From lctg at let.rug.nl Mon Jan 9 11:15:15 2006 From: lctg at let.rug.nl (LCTG) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:15:15 +0100 Subject: Second Call for papers: language contact in times of globalization Message-ID: *** APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS *** First International Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization University of Groningen, September 28-30, 2006 SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The past decade has witnessed a growing interest in the study of linguistic effects of language contact. Due to rapid globalization and increased migration, people are ever more exposed to other languages, both related and unrelated. The aim of the Groningen conference is to explore the linguistic effects of globalization and migration in societies all over the world. We particularly invite papers adressing the conference theme, but in order to put these issues in a broader historical and theoretical perspective, we also welcome papers on other current issues in the study of language contact and language change. Plenary speakers will be Prof.dr. Pieter Muysken (Radboud University Nijmegen), Dr. Ricardo Otheguy (City University of New York) and Prof.dr. Kurt Braunmüller, (Universität Hamburg). Registration For preliminary registration, send an e-mail message to lctg at let.rug.nl. If you wish to present a paper, please provide us with a provisional title. Once you have registered, you will receive the first circular containing information on conference themes, plenary speakers, submission of abstracts, travel to Groningen and accommodation. For more information you may also visit our website: http://odur.let.rug.nl/~dejonge/invest/lctg/ Conference registration is 100 Euro until May 1, 2006. Late or on-site registration will be 120 Euro. Early registration for students is 50 euro, late registration 60 euro. Please bring some kind of identification to prove that you are a student. Abstracts Scholars are invited to submit abstracts for 40-minute papers (including 10 minute discussion time). Deadline for abstracts is February 1, 2006. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by March 1. If you require earlier notification, let us know, and we will send you our reply at an earlier date (though not before January 1, 2006). Organizing committee Cornelius Hasselblatt, Bob de Jonge & Muriel Norde, University of Groningen Conference address Organizers of Language contact in times of globalization Scandinavian Languages and Cultures University of Groningen P.O. Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands e-mail: lctg at let.rug.nl web: http://odur.let.rug.nl/~dejonge/invest/lctg/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Organizers of LCTG Scandinavian Languages and Cultures University of Groningen P.O. Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands http://odur.let.rug.nl/~dejonge/invest/lctg/ From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Tue Jan 10 14:33:30 2006 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:33:30 +0100 Subject: postdoc in syntactic typology (MPI-EVA Leipzig) Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology invites applications for the position of a post-doctoral researcher in syntactic typology starting as soon as possible (subject to final approval of funding). The salary will be according to the German BAT-O IIa (or equivalent TVÖD) scale. This is a non-permanent position terminating after three years. The successful applicant will work with Bernard Comrie and Martin Haspelmath on a cross-linguistic project on ditransitive constructions, within the framework of a Forschergruppe on the grammar of verb arguments funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The project includes the setting up of a typological database on ditransitive constructions in a sample of 200 languages. The complete project description is available (only in German) under http://www.eva.mpg.de/%7Ehaspelmt/DitrProjekt.pdf. The working language of the project is English, but at least a passive knowledge of German would be an asset (given that meetings of the whole Forschergruppe will sometimes be held in German). Applicants should send a full CV and a one-page cover letter (explaining why they would be qualified and interested in collaborating with us on this project) to: Martin Haspelmath Abteilung für Linguistik Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie Deutscher Platz 6 04103 Leipzig haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Applications by e-mail are preferred, ideally in a single PDF or text document.) We will start reviewing applications on 25 January 2006, but applications will be considered until the available position is filled. -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 From katten at rice.edu Sun Jan 15 04:45:33 2006 From: katten at rice.edu (David Katten) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 22:45:33 -0600 Subject: FCP & Deadline Extension: Complex Predicates and Similar Constructions Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - DEADLINE EXTENSION The Rice Linguistics Society will host a poster session to accompany the 11th Biennial Rice Symposium on Linguistics, to be held March 16-18th in Houston, Texas. -Topic The theme for the poster session is ''Complex Predicates and Similar Constructions''. We invite papers from all areas and orientations of linguistics that touch upon the structure, meaning, usage, or development of complex constructions. These posters should complement the symposium topic of ''Intertheoretical approaches to complex verb constructions''. For more information, consult www.rice.edu/lingsymp -Submission Guidelines The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2006, 5 p.m. central time zone. (note new date) Please submit a 300 word abstract in PDF format to rls at rice.edu. The filename should be AUTHORSNAME.pdf. Please include ''poster session'' in the subject. The email body should include: Name of author(s) Paper title Institution(s) of author(s) Email address(es) of author(s) Postal address(es) of author(s) Phone number for primary author Postal submissions will not be accepted. - Poster Presentation Participants will be given a space approximately 6' by 4' to display their work. - Registration Registration will be handled through the symposium. Poster presenters are invited to attend all symposium events. For more information, contact rls at rice.edu or visit the symposium website at www.rice.edu/ lingsymp. From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Sun Jan 15 06:02:39 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 01:02:39 -0500 Subject: social benefactive/antisocial malefactive case? Message-ID: Hi folks. I have questions about case. Working with data from Yahgan (isolate, Tierra del Fuego) I'm finding that various case markings have rather specific uses in certain circumstances. I'm not used to case-marked languages, as almost all the languages I have experience with are either unmarked or primarily head-marking. In Yahgan there is an accusative form -ima which has a very antisocial, malefactive usage when the noun phrase is singular and human. Plurals with this mark don't have to be human, nor is the sense necessarily malefactive. Yet there is another form -nchi- used only when there is a generally positive socially defined and specifiable human relationship (unequal, such as between master/servant, king/subject, teacher/student, etc.) and no party is completely free to do as he/she wishes except within the normal bounds of the social "contract" implied by the noun dyad. Obviously this is all tied up with definiteness, person, number, animacy/control in general. So, is this NORMAL? Or is this rather unusual in case systems? One sees such a malefactive/benefactive split in the voice system of Salishan languages (as suffixes on the verbal head), and I claim that Yahgan and Salishan are in fact more closely related than languages in between (is that a wink from Sapir??). Is this normal for head-marking languages as well? Thanks for any tips, Jess Tauber From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Mon Jan 16 15:43:53 2006 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:43:53 +0100 Subject: Third CFP and extended deadline: LCM2006 Paris Message-ID: THIRD CALL / EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR LANGUAGE CULTURE AND MIND CONFERENCE (LCM 2) INTEGRATING PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGIES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE PARIS 17-20 JULY 2006 The second ‘Language Culture and Mind’ Conference (LCM 2) will be held in Paris in July 2006, following the successful first LCM conference in Portsmouth in 2004. The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue, and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language. The second edition will be held at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST), 46 rue Barrault, 75013 Paris France. Further information concerning the organization, fees and accommodation (including affordable rooms at the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris, at walking distance from the Conference site) will be provided as soon as available at the site of the conference: http://www.lcm2006.net IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submissions:  January 30 (for further detail see underneath) Notification to authors by March 30, 2006 Early registration by April 15, 2006 PRESENTATION Human natural languages are biologically based, cognitively motivated, affectively rich, socially shared, grammatically organized symbolic systems. They provide the principal semiotic means for the complexity and diversity of human cultural life. As has long been recognized, no single discipline or methodology is sufficient to capture all the dimensions of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which lies at the heart of what it is to be human. In the recent past, perception and cognition have been the basis of general unifying models of language and language activity. However, a genuine integrative perspective should also involve such essential modalities of human action as: empathy, mimesis, intersubjectivity, normativity, agentivity and narrativity. Significant theoretical, methodological and empirical advancements in the relevant disciplines now provide a realistic basis for such a broadened perspective.   This conference will articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive and bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to impart their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language sciences.   Topics include but are not limited to the relation between language and: - biological and cultural co-evolution  - comparative study of communication systems, whether animal or artificial - cognitive and cultural schematization  - emergence in ontogeny and phylogeny  - multi-modal communication - normativity  - thought, emotion and consciousness - perception and categorization - empathy and intersubjectivity - imitation and mimesis - symbolic activity - discourse genres in language evolution and ontogeny - sign, text and literacy Plenary speakers Pierre Cadiot (Linguistics, University of Orléans, France) Merlin Donald (Cognitive Science Department, Case Western Reserve University, USA) Shaun Gallagher (Department of Philosophy & Cognitive Science Program, University of Central Florida, USA) Webb Keane (Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, USA) Sandra Laugier (Philosophy, University of Amiens, France) John A. Lucy (Department of Comparative Human Development & Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA) Further information about LCM 2 will be presented at http://www.lcm2006.net. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Caroline David (Université de Montpellier) Jean-Louis Dessalles (École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris) Jean Lassègue (CNRS, Paris) Victor Rosenthal (Inserm-EHESS, Paris) Chris Sinha (University of Portsmouth) Yves-Marie Visetti (CNRS, Paris) Joerg Zinken (University of Portsmouth) Jordan Zlatev (Lund University) SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Iraide Ibarretxe Antunano (University of Zaragoza) Jocelyn Benoist (Université de Paris 1) Enrique Bernárdez, (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) Raphael Berthele (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland) Per Aage Brandt, (Case Western Reserve University) Peer F. Bundgård (Aarhus Universitet) Seana Coulson, (Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD) Jules Davidoff (Goldsmith’s, University of London) Jean-Pierre Durafour (University of Tubingen) Michel de Fornel (EHESS, Paris) Vyvyan Evans, (University of Sussex, Grande-Bretagne) Dirk Geeraerts, (Department of Linguistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgique) Clarisse Herrenschmidt (CNRS-Laboratoire Anthropologie Sociale, Paris) Chris Knight (University of East London) Bernard Laks (Université de Paris 10-Nanterre) Maarten Lemmens, (Université Lille III) Lorenza Mondada (Université Lyon II) François Nemo (Université Orléans) Domenico Parisi (CNR, Roma) David Piotrowski (CREA, Paris) Stéphane Robert (CNRS, Paris) François Rastier (CNRS, Paris) Lucien Scubla (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) Göran Sonesson (Lund, Semiotics) John Stewart (Université de Technologie de Compiègne) Frederik Stjernfelt (University of Copenhagen) Wolfgang Wildgen (University of Bremen) SUBMISSIONS Submissions are solicited either for oral presentations or for poster sessions. They will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee. Oral presentations should last 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion). All submissions should follow the abstract guidelines below. Submissions should be in English. Abstracts should not exceed 1200 words (about two A4 pages), single-spaced, font size 12 pt or larger, with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. Any diagrams and references must fit on this two page submission. Head material (at the top of the first page): - Title of the paper, - Author name(s), - Author affiliation(s) in brief (1 line), - Email address of principal author - Type of submission (oral presentation, poster) PLEASE don’t forget to specify. Abstracts should be emailed to submission at lcm2006.net as an ATTACHMENT (i.e. not included in the message) preferably as a MS Word document, but in PDF or postscript format if it is necessary to include a diagram or figure. Abstracts should be submitted by January 30, 2006. Notification of acceptance by March 30, 2006. All abstracts will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee.     *************************************************** Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Center for Languages and Literature Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html *************************************************** From S.S.Pourcel at sussex.ac.uk Thu Jan 19 12:01:20 2006 From: S.S.Pourcel at sussex.ac.uk (Stephanie Sandra Pourcel) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:01:20 +0000 Subject: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association Message-ID: ***Apologies for cross-postings*** SUBSCRIPTION INVITATION We are delighted to announce that the newly founded UK Cognitive Linguistics Association now offers an active listserv. Subscription to the listserv is FREE and open to all scholars and students, within and outside the UK. To subscribe and receive updates on Cognitive Linguistics news and events in the UK, please email Listserv at jiscmail.ac.uk and write 'subscribe uk-cla forename surname' in the body of the message. In due time, the Association will also offer formal membership. Further details will be posted soon. In the meantime, further information about the UK-CLA is also available at http://www.cogling.org.uk/home.htm. We look forward to receiving your listserv subscriptions! The UK-CLA Governing Board. From tanya at ruc.dk Thu Jan 19 13:12:47 2006 From: tanya at ruc.dk (Tanya Christensen) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:12:47 +0100 Subject: True meaning of morphosyntacitc categories Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, usually just a silent but interested reader in the linguistic debates of this forum, I now ask for your help. More specifically I would appreciate any references on investigations into the meaning/functional content of morphosyntactic categories, such as tense, case, number, gender, etc. I find plenty of material on syntactic categories and the like, but precious little on the ’real’ meaning of case and others. Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev contributed greatly to this field of study, but I would very much like to know if you are familiar with any other theories/investigations/approaches... The question within this line of thought, is whether the established terms for morphosyntactic categories are truly appropriate for the ’job’ they do: the most obvious question seems to be whether the different genera really have to do with different genders, biological or cultural, as the terms ’masculine’ and ’feminine’ would suggest; and if not, what _do_ they mean? But also the term ’plural’ in the category of number is misleading: are there really more than one item when we talk of _trousers_, _scissors_, _glasses_ ? And even more complex, I would say, what about mood and case? I will of course post a list of references to anyone interested. Eagerly awaiting your replies, Tanya Christensen, graduate student, Copenhagen, Denmark From hopper at cmu.edu Thu Jan 19 14:49:44 2006 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 09:49:44 -0500 Subject: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association In-Reply-To: <543606294.1137672080@apb20447.central.susx.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Stephanie, I'm getting contradictory messages as to whether I am or am not subscribed. I do want to be, but the subscribing process is so convoluted that there'll come a time when I'll just say chuck it. Too bad. Paul > ***Apologies for cross-postings*** > > > SUBSCRIPTION INVITATION > > We are delighted to announce that the newly founded UK Cognitive > Linguistics Association now offers an active listserv. > > Subscription to the listserv is FREE and open to all scholars and > students, within and outside the UK. To subscribe and receive updates on > Cognitive Linguistics news and events in the UK, please email > Listserv at jiscmail.ac.uk and write 'subscribe uk-cla forename surname' in > the body of the message. > > In due time, the Association will also offer formal membership. Further > details will be posted soon. > > In the meantime, further information about the UK-CLA is also available > at http://www.cogling.org.uk/home.htm. > > We look forward to receiving your listserv subscriptions! The UK-CLA > Governing Board. > > > > > From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Jan 19 15:33:41 2006 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 16:33:41 +0100 Subject: True meaning of morphosyntacitc categories In-Reply-To: <1137676367.43cf904f2d52c@webmail.ruc.dk> Message-ID: Dear Tanya, the question you raise is highly important (and likewise often neglected) in (General) Linguistics. The best 'field' to look at is Cognitive Linguistics, because you ask for the 'meaning' of *linguistic* categories, that is for their cognitive 'reality'. On the one hand, you should recall that 'linguistic' terms and the categories labeled by them have been set up during the curse of linguistic research since the times of Ancient Greek, Classical Arabic, and Sanskrit grammar traditions. Many of them have been handed down by generations of linguists and (before) philosophers of language) - hence it is not surprising that their 'semantic value' is everything but 'secure'. In general, it is highly problematic to derive the functional value of a morphosyntactic category from its traditional label. You will probably know - taken as an example - the history of the 'accusative', which has come about because of a false translation of the underlying Greek terms by Latin grammarians. The same holds for instance for the Latin term 'kasus' > 'Case'. On the other hand, we should be aware of the fact that linguistic labels have a basically heuristic value. Most of them have been set up to denote a class of common behavior, properties or the like, described from the perspective of a specific theoretical or practical point of view. Nevertheless, some of the categories formulated in this type of Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT, to take up a term by Bob Dixon) seem to include more than just an arbitrary name for a *linguistic* category. Here, both folk linguistics (and the schooling tradition) and serious analytic considerations have contributed to the assumption that even *linguistic* labels tend to mean something. In order to approach this layer, we should start from the hypothesis that cognitive categories (in terms of disjunctive, radial, or prototypical categories, family resemblance, output of metaphorization processes etc.) in fact *may* be mirrored in 'linguistic' categories. In other words: The meta-description (linguistic categories) is said to reflect (in parts) a cognitive reality. It is one the ambitious goals of cognitive linguistics to disclose this correlation. Still, one should be very cautious: Not all linguistic categories really have 'meaning' (in the sense of cognitive semantics), and others may have a meaning which, however, is *not* reflected by the term used to label the category. If you browse through the present-day literature on Cognitive Linguistics (especially in the field of Cognitive GrammarS (!)) you will find a plentitude of examples that discuss the 'semantic' layer of a given category. However, note that quite often linguistic labels have to be 'translated' into the meta-language(s) of Cognitive Linguistics before further studies become possible. For instance, it comes clear that from the point of view of Cognitive Linguistics, prepositions and case categories are subsumed under the label 'cognitively relational' (relating them to verbs), whereas postposition and verbal agreement are subsumed under the label 'cognitively referential' (relating them to nouns etc.). Plurals represent a derivational feature (reflecting the different types of referentiality) rather than an inflectional one, even if they fuse with (relational) Case. The best way to check whether a 'linguistic' term matches a cognitive reality (or: has a 'meaning') is to analyse the functional and semantic domains expressed ALL the members of the corresponding category and to see whether their prototypical, radial, or hyperonymic 'basis' is in accordance with the 'name' of the linguistic category. Recall that this procedure - that can be reinforced with the help of studies in the grammaticalization of those morphemes that are involved in the production of a category - firstly is language-dependent. Only VERY few linguistic categorial labels hold as universals, and if they do, their semantics is often strongly bleached or underdetermined. To sum up (and this is what I always tell my students): Take the names of linguistic categories just as what they are: Arbitrary (and traditional) names of common paradigmatic, structural, or constructral behavior (forming paradigms). They hardly ever tell us about the cognitive 'semantics' (or: functions) of the given paradigm etc., but they motivate researchers to look for just the semantics or functions from a cognitive point of view. It's always in cognition, where semantics takes place (be it lexical, grammatical, phonological, pragmatic or what so ever), but not in the act of naming linguistic paradigms from a mere descriptive (and traditional) perspective. Best wishes, Wolfgang tanya at ruc.dk schrieb: >Dear Funknetters, >usually just a silent but interested reader in the linguistic debates of this >forum, I now ask for your help. More specifically I would appreciate any >references on investigations into the meaning/functional content of >morphosyntactic categories, such as tense, case, number, gender, etc. I find >plenty of material on syntactic categories and the like, but precious little on >the 'real' meaning of case and others. Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev >contributed greatly to this field of study, but I would very much like to know >if you are familiar with any other theories/investigations/approaches... > >The question within this line of thought, is whether the established terms for >morphosyntactic categories are truly appropriate for the 'job' they do: the >most obvious question seems to be whether the different genera really have to >do with different genders, biological or cultural, as the terms 'masculine' and >'feminine' would suggest; and if not, what _do_ they mean? But also the term >'plural' in the category of number is misleading: are there really more than >one item when we talk of _trousers_, _scissors_, _glasses_ ? And even more >complex, I would say, what about mood and case? > >I will of course post a list of references to anyone interested. > >Eagerly awaiting your replies, > >Tanya Christensen, >graduate student, >Copenhagen, Denmark > > > > > > > -- ############################# Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft (IATS) [General Linguistics and Language Typology] Department für Kommunikation und Sprachen / F 13.14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180 2486 (secretary) ++49-(0)89-2180 5343 (office) Fax: ++49-(0)89-2180 5345 E-mail: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/index.php From iccg4komaba at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp Fri Jan 20 03:46:10 2006 From: iccg4komaba at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp (ICCG4 Office) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:46:10 +0900 Subject: Call for papers: ICCG4 Message-ID: Dear all, Below is second call for papers of the 4th International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG4). We very much look forward to your participation. Toshio Ohori ================================== Associate Professor Language & Information Sciences University of Tokyo 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku Tokyo 153-8902, Japan tohori at boz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp http://gamp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp ================================== SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The Fourth International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG4) September 1-3, 2006 University of Tokyo, Japan Website: http://gamp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~iccg2006/iccg2006.html E-mail (general inquiries): iccg4komaba at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp E-mail (abstracts and program): iccg4program at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp We are pleased to announce the call for papers for ICCG4, which marks the fourth occasion on which researchers engaged in Construction Grammar, and the study of grammatical constructions in general, gather together from around the world. ICCG4 also aims to deepen our understanding of Frame Semantics, which is a twin brother of Construction Grammar. In addition, a special feature of ICCG4 is that we hope to promote mutual exchange of ideas between practitioners of Construction Grammar and Japanese scholars from various backgrounds who share a construction-based approach to language. PLENARY SPEAKERS: Collin Baker (International Computer Science Institute) Charles J. Fillmore (ICSI & University of California at Berkeley) Adele Goldberg (Princeton University) Yukio Hirose (University of Tsukuba) Knud Lambrecht (University of Texas at Austin) Yo Matsumoto (Kobe University) Jan-Ola Ostman (University of Helsinki) Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice University & Kobe University) Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) Abstracts for regular conference papers (20 min. talk plus 10 min. discussion) are invited on any aspect of linguistic analysis that is concerned with grammatical constructions and/or semantic frames. All abstracts (which must be in English) must be submitted electronically, as attachment files in PDF format to the following address by February 1st, 2006 (late submission will be considered until February 20, 2006) : iccg4program at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp For more details, including formatting specifications, please refer to our webpage. Authors will be notified regarding acceptance by April 15, 2006. The guidelines for abstract submission, together with other relevant information, are given on the ICCG4 website. From Zygmunt.frajzyngier at Colorado.edu Fri Jan 20 04:00:41 2006 From: Zygmunt.frajzyngier at Colorado.edu (Zygmunt Frajzyngier) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 21:00:41 -0700 Subject: 2nd Call: Typology of Afroasiatic Languages Message-ID: 2nd call for papers: Typology of Afroasiatic Languages Date: 27-29 April 2006 Institution: University of Colorado at Boulder Location: Boulder, Colorado, USA Please share this announcement with your colleagues, especially those who do not have e-mail access. Conference description and call for papers The purpose of this conference is to stimulate and advance typological studies of Afroasiatic languages. The conference will advance our understanding of which typological features are associated with Afroasiatic as a whole and which are associated with individual branches of Afroasiatic. We invite typological papers concerning phonological, morphological, and syntactic issues within the whole Afroasiatic phylum or within one or more of its families. We also invite papers dealing with individual Afroasiatic languages from a typological perspective. Please send e-mail abstracts of one to two pages to Zygmunt Frajzyngier (Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at colorado.edu) or Erin Shay (Erin.Shay at colorado.edu) by 31 January 2006. We will also accept paper copies of abstracts, provided they arrive by 31 January. Send paper copies of abstracts to: Zygmunt Frajzyngier Dept. of Linguistics, Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA 80309 Other readers of abstracts: Gideon Goldenberg Maarten Kossmann Azeb Amha Maarten Mous Information about travel and logistics will be posted by the end of January on Zygmunt Frajzyngier’s website. For additional information, please contact Zygmunt Frajzyngier (Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at colorado.edu) or Erin Shay (erin.shay at colorado.edu). Notification of acceptance of papers will be issued no later than 28 February 2006. Apologies for multiple postings. Zygmunt Frajzyngier Professor Dept. of Linguistics, Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309 USA Phone: 303-492-6959 Fax: 303-492-4416 http://spot.colorado.edu/~frajzyng/ From kimjinok at yahoo.com Fri Jan 20 10:22:29 2006 From: kimjinok at yahoo.com (Jin-Ok KIM) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 02:22:29 -0800 Subject: Call for papers-Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching Message-ID: Dear all, Here by call for papers for an international conference : Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching, Paris, 6-8 September 2006 Please communicate this information to your colleagues who might be interested. **************** International Conference Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching Paris, 6-8 September 2006 Organized by Groupe "Langues en contacts et appropriations", DILTEC, Paris III Call for papers Research on second and foreign language acquisition has been conducted during the past thirty years from various theoretical perspectives, focussing on multiple factors, cognitive and social. Lately, several attempts have been made to describe developmental routes and stages in the L2 acquisition process. They mainly consist of lists of morphosyntactic means pertaining to the noun phrase, to the verb phrase, and to the clause, that are mustered by learners at given stages for a specific L1. SLA research has also been devoted to classroom discourse and teaching activities during the past years. Yet, the relevance of SLA research for second or foreign language teaching is regularly questioned. This conference aims at a dialogue between researchers in language acquisition and language pedagogy over grammar, the lexicon, pragmatics, and discourse. This conference invites SLA researchers and those involved in research on second language pedagogy to examine their findings in terms of its relevance for language teaching. Proposals that include specific interest for language teaching are expected. They will focus on the learning of L2 (or L3, L4 or Lx) grammar, lexicon, pragmatics, and discourse in classroom or guided settings. The mode of implication of teachers and learners during the SLA research process shall also be discussed from the angle of the impact of the research design on teaching activity and, conversely, from the angle of the intricate relation between teaching and researching. Proposals are expected to fit in one of the following sections : A. Discourse practices and grammatical marking: teaching and learning. In this section , shall be discussed the relations between grammatical markers, lexicon and the learners' discourse practices. The learnability of discourse, of macrosyntactic patterns and of the grammatical markers of the target language shall be examined as well as the order of acquisition of different L2 forms and of different functions for a given form. The teachability of macrosyntactic structures and of grammatical markers in their specific context shall also be discussed. B. L2 development, curriculum design, pedagogical grammars and testing Contributions which bear on the use of research findings in SLA to design teaching and testing materials will be selected for this section. The focus will be on the analysis of curriculum design and of teaching activities that are organized to enhance and facilitate the input-intake process. Theoretical constructs involved in course and class design shall be discussed. C. Research design and teaching tasks and activities in L2 learning The design of data collection for SLA research may foster or develop L2 classroom learning. This workshop is devoted to methodological and theoretical issues related to the organization of data gathering and other experimental tasks of SLA research in relation to learners and teachers, and teaching activities in institutional settings. Proposals based on empirical data analysis are most welcome. Contributors are asked to submit two copies of their proposal (about 300 words long) before the 15th of February 2006 (final deadline) - one the copies will have been anonymized - to colloque at groupelca.org Acceptance or refusal of the submitted proposal shall be notified on the 31 st of March 2005. Organizing committee : Catherine Carlo, Cyrille Granget, Dominique Klingler, Kim Jin-ok, Mireille Prodeau, Kamila Sefta, Georges Daniel Véronique *************** Colloque International Recherches en acquisition et en didactique des langues étrangères et secondes / Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching Paris, 6-8 Septembre 2006 www. groupelca.org organisé par le Groupe "Langues en contacts et appropriations " du DILTEC, Paris III Appel à communication Des recherches linguistiques d'orientations théoriques variées, sont conduites à propos du procès d'acquisition des langues étrangères (LE), de ses déterminations multiples, sociales et cognitives, depuis une trentaine d'années. Plus récemment, des propositions de stades d’acquisition en L2 / LE constitués d'inventaires de moyens grammaticaux relatifs au nom, au verbe et à la phrase, mobilisés à une phase déterminée et pour une langue source donnée, ont été formulées. Les recherches acquisitionnelles se sont intéressées de façon variée aux discours de la classe ainsi qu’à l'action pédagogique durant la dernière période. Or, on ne cesse de s’interroger sur la pertinence des recherches sur l'acquisition des LE pour l'action éducative et la didactique des langues étrangères. Ce colloque invite les chercheurs en acquisition et les didacticiens de langues à interroger leurs résultats en termes de pertinence pour l'enseignement. Les contributions retenues concerneront les axes suivants : A. Pratiques discursives et marquage grammatical dans l’ enseignement / apprentissage des LE/ L2 Cet axe interrogera les liens entre grammaires, répertoires lexicaux et discours d’apprenants. La question de l’apprenabilité (learnability) des schèmes discursifs et macrosyntaxiques est posée ainsi que celle de l’ordre d’acquisition des différentes formes et des différentes valeurs pour une même forme. On s’interrogera également sur l’enseignabilité (teachability) des schèmes marcrosyntaxiques et des règles grammaticales et de leur contexte d’emploi. B. Progressions d’apprentissage, progressions d'enseignement, grammaires pédagogiques et évaluation Cet axe réunira les contributions qui s'interrogent sur les modalités de passage de recherches acquisitionnelles aux activités d’enseignement et d'évaluation en didactique des langues étrangères. Y seront confrontés les travaux qui tentent de mieux comprendre la structuration des contenus linguistiques à enseigner par le concepteur de manuel, comme par l’enseignant, en vue d'une meilleure saisie / intériorisation de l’input par l’apprenant, et les théories qui alimentent ces démarches didactiques. C. Dispositifs de recherche et dispositifs d’enseignement Les recherches acquisitionnelles peuvent être conçues de telle sorte que leurs modes opératoires accompagnent des apprentissages linguistiques. Cet axe accueillera des contributions qui essaient de penser les rapports entre les activités de recherche et leurs protocoles expérimentaux (dispositifs d'enquête et d'observation), les apprenants et leurs enseignants ou formateurs en contexte institutionnel. Les communications fondées sur des études de corpus seront privilégiées. Les contributeurs sont priés de soumettre deux exemplaires, dont l'un aura été rendu anonyme, de leur proposition (300 mots environ) avant le 15 Février 2006 (date impérative) à : colloque at groupelca.org Le refus ou l'acceptation de leur communication leur sera notifié(e) au 31 mars 2006. Le comité d'organisation : Catherine Carlo, Cyrille Granget, Dominique Klingler, Kim Jin-Ok, Mireille Prodeau, Kamila Sefta, Georges Daniel Véronique From lstaum at stanford.edu Wed Jan 25 19:53:00 2006 From: lstaum at stanford.edu (Laura Staum) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 11:53:00 -0800 Subject: Call for Course Proposals Message-ID: Call for Course Proposals 2007 Summer Linguistic Institute Stanford University Stanford, CA, July 2-27, 2007 Overview The theme of the 2007 Linguistic Society of America summer institute, 'Empirical Foundations for Theories of Language', takes its inspiration from Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) 'Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change'. The institute will be organized around emerging directions of linguistic research, showcasing new methodologies which complement or enhance existing ones, with the goal of enhancing the grounding of linguistic theory in all parts of the field. The curricular content of the institute aims to inspire the broadening and clarification of the empirical basis of our field, leading directly to the refinement of existing theoretical models or the development of new ones. We are also interested in offering courses which cross the boundaries of traditional subfields of linguistics, many of which have been drawn because of historical accident or technological limitations. As research refocuses itself around new core areas, a redefinition of some of the main theoretical issues within the field is to be expected. For these reasons, we especially seek courses aimed at opening up new lines of inquiry, rather than surveying the generally-accepted state of the art in the field. In addition to courses taught by faculty invited by the institute's organizing committee, we will also include courses obtained by the proposal solicitation process described below. The proposal evaluation committee (see below) includes scholars from diverse academic institutions. The institute will take place from July 2nd to July 27th, 2007 at Stanford University; there will be 4 teaching weeks, and most classes will consist of 8 105-minute meetings. Faculty who teach at the 2007 institute will each receive a living stipend, and reasonable travel costs. To supplement these, we are seeking additional funds to provide a modest honorarium, per course. We therefore solicit proposals for courses, in any area of the field, conforming to these guidelines: Course Descriptions Please provide the following information. Each submission should be a single pdf file. (1) Title of course. (2) Instructor(s): name, current affiliation, current title, year and institution of Ph.D. (3) Brief CV(s), including description of teaching experience (noting, where relevant, connection to the proposed course). An explicit rationale should be provided if more than 2 instructors are proposed. (4) Description of course content (1-2 pages), including a statement of the course's relevance to the theme of the institute. An additional 1-page reading list is desirable. (5) Tentative outline of course schedule (8 x 105-minute sessions). (6) Prerequisites for students in the course (these must be explicitly given in every course proposal). (7) Maximum enrollment (if relevant). (see below) (8) Ideal companion courses or synergistic activities. (see below) Final deadline for receipt of proposals: March 15, 2006. We anticipate notification in early summer 2006. Additional Information Some courses may be limited in size due to technical needs (e.g., available lab space) or inherent content (e.g., being labor-intensive for the instructor). The last category above, 'ideal companion courses or synergistic activities' is for planning purposes - certain courses would naturally complement other ones, for example, or certain courses may naturally lead to a workshop, or one-day presentation session, which would enhance the intellectual activity of the institute. Please send enquiries and proposals to: linginst07prop at stanford.edu. Institute website: http://linginst07.stanford.edu Institute Director: Peter Sells The committee to evaluate proposals has the following members: (AD = Institute Associate Director.) Mary Beckman (The Ohio State University) Juliette Blevins (AD; University of Leipzig) Kay Bock (University of Illinois) Lyle Campbell (University of Utah) Eve V. Clark (AD; Stanford University) Kai von Fintel (MIT) Jeanette Gundel (University of Minnesota) Larry Horn (Yale University) Dan Jurafsky (AD; Stanford University) Beth Levin (AD; Stanford University) Norma Mendoza-Denton (University of Arizona) Ivan A. Sag (AD; Stanford University) Paul Smolensky (Johns Hopkins University) Donca Steriade (MIT) Raffaella Zanuttini (Georgetown University) From hopper at cmu.edu Wed Jan 25 21:45:02 2006 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:45:02 -0500 Subject: Grammar Surprise in the Jungle Message-ID: The December 10, 2005, issue of Science News () features an article "Wild Talk: Grammar Surprise in the Jungle" (no kidding!) about Dan Everett and the stir created by his recently published paper on Piraha~ in Current Anthropology (CA Aug-Oct 2005 vol. 46,4). The CA article, the text of which can be downloaded via ProQuest, is followed by comments from a number of well-known anthropologists and linguists. - Paul Hopper From comrie at eva.mpg.de Sun Jan 29 23:45:01 2006 From: comrie at eva.mpg.de (Bernard Comrie) Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:45:01 -0800 Subject: Conference "Languages and Genes" Message-ID: Conference "Languages and Genes", University of California Santa Barbara, 2006 September 08-10 Call for abstracts for Poster Session The University of California Santa Barbara will host an interdisciplinary conference "Languages and Genes" on 2006 September 8-10, which will bring together leading international specialists in the areas of linguistics, genetics, anthropology, and archeology. The aim is to ascertain the state of the art with regard to cooperative research among these disciplines relating to human prehistory, in particular the major population movements that led to the demographic distribution of population groups, and especially to identify the most promising developments for future research on this problem from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The conference will incorporate a poster session and we invite abstracts for consideration in this session. Abstracts should be a maximum of one page and should be sent no later than 2006 March 10 to Bernard Comrie at the e-mail address . Those submitting abstracts will be informed of the status of their abstract by the end of April. The conference web site is currently under construction; further information will be posted when it is ready. -- [I am based in Santa Barbara through 2006 mid-March. From 2006 late March I will be based in Leipzig] Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie Director, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara E-mail: comrie at eva.mpg.de Home page: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~comrie/ Mobile phone: +49 160 9634 2888 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Germany tel. +49 341 35 50 301 tel. secretary +49 341 35 50 315 fax +49 341 35 50 333 Department of Linguistics University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100 USA tel. +1 805 893 4025 fax +1 805 893 7769 A copy of all incoming e-mail is forwarded to my secretary. If you do not wish your message to be read other than by me, please put "private" in the subject box. From sepkit at utu.fi Mon Jan 30 11:03:38 2006 From: sepkit at utu.fi (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Seppo_Kittil=E4?=) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:03:38 +0200 Subject: Cfp: Workshop on diachronic valency Message-ID: (Apologies for multiple postings) Workshop Diachronic typology of voice and valency-changing categories Call for papers The last decades of the 20th century are marked with the rapid development of the typological study of voice and other valency-changing categories, such as passive, causative, reflexive, antipassive and anticausative (decausative). We now dispose of rich catalogues of possible systems of valency-changing derivations attested in the languages of the world. More specifically, we know a lot about the morphological, syntactic and semantic synchronic properties of these categories. On the other hand, a systematic treatment of these categories in a diachronic perspective is lacking. The rise, development and decline of these categories mostly remain on the periphery of the typological interests. Such an imbalance of the synchronic and diachronic typology (which is not limited to the valency-changing categories) has a number of reasons. One of the main reasons for this imbalance can be found in the fact that synchronic linguistics have at its disposal the material of hundreds of languages of various genetic affiliation and different structural types, whereas the material for diachronic typological generalizations is much more limited. There are relatively few languages for which we dispose of textual evidence for the period sufficient to observe essential changes in the morphological system and syntactic types (say, 1000 years or more). A good many of these languages belong to two major families, Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic. This unavoidably limits the typological diversity of the data. This being the state of affairs, it is advisable to start a diachronic typological research with collecting evidence from languages (language groups) with a history well-documented in texts for a sufficiently long time span (no less than 1000 years). On the other hand, in the case of languages with lesser documente d history, important generalizations can be obtained on the basis of comparison of genetically related languages, which can serve as a basis for reconstruction of possible scenarios of changes within the system of valency-changing categories. Approaching the history of a particular valency-changing category, such as passive or causative, it might be useful to trace the relevant category C (passive, causative etc.) from the earliest attested texts in an ancient language (L0) onwards up to its reflexes in the daughter languages (L1, L2 etc.). Of particular interest would also be – if available – evidence from the sister languages of L0 (L´, L´´ etc.), which can serve as a basis for a tentative reconstruction of the hypothetical history and possible sources of C in proto-language *L. These and related issues will be in the spotlight of the workshop “Diachronic typology of voice and valency-changing categories”. The idea of our workshop is to bring together scholars working on valency phenomena in both (1) languages (language families) with well-documented history (such as Indo-European or Semitic) and (2) languages which furnish less historical evidence but, nevertheless, can provide us with some valuable data on the basis of comparison of daughter languages and linguistic reconstruction (as is the case with Uralic). Ideally, a typologically-oriented study of a valency-changing category in a diachronic perspective should be organized in accordance with a questionnaire, such as those widely used in synchronic typology, for instance, in the framework of the Leningrad / St. Petersburg Typological School (cf. the questionnaire for a study of resultatives outlined in Typology of resultative constructions, ed. by Vladimir Nedjalkov, Amsterdam, 1988, p. 5 7ff.). We believe that using a questionnaire will render our workshop more effective and, eventually, make the collection of papers more publishable. Accordingly, the selection of papers will slightly differ from the usual procedure. If you are interested in the general topic of the workshop, please take a look at our “Preliminary questionnaire for a diachronic typological study of valency-changing categories” (available at http://www.hum.utu.fi/ylkielitiede/questionnaire.pdf). We strongly encourage you to submit a paper along the guidelines outlined in this questionnaire – which, as we hope, will contribute to the maximal mutual intelligibility between the participants and to the efficiency of the workshop. Papers providing explicit answers to at least some questions of this questionnaire in an individual language or group of languages and discussing various aspects of the diachronic typology of valency-changing categories will be particularly welcome. Please send us a detai led abstract (up to 2 pages) of your paper no later than March 20th. We will give priority to papers that follow the guidelines suggested in the questionnaire, but other papers may also be considered, as long as they deal with the development of valency categories in and/or across languages. The organizers reserve, if necessary, the right to approach the author(s) of proposed papers, in order to encourage him/her/them to modify the topic of the paper, focusing on some particular aspects of the problem in question. We hope that this will help to organize our workshop, making it more homogenous and, eventually, more efficient. The workshop will be arranged as a part of the symposium ‘Structure and Context’ organized by The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) to be held August 21-22, 2006 in Turku (Åbo Akademi University), Finland. Please visit http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/context/context.shtml for the SKY Symposium (these pages will include practical information: how to get to Turku, the venue of the symposium, accommodation, etc.). Please do not hesitate to approach us in the case you have any questions about the workshop, in particular, the range of topics you would like to deal with. Leonid Kulikov Leiden University / Universität Göttingen L.Kulikov at let.LeidenUniv.nl Seppo Kittilä University of Turku / University of Oulu sepkit at utu.fi From lctg at let.rug.nl Mon Jan 9 11:15:15 2006 From: lctg at let.rug.nl (LCTG) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:15:15 +0100 Subject: Second Call for papers: language contact in times of globalization Message-ID: *** APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS *** First International Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization University of Groningen, September 28-30, 2006 SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The past decade has witnessed a growing interest in the study of linguistic effects of language contact. Due to rapid globalization and increased migration, people are ever more exposed to other languages, both related and unrelated. The aim of the Groningen conference is to explore the linguistic effects of globalization and migration in societies all over the world. We particularly invite papers adressing the conference theme, but in order to put these issues in a broader historical and theoretical perspective, we also welcome papers on other current issues in the study of language contact and language change. Plenary speakers will be Prof.dr. Pieter Muysken (Radboud University Nijmegen), Dr. Ricardo Otheguy (City University of New York) and Prof.dr. Kurt Braunm?ller, (Universit?t Hamburg). Registration For preliminary registration, send an e-mail message to lctg at let.rug.nl. If you wish to present a paper, please provide us with a provisional title. Once you have registered, you will receive the first circular containing information on conference themes, plenary speakers, submission of abstracts, travel to Groningen and accommodation. For more information you may also visit our website: http://odur.let.rug.nl/~dejonge/invest/lctg/ Conference registration is 100 Euro until May 1, 2006. Late or on-site registration will be 120 Euro. Early registration for students is 50 euro, late registration 60 euro. Please bring some kind of identification to prove that you are a student. Abstracts Scholars are invited to submit abstracts for 40-minute papers (including 10 minute discussion time). Deadline for abstracts is February 1, 2006. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by March 1. If you require earlier notification, let us know, and we will send you our reply at an earlier date (though not before January 1, 2006). Organizing committee Cornelius Hasselblatt, Bob de Jonge & Muriel Norde, University of Groningen Conference address Organizers of Language contact in times of globalization Scandinavian Languages and Cultures University of Groningen P.O. Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands e-mail: lctg at let.rug.nl web: http://odur.let.rug.nl/~dejonge/invest/lctg/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Organizers of LCTG Scandinavian Languages and Cultures University of Groningen P.O. Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands http://odur.let.rug.nl/~dejonge/invest/lctg/ From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Tue Jan 10 14:33:30 2006 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:33:30 +0100 Subject: postdoc in syntactic typology (MPI-EVA Leipzig) Message-ID: The Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology invites applications for the position of a post-doctoral researcher in syntactic typology starting as soon as possible (subject to final approval of funding). The salary will be according to the German BAT-O IIa (or equivalent TV?D) scale. This is a non-permanent position terminating after three years. The successful applicant will work with Bernard Comrie and Martin Haspelmath on a cross-linguistic project on ditransitive constructions, within the framework of a Forschergruppe on the grammar of verb arguments funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The project includes the setting up of a typological database on ditransitive constructions in a sample of 200 languages. The complete project description is available (only in German) under http://www.eva.mpg.de/%7Ehaspelmt/DitrProjekt.pdf. The working language of the project is English, but at least a passive knowledge of German would be an asset (given that meetings of the whole Forschergruppe will sometimes be held in German). Applicants should send a full CV and a one-page cover letter (explaining why they would be qualified and interested in collaborating with us on this project) to: Martin Haspelmath Abteilung f?r Linguistik Max-Planck-Institut f?r evolution?re Anthropologie Deutscher Platz 6 04103 Leipzig haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Applications by e-mail are preferred, ideally in a single PDF or text document.) We will start reviewing applications on 25 January 2006, but applications will be considered until the available position is filled. -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 From katten at rice.edu Sun Jan 15 04:45:33 2006 From: katten at rice.edu (David Katten) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 22:45:33 -0600 Subject: FCP & Deadline Extension: Complex Predicates and Similar Constructions Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - DEADLINE EXTENSION The Rice Linguistics Society will host a poster session to accompany the 11th Biennial Rice Symposium on Linguistics, to be held March 16-18th in Houston, Texas. -Topic The theme for the poster session is ''Complex Predicates and Similar Constructions''. We invite papers from all areas and orientations of linguistics that touch upon the structure, meaning, usage, or development of complex constructions. These posters should complement the symposium topic of ''Intertheoretical approaches to complex verb constructions''. For more information, consult www.rice.edu/lingsymp -Submission Guidelines The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2006, 5 p.m. central time zone. (note new date) Please submit a 300 word abstract in PDF format to rls at rice.edu. The filename should be AUTHORSNAME.pdf. Please include ''poster session'' in the subject. The email body should include: Name of author(s) Paper title Institution(s) of author(s) Email address(es) of author(s) Postal address(es) of author(s) Phone number for primary author Postal submissions will not be accepted. - Poster Presentation Participants will be given a space approximately 6' by 4' to display their work. - Registration Registration will be handled through the symposium. Poster presenters are invited to attend all symposium events. For more information, contact rls at rice.edu or visit the symposium website at www.rice.edu/ lingsymp. From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Sun Jan 15 06:02:39 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 01:02:39 -0500 Subject: social benefactive/antisocial malefactive case? Message-ID: Hi folks. I have questions about case. Working with data from Yahgan (isolate, Tierra del Fuego) I'm finding that various case markings have rather specific uses in certain circumstances. I'm not used to case-marked languages, as almost all the languages I have experience with are either unmarked or primarily head-marking. In Yahgan there is an accusative form -ima which has a very antisocial, malefactive usage when the noun phrase is singular and human. Plurals with this mark don't have to be human, nor is the sense necessarily malefactive. Yet there is another form -nchi- used only when there is a generally positive socially defined and specifiable human relationship (unequal, such as between master/servant, king/subject, teacher/student, etc.) and no party is completely free to do as he/she wishes except within the normal bounds of the social "contract" implied by the noun dyad. Obviously this is all tied up with definiteness, person, number, animacy/control in general. So, is this NORMAL? Or is this rather unusual in case systems? One sees such a malefactive/benefactive split in the voice system of Salishan languages (as suffixes on the verbal head), and I claim that Yahgan and Salishan are in fact more closely related than languages in between (is that a wink from Sapir??). Is this normal for head-marking languages as well? Thanks for any tips, Jess Tauber From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Mon Jan 16 15:43:53 2006 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:43:53 +0100 Subject: Third CFP and extended deadline: LCM2006 Paris Message-ID: THIRD CALL / EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR LANGUAGE CULTURE AND MIND CONFERENCE (LCM 2) INTEGRATING PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGIES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE PARIS 17-20 JULY 2006 The second ?Language Culture and Mind? Conference (LCM 2) will be held in Paris in July 2006, following the successful first LCM conference in Portsmouth in 2004. The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue, and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language. The second edition will be held at the ?cole Nationale Sup?rieure des T?l?communications (ENST), 46 rue Barrault, 75013 Paris France. Further information concerning the organization, fees and accommodation (including affordable rooms at the Cit? Universitaire Internationale de Paris, at walking distance from the Conference site) will be provided as soon as available at the site of the conference: http://www.lcm2006.net IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submissions:? January 30 (for further detail see underneath) Notification to authors by March 30, 2006 Early registration by April 15, 2006 PRESENTATION Human natural languages are biologically based, cognitively motivated, affectively rich, socially shared, grammatically organized symbolic systems. They provide the principal semiotic means for the complexity and diversity of human cultural life. As has long been recognized, no single discipline or methodology is sufficient to capture all the dimensions of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which lies at the heart of what it is to be human. In the recent past, perception and cognition have been the basis of general unifying models of language and language activity. However, a genuine integrative perspective should also involve such essential modalities of human action as: empathy, mimesis, intersubjectivity, normativity, agentivity and narrativity. Significant theoretical, methodological and empirical advancements in the relevant disciplines now provide a realistic basis for such a broadened perspective. ? This conference will articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive and bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to impart their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language sciences. ? Topics include but are not limited to the relation between language and: - biological and cultural co-evolution? - comparative study of communication systems, whether animal or artificial - cognitive and cultural schematization? - emergence in ontogeny and phylogeny? - multi-modal communication - normativity? - thought, emotion and consciousness - perception and categorization - empathy and intersubjectivity - imitation and mimesis - symbolic activity - discourse genres in language evolution and ontogeny - sign, text and literacy Plenary speakers Pierre Cadiot (Linguistics, University of Orl?ans, France) Merlin Donald (Cognitive Science Department, Case Western Reserve University, USA) Shaun Gallagher (Department of Philosophy & Cognitive Science Program, University of Central Florida, USA) Webb Keane (Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, USA) Sandra Laugier (Philosophy, University of Amiens, France) John A. Lucy (Department of Comparative Human Development & Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA) Further information about LCM 2 will be presented at http://www.lcm2006.net. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Caroline David (Universit? de Montpellier) Jean-Louis Dessalles (?cole Nationale Sup?rieure des T?l?communications, Paris) Jean Lass?gue (CNRS, Paris) Victor Rosenthal (Inserm-EHESS, Paris) Chris Sinha (University of Portsmouth) Yves-Marie Visetti (CNRS, Paris) Joerg Zinken (University of Portsmouth) Jordan Zlatev (Lund University) SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Iraide Ibarretxe Antunano (University of Zaragoza) Jocelyn Benoist (Universit? de Paris 1) Enrique Bern?rdez, (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) Raphael Berthele (Universit? de Fribourg, Switzerland) Per Aage Brandt, (Case Western Reserve University) Peer F. Bundg?rd (Aarhus?Universitet) Seana Coulson, (Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD) Jules Davidoff (Goldsmith?s, University of London) Jean-Pierre Durafour (University of Tubingen) Michel de Fornel (EHESS, Paris) Vyvyan Evans, (University of Sussex, Grande-Bretagne) Dirk Geeraerts, (Department of Linguistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgique) Clarisse Herrenschmidt (CNRS-Laboratoire Anthropologie Sociale, Paris) Chris Knight (University of East London) Bernard Laks (Universit? de Paris 10-Nanterre) Maarten Lemmens, (Universit? Lille III) Lorenza Mondada (Universit? Lyon II) Fran?ois Nemo (Universit? Orl?ans) Domenico Parisi (CNR, Roma) David Piotrowski (CREA, Paris) St?phane Robert (CNRS, Paris) Fran?ois Rastier (CNRS, Paris) Lucien Scubla (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) G?ran Sonesson (Lund, Semiotics) John Stewart (Universit? de Technologie de Compi?gne) Frederik Stjernfelt (University of Copenhagen) Wolfgang Wildgen (University of Bremen) SUBMISSIONS Submissions are solicited either for oral presentations or for poster sessions. They will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee. Oral presentations should last 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion). All submissions should follow the abstract guidelines below. Submissions should be in English. Abstracts should not exceed 1200 words (about two A4 pages), single-spaced, font size 12 pt or larger, with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. Any diagrams and references must fit on this two page submission. Head material (at the top of the first page): - Title of the paper, - Author name(s), - Author affiliation(s) in brief (1 line), - Email address of principal author - Type of submission (oral presentation, poster) PLEASE don?t forget to specify. Abstracts should be emailed to submission at lcm2006.net as an ATTACHMENT (i.e. not included in the message) preferably as a MS Word document, but in PDF or postscript format if it is necessary to include a diagram or figure. Abstracts should be submitted by January 30, 2006. Notification of acceptance by March 30, 2006. All abstracts will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee. ? ? *************************************************** Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Center for Languages and Literature Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html *************************************************** From S.S.Pourcel at sussex.ac.uk Thu Jan 19 12:01:20 2006 From: S.S.Pourcel at sussex.ac.uk (Stephanie Sandra Pourcel) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:01:20 +0000 Subject: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association Message-ID: ***Apologies for cross-postings*** SUBSCRIPTION INVITATION We are delighted to announce that the newly founded UK Cognitive Linguistics Association now offers an active listserv. Subscription to the listserv is FREE and open to all scholars and students, within and outside the UK. To subscribe and receive updates on Cognitive Linguistics news and events in the UK, please email Listserv at jiscmail.ac.uk and write 'subscribe uk-cla forename surname' in the body of the message. In due time, the Association will also offer formal membership. Further details will be posted soon. In the meantime, further information about the UK-CLA is also available at http://www.cogling.org.uk/home.htm. We look forward to receiving your listserv subscriptions! The UK-CLA Governing Board. From tanya at ruc.dk Thu Jan 19 13:12:47 2006 From: tanya at ruc.dk (Tanya Christensen) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:12:47 +0100 Subject: True meaning of morphosyntacitc categories Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, usually just a silent but interested reader in the linguistic debates of this forum, I now ask for your help. More specifically I would appreciate any references on investigations into the meaning/functional content of morphosyntactic categories, such as tense, case, number, gender, etc. I find plenty of material on syntactic categories and the like, but precious little on the ?real? meaning of case and others. Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev contributed greatly to this field of study, but I would very much like to know if you are familiar with any other theories/investigations/approaches... The question within this line of thought, is whether the established terms for morphosyntactic categories are truly appropriate for the ?job? they do: the most obvious question seems to be whether the different genera really have to do with different genders, biological or cultural, as the terms ?masculine? and ?feminine? would suggest; and if not, what _do_ they mean? But also the term ?plural? in the category of number is misleading: are there really more than one item when we talk of _trousers_, _scissors_, _glasses_ ? And even more complex, I would say, what about mood and case? I will of course post a list of references to anyone interested. Eagerly awaiting your replies, Tanya Christensen, graduate student, Copenhagen, Denmark From hopper at cmu.edu Thu Jan 19 14:49:44 2006 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 09:49:44 -0500 Subject: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association In-Reply-To: <543606294.1137672080@apb20447.central.susx.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Stephanie, I'm getting contradictory messages as to whether I am or am not subscribed. I do want to be, but the subscribing process is so convoluted that there'll come a time when I'll just say chuck it. Too bad. Paul > ***Apologies for cross-postings*** > > > SUBSCRIPTION INVITATION > > We are delighted to announce that the newly founded UK Cognitive > Linguistics Association now offers an active listserv. > > Subscription to the listserv is FREE and open to all scholars and > students, within and outside the UK. To subscribe and receive updates on > Cognitive Linguistics news and events in the UK, please email > Listserv at jiscmail.ac.uk and write 'subscribe uk-cla forename surname' in > the body of the message. > > In due time, the Association will also offer formal membership. Further > details will be posted soon. > > In the meantime, further information about the UK-CLA is also available > at http://www.cogling.org.uk/home.htm. > > We look forward to receiving your listserv subscriptions! The UK-CLA > Governing Board. > > > > > From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Jan 19 15:33:41 2006 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 16:33:41 +0100 Subject: True meaning of morphosyntacitc categories In-Reply-To: <1137676367.43cf904f2d52c@webmail.ruc.dk> Message-ID: Dear Tanya, the question you raise is highly important (and likewise often neglected) in (General) Linguistics. The best 'field' to look at is Cognitive Linguistics, because you ask for the 'meaning' of *linguistic* categories, that is for their cognitive 'reality'. On the one hand, you should recall that 'linguistic' terms and the categories labeled by them have been set up during the curse of linguistic research since the times of Ancient Greek, Classical Arabic, and Sanskrit grammar traditions. Many of them have been handed down by generations of linguists and (before) philosophers of language) - hence it is not surprising that their 'semantic value' is everything but 'secure'. In general, it is highly problematic to derive the functional value of a morphosyntactic category from its traditional label. You will probably know - taken as an example - the history of the 'accusative', which has come about because of a false translation of the underlying Greek terms by Latin grammarians. The same holds for instance for the Latin term 'kasus' > 'Case'. On the other hand, we should be aware of the fact that linguistic labels have a basically heuristic value. Most of them have been set up to denote a class of common behavior, properties or the like, described from the perspective of a specific theoretical or practical point of view. Nevertheless, some of the categories formulated in this type of Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT, to take up a term by Bob Dixon) seem to include more than just an arbitrary name for a *linguistic* category. Here, both folk linguistics (and the schooling tradition) and serious analytic considerations have contributed to the assumption that even *linguistic* labels tend to mean something. In order to approach this layer, we should start from the hypothesis that cognitive categories (in terms of disjunctive, radial, or prototypical categories, family resemblance, output of metaphorization processes etc.) in fact *may* be mirrored in 'linguistic' categories. In other words: The meta-description (linguistic categories) is said to reflect (in parts) a cognitive reality. It is one the ambitious goals of cognitive linguistics to disclose this correlation. Still, one should be very cautious: Not all linguistic categories really have 'meaning' (in the sense of cognitive semantics), and others may have a meaning which, however, is *not* reflected by the term used to label the category. If you browse through the present-day literature on Cognitive Linguistics (especially in the field of Cognitive GrammarS (!)) you will find a plentitude of examples that discuss the 'semantic' layer of a given category. However, note that quite often linguistic labels have to be 'translated' into the meta-language(s) of Cognitive Linguistics before further studies become possible. For instance, it comes clear that from the point of view of Cognitive Linguistics, prepositions and case categories are subsumed under the label 'cognitively relational' (relating them to verbs), whereas postposition and verbal agreement are subsumed under the label 'cognitively referential' (relating them to nouns etc.). Plurals represent a derivational feature (reflecting the different types of referentiality) rather than an inflectional one, even if they fuse with (relational) Case. The best way to check whether a 'linguistic' term matches a cognitive reality (or: has a 'meaning') is to analyse the functional and semantic domains expressed ALL the members of the corresponding category and to see whether their prototypical, radial, or hyperonymic 'basis' is in accordance with the 'name' of the linguistic category. Recall that this procedure - that can be reinforced with the help of studies in the grammaticalization of those morphemes that are involved in the production of a category - firstly is language-dependent. Only VERY few linguistic categorial labels hold as universals, and if they do, their semantics is often strongly bleached or underdetermined. To sum up (and this is what I always tell my students): Take the names of linguistic categories just as what they are: Arbitrary (and traditional) names of common paradigmatic, structural, or constructral behavior (forming paradigms). They hardly ever tell us about the cognitive 'semantics' (or: functions) of the given paradigm etc., but they motivate researchers to look for just the semantics or functions from a cognitive point of view. It's always in cognition, where semantics takes place (be it lexical, grammatical, phonological, pragmatic or what so ever), but not in the act of naming linguistic paradigms from a mere descriptive (and traditional) perspective. Best wishes, Wolfgang tanya at ruc.dk schrieb: >Dear Funknetters, >usually just a silent but interested reader in the linguistic debates of this >forum, I now ask for your help. More specifically I would appreciate any >references on investigations into the meaning/functional content of >morphosyntactic categories, such as tense, case, number, gender, etc. I find >plenty of material on syntactic categories and the like, but precious little on >the 'real' meaning of case and others. Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev >contributed greatly to this field of study, but I would very much like to know >if you are familiar with any other theories/investigations/approaches... > >The question within this line of thought, is whether the established terms for >morphosyntactic categories are truly appropriate for the 'job' they do: the >most obvious question seems to be whether the different genera really have to >do with different genders, biological or cultural, as the terms 'masculine' and >'feminine' would suggest; and if not, what _do_ they mean? But also the term >'plural' in the category of number is misleading: are there really more than >one item when we talk of _trousers_, _scissors_, _glasses_ ? And even more >complex, I would say, what about mood and case? > >I will of course post a list of references to anyone interested. > >Eagerly awaiting your replies, > >Tanya Christensen, >graduate student, >Copenhagen, Denmark > > > > > > > -- ############################# Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut f?r Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft (IATS) [General Linguistics and Language Typology] Department f?r Kommunikation und Sprachen / F 13.14 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180 2486 (secretary) ++49-(0)89-2180 5343 (office) Fax: ++49-(0)89-2180 5345 E-mail: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Web: http://www.ats.lmu.de/index.php From iccg4komaba at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp Fri Jan 20 03:46:10 2006 From: iccg4komaba at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp (ICCG4 Office) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:46:10 +0900 Subject: Call for papers: ICCG4 Message-ID: Dear all, Below is second call for papers of the 4th International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG4). We very much look forward to your participation. Toshio Ohori ================================== Associate Professor Language & Information Sciences University of Tokyo 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku Tokyo 153-8902, Japan tohori at boz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp http://gamp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp ================================== SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The Fourth International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG4) September 1-3, 2006 University of Tokyo, Japan Website: http://gamp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~iccg2006/iccg2006.html E-mail (general inquiries): iccg4komaba at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp E-mail (abstracts and program): iccg4program at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp We are pleased to announce the call for papers for ICCG4, which marks the fourth occasion on which researchers engaged in Construction Grammar, and the study of grammatical constructions in general, gather together from around the world. ICCG4 also aims to deepen our understanding of Frame Semantics, which is a twin brother of Construction Grammar. In addition, a special feature of ICCG4 is that we hope to promote mutual exchange of ideas between practitioners of Construction Grammar and Japanese scholars from various backgrounds who share a construction-based approach to language. PLENARY SPEAKERS: Collin Baker (International Computer Science Institute) Charles J. Fillmore (ICSI & University of California at Berkeley) Adele Goldberg (Princeton University) Yukio Hirose (University of Tsukuba) Knud Lambrecht (University of Texas at Austin) Yo Matsumoto (Kobe University) Jan-Ola Ostman (University of Helsinki) Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice University & Kobe University) Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) Abstracts for regular conference papers (20 min. talk plus 10 min. discussion) are invited on any aspect of linguistic analysis that is concerned with grammatical constructions and/or semantic frames. All abstracts (which must be in English) must be submitted electronically, as attachment files in PDF format to the following address by February 1st, 2006 (late submission will be considered until February 20, 2006) : iccg4program at ecs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp For more details, including formatting specifications, please refer to our webpage. Authors will be notified regarding acceptance by April 15, 2006. The guidelines for abstract submission, together with other relevant information, are given on the ICCG4 website. From Zygmunt.frajzyngier at Colorado.edu Fri Jan 20 04:00:41 2006 From: Zygmunt.frajzyngier at Colorado.edu (Zygmunt Frajzyngier) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 21:00:41 -0700 Subject: 2nd Call: Typology of Afroasiatic Languages Message-ID: 2nd call for papers: Typology of Afroasiatic Languages Date: 27-29 April 2006 Institution: University of Colorado at Boulder Location: Boulder, Colorado, USA Please share this announcement with your colleagues, especially those who do not have e-mail access. Conference description and call for papers The purpose of this conference is to stimulate and advance typological studies of Afroasiatic languages. The conference will advance our understanding of which typological features are associated with Afroasiatic as a whole and which are associated with individual branches of Afroasiatic. We invite typological papers concerning phonological, morphological, and syntactic issues within the whole Afroasiatic phylum or within one or more of its families. We also invite papers dealing with individual Afroasiatic languages from a typological perspective. Please send e-mail abstracts of one to two pages to Zygmunt Frajzyngier (Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at colorado.edu) or Erin Shay (Erin.Shay at colorado.edu) by 31 January 2006. We will also accept paper copies of abstracts, provided they arrive by 31 January. Send paper copies of abstracts to: Zygmunt Frajzyngier Dept. of Linguistics, Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA 80309 Other readers of abstracts: Gideon Goldenberg Maarten Kossmann Azeb Amha Maarten Mous Information about travel and logistics will be posted by the end of January on Zygmunt Frajzyngier?s website. For additional information, please contact Zygmunt Frajzyngier (Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at colorado.edu) or Erin Shay (erin.shay at colorado.edu). Notification of acceptance of papers will be issued no later than 28 February 2006. Apologies for multiple postings. Zygmunt Frajzyngier Professor Dept. of Linguistics, Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309 USA Phone: 303-492-6959 Fax: 303-492-4416 http://spot.colorado.edu/~frajzyng/ From kimjinok at yahoo.com Fri Jan 20 10:22:29 2006 From: kimjinok at yahoo.com (Jin-Ok KIM) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 02:22:29 -0800 Subject: Call for papers-Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching Message-ID: Dear all, Here by call for papers for an international conference : Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching, Paris, 6-8 September 2006 Please communicate this information to your colleagues who might be interested. **************** International Conference Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching Paris, 6-8 September 2006 Organized by Groupe "Langues en contacts et appropriations", DILTEC, Paris III Call for papers Research on second and foreign language acquisition has been conducted during the past thirty years from various theoretical perspectives, focussing on multiple factors, cognitive and social. Lately, several attempts have been made to describe developmental routes and stages in the L2 acquisition process. They mainly consist of lists of morphosyntactic means pertaining to the noun phrase, to the verb phrase, and to the clause, that are mustered by learners at given stages for a specific L1. SLA research has also been devoted to classroom discourse and teaching activities during the past years. Yet, the relevance of SLA research for second or foreign language teaching is regularly questioned. This conference aims at a dialogue between researchers in language acquisition and language pedagogy over grammar, the lexicon, pragmatics, and discourse. This conference invites SLA researchers and those involved in research on second language pedagogy to examine their findings in terms of its relevance for language teaching. Proposals that include specific interest for language teaching are expected. They will focus on the learning of L2 (or L3, L4 or Lx) grammar, lexicon, pragmatics, and discourse in classroom or guided settings. The mode of implication of teachers and learners during the SLA research process shall also be discussed from the angle of the impact of the research design on teaching activity and, conversely, from the angle of the intricate relation between teaching and researching. Proposals are expected to fit in one of the following sections : A. Discourse practices and grammatical marking: teaching and learning. In this section , shall be discussed the relations between grammatical markers, lexicon and the learners' discourse practices. The learnability of discourse, of macrosyntactic patterns and of the grammatical markers of the target language shall be examined as well as the order of acquisition of different L2 forms and of different functions for a given form. The teachability of macrosyntactic structures and of grammatical markers in their specific context shall also be discussed. B. L2 development, curriculum design, pedagogical grammars and testing Contributions which bear on the use of research findings in SLA to design teaching and testing materials will be selected for this section. The focus will be on the analysis of curriculum design and of teaching activities that are organized to enhance and facilitate the input-intake process. Theoretical constructs involved in course and class design shall be discussed. C. Research design and teaching tasks and activities in L2 learning The design of data collection for SLA research may foster or develop L2 classroom learning. This workshop is devoted to methodological and theoretical issues related to the organization of data gathering and other experimental tasks of SLA research in relation to learners and teachers, and teaching activities in institutional settings. Proposals based on empirical data analysis are most welcome. Contributors are asked to submit two copies of their proposal (about 300 words long) before the 15th of February 2006 (final deadline) - one the copies will have been anonymized - to colloque at groupelca.org Acceptance or refusal of the submitted proposal shall be notified on the 31 st of March 2005. Organizing committee : Catherine Carlo, Cyrille Granget, Dominique Klingler, Kim Jin-ok, Mireille Prodeau, Kamila Sefta, Georges Daniel V?ronique *************** Colloque International Recherches en acquisition et en didactique des langues ?trang?res et secondes / Research on second and foreign language acquisition and teaching Paris, 6-8 Septembre 2006 www. groupelca.org organis? par le Groupe "Langues en contacts et appropriations " du DILTEC, Paris III Appel ? communication Des recherches linguistiques d'orientations th?oriques vari?es, sont conduites ? propos du proc?s d'acquisition des langues ?trang?res (LE), de ses d?terminations multiples, sociales et cognitives, depuis une trentaine d'ann?es. Plus r?cemment, des propositions de stades d?acquisition en L2 / LE constitu?s d'inventaires de moyens grammaticaux relatifs au nom, au verbe et ? la phrase, mobilis?s ? une phase d?termin?e et pour une langue source donn?e, ont ?t? formul?es. Les recherches acquisitionnelles se sont int?ress?es de fa?on vari?e aux discours de la classe ainsi qu?? l'action p?dagogique durant la derni?re p?riode. Or, on ne cesse de s?interroger sur la pertinence des recherches sur l'acquisition des LE pour l'action ?ducative et la didactique des langues ?trang?res. Ce colloque invite les chercheurs en acquisition et les didacticiens de langues ? interroger leurs r?sultats en termes de pertinence pour l'enseignement. Les contributions retenues concerneront les axes suivants : A. Pratiques discursives et marquage grammatical dans l? enseignement / apprentissage des LE/ L2 Cet axe interrogera les liens entre grammaires, r?pertoires lexicaux et discours d?apprenants. La question de l?apprenabilit? (learnability) des sch?mes discursifs et macrosyntaxiques est pos?e ainsi que celle de l?ordre d?acquisition des diff?rentes formes et des diff?rentes valeurs pour une m?me forme. On s?interrogera ?galement sur l?enseignabilit? (teachability) des sch?mes marcrosyntaxiques et des r?gles grammaticales et de leur contexte d?emploi. B. Progressions d?apprentissage, progressions d'enseignement, grammaires p?dagogiques et ?valuation Cet axe r?unira les contributions qui s'interrogent sur les modalit?s de passage de recherches acquisitionnelles aux activit?s d?enseignement et d'?valuation en didactique des langues ?trang?res. Y seront confront?s les travaux qui tentent de mieux comprendre la structuration des contenus linguistiques ? enseigner par le concepteur de manuel, comme par l?enseignant, en vue d'une meilleure saisie / int?riorisation de l?input par l?apprenant, et les th?ories qui alimentent ces d?marches didactiques. C. Dispositifs de recherche et dispositifs d?enseignement Les recherches acquisitionnelles peuvent ?tre con?ues de telle sorte que leurs modes op?ratoires accompagnent des apprentissages linguistiques. Cet axe accueillera des contributions qui essaient de penser les rapports entre les activit?s de recherche et leurs protocoles exp?rimentaux (dispositifs d'enqu?te et d'observation), les apprenants et leurs enseignants ou formateurs en contexte institutionnel. Les communications fond?es sur des ?tudes de corpus seront privil?gi?es. Les contributeurs sont pri?s de soumettre deux exemplaires, dont l'un aura ?t? rendu anonyme, de leur proposition (300 mots environ) avant le 15 F?vrier 2006 (date imp?rative) ? : colloque at groupelca.org Le refus ou l'acceptation de leur communication leur sera notifi?(e) au 31 mars 2006. Le comit? d'organisation : Catherine Carlo, Cyrille Granget, Dominique Klingler, Kim Jin-Ok, Mireille Prodeau, Kamila Sefta, Georges Daniel V?ronique From lstaum at stanford.edu Wed Jan 25 19:53:00 2006 From: lstaum at stanford.edu (Laura Staum) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 11:53:00 -0800 Subject: Call for Course Proposals Message-ID: Call for Course Proposals 2007 Summer Linguistic Institute Stanford University Stanford, CA, July 2-27, 2007 Overview The theme of the 2007 Linguistic Society of America summer institute, 'Empirical Foundations for Theories of Language', takes its inspiration from Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) 'Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change'. The institute will be organized around emerging directions of linguistic research, showcasing new methodologies which complement or enhance existing ones, with the goal of enhancing the grounding of linguistic theory in all parts of the field. The curricular content of the institute aims to inspire the broadening and clarification of the empirical basis of our field, leading directly to the refinement of existing theoretical models or the development of new ones. We are also interested in offering courses which cross the boundaries of traditional subfields of linguistics, many of which have been drawn because of historical accident or technological limitations. As research refocuses itself around new core areas, a redefinition of some of the main theoretical issues within the field is to be expected. For these reasons, we especially seek courses aimed at opening up new lines of inquiry, rather than surveying the generally-accepted state of the art in the field. In addition to courses taught by faculty invited by the institute's organizing committee, we will also include courses obtained by the proposal solicitation process described below. The proposal evaluation committee (see below) includes scholars from diverse academic institutions. The institute will take place from July 2nd to July 27th, 2007 at Stanford University; there will be 4 teaching weeks, and most classes will consist of 8 105-minute meetings. Faculty who teach at the 2007 institute will each receive a living stipend, and reasonable travel costs. To supplement these, we are seeking additional funds to provide a modest honorarium, per course. We therefore solicit proposals for courses, in any area of the field, conforming to these guidelines: Course Descriptions Please provide the following information. Each submission should be a single pdf file. (1) Title of course. (2) Instructor(s): name, current affiliation, current title, year and institution of Ph.D. (3) Brief CV(s), including description of teaching experience (noting, where relevant, connection to the proposed course). An explicit rationale should be provided if more than 2 instructors are proposed. (4) Description of course content (1-2 pages), including a statement of the course's relevance to the theme of the institute. An additional 1-page reading list is desirable. (5) Tentative outline of course schedule (8 x 105-minute sessions). (6) Prerequisites for students in the course (these must be explicitly given in every course proposal). (7) Maximum enrollment (if relevant). (see below) (8) Ideal companion courses or synergistic activities. (see below) Final deadline for receipt of proposals: March 15, 2006. We anticipate notification in early summer 2006. Additional Information Some courses may be limited in size due to technical needs (e.g., available lab space) or inherent content (e.g., being labor-intensive for the instructor). The last category above, 'ideal companion courses or synergistic activities' is for planning purposes - certain courses would naturally complement other ones, for example, or certain courses may naturally lead to a workshop, or one-day presentation session, which would enhance the intellectual activity of the institute. Please send enquiries and proposals to: linginst07prop at stanford.edu. Institute website: http://linginst07.stanford.edu Institute Director: Peter Sells The committee to evaluate proposals has the following members: (AD = Institute Associate Director.) Mary Beckman (The Ohio State University) Juliette Blevins (AD; University of Leipzig) Kay Bock (University of Illinois) Lyle Campbell (University of Utah) Eve V. Clark (AD; Stanford University) Kai von Fintel (MIT) Jeanette Gundel (University of Minnesota) Larry Horn (Yale University) Dan Jurafsky (AD; Stanford University) Beth Levin (AD; Stanford University) Norma Mendoza-Denton (University of Arizona) Ivan A. Sag (AD; Stanford University) Paul Smolensky (Johns Hopkins University) Donca Steriade (MIT) Raffaella Zanuttini (Georgetown University) From hopper at cmu.edu Wed Jan 25 21:45:02 2006 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:45:02 -0500 Subject: Grammar Surprise in the Jungle Message-ID: The December 10, 2005, issue of Science News () features an article "Wild Talk: Grammar Surprise in the Jungle" (no kidding!) about Dan Everett and the stir created by his recently published paper on Piraha~ in Current Anthropology (CA Aug-Oct 2005 vol. 46,4). The CA article, the text of which can be downloaded via ProQuest, is followed by comments from a number of well-known anthropologists and linguists. - Paul Hopper From comrie at eva.mpg.de Sun Jan 29 23:45:01 2006 From: comrie at eva.mpg.de (Bernard Comrie) Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:45:01 -0800 Subject: Conference "Languages and Genes" Message-ID: Conference "Languages and Genes", University of California Santa Barbara, 2006 September 08-10 Call for abstracts for Poster Session The University of California Santa Barbara will host an interdisciplinary conference "Languages and Genes" on 2006 September 8-10, which will bring together leading international specialists in the areas of linguistics, genetics, anthropology, and archeology. The aim is to ascertain the state of the art with regard to cooperative research among these disciplines relating to human prehistory, in particular the major population movements that led to the demographic distribution of population groups, and especially to identify the most promising developments for future research on this problem from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The conference will incorporate a poster session and we invite abstracts for consideration in this session. Abstracts should be a maximum of one page and should be sent no later than 2006 March 10 to Bernard Comrie at the e-mail address . Those submitting abstracts will be informed of the status of their abstract by the end of April. The conference web site is currently under construction; further information will be posted when it is ready. -- [I am based in Santa Barbara through 2006 mid-March. From 2006 late March I will be based in Leipzig] Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie Director, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara E-mail: comrie at eva.mpg.de Home page: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~comrie/ Mobile phone: +49 160 9634 2888 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Germany tel. +49 341 35 50 301 tel. secretary +49 341 35 50 315 fax +49 341 35 50 333 Department of Linguistics University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100 USA tel. +1 805 893 4025 fax +1 805 893 7769 A copy of all incoming e-mail is forwarded to my secretary. If you do not wish your message to be read other than by me, please put "private" in the subject box. From sepkit at utu.fi Mon Jan 30 11:03:38 2006 From: sepkit at utu.fi (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Seppo_Kittil=E4?=) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:03:38 +0200 Subject: Cfp: Workshop on diachronic valency Message-ID: (Apologies for multiple postings) Workshop Diachronic typology of voice and valency-changing categories Call for papers The last decades of the 20th century are marked with the rapid development of the typological study of voice and other valency-changing categories, such as passive, causative, reflexive, antipassive and anticausative (decausative). We now dispose of rich catalogues of possible systems of valency-changing derivations attested in the languages of the world. More specifically, we know a lot about the morphological, syntactic and semantic synchronic properties of these categories. On the other hand, a systematic treatment of these categories in a diachronic perspective is lacking. The rise, development and decline of these categories mostly remain on the periphery of the typological interests. Such an imbalance of the synchronic and diachronic typology (which is not limited to the valency-changing categories) has a number of reasons. One of the main reasons for this imbalance can be found in the fact that synchronic linguistics have at its disposal the material of hundreds of languages of various genetic affiliation and different structural types, whereas the material for diachronic typological generalizations is much more limited. There are relatively few languages for which we dispose of textual evidence for the period sufficient to observe essential changes in the morphological system and syntactic types (say, 1000 years or more). A good many of these languages belong to two major families, Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic. This unavoidably limits the typological diversity of the data. This being the state of affairs, it is advisable to start a diachronic typological research with collecting evidence from languages (language groups) with a history well-documented in texts for a sufficiently long time span (no less than 1000 years). On the other hand, in the case of languages with lesser documente d history, important generalizations can be obtained on the basis of comparison of genetically related languages, which can serve as a basis for reconstruction of possible scenarios of changes within the system of valency-changing categories. Approaching the history of a particular valency-changing category, such as passive or causative, it might be useful to trace the relevant category C (passive, causative etc.) from the earliest attested texts in an ancient language (L0) onwards up to its reflexes in the daughter languages (L1, L2 etc.). Of particular interest would also be ? if available ? evidence from the sister languages of L0 (L?, L?? etc.), which can serve as a basis for a tentative reconstruction of the hypothetical history and possible sources of C in proto-language *L. These and related issues will be in the spotlight of the workshop ?Diachronic typology of voice and valency-changing categories?. The idea of our workshop is to bring together scholars working on valency phenomena in both (1) languages (language families) with well-documented history (such as Indo-European or Semitic) and (2) languages which furnish less historical evidence but, nevertheless, can provide us with some valuable data on the basis of comparison of daughter languages and linguistic reconstruction (as is the case with Uralic). Ideally, a typologically-oriented study of a valency-changing category in a diachronic perspective should be organized in accordance with a questionnaire, such as those widely used in synchronic typology, for instance, in the framework of the Leningrad / St. Petersburg Typological School (cf. the questionnaire for a study of resultatives outlined in Typology of resultative constructions, ed. by Vladimir Nedjalkov, Amsterdam, 1988, p. 5 7ff.). We believe that using a questionnaire will render our workshop more effective and, eventually, make the collection of papers more publishable. Accordingly, the selection of papers will slightly differ from the usual procedure. If you are interested in the general topic of the workshop, please take a look at our ?Preliminary questionnaire for a diachronic typological study of valency-changing categories? (available at http://www.hum.utu.fi/ylkielitiede/questionnaire.pdf). We strongly encourage you to submit a paper along the guidelines outlined in this questionnaire ? which, as we hope, will contribute to the maximal mutual intelligibility between the participants and to the efficiency of the workshop. Papers providing explicit answers to at least some questions of this questionnaire in an individual language or group of languages and discussing various aspects of the diachronic typology of valency-changing categories will be particularly welcome. Please send us a detai led abstract (up to 2 pages) of your paper no later than March 20th. We will give priority to papers that follow the guidelines suggested in the questionnaire, but other papers may also be considered, as long as they deal with the development of valency categories in and/or across languages. The organizers reserve, if necessary, the right to approach the author(s) of proposed papers, in order to encourage him/her/them to modify the topic of the paper, focusing on some particular aspects of the problem in question. We hope that this will help to organize our workshop, making it more homogenous and, eventually, more efficient. The workshop will be arranged as a part of the symposium ?Structure and Context? organized by The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) to be held August 21-22, 2006 in Turku (?bo Akademi University), Finland. Please visit http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/context/context.shtml for the SKY Symposium (these pages will include practical information: how to get to Turku, the venue of the symposium, accommodation, etc.). Please do not hesitate to approach us in the case you have any questions about the workshop, in particular, the range of topics you would like to deal with. Leonid Kulikov Leiden University / Universit?t G?ttingen L.Kulikov at let.LeidenUniv.nl Seppo Kittil? University of Turku / University of Oulu sepkit at utu.fi