From Salinas17 at aol.com Sun Jul 3 02:58:49 2005 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 22:58:49 EDT Subject: Chomsky/Innovation Message-ID: In a message dated 6/30/05 3:27:52 AM, twood at uwc.ac.za writes: << For Chomsky, the culture of science is the real 'counter-culture' to the reigning ideology... >> The difficulty of course would be in conjecturing a society where the "culture of science" is "the reigning ideology." What would such an animal look like? How would it affect the everyday life of the person who bakes Dunkin Donuts every morning? Is science a way of life that can operate on a democratic level? Or is the idea that the culture of science must be represented by an elite minority whether that minority represents the real counter-culture or the ruling ideology? In a message dated 6/30/05 8:02:33 AM, pustetrm at yahoo.com writes: << Personally, as a linguist, I have never felt “threatened by science” or innovations,... This comes as no surprise because resistance to innovation is a deeply human trait (probably evolutionarily based, if we want to discuss that). >> I'm sure that most of us here feel, as you do, that we are not particularly tainted with the dreaded "fear of innovation" trait that plagued countless generations of our human and pre-human ancestors. If only it had been dropped from our genetic repetoire earlier, we humans would have been using cell phones and disposable razors in late paleolithic times at minimum. However, given that not all "innovations" end up generating positive results, one really doesn't need to reach way over to evolution to explain such resistance. In fact, it might be more accurate to lay the blame on something that used to be called "common sense." If we really must identify "deep human traits" that are "evolutionarily based," my candidate would the appetite for reality programming on television -- my theory is that it is a trait directly inherited from those of our protozoic ancestors who developed the first light sensing organs and it has been all down-hill from there. Regards, Steve Long From v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net Sun Jul 10 14:13:53 2005 From: v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net (Bittor Hidalgo) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:13:53 +0200 Subject: Japanese (historical and dialectal) word order (development) Message-ID: It is everywhere rigidly claimed that Japanese is (always) a rigid verb final language. But has always been so? I have no reference about Japanese historical and dialectal word order development and variation, and I would thank any. My concern would be to know if Japanese has always and everywhere been so a rigid-verb-final language? Or on the contrary, as it is the case of other characteristics (cf. Gottlieb, 2005), verb rigid finality is also a claime, more or less born or rigidly developed at the last century, with the general standardization process of Japanese? Beside, I would definitely want to know if even current Japanese spontaneous (oral) word order is so rigidly verb final as claimed? Because between some other, at least P.M. Clancy (1982) or Matsumoto (2003) claim that Japanese spoken word order is not so rigid (as Matsumoto says, 4: Japanese spoken discourse consists not only of basic canonical SOV word order constructions involving pre-predicate elements, but also of marked word order constructions involving post-predicate elements). And Shibamoto (1985, ap. Gottlieb 2005, 14) «found that women often reverse the normal word order, putting the subject after the predicate», where predicate seems to include the verb). Then, what is Japanese rigid verb final condition, a description or a desideratum? And if Japanese is so a rigid verb final language how can the current Japanese hearer or listener manage to easily understand verb final long (very long) sentences, as those with verbs of thinking or saying? Maybe, it is necessary for them to start reading (not listening, of couse, they can not) by the end to understand sentences, as it is usually recommended for foreigners («Sometimes it is good to start from the end of the sentence and work your way to the beginning. In that way you will learn the most important info first (the verb) and move to what is made to happen and who does it.»). Because cognitive processement constrictions seem to be more or less similar for humankind, ... And by the same way, how does children language work? Is it also so rigid verb final always? --------------------------------------------- Bittor Hidalgo Eizagirre /Victor/ k/ Intxaurrondo, 54, 4. A 20015 Donostia (Euskal Herria) (Espainia gainezarpenez) Tfnoa eta faxa: 943-273748 // 655728290 posta-e: bittorhidalgo at euskalnet.net From tgivon at uoregon.edu Sun Jul 10 16:34:34 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:34:34 -0700 Subject: Japanese (historical and dialectal) word order(development) Message-ID: Dear Bittor, One could make a few methodological suggestions about how to approach the problem(s) you raised: 1. Synchronic morphology is most often the best guide for reconstructing older syntax. There is not a single shred of evidence in Japanese morphology indicating anything but SOV syntax (see Givon 1971, 1979, 1983 ed., 2001, inter alia). 2. In general, SOV is the oldest attested word-order in human language. Most natural (non-contact induced) drift is, as far as I know, always away from SOV, not toward it (Givon 1979; Ruhlen & Gell-Man, forthcoming). 3. All natural languages with 'rigid' word-order have much free-er word-order in actual natural (oral) communication, with much pramatically-determined variation. Put another way, rigid WO is relative, never absolute. These are all old hats, by the way, so much so that I feel somewhat embarrassed to re-state them (again...). Best regards, TG ================== Bittor Hidalgo wrote: > It is everywhere rigidly claimed that Japanese is (always) a rigid verb final language. But has always been so? I have no reference about Japanese historical and dialectal word order development and variation, and I would thank any. > > My concern would be to know if Japanese has always and everywhere been so a rigid-verb-final language? Or on the contrary, as it is the case of other characteristics (cf. Gottlieb, 2005), verb rigid finality is also a claime, more or less born or rigidly developed at the last century, with the general standardization process of Japanese? Beside, I would definitely want to know if even current Japanese spontaneous (oral) word order is so rigidly verb final as claimed? Because between some other, at least P.M. Clancy (1982) or Matsumoto (2003) claim that Japanese spoken word order is not so rigid (as Matsumoto says, 4: Japanese spoken discourse consists not only of basic canonical SOV word order constructions involving pre-predicate elements, but also of marked word order constructions involving post-predicate elements). And Shibamoto (1985, ap. Gottlieb 2005, 14) «found that women often reverse the normal word order, putting the subject after the predicate», where predicate seems to > include the verb). Then, what is Japanese rigid verb final condition, a description or a desideratum? And if Japanese is so a rigid verb final language how can the current Japanese hearer or listener manage to easily understand verb final long (very long) sentences, as those with verbs of thinking or saying? Maybe, it is necessary for them to start reading (not listening, of couse, they can not) by the end to understand sentences, as it is usually recommended for foreigners («Sometimes it is good to start from the end of the sentence and work your way to the beginning. In that way you will learn the most important info first (the verb) and move to what is made to happen and who does it.»). Because cognitive processement constrictions seem to be more or less similar for humankind, ... And by the same way, how does children language work? Is it also so rigid verb final always? > > --------------------------------------------- > Bittor Hidalgo Eizagirre /Victor/ > k/ Intxaurrondo, 54, 4. A > 20015 Donostia (Euskal Herria) > (Espainia gainezarpenez) > Tfnoa eta faxa: 943-273748 // 655728290 > posta-e: bittorhidalgo at euskalnet.net From fg-fgw at uva.nl Mon Jul 11 10:32:30 2005 From: fg-fgw at uva.nl (fg-fgw) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 12:32:30 +0200 Subject: first announcement ICFG12 and IPCFG3 Message-ID: First Announcement ICFG12 12th International Conference on Functional Grammar Universidade Estadual Paulista, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil 19-22 July 2006 preceded by IPCFG3 3rd International Postgraduate Course on Functional Grammar Universidade estadual Paulista, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil 17-19 July 2006 Background Since 1984, there has been a highly successful biennial series of International Conferences on Functional Grammar (ICFG). The first eleven conferences took place in ICFG1 Amsterdam - UvA, 1984 ICFG2 Antwerp, 1986 ICFG3 Amsterdam - VU, 1988 ICFG4 Copenhagen, 1990 ICFG5 Antwerp, 1992 ICFG6 York, 1994 ICFG7 Córdoba, 1996 ICFG8 Amsterdam - VU, 1998 ICFG9 Madrid - UNED, 2000 ICFG10 Amsterdam - UvA, 2002 ICFG11 Gijón - 2004 The aim of ICFG is to further elaborate the model of Functional Grammar (FG) that was originally proposed by the late Simon Dik. A full treatment of FG may be found in: Dik, Simon C. 1997, The Theory of Functional Grammar. 2 Vols. Ed. by Kees Hengeveld. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. The most recent version of FG is called Functional Discourse Grammar. A sketch of this model may be found in: Hengeveld, Kees & J. Lachlan Mackenzie, 'Functional Discourse Grammar', In: Keith Brown (ed), Encyclopedia of Language and Lingistics, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier, downloadable from www.functionalgrammar.com --> Publications --> FDG The venue ICFG12 will be hosted by the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), São José do Rio Preto, Brazil. São José do Rio Preto is a 350,000 inhabitant city, located 450km from the city of São Paulo. Information about travel arrangements and accommodation in São José do Rio Preto will be provided in the second circular. Local organization The local organizing committee consists of Marize Dall'Aglio-Hattnher (president), Roberto Gomes Camacho, Erotilde Goretti Pezatti, Sebastião Carlos Leite Gonçalves and Sandra Denise Gasparini Bastos. The Conference Programme Although the conference programme will host all possible topics related to the further elaboration of F(D)G, one topic will be given special attention at the conference: the conference will start on Wednesday afternoon 19 July with a special workshop on Complex structures in Grammar and Discourse. The length of the papers will be 30 minutes followed by another 10 minutes of discussion. The language of the conference will be English. Apart from the workshop and general sessions, there will be ample room for poster presentations. Programme committee The board of the Functional Grammar Foundation (FGF) has appointed the following programme committee for ICFG12: Daniel García Velasco (president), Marize Dall'Aglio-Hattner, and Kees Hengeveld. The programme committee will evaluate the anonymous abstracts and decide on their inclusion in the conference programme. In case a member of the programme committee submits an abstract, he/she will not evaluate his/her own abstract, but a member of the board of FGF will step in to evaluate the abstract of the committee member involved. Abstracts Given the role the quality of the abstract plays in the selection procedure, it should contain at least the following items: a clearly defined and well-motivated research question; the crucial examples illustrating the relevance of the research question; and the main conclusions the paper arrives at. Abstracts should have a length of approximately 1000 words, i.e. roughly 3 pages, and should not contain the name of the author. References to the literature cited should be given. References containing the name of the author may also be given but will be suppressed before the abstract is sent to the programme committee. Please indicate in the accompanying message whether you want to present a paper or a poster. The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and posters is 15 December 2005. Abstracts should be submitted electronically to the international secretary of the FGF at fg-fgw at uva.nl Conference Fee The regular fees, in Brazil Reais, are as follows: Regular Conference R$ 170,00 appr. Euro 60,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 290,00 appr. Euro 100,00 Students Conference R$ 140,00 appr. Euro 50,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 225,00 appr. Euro 80,00 Since bank taxes are very high in Brazil, fees can be paid upon registration only. Brazilian participants are offered the possibility to pay the fee in advance as well as upon registration. Due to a partial grant by the Brazilian Government for all Brazilian participants the fees for Brazilians will be: Regular Advance payment Upon registration Conference R$ 60,00 R$ 75,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 100,00 R$ 120,00 Students Conference R$ 50,00 R$ 65,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 80,00 R$ 100,00 Waivers A limited number of waivers will be available. Applications should be sent to the international secretary of the FGF at fg-fgw at uva.nl Registration The second circular will contain all details about how to (pre-)register for ICFG12. This information will also be made available on our website www.functionalgrammar.com Pre-Conference Course In view of the success of the pre-conference courses in 2002 and 2004, an intensive course on Functional (Discourse) Grammar will be organized in the days preceding the conference to enable linguists unfamiliar with the theory to prepare for the conference. The course will be organized with participants at PhD level in mind. The course preceding ICFG12 will focus on the Functional Discourse Grammar model and will also prepare the students for the special conference theme. Please inform your PhD students and colleagues unfamiliar with Functional (Discourse) Grammar of this possibility of getting acquainted with the theory and its applications. Further details about registration will be provided in the second circular and on our website www.functionalgrammar.com Website All information concerning ICFG12 and IPCFG3 will be made available at www.functionalgrammar.com. How we try to reach you All information concerning ICFG12 is being sent out by email to those who have expressed their interest in the past. If you do not wish to receive any further information, please let us know. How you can reach us The email address for all matters related to the conference programme is: fg-fgw at uva.nl From andreif at rice.edu Thu Jul 14 10:13:15 2005 From: andreif at rice.edu (Andrei Filtchenko) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:13:15 -0000 Subject: LENCA-3 Call For Abstracts Message-ID: LENCA 3: 1ST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Full Title: The Grammar and Pragmatics of Complex Sentences in Languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA -3). Date: 27-Jun-2006 - 30-Jun-2006 Location: Tomsk, Russia Contact Persons: Elizaveta Kotorova, Andrey Filchenko, Pirkko Suihkonen Meeting Email: tomsk at eva.mpg.de Conference Web Site (Eng, Rus): www.lenca3.siblang.org Mirror Site (Eng. only): http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/uhlcs/LENCA/LENCA- 3/lenca-3.html (under constr.) Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Syntax; Semantics, Complex Sentence. Call Deadline: 15-Dec-2005 Meeting Description: The organizing committee of the third international symposium on the languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA) to be held at Tomsk State Pedagogical University, Tomsk, Russia, on June 27-30, 2006, announces the CALL FOR PAPERS for LENCA-3. Europe and North and Central Asia form a large natural geographical area for distribution of languages spoken in the area, and for diffusion of peoples and cultures. This area is the geographical basis for the LENCA-project which forms a framework for research of these languages and collecting information on these languages. The LENCA-1 symposium on the languages belonging to the LENCA-group was at the Udmurt State University, I�evsk, Udmurtia, Russia in 2001. The topic of the first symposium was �Deixis and quantification� in languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia. The LENCA-2 symposium took place at the Kazan State University in 2004, with the theme �Argument structure and grammatical relations�. The theme of the LENCA-3 symposium centers on structural and semantic features of complex sentences: different strategies of subordination and coordination employed by languages, their geographic distribution and historical development, discourse-pragmatic features of their usage as a means of ensuring inter-clausal coherence, i.e. the semantic-pragmatic connectivity of the functional dimension of event integration vis-�-vis the syntactic dependency (grammatical bonds) of clause integration. It is anticipated that a number of presentations will deal with these various aspects of complex sentences from a Siberian areal perspective. That is, the conference aims to encourage the development of a local typological view of complex sentences in languages native to Western and Central Siberia (such as Khanty, Selkup, Nenets, Evenki, Ket, Siberian Turkic, etc.), as well as possible contact influence from Russian. The scale, depth, terminology, and methodology of existing descriptions in this area vary considerably, and with this in mind one of the objectives envisioned for the symposium is to facilitate a negotiation of theoretical frameworks, methodologies, terminologies, and data as a prerequisite for further advancing of the topic. To this end, both a general typological and a historical perspective as a means to inform this discourse will be welcomed. PLENARY SPEAKERS (CONFIRMED) Dr. Balthasar Bickel, University of Leipzig, Germany Dr. Bernard Comrie, MPI for , Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Dr. Alexander Kibrik, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia Dr. Osahito Miyaoka, Osaka Gakuin University, Japan Dr. Vladimir Plungian, Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia Dr. Edward Vajda, Western Washington University, USA Dr. Robert D. Van Valin, University of New York, Buffalo, USA IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submitting abstracts: 15-December-2005 Notification of acceptance: 15-February-2006 Time of the symposium: 27-30-June-2006 (participants in need of an earlier notification of acceptance, please make a note to the Organizing Committee in the body of e-mail submission) ABSTRACT REQUIREMENTS Anonymous abstracts in English or Russian are to be submitted to the Programme Committee in electronic version by e-mail at and should not exceed two pages in length, including examples, notes, and bibliography (1 page of text and 1 page of examples and references). Please adhere to the requirements for formatting of abstracts. The text of the abstract is to be submitted as an attachment following these guidelines: - format the title: Times New Roman, bold, size 12, all caps, aligned by center - format the body of the text and the list of references: (MS Word .DOC or .RTF); Times New Roman, size 12, paragraph break 1cm, line interval 1,5; margins - all 2,5 cm - citations in text to be noted in square brackets, as follows [1, p.134], [2, p. 567] - bibliography list to be added in the end listed in the order of appearance; the title �References�: Times New Roman, font size 12 regular, title aligned by center - examples: please number and, when possible, use IPA font (SILDoulosIPA) and/or Unicode font (DoulosSIL) - body of the e-mail should contain the title and the information about the author: name & affiliation Accepted abstracts will be published for the symposium, and an internet version of the collection of abstracts will be available at the symposium website. Authors are encouraged to design their abstracts with the view that most of the papers presented at the symposium could be published later in the proceedings or selected papers volume. OFFICIAL LANGUAGES Russian, English, German, French CONTACT INFORMATION E-MAIL of the conference: tomsk at eva.mpg.de URL of the conference (English and Russian): http://www.lenca3/siblang.org Mirror Site (Eng. only): http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/uhlcs/LENCA/LENCA- 3/lenca-3.html From kibrik at comtv.ru Mon Jul 18 11:38:14 2005 From: kibrik at comtv.ru (Andrej Kibrik) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 15:38:14 +0400 Subject: St. Petersburg 2006 Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON SEGMENTATION OF BEHAVIOR June 2006, St. Petersburg An interdisciplinary Workshop on segmentation of behavior is planned as a part of the Second Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science (June 9-13, 2006, St. Petersburg, see http://www.cogsci.ru). Behavior of organisms - from animal movements to the highest forms of behavior, such as human speech, - is characterized by a number of common patterns. (As an example one can mention the cases of lingering, observed in the movement of lab animals, and the analogous phenomenon of hesitation found both within and between speech segments, that is, prosodic units.) The goal of the Workshop is to reveal and discuss such common patterns. The questions to be addressed at the Workshop include the following: · Of what segments does behavior consist? · How discrete are boundaries between segments? · What are the indicators of inter-segment boundaries? · What determines the integral nature of individual segments? · What methods of analytic discovery of the segments of behavior and boundaries between them can be used? · What patterns of behavior segmentation are universal, and what are specific to a particular species or form of behavior? · Is the notion of behavior continuum compatible with the segmented, quantized character of many forms of behavior? The Workshop is planned to consist of six to eight half-hour presentations. The overall length of workshop is a half of a working day. The working languages of the Workshop are Russian and English. All specialists in cognitive studies are invited for participation in the Workshop. If you are interested please email an abstract of your presentation, devoted to problems of behavior segmentation, to the address cogsci06 at cs.msu.su. In the text of the message please indicate: · the title of the paper · the author(s) information, including: o full name o affiliation o educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D., etc.) o postal address o phone numbers o e-mail address · 5 to 7 keywords · the title of the Workshop The text of the abstract, attached to the message, must be in Russian or English and no longer than 2 pages long (single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 type size), including illustrations and references. Please use the MS Word format; in case of complex graphics, please use PDF. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2005. Authors will be informed of the decisions on acceptance by January 15, 2006. Organizers of the Workshop: Konstantin V. Anokhin (Institute of Normal Physiology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences), k_anokhin at yahoo.com Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences), kibrik at comtv.ru From francisco.ruiz at dfm.unirioja.es Thu Jul 28 08:23:38 2005 From: francisco.ruiz at dfm.unirioja.es (Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 10:23:38 +0200 Subject: 24th International AESLA Conference Message-ID: Dear colleagues: The link below will provide you with all relevant information (call for papers included) on the 24th International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA), which will take place in Madrid from 30 March to 1 April, 2006. The central topic of the Conference will be "Language learning, language Use and Cognitive Modeling: Applied Perspectives Across Disciplines". Best regards, Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza AESLA President http://www.uned.es/aesla2006/english/bienvenida.htm From v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net Fri Jul 29 15:26:25 2005 From: v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net (Bittor Hidalgo) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:26:25 +0200 Subject: Sumary: Japanese word order Message-ID: Some 20 days ago I addressed a question about the real or claimed rigidity of verb-final order of Japanese (just to prod the discussion somehow a prototypical citation from «MSN ENCARTA - Japanese Language»: «Japanese permits a variety of word orders as long as the verb remains at the end of the sentence. // The most significant part of a clause or sentence is referred to as the head, and in Japanese the head is always placed at the end. The verb is the head of a typical Japanese sentence and appears at the end»). But I especially asked about this "rigid" order possible historical evolution, and dialectal or sociolectal (children language, ...) variability. I explicitly cited Clancy (1982), Shibamoto (1985) and Matsumoto (2003) as different testimonies of the existence of -at least- exceptions to the verb-final rule. I addressed the same question to LinguistList, Funknet and Jpling, and will resume the most interesting answers. Tom Givon and Dan I. Slobin remembered that these kinds of discussions were like "old hats" that "must already be" surmounted (even if they are not). T. Givon explicitly stated that: "All natural languages with 'rigid' word-order have much free-er word-order in actual natural (oral) communication, with much pragmatically-determined variation. Put another way, rigid VO [WO] is relative, never absolute." And added: "The normal degree of VO [WO] variability in most 'rigid'-VO [WO] languages is 5%-10% of the total sample." Bart Mathias stated in the same way: "Spoken Japanese is not quite a *rigid* verb-final language, but when the verb (plus suffixes) is followed by anything, what follows is always a sort of afterthought, or correction--addition of data that might not be understood after all. // The "afterthoughts" may be themes, subjects, objects (direct or indirect), or adverbials." But I have not received not found myself many references of works studying these not verb-final sentences' uses, their values, circumstances and real quantifications, and I don't understand that absence of interest (it is so easy to find statements about Japanese verb-final rigid condition -as that from Encarta-, and why is it so difficult to find the other references? Don't they exist?). Here some references that I received or found myself: Clancy, P.M. (1982) «Written and Spoken Style in Japanese Narratives». In D. Tannen (ed.) Spoken and Written Language. Exploring Orality and Literacy (2nd printing), Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, New Jersey, 1984, 55-76. Endo, Y. (1996) «Right dislocation». In M. Koizumi, M. Oishi, U. Sauerland (eds.) Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 2, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 29, 1-20. Fujii, Y. (1989) Right dislocation in Japanese discourse. M.A. thesis, Univ. of Oregon at Eugene. Matsumoto, K. (2003) Intonation Units in Japanese Conversation. Syntactic, informational and functional structures. J. Benjamins, 2003. Ono, T; R. Suzuki (1992) «¿Word order variability in Japanese conversation: Motivations and grammaticization». Text 12, 429-45. Sells, P. (1999) «Postposing in Japanese». (www) Shibamoto, J. (1985) Japanese Women's Language. London Academic Press. Shimizu, H. (2000) Information Status and Free Word Order in Japanese: An Analysis of Scrambling and Right-Dislocation. (Linguistics Students Association. Department of Linguistics - San Diego State University - Recent Graduates) Siegel, M.; E.M. Bender (2004) «Head-Initial Constructions in Japanese». Proceedings of the HPSG04 Conference, Univ. Leuven, S. Müller (ed.), 2004, CSLI Publ. (www) Simon, M.E. (1989) An Analysisi of the Postposing Construction in Japanese. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. About historical data Bart Mathias clearly states: "Whether it has *always* been so [rigd verb-final], who can say? We only have data for a millennium and a quarter. In that data, so far as I have seen, such postposing of pre-verb elements does not occur in prose, even in dialog. (I suspect cases might be found in poetry.)" But I didn't find either any reference about word order historical variation. Maybe because it is absolutely true as G.B. Sansom states (An Historical Grammar of Japanese 1928 [1995], 339) "word order can be said to have remained unchanged -c'est à dire, has been verb-final- since the Nara period -710-784 a.D., I think-"?. But the same Sansom cites there lists of exceptions (338-9),"most in poetical or rhetorical language, but corresponding usages are to be found n modern colloquial" // or "Japanese prose writers are often tempted to imitate Chinese word order" -not rigidly verb final at least-). B. Mathias explicitly cites also the fairly omission of the verb in Japanese, but he confesses to have not idea where find a study and collection about theses cases in real discourse. And I would be very interested in them, because as discussed with Mark A. Mandel it seems that the verb, and the verb position in a sentence (in long sentences) has a close relationship with processing difficulty in *any language* (and because of that the advice taken from http://www.thejapanesepage.com/grammar1.htm: «Sometimes it is good to start from the end of the sentence and work your way to the beginning. In that way you will learn the most important info first (the verb) and move to what is made to happen and who does it.»). I will bring here part of our discussion, just in case anybody is interested to participate, because it can be enlarged to other reputed (more or less rigid) verb final languages as Korean, Turkish or Basque. We compared the relative difficulty/facility of processing "in any language" of the next 2 sentence orders (I don't know if the English -syntax, ....- is very correct, but for the example it is the same), and will repeat the discussion: *A friend of mine asked me last weekend if I could ever be ready to run in the face of the bulls in Pamplona as Hemingway did in his youth, or at least counts in his books, in these first days of July* And asked: "Can you imagine a sentence of that type (not so strange at least written) with the main verb final? Read it again:" *A man that I met here some mounts ago, if you were apt to understand what had happened with the many he borrowed from your old sister when he was ill and couldn't work at all for a long year, didn't ask me* A possible reader (hearer) won't know clearly what is the sentence talking about until (s)he receives the final verb, and just as (s)he doesn't know what kind of verb will be (because it can be *asked me* instead of *didn't ask me* (or in other sentences *said me* or *denied me*, etc.), the message receiver can not erase from his/her working memory any part of the sentence before receiving the main verb because (s)he doesn't know any predicative universe to integrate it, and try to maintain all the information active until the verb, which seems very difficult because of general limitations of our verbal working memory. I don't know if you feel at easy reading the second sentence, but I can assure you that we, Basque users -as I myself am-, feel not at easy. And Basques don't normally give -and have not historically given- verbs final in long sentences, at least as frequently as they can give them final in short ones. And I wanted to know what happens with Japanese or Korean users in these conditions, and because of that was my question, with the last citation from the web ("start reading by the end"), which is also what Basque teachers recommend their pupils when they have to read an author that wants to be especially verb final as a rule. The discussion then can be extended to all pretended more or less rigid SOV languages as Korean, (more similar to Japanese, but with a lot of non verb final exceptions), Turkish (where as Dan I Slobin states (and others) statistical data are not conclusive and children don't show especial preference for SOV) or Basque (that statistically is nowadays and has historically been SVO without any doubt (%55,3), against the pretended SOV (%23,4) as I show in my papers; even if Basque acts undoubtedly as an OV language, better XV -where X = any complement- in short sentences, or short sentential segments -head final-). The question is that at least in Basque things change a lot in longer sentences or longer segments (as T. Givon explicitly states talking about OV languages in general: "longer complements (verbal complement clauses) tend to be post-verbal more often than shorter (nominal) objects/adverbs.") My big question is how do Japanese, Korean or Turkish people actually manage in these long sentences. Because reading the papers it seems they continue being "rigidly verb final". Can anyone help me? Thanks also to Melanie Siegel and Mark Mitchell for their post-verbal particles' comments. Bittor From Salinas17 at aol.com Sun Jul 3 02:58:49 2005 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 22:58:49 EDT Subject: Chomsky/Innovation Message-ID: In a message dated 6/30/05 3:27:52 AM, twood at uwc.ac.za writes: << For Chomsky, the culture of science is the real 'counter-culture' to the reigning ideology... >> The difficulty of course would be in conjecturing a society where the "culture of science" is "the reigning ideology." What would such an animal look like? How would it affect the everyday life of the person who bakes Dunkin Donuts every morning? Is science a way of life that can operate on a democratic level? Or is the idea that the culture of science must be represented by an elite minority whether that minority represents the real counter-culture or the ruling ideology? In a message dated 6/30/05 8:02:33 AM, pustetrm at yahoo.com writes: << Personally, as a linguist, I have never felt ?threatened by science? or innovations,... This comes as no surprise because resistance to innovation is a deeply human trait (probably evolutionarily based, if we want to discuss that). >> I'm sure that most of us here feel, as you do, that we are not particularly tainted with the dreaded "fear of innovation" trait that plagued countless generations of our human and pre-human ancestors. If only it had been dropped from our genetic repetoire earlier, we humans would have been using cell phones and disposable razors in late paleolithic times at minimum. However, given that not all "innovations" end up generating positive results, one really doesn't need to reach way over to evolution to explain such resistance. In fact, it might be more accurate to lay the blame on something that used to be called "common sense." If we really must identify "deep human traits" that are "evolutionarily based," my candidate would the appetite for reality programming on television -- my theory is that it is a trait directly inherited from those of our protozoic ancestors who developed the first light sensing organs and it has been all down-hill from there. Regards, Steve Long From v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net Sun Jul 10 14:13:53 2005 From: v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net (Bittor Hidalgo) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:13:53 +0200 Subject: Japanese (historical and dialectal) word order (development) Message-ID: It is everywhere rigidly claimed that Japanese is (always) a rigid verb final language. But has always been so? I have no reference about Japanese historical and dialectal word order development and variation, and I would thank any. My concern would be to know if Japanese has always and everywhere been so a rigid-verb-final language? Or on the contrary, as it is the case of other characteristics (cf. Gottlieb, 2005), verb rigid finality is also a claime, more or less born or rigidly developed at the last century, with the general standardization process of Japanese? Beside, I would definitely want to know if even current Japanese spontaneous (oral) word order is so rigidly verb final as claimed? Because between some other, at least P.M. Clancy (1982) or Matsumoto (2003) claim that Japanese spoken word order is not so rigid (as Matsumoto says, 4: Japanese spoken discourse consists not only of basic canonical SOV word order constructions involving pre-predicate elements, but also of marked word order constructions involving post-predicate elements). And Shibamoto (1985, ap. Gottlieb 2005, 14) ?found that women often reverse the normal word order, putting the subject after the predicate?, where predicate seems to include the verb). Then, what is Japanese rigid verb final condition, a description or a desideratum? And if Japanese is so a rigid verb final language how can the current Japanese hearer or listener manage to easily understand verb final long (very long) sentences, as those with verbs of thinking or saying? Maybe, it is necessary for them to start reading (not listening, of couse, they can not) by the end to understand sentences, as it is usually recommended for foreigners (?Sometimes it is good to start from the end of the sentence and work your way to the beginning. In that way you will learn the most important info first (the verb) and move to what is made to happen and who does it.?). Because cognitive processement constrictions seem to be more or less similar for humankind, ... And by the same way, how does children language work? Is it also so rigid verb final always? --------------------------------------------- Bittor Hidalgo Eizagirre /Victor/ k/ Intxaurrondo, 54, 4. A 20015 Donostia (Euskal Herria) (Espainia gainezarpenez) Tfnoa eta faxa: 943-273748 // 655728290 posta-e: bittorhidalgo at euskalnet.net From tgivon at uoregon.edu Sun Jul 10 16:34:34 2005 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:34:34 -0700 Subject: Japanese (historical and dialectal) word order(development) Message-ID: Dear Bittor, One could make a few methodological suggestions about how to approach the problem(s) you raised: 1. Synchronic morphology is most often the best guide for reconstructing older syntax. There is not a single shred of evidence in Japanese morphology indicating anything but SOV syntax (see Givon 1971, 1979, 1983 ed., 2001, inter alia). 2. In general, SOV is the oldest attested word-order in human language. Most natural (non-contact induced) drift is, as far as I know, always away from SOV, not toward it (Givon 1979; Ruhlen & Gell-Man, forthcoming). 3. All natural languages with 'rigid' word-order have much free-er word-order in actual natural (oral) communication, with much pramatically-determined variation. Put another way, rigid WO is relative, never absolute. These are all old hats, by the way, so much so that I feel somewhat embarrassed to re-state them (again...). Best regards, TG ================== Bittor Hidalgo wrote: > It is everywhere rigidly claimed that Japanese is (always) a rigid verb final language. But has always been so? I have no reference about Japanese historical and dialectal word order development and variation, and I would thank any. > > My concern would be to know if Japanese has always and everywhere been so a rigid-verb-final language? Or on the contrary, as it is the case of other characteristics (cf. Gottlieb, 2005), verb rigid finality is also a claime, more or less born or rigidly developed at the last century, with the general standardization process of Japanese? Beside, I would definitely want to know if even current Japanese spontaneous (oral) word order is so rigidly verb final as claimed? Because between some other, at least P.M. Clancy (1982) or Matsumoto (2003) claim that Japanese spoken word order is not so rigid (as Matsumoto says, 4: Japanese spoken discourse consists not only of basic canonical SOV word order constructions involving pre-predicate elements, but also of marked word order constructions involving post-predicate elements). And Shibamoto (1985, ap. Gottlieb 2005, 14) ?found that women often reverse the normal word order, putting the subject after the predicate?, where predicate seems to > include the verb). Then, what is Japanese rigid verb final condition, a description or a desideratum? And if Japanese is so a rigid verb final language how can the current Japanese hearer or listener manage to easily understand verb final long (very long) sentences, as those with verbs of thinking or saying? Maybe, it is necessary for them to start reading (not listening, of couse, they can not) by the end to understand sentences, as it is usually recommended for foreigners (?Sometimes it is good to start from the end of the sentence and work your way to the beginning. In that way you will learn the most important info first (the verb) and move to what is made to happen and who does it.?). Because cognitive processement constrictions seem to be more or less similar for humankind, ... And by the same way, how does children language work? Is it also so rigid verb final always? > > --------------------------------------------- > Bittor Hidalgo Eizagirre /Victor/ > k/ Intxaurrondo, 54, 4. A > 20015 Donostia (Euskal Herria) > (Espainia gainezarpenez) > Tfnoa eta faxa: 943-273748 // 655728290 > posta-e: bittorhidalgo at euskalnet.net From fg-fgw at uva.nl Mon Jul 11 10:32:30 2005 From: fg-fgw at uva.nl (fg-fgw) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 12:32:30 +0200 Subject: first announcement ICFG12 and IPCFG3 Message-ID: First Announcement ICFG12 12th International Conference on Functional Grammar Universidade Estadual Paulista, S?o Jos? do Rio Preto, Brazil 19-22 July 2006 preceded by IPCFG3 3rd International Postgraduate Course on Functional Grammar Universidade estadual Paulista, S?o Jos? do Rio Preto, Brazil 17-19 July 2006 Background Since 1984, there has been a highly successful biennial series of International Conferences on Functional Grammar (ICFG). The first eleven conferences took place in ICFG1 Amsterdam - UvA, 1984 ICFG2 Antwerp, 1986 ICFG3 Amsterdam - VU, 1988 ICFG4 Copenhagen, 1990 ICFG5 Antwerp, 1992 ICFG6 York, 1994 ICFG7 C?rdoba, 1996 ICFG8 Amsterdam - VU, 1998 ICFG9 Madrid - UNED, 2000 ICFG10 Amsterdam - UvA, 2002 ICFG11 Gij?n - 2004 The aim of ICFG is to further elaborate the model of Functional Grammar (FG) that was originally proposed by the late Simon Dik. A full treatment of FG may be found in: Dik, Simon C. 1997, The Theory of Functional Grammar. 2 Vols. Ed. by Kees Hengeveld. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. The most recent version of FG is called Functional Discourse Grammar. A sketch of this model may be found in: Hengeveld, Kees & J. Lachlan Mackenzie, 'Functional Discourse Grammar', In: Keith Brown (ed), Encyclopedia of Language and Lingistics, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier, downloadable from www.functionalgrammar.com --> Publications --> FDG The venue ICFG12 will be hosted by the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), S?o Jos? do Rio Preto, Brazil. S?o Jos? do Rio Preto is a 350,000 inhabitant city, located 450km from the city of S?o Paulo. Information about travel arrangements and accommodation in S?o Jos? do Rio Preto will be provided in the second circular. Local organization The local organizing committee consists of Marize Dall'Aglio-Hattnher (president), Roberto Gomes Camacho, Erotilde Goretti Pezatti, Sebasti?o Carlos Leite Gon?alves and Sandra Denise Gasparini Bastos. The Conference Programme Although the conference programme will host all possible topics related to the further elaboration of F(D)G, one topic will be given special attention at the conference: the conference will start on Wednesday afternoon 19 July with a special workshop on Complex structures in Grammar and Discourse. The length of the papers will be 30 minutes followed by another 10 minutes of discussion. The language of the conference will be English. Apart from the workshop and general sessions, there will be ample room for poster presentations. Programme committee The board of the Functional Grammar Foundation (FGF) has appointed the following programme committee for ICFG12: Daniel Garc?a Velasco (president), Marize Dall'Aglio-Hattner, and Kees Hengeveld. The programme committee will evaluate the anonymous abstracts and decide on their inclusion in the conference programme. In case a member of the programme committee submits an abstract, he/she will not evaluate his/her own abstract, but a member of the board of FGF will step in to evaluate the abstract of the committee member involved. Abstracts Given the role the quality of the abstract plays in the selection procedure, it should contain at least the following items: a clearly defined and well-motivated research question; the crucial examples illustrating the relevance of the research question; and the main conclusions the paper arrives at. Abstracts should have a length of approximately 1000 words, i.e. roughly 3 pages, and should not contain the name of the author. References to the literature cited should be given. References containing the name of the author may also be given but will be suppressed before the abstract is sent to the programme committee. Please indicate in the accompanying message whether you want to present a paper or a poster. The deadline for the submission of abstracts of papers and posters is 15 December 2005. Abstracts should be submitted electronically to the international secretary of the FGF at fg-fgw at uva.nl Conference Fee The regular fees, in Brazil Reais, are as follows: Regular Conference R$ 170,00 appr. Euro 60,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 290,00 appr. Euro 100,00 Students Conference R$ 140,00 appr. Euro 50,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 225,00 appr. Euro 80,00 Since bank taxes are very high in Brazil, fees can be paid upon registration only. Brazilian participants are offered the possibility to pay the fee in advance as well as upon registration. Due to a partial grant by the Brazilian Government for all Brazilian participants the fees for Brazilians will be: Regular Advance payment Upon registration Conference R$ 60,00 R$ 75,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 100,00 R$ 120,00 Students Conference R$ 50,00 R$ 65,00 Course (includes conference) R$ 80,00 R$ 100,00 Waivers A limited number of waivers will be available. Applications should be sent to the international secretary of the FGF at fg-fgw at uva.nl Registration The second circular will contain all details about how to (pre-)register for ICFG12. This information will also be made available on our website www.functionalgrammar.com Pre-Conference Course In view of the success of the pre-conference courses in 2002 and 2004, an intensive course on Functional (Discourse) Grammar will be organized in the days preceding the conference to enable linguists unfamiliar with the theory to prepare for the conference. The course will be organized with participants at PhD level in mind. The course preceding ICFG12 will focus on the Functional Discourse Grammar model and will also prepare the students for the special conference theme. Please inform your PhD students and colleagues unfamiliar with Functional (Discourse) Grammar of this possibility of getting acquainted with the theory and its applications. Further details about registration will be provided in the second circular and on our website www.functionalgrammar.com Website All information concerning ICFG12 and IPCFG3 will be made available at www.functionalgrammar.com. How we try to reach you All information concerning ICFG12 is being sent out by email to those who have expressed their interest in the past. If you do not wish to receive any further information, please let us know. How you can reach us The email address for all matters related to the conference programme is: fg-fgw at uva.nl From andreif at rice.edu Thu Jul 14 10:13:15 2005 From: andreif at rice.edu (Andrei Filtchenko) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:13:15 -0000 Subject: LENCA-3 Call For Abstracts Message-ID: LENCA 3: 1ST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Full Title: The Grammar and Pragmatics of Complex Sentences in Languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA -3). Date: 27-Jun-2006 - 30-Jun-2006 Location: Tomsk, Russia Contact Persons: Elizaveta Kotorova, Andrey Filchenko, Pirkko Suihkonen Meeting Email: tomsk at eva.mpg.de Conference Web Site (Eng, Rus): www.lenca3.siblang.org Mirror Site (Eng. only): http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/uhlcs/LENCA/LENCA- 3/lenca-3.html (under constr.) Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Syntax; Semantics, Complex Sentence. Call Deadline: 15-Dec-2005 Meeting Description: The organizing committee of the third international symposium on the languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA) to be held at Tomsk State Pedagogical University, Tomsk, Russia, on June 27-30, 2006, announces the CALL FOR PAPERS for LENCA-3. Europe and North and Central Asia form a large natural geographical area for distribution of languages spoken in the area, and for diffusion of peoples and cultures. This area is the geographical basis for the LENCA-project which forms a framework for research of these languages and collecting information on these languages. The LENCA-1 symposium on the languages belonging to the LENCA-group was at the Udmurt State University, I?evsk, Udmurtia, Russia in 2001. The topic of the first symposium was ?Deixis and quantification? in languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia. The LENCA-2 symposium took place at the Kazan State University in 2004, with the theme ?Argument structure and grammatical relations?. The theme of the LENCA-3 symposium centers on structural and semantic features of complex sentences: different strategies of subordination and coordination employed by languages, their geographic distribution and historical development, discourse-pragmatic features of their usage as a means of ensuring inter-clausal coherence, i.e. the semantic-pragmatic connectivity of the functional dimension of event integration vis-?-vis the syntactic dependency (grammatical bonds) of clause integration. It is anticipated that a number of presentations will deal with these various aspects of complex sentences from a Siberian areal perspective. That is, the conference aims to encourage the development of a local typological view of complex sentences in languages native to Western and Central Siberia (such as Khanty, Selkup, Nenets, Evenki, Ket, Siberian Turkic, etc.), as well as possible contact influence from Russian. The scale, depth, terminology, and methodology of existing descriptions in this area vary considerably, and with this in mind one of the objectives envisioned for the symposium is to facilitate a negotiation of theoretical frameworks, methodologies, terminologies, and data as a prerequisite for further advancing of the topic. To this end, both a general typological and a historical perspective as a means to inform this discourse will be welcomed. PLENARY SPEAKERS (CONFIRMED) Dr. Balthasar Bickel, University of Leipzig, Germany Dr. Bernard Comrie, MPI for , Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Dr. Alexander Kibrik, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia Dr. Osahito Miyaoka, Osaka Gakuin University, Japan Dr. Vladimir Plungian, Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia Dr. Edward Vajda, Western Washington University, USA Dr. Robert D. Van Valin, University of New York, Buffalo, USA IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submitting abstracts: 15-December-2005 Notification of acceptance: 15-February-2006 Time of the symposium: 27-30-June-2006 (participants in need of an earlier notification of acceptance, please make a note to the Organizing Committee in the body of e-mail submission) ABSTRACT REQUIREMENTS Anonymous abstracts in English or Russian are to be submitted to the Programme Committee in electronic version by e-mail at and should not exceed two pages in length, including examples, notes, and bibliography (1 page of text and 1 page of examples and references). Please adhere to the requirements for formatting of abstracts. The text of the abstract is to be submitted as an attachment following these guidelines: - format the title: Times New Roman, bold, size 12, all caps, aligned by center - format the body of the text and the list of references: (MS Word .DOC or .RTF); Times New Roman, size 12, paragraph break 1cm, line interval 1,5; margins - all 2,5 cm - citations in text to be noted in square brackets, as follows [1, p.134], [2, p. 567] - bibliography list to be added in the end listed in the order of appearance; the title ?References?: Times New Roman, font size 12 regular, title aligned by center - examples: please number and, when possible, use IPA font (SILDoulosIPA) and/or Unicode font (DoulosSIL) - body of the e-mail should contain the title and the information about the author: name & affiliation Accepted abstracts will be published for the symposium, and an internet version of the collection of abstracts will be available at the symposium website. Authors are encouraged to design their abstracts with the view that most of the papers presented at the symposium could be published later in the proceedings or selected papers volume. OFFICIAL LANGUAGES Russian, English, German, French CONTACT INFORMATION E-MAIL of the conference: tomsk at eva.mpg.de URL of the conference (English and Russian): http://www.lenca3/siblang.org Mirror Site (Eng. only): http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/uhlcs/LENCA/LENCA- 3/lenca-3.html From kibrik at comtv.ru Mon Jul 18 11:38:14 2005 From: kibrik at comtv.ru (Andrej Kibrik) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 15:38:14 +0400 Subject: St. Petersburg 2006 Message-ID: WORKSHOP ON SEGMENTATION OF BEHAVIOR June 2006, St. Petersburg An interdisciplinary Workshop on segmentation of behavior is planned as a part of the Second Biennial Conference on Cognitive Science (June 9-13, 2006, St. Petersburg, see http://www.cogsci.ru). Behavior of organisms - from animal movements to the highest forms of behavior, such as human speech, - is characterized by a number of common patterns. (As an example one can mention the cases of lingering, observed in the movement of lab animals, and the analogous phenomenon of hesitation found both within and between speech segments, that is, prosodic units.) The goal of the Workshop is to reveal and discuss such common patterns. The questions to be addressed at the Workshop include the following: ? Of what segments does behavior consist? ? How discrete are boundaries between segments? ? What are the indicators of inter-segment boundaries? ? What determines the integral nature of individual segments? ? What methods of analytic discovery of the segments of behavior and boundaries between them can be used? ? What patterns of behavior segmentation are universal, and what are specific to a particular species or form of behavior? ? Is the notion of behavior continuum compatible with the segmented, quantized character of many forms of behavior? The Workshop is planned to consist of six to eight half-hour presentations. The overall length of workshop is a half of a working day. The working languages of the Workshop are Russian and English. All specialists in cognitive studies are invited for participation in the Workshop. If you are interested please email an abstract of your presentation, devoted to problems of behavior segmentation, to the address cogsci06 at cs.msu.su. In the text of the message please indicate: ? the title of the paper ? the author(s) information, including: o full name o affiliation o educational status or degree (undergraduate student, graduate student, Ph.D., etc.) o postal address o phone numbers o e-mail address ? 5 to 7 keywords ? the title of the Workshop The text of the abstract, attached to the message, must be in Russian or English and no longer than 2 pages long (single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 type size), including illustrations and references. Please use the MS Word format; in case of complex graphics, please use PDF. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2005. Authors will be informed of the decisions on acceptance by January 15, 2006. Organizers of the Workshop: Konstantin V. Anokhin (Institute of Normal Physiology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences), k_anokhin at yahoo.com Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences), kibrik at comtv.ru From francisco.ruiz at dfm.unirioja.es Thu Jul 28 08:23:38 2005 From: francisco.ruiz at dfm.unirioja.es (Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 10:23:38 +0200 Subject: 24th International AESLA Conference Message-ID: Dear colleagues: The link below will provide you with all relevant information (call for papers included) on the 24th International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA), which will take place in Madrid from 30 March to 1 April, 2006. The central topic of the Conference will be "Language learning, language Use and Cognitive Modeling: Applied Perspectives Across Disciplines". Best regards, Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza AESLA President http://www.uned.es/aesla2006/english/bienvenida.htm From v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net Fri Jul 29 15:26:25 2005 From: v.hidalgo at euskalnet.net (Bittor Hidalgo) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:26:25 +0200 Subject: Sumary: Japanese word order Message-ID: Some 20 days ago I addressed a question about the real or claimed rigidity of verb-final order of Japanese (just to prod the discussion somehow a prototypical citation from ?MSN ENCARTA - Japanese Language?: ?Japanese permits a variety of word orders as long as the verb remains at the end of the sentence. // The most significant part of a clause or sentence is referred to as the head, and in Japanese the head is always placed at the end. The verb is the head of a typical Japanese sentence and appears at the end?). But I especially asked about this "rigid" order possible historical evolution, and dialectal or sociolectal (children language, ...) variability. I explicitly cited Clancy (1982), Shibamoto (1985) and Matsumoto (2003) as different testimonies of the existence of -at least- exceptions to the verb-final rule. I addressed the same question to LinguistList, Funknet and Jpling, and will resume the most interesting answers. Tom Givon and Dan I. Slobin remembered that these kinds of discussions were like "old hats" that "must already be" surmounted (even if they are not). T. Givon explicitly stated that: "All natural languages with 'rigid' word-order have much free-er word-order in actual natural (oral) communication, with much pragmatically-determined variation. Put another way, rigid VO [WO] is relative, never absolute." And added: "The normal degree of VO [WO] variability in most 'rigid'-VO [WO] languages is 5%-10% of the total sample." Bart Mathias stated in the same way: "Spoken Japanese is not quite a *rigid* verb-final language, but when the verb (plus suffixes) is followed by anything, what follows is always a sort of afterthought, or correction--addition of data that might not be understood after all. // The "afterthoughts" may be themes, subjects, objects (direct or indirect), or adverbials." But I have not received not found myself many references of works studying these not verb-final sentences' uses, their values, circumstances and real quantifications, and I don't understand that absence of interest (it is so easy to find statements about Japanese verb-final rigid condition -as that from Encarta-, and why is it so difficult to find the other references? Don't they exist?). Here some references that I received or found myself: Clancy, P.M. (1982) ?Written and Spoken Style in Japanese Narratives?. In D. Tannen (ed.) Spoken and Written Language. Exploring Orality and Literacy (2nd printing), Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, New Jersey, 1984, 55-76. Endo, Y. (1996) ?Right dislocation?. In M. Koizumi, M. Oishi, U. Sauerland (eds.) Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 2, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 29, 1-20. Fujii, Y. (1989) Right dislocation in Japanese discourse. M.A. thesis, Univ. of Oregon at Eugene. Matsumoto, K. (2003) Intonation Units in Japanese Conversation. Syntactic, informational and functional structures. J. Benjamins, 2003. Ono, T; R. Suzuki (1992) ??Word order variability in Japanese conversation: Motivations and grammaticization?. Text 12, 429-45. Sells, P. (1999) ?Postposing in Japanese?. (www) Shibamoto, J. (1985) Japanese Women's Language. London Academic Press. Shimizu, H. (2000) Information Status and Free Word Order in Japanese: An Analysis of Scrambling and Right-Dislocation. (Linguistics Students Association. Department of Linguistics - San Diego State University - Recent Graduates) Siegel, M.; E.M. Bender (2004) ?Head-Initial Constructions in Japanese?. Proceedings of the HPSG04 Conference, Univ. Leuven, S. M?ller (ed.), 2004, CSLI Publ. (www) Simon, M.E. (1989) An Analysisi of the Postposing Construction in Japanese. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. About historical data Bart Mathias clearly states: "Whether it has *always* been so [rigd verb-final], who can say? We only have data for a millennium and a quarter. In that data, so far as I have seen, such postposing of pre-verb elements does not occur in prose, even in dialog. (I suspect cases might be found in poetry.)" But I didn't find either any reference about word order historical variation. Maybe because it is absolutely true as G.B. Sansom states (An Historical Grammar of Japanese 1928 [1995], 339) "word order can be said to have remained unchanged -c'est ? dire, has been verb-final- since the Nara period -710-784 a.D., I think-"?. But the same Sansom cites there lists of exceptions (338-9),"most in poetical or rhetorical language, but corresponding usages are to be found n modern colloquial" // or "Japanese prose writers are often tempted to imitate Chinese word order" -not rigidly verb final at least-). B. Mathias explicitly cites also the fairly omission of the verb in Japanese, but he confesses to have not idea where find a study and collection about theses cases in real discourse. And I would be very interested in them, because as discussed with Mark A. Mandel it seems that the verb, and the verb position in a sentence (in long sentences) has a close relationship with processing difficulty in *any language* (and because of that the advice taken from http://www.thejapanesepage.com/grammar1.htm: ?Sometimes it is good to start from the end of the sentence and work your way to the beginning. In that way you will learn the most important info first (the verb) and move to what is made to happen and who does it.?). I will bring here part of our discussion, just in case anybody is interested to participate, because it can be enlarged to other reputed (more or less rigid) verb final languages as Korean, Turkish or Basque. We compared the relative difficulty/facility of processing "in any language" of the next 2 sentence orders (I don't know if the English -syntax, ....- is very correct, but for the example it is the same), and will repeat the discussion: *A friend of mine asked me last weekend if I could ever be ready to run in the face of the bulls in Pamplona as Hemingway did in his youth, or at least counts in his books, in these first days of July* And asked: "Can you imagine a sentence of that type (not so strange at least written) with the main verb final? Read it again:" *A man that I met here some mounts ago, if you were apt to understand what had happened with the many he borrowed from your old sister when he was ill and couldn't work at all for a long year, didn't ask me* A possible reader (hearer) won't know clearly what is the sentence talking about until (s)he receives the final verb, and just as (s)he doesn't know what kind of verb will be (because it can be *asked me* instead of *didn't ask me* (or in other sentences *said me* or *denied me*, etc.), the message receiver can not erase from his/her working memory any part of the sentence before receiving the main verb because (s)he doesn't know any predicative universe to integrate it, and try to maintain all the information active until the verb, which seems very difficult because of general limitations of our verbal working memory. I don't know if you feel at easy reading the second sentence, but I can assure you that we, Basque users -as I myself am-, feel not at easy. And Basques don't normally give -and have not historically given- verbs final in long sentences, at least as frequently as they can give them final in short ones. And I wanted to know what happens with Japanese or Korean users in these conditions, and because of that was my question, with the last citation from the web ("start reading by the end"), which is also what Basque teachers recommend their pupils when they have to read an author that wants to be especially verb final as a rule. The discussion then can be extended to all pretended more or less rigid SOV languages as Korean, (more similar to Japanese, but with a lot of non verb final exceptions), Turkish (where as Dan I Slobin states (and others) statistical data are not conclusive and children don't show especial preference for SOV) or Basque (that statistically is nowadays and has historically been SVO without any doubt (%55,3), against the pretended SOV (%23,4) as I show in my papers; even if Basque acts undoubtedly as an OV language, better XV -where X = any complement- in short sentences, or short sentential segments -head final-). The question is that at least in Basque things change a lot in longer sentences or longer segments (as T. Givon explicitly states talking about OV languages in general: "longer complements (verbal complement clauses) tend to be post-verbal more often than shorter (nominal) objects/adverbs.") My big question is how do Japanese, Korean or Turkish people actually manage in these long sentences. Because reading the papers it seems they continue being "rigidly verb final". Can anyone help me? Thanks also to Melanie Siegel and Mark Mitchell for their post-verbal particles' comments. Bittor