From language at sprynet.com Wed Sep 1 23:55:10 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 19:55:10 -0400 Subject: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (3) Message-ID: Thanks for your latest message, Steve, and for the Peter Master article, which i enjoyed. Though since i am among other things a translator, i can't help wondering how it would translate into Russian or Chinese. I think over time we will reach a meeting of the minds over whatever issues may seem to divide us. I also pulled down my heavy Liddell & Scott, and i wonder if the medical-pharmacological meaning could be the missing link between classical _chrio_ & christian _christos_. Speaking as a former state-accredited practictioner of humoral medicine, the kind Hippocrates & Galen practiced, the act of rubbing a medicine onto & into someone's flesh is in fact intended to alter their physical & emotional reality, so it wouldn't be an enormous stretch to imagine that such an act could identify or legitimize a religious leader, even a "saviour." We have all kinds of ads surrounding us with claims that swallowing a pill can alter our state of being, though some cultures still prefer herbs or fire or needles or even suppositories to do the trick. So why wouldn't rubbing in a bit of aromatic herbal oil also impart wisdom and leadership? very best to all! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 10:40 AM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Re: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (3) > In a message dated 8/30/04 4:37:17 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: > << Contrary to Steve's fantasies that all language can be broken down to Roger > > Schank-like scenarios involving dialogues with car valets, both grammar and > > accent really do matter in most languages. >> > > Well, obviously a problem with my scenario would be that it gave Alex the > impression that I was saying grammar and accent don't matter. > > (Reminded me of one of the more memorable Roger Schank lines: "People don't > remember what you say. They remember what they say.") > > One of my points was that there are actually two different kinds of "bad > grammar." There's one kind that makes my speech incomprehensible to listeners. > There's another kind that sounds wrong "grammatically" but is nevertheless > understandable by listeners. > (Time for more scenarios.) > > A child recently told me that he "waked up in the morning..." I corrected > him but understood what he was saying. That's bad grammar that doesn't directly > interfere with communication, except to the extent that it distracts or > affects the willingness of the listener to listen. > > However, the Chinese diplomat scenario appears to teach us that whether > grammar is faulty can often depend on non-linguistic factors (i.e., whether the > embassy owns many cars or just one car -- ie, "get a car" or "get the car"). > Some sociolinguists have had a habit of calling these non-linguistic factors > "context", in the sense of surrounding circumstances. But the fact is they are > the core reason we are speaking in the first place. If our diplomat has no > interest in cars, he should logically have nothing to say and the correct article > and other grammar problems do not arise. > > What Rob originally wrote was: "At any rate, the performance of the best > [computer] models is getting close to that of humans at guessing which article > will be used in a given context." > > What I was challenging in that statement was how a computer could know > "context" -- the non-linguistic ingredients in the soup. From what I can tell, the > computer thinks "get the car" is more likely than "get a car" because "get the > car" or something like it has been more likely in the past. This is not > "context" in the sense of reference, which involves non-linguistic factors. It's > "context" in the sense of word sequence and adjacency history and contraints > on sentence structure. That's an important difference in terminology and one I > thought worth mentioning. It seems to confuse the computer generated > language issues a lot. > > Particularly because "a car" versus "the car" is NOT always a matter that can > be solved without looking outside language and in the real world. The > parking valet teaches us that. A machine cannot solve that problem on its own. It > just doesn't know whether " a car" or "the car" is correct in that > circumstance. It doesn't know whether the diplomat should choose one or the other. And > of course we can't say which is correct unless we also have such knowledge. > > Alex also writes: > <<... just as i am concerned with ...breaking through to describing how > language actually works. >> > > Let me suggest a place to start. A friend recently received a phone message > from a colleague with a strong Southern accent. She and I could make out at > best five words out of two dozen. We're all competent native English speakers, > but the message to us was incomprehensible. That's an example of when > language "actually doesn't work" though it should. Let me suggest that explaining > why it didn't work might go a long way towards explaining how it works, when it > does work. > > BTW, there's a humorous piece on the web about "the THE" by Peter Master at: > http://aaal.lang.uiuc.edu/letter/23.2/theology.html > > Regards, > Steve Long From prashantpardeshi at yahoo.com Thu Sep 2 06:45:09 2004 From: prashantpardeshi at yahoo.com (Prashant Pardeshi) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 23:45:09 -0700 Subject: Conference on Cognition, Brain and Typology (Sept. 12-13, 2004) Message-ID: === Apologies For Multiple Copies -- Please Distribute === The Fourth International Forum on Language, Brain, and Cognition "Cognition, Brain and Typology: Towards a Synthesis" Program: http://www.lbc21.jp/TEMP/InfoForum04_Prog.htm Organized by: Tohoku University 21st Century Program in Humanities�@Strategic Research and Education Center for an Integrated Approach to Language, Brain, and Cognition (http://www.lbc21.jp/) Date: September 12-13 (Sunday-Monday), 9am-7pm Venue: Kawauchi-kita Campus, Multi Media Hall, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. Invited Speakers Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands) William Croft (Department of Linguistics, University of Manchester, UK) Asifa Majid (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands) Kichun Nam (Korea University and Brain Science Research Center, KAIST, Korea) Heiko Narrog (Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Japan) Kwangoh Yi (Department of Psychology, Yeungnam University, Korea) In addition to the above-mentioned invited lectures there will also be presentation sessions by researchers related to this COE Program. Admission is Free. But please contact the Secretariat by September 10 (Friday). *Reception scheduled in the evening of September 12 (Sun), please contact the Secretariat by September 7 (Tuesday) if you are interested in attending it.(3000yen for non-students, 1000 yen for students) Contact: Secretariat, The Tohoku University 21st Century COE Program in Humanities Tel: 022-217-7550, Fax: 022-217-7850, E-mail: office at lbc21.jp, URL: http://www.lbc21.jp __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From Salinas17 at aol.com Thu Sep 2 18:55:33 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 14:55:33 EDT Subject: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (4) Message-ID: In a message dated 9/1/04 7:55:32 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: << I also pulled down my heavy Liddell & Scott, and i wonder if the medical-pharmacological meaning could be the missing link between classical _chrio_ & christian _christos_. >> One of the curious and I think not adequately explained things in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets is the great emphasis placed on "perfumed oil." “The amount of space at Pylos devoted to the manufacture and storage of perfumed oil, and the role of palace administrators in collecting and allocating raw material to perfumers, indicate the importance of the industry” (Shelmerdine, 1985). The usual interpretation is that this was a vanity item, but then why should it get more emphasis and distribution than regular or fancy textiles or clothes, for example? Perhaps this supports your idea that we don't have a real picture of how the chrio word worked in ancient times -- what it actually meant. Maybe some things are just not translateable across time, even in languages we still know well. And maybe that suggests how vital experience -- real world context -- is to how language actually works. Regards, Steve Long From jeonglee12 at hotmail.com Fri Sep 3 07:39:56 2004 From: jeonglee12 at hotmail.com (Jeong-Hwa Lee) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 07:39:56 +0000 Subject: Second Call for Papers for ICLC9 Message-ID: Second Call for Papers for the 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference Theme: Language, Mind and Brain Yonsei University, Seoul KOREA 17-22 July 2005 (Sunday-Friday) http://www.iclc2005.org (after 1 May 2004) The International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA) will be holding its Ninth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC) in Seoul, Korea on 17-22 July 2005 (Conference Chair: Prof. Hyon-Sook Shin chair at iclc2005.org). This is the first ICLC held in Asia. The conference will include several theme sessions in addition to general and poster sessions. For information about the Association and previous conferences, visit the ICLA website: http://www.cogling.org Invited Speakers Eve Sweetser (University of California at Berkeley) George Lakoff (University of California at Berkeley) Gilles Fauconnier (University of California at San Diego) Guenter Radden (Hamburg University) John Taylor (University of Otago) Keedong Lee (Yonsei University) Leonard Talmy (State University of New York at Buffalo) Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) Ronald W. Langacker (University of California at San Diego) Seana Coulson (University of California at San Diego) Suzanne Kemmer (Rice University) SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS A. For General and Poster Sessions: We solicit abstracts (for 25-minute presentations including discussion) which address various aspects of cognitive approaches to human language. Papers on cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, discourse studies, corpus linguistics, or language processing will be of particular interest. However, papers concerning any issues relating cognition and language will be welcome. B. Theme Sessions: Organizers of theme sessions are asked submit the followings: (a) A short description of the topic of the session (300-500 words) (b) A detailed description of the structure of the session: presentations, discussions, breaks, etc. (with specific time allotment) (c) The abstracts of all speakers following the abstract specifications below (d) The names of discussants with contact information We ask that neither the presentation nor the discussion by a discussant exceeds 20 minutes. All submissions should follow the abstract specifications below: Abstract specifications An abstract should be maximum 500 words (about one page), including examples and references. It should specify research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by three members of a large international panel. Notification of Theme Session will be made on or before January 15, 2005. And notification of General and Poster Sessions will be made on or before February 15, 2005. Electronic submissions as attachment (in MS word or PDF format) are strongly encouraged. We ask each author to restrict their submission to one single-authored abstract and one co-authored abstract maximum to give opportunity to more authors within limited time. The body of e-mail message should include - author name(s) - affiliation(s) - telephone number - e-mail address - fax number - title of paper - specific area (e.g., subfields of cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, discourse studies, etc.) - three to five keywords - presenter's name - preferred session: (a) General Session (b) Poster Session (c) preference General Session but willing to do a poster The abstract should be anonymous. All abstracts should be sent to park at iclc2005.org (Prof. Jeong-Woon Park, Program Committee Chair) Should you be unable to submit your abstract electronically, send three high-quality copies of your abstract and a separate page containing the required information to Prof. Jeong-Woon Park English Department, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies 270 Imun-Dong Dongdaemun-Gu Seoul 130-791 KOREA IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline for Theme Sessions: September 15, 2004 Submission deadline for General and Poster Sessions: November 15, 2004 Acceptance notification of Theme Session: January 15, 2005 Acceptance notification of General and Poster Sessions: February 15, 2005 For further information, visit http://www.iclc2005.org (after 1 May 2004). Hyon-Sook Shin Ph.D. Conference Chair 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference chair at iclc2005.org _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From language at sprynet.com Mon Sep 6 04:29:51 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 00:29:51 -0400 Subject: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (4) Message-ID: > Maybe some things are just not translateable across time, even in languages > we still know well. And maybe that suggests how vital experience -- real > world context -- is to how language actually works. Good, Steve, we agree on something. I would only add that some things are just not translatable even today between two existing cultures. Or even between two people in the same room speaking essentially the same form of the same language. Take as just one possible example among thousands the following simple sentence: "Put it in." This sentence most definitely requires translation even between two members of the same linguistics department, or it might well cause an explosion. It could mean: Include something... Provide or install something... Spend or pass time in or at something... Insert a key... Place something in the oven... Introduce the arming device for a bomb... Or just to make this subject a bit more interesting: Initiate sexual intercourse. And lots of other meanings besides--anaphora may be far too meager a term to describe what is going on here, like so many other "terms" in our field. "Image schemas" don't really come close. And even "linguistic relativity" may fall short. I can quite easily provide vast numbers of other such examples. Simply go to my website and download my ancient, pre-windows computer program "The Glorious Verb 'TO PUT.'" Just click under Free Downloads on my website at: http://language.home.sprynet.com I think you'll find it presents more than enough problems to short-circuit the whole Schank-Lenat scenario-CYC dreamwalker's approach to NLP. Any & all of these examples require loads of context and/or mutual understanding to make sense of the sentence. Or a truly competent translator. And any or all of them would require different translations into a foreign language. Much effort in what we call "communicating" gets devoted to making sure we have the context right. One could almost say: communication = disambiguation, on the assumption that the message is ambiguous to begin with. If there seems to be a missing middle here, there isn't. From a functional point of view translating between two languages isn't all that different from explaining or paraphrasing something in a single tongue. In some ways translation can be seen as a form of paraphrasing between two different idioms. very best, alex ps--the program comes as a zip file. unzip it into a single directory and go to Windows/Run. From there find your directory and run the file to_put.exe. make sure you read the file to_put.doc as well, along with the docs inside the program. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 2:55 PM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Re: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (4) In a message dated 9/1/04 7:55:32 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: << I also pulled down my heavy Liddell & Scott, and i wonder if the medical-pharmacological meaning could be the missing link between classical _chrio_ & christian _christos_. >> One of the curious and I think not adequately explained things in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets is the great emphasis placed on "perfumed oil." “The amount of space at Pylos devoted to the manufacture and storage of perfumed oil, and the role of palace administrators in collecting and allocating raw material to perfumers, indicate the importance of the industry” (Shelmerdine, 1985). The usual interpretation is that this was a vanity item, but then why should it get more emphasis and distribution than regular or fancy textiles or clothes, for example? Perhaps this supports your idea that we don't have a real picture of how the chrio word worked in ancient times -- what it actually meant. Maybe some things are just not translateable across time, even in languages we still know well. And maybe that suggests how vital experience -- real world context -- is to how language actually works. Regards, Steve Long From Salinas17 at aol.com Sun Sep 12 15:49:45 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 11:49:45 EDT Subject: Times Piece on "Doctor Dolittle's Delusion" Message-ID: News piece on Stephen R. Anderson's forthcoming book "Doctor Dolittle's Delusion" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/science/07cont.html?pagewanted=1 <<...To linguists, languages are not lists of words, but frames governed by syntax, the art that gives different meanings to "The murderer believed Mary to be John's mother," "Mary believed John's mother to be the murderer" or "To be the murderer, Mary believed John's mother.">> It is difficult to understand what Anderson believes animals are deficit in from these examples. I understand that chimps seem to be capable of communicating "You gave my ball to Kokie." <> It is difficult to understand what Anderson believes animals are deficit in from these examples. I suspect there are many humans who don't "reminisce" about last year's honey. And I did not know that "reminiscing" was a quality of language. Animals certainly have memories of course -- and some might be good memories -- and they might be able to communicate them. As far as apes not asking why they are captives -- a look into history shows that human slaves frequently assumed that slavery was their status and also had no reason to ask why they were captives either. The concepts of murder, belief and captivity may all be cultural late-comers and, while the arrangement of their relationships to other sentence parts may be syntactic, their absence from animal speech might be explained by their absence from relatively recent human speech. What this may be is the absence of human culture in animals, not the absence of language. If communication is acheived, then the difference is in what is communicated. Most humans are definitely not good at telling others where the best pollen is by doing a dance, or even by describing it verbally. I have no idea which flowers to go to in order to get the best pollen or how to tell others about it. Is that a language incompetency? It seems to me that two jumps are being compressed into one here. The complexity of human speech -- and the use of syntax -- may allow us to communicate more detail about more things. But that is the advantage of the system, not of being biologically human. We really don't know what a human isolated from the language of other humans can manage. On the other hand, what allowed us to use such a complex system is a different jump and a different question. Steve Long From iiiheleniii at hotmail.com Tue Sep 14 19:10:50 2004 From: iiiheleniii at hotmail.com (Helen East) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:10:50 +0100 Subject: "the" (2) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Johanna Rubba" > Re British "the Burger King", this has a familiar ring to me. But my > memories of British English are too foggy to verify or come up with > other examples. Surely there are some Brits out there who subscribe to > Funknet ... ? We have something similar to the "the 405 (?freeway)" issue you mentioned in that we refer to all our roads like this, from "the M25" (a notorious carpark) to "the B1303" (minor road). In these cases, it's not a shorthand for anything (eg, the B1303 road). Although it's possible to say "the M25 motorway", I don't think anyone does, and I don't think it would be acceptable to say "the B1303 road". Personally I feel it's a uniqueness indicator but it's also a name (as in the Hudson). In my local area (Cambridge), certain roads are given "the" such as "the Milton Road" (similar to "the Old Kent Road") by local people, but there rest of us would call it Milton Road. I suppose this stems from the road originally leading to Milton (ie, "I'll meet you on the Milton Road as opposed to the Huntingdon Road") as it only seems to apply to roads that do lead in the direction their name suggests. The "the Burger King" example could only work in my dialect if there was only one BK in town. It would not be acceptable IMHO if the speaker was referring to the chain. There's something weird, though, in that I can say "I'll meet you in front of the Burger King" but it's much harder to say *"I'll meet you in front of the McDonalds." Oh well, food for thought I guess. Usage such as "the Nashville" and "I like the coffee" (generic) are very interesting, as it's something EFL teachers try to stamp out all the time. I'm currently teaching an Italian, so perhaps I should reconsider my tactics. Helen Helen East RCEAL Cambridge From langconf at bu.edu Thu Sep 16 16:59:35 2004 From: langconf at bu.edu (Boston University Conference on Language Development) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:59:35 -0400 Subject: The 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development Message-ID: The 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development will be held at Boston University, November 5-7, 2004. Our invited speakers are: Elizabeth S. Spelke, Harvard University "Language and Core Knowledge" Keynote address, Friday, November 5 at 8:00 pm Ken Wexler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Beauty and Awe: Language Acquisition as High Science" Plenary address, Saturday, November 6 at 5:45 pm Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Stephen Crain, University of Maryland - College Park "Where does grammar come from? A debate on the nature of child language acquisition" Lunchtime symposium, Saturday, November 6 at 12:00 pm The full conference schedule, with 87 papers and 44 posters, is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/schedule.htm Pre-registration for BUCLD 29 is now available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/prereg.htm More information about BUCLD is available at our website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD We look forward to seeing you at BUCLD 29. Sincerely, Alejna Brugos, Rossie Clark-Cotton, and Seungwan Ha BUCLD 29 Co-organizers From language at sprynet.com Tue Sep 21 20:17:29 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:17:29 -0400 Subject: On the Relativity Front... Message-ID: Since it's closely related to our recent discussions about linguistic relativity and MT, some of you might want to look at my latest published paper in Translation Journal, a review that in its print & digital formats has been in existence since 1987. Simply go to: http://accurapid.com/journal/30review2.htm Taking the form of a book review, this paper nonetheless manages to deal with a number of serious linguistic issues often excluded from current discussion, among them: Recurrent and predictable problems created in all languages when extensive new technical vocabularies are suddenly imported, problems one would not expect to encounter if human language were truly "innate" or if "we all have the same minds" and/or there were a "single mental design underlying" all languages. New evidence that MT may be doomed and is still floundering around helplessly in the same polemics that surrounded it twenty years ago. New testimony by a medical doctor that the arguments favoring the MIT school of linguistics are deeply defective . What may well be the final word in the extended debate about Whorf's theories and the alleged number of "snow words" in Inuit languages. It may well be that neither linguists nor anthropologists can have any deep insight into these questions, since they are most properly the domain of that branch of translation studies dealing with terminology. And miracle of miracles, at least in the context of much "mainstream" linguistics where so many arguments are advanced either by fiat on high or by exquisitely meandering, metaphysical, metalinguistical meditations, each one of these points is actually accompanied by evidence. What on earth would happen to this field of study if linguists were required from now on to follow the recent example set by evidence-based medicine, so that evidence-based linguistics were suddenly to become the norm? very best to all! alex From jrubba at calpoly.edu Fri Sep 24 19:11:12 2004 From: jrubba at calpoly.edu (Jo Rubba) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 12:11:12 -0700 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Hi, all, People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) constructions? Thanks -- Jo *************************************************** Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics English Department, Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596 Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba *************************************************** From wilcox at unm.edu Fri Sep 24 20:22:19 2004 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:22:19 -0600 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" In-Reply-To: <41547150.8020706@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: On 9/24/04 1:11 PM, "Jo Rubba" wrote: > People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect > objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm > gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". You should play "Peel Me A Grape" (Diana Krall has a nice version) for your class. "Champagne me," "new Thunderbird me," "polar bear rug me" -- it's a great tune for analysis. -- Sherman Wilcox Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico From lgorbet at unm.edu Fri Sep 24 23:03:11 2004 From: lgorbet at unm.edu (Larry Gorbet) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 17:03:11 -0600 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" In-Reply-To: <41547150.8020706@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: Jo Rubba wrote >People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect >objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as >"I'm gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a >cake". Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) >constructions? By some people. I was about to jump in running on the basis of your second example, but the first one stopped me in my tracks. They are really different in some ways. And, no, I don't really know how. But consider what (for me) are some contrasts. The first contrasts with 2b. I'm gonna bake myself a cake. 2c. I'm gonna bake a cake. [no beneficiary specified or even necessary] But the first feels really odd to me (at least this afternoon) with "myself". 1b. ? I'm gonna run myself the best race of my life. 1c. I'm gonna run the best race of my life. [like 2c, no beneficiary] I'm all open to the possibility that the difference between 1b. and 2b. is just a consequence of the semantics of the construction plus that of the respective original sentences. But it's tricky stuff. The "1a" sentence (Jo's original second) seems to objectivize the speaker/beneficiary (?) by using the form that would be used if the subject were not coreferential. Hmm. Is the oddity for me of 1b. related to the oddity of "Sheila's gonna run me the best race of her life"? That is, the "source" construction (X do V Y..., where X and Y are plain nominals without prepositions) for it doesn't work. Parenthetically, Sherman's examples are all of these non-coreferential types and so, while perhaps related to Jo's, are not at all exemplars of the same construction(s). Whee. - Larry From mariel at post.tau.ac.il Sat Sep 25 09:24:49 2004 From: mariel at post.tau.ac.il (Mira Ariel) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:24:49 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Dear Jo, I agree with Larry Gorbet. 1. I'm gonna buy me a dog: Me is an argument, and alternates with a reflexive. I argue that the grammaticization of the reflexive in English has not been completed, so self-directed actions such as these did not necessarily conventionalize as reflexives. (Cf. ?? I sold me a dog yesterday -- Imagine you work at a pet shop and you sold yourself a dog there. You would then say I sold myself a dog). 2. I'm gonna run me... Here 'me' is not an argument. Keenan called such pronouns pleonastic. In fact, my ?? example -- I'm gonna sell me a dog -- can be ok under this reading. Here me probably means something like the action will favorably affect me. In some languages (e.g., Hebrew) there's no necessary corefernce in this type of example. I can say: She's gonna run me... And the effect can be positive or negative. Best, Mira Ariel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jo Rubba" To: "funknet" Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 21:11 Subject: [FUNKNET] "I'm gonna buy me a dog" > Hi, all, > > People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect > objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm > gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". > Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) constructions? > > Thanks -- > > Jo > *************************************************** > Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics > English Department, Cal Poly State University > San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 > Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596 > Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu > URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba > *************************************************** > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Sat Sep 25 08:28:08 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:28:08 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" In-Reply-To: <41547150.8020706@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: Dear Jo, I am far from being specialized in English and I'm hence not very qualified to answer to the 'English component' of your question. Nevertheless, please allow just a few words, just because the constructional type you seem to allude to is rather familiar in a number of other languages, be it Indoeuropean or not. Superficially, we havce to deal with a 'benebefactive/malefactive reflexive' construction that is marked by a) the use of a pronominal segment in a positional and/or formal variant that else occurs for what is often called 'indirect object', and b) by coreferentiality between the referent of this pronoun and the 'subject' of the clause. In English, these two parameters are not immediately visible, as shown by your examples. The positional left-drift of the pronoun as well as its form both mask the functional properties of 'me'. Still, iif you re-construct the original (?) position, you immediately see that the 'role' taken by 'me' is different from that of an 'indirect object': I'm gonna bake a cake for me ~ myself.' If we start from the GIVE-concept as representing a rather prototypical constructional pattern involving 'indirect objects', it comes clear that 'me' in the clause 'I'm gonna bake me a cake' is NOT an indirect object strictu sensu. This aspect is even more evindet, if we consider the first clause ('I'm gonna run me the best race of my life.'). Here, the for-substitute does not seem to work (at least in my rudimentary English). This means that the me-constructions would not involve' indirect objects'. But what IS their nature? AS I said above, the constructional type is rather common in a number of other e.g. Indoeuropean lanuanguages, compare Grerman (pseudo-dialectal, region of Siegen): Ich rauch' mir erstmal ne Zigarette. I smoke:1sg me first a cigarette 'I'll first smoke a cigarette (just on my own).' Trink dir n Bier drink:imp:2sg you:dat a beer 'Have a beer!' This constructional pattern which spreads more and more in colloquial German perhaps stems from the adoption of parallel strategies from bilingual Polish-German speakers (immigrants from Poland into the Ruhr region), as the pattern is famous for many Slavic languages, too, (though, here the reflexive strategies are slightly different). On the other hand, we find analogous strategies in many Romance languages. This would argue in favor of a more general 'cognitive' strategy. It is important to note that in German, the mir-construction is strongly related to what one may call 'solipsistic semantics': By this term I mean the fact that the mir-construction stresses the 'isolation' of the primary agent (be it subjective or agentive). The reflexive pronoun (visible as such in German in the 3rd person only (sich)) hence functions more like an emphatic element, focusing on its coreferent. Note that in German the nealry same effect as the mir-construction can also be yielded by putting stress onto the agent: (also...) ICH rauch' erstmal ne Zigratte. This observation goes together with a typology of reflexives that interpretes them as members of a 'reflexivization scale'. Acccordingly, the semantics of 'reflexive' constructions starts from highly S(ubjective)/A(gentive) oriented semantics coupled with corresponding positional preferences ('near to S/A'). Such patterns yield emphatic variants of S/A (e.g. I myself). On the other side of the scale, we find reflexives in Objective (or, if you want: Object) function (prototypically I kill myself). Again the (now extremely 'distant') relation between S/A and its coreferential 'O' (in fact usually a partitive of S/A) is iconically encoded by the corresponding techniques to distinguish S/A (here: A) from O. The mir/me-constructions seem to be located somewhere 'in the middle' of this scale (which by itself is derived from the framework of Cognitive Typology), hence the term 'middle-voice' seems not too bad. It is what is called the 'Subjective Version' (SV) in Georgian (or: sataviso), e.g. me v-i-tbob sac^'mel-s I 1sg-SV-warm=up:pres food-dat 'I warm up the food for me' (~ ? 'I warm me up the food.') In Georgian, the the pre-stem vowel -i- is a general SV indicator, a fact that correlates with the well-known distinction between verbal and lexical reflexivity: In English and in German, we would have to deal with a kind of lexical SV, whereas in Slavic, a verbal type of SV seems to prevail. What is interesting in English is the fact that the language does not use the 'standard reflexive' (myself etc.). In his posting, Larry has convincingly argued that a phrasing like > 2b. I'm gonna bake myself a cake. is even more emphatic than the original phrase (in fact, in Larry's version, it is the referential entity 'I' which is under emphasis, whereas in I'm gonna bake me a cake the emphasis also involves aspects of the verbal action. It would be interesting to see how English would construe the same phrase with a third person (He's gonna bake him(self) a cake. ??? - sorry, no competence on my side...). So, in sum I would dare to adopt the Georgian term (be it sataviso or Subjective Version) to denote the construction at issue. There surely are parallels with the standard middle voice, but there also are differences which should not be put aside by using such a 'cover term'.... By the way: It's rather tempting to interprete the Indoeuropean Middle Voice endings as a conglomarate of Personal Agreement markers and an SV marker, e.g. (secondary endings): Active SV 1sg *-m *-m-a: 2sg *-s *-s-o 3sg *-t *-t-o 3pl *-nt *-nt-o The vocalic suffix *-a:/-o (some kind of ablaut?) would than have functioned just as the Georgian version vowl -i- , or the Slavic pair -s'/-sja, as in Russian sobaka kusa-et-sja dog bite:pres-3sg-SV 'The dog bites (for itself) / *itself ........ I'll stop here, else I would be at risk to start writing an article - it's just fascinating stuff! Best wishes, Wolfgang Jo Rubba schrieb: > Hi, all, > > People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect > objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm > gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". > Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) constructions? > -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze From ocls at madisoncounty.net Sat Sep 25 12:52:23 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 07:52:23 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: September 25, 2004 I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and the fact that I can't offer evidence, but I guess I that's cowardly -- so here goes. "I'm gonna buy me a dog" is native for me ... part of my native Ozark English dialect. Where I live in rural northwest Arkansas I hear the construction constantly. I've tried to imagine a context in which I would say "I'm gonna run me a race," and I've failed; but I can certainly say "I'm gonna write me a novel." But for me, as a native speaker, the "me/myself" pairs just are not synonymous. I wouldn't say "I'm gonna buy me a dog" and "I'm gonna buy myself a dog" interchangeably, and the difference isn't simply the degree of formality. As I said, I can't offer evidence. However, my guess is that the "me" is resumptive and that it's related to the double-pronoun focus phenomenon -- like the "he" in "Tom, he never offers a grammaticality judgment unless he can offer solid evidence with it." Suzette Haden Elgin From mariel at post.tau.ac.il Sat Sep 25 14:48:37 2004 From: mariel at post.tau.ac.il (Mira Ariel) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 16:48:37 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Dear Scott, Of course the sentence 'I sold me a dog' is acceptable in the context and reading you gave it, which is what I too said in my message! But I think that in this case I'm only the seller, not the buyer (as well)! But in 'I sold myself a dog' I am the buyer as well as the seller. So, you can substitute 'me' with 'myself' in the 'buy' case but not in the 'sell' case. Also: I sold a dog to myself ??I sold a dog to me. But I'd better stop. I'm not a native speaker. The corpora I looked at had no sell + pronoun ananphoric to the subject (as in 'I sold me'). But I did find 'buy' with such ananphoric pronoun rather than reflexive (as in 'I bought me'). Best, Mira Ariel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott DeLancey" To: "Mira Ariel" Cc: "Jo Rubba" ; "funknet" Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 12:27 Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] "I'm gonna buy me a dog" > On Sat, 25 Sep 2004, Mira Ariel wrote: > > > (Cf. ?? I sold me a dog yesterday -- Imagine you work at a pet shop and you > > sold yourself a dog there. You would then say I sold myself a dog). > > For me (though I'm not really a native speaker of this dialect) this > is perfectly good in the middle sense. If I raise dogs, and sell them > for a living, and I made a good sale yesterday, then I sold me a dog > yesterday. All that's necessary for the construction to be good is > that I benefited somehow from the transaction. > > Scott DeLancey > Department of Linguistics > 1290 University of Oregon > Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA > > delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu > http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. From ocls at madisoncounty.net Sat Sep 25 14:30:37 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 09:30:37 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: **Mira Ariel is right -- In "I sold me a dog" the "me" can only be the seller, not the buyer. "I sold a dog to me" is possible only with strong contrastive stress on "me," as in "I didn't sell a dog to Tracy, I sold a dog to ME." (And "I didn't sell a dog to Tracy, I sold a dog to mySELF" is far more likely.) Similarly, in "I wrote me a letter" the "me" can only be the writer, not the recipient of the letter. Suzette Haden Elgin (native speaker, Ozark English) From language at sprynet.com Sun Sep 26 06:23:43 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 02:23:43 -0400 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. Anyway, you did _too_ offer evidence, the Ozarks count, just as much as any other language form. Another possible example: I wanna build me a whole new world of linguistics. very best to all! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: "Suzette Haden Elgin" To: Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 8:52 AM Subject: [FUNKNET] Re: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" > > September 25, 2004 > > I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and the fact that I > can't offer evidence, but I guess I that's cowardly -- so here goes. > > "I'm gonna buy me a dog" is native for me ... part of my native Ozark > English dialect. Where I live in rural northwest Arkansas I hear the > construction constantly. I've tried to imagine a context in which I would > say "I'm gonna run me a race," and I've failed; but I can certainly say > "I'm gonna write me a novel." But for me, as a native speaker, the > "me/myself" pairs just are not synonymous. I wouldn't say "I'm gonna buy me > a dog" and "I'm gonna buy myself a dog" interchangeably, and the difference > isn't simply the degree of formality. > > As I said, I can't offer evidence. However, my guess is that the "me" is > resumptive and that it's related to the double-pronoun focus phenomenon -- > like the "he" in "Tom, he never offers a grammaticality judgment unless he > can offer solid evidence with it." > > Suzette Haden Elgin > > > From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Sun Sep 26 10:41:52 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:41:52 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" (2) In-Reply-To: <006701c4a391$61b39140$d22cf7a5@woowoo> Message-ID: Dear friends, I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the following two wordings: Suzette Haden Elgin wrote: >>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...) >> Alexander Gross wrote: >Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. > Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me! Very best wishes, Wolfgang -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/wschulze From ocls at madisoncounty.net Sun Sep 26 12:35:47 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 07:35:47 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: September 26, 2004 Wolfgang Schulze wrote: >Dear friends, > >I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but >please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the >following two wordings: > >Suzette Haden Elgin wrote: > >>>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...) >>> >Alexander Gross wrote: > >>Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. >> >Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which >climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear >as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me! > >Very best wishes, >Wolfgang >Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze **I'm sorry, Dr. Schulze (and all of you on FunkNet). It wasn't my intention to be obscure, and I had nothing particularly interesting in mind. What I meant by "the current climate" is all the cautionary carrying-on about using one's personal intuitions as grammatical judgments. I understand the objections and agree that such judgments are often suspect, and I was therefore hesitant to add my own to the "get me a dog" discussion. However, there are so few Ozark English native speakers in the population of linguists that I decided I'd better speak up anyway. It may be that Alexander meant something else; I'll leave that to him to explain. Best wishes, Suzette Suzette Haden Elgin Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS) PO Box 1137 Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 ocls at madisoncounty.net http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin http://www.livejournal.com/users/ozarque From language at sprynet.com Sun Sep 26 14:59:56 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 10:59:56 -0400 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" (2) Message-ID: If this is at all unclear, let me provide the missing links. Suzette had written: "I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and the fact that I can't offer evidence, but I guess I that's cowardly -- so here goes." Which I took to be clearly related to something I had written one day earlier summarizing my paper published in Translation Journal: _And miracle of miracles, at least in the context of much "mainstream" linguistics where so many arguments are advanced either by fiat on high or by exquisitely meandering, metaphysical, metalinguistical meditations, each one of these points is actually accompanied by evidence. What on earth would happen to this field of study if linguists were required from now on to follow the recent example set by evidence-based medicine, so that evidence-based linguistics were suddenly to become the norm?_ This appeared under the the subject heading "Re: On the Relativity Front..." The paper in question can be found at: http://accurapid.com/journal/30review2.htm Hope that clears up everything. very best to all! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wolfgang Schulze" To: Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 6:41 AM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Re: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" (2) > Dear friends, > > I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but > please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the > following two wordings: > > Suzette Haden Elgin wrote: > > >>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...) > >> > Alexander Gross wrote: > > >Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. > > > Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which > climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear > as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me! > > Very best wishes, > Wolfgang > > -- > > Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze > Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft > Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München > Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 > D-80539 München > Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro) > Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 > Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de > Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/wschulze > > From bls at socrates.Berkeley.EDU Mon Sep 27 18:38:15 2004 From: bls at socrates.Berkeley.EDU (Berkeley Linguistics Society) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:38:15 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Linguistics Society - call for papers Message-ID: Dear all, Below is the call for papers for the 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, to be held February 18-20, 2005. Please forward this message to the students and faculty in your departments. Thank you for your help. We look forward to reading the submissions! Sincerely, Rebecca Cover Yuni Kim Co-chairs, BLS 31 ********************** BLS 31 Call for Papers The conference will consist of a General Session, a Parasession and a Special Session. General Session The General Session will cover all areas of linguistic interest. We encourage proposals from diverse theoretical frameworks and also welcome papers on language-related topics from disciplines such as Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Literature, Neuroscience and Psychology. Invited speakers: Sandra Chung, University of California, Santa Cruz Nicholas Evans, University of Melbourne TBA Parasession: Prosodic Variation and Change The Parasession aims to explore synchronic variation and historical change in all areas of prosody, including syllable structure, metrical structure, stress, accent, tone, and intonation. We invite submissions addressing pathways and general principles of prosodic change. In addition, we invite papers on prosodic variation, broadly construed: across related languages and dialects, within an individual's grammar, and within speech communities. Papers from a wide range of perspectives are encouraged. Invited speakers: Jose Hualde, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Paul Kiparsky, Stanford University Special Session: Languages of West Africa The Special Session will discuss languages of West Africa (from Cameroon west). We welcome submissions on all aspects of West African languages, including syntax, semantics, phonology, phonetics, morphology, pragmatics, historical issues, and sociolinguistics. We particularly encourage papers on minority and understudied languages, language contact, and cross-linguistic comparison. 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We may be contacted: Email: bls at socrates.berkeley.edu Website: http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/ Updates will be posted to our website. The conference schedule will be posted in January. ............................. Berkeley Linguistics Society University of California, Berkeley Department of Linguistics 1203 Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 Phone/Fax: 510-642-5808 find information on BLS meetings and availability of proceedings at: http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/ ............................. From l.stassen at let.kun.nl Tue Sep 28 01:57:14 2004 From: l.stassen at let.kun.nl (Leon Stassen) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 03:57:14 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" Message-ID: I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which the following line can be heard: "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that has a song with the line: "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of at least American English. From hstahlke at bsu.edu Tue Sep 28 03:23:28 2004 From: hstahlke at bsu.edu (Stahlke, Herbert F.W.) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:23:28 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" Message-ID: I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Herb Stahlke ============ I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which the following line can be heard: "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that has a song with the line: "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of at least American English. From clements at indiana.edu Tue Sep 28 04:21:57 2004 From: clements at indiana.edu (clements) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:21:57 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" and the 'ethical dative' In-Reply-To: <08E7F6310CCC7642A44FCD859F7740790EC6AE@email03.bsu.edu> Message-ID: The term 'ethical dative' is often used to name a similar phenomenon in Spanish, of the type Se ME murio' el gato. EMPH 1sg-dative died the cat 'My cat died on me.' Esta nena no me come. this little.girl NEG 1sg-dative eats 'This little girl is not wanting to eat (for me).' In Spanish, it seems more frequently in 1st and 2nd person than in 3rd. I don't know if anyone has studied the distribution of this in English. It'd be interesting to know whether the distribution is sensitive to person and number distinctions. Clancy Clements On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: > I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. > > Herb Stahlke > > ============ > > I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I > do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which > the following line can be heard: > > "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " > > What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that > has a song with the line: > > "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" > > Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any > buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be > clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of > at least American English. > > > > > ************************************************* J. Clancy Clements Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP 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 W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Tue Sep 28 08:36:02 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:36:02 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" In-Reply-To: <08E7F6310CCC7642A44FCD859F7740790EC6AE@email03.bsu.edu> Message-ID: Dear friends, please allow me to briefly come back to the 'me'-issue. In my last posting, I had suggested to treat the examples of a possible 'me'-construction in English as an instantiation of the 'middle-reflexive' construction as documented in quite a considerable number of languages. What seems crucial to me is the fact that we have to deal with a specific constructional pattern, not necessarily with a segmental specification based on case semantics. This comes clear from the fact that in all the examples brought forth so far, there is coreference between the 'agent' (S(ubjective); A(gentive)) and the 'dative pronoun'. Now, if you look at standard Old Greek grammars, you will imeediately realize that coreference (that is constructional reflexivity) is not necessarily present with what is called the Dativus Ethicus. The standard Old Greek example for this case semantics is: mÉ moi thorubÉsete proh I:dat make=noise:imp:2pl 'Don't make noise (for me).' If ever there is coreference in this clause, it is organized according to what typology calls logophoric reference (reference towards the speaker). Rather parallel constructions can already be found in Old English, e.g.(capital letters are long vowels). An interesting passage can be found in Beda's Historia ecclesiastica (~ 670), translated by Aelfred (~ 890): In Book IV, chapter 24, we read: Cedoman sin3 mE hwaethwu3u Caedmon sing:imp:2sg I:dat something Latin: Demon (...) canta mihi aliquid.' (8) 'Caedman, sing me something.' hwaerthe thU mE meaht sin3an still you:sg I:dat can:pres:2sg sing Latin: Attamen (...) cantare habes.' 'You can still sing me.' ((ibid. (10)). sin3 mE frumsceaft (12) sing I:dat creation Latin: Canta (...) principium creaturarum.' 'Sing me (about) the creation' It is interesting to see that at least in (10) and (12), the Dativus Ethicus turns up only in the translation, which argues in favor of am autochthonous construction (logophoric reference = Dativus Ethicus). This also comes true from Old Norse / Old Icelandic, confer: gakk mér firr (Heusler 1967:189) go:imp:2sg I:dat far 'Go far (for me)' [not: from me!] All these are examples for a (horribile dictu) Dativus Ethicus. Still, these examples are NOT what seems to be meant with the examples at issue, namely the 'me'-construction. As I said above: In my eyes, the crucial difference is that the dativus ethicus does not necessarily involve a clause-internal reflexive strategy, whereas the 'me'-construction does. Unfortunately, I do not have at hands an Old English or Old Norse corpus to test, whether 'me'-constructions had been present already in older variants of Germanic. Still, in a passage from Hávamál (Older Edda, verse 47) I have read: audhigr thótto-mz rich appear:past:1sg-refl:1 'I appeared for me to be rich' a form, that competed with audhigr thótto 'I appeared to be rich'. Here, we would have something like the 'me'-construction at issue. All this (and, admittedly, much more) argues - in my humble eyes - against the use of the term 'Dativus Ethicus' for the 'me'-construction. This would make perhaps too strong use of the traditional Latin/Greek based terminology that often obscures important typological differences... Best Wolfgang Stahlke, Herbert F.W. schrieb: >I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. > >Herb Stahlke > >============ > >I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I >do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which >the following line can be heard: > >"I went outside and I smoked myself a J " > >What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that >has a song with the line: > >"I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" > >Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any >buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be >clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of >at least American English. > > > > > > > -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze From ocls at madisoncounty.net Tue Sep 28 12:40:49 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:40:49 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" Message-ID: Clancy Clements wrote: The term 'ethical dative' is often used to name a similar phenomenon in Spanish, of the type Se ME murio' el gato. EMPH 1sg-dative died the cat 'My cat died on me.' Esta nena no me come. this little.girl NEG 1sg-dative eats 'This little girl is not wanting to eat (for me).' In Spanish, it seems more frequently in 1st and 2nd person than in 3rd. I don't know if anyone has studied the distribution of this in English. It'd be interesting to know whether the distribution is sensitive to person and number distinctions. ====== Ozark English also has the "on me" construction, as in "My cat died on me" and "My barn burned down on me" and "This little girl is going all weird on me and not wanting to eat" and so on. But I see no connection between that construction and the "me" in "I'm gonna get me a dog." Nor do I see anything "ethical" about the "me" in "I'm gonna get me a dog." Perhaps "ethical" is like "competence," and has a technical meaning I'm unaware of.... Dr. Clements ask whether the construction is sensitive to person and number distinctions; here's a range of examples. "I got me a new pickup truck yesterday." "We got us a new pickup truck yesterday." "You better get you a new pickup truck pretty soon." "You got you a new pickup truck, sure, but you didn't pay your mortgage." "Go get you some supper before it gets cold." "He got him a new pickup truck yesterday." "She got her a new pickkup truck yesterday." [Note: I'm hesitant about "They got them a new pickup truck yesterday," but have no idea why; something tells me that one has to go to the reflexive, which of course means I'd have to choose between "themselves" and "theirselves." Maybe it's just example fatigue, from running through the set? Well. I've got me this example that's gone funny-sounding on me. Suzette From langconf at bu.edu Tue Sep 28 14:57:48 2004 From: langconf at bu.edu (Boston University Conference on Language Development) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:57:48 -0400 Subject: Soliciting questions for BUCLD debate between Stephen Crain & Michael Tomasello Message-ID: Soliciting questions for BUCLD debate between Stephen Crain and Michael Tomasello: "Where does grammar come from? A debate on the nature of child language acquisition" This year's Boston University Conference on Language Development (Nov. 5-7) will feature a 2-hour debate between Stephen Crain and Michael Tomasello entitled: "Where does grammar come from? A debate on the nature of child language acquisition." The speakers will first present their own positions on this question, and then respond to each other's positions. During the last half hour or so, they will respond to questions submitted in advance by you, members of the language development community. So I'm writing now to solicit your questions. Any questions are welcome, representing any theoretical perspective or about any topic relevant to the debate. So here's your chance to ask that question that's always been bothering you, or that you could never understand, or that you just want to know about. Please send any and all questions to Seungwan Ha at by October 15, 2004. For more information about BUCLD, or to pre-register, check out our website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/index.htm From jst at email.byu.edu Tue Sep 28 17:24:41 2004 From: jst at email.byu.edu (Jeffrey S. Turley) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:24:41 -0600 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" and the 'ethical dative' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Clancy, I've studied Spanish clitics quite a bit, and I'm not sure I've noticed that the frequency of ethical datives are lower in the 3rd person. I know this isn't scientific, but a Google search of "se le murió" and "se me murió" turned up almost equal number of hits. Best, Jeff Turley Date sent: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:21:57 -0500 (EST) From: clements Subject: [FUNKNET] "I'm gonna get me a dog" and the 'ethical dative' To: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." Copies to: Leon Stassen , funknet at mailman.riceedu > The term 'ethical dative' is often used to name a similar phenomenon in > Spanish, of the type > > Se ME murio' el gato. > EMPH 1sg-dative died the cat > 'My cat died on me.' > > Esta nena no me come. > this little.girl NEG 1sg-dative eats > 'This little girl is not wanting to eat (for me).' > > In Spanish, it seems more frequently in 1st and 2nd person than in > 3rd. I don't know if anyone has studied the distribution of this in > English. It'd be interesting to know whether the distribution is sensitive > to person and number distinctions. > > Clancy Clements > > > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: > > > I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. > > > > Herb Stahlke > > > > ============ > > > > I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I > > do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which > > the following line can be heard: > > > > "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " > > > > What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that > > has a song with the line: > > > > "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" > > > > Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any > > buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be > > clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of > > at least American English. > > > > > > > > > > > > ************************************************* > J. Clancy Clements > Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP > 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 promotion at benjamins.com Tue Sep 28 19:54:06 2004 From: promotion at benjamins.com (Christopher Bell) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:54:06 -0400 Subject: New Book: DIRVEN Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing Company is pleased to announce the publication of the following new book: Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics Second revised edition Edited by René Dirven and Marjolijn H. Verspoor University of Duisberg-Essen / University of Groningen In collaboration with Johan De Caluwé, Dirk Geeraerts, Cliff Goddard, Stef Grondelaers, Ralf Pörings, Günter Radden, Willy Serniclaes, Marcello Soffritti, Wilbert Spooren, John R. Taylor, Ignacio Vazquez, Anna Wierzbicka, Margaret E. Winters Cognitive Linguistics in Practice 1 2004. xii, 277 pp. U.S. and Canada: Cloth: 1 58811 485 6 / USD 108.00 Everywhere else: Cloth: 90 272 1905 2 / EUR 90.00 U.S. and Canada: Paper: 1 58811 486 4 / USD 39.95 Everywhere else: Paper: 90 272 1906 0 / EUR 33.00 Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics is designed as a comprehensive introductory text for first and second-year university students of language and linguistics. It provides a chapter on each of the more established areas in linguistics such as lexicology, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, historical linguistics, and language typology and on some of the newer areas such as cross-cultural semantics, pragmatics, text linguistics and contrastive linguistics. In each of these areas language is explored as part of a cognitive system comprising perception, emotion, categorisation, abstraction processes, and reasoning. All these cognitive abilities may interact with language and be influenced by language. Thus the study of language in a sense becomes the study of the way we express and exchange ideas and thoughts. This Second Revised Edition is corrected, updated and expanded. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics is clearly presented and organized after having been tested in several courses in various countries. Includes exercises (solutions to be found on the Internet). Table of contents Preface ix–xii 1. The cognitive basis of language: Language and thought 1–23 2. What’s in a word? Lexicology 25–48 3. Meaningful building blocks: Morphology 49–74 4. Putting concepts together: Syntax 75–100 5. The sounds of language: Phonetics and Phonology 101–126 6. Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics 127–148 7. Doing things with words: Pragmatics 149–177 8. Structuring texts: Text linguistics 179–201 9. Language across time: Historical linguistics 203–230 10. Comparing languages: Language: classification, typology, and contrastive linguistics 231–258 References 259–268 Subject index 269–277 John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Call toll free to order: 1-800-562-5666 From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Sep 30 07:51:20 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:51:20 +0200 Subject: ME and the 'ethical dative' In-Reply-To: <415949F9.15566.11BA06@localhost> Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, please allow me just to quote a German Children's joke which nicely illustrates the ambiguity of so-called "dativus-ethicus constructions" (the crucial phrase in italics): "Klein Erna hat mal wieder in die Hosen gemacht. Die Mutter schimpft: "Dass MIR das nicht noch einmal passiert!". Sagt Klein Erna erleichtert: "Ach, DIR ist das passiert? Ich dachte schon MIR!" A rough translation: " Little Erna has again wet herself. Mother shouts: "I hope that this does not happen again!" (lit: That this does not happen ME again!). Being relieved, Little Erna says: "Oh, that did happen to YOU? I already thought to ME!". Best, Wolfgang -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze From tgivon at uoregon.edu Thu Sep 30 17:12:12 2004 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 10:12:12 -0700 Subject: etc. Message-ID: Dear Funk people, I have been waiting for someone to say this, but apparently in vain. To anyone who has followed (and sometime participated in) the last 30-odd years of cumulative comparative-typological work and argumentation on the subject of the grammatical status of DAT/BEN objects, the following would surely appear familiar, indeed superfluous. But it seems that, as always, we linguists are doomed to chase our tail in ever-narrowing circles, recycling the same data and arguments ad infinutum, often under the guise of new terminology, new filing schemes, new formats or--alas-- 'theories'. There is a vast comparative-typological literature on the obligatory or the near-obligatory "promotion" of dative/benefactive arguments to grammatical DIR OBJ. It begins (implicitly) with Keenan's 1975,1976 seminal papers on GRs (inpired by the RG mini-explosion of the LSA-summer 1972); Judy Aissen's description of "ascention" in Mayan; Hawkinson & Hyman's 1974 paper on Bantu; Alexandre Kimewnyi's 1976 dissertation on KinyaRwanda; Noel Rude's 1985 dissertation on Nez Perce; Matt Dryer's work on "primary object"; Matt Shibatani's work on GRs; among many many others. Among the the well established facts comking out of this literature, the following are relevant to the current discussion: (a) In many, perhaps most languages (and language families) known to us, the dative/recipient object/argument (of verbs such as 'give', 'send', 'show', 'tell', 'bring') and the optional benefactive argument are obligaqtorily coded as the DIR OBJ of the clause, given whatever language-specific criteria for DIR OBJ-hood exist in the language (word-order, nominal case-marking, verbal morphology, pronominal or otherwise, behavior/control properties). Mayan (Tzotzil), Bantu, Uto-Aztecan (Ute), So., Arawak (Machiguenga), Sahaptian (Nez Perce), Athabaskan (Tolowa) easily come to mind, but the list can go on and on seemingly forever. (b) Relatively few languages allow the DAT/BEN argument to be coded at all as an INDIR OBJ (English being a prime example here). But even in sauch languages, the vast majority of DAT/BEN objects in discourse are still coded as DIR OBJs ('She gave him a book', 'She cooked him a stake') rather than INDIR OBJ ('She gave a/the book to Joe', 'She cooked a/the stake for him', resp). And the vast majority of the DAT/BEN direct objects in discourse are pronouns. In my text counts in written English (found in several publications beginning with ca. 1984), these generalization approach the 90% level, and it is a safe bet that counts in informal spoken English will show an even higher correlation of DAT/BEN > DIR OBJ. (c) In the Generative tradition, the difference between a 100% (obligatory) and 90% (optional) grammatical process is highly significant. But if the grammaticalization literature of the very same 30-odd years has shown anything, it is that at 80-90% usage frequency, the difference between the two "types" of grammar becomes negligible, and sooner or later the 90% is interpreted as 100% by naive speakers. (This "glossing over the difference" is not really about language, but about cognition and the rise of automaticity. Both automatic processing and grammaticalization are usage- frequency-driven. There's a vast literature on that too). (d) Lastly, and methodologically sobering: Most of the languages with reported "optional promotion" of DAT/BEN to DIR OBJ (English, Hebrew, Spanish etc.) are languages with a long literate tradition, with highly literate linguists who tend to count--if they count usage frequencies at all--written discourse. In contrast, all the languages reporting "obligatrory promotion" are recently-described spoken languages. As most of us know, literacy exerts a notorious slow-down effect on grammaticalization. So in such languages it may well be that the reinterpreetation of 90% > 100% is already long completed in the spoken language; but the conservative written forms preserve older relics--the recalcitrant 10% that makes the process seem still "optional". And literate linguists tend to report such relics as highly significant. With apologies & best regards, TG From language at sprynet.com Wed Sep 1 23:55:10 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 19:55:10 -0400 Subject: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (3) Message-ID: Thanks for your latest message, Steve, and for the Peter Master article, which i enjoyed. Though since i am among other things a translator, i can't help wondering how it would translate into Russian or Chinese. I think over time we will reach a meeting of the minds over whatever issues may seem to divide us. I also pulled down my heavy Liddell & Scott, and i wonder if the medical-pharmacological meaning could be the missing link between classical _chrio_ & christian _christos_. Speaking as a former state-accredited practictioner of humoral medicine, the kind Hippocrates & Galen practiced, the act of rubbing a medicine onto & into someone's flesh is in fact intended to alter their physical & emotional reality, so it wouldn't be an enormous stretch to imagine that such an act could identify or legitimize a religious leader, even a "saviour." We have all kinds of ads surrounding us with claims that swallowing a pill can alter our state of being, though some cultures still prefer herbs or fire or needles or even suppositories to do the trick. So why wouldn't rubbing in a bit of aromatic herbal oil also impart wisdom and leadership? very best to all! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 10:40 AM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Re: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (3) > In a message dated 8/30/04 4:37:17 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: > << Contrary to Steve's fantasies that all language can be broken down to Roger > > Schank-like scenarios involving dialogues with car valets, both grammar and > > accent really do matter in most languages. >> > > Well, obviously a problem with my scenario would be that it gave Alex the > impression that I was saying grammar and accent don't matter. > > (Reminded me of one of the more memorable Roger Schank lines: "People don't > remember what you say. They remember what they say.") > > One of my points was that there are actually two different kinds of "bad > grammar." There's one kind that makes my speech incomprehensible to listeners. > There's another kind that sounds wrong "grammatically" but is nevertheless > understandable by listeners. > (Time for more scenarios.) > > A child recently told me that he "waked up in the morning..." I corrected > him but understood what he was saying. That's bad grammar that doesn't directly > interfere with communication, except to the extent that it distracts or > affects the willingness of the listener to listen. > > However, the Chinese diplomat scenario appears to teach us that whether > grammar is faulty can often depend on non-linguistic factors (i.e., whether the > embassy owns many cars or just one car -- ie, "get a car" or "get the car"). > Some sociolinguists have had a habit of calling these non-linguistic factors > "context", in the sense of surrounding circumstances. But the fact is they are > the core reason we are speaking in the first place. If our diplomat has no > interest in cars, he should logically have nothing to say and the correct article > and other grammar problems do not arise. > > What Rob originally wrote was: "At any rate, the performance of the best > [computer] models is getting close to that of humans at guessing which article > will be used in a given context." > > What I was challenging in that statement was how a computer could know > "context" -- the non-linguistic ingredients in the soup. From what I can tell, the > computer thinks "get the car" is more likely than "get a car" because "get the > car" or something like it has been more likely in the past. This is not > "context" in the sense of reference, which involves non-linguistic factors. It's > "context" in the sense of word sequence and adjacency history and contraints > on sentence structure. That's an important difference in terminology and one I > thought worth mentioning. It seems to confuse the computer generated > language issues a lot. > > Particularly because "a car" versus "the car" is NOT always a matter that can > be solved without looking outside language and in the real world. The > parking valet teaches us that. A machine cannot solve that problem on its own. It > just doesn't know whether " a car" or "the car" is correct in that > circumstance. It doesn't know whether the diplomat should choose one or the other. And > of course we can't say which is correct unless we also have such knowledge. > > Alex also writes: > <<... just as i am concerned with ...breaking through to describing how > language actually works. >> > > Let me suggest a place to start. A friend recently received a phone message > from a colleague with a strong Southern accent. She and I could make out at > best five words out of two dozen. We're all competent native English speakers, > but the message to us was incomprehensible. That's an example of when > language "actually doesn't work" though it should. Let me suggest that explaining > why it didn't work might go a long way towards explaining how it works, when it > does work. > > BTW, there's a humorous piece on the web about "the THE" by Peter Master at: > http://aaal.lang.uiuc.edu/letter/23.2/theology.html > > Regards, > Steve Long From prashantpardeshi at yahoo.com Thu Sep 2 06:45:09 2004 From: prashantpardeshi at yahoo.com (Prashant Pardeshi) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 23:45:09 -0700 Subject: Conference on Cognition, Brain and Typology (Sept. 12-13, 2004) Message-ID: === Apologies For Multiple Copies -- Please Distribute === The Fourth International Forum on Language, Brain, and Cognition "Cognition, Brain and Typology: Towards a Synthesis" Program: http://www.lbc21.jp/TEMP/InfoForum04_Prog.htm Organized by: Tohoku University 21st Century Program in Humanities?@Strategic Research and Education Center for an Integrated Approach to Language, Brain, and Cognition (http://www.lbc21.jp/) Date: September 12-13 (Sunday-Monday), 9am-7pm Venue: Kawauchi-kita Campus, Multi Media Hall, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. Invited Speakers Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands) William Croft (Department of Linguistics, University of Manchester, UK) Asifa Majid (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands) Kichun Nam (Korea University and Brain Science Research Center, KAIST, Korea) Heiko Narrog (Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Japan) Kwangoh Yi (Department of Psychology, Yeungnam University, Korea) In addition to the above-mentioned invited lectures there will also be presentation sessions by researchers related to this COE Program. Admission is Free. But please contact the Secretariat by September 10 (Friday). *Reception scheduled in the evening of September 12 (Sun), please contact the Secretariat by September 7 (Tuesday) if you are interested in attending it.(3000yen for non-students, 1000 yen for students) Contact: Secretariat, The Tohoku University 21st Century COE Program in Humanities Tel: 022-217-7550, Fax: 022-217-7850, E-mail: office at lbc21.jp, URL: http://www.lbc21.jp __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From Salinas17 at aol.com Thu Sep 2 18:55:33 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 14:55:33 EDT Subject: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (4) Message-ID: In a message dated 9/1/04 7:55:32 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: << I also pulled down my heavy Liddell & Scott, and i wonder if the medical-pharmacological meaning could be the missing link between classical _chrio_ & christian _christos_. >> One of the curious and I think not adequately explained things in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets is the great emphasis placed on "perfumed oil." ?The amount of space at Pylos devoted to the manufacture and storage of perfumed oil, and the role of palace administrators in collecting and allocating raw material to perfumers, indicate the importance of the industry? (Shelmerdine, 1985). The usual interpretation is that this was a vanity item, but then why should it get more emphasis and distribution than regular or fancy textiles or clothes, for example? Perhaps this supports your idea that we don't have a real picture of how the chrio word worked in ancient times -- what it actually meant. Maybe some things are just not translateable across time, even in languages we still know well. And maybe that suggests how vital experience -- real world context -- is to how language actually works. Regards, Steve Long From jeonglee12 at hotmail.com Fri Sep 3 07:39:56 2004 From: jeonglee12 at hotmail.com (Jeong-Hwa Lee) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 07:39:56 +0000 Subject: Second Call for Papers for ICLC9 Message-ID: Second Call for Papers for the 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference Theme: Language, Mind and Brain Yonsei University, Seoul KOREA 17-22 July 2005 (Sunday-Friday) http://www.iclc2005.org (after 1 May 2004) The International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA) will be holding its Ninth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC) in Seoul, Korea on 17-22 July 2005 (Conference Chair: Prof. Hyon-Sook Shin chair at iclc2005.org). This is the first ICLC held in Asia. The conference will include several theme sessions in addition to general and poster sessions. For information about the Association and previous conferences, visit the ICLA website: http://www.cogling.org Invited Speakers Eve Sweetser (University of California at Berkeley) George Lakoff (University of California at Berkeley) Gilles Fauconnier (University of California at San Diego) Guenter Radden (Hamburg University) John Taylor (University of Otago) Keedong Lee (Yonsei University) Leonard Talmy (State University of New York at Buffalo) Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) Ronald W. Langacker (University of California at San Diego) Seana Coulson (University of California at San Diego) Suzanne Kemmer (Rice University) SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS A. For General and Poster Sessions: We solicit abstracts (for 25-minute presentations including discussion) which address various aspects of cognitive approaches to human language. Papers on cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, discourse studies, corpus linguistics, or language processing will be of particular interest. However, papers concerning any issues relating cognition and language will be welcome. B. Theme Sessions: Organizers of theme sessions are asked submit the followings: (a) A short description of the topic of the session (300-500 words) (b) A detailed description of the structure of the session: presentations, discussions, breaks, etc. (with specific time allotment) (c) The abstracts of all speakers following the abstract specifications below (d) The names of discussants with contact information We ask that neither the presentation nor the discussion by a discussant exceeds 20 minutes. All submissions should follow the abstract specifications below: Abstract specifications An abstract should be maximum 500 words (about one page), including examples and references. It should specify research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by three members of a large international panel. Notification of Theme Session will be made on or before January 15, 2005. And notification of General and Poster Sessions will be made on or before February 15, 2005. Electronic submissions as attachment (in MS word or PDF format) are strongly encouraged. We ask each author to restrict their submission to one single-authored abstract and one co-authored abstract maximum to give opportunity to more authors within limited time. The body of e-mail message should include - author name(s) - affiliation(s) - telephone number - e-mail address - fax number - title of paper - specific area (e.g., subfields of cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, discourse studies, etc.) - three to five keywords - presenter's name - preferred session: (a) General Session (b) Poster Session (c) preference General Session but willing to do a poster The abstract should be anonymous. All abstracts should be sent to park at iclc2005.org (Prof. Jeong-Woon Park, Program Committee Chair) Should you be unable to submit your abstract electronically, send three high-quality copies of your abstract and a separate page containing the required information to Prof. Jeong-Woon Park English Department, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies 270 Imun-Dong Dongdaemun-Gu Seoul 130-791 KOREA IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline for Theme Sessions: September 15, 2004 Submission deadline for General and Poster Sessions: November 15, 2004 Acceptance notification of Theme Session: January 15, 2005 Acceptance notification of General and Poster Sessions: February 15, 2005 For further information, visit http://www.iclc2005.org (after 1 May 2004). Hyon-Sook Shin Ph.D. Conference Chair 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference chair at iclc2005.org _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From language at sprynet.com Mon Sep 6 04:29:51 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 00:29:51 -0400 Subject: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (4) Message-ID: > Maybe some things are just not translateable across time, even in languages > we still know well. And maybe that suggests how vital experience -- real > world context -- is to how language actually works. Good, Steve, we agree on something. I would only add that some things are just not translatable even today between two existing cultures. Or even between two people in the same room speaking essentially the same form of the same language. Take as just one possible example among thousands the following simple sentence: "Put it in." This sentence most definitely requires translation even between two members of the same linguistics department, or it might well cause an explosion. It could mean: Include something... Provide or install something... Spend or pass time in or at something... Insert a key... Place something in the oven... Introduce the arming device for a bomb... Or just to make this subject a bit more interesting: Initiate sexual intercourse. And lots of other meanings besides--anaphora may be far too meager a term to describe what is going on here, like so many other "terms" in our field. "Image schemas" don't really come close. And even "linguistic relativity" may fall short. I can quite easily provide vast numbers of other such examples. Simply go to my website and download my ancient, pre-windows computer program "The Glorious Verb 'TO PUT.'" Just click under Free Downloads on my website at: http://language.home.sprynet.com I think you'll find it presents more than enough problems to short-circuit the whole Schank-Lenat scenario-CYC dreamwalker's approach to NLP. Any & all of these examples require loads of context and/or mutual understanding to make sense of the sentence. Or a truly competent translator. And any or all of them would require different translations into a foreign language. Much effort in what we call "communicating" gets devoted to making sure we have the context right. One could almost say: communication = disambiguation, on the assumption that the message is ambiguous to begin with. If there seems to be a missing middle here, there isn't. From a functional point of view translating between two languages isn't all that different from explaining or paraphrasing something in a single tongue. In some ways translation can be seen as a form of paraphrasing between two different idioms. very best, alex ps--the program comes as a zip file. unzip it into a single directory and go to Windows/Run. From there find your directory and run the file to_put.exe. make sure you read the file to_put.doc as well, along with the docs inside the program. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 2:55 PM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Re: The Chinese Diplomat's "the" (4) In a message dated 9/1/04 7:55:32 PM, language at sprynet.com writes: << I also pulled down my heavy Liddell & Scott, and i wonder if the medical-pharmacological meaning could be the missing link between classical _chrio_ & christian _christos_. >> One of the curious and I think not adequately explained things in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets is the great emphasis placed on "perfumed oil." ?The amount of space at Pylos devoted to the manufacture and storage of perfumed oil, and the role of palace administrators in collecting and allocating raw material to perfumers, indicate the importance of the industry? (Shelmerdine, 1985). The usual interpretation is that this was a vanity item, but then why should it get more emphasis and distribution than regular or fancy textiles or clothes, for example? Perhaps this supports your idea that we don't have a real picture of how the chrio word worked in ancient times -- what it actually meant. Maybe some things are just not translateable across time, even in languages we still know well. And maybe that suggests how vital experience -- real world context -- is to how language actually works. Regards, Steve Long From Salinas17 at aol.com Sun Sep 12 15:49:45 2004 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 11:49:45 EDT Subject: Times Piece on "Doctor Dolittle's Delusion" Message-ID: News piece on Stephen R. Anderson's forthcoming book "Doctor Dolittle's Delusion" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/science/07cont.html?pagewanted=1 <<...To linguists, languages are not lists of words, but frames governed by syntax, the art that gives different meanings to "The murderer believed Mary to be John's mother," "Mary believed John's mother to be the murderer" or "To be the murderer, Mary believed John's mother.">> It is difficult to understand what Anderson believes animals are deficit in from these examples. I understand that chimps seem to be capable of communicating "You gave my ball to Kokie." <> It is difficult to understand what Anderson believes animals are deficit in from these examples. I suspect there are many humans who don't "reminisce" about last year's honey. And I did not know that "reminiscing" was a quality of language. Animals certainly have memories of course -- and some might be good memories -- and they might be able to communicate them. As far as apes not asking why they are captives -- a look into history shows that human slaves frequently assumed that slavery was their status and also had no reason to ask why they were captives either. The concepts of murder, belief and captivity may all be cultural late-comers and, while the arrangement of their relationships to other sentence parts may be syntactic, their absence from animal speech might be explained by their absence from relatively recent human speech. What this may be is the absence of human culture in animals, not the absence of language. If communication is acheived, then the difference is in what is communicated. Most humans are definitely not good at telling others where the best pollen is by doing a dance, or even by describing it verbally. I have no idea which flowers to go to in order to get the best pollen or how to tell others about it. Is that a language incompetency? It seems to me that two jumps are being compressed into one here. The complexity of human speech -- and the use of syntax -- may allow us to communicate more detail about more things. But that is the advantage of the system, not of being biologically human. We really don't know what a human isolated from the language of other humans can manage. On the other hand, what allowed us to use such a complex system is a different jump and a different question. Steve Long From iiiheleniii at hotmail.com Tue Sep 14 19:10:50 2004 From: iiiheleniii at hotmail.com (Helen East) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:10:50 +0100 Subject: "the" (2) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Johanna Rubba" > Re British "the Burger King", this has a familiar ring to me. But my > memories of British English are too foggy to verify or come up with > other examples. Surely there are some Brits out there who subscribe to > Funknet ... ? We have something similar to the "the 405 (?freeway)" issue you mentioned in that we refer to all our roads like this, from "the M25" (a notorious carpark) to "the B1303" (minor road). In these cases, it's not a shorthand for anything (eg, the B1303 road). Although it's possible to say "the M25 motorway", I don't think anyone does, and I don't think it would be acceptable to say "the B1303 road". Personally I feel it's a uniqueness indicator but it's also a name (as in the Hudson). In my local area (Cambridge), certain roads are given "the" such as "the Milton Road" (similar to "the Old Kent Road") by local people, but there rest of us would call it Milton Road. I suppose this stems from the road originally leading to Milton (ie, "I'll meet you on the Milton Road as opposed to the Huntingdon Road") as it only seems to apply to roads that do lead in the direction their name suggests. The "the Burger King" example could only work in my dialect if there was only one BK in town. It would not be acceptable IMHO if the speaker was referring to the chain. There's something weird, though, in that I can say "I'll meet you in front of the Burger King" but it's much harder to say *"I'll meet you in front of the McDonalds." Oh well, food for thought I guess. Usage such as "the Nashville" and "I like the coffee" (generic) are very interesting, as it's something EFL teachers try to stamp out all the time. I'm currently teaching an Italian, so perhaps I should reconsider my tactics. Helen Helen East RCEAL Cambridge From langconf at bu.edu Thu Sep 16 16:59:35 2004 From: langconf at bu.edu (Boston University Conference on Language Development) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 12:59:35 -0400 Subject: The 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development Message-ID: The 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development will be held at Boston University, November 5-7, 2004. Our invited speakers are: Elizabeth S. Spelke, Harvard University "Language and Core Knowledge" Keynote address, Friday, November 5 at 8:00 pm Ken Wexler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Beauty and Awe: Language Acquisition as High Science" Plenary address, Saturday, November 6 at 5:45 pm Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Stephen Crain, University of Maryland - College Park "Where does grammar come from? A debate on the nature of child language acquisition" Lunchtime symposium, Saturday, November 6 at 12:00 pm The full conference schedule, with 87 papers and 44 posters, is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/schedule.htm Pre-registration for BUCLD 29 is now available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/prereg.htm More information about BUCLD is available at our website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD We look forward to seeing you at BUCLD 29. Sincerely, Alejna Brugos, Rossie Clark-Cotton, and Seungwan Ha BUCLD 29 Co-organizers From language at sprynet.com Tue Sep 21 20:17:29 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:17:29 -0400 Subject: On the Relativity Front... Message-ID: Since it's closely related to our recent discussions about linguistic relativity and MT, some of you might want to look at my latest published paper in Translation Journal, a review that in its print & digital formats has been in existence since 1987. Simply go to: http://accurapid.com/journal/30review2.htm Taking the form of a book review, this paper nonetheless manages to deal with a number of serious linguistic issues often excluded from current discussion, among them: Recurrent and predictable problems created in all languages when extensive new technical vocabularies are suddenly imported, problems one would not expect to encounter if human language were truly "innate" or if "we all have the same minds" and/or there were a "single mental design underlying" all languages. New evidence that MT may be doomed and is still floundering around helplessly in the same polemics that surrounded it twenty years ago. New testimony by a medical doctor that the arguments favoring the MIT school of linguistics are deeply defective . What may well be the final word in the extended debate about Whorf's theories and the alleged number of "snow words" in Inuit languages. It may well be that neither linguists nor anthropologists can have any deep insight into these questions, since they are most properly the domain of that branch of translation studies dealing with terminology. And miracle of miracles, at least in the context of much "mainstream" linguistics where so many arguments are advanced either by fiat on high or by exquisitely meandering, metaphysical, metalinguistical meditations, each one of these points is actually accompanied by evidence. What on earth would happen to this field of study if linguists were required from now on to follow the recent example set by evidence-based medicine, so that evidence-based linguistics were suddenly to become the norm? very best to all! alex From jrubba at calpoly.edu Fri Sep 24 19:11:12 2004 From: jrubba at calpoly.edu (Jo Rubba) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 12:11:12 -0700 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Hi, all, People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) constructions? Thanks -- Jo *************************************************** Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics English Department, Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596 Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba *************************************************** From wilcox at unm.edu Fri Sep 24 20:22:19 2004 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:22:19 -0600 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" In-Reply-To: <41547150.8020706@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: On 9/24/04 1:11 PM, "Jo Rubba" wrote: > People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect > objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm > gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". You should play "Peel Me A Grape" (Diana Krall has a nice version) for your class. "Champagne me," "new Thunderbird me," "polar bear rug me" -- it's a great tune for analysis. -- Sherman Wilcox Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico From lgorbet at unm.edu Fri Sep 24 23:03:11 2004 From: lgorbet at unm.edu (Larry Gorbet) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 17:03:11 -0600 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" In-Reply-To: <41547150.8020706@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: Jo Rubba wrote >People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect >objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as >"I'm gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a >cake". Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) >constructions? By some people. I was about to jump in running on the basis of your second example, but the first one stopped me in my tracks. They are really different in some ways. And, no, I don't really know how. But consider what (for me) are some contrasts. The first contrasts with 2b. I'm gonna bake myself a cake. 2c. I'm gonna bake a cake. [no beneficiary specified or even necessary] But the first feels really odd to me (at least this afternoon) with "myself". 1b. ? I'm gonna run myself the best race of my life. 1c. I'm gonna run the best race of my life. [like 2c, no beneficiary] I'm all open to the possibility that the difference between 1b. and 2b. is just a consequence of the semantics of the construction plus that of the respective original sentences. But it's tricky stuff. The "1a" sentence (Jo's original second) seems to objectivize the speaker/beneficiary (?) by using the form that would be used if the subject were not coreferential. Hmm. Is the oddity for me of 1b. related to the oddity of "Sheila's gonna run me the best race of her life"? That is, the "source" construction (X do V Y..., where X and Y are plain nominals without prepositions) for it doesn't work. Parenthetically, Sherman's examples are all of these non-coreferential types and so, while perhaps related to Jo's, are not at all exemplars of the same construction(s). Whee. - Larry From mariel at post.tau.ac.il Sat Sep 25 09:24:49 2004 From: mariel at post.tau.ac.il (Mira Ariel) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:24:49 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Dear Jo, I agree with Larry Gorbet. 1. I'm gonna buy me a dog: Me is an argument, and alternates with a reflexive. I argue that the grammaticization of the reflexive in English has not been completed, so self-directed actions such as these did not necessarily conventionalize as reflexives. (Cf. ?? I sold me a dog yesterday -- Imagine you work at a pet shop and you sold yourself a dog there. You would then say I sold myself a dog). 2. I'm gonna run me... Here 'me' is not an argument. Keenan called such pronouns pleonastic. In fact, my ?? example -- I'm gonna sell me a dog -- can be ok under this reading. Here me probably means something like the action will favorably affect me. In some languages (e.g., Hebrew) there's no necessary corefernce in this type of example. I can say: She's gonna run me... And the effect can be positive or negative. Best, Mira Ariel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jo Rubba" To: "funknet" Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 21:11 Subject: [FUNKNET] "I'm gonna buy me a dog" > Hi, all, > > People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect > objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm > gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". > Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) constructions? > > Thanks -- > > Jo > *************************************************** > Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics > English Department, Cal Poly State University > San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 > Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596 > Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu > URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba > *************************************************** > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Sat Sep 25 08:28:08 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:28:08 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" In-Reply-To: <41547150.8020706@calpoly.edu> Message-ID: Dear Jo, I am far from being specialized in English and I'm hence not very qualified to answer to the 'English component' of your question. Nevertheless, please allow just a few words, just because the constructional type you seem to allude to is rather familiar in a number of other languages, be it Indoeuropean or not. Superficially, we havce to deal with a 'benebefactive/malefactive reflexive' construction that is marked by a) the use of a pronominal segment in a positional and/or formal variant that else occurs for what is often called 'indirect object', and b) by coreferentiality between the referent of this pronoun and the 'subject' of the clause. In English, these two parameters are not immediately visible, as shown by your examples. The positional left-drift of the pronoun as well as its form both mask the functional properties of 'me'. Still, iif you re-construct the original (?) position, you immediately see that the 'role' taken by 'me' is different from that of an 'indirect object': I'm gonna bake a cake for me ~ myself.' If we start from the GIVE-concept as representing a rather prototypical constructional pattern involving 'indirect objects', it comes clear that 'me' in the clause 'I'm gonna bake me a cake' is NOT an indirect object strictu sensu. This aspect is even more evindet, if we consider the first clause ('I'm gonna run me the best race of my life.'). Here, the for-substitute does not seem to work (at least in my rudimentary English). This means that the me-constructions would not involve' indirect objects'. But what IS their nature? AS I said above, the constructional type is rather common in a number of other e.g. Indoeuropean lanuanguages, compare Grerman (pseudo-dialectal, region of Siegen): Ich rauch' mir erstmal ne Zigarette. I smoke:1sg me first a cigarette 'I'll first smoke a cigarette (just on my own).' Trink dir n Bier drink:imp:2sg you:dat a beer 'Have a beer!' This constructional pattern which spreads more and more in colloquial German perhaps stems from the adoption of parallel strategies from bilingual Polish-German speakers (immigrants from Poland into the Ruhr region), as the pattern is famous for many Slavic languages, too, (though, here the reflexive strategies are slightly different). On the other hand, we find analogous strategies in many Romance languages. This would argue in favor of a more general 'cognitive' strategy. It is important to note that in German, the mir-construction is strongly related to what one may call 'solipsistic semantics': By this term I mean the fact that the mir-construction stresses the 'isolation' of the primary agent (be it subjective or agentive). The reflexive pronoun (visible as such in German in the 3rd person only (sich)) hence functions more like an emphatic element, focusing on its coreferent. Note that in German the nealry same effect as the mir-construction can also be yielded by putting stress onto the agent: (also...) ICH rauch' erstmal ne Zigratte. This observation goes together with a typology of reflexives that interpretes them as members of a 'reflexivization scale'. Acccordingly, the semantics of 'reflexive' constructions starts from highly S(ubjective)/A(gentive) oriented semantics coupled with corresponding positional preferences ('near to S/A'). Such patterns yield emphatic variants of S/A (e.g. I myself). On the other side of the scale, we find reflexives in Objective (or, if you want: Object) function (prototypically I kill myself). Again the (now extremely 'distant') relation between S/A and its coreferential 'O' (in fact usually a partitive of S/A) is iconically encoded by the corresponding techniques to distinguish S/A (here: A) from O. The mir/me-constructions seem to be located somewhere 'in the middle' of this scale (which by itself is derived from the framework of Cognitive Typology), hence the term 'middle-voice' seems not too bad. It is what is called the 'Subjective Version' (SV) in Georgian (or: sataviso), e.g. me v-i-tbob sac^'mel-s I 1sg-SV-warm=up:pres food-dat 'I warm up the food for me' (~ ? 'I warm me up the food.') In Georgian, the the pre-stem vowel -i- is a general SV indicator, a fact that correlates with the well-known distinction between verbal and lexical reflexivity: In English and in German, we would have to deal with a kind of lexical SV, whereas in Slavic, a verbal type of SV seems to prevail. What is interesting in English is the fact that the language does not use the 'standard reflexive' (myself etc.). In his posting, Larry has convincingly argued that a phrasing like > 2b. I'm gonna bake myself a cake. is even more emphatic than the original phrase (in fact, in Larry's version, it is the referential entity 'I' which is under emphasis, whereas in I'm gonna bake me a cake the emphasis also involves aspects of the verbal action. It would be interesting to see how English would construe the same phrase with a third person (He's gonna bake him(self) a cake. ??? - sorry, no competence on my side...). So, in sum I would dare to adopt the Georgian term (be it sataviso or Subjective Version) to denote the construction at issue. There surely are parallels with the standard middle voice, but there also are differences which should not be put aside by using such a 'cover term'.... By the way: It's rather tempting to interprete the Indoeuropean Middle Voice endings as a conglomarate of Personal Agreement markers and an SV marker, e.g. (secondary endings): Active SV 1sg *-m *-m-a: 2sg *-s *-s-o 3sg *-t *-t-o 3pl *-nt *-nt-o The vocalic suffix *-a:/-o (some kind of ablaut?) would than have functioned just as the Georgian version vowl -i- , or the Slavic pair -s'/-sja, as in Russian sobaka kusa-et-sja dog bite:pres-3sg-SV 'The dog bites (for itself) / *itself ........ I'll stop here, else I would be at risk to start writing an article - it's just fascinating stuff! Best wishes, Wolfgang Jo Rubba schrieb: > Hi, all, > > People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect > objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as "I'm > gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a cake". > Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar) constructions? > -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut f?r Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (B?ro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze From ocls at madisoncounty.net Sat Sep 25 12:52:23 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 07:52:23 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: September 25, 2004 I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and the fact that I can't offer evidence, but I guess I that's cowardly -- so here goes. "I'm gonna buy me a dog" is native for me ... part of my native Ozark English dialect. Where I live in rural northwest Arkansas I hear the construction constantly. I've tried to imagine a context in which I would say "I'm gonna run me a race," and I've failed; but I can certainly say "I'm gonna write me a novel." But for me, as a native speaker, the "me/myself" pairs just are not synonymous. I wouldn't say "I'm gonna buy me a dog" and "I'm gonna buy myself a dog" interchangeably, and the difference isn't simply the degree of formality. As I said, I can't offer evidence. However, my guess is that the "me" is resumptive and that it's related to the double-pronoun focus phenomenon -- like the "he" in "Tom, he never offers a grammaticality judgment unless he can offer solid evidence with it." Suzette Haden Elgin From mariel at post.tau.ac.il Sat Sep 25 14:48:37 2004 From: mariel at post.tau.ac.il (Mira Ariel) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 16:48:37 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Dear Scott, Of course the sentence 'I sold me a dog' is acceptable in the context and reading you gave it, which is what I too said in my message! But I think that in this case I'm only the seller, not the buyer (as well)! But in 'I sold myself a dog' I am the buyer as well as the seller. So, you can substitute 'me' with 'myself' in the 'buy' case but not in the 'sell' case. Also: I sold a dog to myself ??I sold a dog to me. But I'd better stop. I'm not a native speaker. The corpora I looked at had no sell + pronoun ananphoric to the subject (as in 'I sold me'). But I did find 'buy' with such ananphoric pronoun rather than reflexive (as in 'I bought me'). Best, Mira Ariel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott DeLancey" To: "Mira Ariel" Cc: "Jo Rubba" ; "funknet" Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 12:27 Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] "I'm gonna buy me a dog" > On Sat, 25 Sep 2004, Mira Ariel wrote: > > > (Cf. ?? I sold me a dog yesterday -- Imagine you work at a pet shop and you > > sold yourself a dog there. You would then say I sold myself a dog). > > For me (though I'm not really a native speaker of this dialect) this > is perfectly good in the middle sense. If I raise dogs, and sell them > for a living, and I made a good sale yesterday, then I sold me a dog > yesterday. All that's necessary for the construction to be good is > that I benefited somehow from the transaction. > > Scott DeLancey > Department of Linguistics > 1290 University of Oregon > Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA > > delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu > http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. From ocls at madisoncounty.net Sat Sep 25 14:30:37 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 09:30:37 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: **Mira Ariel is right -- In "I sold me a dog" the "me" can only be the seller, not the buyer. "I sold a dog to me" is possible only with strong contrastive stress on "me," as in "I didn't sell a dog to Tracy, I sold a dog to ME." (And "I didn't sell a dog to Tracy, I sold a dog to mySELF" is far more likely.) Similarly, in "I wrote me a letter" the "me" can only be the writer, not the recipient of the letter. Suzette Haden Elgin (native speaker, Ozark English) From language at sprynet.com Sun Sep 26 06:23:43 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 02:23:43 -0400 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. Anyway, you did _too_ offer evidence, the Ozarks count, just as much as any other language form. Another possible example: I wanna build me a whole new world of linguistics. very best to all! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: "Suzette Haden Elgin" To: Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 8:52 AM Subject: [FUNKNET] Re: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" > > September 25, 2004 > > I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and the fact that I > can't offer evidence, but I guess I that's cowardly -- so here goes. > > "I'm gonna buy me a dog" is native for me ... part of my native Ozark > English dialect. Where I live in rural northwest Arkansas I hear the > construction constantly. I've tried to imagine a context in which I would > say "I'm gonna run me a race," and I've failed; but I can certainly say > "I'm gonna write me a novel." But for me, as a native speaker, the > "me/myself" pairs just are not synonymous. I wouldn't say "I'm gonna buy me > a dog" and "I'm gonna buy myself a dog" interchangeably, and the difference > isn't simply the degree of formality. > > As I said, I can't offer evidence. However, my guess is that the "me" is > resumptive and that it's related to the double-pronoun focus phenomenon -- > like the "he" in "Tom, he never offers a grammaticality judgment unless he > can offer solid evidence with it." > > Suzette Haden Elgin > > > From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Sun Sep 26 10:41:52 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:41:52 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" (2) In-Reply-To: <006701c4a391$61b39140$d22cf7a5@woowoo> Message-ID: Dear friends, I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the following two wordings: Suzette Haden Elgin wrote: >>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...) >> Alexander Gross wrote: >Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. > Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me! Very best wishes, Wolfgang -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut f?r Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (B?ro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/wschulze From ocls at madisoncounty.net Sun Sep 26 12:35:47 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 07:35:47 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" Message-ID: September 26, 2004 Wolfgang Schulze wrote: >Dear friends, > >I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but >please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the >following two wordings: > >Suzette Haden Elgin wrote: > >>>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...) >>> >Alexander Gross wrote: > >>Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. >> >Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which >climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear >as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me! > >Very best wishes, >Wolfgang >Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze **I'm sorry, Dr. Schulze (and all of you on FunkNet). It wasn't my intention to be obscure, and I had nothing particularly interesting in mind. What I meant by "the current climate" is all the cautionary carrying-on about using one's personal intuitions as grammatical judgments. I understand the objections and agree that such judgments are often suspect, and I was therefore hesitant to add my own to the "get me a dog" discussion. However, there are so few Ozark English native speakers in the population of linguists that I decided I'd better speak up anyway. It may be that Alexander meant something else; I'll leave that to him to explain. Best wishes, Suzette Suzette Haden Elgin Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS) PO Box 1137 Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 ocls at madisoncounty.net http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin http://www.livejournal.com/users/ozarque From language at sprynet.com Sun Sep 26 14:59:56 2004 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 10:59:56 -0400 Subject: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" (2) Message-ID: If this is at all unclear, let me provide the missing links. Suzette had written: "I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and the fact that I can't offer evidence, but I guess I that's cowardly -- so here goes." Which I took to be clearly related to something I had written one day earlier summarizing my paper published in Translation Journal: _And miracle of miracles, at least in the context of much "mainstream" linguistics where so many arguments are advanced either by fiat on high or by exquisitely meandering, metaphysical, metalinguistical meditations, each one of these points is actually accompanied by evidence. What on earth would happen to this field of study if linguists were required from now on to follow the recent example set by evidence-based medicine, so that evidence-based linguistics were suddenly to become the norm?_ This appeared under the the subject heading "Re: On the Relativity Front..." The paper in question can be found at: http://accurapid.com/journal/30review2.htm Hope that clears up everything. very best to all! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wolfgang Schulze" To: Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 6:41 AM Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Re: "I'm gonna buy me a dog" (2) > Dear friends, > > I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but > please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the > following two wordings: > > Suzette Haden Elgin wrote: > > >>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...) > >> > Alexander Gross wrote: > > >Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette. > > > Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which > climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear > as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me! > > Very best wishes, > Wolfgang > > -- > > Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze > Institut f?r Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft > Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen > Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 > D-80539 M?nchen > Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (B?ro) > Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 > Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de > Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/wschulze > > From bls at socrates.Berkeley.EDU Mon Sep 27 18:38:15 2004 From: bls at socrates.Berkeley.EDU (Berkeley Linguistics Society) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:38:15 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Linguistics Society - call for papers Message-ID: Dear all, Below is the call for papers for the 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, to be held February 18-20, 2005. Please forward this message to the students and faculty in your departments. Thank you for your help. We look forward to reading the submissions! Sincerely, Rebecca Cover Yuni Kim Co-chairs, BLS 31 ********************** BLS 31 Call for Papers The conference will consist of a General Session, a Parasession and a Special Session. General Session The General Session will cover all areas of linguistic interest. We encourage proposals from diverse theoretical frameworks and also welcome papers on language-related topics from disciplines such as Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Literature, Neuroscience and Psychology. Invited speakers: Sandra Chung, University of California, Santa Cruz Nicholas Evans, University of Melbourne TBA Parasession: Prosodic Variation and Change The Parasession aims to explore synchronic variation and historical change in all areas of prosody, including syllable structure, metrical structure, stress, accent, tone, and intonation. We invite submissions addressing pathways and general principles of prosodic change. In addition, we invite papers on prosodic variation, broadly construed: across related languages and dialects, within an individual's grammar, and within speech communities. Papers from a wide range of perspectives are encouraged. Invited speakers: Jose Hualde, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Paul Kiparsky, Stanford University Special Session: Languages of West Africa The Special Session will discuss languages of West Africa (from Cameroon west). We welcome submissions on all aspects of West African languages, including syntax, semantics, phonology, phonetics, morphology, pragmatics, historical issues, and sociolinguistics. We particularly encourage papers on minority and understudied languages, language contact, and cross-linguistic comparison. Invited speakers: Denis Creissels, Universite Lumiere Lyon 2 Paul Newman, Indiana University, Bloomington Russell Schuh, University of California, Los Angeles Abstracts must be received in our office (not postmarked) by *** 5:00 p.m. PST, November 15, 2004 *** An author may submit at most one single and one joint abstract. In case of joint authorship, one address should be designated for communication with BLS. Abstracts should be as specific as possible, with a statement of topic, approach and conclusions, and may be at most 400 words (not including data and references, which may be placed on the reverse side). 10 copies of an anonymous, one-page (8.5''x11'') abstract should be sent, along with a 3''x5'' card listing: (1) paper title (2) session (General/Para/Special) (3) name(s) of author(s) (4) affiliation(s) of author(s) (5) address where notification of acceptance should be sent (6) phone number for each author (7) email address for each author (8) subfield (syntax, phonology, etc.) SEND ABSTRACTS TO BLS 31 Abstracts Committee 1203 Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 Abstracts may also be submitted via e-mail. Only those abstracts formatted as ASCII text, PDF, or Microsoft Word (Mac version preferred) can be accepted. Electronically submitted abstracts should have the author's name as filename, followed by the appropriate file extension. The text of the message must contain the information requested in (1)-(8) above. We cannot accept faxed abstracts. Send electronic submissions to . PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION Presentations are allotted 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for questions. Presented papers are published in the BLS Proceedings. Authors agree to provide camera-ready copy (up to 12 pages) by May 15, 2005. REGISTRATION INFORMATION All attendees, including presenters, must register for the conference. For advance registration, we can accept only checks or money orders drawn on US banks in US dollars, made payable to the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Received in our office by February 1, 2005: Students $20 Non-students $40 On-site, or received after February 1, 2005: Students $25 Non-students $55 SEND ADVANCE REGISTRATION TO BLS 31 Registration 1203 Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 BLS will arrange ASL interpretation if requested before Dec. 1, 2004. We may be contacted: Email: bls at socrates.berkeley.edu Website: http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/ Updates will be posted to our website. The conference schedule will be posted in January. ............................. Berkeley Linguistics Society University of California, Berkeley Department of Linguistics 1203 Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 Phone/Fax: 510-642-5808 find information on BLS meetings and availability of proceedings at: http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/ ............................. From l.stassen at let.kun.nl Tue Sep 28 01:57:14 2004 From: l.stassen at let.kun.nl (Leon Stassen) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 03:57:14 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" Message-ID: I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which the following line can be heard: "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that has a song with the line: "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of at least American English. From hstahlke at bsu.edu Tue Sep 28 03:23:28 2004 From: hstahlke at bsu.edu (Stahlke, Herbert F.W.) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:23:28 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" Message-ID: I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Herb Stahlke ============ I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which the following line can be heard: "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that has a song with the line: "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of at least American English. From clements at indiana.edu Tue Sep 28 04:21:57 2004 From: clements at indiana.edu (clements) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:21:57 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" and the 'ethical dative' In-Reply-To: <08E7F6310CCC7642A44FCD859F7740790EC6AE@email03.bsu.edu> Message-ID: The term 'ethical dative' is often used to name a similar phenomenon in Spanish, of the type Se ME murio' el gato. EMPH 1sg-dative died the cat 'My cat died on me.' Esta nena no me come. this little.girl NEG 1sg-dative eats 'This little girl is not wanting to eat (for me).' In Spanish, it seems more frequently in 1st and 2nd person than in 3rd. I don't know if anyone has studied the distribution of this in English. It'd be interesting to know whether the distribution is sensitive to person and number distinctions. Clancy Clements On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: > I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. > > Herb Stahlke > > ============ > > I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I > do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which > the following line can be heard: > > "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " > > What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that > has a song with the line: > > "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" > > Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any > buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be > clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of > at least American English. > > > > > ************************************************* J. Clancy Clements Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP 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 W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Tue Sep 28 08:36:02 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:36:02 +0200 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" In-Reply-To: <08E7F6310CCC7642A44FCD859F7740790EC6AE@email03.bsu.edu> Message-ID: Dear friends, please allow me to briefly come back to the 'me'-issue. In my last posting, I had suggested to treat the examples of a possible 'me'-construction in English as an instantiation of the 'middle-reflexive' construction as documented in quite a considerable number of languages. What seems crucial to me is the fact that we have to deal with a specific constructional pattern, not necessarily with a segmental specification based on case semantics. This comes clear from the fact that in all the examples brought forth so far, there is coreference between the 'agent' (S(ubjective); A(gentive)) and the 'dative pronoun'. Now, if you look at standard Old Greek grammars, you will imeediately realize that coreference (that is constructional reflexivity) is not necessarily present with what is called the Dativus Ethicus. The standard Old Greek example for this case semantics is: m? moi thorub?sete proh I:dat make=noise:imp:2pl 'Don't make noise (for me).' If ever there is coreference in this clause, it is organized according to what typology calls logophoric reference (reference towards the speaker). Rather parallel constructions can already be found in Old English, e.g.(capital letters are long vowels). An interesting passage can be found in Beda's Historia ecclesiastica (~ 670), translated by Aelfred (~ 890): In Book IV, chapter 24, we read: Cedoman sin3 mE hwaethwu3u Caedmon sing:imp:2sg I:dat something Latin: Demon (...) canta mihi aliquid.' (8) 'Caedman, sing me something.' hwaerthe thU mE meaht sin3an still you:sg I:dat can:pres:2sg sing Latin: Attamen (...) cantare habes.' 'You can still sing me.' ((ibid. (10)). sin3 mE frumsceaft (12) sing I:dat creation Latin: Canta (...) principium creaturarum.' 'Sing me (about) the creation' It is interesting to see that at least in (10) and (12), the Dativus Ethicus turns up only in the translation, which argues in favor of am autochthonous construction (logophoric reference = Dativus Ethicus). This also comes true from Old Norse / Old Icelandic, confer: gakk m?r firr (Heusler 1967:189) go:imp:2sg I:dat far 'Go far (for me)' [not: from me!] All these are examples for a (horribile dictu) Dativus Ethicus. Still, these examples are NOT what seems to be meant with the examples at issue, namely the 'me'-construction. As I said above: In my eyes, the crucial difference is that the dativus ethicus does not necessarily involve a clause-internal reflexive strategy, whereas the 'me'-construction does. Unfortunately, I do not have at hands an Old English or Old Norse corpus to test, whether 'me'-constructions had been present already in older variants of Germanic. Still, in a passage from H?vam?l (Older Edda, verse 47) I have read: audhigr th?tto-mz rich appear:past:1sg-refl:1 'I appeared for me to be rich' a form, that competed with audhigr th?tto 'I appeared to be rich'. Here, we would have something like the 'me'-construction at issue. All this (and, admittedly, much more) argues - in my humble eyes - against the use of the term 'Dativus Ethicus' for the 'me'-construction. This would make perhaps too strong use of the traditional Latin/Greek based terminology that often obscures important typological differences... Best Wolfgang Stahlke, Herbert F.W. schrieb: >I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. > >Herb Stahlke > >============ > >I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I >do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which >the following line can be heard: > >"I went outside and I smoked myself a J " > >What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that >has a song with the line: > >"I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" > >Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any >buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be >clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of >at least American English. > > > > > > > -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut f?r Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (B?ro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze From ocls at madisoncounty.net Tue Sep 28 12:40:49 2004 From: ocls at madisoncounty.net (Suzette Haden Elgin) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:40:49 -0500 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" Message-ID: Clancy Clements wrote: The term 'ethical dative' is often used to name a similar phenomenon in Spanish, of the type Se ME murio' el gato. EMPH 1sg-dative died the cat 'My cat died on me.' Esta nena no me come. this little.girl NEG 1sg-dative eats 'This little girl is not wanting to eat (for me).' In Spanish, it seems more frequently in 1st and 2nd person than in 3rd. I don't know if anyone has studied the distribution of this in English. It'd be interesting to know whether the distribution is sensitive to person and number distinctions. ====== Ozark English also has the "on me" construction, as in "My cat died on me" and "My barn burned down on me" and "This little girl is going all weird on me and not wanting to eat" and so on. But I see no connection between that construction and the "me" in "I'm gonna get me a dog." Nor do I see anything "ethical" about the "me" in "I'm gonna get me a dog." Perhaps "ethical" is like "competence," and has a technical meaning I'm unaware of.... Dr. Clements ask whether the construction is sensitive to person and number distinctions; here's a range of examples. "I got me a new pickup truck yesterday." "We got us a new pickup truck yesterday." "You better get you a new pickup truck pretty soon." "You got you a new pickup truck, sure, but you didn't pay your mortgage." "Go get you some supper before it gets cold." "He got him a new pickup truck yesterday." "She got her a new pickkup truck yesterday." [Note: I'm hesitant about "They got them a new pickup truck yesterday," but have no idea why; something tells me that one has to go to the reflexive, which of course means I'd have to choose between "themselves" and "theirselves." Maybe it's just example fatigue, from running through the set? Well. I've got me this example that's gone funny-sounding on me. Suzette From langconf at bu.edu Tue Sep 28 14:57:48 2004 From: langconf at bu.edu (Boston University Conference on Language Development) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:57:48 -0400 Subject: Soliciting questions for BUCLD debate between Stephen Crain & Michael Tomasello Message-ID: Soliciting questions for BUCLD debate between Stephen Crain and Michael Tomasello: "Where does grammar come from? A debate on the nature of child language acquisition" This year's Boston University Conference on Language Development (Nov. 5-7) will feature a 2-hour debate between Stephen Crain and Michael Tomasello entitled: "Where does grammar come from? A debate on the nature of child language acquisition." The speakers will first present their own positions on this question, and then respond to each other's positions. During the last half hour or so, they will respond to questions submitted in advance by you, members of the language development community. So I'm writing now to solicit your questions. Any questions are welcome, representing any theoretical perspective or about any topic relevant to the debate. So here's your chance to ask that question that's always been bothering you, or that you could never understand, or that you just want to know about. Please send any and all questions to Seungwan Ha at by October 15, 2004. For more information about BUCLD, or to pre-register, check out our website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/index.htm From jst at email.byu.edu Tue Sep 28 17:24:41 2004 From: jst at email.byu.edu (Jeffrey S. Turley) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:24:41 -0600 Subject: "I'm gonna get me a dog" and the 'ethical dative' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Clancy, I've studied Spanish clitics quite a bit, and I'm not sure I've noticed that the frequency of ethical datives are lower in the 3rd person. I know this isn't scientific, but a Google search of "se le muri?" and "se me muri?" turned up almost equal number of hits. Best, Jeff Turley Date sent: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:21:57 -0500 (EST) From: clements Subject: [FUNKNET] "I'm gonna get me a dog" and the 'ethical dative' To: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." Copies to: Leon Stassen , funknet at mailman.riceedu > The term 'ethical dative' is often used to name a similar phenomenon in > Spanish, of the type > > Se ME murio' el gato. > EMPH 1sg-dative died the cat > 'My cat died on me.' > > Esta nena no me come. > this little.girl NEG 1sg-dative eats > 'This little girl is not wanting to eat (for me).' > > In Spanish, it seems more frequently in 1st and 2nd person than in > 3rd. I don't know if anyone has studied the distribution of this in > English. It'd be interesting to know whether the distribution is sensitive > to person and number distinctions. > > Clancy Clements > > > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: > > > I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this. It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on. I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much. There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. > > > > Herb Stahlke > > > > ============ > > > > I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I > > do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which > > the following line can be heard: > > > > "I went outside and I smoked myself a J " > > > > What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter that > > has a song with the line: > > > > "I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin' her quota" > > > > Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any > > buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be > > clear: these what i would call "ethical datives" are a real phenomenon of > > at least American English. > > > > > > > > > > > > ************************************************* > J. Clancy Clements > Director of Undergraduate Studies, HISP > 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 promotion at benjamins.com Tue Sep 28 19:54:06 2004 From: promotion at benjamins.com (Christopher Bell) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:54:06 -0400 Subject: New Book: DIRVEN Message-ID: John Benjamins Publishing Company is pleased to announce the publication of the following new book: Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics Second revised edition Edited by Ren? Dirven and Marjolijn H. Verspoor University of Duisberg-Essen / University of Groningen In collaboration with Johan De Caluw?, Dirk Geeraerts, Cliff Goddard, Stef Grondelaers, Ralf P?rings, G?nter Radden, Willy Serniclaes, Marcello Soffritti, Wilbert Spooren, John R. Taylor, Ignacio Vazquez, Anna Wierzbicka, Margaret E. Winters Cognitive Linguistics in Practice 1 2004. xii, 277 pp. U.S. and Canada: Cloth: 1 58811 485 6 / USD 108.00 Everywhere else: Cloth: 90 272 1905 2 / EUR 90.00 U.S. and Canada: Paper: 1 58811 486 4 / USD 39.95 Everywhere else: Paper: 90 272 1906 0 / EUR 33.00 Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics is designed as a comprehensive introductory text for first and second-year university students of language and linguistics. It provides a chapter on each of the more established areas in linguistics such as lexicology, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, historical linguistics, and language typology and on some of the newer areas such as cross-cultural semantics, pragmatics, text linguistics and contrastive linguistics. In each of these areas language is explored as part of a cognitive system comprising perception, emotion, categorisation, abstraction processes, and reasoning. All these cognitive abilities may interact with language and be influenced by language. Thus the study of language in a sense becomes the study of the way we express and exchange ideas and thoughts. This Second Revised Edition is corrected, updated and expanded. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics is clearly presented and organized after having been tested in several courses in various countries. Includes exercises (solutions to be found on the Internet). Table of contents Preface ix?xii 1. The cognitive basis of language: Language and thought 1?23 2. What?s in a word? Lexicology 25?48 3. Meaningful building blocks: Morphology 49?74 4. Putting concepts together: Syntax 75?100 5. The sounds of language: Phonetics and Phonology 101?126 6. Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics 127?148 7. Doing things with words: Pragmatics 149?177 8. Structuring texts: Text linguistics 179?201 9. Language across time: Historical linguistics 203?230 10. Comparing languages: Language: classification, typology, and contrastive linguistics 231?258 References 259?268 Subject index 269?277 John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Call toll free to order: 1-800-562-5666 From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Sep 30 07:51:20 2004 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:51:20 +0200 Subject: ME and the 'ethical dative' In-Reply-To: <415949F9.15566.11BA06@localhost> Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, please allow me just to quote a German Children's joke which nicely illustrates the ambiguity of so-called "dativus-ethicus constructions" (the crucial phrase in italics): "Klein Erna hat mal wieder in die Hosen gemacht. Die Mutter schimpft: "Dass MIR das nicht noch einmal passiert!". Sagt Klein Erna erleichtert: "Ach, DIR ist das passiert? Ich dachte schon MIR!" A rough translation: " Little Erna has again wet herself. Mother shouts: "I hope that this does not happen again!" (lit: That this does not happen ME again!). Being relieved, Little Erna says: "Oh, that did happen to YOU? I already thought to ME!". Best, Wolfgang -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut f?r Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (B?ro) Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze From tgivon at uoregon.edu Thu Sep 30 17:12:12 2004 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 10:12:12 -0700 Subject: etc. Message-ID: Dear Funk people, I have been waiting for someone to say this, but apparently in vain. To anyone who has followed (and sometime participated in) the last 30-odd years of cumulative comparative-typological work and argumentation on the subject of the grammatical status of DAT/BEN objects, the following would surely appear familiar, indeed superfluous. But it seems that, as always, we linguists are doomed to chase our tail in ever-narrowing circles, recycling the same data and arguments ad infinutum, often under the guise of new terminology, new filing schemes, new formats or--alas-- 'theories'. There is a vast comparative-typological literature on the obligatory or the near-obligatory "promotion" of dative/benefactive arguments to grammatical DIR OBJ. It begins (implicitly) with Keenan's 1975,1976 seminal papers on GRs (inpired by the RG mini-explosion of the LSA-summer 1972); Judy Aissen's description of "ascention" in Mayan; Hawkinson & Hyman's 1974 paper on Bantu; Alexandre Kimewnyi's 1976 dissertation on KinyaRwanda; Noel Rude's 1985 dissertation on Nez Perce; Matt Dryer's work on "primary object"; Matt Shibatani's work on GRs; among many many others. Among the the well established facts comking out of this literature, the following are relevant to the current discussion: (a) In many, perhaps most languages (and language families) known to us, the dative/recipient object/argument (of verbs such as 'give', 'send', 'show', 'tell', 'bring') and the optional benefactive argument are obligaqtorily coded as the DIR OBJ of the clause, given whatever language-specific criteria for DIR OBJ-hood exist in the language (word-order, nominal case-marking, verbal morphology, pronominal or otherwise, behavior/control properties). Mayan (Tzotzil), Bantu, Uto-Aztecan (Ute), So., Arawak (Machiguenga), Sahaptian (Nez Perce), Athabaskan (Tolowa) easily come to mind, but the list can go on and on seemingly forever. (b) Relatively few languages allow the DAT/BEN argument to be coded at all as an INDIR OBJ (English being a prime example here). But even in sauch languages, the vast majority of DAT/BEN objects in discourse are still coded as DIR OBJs ('She gave him a book', 'She cooked him a stake') rather than INDIR OBJ ('She gave a/the book to Joe', 'She cooked a/the stake for him', resp). And the vast majority of the DAT/BEN direct objects in discourse are pronouns. In my text counts in written English (found in several publications beginning with ca. 1984), these generalization approach the 90% level, and it is a safe bet that counts in informal spoken English will show an even higher correlation of DAT/BEN > DIR OBJ. (c) In the Generative tradition, the difference between a 100% (obligatory) and 90% (optional) grammatical process is highly significant. But if the grammaticalization literature of the very same 30-odd years has shown anything, it is that at 80-90% usage frequency, the difference between the two "types" of grammar becomes negligible, and sooner or later the 90% is interpreted as 100% by naive speakers. (This "glossing over the difference" is not really about language, but about cognition and the rise of automaticity. Both automatic processing and grammaticalization are usage- frequency-driven. There's a vast literature on that too). (d) Lastly, and methodologically sobering: Most of the languages with reported "optional promotion" of DAT/BEN to DIR OBJ (English, Hebrew, Spanish etc.) are languages with a long literate tradition, with highly literate linguists who tend to count--if they count usage frequencies at all--written discourse. In contrast, all the languages reporting "obligatrory promotion" are recently-described spoken languages. As most of us know, literacy exerts a notorious slow-down effect on grammaticalization. So in such languages it may well be that the reinterpreetation of 90% > 100% is already long completed in the spoken language; but the conservative written forms preserve older relics--the recalcitrant 10% that makes the process seem still "optional". And literate linguists tend to report such relics as highly significant. With apologies & best regards, TG