From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Jul 5 15:13:25 2006 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 08:13:25 -0700 Subject: Aymara/cog.scie article Message-ID: Dear Eve & Rafael, That was a terrific article. Especially the quantified evidence on gesture, which gets us out of the circularity of citing purely linguistic evidence as 'proof' of cognition. The competing cognitive patterns discussion (static vision vs. dynamic motion) was right on too. Much in cross-language typological variation has to do with a range of possible patterns that languages can exploit, all equally 'reasonable' and 'cognitively plausible'. Quite often, the very same language 'chooses' one pattern once historically, then on the next grammaticalization cycle 'chooses' another (e.g. French chose 'have' as the Perfect auxiliary earlier, but appears to be choosing 'come' now as the replacement pattern). Universals seem constrain the range of possible choices, but it is still a considerable range. I have one question about the final explanation as to why Aymara (rather than other languages) 'choses' the vision metaphor here. You invoke the fact that (a) Aymara has a marked evidential system, and (b) vision is at the top of the evidential hierarchy in Aymara. But--vision is at the top of the EV-hierarchy in ALL known evidential systems. So if your explanation holds, then ALL languages with marked EV-morphology (Turkish, etc.) ought to exhibit the same 'choice' of the vision-based metaphor for time as in Aymara. Or, at the very least (weaker but still meaningful correlation), ONLY languages with marked EV-morphology ought to exhibit this vision metaphor. Do you have any evidence that either of these are viable predictions? A related question: The fact trhat vision winds up at the top of the evidential hierarchy in marked EV-morphology systems is a powerful non-accidental fact about the central/universal role of vision as the primary pereceptual modality in humans (indeed, in primates, mammals and many avians). This is documented, e.g. by the amount of cortical space dedicated to vision, and the number of distinct visual; processing centers (vis. Mishkin's and Kaas' old work on primates). So if vision is the primary source of knowledge in most mammalians, all primates, & all humans, how could Aymara's 'choice' of the vision metaphor be so unique? Thanks again for a terrific article. Best, TG From amnfn at well.com Wed Jul 5 16:23:58 2006 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 09:23:58 -0700 Subject: Aymara/cog.scie article In-Reply-To: <44ABD715.9010006@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: T. Givon wrote: > So if vision is the primary source of knowledge in most mammalians, all primates, & all humans.... Surely vision is not the primary source of knowledge in ALL humans. What about the blind? --Aya ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Wed Jul 5 20:28:08 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 16:28:08 -0400 Subject: Aymara/cog.scie article Message-ID: Actually, for most mammals I'd have to say that the sense of smell trumps vision for at least identificational purposes, though vision may be able to tell you of immediate if relatively undifferentiated threats (shadows, increasing aspects, etc.) or opportunities (prey status) in time and space. Maybe the various senses divvy up the WH/TH- panoply in various ways. Some are more intimate than others, more reliable than others, or provide more information than others. Sonar developments from hearing (in bats, whales, even shrews) reflect increased informational analysis, picking up the slack from poor seeing, allowing the possessor to dynamically process shifting scenes, determine locations and trajectories, identify objects by size, density, surface sound reflectivity, etc. In other species smell, combined with lateral motion, lets creatures spatially zero in on odorant sources- bigger sensor palettes allow for more simultaneous analysis of combinations for source identification (including its hormonal or health status). And while primate-style stereo vision is a great adaptation (letting one calculate range), many side-eyed animals do an approximation of it by bobbing their heads this way or that to get effective parallax. While we're at it lets not forget pit-viper infrared/heat sensing. I'm not sure that in creatures with such elaborations of other basic sensoria one can say definitively that vision is the topmost sense- or are we creating perhaps the species-ist equivalent of 'standard-average-quadruped' or prototype 'animal'? Side note- for many years birds were considered to have reduced or vestigial senses of smell- a couple of researchers actually challenged dogma a couple of years ago and found out they have excellent senses of smell. Sometimes it pays to actually look. So maybe its better to say that for primates vision is usually the primary sense, rather than for mammals generally. Birds too, generally (but vultures??). But given differences in intimacy with various senses (far external, surface, and internal) shouldn't we expect that increasing intimacy should associate with evidentiality? To say one knows because one saw or heard, versus being involved in oneself? Perhaps this can be lined up alongside the posture verb> aspect grammaticalization pathway? In Yahgan -mvni 'stand', -mu:tu: 'sit', -(w)i:a 'lie' involve increasing surface area contact and increasing temporal involvement in activity. Beyond -mvni is -a:gulu: 'jump, fly', with detachment from surface, discontinuation of referenced activity- and perhaps bird's eye view to survey all possibilities without actual commitment to any particular one? -mvni 'stand' gives a better visual vantage than either -mu:tu: 'sit' or -(w)i:a 'lie'. As surface contact increases for the posturer, so does intimacy, so one would expect greater reliance on touch, taste, smell, etc. One would hope for greater familiarity with the increased contact and intimacy- so perhaps what 'seeing' does for you isn't so much greater surety of information content absolutely, but more for new or unexpected information, matters arising? And while I can't say that there is any real etymological evidence for the following, it is somewhat interesting from the above perspective: in Yahgan -mvni 'stand' is formally similar to -min-, the visual evidential, and -mu:tu: (reduced form -muhr) bears resemblance to -mush-, the hearsay evidential (reduced from mvra 'hear'). Less resemblant perhaps is the pair -(w)i:a 'lie' and i:lina 'touch, sense'- though the latter isn't used so far as I know as a tactile evidential, if such a thing exists. Similarly -a:gulu: 'fly' and alagvn- 'wait and see/watch, but not interfere'? And hvshama 'smell something' versus hamasha 'not see clearly'? Pattern pressure? It would be very interesting to know whether such pattern parallelisms, however murky themselves, exist in other languages. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Sat Jul 8 10:53:27 2006 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 12:53:27 +0200 Subject: Swedish Association for Language and Cognition Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, On June 16 2006, The Swedish Association for Language and Cognition (SALC) was formed at an international conference at Umeå University involving mostly linguists, but also psychologists and cognitive scientists working on a variety of topics and utilising different methodologies. The major goal of the association is to promote the study of the relationship between language and cognition, both in Sweden and internationally. This involves any type of research in which language is not treated in isolation (e.g. as a "module"), but both as based on structures and processes of general cognition (e.g. perception, memory and reasoning) and social cognition (e.g. joint attention and imitation), and as affecting such structures and processes. The association is intended to be a forum for cooperation and exchange of ideas between disciplines, fields of study and theoretical frameworks. In terms of disciplines, the association is intended to bring together not only linguists (at both Linguistics and Modern Language departments), but also psychologists, cognitive scientists, semioticians and philosophers with an interest in the language-cognition nexus. The relationship between language and cognition is central within various fields of study, such as semantic analysis, discourse analysis, grammar, pragmatics, semiotics, linguistic typology, language development, language evolution, language change, gesture studies, consciousness studies and linguistic relativity. Members of the association working in these fields use various theoretical frameworks such as cognitive semantics, functional semantics, conceptual semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, relevance theory, blending theory and discourse representation theory. There is much to gain by enhancing communication between researchers within such different frameworks, who are all interested in the same fields of study, and in the same overarching question "How does language relate to cognition"? While the nature of the research to be supported by SALC is primarily theoretical, in the sense that is aims at a better understanding of the relationship between language and cognition, such research is also of direct relevance for various more applied fields such as language impairment, advertising and language technology. Finally, SALC has already entered discussions with the UK Association for Cognitive Linguistics for launching a common journal Language and Cognition, to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2007. The Board of SALC is also conducting discussions with prominent researchers in Denmark, Norway and Finland for the establishment of a Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition, or some other form of "umbrella" organization in order to consolidate research in language and cognition even further. We invite all researchers, within Sweden and abroad, who wish to contribute to the goal of the newly established association to join as members! This can achieved by sending an email to the Secretary of SALC, Ulf Magnusson at mag.nusson at bredband.net. A temporary homesite for SALC, with the goals, constitution and governing board of the association is available at: http://project.sol.lu.se/sedsu/salc.html Please spread the information to others who may be concerned. Sincere regards, Jordan Zlatev, President of SALC Ulf Magnusson, Secretary SALC *************************************************** 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 nstern at ccny.cuny.edu Mon Jul 10 17:50:12 2006 From: nstern at ccny.cuny.edu (Nancy Stern) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:50:12 -0400 Subject: Columbia School Linguistics Conference Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS 9th International Columbia School Conference on the Interaction of Linguistic Form and Meaning with Human Behavior February 18-19, 2007 The City College of New York New York, New York Invited speakers: Yishai Tobin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) Elizabeth Traugott (Stanford University) Special session: Functional linguistics in language education Papers are invited on any aspect of linguistic analysis in which the postulation and testing of hypotheses about meaningful signals plays a central role in explaining the distribution of linguistic forms. A special session will be devoted to functional linguistics in language education. The Columbia School is a group of linguists developing the theoretical framework originally established by the late William Diver. Language is seen as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its users. Grammatical analyses account for the distribution of linguistic forms as an interaction between hypothesized linguistic meanings and contextual, pragmatic and functional factors such as inference, ease of processing, and iconicity. Phonological analyses explain the syntagmatic and paradigmatic distribution of phonological units within signals, also drawing on both communicative function and human physiological and psychological characteristics. Abstracts should be sent as an email attachment to nstern at ccny.cuny.edu, following these guidelines: *In the body of the email, please include: (1) Author name(s) and affiliation(s); (2) Title of the paper; (3) Email addresses and telephone numbers of all authors. *The abstract, containing only the title of the paper and the text of the abstract, should be sent as an attachment (RTF or Word) format. The abstract should be no more than 300 words, although references and/or data may be added to that limit. DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: 30 SEPTEMBER 2006 The language of the conference is English. Papers delivered in languages other than English will be considered. * * * * * * * * The support of The Columbia School Linguistic Society is gratefully acknowledged www.csling.org * * * * * * * * Selected Columbia School bibliography: Contini-Morava, Ellen, Robert S. Kirsner, and Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller (eds). 2005. Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Contini-Morava, Ellen, and Barbara Sussman Goldberg (eds). 1995. Meaning as Explanation: Advances in Linguistic Sign Theory. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Huffman, Alan. 1997. The Categories of Grammar: French lui and le. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffman, Alan. 2001. "The Linguistics of William Diver and the Columbia School." WORD 52:1, 29-68. Reid, Wallis. 1991. Verb and Noun Number in English: A Functional Explanation. London: Longman. Reid, Wallis, Ricardo Otheguy, and Nancy Stern (eds). 2002. Signal, Meaning, and Message: Perspectives on Sign-Based Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tobin, Yishai. 1997. Phonology as Human Behavior: Theoretical Implications and Clinical Applications. Durham, NC: Duke U Press. For more information, please contact Nancy Stern at nstern at ccny.cuny.edu From phdebrab at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jul 10 21:05:55 2006 From: phdebrab at yahoo.co.uk (Philippe De Brabanter) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:05:55 +0100 Subject: Commitment in linguistics: 2nd call for papers Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE under the auspices of the Linguistic Society of Belgium: « THE NOTION OF COMMITMENT IN LINGUISTICS » « LA NOTION DE PRISE EN CHARGE EN LINGUISTIQUE » January 11-13, 2007 / University of Antwerp (Belgium) Organizers : Patrick Dendale (Universiteit Antwerpen) Danielle Coltier (Université du Maine, Le Mans) Philippe De Brabanter (Université Paris 4-Sorbonne – Institut Jean Nicod) Keynote Speakers Robyn CARSTON (University College London) Paul LAURENDEAU (York University, Toronto) + 2 others to be announced Abstract Deadline : August, 20 2006 The notion of commitment (Non-)Commitment ((non-)prise en charge in French) is a notion which is fairly often used in the analysis of certain types of linguistic phenomena (sometimes under the guise of other la-bels, such as “assuming responsibility for” or “endorsing” or “performativity”) – e.g. in the analysis of speech acts, of semantic categories such as modality, evidentiality and subjectiv-ity, of different forms of reported speech, and of certain tenses and moods. But it is hardly ever the subject of explicit investigation in its own right. Goal of the conference The aim of this conference is to bring together research which crucially draws on the notion of (non-)commitment in one or another way, in an attempt to achieve a better understanding of the nature and the extension of the notion itself. It welcomes theoretical and empirical con-tributions addressing the issue in its own right or in terms of its role in any relevant linguistic or conceptual phenomenon, using any kind of methodological approach, and coming from any kind of theoretical background. One section of the conference will be devoted to typological contributions, next to other sections dealing with grammatical or lexical markers or strategies of (non-)commitment in the Romance and Germanic languages. Theoretical problems pertaining to the notion The theoretical issues addressed in this conference can be summarized in terms of five central questions: A) To what does (non-)commitment apply? What are possible objects or (aspects of) ob-jects of (non-)commitment (elements of form, aspects or levels of meaning, illocution-ary force)? Is commitment entirely dependent on “what is in the speaker’s mind” (the concepts and intentions a speaker has access to) or may one be committed to “things that are in other people’s minds”? B) Who commits him/herself? Who is the agent of the commitment (which instance of the speaker)? This, which relates to the notion of “polyphony” popularised by Oswald Ducrot, is especially important when several speakers/thinkers can be identified in an utterance, as in cases of reported speech or reported thought. C) When does (non-)commitment apply? Only at the moment of speech, or also at other times? D) What is the nature of (non-)commitment? Are there different forms or degrees of it? E) How is (non-)commitment taken? Under which conditions and by means of which forms, mechanisms or strategies is it signalled? Conference languages In view of the fact that the notion of (non-)commitment or (non-)prise en charge ((non )res¬ponsibilité) is quite manifestly present in the French linguistic tradition (especially in the af-termath of the work of Benveniste), more so than in the Anglo-American tradition, the present conference also explicitly aims to establish communication on the issue between these ‘geo-graphical’ research traditions. Therefore, the conference will feature presentations in French as well as in English. Deadline for abstract submissions is August 20, 2006 Format and evaluation of abstracts • Abstracts will be refereed anonymously. • Abstracts are to be submitted as an attachment in Word or Rich Text Format to an email sent to commitment2007 at ua.ac.be. Your abstract should be in French or in English (please use the language of the actual presentation). It should not exceed 500 words (references not included). Please include the title but do not mention the name of the author(s). Use Times Roman 12 and single spacing, and make sure to embed TrueType Fonts for special characters (cf. typological studies). • The email accompanying the abstract should contain the title of the presentation (identical to the title indicated on the abstract in the attachment), the name of the author(s), and their full coordinates (affiliation, postal address, email address). • Notification of acceptance/rejection: September 2006. Conference registration • Registration fee: 80 Euro • Special registration fees apply to members of the Linguistic Society of Belgium, please check the website (www.bkl-cbl.be) for details. Important dates Abstract deadline: August 20, 2006 Notification: September 2006 Conference dates: January 11-13, 2007, at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) Conference website: www.ua.ac.be/commitment For further information, please contact Patrick Dendale University of Antwerp Department of Linguistics Universiteitsplein 1 B-2610 Anvers-Wilrijk Belgium Email: patrick.dendale at ua.ac.be Web : webhost.ua.ac.be/dendale Tél : +32 3 820 28 13 Fax : +32 3 820 28 23 * * * * * UFR anglais-Paris4 1, rue Victor Cousin 75005 Paris Institut Jean Nicod 1bis, avenue de Lowendal 75007 Paris ___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html From m.norde at rug.nl Wed Jul 12 08:09:32 2006 From: m.norde at rug.nl (Muriel Norde) Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:09:32 +0200 Subject: PhD fellowship Groningen Netherlands Message-ID: **** apologies for cross-postings **** Institution/Organization: University of Groningen Department: Center for Language and Cognition Level: PhD Duties: Research Specialty Areas: Discourse Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics Description: One Ubbo Emmius PhD fellowship in Linguistics is available at the Center for Language and Cognition, Groningen for research in EITHER discourse analysis OR in language variation and language change. The Ubbo Emmius positions (all the PhD positions) are open only to foreign applicants. Dutch citizens are not eligible due to tax restrictions. See http://www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/clcg/phd-2006/ for more information, including an email address for applications. Web Address for Applications: http://www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/clcg/phd-2006/ Mailing Address for Applications: Attn: Ms Wyke van der Meer CLCG (Positions), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Postbus 716 Groningen NL 9700 AS Netherlands Applications are due by: 15-Sep-2006 Contact Information: Prof. John Nerbonne J.Nerbonne at rug.nl Phone:+31 50 363-5815 Fax:+31 50 363-6855 From oesten at ling.su.se Thu Jul 13 14:12:55 2006 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?iso-8859-1?Q?=D6sten_Dahl?=) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:12:55 +0200 Subject: "flag" for case/adposition In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In Russian, prepositions can be doubled in a way that looks like incipient case agreement. This shows up above all in genres like folklore, but here is a beautiful example I just found on the Internet: "...u kollegi u nashego u Andreja Shevchenko byla klassnaja citata..." at colleague.GEN at our.GEN at Andrej.GEN Shevchenko.GEN be.PRET.F.SG first-class quotation 'our colleague A.S. had a first-class quotation' - Östen Dahl > -----Original Message----- > From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] > On Behalf Of nigel Vincent > Sent: den 13 juli 2006 16:07 > To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG > Subject: Re: "flag" for case/adposition > > Just a quick query re Martin's endorsement of Zwicky's observation that > "Everything you can do with adpositions you can do with case > inflections, and vice versa." Might suffixaufnahme or case agreement be > an instance of something you can do with case but not with an > adposition? What too about case attraction (arguably a kind of case > agreement - cf a paper by Hans Vogt many years ago)? > Nigel From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Jul 13 15:48:18 2006 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:48:18 +0200 Subject: "flag" for case/adposition / Functeme In-Reply-To: <000a01c6a686$6fd4e6d0$50abed82@win.su.se> Message-ID: (a) Dear Östen, many thanks for this nice example. One additional question: Doesn't the Russian phrase you quote represent an appositional chain [each of the terms kolleg, nashij, and Andrej Shevchenko have strong referential properties]? >In Russian, prepositions can be doubled in a way that looks like incipient >case agreement. This shows up above all in genres like folklore, but here is >a beautiful example I just found on the Internet: > >"...u kollegi u nashego u Andreja Shevchenko byla klassnaja citata..." >at colleague.GEN at our.GEN at Andrej.GEN Shevchenko.GEN be.PRET.F.SG >first-class quotation >'our colleague A.S. had a first-class quotation' > (b) Dear Marcel, > A question: Relational nouns (or auxiliary nouns, as I have called > them), which inflect for person plus case and/or are themselves > governed by adpositions, assume relational functions similar to case > and adpositions in (among others) Turkic and Semitic languages. Which > of the terms discussed are intended to cover them? *If* I understand you correctly, you refer to constuctions like the following Tyvan example: ot üstü-n-den fire top-*3SG:POSS-ABL 'from the top of the fire' I have glossed -n- as *3SG:POSS just because it merely is a diachronic interpretation (hope that I have got this right!). According to my approach, I would interpret ot üstü-n- in terms of an appositional structure [unspecific possessive construction or so, if you like] (fire *its=top), which is then case-marked by ABL -den. The marker -den (the relational echo) would be motivated by the appropriate verb (e.g. '[ashes] [fell from] [top of the fire]'. (c) Dear Claude, > I coin FUNCTEME in the following way: the suffix -eme, in the > terminology of linguistics as well as in that of other sciences, > regularly refers to "a unit (often the smallest one) of what the root > says" (cf. phoneme, toneme, sememe, etc.). The root, in funct-eme, > says that the unit in question merely indicates the function of > the element (mostly a noun or noun phrase) that it governs: Engl. for > in for my friend indicates that my friend is the benefactive > complement of the predicate. It is obvious that prepositions like for > also have a meaning (and this is the main reason why case was > originally used by Fillmore 1968 in a semantic acception), but > functeme strictly refers to the syntactic role of relators. Thus, > functeme precisely says what relators are actually from the > morphological and syntactic point(s) of view: they are units of > function marking. You say: "The 'unit (...) indicates the function of the element (...) that it governs". Admittedly, I have some problems in understanding this phrase: Maybe that e.g. prepostions govern their NP/nouns (personally, I do not think so, rather, I believe that it is the cluster {verb+preposition} that governs the NP/noun). But let's take an example with case marking: amic-us flor-em videt 'The friend sees the flower'. Can we really say, that -us *itself* 'governs' the referent 'friend', and -em the referent 'flower'? Isn't it the verb videt that governs the distribution of case markers (> relational echos, in my terms)? Or did I get you wrong? Best wishes, Wolfgang ---- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut fuer Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 Muenchen Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) Tel.: ++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 John at research.haifa.ac.il Fri Jul 14 07:23:40 2006 From: John at research.haifa.ac.il (John at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:23:40 +0300 Subject: Book on language and national identity Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, John Benjamins has just released my new book, entitled `Language, Religion, and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East: A historical study.' I'm attaching the flyer for it. John Myhill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From comrie at eva.mpg.de Sat Jul 15 15:32:18 2006 From: comrie at eva.mpg.de (Bernard Comrie) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:32:18 +0200 Subject: MPI-EVA Leipzig: Position available Message-ID: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Announcement of Vacancy The Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig has a vacancy for a Senior Researcher in the areas of language history and prehistory, linguistic typology, and description of little studied and endangered languages. The five-year non-renewable position is available from 01 January 2007; a later starting date may be negotiable. Prerequisites for an application are a PhD and publications in one of the above mentioned areas. The salary is according to the German TVöD. The Max Planck Society is concerned to employ more disabled people; applications from disabled people are explicitly sought. The Max Planck Society wishes to increase the proportion of women in areas in which they are underrepresented; women are therefore explicitly encouraged to apply. Applicants are requested to send their complete dossier (including curriculum vitae, description of research interests, two letters of recommendation, and a piece of written work on one of the relevant topics) no later than 30 September 2006 to: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Personnel Department Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie Code word: Scientist Dept Linguistics Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig, Germany Please address questions to Bernard Comrie . Information on the institute is available at http://www.eva.mpg.de/. -- [I am currently 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/ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Germany tel. +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 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 language at sprynet.com Sat Jul 15 20:14:18 2006 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:14:18 -0400 Subject: Book on language and national identity Message-ID: Thanks for letting us know about your book, John. At a time when no theme or digression in our field can be too minor or obscure, your work sounds remarkably brave and ambitious since it deals with a truly primary question not only of linguistics but of history, politics, and culture. Unfortunately I did not receive your attachment about the book (& perhaps others also failed to receive it), since i believe i'm correct in stating that news and discussion groups like FUNKNET do not permit attachments. However, i went to the J. Benjamins site at: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=DAPSAC%2021 and found what is likely to be similar to what you meant to send: --------------------------------------------- Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East A historical study John Myhill University of Haifa Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21 2006. ix, 300 pp. Hardbound 90 272 2711 X / USD 138.00 / EUR 115.00 This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. Nationalist movements aimed at ‘unification’, based upon languages which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Table of contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1–26 Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate 27–70 Small languages and national liberation 71–117 Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism 119–176 Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe 177–227 Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East 229–276 Conclusion 277–281 Bibliography 283–293 Index 295–300 “It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show for the first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It may be true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy". But it is not just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some languages are more obviously languages than others.” Peter Trudgill --------------------------------------------------- By all means let us know if there's anything further you would like to tell us about your book. very best! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 3:23 AM Subject: [FUNKNET] Book on language and national identity > Dear Funknetters, > John Benjamins has just released my new book, entitled `Language, Religion, and > National Identity in Europe and the Middle East: A historical study.' I'm > attaching the flyer for it. > John Myhill > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University > From jleitao at ci.uc.pt Wed Jul 19 02:07:38 2006 From: jleitao at ci.uc.pt (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Leit=E3o?=) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:07:38 +0100 Subject: 2nd Cfp : The 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC'2007) Message-ID: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC'2007) Lagos (Algarve), Portugal hosted by University of Lisbon, Faculty of Sciences March 29 - 30, 2007 http://daarc2007.di.fc.ul.pt/ Anaphora is a central topic in the study of natural language and has long been the object of research in a wide range of disciplines such as theoretical, corpus and computational linguistics, philosophy of language, cognitive science, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology. On the other hand, the correct interpretation of anaphora has played an increasingly vital role in real-world natural language processing applications, including machine translation, automatic abstracting, information extraction and question answering. As a result, the processing of anaphora has become one of the most productive topics of multi- and inter-disciplinary research, and has enjoyed increased interest and attention in recent years. In this context, the Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquia (DAARC) have emerged as the major regular forum for presentation and discussion of the best research results in this area. Initiated in 1996 at Lancaster University and taken over in 2002 by the University of Lisbon, the DAARC series established itself as a specialised and competitive forum for the presentation of the latest results on anaphora processing, ranging from theoretical linguistic approaches through psycholinguistic and cognitive work to corpus studies and computational modelling. The sixth Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC’2007) will take place in Lagos (Algarve), Portugal, in March 29-30, 2007. We would like to invite anyone currently researching in the areas of discourse anaphora and anaphor resolution, from any methodological perspective or framework, to submit a paper to DAARC'2007. The closing date for submission is October 16, 2006. Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 15, 2006. Final versions of selected papers to be included in the proceedings are expected by January 19, 2007. Submissions (extended abstracts) must be anonymous and at most 3 pages in length. For further details on the submission procedure, and other relevant info on the colloquium visit its website at: http://daarc2007.di.fc.ul.pt/ Program Committee: Mijail Alexandrov-Kabadjov, Univ Essex Mira Ariel, Tel Aviv Univ Sergey Avrutin, OTS Amit Bagga, Ask.com Patricio Martinez Barco, Univ Alicante Peter Bosch, Univ Osnabrueck António Branco, Univ Lisbon Donna Byron, Ohio State Univ Francis Cornish, Univ Toulouse-Le Mirail Dan Cristea, Univ Iasi Robert Dale, Macquarie Univ Richard Evans, Univ Wolverhampton Martin Everaert, OTS Lyn Frazier, MIT Claire Gardent, CNRS/Loria Rafael Muñoz Guillena, Univ Alicante Jeanette Gundel, Univ Minnesota Sanda Harabagiu, Univ Texas at Dallas Lars Hellan, Norwegian Univ of Science and Technology Erhard Hinrichs, Univ Tuebingen Graeme Hirst, Univ Toronto Yan Huang, Univ Reading Andrew Kehler, Univ California San Diego Andrej Kibrik, Russian Academy of Sciences Emiel Krahmer, Tilburg Univ Shalom Lappin, King's College Tony McEnery, Lancaster Univ Ruslan Mitkov, Univ Wolverhampton Jill Nickerson, Ab Initio Software Corp Constantin Orasan, Univ. Wolverhampton Maria Mercedes Piñango, Yale Univ Georgiana Puscasu, Univ Wolverhampton Costanza Navarretta, CST Massimo Poesio, Univ Essex Eric Reuland, OTS Jeffrey Runner, Univ of Rochester Antonio Fernandez Rodriguez, Univ Alacant Tony Sanford, Glasgow Univ Frédérique Segond, Xerox Research Centre Europe Roland Stuckardt, Univ Frankfurt am Main Joel Tetreault, Univ. Rochester Renata Vieira, Unisinos Organisers: Antonio Branco, Univ Lisbon Tony McEnery, Lancaster Univ Ruslan Mitkov, Univ Wolverhampton Fátima Silva, Univ Oporto From Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl Wed Jul 19 10:17:41 2006 From: Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl (Amiridze, Nino) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 12:17:41 +0200 Subject: call for abstracts Message-ID: [Apologies for multiple postings] ********************************************************************* * Call for Participation * * * * FILLERS IN GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE * * * * Panel Proposed at the 10th International Pragmatics Conference * * 9-13 July 2007, Goeteborg, Sweden * * * ********************************************************************* http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nino.Amiridze/personal/organization/fillers.html SCOPE =========== We would like to invite researchers interested in the role of fillers in grammar and discourse to submit abstracts for participation in a panel proposed for the 10th International Pragmatics Conference. Contributions studying various types of fillers, their morphophonology, morphosyntax, pragmatics and/or diachronic development in a particular language or across a sample of languages are welcome. We would also be interested to have contributions from psycholinguists working on fillers in language acquisition and from neurolinguists who are interested in the use of repair strategies in lexical access failure. DATES =========== If you are interested, please send one page abstract (with an optional additional page for data and references) by September 4, 2006 to Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl You will be informed on acceptance/rejection in the beginning of October, 2006. ORGANIZERS =========== Nino Amiridze, Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Hiroaki Kitano, Aichi University of Education (Japan) PUBLICATION =========== If after the meeting there will be interest in publishing either a proceedings or a special journal issue, then the organizers will take responsibility of finding a suitable forum and will act as editors. From John at research.haifa.ac.il Wed Jul 19 11:22:08 2006 From: John at research.haifa.ac.il (John at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:22:08 +0300 Subject: Book on language and nationalism Message-ID: It seems that the attachment I sent for my book didn't come through, so I'm adding this to my message. John Myhill Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East A historical study John Myhill University of Haifa Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21 2006. ix, 300 pp. Hardbound 90 272 2711 X / USD 138.00 / EUR 115.00 This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. Nationalist movements aimed at ‘unification’, based upon languages which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Table of contents Acknowledgements  vii Introduction  1–26 Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate  27–70 Small languages and national liberation  71–117 Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism  119–176 Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe  177–227 Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East  229–276 Conclusion  277–281 Bibliography  283–293 Index  295–300 “It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show for the first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It may be true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy". But it is not just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some languages are more obviously languages than others.” Peter Trudgill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From hartmut at ruc.dk Wed Jul 19 12:07:25 2006 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (hartmut at ruc.dk) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:07:25 +0200 Subject: Book on language and nationalism In-Reply-To: <1153308128.44be15e087f95@webmail.haifa.ac.il> Message-ID: Dear John, this sounds like an extremely interesting book and I will definitely read it. am just wondering about one sentence in your blurb, "while [nationalist movements] based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability". I do not know about Ukrainian, but I wonder if Czech and Norwegain can count as "relatively homogeneous spoken languages". As to Czech, I only remember Petr Sgalls 1986 paper, Sgall P. (1986), Czech: Crux Sociolinguistarum. In Rosenbaum and Sonne, eds. Pragmatics and Linguistics. Festschrift for Jacob L. Mey. Odense: Odense University Press and if I remember correctly, he strongly deconstructs the myth of homogeneity of Czech. As to Norwegian, it is amazing to see how a language with widely diverging dialects and, deliberately, no standardization of spoken language at all (listening to Norwegian tv for a few hours is a feast for the sociolinguist) can function so well - a living proof that language standardization is not a precondition for functioning of a language in the modern world. Written Norwegian with its twin normative peaks of nynorsk and bokmål is a different matter again, but even in its written form Norwegian is not relatively homogeneous, not even within the two official "standards". I admit that for spoken Norwegian, mutual intelligibility of varieties is greater than for German (and, I guess, Arabic)but I think this has more to do with willingness to understand each other than with objective measures of diversity. But maybe I should read the book first! Hartmut Haberland Zitat von John at research.haifa.ac.il: | It seems that the attachment I sent for my book didn't come through, | so I'm adding this to my message. | John Myhill | | | Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East | A historical study | John Myhill | University of Haifa | | Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21 | | 2006. ix, 300 pp. | | Hardbound | 90 272 2711 X / USD 138.00 / EUR 115.00 | | This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is | associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications | of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. | Nationalist movements aimed at ‘unification’, based upon languages which | vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and | Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while | those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, | Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and | international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more | important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups | which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than | universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and | English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the | Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, | the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom. | | Table of contents | | Acknowledgements  vii | | Introduction  1–26 | | Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate  27–70 | | Small languages and national liberation  71–117 | | Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism  119–176 | | Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe  177–227 | | Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East  229–276 | | Conclusion  277–281 | | Bibliography  283–293 | | Index  295–300 | | “It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and | nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show for the | first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It may be | true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy". But it is not | just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some languages | are more obviously languages than others.” | | Peter Trudgill | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University | From segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr Thu Jul 20 15:17:36 2006 From: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr (Guillaume Segerer) Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:17:36 +0200 Subject: Call for papers - Workshop on the Typology of African Languages Message-ID: Workshop on the Typology of African Languages - Call for papers The Seventh International Conference of the Association of Linguistic Typology (ALT VII) will take place in Paris from the 24th to the 28th of September 2007. It will be organized by the « Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques » of the CNRS. The local organizing comittee includes Stéphane Robert, Isabelle Bril, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest and Martine Vanhove. On Monday, September 24, and Tuesday morning, there will be a Workshop on the typology of African Languages organized by Guillaume Segerer and Bernard Caron. African languages show a great typological diversity as well as specific features that cross genetic boundaries and contrast with other languages of the world. Four sessions will be dedicated to papers on the following topics, with a State-of-the-Art paper followed by a case study for each of them. The four topics are (i) Information structure and prosody. Invited Speaker : Laura Downing (ii) A typology of linguistic change. Invited Speaker : Konstantin Pozdniakov (iii) Linguistic typology and genealogy. Invited Speaker : Zygmund Frajzyngier (iv) Areal typology in Africa. Invited Speaker : Tom Güldemann Anyone wishing to present a paper is invited to send an abstract (max 400 words) before January 15, 2007 to the address below. Abstracts sent by e-mail should be included in the message (i.e. not appended as an attachment). The scientific committtee is composed of the Invited Speakers and the Organizers. The Proceedings of the workshop will be published. Address for workshop abstracts: Guillaume Segerer Workshop on African Languages LLACAN – CNRS – B.P. 8 7, rue Guy Môquet 94801 Villejuif Cedex France email: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr fax: ++33 1 49 58 38 00 Atelier sur la Typologie des Langues Africaines Appel à communication Le Septième Congrès de l’Association de Typologie Linguistique (ALT VII) se tiendra à Paris du 24 au 28 Septembre 2007. Il sera organisé par la Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques du CNRS. Le comité local d’organisation comprend Stéphane Robert, Isabelle Bril, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest et Martine Vanhove. Les lundi 24 septembre et mardi 25 au matin, se déroulera un atelier sur les langues africaines. Celles-ci présentent une très grande diversité typologique ainsi que des traits uniques qui traversent les frontières génétiques et contrastent de diverses manières avec les autres langues du monde. Quatre sessions seront dédiées à des communications portant sur les thèmes suivants, avec chacune un conférencier invité : (i) Structure informationnelle et prosodie. Invitée : Laura Downing (ii) Typologie du changement linguistique. Invité : Konstantin Pozdniakov (iii)Typologie linguistique et généalogie. Invité : Zygmund Frajzyngier (iv)Typologie aréale en Afrique. Invité : Tom Güldemann Si vous désirez présenter une communication dans le cadre de cet atelier (de 20 minutes plus 10 minutes de discussion), vous devez envoyer un résumé (400 mots maximum) à l’adresse ci-dessous avant le 15 janvier 2007. Les soumissions par couriel devront se faire dans le corps du message et non en fichier attaché. Le comité scientifique est composé des conférenciers invités et des organisateurs. Les Actes de l’Atelier feront l’objet d’une publication. L’envoi des résumés devra se faire à l’adresse suivante : Guillaume Segerer Atelier Typologie des Langues Africaines LLACAN - CNRS Centre Georges Haudricourt B.P. 8 7, rue Guy Môquet 94801 Villejuif Cedex France email: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr fax: 33 1 49 58 38 00 From jcclemen at unm.edu Sun Jul 23 21:25:13 2006 From: jcclemen at unm.edu (J. Clancy Clements) Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:25:13 -0600 Subject: New Book: Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall In-Reply-To: <44ABD715.9010006@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: The following review is written by Geoff Pullum. The full title of the book is: Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know About Language and Languages, by Mikael Parkvall (London and Ahungalla: Battlebridge) Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum on Language Log http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/ “The book for your linguist lover I have come upon a book that would be the ideal birthday present for the linguist in your life who you feel already has everything, even a copy of Far From the Madding Gerund. (By the way, if you don't have a linguist in your life, you should definitely consider it. When a linguist kisses you, you stay kissed.) The book in question is quite obscure at the moment. The publisher is Battlebridge, located in London and Ahungalla. (Really, Ahungalla. It's in Sri Lanka.) As yet, it is only available via Amazon in the UK and Japan, so have some pounds sterling or yen ready), and your linguist lover will not know about it yet. It is called Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Language and Languages, and it's by Mikael Parkvall. The ISBN for the paperback that I have appears to be 9 781903 292044 but the ISBN cited by Amazon.co.uk is 1 903292 04 2 (and they're charging just £15, so it surely can't be a hardback; I don't know why there would be two ISBNs). I can only describe the book as the realization of a fantasy idea I once had for a Linguist's Book of Lists (see chapter 22 of my book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax). It also has a touch of Guinness Book of World Linguistic Records about it. It is really cute, and absolutely stuffed with linguistic trivia and facts and dates and lists and ephemera and exotica (and a linguist joke or two among the fake endorsement quotes on the back). It's often funny, but also quite serious and useful. It will delight any member of our profession. Buy it, and check it out for yourself before you gift-wrap it for your linguist lover.” Clancy Clements From hdls at unm.edu Mon Jul 24 20:04:58 2006 From: hdls at unm.edu (High Desert Linguistics Society) Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:04:58 -0600 Subject: Second call - 7th High Desert International Linguistics Conference (HDLS-7) Nov. 9-11, 2006 Message-ID: The Seventh High Desert International Linguistics Conference (HDLS-7) will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, November 9-11, 2006. With invited keynote speakers: William Croft (University of New Mexico) Sally Rice (University of Alberta) Elizabeth Traugott (Stanford University) We invite you to submit proposals for 20-minute talks with 10-minute discussion sessions in any area of linguistics - especially those from a cognitive / functional linguistics perspective. Papers in the following areas are particularly welcome: Evolution of Language, Grammaticization, Metaphor & Metonymy, Native American Languages, Typology, Spanish and Languages of the American Southwest, Language Revitalization and Maintenance, Language Change & Variation, Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, Discourse Analysis, Signed Languages, Language Acquisition and Computational Linguistics. The deadline for submitting abstracts is Friday August 25th, 2006. Abstracts should be sent via email, as an attachment, to hdls at unm.edu Please include the title ''HDLS-7 abstract ''in the subject line. MS-Word format is preferred or RTF if necessary. The e-mail and attached abstract must include the following: 1. Author's Name(s) 2. Author's Affiliation(s) 3. Title of the Paper 4. E-mail address of the primary author The abstract should be no more than one page and no less than 11-point font. A second page is permitted for references and/or data. Only two submissions per author will be accepted and we will only consider submissions that conform to the above guidelines. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by September 1st, 2006. If you have any questions or need for further information please contact us at hdls at unm.edu with ''HDLS-7 Conference'' in the subject line. From comrie at eva.mpg.de Tue Jul 25 09:00:19 2006 From: comrie at eva.mpg.de (Bernard Comrie) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:00:19 +0200 Subject: Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus Message-ID: Call for papers Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus December 07-09, 2007 The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, will host a conference on the Languages of the Caucasus on December 07-09, 2007 (Fri-Sun). Those interested in participating are asked to submit abstracts for papers lasting 30 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion). Papers may relate to any language or languages spoken in the Caucasus. A particular emphasis of the conference will be areal linguistic features, so papers relating to this topic will be particularly welcome, although papers on all aspects of languages of the Caucasus are sought. The languages of the conference will be English and Russian, and abstracts may be submitted in either language. Abstracts should be sent to Bernard Comrie or Jasmine Dum-Tragut (for addresses, see below), preferably as e-mail attachments in pdf format; electronic versions in doc or rtf format must use Unicode for any special symbols; hard copies may also be sent by regular mail. Abstracts should not exceed two pages (including references and examples) and should include the title of the presentation, the name of the presenter(s), and coordinates for one presenter (e-mail, telephone, fax, postal address) to be used for correspondence with the conference organizers. The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 31, 2007. Those submitting abstracts will be informed of the program committee's decision by March 31, 2007. Some travel funding may be available for scholars from the Caucasus whose abstracts are accepted. Questions should be addressed to one of the conference organizers, preferably by e-mail to cauc2007 at eva.mpg.de: Bernard Comrie (Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany) or Jasmine Dum-Tragut (Department of Linguistics, University of Salzburg, Muehlbacherhofweg 6, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria). The web site of the conference is: http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/Caucasus_Conference_2007/ -- [I am currently 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/ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Germany tel. +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 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 phonosemantics at earthlink.net Tue Jul 25 21:33:58 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:33:58 -0400 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? Message-ID: Study hints language skills came early in primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From mark at polymathix.com Wed Jul 26 16:27:37 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:27:37 -0500 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <10391185.1153863239266.JavaMail.root@elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.n et> Message-ID: jess tauber wrote: > Study hints language skills came early in > primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc > > I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) > brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? I think this study is important precisely because it had been hypothesized that monkey vocalization does not involve the cortex. This rather seriously overgeneralized hypothesis came about because experiments (starting in the 1970's, I think) showed that vocalization was elicited by limbic but not by cortical stimulation. Apart from the obvious ramifications for our understanding of the phylogeny of primate communication, the study also suggests that the reason for those stimulation results in monkeys may be due to limbic control of vocalization even if there is cortical involvement in the actual behavior: limbic stimulation causes vocalization because it provides the control stimulus, while cortical stimulation does nothing because the limbic signal is absent. Note that monkeys don't want to vocalize willy-nilly except for good reason (since there might be an undetected predator within earshot), and that there would be solid inhibitory pathways preventing vocalization if only Broca is stimulated without the limbic input. Humans will have evolved past this limbic control -- most communication is consciously intended and neocortically controlled. (There's an obvious joke about throwbacks at a recent coffee klatsch.) I'm surprised that no such study was done before now and that the limbic-only hypothesis for monkey vocalization remained unfalsified until now, but I guess I'll take their word for it. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Jul 26 17:49:13 2006 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:49:13 -0700 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <1380.69.91.14.68.1153931257.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com> Message-ID: Neuroscience advances somewhat fitfully. For every announced new discovery, there is sooner or later (more often sooner) a finding pointing in another direction. This is because of the complexity & distributiveness of most higher cognitive system. Another instasnce, I suppose, of the three blind men describing the elephant. So first, we need to be cautious about evaluating 'radical new discoveries', particularly about language (which is the most complex & distributive capacity supported by the brain). More to the point, the function-specific regions ("modules") of the cortex ('periphery') are all mamalian evolutionary projections from the *limbic-thalamic sub-cortex*. This is true of vision, audition, motor control, somatic-sensory areas, attention, episodic & semantic memories, etc. And for most of those 'higher' cortical capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas remain part of the functional system--in a a *distributive network* (see e.g. M-M. Mesulam's "Principles of Behavioral & Cognitive Neurology", 2nd edition, Oxford U. Press, 2000 as a major source on this. But there is a vast lit. on the subject). Thus, because so many of the cognitive capacities that support human language are the outgrowth of (functionally amenable) pre-linguistic capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas are implicated in almost all brain-activity related to language processing. And the pre-human primate brain is so close to ours in its general architecture, there's no reason to assume that the same core-periphery relation doesn't apply there. So if at one time research implicates a cortical area ('periphery') and at another a sub-cortical one ('core') in executing the same function, be it linguistic or pre-linguistic, it is because* both* are implicated. Keep on truckin'. TG ======================= Mark P. Line wrote: >jess tauber wrote: > > >>Study hints language skills came early in >>primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc >> >>I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) >>brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? >> >> > >I think this study is important precisely because it had been hypothesized >that monkey vocalization does not involve the cortex. This rather >seriously overgeneralized hypothesis came about because experiments >(starting in the 1970's, I think) showed that vocalization was elicited by >limbic but not by cortical stimulation. > >Apart from the obvious ramifications for our understanding of the >phylogeny of primate communication, the study also suggests that the >reason for those stimulation results in monkeys may be due to limbic >control of vocalization even if there is cortical involvement in the >actual behavior: limbic stimulation causes vocalization because it >provides the control stimulus, while cortical stimulation does nothing >because the limbic signal is absent. Note that monkeys don't want to >vocalize willy-nilly except for good reason (since there might be an >undetected predator within earshot), and that there would be solid >inhibitory pathways preventing vocalization if only Broca is stimulated >without the limbic input. > >Humans will have evolved past this limbic control -- most communication is >consciously intended and neocortically controlled. (There's an obvious >joke about throwbacks at a recent coffee klatsch.) > >I'm surprised that no such study was done before now and that the >limbic-only hypothesis for monkey vocalization remained unfalsified until >now, but I guess I'll take their word for it. > >-- Mark > >Mark P. Line >Polymathix >San Antonio, TX > > From dlevere at ilstu.edu Wed Jul 26 18:04:52 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 14:04:52 -0400 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <44C7AB19.60502@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Tom's posting is a very useful one. Too many strange claims are floating about that require a degree of cortical localization. But any rigid specialization proposed is almost certainly premature at this point. A couple of sources are: Pulvermüller, Friedman. (2002). The neuroscience of language: on brain circuits of words and serial order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brook, Andrew and Kathleen Akins, eds. 2005. Cognition and the Brain: The philosophy and neuroscience movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dan On 26 Jul 2006, at 13:49, Tom Givon wrote: > > Neuroscience advances somewhat fitfully. For every announced new > discovery, there is sooner or later (more often sooner) a finding > pointing in another direction. This is because of the complexity & > distributiveness of most higher cognitive system. Another > instasnce, I suppose, of the three blind men describing the > elephant. So first, we need to be cautious about evaluating > 'radical new discoveries', particularly about language (which is > the most complex & distributive capacity supported by the brain). > > More to the point, the function-specific regions ("modules") of the > cortex ('periphery') are all mamalian evolutionary projections > from the *limbic-thalamic sub-cortex*. This is true of vision, > audition, motor control, somatic-sensory areas, attention, episodic > & semantic memories, etc. And for most of those 'higher' cortical > capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas remain part of the functional > system--in a a *distributive network* (see e.g. M-M. Mesulam's > "Principles of Behavioral & Cognitive Neurology", 2nd edition, > Oxford U. Press, 2000 as a major source on this. But there is a > vast lit. on the subject). > > Thus, because so many of the cognitive capacities that support > human language are the outgrowth of (functionally amenable) pre- > linguistic capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas are implicated in > almost all brain-activity related to language processing. And the > pre-human primate brain is so close to ours in its general > architecture, there's no reason to assume that the same core- > periphery relation doesn't apply there. > > So if at one time research implicates a cortical area > ('periphery') and at another a sub-cortical one ('core') in > executing the same function, be it linguistic or pre-linguistic, it > is because* both* are implicated. Keep on truckin'. TG > > ======================= ********************* Daniel L. Everett Outgoing (as of August 2006) Profesor of Phonetics and Phonology School of Languages, Linguistics, and Cultures University of Manchester Manchester, UK M13 9PL http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/DE/DEHome.html ---------- Incoming Chairperson Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 phone: (309) 438-3604 fax: (309) 438-8038 From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Wed Jul 26 21:22:29 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:22:29 -0400 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? Message-ID: In a completely speculative vein, I wonder whether differences in stimulability between monkey and human cortical versus limbic areas (re vocal communication) are due to stereotypicality/innateness in the responses elicited. Our more linguistically oriented vocalizations are largely learned and often highly context dependent- would this not be far less likely to be the case for most of the limbically motivated vocalizations, both in man and monkey? Is it not also true that monkey and ape brains are to some extent both less lateralized and interconnected via corpus callosum etc.? AND also true that limbically motivated vocalizations in humans, given our lateralization, are more likely to be organized via the RIGHT hemisphere statistically? One might also notice that my thoughts here exhibit perhaps less interconnection than they should before committing them to the electronic sea. :-) Now I have heard it said (though not remembering where from...) that ape lateralization is the reverse of ours statistically. Any of you heard that as well? IF so then a) the cortical areas in monkey being compared to the corresponding homologous human ones should be on the opposite side of the head. It would also be interesting to know whether cortical versus limbic stimulation of the human right hemispheric Broca/Wernicke area homologues elicits the same responses as those done on the left side. b) Even for the right hemisphere some vocalizations are linguistic (epithets, for instance), while others are more purely continuum-type interjections (the ones that are hard to write in a consistent form), perhaps also ideophones (still linguistic but outside lexicon proper for many students), pragmatic modulation of intonation, etc. Is there a cortex versus lower center hierarchy for these different forms (hmmm)?? Parallel, but opposite symmetry, evolution isn't all that uncommon in biology. Our reptilian ancestors (with apologies to those of you reading many might still consider reptilian in demeanor...) had TWO bilateral aortas and vena cavas (my Latin is failing me here). This symmetry was broken in birds and mammals respectively- but birds made the opposite choice. Thus their hearts are oriented opposite to ours. Brain lateralization may have had similar choice in anlagen/raw materials. Functionalists, more than other species of linguist, should be painfully aware that comparisons can be forced when categories are not so clearly identical, have fuzzy boundaries, etc. Symmetry is an issue that needs to be addressed- the recent discussion about 'time reversal' showed us that- keeping in mind that symmetry breaking can create differences leading to somewhat false homology. One last point- why is it I write so much better than I speak in public?- aaaarrrrgh! Jess Tauber From cc at cds-web.net Wed Jul 26 22:03:00 2006 From: cc at cds-web.net (cc at cds-web.net) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:03:00 -0700 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <44C7AB19.60502@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Strictly speaking, present-day monkeys are not "pre-human primates". They are the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor with humans, as indeed are we. This type of short-hand can be seriously misleading. cheers, chris Quoting Tom Givon : > > Neuroscience advances somewhat fitfully. For every announced new > discovery, there is sooner or later (more often sooner) a finding > pointing in another direction. This is because of the complexity & > distributiveness of most higher cognitive system. Another instasnce, I > suppose, of the three blind men describing the elephant. So first, we > need to be cautious about evaluating 'radical new discoveries', > particularly about language (which is the most complex & distributive > capacity supported by the brain). > > More to the point, the function-specific regions ("modules") of the > cortex ('periphery') are all mamalian evolutionary projections from > the *limbic-thalamic sub-cortex*. This is true of vision, audition, > motor control, somatic-sensory areas, attention, episodic & semantic > memories, etc. And for most of those 'higher' cortical capacities, the > limbic-thalamic areas remain part of the functional system--in a a > *distributive network* (see e.g. M-M. Mesulam's "Principles of > Behavioral & Cognitive Neurology", 2nd edition, Oxford U. Press, 2000 > as a major source on this. But there is a vast lit. on the subject). > > Thus, because so many of the cognitive capacities that support human > language are the outgrowth of (functionally amenable) pre-linguistic > capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas are implicated in almost all > brain-activity related to language processing. And the pre-human > primate brain is so close to ours in its general architecture, there's > no reason to assume that the same core-periphery relation doesn't apply > there. > > So if at one time research implicates a cortical area ('periphery') > and at another a sub-cortical one ('core') in executing the same > function, be it linguistic or pre-linguistic, it is because* both* are > implicated. Keep on truckin'. TG > > ======================= > > Mark P. Line wrote: > >> jess tauber wrote: >> >>> Study hints language skills came early in >>> primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc >>> >>> I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) >>> brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? >>> >> >> I think this study is important precisely because it had been hypothesized >> that monkey vocalization does not involve the cortex. This rather >> seriously overgeneralized hypothesis came about because experiments >> (starting in the 1970's, I think) showed that vocalization was elicited by >> limbic but not by cortical stimulation. >> >> Apart from the obvious ramifications for our understanding of the >> phylogeny of primate communication, the study also suggests that the >> reason for those stimulation results in monkeys may be due to limbic >> control of vocalization even if there is cortical involvement in the >> actual behavior: limbic stimulation causes vocalization because it >> provides the control stimulus, while cortical stimulation does nothing >> because the limbic signal is absent. Note that monkeys don't want to >> vocalize willy-nilly except for good reason (since there might be an >> undetected predator within earshot), and that there would be solid >> inhibitory pathways preventing vocalization if only Broca is stimulated >> without the limbic input. >> >> Humans will have evolved past this limbic control -- most communication is >> consciously intended and neocortically controlled. (There's an obvious >> joke about throwbacks at a recent coffee klatsch.) >> >> I'm surprised that no such study was done before now and that the >> limbic-only hypothesis for monkey vocalization remained unfalsified until >> now, but I guess I'll take their word for it. >> >> -- Mark >> >> Mark P. Line >> Polymathix >> San Antonio, TX >> From amnfn at well.com Thu Jul 27 09:23:15 2006 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 02:23:15 -0700 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <1941236.1153948950247.JavaMail.root@elwamui-mouette.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: Jess Tauber wrote: > Now I have heard it said >(though not remembering where from...) that ape lateralization is the >reverse of ours statistically. Any of you heard that as well? According to TOUCHING FOR KNOWING, edited by Hatwell. Streri and Gentaz (John Benjamins 2003.229) "both Old World and New World monkeys display a left hand preference to perform [tactile tasks of identifying objects they cannot see], while chimpanzees tend to use predominantly the right hand." Right handed humans tend to favor the left hand for these types of tasks. --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Thu Jul 27 19:40:31 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:40:31 -0400 Subject: Voice and Bybeean Relevance Message-ID: Yahgan voice prefixes include a form which has a circumstantial meaning. In the Bridges dictionary of the language there are examples where two of these circumstantials occur in sequence, with or without intervening causative, permissive, etc. Based on the definitions provided in the text it would appear that there is a semantic differentiation when this sequencing occurs. The leftmost instance seems to encode spatiotemporal notions, while the second (I've not yet found three in a row) encodes more mass/energy specifying ones (instruments, materials needed to accomplish a task, etc.). Am I right in assuming that there is a cline here from more peripheral/distal/external circumstantial encoding further from the root and more central/proximal/internal closer? And that this fits expectations from work by Joan Bybee and others re her 'relevance' theory? Scope? Yahgan has many typological features of a right headed language, and the prefixed strings of voice marking morphemes appear to consistently be read from right to left. Does this also jibe with the above? Curiously, TAM suffixes would be mirror image since more grammaticalized senses are also further from the root, fitting with the relevance ideal. Further, I've noted that many grammaticalized morphemes have an opposition of meaning depending on whether they appear prefixally or suffixally. Since Yahgan is a serializing language this makes sense from a before/after POV. The language also has a relatively unproductive reversative morpheme. Based on the few examples I have so far, this morpheme, when incorporated into a grammaticalized form, allows it to be utilized without the usual positional reversal of meaning (a kind of double reversal, one positional/syntactic, the other morphological). This would be interesting enough by itself, but there exist a small number of lexemes that may in fact have been created out of the grammaticalized forms (such as ta:gu: 'give', where the grammaticalized form doubling as a causative is -tu:-, and the reversative is -a:k-). I'd been under the impression that -tu:- was itself originally ta:gu:, but now I'm not so sure, and it may be that gram strings have lexicalized here. How common is this sort of thing? How many languages do you know of that have such a reversative? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Jul 5 15:13:25 2006 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 08:13:25 -0700 Subject: Aymara/cog.scie article Message-ID: Dear Eve & Rafael, That was a terrific article. Especially the quantified evidence on gesture, which gets us out of the circularity of citing purely linguistic evidence as 'proof' of cognition. The competing cognitive patterns discussion (static vision vs. dynamic motion) was right on too. Much in cross-language typological variation has to do with a range of possible patterns that languages can exploit, all equally 'reasonable' and 'cognitively plausible'. Quite often, the very same language 'chooses' one pattern once historically, then on the next grammaticalization cycle 'chooses' another (e.g. French chose 'have' as the Perfect auxiliary earlier, but appears to be choosing 'come' now as the replacement pattern). Universals seem constrain the range of possible choices, but it is still a considerable range. I have one question about the final explanation as to why Aymara (rather than other languages) 'choses' the vision metaphor here. You invoke the fact that (a) Aymara has a marked evidential system, and (b) vision is at the top of the evidential hierarchy in Aymara. But--vision is at the top of the EV-hierarchy in ALL known evidential systems. So if your explanation holds, then ALL languages with marked EV-morphology (Turkish, etc.) ought to exhibit the same 'choice' of the vision-based metaphor for time as in Aymara. Or, at the very least (weaker but still meaningful correlation), ONLY languages with marked EV-morphology ought to exhibit this vision metaphor. Do you have any evidence that either of these are viable predictions? A related question: The fact trhat vision winds up at the top of the evidential hierarchy in marked EV-morphology systems is a powerful non-accidental fact about the central/universal role of vision as the primary pereceptual modality in humans (indeed, in primates, mammals and many avians). This is documented, e.g. by the amount of cortical space dedicated to vision, and the number of distinct visual; processing centers (vis. Mishkin's and Kaas' old work on primates). So if vision is the primary source of knowledge in most mammalians, all primates, & all humans, how could Aymara's 'choice' of the vision metaphor be so unique? Thanks again for a terrific article. Best, TG From amnfn at well.com Wed Jul 5 16:23:58 2006 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 09:23:58 -0700 Subject: Aymara/cog.scie article In-Reply-To: <44ABD715.9010006@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: T. Givon wrote: > So if vision is the primary source of knowledge in most mammalians, all primates, & all humans.... Surely vision is not the primary source of knowledge in ALL humans. What about the blind? --Aya ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Wed Jul 5 20:28:08 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 16:28:08 -0400 Subject: Aymara/cog.scie article Message-ID: Actually, for most mammals I'd have to say that the sense of smell trumps vision for at least identificational purposes, though vision may be able to tell you of immediate if relatively undifferentiated threats (shadows, increasing aspects, etc.) or opportunities (prey status) in time and space. Maybe the various senses divvy up the WH/TH- panoply in various ways. Some are more intimate than others, more reliable than others, or provide more information than others. Sonar developments from hearing (in bats, whales, even shrews) reflect increased informational analysis, picking up the slack from poor seeing, allowing the possessor to dynamically process shifting scenes, determine locations and trajectories, identify objects by size, density, surface sound reflectivity, etc. In other species smell, combined with lateral motion, lets creatures spatially zero in on odorant sources- bigger sensor palettes allow for more simultaneous analysis of combinations for source identification (including its hormonal or health status). And while primate-style stereo vision is a great adaptation (letting one calculate range), many side-eyed animals do an approximation of it by bobbing their heads this way or that to get effective parallax. While we're at it lets not forget pit-viper infrared/heat sensing. I'm not sure that in creatures with such elaborations of other basic sensoria one can say definitively that vision is the topmost sense- or are we creating perhaps the species-ist equivalent of 'standard-average-quadruped' or prototype 'animal'? Side note- for many years birds were considered to have reduced or vestigial senses of smell- a couple of researchers actually challenged dogma a couple of years ago and found out they have excellent senses of smell. Sometimes it pays to actually look. So maybe its better to say that for primates vision is usually the primary sense, rather than for mammals generally. Birds too, generally (but vultures??). But given differences in intimacy with various senses (far external, surface, and internal) shouldn't we expect that increasing intimacy should associate with evidentiality? To say one knows because one saw or heard, versus being involved in oneself? Perhaps this can be lined up alongside the posture verb> aspect grammaticalization pathway? In Yahgan -mvni 'stand', -mu:tu: 'sit', -(w)i:a 'lie' involve increasing surface area contact and increasing temporal involvement in activity. Beyond -mvni is -a:gulu: 'jump, fly', with detachment from surface, discontinuation of referenced activity- and perhaps bird's eye view to survey all possibilities without actual commitment to any particular one? -mvni 'stand' gives a better visual vantage than either -mu:tu: 'sit' or -(w)i:a 'lie'. As surface contact increases for the posturer, so does intimacy, so one would expect greater reliance on touch, taste, smell, etc. One would hope for greater familiarity with the increased contact and intimacy- so perhaps what 'seeing' does for you isn't so much greater surety of information content absolutely, but more for new or unexpected information, matters arising? And while I can't say that there is any real etymological evidence for the following, it is somewhat interesting from the above perspective: in Yahgan -mvni 'stand' is formally similar to -min-, the visual evidential, and -mu:tu: (reduced form -muhr) bears resemblance to -mush-, the hearsay evidential (reduced from mvra 'hear'). Less resemblant perhaps is the pair -(w)i:a 'lie' and i:lina 'touch, sense'- though the latter isn't used so far as I know as a tactile evidential, if such a thing exists. Similarly -a:gulu: 'fly' and alagvn- 'wait and see/watch, but not interfere'? And hvshama 'smell something' versus hamasha 'not see clearly'? Pattern pressure? It would be very interesting to know whether such pattern parallelisms, however murky themselves, exist in other languages. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Sat Jul 8 10:53:27 2006 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 12:53:27 +0200 Subject: Swedish Association for Language and Cognition Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, On June 16 2006, The Swedish Association for Language and Cognition (SALC) was formed at an international conference at Ume? University involving mostly linguists, but also psychologists and cognitive scientists working on a variety of topics and utilising different methodologies. The major goal of the association is to promote the study of the relationship between language and cognition, both in Sweden and internationally. This involves any type of research in which language is not treated in isolation (e.g. as a "module"), but both as based on structures and processes of general cognition (e.g. perception, memory and reasoning) and social cognition (e.g. joint attention and imitation), and as affecting such structures and processes. The association is intended to be a forum for cooperation and exchange of ideas between disciplines, fields of study and theoretical frameworks. In terms of disciplines, the association is intended to bring together not only linguists (at both Linguistics and Modern Language departments), but also psychologists, cognitive scientists, semioticians and philosophers with an interest in the language-cognition nexus. The relationship between language and cognition is central within various fields of study, such as semantic analysis, discourse analysis, grammar, pragmatics, semiotics, linguistic typology, language development, language evolution, language change, gesture studies, consciousness studies and linguistic relativity. Members of the association working in these fields use various theoretical frameworks such as cognitive semantics, functional semantics, conceptual semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, relevance theory, blending theory and discourse representation theory. There is much to gain by enhancing communication between researchers within such different frameworks, who are all interested in the same fields of study, and in the same overarching question "How does language relate to cognition"? While the nature of the research to be supported by SALC is primarily theoretical, in the sense that is aims at a better understanding of the relationship between language and cognition, such research is also of direct relevance for various more applied fields such as language impairment, advertising and language technology. Finally, SALC has already entered discussions with the UK Association for Cognitive Linguistics for launching a common journal Language and Cognition, to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2007. The Board of SALC is also conducting discussions with prominent researchers in Denmark, Norway and Finland for the establishment of a Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition, or some other form of "umbrella" organization in order to consolidate research in language and cognition even further. We invite all researchers, within Sweden and abroad, who wish to contribute to the goal of the newly established association to join as members! This can achieved by sending an email to the Secretary of SALC, Ulf Magnusson at mag.nusson at bredband.net. A temporary homesite for SALC, with the goals, constitution and governing board of the association is available at: http://project.sol.lu.se/sedsu/salc.html Please spread the information to others who may be concerned. Sincere regards, Jordan Zlatev, President of SALC Ulf Magnusson, Secretary SALC *************************************************** 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 nstern at ccny.cuny.edu Mon Jul 10 17:50:12 2006 From: nstern at ccny.cuny.edu (Nancy Stern) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:50:12 -0400 Subject: Columbia School Linguistics Conference Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS 9th International Columbia School Conference on the Interaction of Linguistic Form and Meaning with Human Behavior February 18-19, 2007 The City College of New York New York, New York Invited speakers: Yishai Tobin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) Elizabeth Traugott (Stanford University) Special session: Functional linguistics in language education Papers are invited on any aspect of linguistic analysis in which the postulation and testing of hypotheses about meaningful signals plays a central role in explaining the distribution of linguistic forms. A special session will be devoted to functional linguistics in language education. The Columbia School is a group of linguists developing the theoretical framework originally established by the late William Diver. Language is seen as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its users. Grammatical analyses account for the distribution of linguistic forms as an interaction between hypothesized linguistic meanings and contextual, pragmatic and functional factors such as inference, ease of processing, and iconicity. Phonological analyses explain the syntagmatic and paradigmatic distribution of phonological units within signals, also drawing on both communicative function and human physiological and psychological characteristics. Abstracts should be sent as an email attachment to nstern at ccny.cuny.edu, following these guidelines: *In the body of the email, please include: (1) Author name(s) and affiliation(s); (2) Title of the paper; (3) Email addresses and telephone numbers of all authors. *The abstract, containing only the title of the paper and the text of the abstract, should be sent as an attachment (RTF or Word) format. The abstract should be no more than 300 words, although references and/or data may be added to that limit. DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: 30 SEPTEMBER 2006 The language of the conference is English. Papers delivered in languages other than English will be considered. * * * * * * * * The support of The Columbia School Linguistic Society is gratefully acknowledged www.csling.org * * * * * * * * Selected Columbia School bibliography: Contini-Morava, Ellen, Robert S. Kirsner, and Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller (eds). 2005. Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Contini-Morava, Ellen, and Barbara Sussman Goldberg (eds). 1995. Meaning as Explanation: Advances in Linguistic Sign Theory. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Huffman, Alan. 1997. The Categories of Grammar: French lui and le. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffman, Alan. 2001. "The Linguistics of William Diver and the Columbia School." WORD 52:1, 29-68. Reid, Wallis. 1991. Verb and Noun Number in English: A Functional Explanation. London: Longman. Reid, Wallis, Ricardo Otheguy, and Nancy Stern (eds). 2002. Signal, Meaning, and Message: Perspectives on Sign-Based Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tobin, Yishai. 1997. Phonology as Human Behavior: Theoretical Implications and Clinical Applications. Durham, NC: Duke U Press. For more information, please contact Nancy Stern at nstern at ccny.cuny.edu From phdebrab at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jul 10 21:05:55 2006 From: phdebrab at yahoo.co.uk (Philippe De Brabanter) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:05:55 +0100 Subject: Commitment in linguistics: 2nd call for papers Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE under the auspices of the Linguistic Society of Belgium: ? THE NOTION OF COMMITMENT IN LINGUISTICS ? ? LA NOTION DE PRISE EN CHARGE EN LINGUISTIQUE ? January 11-13, 2007 / University of Antwerp (Belgium) Organizers : Patrick Dendale (Universiteit Antwerpen) Danielle Coltier (Universit? du Maine, Le Mans) Philippe De Brabanter (Universit? Paris 4-Sorbonne ? Institut Jean Nicod) Keynote Speakers Robyn CARSTON (University College London) Paul LAURENDEAU (York University, Toronto) + 2 others to be announced Abstract Deadline : August, 20 2006 The notion of commitment (Non-)Commitment ((non-)prise en charge in French) is a notion which is fairly often used in the analysis of certain types of linguistic phenomena (sometimes under the guise of other la-bels, such as ?assuming responsibility for? or ?endorsing? or ?performativity?) ? e.g. in the analysis of speech acts, of semantic categories such as modality, evidentiality and subjectiv-ity, of different forms of reported speech, and of certain tenses and moods. But it is hardly ever the subject of explicit investigation in its own right. Goal of the conference The aim of this conference is to bring together research which crucially draws on the notion of (non-)commitment in one or another way, in an attempt to achieve a better understanding of the nature and the extension of the notion itself. It welcomes theoretical and empirical con-tributions addressing the issue in its own right or in terms of its role in any relevant linguistic or conceptual phenomenon, using any kind of methodological approach, and coming from any kind of theoretical background. One section of the conference will be devoted to typological contributions, next to other sections dealing with grammatical or lexical markers or strategies of (non-)commitment in the Romance and Germanic languages. Theoretical problems pertaining to the notion The theoretical issues addressed in this conference can be summarized in terms of five central questions: A) To what does (non-)commitment apply? What are possible objects or (aspects of) ob-jects of (non-)commitment (elements of form, aspects or levels of meaning, illocution-ary force)? Is commitment entirely dependent on ?what is in the speaker?s mind? (the concepts and intentions a speaker has access to) or may one be committed to ?things that are in other people?s minds?? B) Who commits him/herself? Who is the agent of the commitment (which instance of the speaker)? This, which relates to the notion of ?polyphony? popularised by Oswald Ducrot, is especially important when several speakers/thinkers can be identified in an utterance, as in cases of reported speech or reported thought. C) When does (non-)commitment apply? Only at the moment of speech, or also at other times? D) What is the nature of (non-)commitment? Are there different forms or degrees of it? E) How is (non-)commitment taken? Under which conditions and by means of which forms, mechanisms or strategies is it signalled? Conference languages In view of the fact that the notion of (non-)commitment or (non-)prise en charge ((non )res?ponsibilit?) is quite manifestly present in the French linguistic tradition (especially in the af-termath of the work of Benveniste), more so than in the Anglo-American tradition, the present conference also explicitly aims to establish communication on the issue between these ?geo-graphical? research traditions. Therefore, the conference will feature presentations in French as well as in English. Deadline for abstract submissions is August 20, 2006 Format and evaluation of abstracts ? Abstracts will be refereed anonymously. ? Abstracts are to be submitted as an attachment in Word or Rich Text Format to an email sent to commitment2007 at ua.ac.be. Your abstract should be in French or in English (please use the language of the actual presentation). It should not exceed 500 words (references not included). Please include the title but do not mention the name of the author(s). Use Times Roman 12 and single spacing, and make sure to embed TrueType Fonts for special characters (cf. typological studies). ? The email accompanying the abstract should contain the title of the presentation (identical to the title indicated on the abstract in the attachment), the name of the author(s), and their full coordinates (affiliation, postal address, email address). ? Notification of acceptance/rejection: September 2006. Conference registration ? Registration fee: 80 Euro ? Special registration fees apply to members of the Linguistic Society of Belgium, please check the website (www.bkl-cbl.be) for details. Important dates Abstract deadline: August 20, 2006 Notification: September 2006 Conference dates: January 11-13, 2007, at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) Conference website: www.ua.ac.be/commitment For further information, please contact Patrick Dendale University of Antwerp Department of Linguistics Universiteitsplein 1 B-2610 Anvers-Wilrijk Belgium Email: patrick.dendale at ua.ac.be Web : webhost.ua.ac.be/dendale T?l : +32 3 820 28 13 Fax : +32 3 820 28 23 * * * * * UFR anglais-Paris4 1, rue Victor Cousin 75005 Paris Institut Jean Nicod 1bis, avenue de Lowendal 75007 Paris ___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html From m.norde at rug.nl Wed Jul 12 08:09:32 2006 From: m.norde at rug.nl (Muriel Norde) Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:09:32 +0200 Subject: PhD fellowship Groningen Netherlands Message-ID: **** apologies for cross-postings **** Institution/Organization: University of Groningen Department: Center for Language and Cognition Level: PhD Duties: Research Specialty Areas: Discourse Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics Description: One Ubbo Emmius PhD fellowship in Linguistics is available at the Center for Language and Cognition, Groningen for research in EITHER discourse analysis OR in language variation and language change. The Ubbo Emmius positions (all the PhD positions) are open only to foreign applicants. Dutch citizens are not eligible due to tax restrictions. See http://www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/clcg/phd-2006/ for more information, including an email address for applications. Web Address for Applications: http://www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/clcg/phd-2006/ Mailing Address for Applications: Attn: Ms Wyke van der Meer CLCG (Positions), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Postbus 716 Groningen NL 9700 AS Netherlands Applications are due by: 15-Sep-2006 Contact Information: Prof. John Nerbonne J.Nerbonne at rug.nl Phone:+31 50 363-5815 Fax:+31 50 363-6855 From oesten at ling.su.se Thu Jul 13 14:12:55 2006 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?iso-8859-1?Q?=D6sten_Dahl?=) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:12:55 +0200 Subject: "flag" for case/adposition In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In Russian, prepositions can be doubled in a way that looks like incipient case agreement. This shows up above all in genres like folklore, but here is a beautiful example I just found on the Internet: "...u kollegi u nashego u Andreja Shevchenko byla klassnaja citata..." at colleague.GEN at our.GEN at Andrej.GEN Shevchenko.GEN be.PRET.F.SG first-class quotation 'our colleague A.S. had a first-class quotation' - ?sten Dahl > -----Original Message----- > From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] > On Behalf Of nigel Vincent > Sent: den 13 juli 2006 16:07 > To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG > Subject: Re: "flag" for case/adposition > > Just a quick query re Martin's endorsement of Zwicky's observation that > "Everything you can do with adpositions you can do with case > inflections, and vice versa." Might suffixaufnahme or case agreement be > an instance of something you can do with case but not with an > adposition? What too about case attraction (arguably a kind of case > agreement - cf a paper by Hans Vogt many years ago)? > Nigel From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Jul 13 15:48:18 2006 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:48:18 +0200 Subject: "flag" for case/adposition / Functeme In-Reply-To: <000a01c6a686$6fd4e6d0$50abed82@win.su.se> Message-ID: (a) Dear ?sten, many thanks for this nice example. One additional question: Doesn't the Russian phrase you quote represent an appositional chain [each of the terms kolleg, nashij, and Andrej Shevchenko have strong referential properties]? >In Russian, prepositions can be doubled in a way that looks like incipient >case agreement. This shows up above all in genres like folklore, but here is >a beautiful example I just found on the Internet: > >"...u kollegi u nashego u Andreja Shevchenko byla klassnaja citata..." >at colleague.GEN at our.GEN at Andrej.GEN Shevchenko.GEN be.PRET.F.SG >first-class quotation >'our colleague A.S. had a first-class quotation' > (b) Dear Marcel, > A question: Relational nouns (or auxiliary nouns, as I have called > them), which inflect for person plus case and/or are themselves > governed by adpositions, assume relational functions similar to case > and adpositions in (among others) Turkic and Semitic languages. Which > of the terms discussed are intended to cover them? *If* I understand you correctly, you refer to constuctions like the following Tyvan example: ot ?st?-n-den fire top-*3SG:POSS-ABL 'from the top of the fire' I have glossed -n- as *3SG:POSS just because it merely is a diachronic interpretation (hope that I have got this right!). According to my approach, I would interpret ot ?st?-n- in terms of an appositional structure [unspecific possessive construction or so, if you like] (fire *its=top), which is then case-marked by ABL -den. The marker -den (the relational echo) would be motivated by the appropriate verb (e.g. '[ashes] [fell from] [top of the fire]'. (c) Dear Claude, > I coin FUNCTEME in the following way: the suffix -eme, in the > terminology of linguistics as well as in that of other sciences, > regularly refers to "a unit (often the smallest one) of what the root > says" (cf. phoneme, toneme, sememe, etc.). The root, in funct-eme, > says that the unit in question merely indicates the function of > the element (mostly a noun or noun phrase) that it governs: Engl. for > in for my friend indicates that my friend is the benefactive > complement of the predicate. It is obvious that prepositions like for > also have a meaning (and this is the main reason why case was > originally used by Fillmore 1968 in a semantic acception), but > functeme strictly refers to the syntactic role of relators. Thus, > functeme precisely says what relators are actually from the > morphological and syntactic point(s) of view: they are units of > function marking. You say: "The 'unit (...) indicates the function of the element (...) that it governs". Admittedly, I have some problems in understanding this phrase: Maybe that e.g. prepostions govern their NP/nouns (personally, I do not think so, rather, I believe that it is the cluster {verb+preposition} that governs the NP/noun). But let's take an example with case marking: amic-us flor-em videt 'The friend sees the flower'. Can we really say, that -us *itself* 'governs' the referent 'friend', and -em the referent 'flower'? Isn't it the verb videt that governs the distribution of case markers (> relational echos, in my terms)? Or did I get you wrong? Best wishes, Wolfgang ---- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze Institut fuer Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 Muenchen Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) Tel.: ++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 John at research.haifa.ac.il Fri Jul 14 07:23:40 2006 From: John at research.haifa.ac.il (John at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:23:40 +0300 Subject: Book on language and national identity Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, John Benjamins has just released my new book, entitled `Language, Religion, and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East: A historical study.' I'm attaching the flyer for it. John Myhill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From comrie at eva.mpg.de Sat Jul 15 15:32:18 2006 From: comrie at eva.mpg.de (Bernard Comrie) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:32:18 +0200 Subject: MPI-EVA Leipzig: Position available Message-ID: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Announcement of Vacancy The Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig has a vacancy for a Senior Researcher in the areas of language history and prehistory, linguistic typology, and description of little studied and endangered languages. The five-year non-renewable position is available from 01 January 2007; a later starting date may be negotiable. Prerequisites for an application are a PhD and publications in one of the above mentioned areas. The salary is according to the German TV?D. The Max Planck Society is concerned to employ more disabled people; applications from disabled people are explicitly sought. The Max Planck Society wishes to increase the proportion of women in areas in which they are underrepresented; women are therefore explicitly encouraged to apply. Applicants are requested to send their complete dossier (including curriculum vitae, description of research interests, two letters of recommendation, and a piece of written work on one of the relevant topics) no later than 30 September 2006 to: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Personnel Department Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie Code word: Scientist Dept Linguistics Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig, Germany Please address questions to Bernard Comrie . Information on the institute is available at http://www.eva.mpg.de/. -- [I am currently 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/ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Germany tel. +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 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 language at sprynet.com Sat Jul 15 20:14:18 2006 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:14:18 -0400 Subject: Book on language and national identity Message-ID: Thanks for letting us know about your book, John. At a time when no theme or digression in our field can be too minor or obscure, your work sounds remarkably brave and ambitious since it deals with a truly primary question not only of linguistics but of history, politics, and culture. Unfortunately I did not receive your attachment about the book (& perhaps others also failed to receive it), since i believe i'm correct in stating that news and discussion groups like FUNKNET do not permit attachments. However, i went to the J. Benjamins site at: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=DAPSAC%2021 and found what is likely to be similar to what you meant to send: --------------------------------------------- Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East A historical study John Myhill University of Haifa Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21 2006. ix, 300 pp. Hardbound 90 272 2711 X / USD 138.00 / EUR 115.00 This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. Nationalist movements aimed at ?unification?, based upon languages which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Table of contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1?26 Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate 27?70 Small languages and national liberation 71?117 Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism 119?176 Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe 177?227 Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East 229?276 Conclusion 277?281 Bibliography 283?293 Index 295?300 ?It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show for the first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It may be true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy". But it is not just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some languages are more obviously languages than others.? Peter Trudgill --------------------------------------------------- By all means let us know if there's anything further you would like to tell us about your book. very best! alex ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 3:23 AM Subject: [FUNKNET] Book on language and national identity > Dear Funknetters, > John Benjamins has just released my new book, entitled `Language, Religion, and > National Identity in Europe and the Middle East: A historical study.' I'm > attaching the flyer for it. > John Myhill > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University > From jleitao at ci.uc.pt Wed Jul 19 02:07:38 2006 From: jleitao at ci.uc.pt (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Leit=E3o?=) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:07:38 +0100 Subject: 2nd Cfp : The 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC'2007) Message-ID: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC'2007) Lagos (Algarve), Portugal hosted by University of Lisbon, Faculty of Sciences March 29 - 30, 2007 http://daarc2007.di.fc.ul.pt/ Anaphora is a central topic in the study of natural language and has long been the object of research in a wide range of disciplines such as theoretical, corpus and computational linguistics, philosophy of language, cognitive science, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology. On the other hand, the correct interpretation of anaphora has played an increasingly vital role in real-world natural language processing applications, including machine translation, automatic abstracting, information extraction and question answering. As a result, the processing of anaphora has become one of the most productive topics of multi- and inter-disciplinary research, and has enjoyed increased interest and attention in recent years. In this context, the Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquia (DAARC) have emerged as the major regular forum for presentation and discussion of the best research results in this area. Initiated in 1996 at Lancaster University and taken over in 2002 by the University of Lisbon, the DAARC series established itself as a specialised and competitive forum for the presentation of the latest results on anaphora processing, ranging from theoretical linguistic approaches through psycholinguistic and cognitive work to corpus studies and computational modelling. The sixth Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium (DAARC?2007) will take place in Lagos (Algarve), Portugal, in March 29-30, 2007. We would like to invite anyone currently researching in the areas of discourse anaphora and anaphor resolution, from any methodological perspective or framework, to submit a paper to DAARC'2007. The closing date for submission is October 16, 2006. Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 15, 2006. Final versions of selected papers to be included in the proceedings are expected by January 19, 2007. Submissions (extended abstracts) must be anonymous and at most 3 pages in length. For further details on the submission procedure, and other relevant info on the colloquium visit its website at: http://daarc2007.di.fc.ul.pt/ Program Committee: Mijail Alexandrov-Kabadjov, Univ Essex Mira Ariel, Tel Aviv Univ Sergey Avrutin, OTS Amit Bagga, Ask.com Patricio Martinez Barco, Univ Alicante Peter Bosch, Univ Osnabrueck Ant?nio Branco, Univ Lisbon Donna Byron, Ohio State Univ Francis Cornish, Univ Toulouse-Le Mirail Dan Cristea, Univ Iasi Robert Dale, Macquarie Univ Richard Evans, Univ Wolverhampton Martin Everaert, OTS Lyn Frazier, MIT Claire Gardent, CNRS/Loria Rafael Mu?oz Guillena, Univ Alicante Jeanette Gundel, Univ Minnesota Sanda Harabagiu, Univ Texas at Dallas Lars Hellan, Norwegian Univ of Science and Technology Erhard Hinrichs, Univ Tuebingen Graeme Hirst, Univ Toronto Yan Huang, Univ Reading Andrew Kehler, Univ California San Diego Andrej Kibrik, Russian Academy of Sciences Emiel Krahmer, Tilburg Univ Shalom Lappin, King's College Tony McEnery, Lancaster Univ Ruslan Mitkov, Univ Wolverhampton Jill Nickerson, Ab Initio Software Corp Constantin Orasan, Univ. Wolverhampton Maria Mercedes Pi?ango, Yale Univ Georgiana Puscasu, Univ Wolverhampton Costanza Navarretta, CST Massimo Poesio, Univ Essex Eric Reuland, OTS Jeffrey Runner, Univ of Rochester Antonio Fernandez Rodriguez, Univ Alacant Tony Sanford, Glasgow Univ Fr?d?rique Segond, Xerox Research Centre Europe Roland Stuckardt, Univ Frankfurt am Main Joel Tetreault, Univ. Rochester Renata Vieira, Unisinos Organisers: Antonio Branco, Univ Lisbon Tony McEnery, Lancaster Univ Ruslan Mitkov, Univ Wolverhampton F?tima Silva, Univ Oporto From Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl Wed Jul 19 10:17:41 2006 From: Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl (Amiridze, Nino) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 12:17:41 +0200 Subject: call for abstracts Message-ID: [Apologies for multiple postings] ********************************************************************* * Call for Participation * * * * FILLERS IN GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE * * * * Panel Proposed at the 10th International Pragmatics Conference * * 9-13 July 2007, Goeteborg, Sweden * * * ********************************************************************* http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nino.Amiridze/personal/organization/fillers.html SCOPE =========== We would like to invite researchers interested in the role of fillers in grammar and discourse to submit abstracts for participation in a panel proposed for the 10th International Pragmatics Conference. Contributions studying various types of fillers, their morphophonology, morphosyntax, pragmatics and/or diachronic development in a particular language or across a sample of languages are welcome. We would also be interested to have contributions from psycholinguists working on fillers in language acquisition and from neurolinguists who are interested in the use of repair strategies in lexical access failure. DATES =========== If you are interested, please send one page abstract (with an optional additional page for data and references) by September 4, 2006 to Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl You will be informed on acceptance/rejection in the beginning of October, 2006. ORGANIZERS =========== Nino Amiridze, Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Hiroaki Kitano, Aichi University of Education (Japan) PUBLICATION =========== If after the meeting there will be interest in publishing either a proceedings or a special journal issue, then the organizers will take responsibility of finding a suitable forum and will act as editors. From John at research.haifa.ac.il Wed Jul 19 11:22:08 2006 From: John at research.haifa.ac.il (John at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:22:08 +0300 Subject: Book on language and nationalism Message-ID: It seems that the attachment I sent for my book didn't come through, so I'm adding this to my message. John Myhill Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East A historical study John Myhill University of Haifa Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21 2006. ix, 300 pp. Hardbound 90 272 2711 X / USD 138.00 / EUR 115.00 This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. Nationalist movements aimed at ?unification?, based upon languages which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Table of contents Acknowledgements ?vii Introduction ?1?26 Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate ?27?70 Small languages and national liberation ?71?117 Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism ?119?176 Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe ?177?227 Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East ?229?276 Conclusion ?277?281 Bibliography ?283?293 Index ?295?300 ?It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show for the first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It may be true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy". But it is not just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some languages are more obviously languages than others.? Peter Trudgill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From hartmut at ruc.dk Wed Jul 19 12:07:25 2006 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (hartmut at ruc.dk) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:07:25 +0200 Subject: Book on language and nationalism In-Reply-To: <1153308128.44be15e087f95@webmail.haifa.ac.il> Message-ID: Dear John, this sounds like an extremely interesting book and I will definitely read it. am just wondering about one sentence in your blurb, "while [nationalist movements] based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability". I do not know about Ukrainian, but I wonder if Czech and Norwegain can count as "relatively homogeneous spoken languages". As to Czech, I only remember Petr Sgalls 1986 paper, Sgall P. (1986), Czech: Crux Sociolinguistarum. In Rosenbaum and Sonne, eds. Pragmatics and Linguistics. Festschrift for Jacob L. Mey. Odense: Odense University Press and if I remember correctly, he strongly deconstructs the myth of homogeneity of Czech. As to Norwegian, it is amazing to see how a language with widely diverging dialects and, deliberately, no standardization of spoken language at all (listening to Norwegian tv for a few hours is a feast for the sociolinguist) can function so well - a living proof that language standardization is not a precondition for functioning of a language in the modern world. Written Norwegian with its twin normative peaks of nynorsk and bokm?l is a different matter again, but even in its written form Norwegian is not relatively homogeneous, not even within the two official "standards". I admit that for spoken Norwegian, mutual intelligibility of varieties is greater than for German (and, I guess, Arabic)but I think this has more to do with willingness to understand each other than with objective measures of diversity. But maybe I should read the book first! Hartmut Haberland Zitat von John at research.haifa.ac.il: | It seems that the attachment I sent for my book didn't come through, | so I'm adding this to my message. | John Myhill | | | Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East | A historical study | John Myhill | University of Haifa | | Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21 | | 2006. ix, 300 pp. | | Hardbound | 90 272 2711 X / USD 138.00 / EUR 115.00 | | This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is | associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications | of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. | Nationalist movements aimed at ?unification?, based upon languages which | vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and | Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while | those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, | Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and | international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more | important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups | which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than | universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and | English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the | Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, | the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom. | | Table of contents | | Acknowledgements ?vii | | Introduction ?1?26 | | Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate ?27?70 | | Small languages and national liberation ?71?117 | | Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism ?119?176 | | Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe ?177?227 | | Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East ?229?276 | | Conclusion ?277?281 | | Bibliography ?283?293 | | Index ?295?300 | | ?It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and | nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show for the | first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It may be | true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy". But it is not | just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some languages | are more obviously languages than others.? | | Peter Trudgill | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University | From segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr Thu Jul 20 15:17:36 2006 From: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr (Guillaume Segerer) Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:17:36 +0200 Subject: Call for papers - Workshop on the Typology of African Languages Message-ID: Workshop on the Typology of African Languages - Call for papers The Seventh International Conference of the Association of Linguistic Typology (ALT VII) will take place in Paris from the 24th to the 28th of September 2007. It will be organized by the ? F?d?ration Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques ? of the CNRS. The local organizing comittee includes St?phane Robert, Isabelle Bril, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest and Martine Vanhove. On Monday, September 24, and Tuesday morning, there will be a Workshop on the typology of African Languages organized by Guillaume Segerer and Bernard Caron. African languages show a great typological diversity as well as specific features that cross genetic boundaries and contrast with other languages of the world. Four sessions will be dedicated to papers on the following topics, with a State-of-the-Art paper followed by a case study for each of them. The four topics are (i) Information structure and prosody. Invited Speaker : Laura Downing (ii) A typology of linguistic change. Invited Speaker : Konstantin Pozdniakov (iii) Linguistic typology and genealogy. Invited Speaker : Zygmund Frajzyngier (iv) Areal typology in Africa. Invited Speaker : Tom G?ldemann Anyone wishing to present a paper is invited to send an abstract (max 400 words) before January 15, 2007 to the address below. Abstracts sent by e-mail should be included in the message (i.e. not appended as an attachment). The scientific committtee is composed of the Invited Speakers and the Organizers. The Proceedings of the workshop will be published. Address for workshop abstracts: Guillaume Segerer Workshop on African Languages LLACAN ? CNRS ? B.P. 8 7, rue Guy M?quet 94801 Villejuif Cedex France email: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr fax: ++33 1 49 58 38 00 Atelier sur la Typologie des Langues Africaines Appel ? communication Le Septi?me Congr?s de l?Association de Typologie Linguistique (ALT VII) se tiendra ? Paris du 24 au 28 Septembre 2007. Il sera organis? par la F?d?ration Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques du CNRS. Le comit? local d?organisation comprend St?phane Robert, Isabelle Bril, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest et Martine Vanhove. Les lundi 24 septembre et mardi 25 au matin, se d?roulera un atelier sur les langues africaines. Celles-ci pr?sentent une tr?s grande diversit? typologique ainsi que des traits uniques qui traversent les fronti?res g?n?tiques et contrastent de diverses mani?res avec les autres langues du monde. Quatre sessions seront d?di?es ? des communications portant sur les th?mes suivants, avec chacune un conf?rencier invit? : (i) Structure informationnelle et prosodie. Invit?e : Laura Downing (ii) Typologie du changement linguistique. Invit? : Konstantin Pozdniakov (iii)Typologie linguistique et g?n?alogie. Invit? : Zygmund Frajzyngier (iv)Typologie ar?ale en Afrique. Invit? : Tom G?ldemann Si vous d?sirez pr?senter une communication dans le cadre de cet atelier (de 20 minutes plus 10 minutes de discussion), vous devez envoyer un r?sum? (400 mots maximum) ? l?adresse ci-dessous avant le 15 janvier 2007. Les soumissions par couriel devront se faire dans le corps du message et non en fichier attach?. Le comit? scientifique est compos? des conf?renciers invit?s et des organisateurs. Les Actes de l?Atelier feront l?objet d?une publication. L?envoi des r?sum?s devra se faire ? l?adresse suivante : Guillaume Segerer Atelier Typologie des Langues Africaines LLACAN - CNRS Centre Georges Haudricourt B.P. 8 7, rue Guy M?quet 94801 Villejuif Cedex France email: segerer at vjf.cnrs.fr fax: 33 1 49 58 38 00 From jcclemen at unm.edu Sun Jul 23 21:25:13 2006 From: jcclemen at unm.edu (J. Clancy Clements) Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:25:13 -0600 Subject: New Book: Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall In-Reply-To: <44ABD715.9010006@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: The following review is written by Geoff Pullum. The full title of the book is: Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know About Language and Languages, by Mikael Parkvall (London and Ahungalla: Battlebridge) Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum on Language Log http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/ ?The book for your linguist lover I have come upon a book that would be the ideal birthday present for the linguist in your life who you feel already has everything, even a copy of Far From the Madding Gerund. (By the way, if you don't have a linguist in your life, you should definitely consider it. When a linguist kisses you, you stay kissed.) The book in question is quite obscure at the moment. The publisher is Battlebridge, located in London and Ahungalla. (Really, Ahungalla. It's in Sri Lanka.) As yet, it is only available via Amazon in the UK and Japan, so have some pounds sterling or yen ready), and your linguist lover will not know about it yet. It is called Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Language and Languages, and it's by Mikael Parkvall. The ISBN for the paperback that I have appears to be 9 781903 292044 but the ISBN cited by Amazon.co.uk is 1 903292 04 2 (and they're charging just ?15, so it surely can't be a hardback; I don't know why there would be two ISBNs). I can only describe the book as the realization of a fantasy idea I once had for a Linguist's Book of Lists (see chapter 22 of my book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax). It also has a touch of Guinness Book of World Linguistic Records about it. It is really cute, and absolutely stuffed with linguistic trivia and facts and dates and lists and ephemera and exotica (and a linguist joke or two among the fake endorsement quotes on the back). It's often funny, but also quite serious and useful. It will delight any member of our profession. Buy it, and check it out for yourself before you gift-wrap it for your linguist lover.? Clancy Clements From hdls at unm.edu Mon Jul 24 20:04:58 2006 From: hdls at unm.edu (High Desert Linguistics Society) Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:04:58 -0600 Subject: Second call - 7th High Desert International Linguistics Conference (HDLS-7) Nov. 9-11, 2006 Message-ID: The Seventh High Desert International Linguistics Conference (HDLS-7) will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, November 9-11, 2006. With invited keynote speakers: William Croft (University of New Mexico) Sally Rice (University of Alberta) Elizabeth Traugott (Stanford University) We invite you to submit proposals for 20-minute talks with 10-minute discussion sessions in any area of linguistics - especially those from a cognitive / functional linguistics perspective. Papers in the following areas are particularly welcome: Evolution of Language, Grammaticization, Metaphor & Metonymy, Native American Languages, Typology, Spanish and Languages of the American Southwest, Language Revitalization and Maintenance, Language Change & Variation, Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, Discourse Analysis, Signed Languages, Language Acquisition and Computational Linguistics. The deadline for submitting abstracts is Friday August 25th, 2006. Abstracts should be sent via email, as an attachment, to hdls at unm.edu Please include the title ''HDLS-7 abstract ''in the subject line. MS-Word format is preferred or RTF if necessary. The e-mail and attached abstract must include the following: 1. Author's Name(s) 2. Author's Affiliation(s) 3. Title of the Paper 4. E-mail address of the primary author The abstract should be no more than one page and no less than 11-point font. A second page is permitted for references and/or data. Only two submissions per author will be accepted and we will only consider submissions that conform to the above guidelines. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by September 1st, 2006. If you have any questions or need for further information please contact us at hdls at unm.edu with ''HDLS-7 Conference'' in the subject line. From comrie at eva.mpg.de Tue Jul 25 09:00:19 2006 From: comrie at eva.mpg.de (Bernard Comrie) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:00:19 +0200 Subject: Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus Message-ID: Call for papers Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus December 07-09, 2007 The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, will host a conference on the Languages of the Caucasus on December 07-09, 2007 (Fri-Sun). Those interested in participating are asked to submit abstracts for papers lasting 30 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion). Papers may relate to any language or languages spoken in the Caucasus. A particular emphasis of the conference will be areal linguistic features, so papers relating to this topic will be particularly welcome, although papers on all aspects of languages of the Caucasus are sought. The languages of the conference will be English and Russian, and abstracts may be submitted in either language. Abstracts should be sent to Bernard Comrie or Jasmine Dum-Tragut (for addresses, see below), preferably as e-mail attachments in pdf format; electronic versions in doc or rtf format must use Unicode for any special symbols; hard copies may also be sent by regular mail. Abstracts should not exceed two pages (including references and examples) and should include the title of the presentation, the name of the presenter(s), and coordinates for one presenter (e-mail, telephone, fax, postal address) to be used for correspondence with the conference organizers. The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 31, 2007. Those submitting abstracts will be informed of the program committee's decision by March 31, 2007. Some travel funding may be available for scholars from the Caucasus whose abstracts are accepted. Questions should be addressed to one of the conference organizers, preferably by e-mail to cauc2007 at eva.mpg.de: Bernard Comrie (Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany) or Jasmine Dum-Tragut (Department of Linguistics, University of Salzburg, Muehlbacherhofweg 6, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria). The web site of the conference is: http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/Caucasus_Conference_2007/ -- [I am currently 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/ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Germany tel. +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 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 phonosemantics at earthlink.net Tue Jul 25 21:33:58 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:33:58 -0400 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? Message-ID: Study hints language skills came early in primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From mark at polymathix.com Wed Jul 26 16:27:37 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:27:37 -0500 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <10391185.1153863239266.JavaMail.root@elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.n et> Message-ID: jess tauber wrote: > Study hints language skills came early in > primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc > > I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) > brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? I think this study is important precisely because it had been hypothesized that monkey vocalization does not involve the cortex. This rather seriously overgeneralized hypothesis came about because experiments (starting in the 1970's, I think) showed that vocalization was elicited by limbic but not by cortical stimulation. Apart from the obvious ramifications for our understanding of the phylogeny of primate communication, the study also suggests that the reason for those stimulation results in monkeys may be due to limbic control of vocalization even if there is cortical involvement in the actual behavior: limbic stimulation causes vocalization because it provides the control stimulus, while cortical stimulation does nothing because the limbic signal is absent. Note that monkeys don't want to vocalize willy-nilly except for good reason (since there might be an undetected predator within earshot), and that there would be solid inhibitory pathways preventing vocalization if only Broca is stimulated without the limbic input. Humans will have evolved past this limbic control -- most communication is consciously intended and neocortically controlled. (There's an obvious joke about throwbacks at a recent coffee klatsch.) I'm surprised that no such study was done before now and that the limbic-only hypothesis for monkey vocalization remained unfalsified until now, but I guess I'll take their word for it. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From tgivon at uoregon.edu Wed Jul 26 17:49:13 2006 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:49:13 -0700 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <1380.69.91.14.68.1153931257.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com> Message-ID: Neuroscience advances somewhat fitfully. For every announced new discovery, there is sooner or later (more often sooner) a finding pointing in another direction. This is because of the complexity & distributiveness of most higher cognitive system. Another instasnce, I suppose, of the three blind men describing the elephant. So first, we need to be cautious about evaluating 'radical new discoveries', particularly about language (which is the most complex & distributive capacity supported by the brain). More to the point, the function-specific regions ("modules") of the cortex ('periphery') are all mamalian evolutionary projections from the *limbic-thalamic sub-cortex*. This is true of vision, audition, motor control, somatic-sensory areas, attention, episodic & semantic memories, etc. And for most of those 'higher' cortical capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas remain part of the functional system--in a a *distributive network* (see e.g. M-M. Mesulam's "Principles of Behavioral & Cognitive Neurology", 2nd edition, Oxford U. Press, 2000 as a major source on this. But there is a vast lit. on the subject). Thus, because so many of the cognitive capacities that support human language are the outgrowth of (functionally amenable) pre-linguistic capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas are implicated in almost all brain-activity related to language processing. And the pre-human primate brain is so close to ours in its general architecture, there's no reason to assume that the same core-periphery relation doesn't apply there. So if at one time research implicates a cortical area ('periphery') and at another a sub-cortical one ('core') in executing the same function, be it linguistic or pre-linguistic, it is because* both* are implicated. Keep on truckin'. TG ======================= Mark P. Line wrote: >jess tauber wrote: > > >>Study hints language skills came early in >>primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc >> >>I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) >>brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? >> >> > >I think this study is important precisely because it had been hypothesized >that monkey vocalization does not involve the cortex. This rather >seriously overgeneralized hypothesis came about because experiments >(starting in the 1970's, I think) showed that vocalization was elicited by >limbic but not by cortical stimulation. > >Apart from the obvious ramifications for our understanding of the >phylogeny of primate communication, the study also suggests that the >reason for those stimulation results in monkeys may be due to limbic >control of vocalization even if there is cortical involvement in the >actual behavior: limbic stimulation causes vocalization because it >provides the control stimulus, while cortical stimulation does nothing >because the limbic signal is absent. Note that monkeys don't want to >vocalize willy-nilly except for good reason (since there might be an >undetected predator within earshot), and that there would be solid >inhibitory pathways preventing vocalization if only Broca is stimulated >without the limbic input. > >Humans will have evolved past this limbic control -- most communication is >consciously intended and neocortically controlled. (There's an obvious >joke about throwbacks at a recent coffee klatsch.) > >I'm surprised that no such study was done before now and that the >limbic-only hypothesis for monkey vocalization remained unfalsified until >now, but I guess I'll take their word for it. > >-- Mark > >Mark P. Line >Polymathix >San Antonio, TX > > From dlevere at ilstu.edu Wed Jul 26 18:04:52 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 14:04:52 -0400 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <44C7AB19.60502@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Tom's posting is a very useful one. Too many strange claims are floating about that require a degree of cortical localization. But any rigid specialization proposed is almost certainly premature at this point. A couple of sources are: Pulverm?ller, Friedman. (2002). The neuroscience of language: on brain circuits of words and serial order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brook, Andrew and Kathleen Akins, eds. 2005. Cognition and the Brain: The philosophy and neuroscience movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dan On 26 Jul 2006, at 13:49, Tom Givon wrote: > > Neuroscience advances somewhat fitfully. For every announced new > discovery, there is sooner or later (more often sooner) a finding > pointing in another direction. This is because of the complexity & > distributiveness of most higher cognitive system. Another > instasnce, I suppose, of the three blind men describing the > elephant. So first, we need to be cautious about evaluating > 'radical new discoveries', particularly about language (which is > the most complex & distributive capacity supported by the brain). > > More to the point, the function-specific regions ("modules") of the > cortex ('periphery') are all mamalian evolutionary projections > from the *limbic-thalamic sub-cortex*. This is true of vision, > audition, motor control, somatic-sensory areas, attention, episodic > & semantic memories, etc. And for most of those 'higher' cortical > capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas remain part of the functional > system--in a a *distributive network* (see e.g. M-M. Mesulam's > "Principles of Behavioral & Cognitive Neurology", 2nd edition, > Oxford U. Press, 2000 as a major source on this. But there is a > vast lit. on the subject). > > Thus, because so many of the cognitive capacities that support > human language are the outgrowth of (functionally amenable) pre- > linguistic capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas are implicated in > almost all brain-activity related to language processing. And the > pre-human primate brain is so close to ours in its general > architecture, there's no reason to assume that the same core- > periphery relation doesn't apply there. > > So if at one time research implicates a cortical area > ('periphery') and at another a sub-cortical one ('core') in > executing the same function, be it linguistic or pre-linguistic, it > is because* both* are implicated. Keep on truckin'. TG > > ======================= ********************* Daniel L. Everett Outgoing (as of August 2006) Profesor of Phonetics and Phonology School of Languages, Linguistics, and Cultures University of Manchester Manchester, UK M13 9PL http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/DE/DEHome.html ---------- Incoming Chairperson Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 phone: (309) 438-3604 fax: (309) 438-8038 From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Wed Jul 26 21:22:29 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:22:29 -0400 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? Message-ID: In a completely speculative vein, I wonder whether differences in stimulability between monkey and human cortical versus limbic areas (re vocal communication) are due to stereotypicality/innateness in the responses elicited. Our more linguistically oriented vocalizations are largely learned and often highly context dependent- would this not be far less likely to be the case for most of the limbically motivated vocalizations, both in man and monkey? Is it not also true that monkey and ape brains are to some extent both less lateralized and interconnected via corpus callosum etc.? AND also true that limbically motivated vocalizations in humans, given our lateralization, are more likely to be organized via the RIGHT hemisphere statistically? One might also notice that my thoughts here exhibit perhaps less interconnection than they should before committing them to the electronic sea. :-) Now I have heard it said (though not remembering where from...) that ape lateralization is the reverse of ours statistically. Any of you heard that as well? IF so then a) the cortical areas in monkey being compared to the corresponding homologous human ones should be on the opposite side of the head. It would also be interesting to know whether cortical versus limbic stimulation of the human right hemispheric Broca/Wernicke area homologues elicits the same responses as those done on the left side. b) Even for the right hemisphere some vocalizations are linguistic (epithets, for instance), while others are more purely continuum-type interjections (the ones that are hard to write in a consistent form), perhaps also ideophones (still linguistic but outside lexicon proper for many students), pragmatic modulation of intonation, etc. Is there a cortex versus lower center hierarchy for these different forms (hmmm)?? Parallel, but opposite symmetry, evolution isn't all that uncommon in biology. Our reptilian ancestors (with apologies to those of you reading many might still consider reptilian in demeanor...) had TWO bilateral aortas and vena cavas (my Latin is failing me here). This symmetry was broken in birds and mammals respectively- but birds made the opposite choice. Thus their hearts are oriented opposite to ours. Brain lateralization may have had similar choice in anlagen/raw materials. Functionalists, more than other species of linguist, should be painfully aware that comparisons can be forced when categories are not so clearly identical, have fuzzy boundaries, etc. Symmetry is an issue that needs to be addressed- the recent discussion about 'time reversal' showed us that- keeping in mind that symmetry breaking can create differences leading to somewhat false homology. One last point- why is it I write so much better than I speak in public?- aaaarrrrgh! Jess Tauber From cc at cds-web.net Wed Jul 26 22:03:00 2006 From: cc at cds-web.net (cc at cds-web.net) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:03:00 -0700 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <44C7AB19.60502@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Strictly speaking, present-day monkeys are not "pre-human primates". They are the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor with humans, as indeed are we. This type of short-hand can be seriously misleading. cheers, chris Quoting Tom Givon : > > Neuroscience advances somewhat fitfully. For every announced new > discovery, there is sooner or later (more often sooner) a finding > pointing in another direction. This is because of the complexity & > distributiveness of most higher cognitive system. Another instasnce, I > suppose, of the three blind men describing the elephant. So first, we > need to be cautious about evaluating 'radical new discoveries', > particularly about language (which is the most complex & distributive > capacity supported by the brain). > > More to the point, the function-specific regions ("modules") of the > cortex ('periphery') are all mamalian evolutionary projections from > the *limbic-thalamic sub-cortex*. This is true of vision, audition, > motor control, somatic-sensory areas, attention, episodic & semantic > memories, etc. And for most of those 'higher' cortical capacities, the > limbic-thalamic areas remain part of the functional system--in a a > *distributive network* (see e.g. M-M. Mesulam's "Principles of > Behavioral & Cognitive Neurology", 2nd edition, Oxford U. Press, 2000 > as a major source on this. But there is a vast lit. on the subject). > > Thus, because so many of the cognitive capacities that support human > language are the outgrowth of (functionally amenable) pre-linguistic > capacities, the limbic-thalamic areas are implicated in almost all > brain-activity related to language processing. And the pre-human > primate brain is so close to ours in its general architecture, there's > no reason to assume that the same core-periphery relation doesn't apply > there. > > So if at one time research implicates a cortical area ('periphery') > and at another a sub-cortical one ('core') in executing the same > function, be it linguistic or pre-linguistic, it is because* both* are > implicated. Keep on truckin'. TG > > ======================= > > Mark P. Line wrote: > >> jess tauber wrote: >> >>> Study hints language skills came early in >>> primates-http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060725/sc_nm/science_language_dc >>> >>> I remember being told that lower primates only utilize lower (limbic) >>> brain centers for vocal communication. So what does all this mean?? >>> >> >> I think this study is important precisely because it had been hypothesized >> that monkey vocalization does not involve the cortex. This rather >> seriously overgeneralized hypothesis came about because experiments >> (starting in the 1970's, I think) showed that vocalization was elicited by >> limbic but not by cortical stimulation. >> >> Apart from the obvious ramifications for our understanding of the >> phylogeny of primate communication, the study also suggests that the >> reason for those stimulation results in monkeys may be due to limbic >> control of vocalization even if there is cortical involvement in the >> actual behavior: limbic stimulation causes vocalization because it >> provides the control stimulus, while cortical stimulation does nothing >> because the limbic signal is absent. Note that monkeys don't want to >> vocalize willy-nilly except for good reason (since there might be an >> undetected predator within earshot), and that there would be solid >> inhibitory pathways preventing vocalization if only Broca is stimulated >> without the limbic input. >> >> Humans will have evolved past this limbic control -- most communication is >> consciously intended and neocortically controlled. (There's an obvious >> joke about throwbacks at a recent coffee klatsch.) >> >> I'm surprised that no such study was done before now and that the >> limbic-only hypothesis for monkey vocalization remained unfalsified until >> now, but I guess I'll take their word for it. >> >> -- Mark >> >> Mark P. Line >> Polymathix >> San Antonio, TX >> From amnfn at well.com Thu Jul 27 09:23:15 2006 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 02:23:15 -0700 Subject: Monkey Broca, Wernicke? In-Reply-To: <1941236.1153948950247.JavaMail.root@elwamui-mouette.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: Jess Tauber wrote: > Now I have heard it said >(though not remembering where from...) that ape lateralization is the >reverse of ours statistically. Any of you heard that as well? According to TOUCHING FOR KNOWING, edited by Hatwell. Streri and Gentaz (John Benjamins 2003.229) "both Old World and New World monkeys display a left hand preference to perform [tactile tasks of identifying objects they cannot see], while chimpanzees tend to use predominantly the right hand." Right handed humans tend to favor the left hand for these types of tasks. --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Thu Jul 27 19:40:31 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:40:31 -0400 Subject: Voice and Bybeean Relevance Message-ID: Yahgan voice prefixes include a form which has a circumstantial meaning. In the Bridges dictionary of the language there are examples where two of these circumstantials occur in sequence, with or without intervening causative, permissive, etc. Based on the definitions provided in the text it would appear that there is a semantic differentiation when this sequencing occurs. The leftmost instance seems to encode spatiotemporal notions, while the second (I've not yet found three in a row) encodes more mass/energy specifying ones (instruments, materials needed to accomplish a task, etc.). Am I right in assuming that there is a cline here from more peripheral/distal/external circumstantial encoding further from the root and more central/proximal/internal closer? And that this fits expectations from work by Joan Bybee and others re her 'relevance' theory? Scope? Yahgan has many typological features of a right headed language, and the prefixed strings of voice marking morphemes appear to consistently be read from right to left. Does this also jibe with the above? Curiously, TAM suffixes would be mirror image since more grammaticalized senses are also further from the root, fitting with the relevance ideal. Further, I've noted that many grammaticalized morphemes have an opposition of meaning depending on whether they appear prefixally or suffixally. Since Yahgan is a serializing language this makes sense from a before/after POV. The language also has a relatively unproductive reversative morpheme. Based on the few examples I have so far, this morpheme, when incorporated into a grammaticalized form, allows it to be utilized without the usual positional reversal of meaning (a kind of double reversal, one positional/syntactic, the other morphological). This would be interesting enough by itself, but there exist a small number of lexemes that may in fact have been created out of the grammaticalized forms (such as ta:gu: 'give', where the grammaticalized form doubling as a causative is -tu:-, and the reversative is -a:k-). I'd been under the impression that -tu:- was itself originally ta:gu:, but now I'm not so sure, and it may be that gram strings have lexicalized here. How common is this sort of thing? How many languages do you know of that have such a reversative? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net