adverbial surrogate or a form on > its way to becoming an adverb. Just as the basic forms of life are > continually re-evolving in the sea around us, could various stages of > evolving language forms also be in the process of reenactment? After all, > where did the adverb suffix "-ly" come from anyway? And why do we find the > adjective suffixes "-lich" and "-lijk" in German and Dutch? > > Both so-called substandard English and standard German make their adjectives > double as adverbs, but could there nonetheless be a shared feeling among > speakers that something might be missing? Could the explanation for this be > found in a lost ancestor of several related languages? > > This is scarcely to suggest that adverbs represent any kind of linguistic > advance or that languages with an adverb for every adjective (which would > exclude English) are superior to those without this feature, rather it seems > interesting to note what may be a common conflict within a small group of > languages. > > But why an adverb? I would suggest that such speakers do not feel full > confidence in the words they use and thus feel the need for some kind of > qualification, even if they are not sure what form this qualification should > take. And this comes out as "like." > > A more persuasive adverbial surrogate is "wise," which is also sometimes > claimed as an Americanism. As in "How are we doing supply wise?" > > This is not quite off topic, since adverb-shunning Germans sometimes tack a > two- or three-syllable adverbial surrogate onto their nouns and adjectives," > namely "-weise" or "-erweise." Thus, the following structure: > > Er hat uns sehr freundlicherweise erwaehnt, dass... > > Could be translated into an extreme form of American English as: > > He mentioned to us like real friendly wise that... > > I recall a Royal Shakespeare actor friend making fun of Americans who talk > like this, his example was "the owl who wasn't very wise wise-wise." > > best to all, > > alex > > > > > From Salinas17 at aol.com Mon Feb 23 05:00:48 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:00:48 EST Subject: like Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/04 6:25:35 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: << "Like" was definitely used in this manner in a circa-1900 Bram Stoker novel, where it became clear from context that this was considered substandard British English and/or criminal cant. >> "Like" appeared in all kinds of old idiomatic expressions where it can be read as abbreviations of longer forms. E.g., "I feel like going home" (1863) "looking for you like anything." (1665), "...the broad heath looked like rabbits." (1868)" "What is he like?" (1878), "So, it's like that, is it?", etc. When we take the use of "like" as signaling approximation ("something like"), a lot of modern uses can be connected to earlier uses. The quotative, of course, also ought to be seen as part of a narrative voice -- "He's like, 'go ahead!'" uses the storyteller's present tense, qualifies the exactness of the quote and drops narrative redundacies. (So then he says something like.../So then he acts as if he were saying...) Similarly, "He goes~" may be seen as not different in sense from "he goes on and on and on..." or the formal narrative device, "he proceeds to say..." When we heard "he goes, like, 'forget it'" on the streets of Brooklyn many years ago, it was in the course of a narrative and was understood to mean "he then goes on to say something like, 'forget it'." Regards, Steve Long From mliu at cc.nctu.edu.tw Thu Feb 26 09:54:01 2004 From: mliu at cc.nctu.edu.tw (Mei-chun Liu) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:54:01 +0800 Subject: Linguistics position Message-ID: Tenure Track Position in LINGUISTICS Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures & Institute of Linguistics and Cultural Studies National Chiao Tung university Hsinchu, Taiwan The Institute of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University invite applications for a full-time tenure-track position in LINGUISTICS at all possible levels, with a starting date of August 1st, 2004. We seek applications with a Ph. D degree and strong record of research in the following areas: 1) Computational or Corpus Linguistics (Speech-related research is preferred); 2) Cognitive Linguistics or Neurolinguistics; 3) Interface between Syntax, Semantics and Prosody. Strong consideration will be given to applicants whose research is corpus-based and can be integrated with the existing strengths of the Institute. Regular duties include graduate and undergraduate teaching, research, graduate student advising, as well as Institute, Departmental, and College service assignment as required for university faculty members. Applicants should send 1) curriculum vitae, 2) copies of representative publications, 3) copy of diploma, 4) research summary and teaching portfolio, 5) Names of three referees by April 15, 2004 to: Dr. Meichun Liu, Professor and Chair Department of Foreign languages and Literatures & Institute of Linguistics and Cultural Studies National Chiao Tung University 1001 Ta Hsueh Rd. Hsinchu 300, Taiwan E-mail inquiries may be sent to : hclo at mail.nctu.edu.tw Tel: 886-3-5731660~1 Fax: 886-3-5726037