From bergen at hawaii.edu Wed Oct 4 02:04:48 2006 From: bergen at hawaii.edu (Benjamin K Bergen) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 16:04:48 -1000 Subject: Job opening in Language Documentation and Conservation Message-ID: ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS IN LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION AND CONSERVATION. The Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position (position no. 83078) in Language Documentation and Conservation, to begin August 1, 2007, or as soon as possible thereafter, pending availability of position and funding. Minimum qualifications: Ph.D. in linguistics or related field. (Those currently pursuing a Ph.D. must provide evidence that all degree requirements will have been met by the date of hire). Applicants are expected to have practical fieldwork experience and a demonstrated commitment to the goals of language documentation and conservation, as well as a high-quality research record in these areas. Desirable qualifications: Prior knowledge of one or more Asian and/or Pacific languages would be an important asset, as would expertise in computational methods of data manipulation, storage, and dissemination. We are especially interested in candidates who are willing to participate fully in the departments many language documentation activities, and whose research and teaching interests allow them to interact with faculty and students in the department, in other departments, and within the community as well. Pay range: Commensurate with experience. To apply: Submit cover letter indicating how you satisfy the minimum and desirable qualifications, 3 letters of recommendation, a copy of your CV, copies of key, relevant publications. Application address: Chair, Department Personnel Committee, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Inquiries: Michael Forman, Chair, Department Personnel Committee, Department of Linguistics, 808-956-8602, linguist at hawaii.edu. Closing date: tentatively Dec-01-2006. The University of Hawai'i is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution. All qualified applicants will be considered, regardless of race, sex, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or status as disabled veteran or veteran of Vietnam era. +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ Benjamin K. Bergen Associate Professor Department of Linguistics University of Hawai`i, Manoa bergen at hawaii.edu http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ From giuliana.fiorentino at unimol.it Sat Oct 7 18:39:49 2006 From: giuliana.fiorentino at unimol.it (Giuliana Fiorentino) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 20:39:49 +0200 Subject: Symposium: Nouns Cross-linguistically Message-ID: The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany) and the University of Molise, (Italy), are jointly organizing a Symposium on Nouns Cross-linguistically to be held at Campobasso, University of Molise, June, 22-23, 2007. The focus of the Symposium is on the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of nouns, nominalizations and other strategies that are used by languages in order to 'name' things and events. Our aim is to adopt a broad and interdisciplinary approach to this topic. List of participants: a.. Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Nominalizations between verbs and nouns a.. Giuliana Fiorentino, University of Molise Nouns, nominalizations and complex NP between speech and writing: a syntactic approach a.. Livio Gaeta, University of Naples, Federico II Action nouns: at a cross-road of morphology, syntax and semantics a.. David Gil, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Nouns May Belong to Different Syntactic Categories in Different Languages a.. Martin Haspelmath, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Substantivizations cross-linguistically a.. John Hawkins, University of Cambridge Nouns and Noun Phrases: Grammatical Variation and Language processing a.. Kees Hengeveld, University of Amsterdam Non-prototypical noun phrases a.. Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, University of Stockholm Proper-name compounds: meanings and uses a.. Romano Lazzeroni, University of Pisa Title to be announced a.. Christian Lehmann, University of Erfurt Nominal Concepts a.. Andrej Malchukov, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Constraining nominalization: functional and structural factors in interaction a.. Johanna Mattissen, University of Cologne Morphological Complexity in Nouns a.. Frans Plank, University of Konstanz About nameworthiness a.. Jan Rijkhoff, University of Aarhus Directionality in the grammaticalization of noun modifiers a.. Frank Seifart, University of Bochum Shape-based noun classes in Miraña (North West Amazon) For further information, consult the following websites: http://serviziweb.unimol.it/pls/unimol/consultazione.mostra_pagina?id_pagina=2585 and soon: http://www.eva.mpg.de/english/events.htm Organizers: Bernard Comrie comrie at eva.mpg.de Giuliana Fiorentino giuliana.fiorentino at unimol.it From langconf at bu.edu Wed Oct 11 13:22:45 2006 From: langconf at bu.edu (bucld) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:22:45 -0400 Subject: BUCLD 31 Pre-Registration Reminder Message-ID: Dear Colleague, We would like to friendly remind you that the deadline for pre- registering for BUCLD 31 is on October 20 (Please disregard this message if you have already registered). The pre-registration information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/ BUCLD/prereg.htm The 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development will be held at Boston University, November 3-5, 2006. Our invited speakers are: Roberta Golinkoff, University of Delaware Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University "Breaking the Language Barrier: The View from the Radical Middle." Keynote address, Friday, November 3 at 8:00 pm Jürgen M. Meisel, University of Hamburg & University of Calgary “Multiple First Language Acquisition: A Case for Autonomous Syntactic Development in the Simultaneous Acquisition of More Than One Language.” Plenary address, Saturday, November 4 at 5:45 pm Mabel Rice, University of Kansas Helen Tager-Flusberg, Boston University Simon Fisher, University of Oxford Discussant: Gary Marcus, New York University “Future Directions in Search of Genes that Influence Language: Phenotypes, Molecules, Brains, and Growth.” Lunchtime symposium, Saturday, November 4 at 12:00 pm The Society for Language Development (SLD) will be holding its third annual symposium on Thursday, November 2, in conjunction with the BUCLD meeting. BUCLD 31 is offering a pre-registration option for this event. Onsite registration will also be available. The Symposium will be on "Learning Verbs." Speakers: Lila Gleitman, Cynthia Fisher,Adele Goldberg, and Dedre Gentner. More information on the SLD symposium can be found at: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/sld/symposium.html The pre-registration information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/prereg.htm The full conference schedule is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/schedule.htm More information about BUCLD is available at our website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD We look forward to seeing you at BUCLD 31. Sincerely, Heather Caunt-Nulton, Samantha Kulatilake, I-hao Woo BUCLD 31 Co-Organizers From melba at rice.edu Fri Oct 13 18:35:26 2006 From: melba at rice.edu (Melissa Bailar) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:35:26 -0500 Subject: Rice Humanities Research Center External Faculty Fellowships Message-ID: Rice University's Humanities Research Center will award up to four external faculty fellowships during the academic year 2007-2008. Fellows will be in residence at the Center for one semester, give a series of three lectures or teach one course, and participate in the Center's intellectual life. Both junior and senior faculty with appointments at universities other than Rice are eligible but must be at least three years beyond receipt of the PhD by the beginning of their fellowship term. Fellows are awarded a stipend ranging from 40K to 75K, depending on rank, and a moving allowance. Application Deadline: December 18, 2006 Application information is available at http://hrc.rice.edu. These fellowships are generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lynette S. Autrey Endowment. -- Melissa Bailar, PhD Project Coordinator Humanities Research Center MS-620 713-348-4227 From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Sun Oct 15 07:36:40 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 03:36:40 -0400 Subject: More parallels? Sub- and super-languages Message-ID: When "world" languages (as some have called them) are examined, we often see extra goodies they have cumulated (extra large vocabularies, perhaps more registers, genres, grammatical elaborations, and so on). Conversely, moribund endangered languages appear to have undergone opposite trends (lost vocabulary, reduced grammatical possibilities, etc.). Not surprisingly, speakers of endangered languages often find themselves absorbed other cultures- pressures created by living within those other cultures have led to the loss of content and structure in their languages. The 'world' languages, on the other hand, have benefitted from great expansion of speaker territory and material economies, often at the expense of weaker societies. Cheap labor seems often to derive from those whose languages are in trouble (at least in the country of residence, if not origin). I was led to think about this after reading today an article (Researchers Find Smallest Cellular Genome http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061012184647.htm) about research which suggests that an insect endosymbiotic bacterium is slowly losing its genes to the host and headed towards organelle status. Organelles are semi-independent structures within cells that do jobs the cells could not do alone, or as efficiently (such as making ATP, photosynthesis, breaking down waste products, and so on). Research has shown that such structures for the most part evolved from free-living organisms that had their own full-sized genomes. In some cases organelles have been reduced to almost no genetic material left. What they can't make on their own they get from the host- usually chemical 'finished goods' of higher complexity. So the bacteria end up running the mills, sweeping the floors, and other menial labor, losing their own 'language' and 'culture' in the process, ending up dependent on the larger host 'language' and 'culture', spoken in the big shining city of the nucleus, which maintains control of most of the economic decisions and resources. At the same time full integration is prevented- often the organelles have their own 'accent' (variants in the DNA coding paradigm). Seems like a bit of ghettoization going on. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr Sun Oct 15 08:11:17 2006 From: maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr (Maarten Lemmens) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:11:17 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers: CogLing conference, France Message-ID: ==== Apologies for cross-posting ==== SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS (version française ci-dessous) Second International conference of the Association Française de Linguistique Cognitive (AFLiCo), with general sessions and special thematic sessions on "Typology, Gesture, and Sign". University of Lille 3, Lille, France 10-12 May 2007 http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ ****** PLEASE NOTE: - the conference is not restricted to the three themes, but welcomes more general topics as well (see below) - addition of "cognitive phonology" and "cognitive language pedagogy" for general sessions - provisional conference structure available on conference website ***** PLENARY SPEAKERS : William CROFT (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque) Christian CUXAC (Univ. Paris 8) Susan GOLDIN-MEADOW (Univ. de Chicago) Colette GRINEVALD (Univ. Lyon 2) Scott LIDDELL (Univ. of San Diego) Irit MEIR (Univ de Tel-Aviv) Christian PLANTIN (Univ. Lyon 2) Dan SLOBIN (Univ. de Californie, Berkeley) Eve SWEETSER (Univ. of California, Berkeley) Sherman WILCOX (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque) OBJECTIVES The conference aims at bringing together and strengthening the network of cognitive linguistics working in France and abroad, to continue the network of discussion and collaboration set in motion by the inaugural conference of AFLiCo ("From Grammar to Mind"), held in Bordeaux, May 2007. This second conference will offer a forum both thematic sessions and general sessions. THEMATIC SESSIONS The conference will devote special attention to three major themes of research, viz. typology, gesture and sign language. The last topic ties in with the LSF Interpreter training at the University of Lille. These three themes all pertain to the relationship between language and cognition. The typological and comparative studies tie in with the question of universal grammar and linguistic relativity. Sign languages are essential to better understand the cognitive dimensions of language. Cognitive Linguistics offers a well-suited model to account for iconicity, metaphor and metonymy that are central to the study of the sign languages of the world. The study of co-verbal gestures, which straddle the boarder between the verbal and the non-verbal offer another window into the mind, revealing cognitive strategies which may or may not be identical to those that one finds in language. The study of gesture, still relatively young, finds a natural place within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. GENERAL SESSIONS However, the conference will not be limited to these three domains of research. The organisers encourage researchers to submit proposals within other areas of cognitive linguistics, to be presented in the general parallel sessions. In addition to the three thematic areas, these topics include (but are not limited to): - interaction between lexicon and syntax - corpus linguistics and cognitive linguistics - grammaticalization and diachronic linguistics - semantic – pragmatic interface - linguistic relativism - iconicity - cognitive phonology - cognitive applications in language pedagadogy In line with one of the main goals of AFLiCo, we welcome papers elaborating the affinities between cognitive linguistics and Culioli’s "théorie des opérations énoniciatives". The organisers further encourage young researchers to submit an abstract. NOTE: for organisational reasons, the thematic sessions on sign languages will be grouped on the first day of the conference (10 May). SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Abstracts will be submitted to a double, blind review. They should be fully anonymous and not exceed 500 words (references excluded). To be sent via email as attachment (MS-WORD doc or rtf, OpenOffice, PDF) to: aflico at univ-lille3.fr Please put in the subject line: "abstract AFLICO" In the body of the mail, please specify: - author(s) - title - affiliation of author(s) - presentation or poster - thematic sessions (typology, gesture, sign) or general session - 3 - 5 keywords to help organisers arrange presentations thematically. - need for sign language interpreter IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline: 15 Nov., 2006 Notification of acceptance: 15 Jan., 2007 Satellite event (workshop "Space & Language"): May 9, 2007 Conference dates : May 10-12, 2007 (TBC : registration & welcome reception : May 9, from 17h00) REGISTRATION Details about the registration procedure and registration deadlines will be posted on the conference website as soon as they become available. There will be reduced registration fee for AFLiCo members and students. CONFERENCE LANGUAGES English (preferred), French, LSF (please notify the organisers in advance) Conference website http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ SATELLITE EVENT Prior to the conference (May 9), there will be a thematic workshop on "Space and Language in typological perspective", with as speakers, Dan Slobin (Univ. of California), Maya Hickmann (Univ. Paris 5), Catherine Fuchs (CNRS), Laure Sarda (CNRS), Dejan Stosic (Univ. d’Artois), among others. Further details will be posted on the conference website. ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Maarten Lemmens, Université Lille3 Annie Risler, Université Lille3 Rudy Loock, Université Lille 3 Dejan Stosic, Univ. d’Artois Anne Jugnet, Univ. Lille3 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Michel Achard, Univ. de Rice, Houston, Tx, USA Marion Blondel, Dyalang, Univ. Rouen Stéphanie Bonnefille, Univ. de Tour Bert Cornilie, Université de Leuven, Belgique Christian Cuxac, Univ. Paris 8 Georgette Dal, Université Lille3 Caroline David, Université Montpellier Liesbeth Degand, Université de Louvain, Belgique Nicole Delbecque, Université de Leuven, Belgique Jean-Pierre Desclés, Université Paris 4 Dagmar Divjak, FWO Belgique & Université de Sheffield, Angleterre Jean-Michel Fortis, Univ. de Paris 7 Cathérine Fuchs, ENS Ulm, Paris Stefan Gries, Univ. de Californie, Santa Barbara, USA Colette Grinevald, Université de Lyon 2. Maya Hickmann, Univ. Paris 5 Bernard Laks, Univ. Paris 10 Jean-Rémi Lapaire, Univ. Bordeaux 3 Scott Liddell, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA Wilfrid Rotgé, Univ. Paris X Nanterre Marie-Anne Sallandre, Univ. Paris 8 Anatol Stefanowitsch, Univ. de Bremen, Allemagne Eve Sweetser, Univ. de Californie, Berkeley, USA Phyllis Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Sherman Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA === version française === DEUXIEME APPEL A PROPOSITIONS Deuxième Colloque International de l’Association Française de Linguistique Cognitive (AFLiCo), avec des session générales et avec des sessions thématiques sur "Typologie, Gestes, et Signes" Université Lille 3, Lille, France 10-12 mai 2007 http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ ****** VEUILLEZ NOTER: - le colloque n’est pas limité aux trois thèmes, mais accueille également des communications sur des sujets plus généraux (voir ci-dessous) - l’addition de "phonologie cognitive" et "didactique des langues cognitive" pour les sessions générales - structure du colloque prévisionnel disponible sur le site du colloque ***** INTERVENANTS PLENIERES INVITES : William CROFT (Univ. de New Mexico, Albuquerque) Christian CUXAC (Univ. Paris 8) Susan GOLDIN-MEADOW (Univ. de Chicago) Colette GRINEVALD (Univ. Lyon 2) Scott LIDDELL (Univ. de San Diego) Irit MEIR (Univ de Tel-Aviv) Christian PLANTIN (Univ. Lyon 2) Dan SLOBIN (Univ. de Californie, Berkeley) Eve SWEETSER (Univ. de Californie, Berkeley) Sherman WILCOX (Univ. de New Mexico, Albuquerque) L’objectif principal de ce colloque consiste à renforcer le réseau de collaboration et de discussion des linguistes cognitivistes en France dans un cadre international, comme a pu le faire le premier colloque de l’AFLiCo (« Du fait grammatical au fait cognitif »), tenu à Bordeaux en mai 2005. Le deuxième colloque comprendra des sessions thématiques et des sessions générales. SESSIONS THEMATIQUES Comme l’indique le sous-titre, ce colloque vise à regrouper des chercheurs internationaux autour des trois thèmes suivants : la recherche typologique et comparative, l’étude des gestes co-verbaux et la langue des signes. Ce dernier axe s’intègre dans la filière langue des signes française (LSF) à l’Université Lille3. Ces trois thèmes concernent tous la relation entre le langage et la cognition. Les études typologiques et comparatives cognitives touchent à la question de la grammaire universelle et la relativité linguistique. Les langues de signes sont essentielles pour mieux comprendre les dimensions cognitives du langage ; la Linguistique Cognitive offre un cadre parfaitement adéquat pour rendre compte des phénomènes d’iconicité dans l’utilisation de l’espace, de métaphore et de métonymie à l’œuvre dans les langues des signes du monde. L’étude des gestes co-verbaux, qui transgressent la frontière entre le verbal et le non-verbal, pourrait fournir un autre accès aux stratégies cognitives (identiques ou non à ce qu’on trouve dans le verbal et dans le gestuel) ; l’étude gestuelle, relativement jeune encore, trouve sa place naturelle dans le cadre de la Linguistique Cognitive. SESSIONS GENERALES Bien évidemment, le colloque ne se limite pas à des sessions thématiques. Les organisateurs encouragent des chercheurs à soumettre des propositions dans d’autres domaines de la Linguistique Cognitive. Ces communications pourront être présentées dans les sessions parallèles non thématiques. Voici quelques uns de ces domaines, la liste n’étant pas limitative : - interaction entre lexique et syntaxe - linguistique de corpus et linguistique cognitive - grammaticalisation et linguistique diachronique - interface entre la sémantique et la pragmatique - relativité linguistique - subjectification - iconicité - phonologie cognitive - didactique des langues cognitive En accord avec les buts généraux de l’AFLiCo, seront également accueillies des présentations qui élaborent les points de convergence et de divergence entre la linguistique cognitive et la Théorie des Opérations Enonciatives. Les organisateurs encouragent des jeunes chercheurs à soumettre des propositions. NOTE: pour des raisons d’organisation, les sessions thématiques sur la langue des signes seront groupées sur le premier jour du colloque (10 mai). PROCEDURE DE SOUMISSION Chaque proposition sera évaluée par deux relecteurs. Les textes doivent être anonymes et ne pas dépasser 500 mots (hors bibliographie). Ils sont à envoyer par email en fichier attaché (MS-WORD (doc ou rtf), OpenOffice, PDF) à l’adresse suivante : aflico at univ-lille3.fr Dans l’objet de votre message, spécifiez : "abstract AFLICO" Dans le corps du message, précisez : - le nom de l’auteur / des auteurs - titre - affiliation et adresse de l’auteur / des auteurs - présentation ou poster - sessions thématiques (typologie, gestes, signes) ou session générale - 3 à 5 mots - clés qui aideraient à mettre la communication dans une session adaptée. - besoin d’interprète LSF (ou LSA) DATES IMPORTANTES Date limite de soumission : 15 novembre 2006 Notification d’acceptation : 15 janvier 2007 Satellite event (journée d’étude "Espace & Langage"): 9 mai 2007 Colloque : 10-12 mai 2007 (à confirmer : inscription & pot d’accueil : 9 mai, à partir d’env. 17h00) INSCRIPTION Des renseignements spécifiques concernant la procédure d’inscription et les dates limites seront affichés dès que possible sur le site. Frais d’inscription réduits pour les membres de l’AFLiCo et les étudiants. LANGUES DU COLLOQUE Anglais (préféré), Français, LSF (merci de le signaler) SITE DU COLLOQUE http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ EVENEMENT SATELLITE La veille du colloque (le 9 mai 2007) se tiendra une journée d’étude sur "L’espace et la langue dans une perspective typologique" ; les intervenants seront, entre autres, Dan Slobin (Univ. of California), Maya Hickmann (Univ. Paris 5), Catherine Fuchs (CNRS), Laure Sarda (CNRS), Dejan Stosic (Univ. d’Artois). Plus de détails seront affichés sur le site du colloque. COMITE D’ORGANISATION: Maarten Lemmens, Université Lille3 Annie Risler, Université Lille3 Rudy Loock, Université Lille 3 Dejan Stosic, Univ. d’Artois Anne Jugnet, Univ. Lille3 COMITE SCIENTIFIQUE Michel Achard, Univ. de Rice, Houston, Tx, USA Marion Blondel, Dyalang, Univ. Rouen Stéphanie Bonnefille, Univ. de Tour Bert Cornilie, Université de Leuven, Belgique Christian Cuxac, Univ. Paris 8 Georgette Dal, Université Lille3 Caroline David, Université Montpellier Liesbeth Degand, Université de Louvain, Belgique Nicole Delbecque, Université de Leuven, Belgique Jean-Pierre Desclés, Université Paris 4 Dagmar Divjak, FWO Belgique & Université de Sheffield, Angleterre Jean-Michel Fortis, Univ. de Paris 7 Cathérine Fuchs, ENS Ulm, Paris Stefan Gries, Univ. de Californie, Santa Barbara, USA Colette Grinevald, Université de Lyon 2. Maya Hickmann, Univ. Paris 5 Bernard Laks, Univ. Paris 10 Jean-Rémi Lapaire, Univ. Bordeaux 3 Scott Liddell, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA Wilfrid Rotgé, Univ. Paris X Nanterre Marie-Anne Sallandre, Univ. Paris 8 Anatol Stefanowitsch, Univ. de Bremen, Allemagne Eve Sweetser, Univ. de Californie, Berkeley, USA Phyllis Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Sherman Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA From lstaum at stanford.edu Mon Oct 16 20:52:31 2006 From: lstaum at stanford.edu (Laura Staum) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:52:31 -0700 Subject: 2007 LSA Linguistic Institute Message-ID: On behalf of the Linguistics Department at Stanford University and the Linguistic Society of America, I am proud to announce the new website for the 2007 Linguistic Institute, July 1-27: http://linginst07.stanford.edu which includes information about courses and special lectures, and our teaching faculty, as well as information for participant and affiliate registration and accommodation. For all inquiries please contact linginst07 at stanford.edu. Peter Sells Director 2007 Linguistic Institute, Stanford University From kemmer at rice.edu Tue Oct 17 20:25:39 2006 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:25:39 -0500 Subject: Faculty Fellowships at Rice University Message-ID: The Linguistics Department at Rice wants to call your attention to the one-year faculty fellowships described below, for faculty at least 3 years beyond receipt of Ph.D. Recipients will be Humanities Center fellows, but will select a host department to interact with. The Humanities Center is in the same building as the Linguistics Department, just upstairs. These are NEH fellowships, and can be billed as such on your CV. If you have a chance to spend a year somewhere else besides your own university, Rice is a great environment to do so. We have a doctoral program in Linguistics, a great library collection and computer facilities, an Electronic Texts center with lots of linguistic corpora, and a beautiful campus with more trees than people. In addition to 7 full-time faculty and other teaching faculty, and 22 Linguistics Ph.D. students, we will also have 2 postdocs in Linguistics next year. There are fewer than 5,000 students at Rice and a faculty-student ratio of about 9 to 1. Our department regularly runs conferences and hosts a weekly colloquium series with many well-known visitors. In Spring 2007 the department will host one of our biennial Symposia on Language, this one organized by Matt Shibatani. See www.ruf.rice.edu/~ling for more info on our department. If you are interested in interacting outside the classroom with our first-rate undergraduates, we can pursue possibilities for housing in faculty accommodation in the residential colleges, which includes free room and board. Suzanne Kemmer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------- Rice Humanities Research Center External Faculty Fellowships Application Deadline: December 18, 2006 Rice University’s Humanities Research Center will award up to four external faculty fellowships during the academic year 2007-2008. Fellows will be in residence at the Center for one semester, give a series of three lectures OR teach one course, and participate in the Center’s intellectual life. Both junior and senior faculty with appointments at universities other than Rice are eligible but must be at least three years beyond receipt of the PhD by the beginning of their fellowship term. Fellows are awarded a stipend ranging from 40K to 75K, depending on rank, and a moving allowance. Application information is available at http://hrc.rice.edu . These fellowships are generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lynette S. Autrey Endowment. From coulson at cogsci.ucsd.edu Wed Oct 18 19:20:33 2006 From: coulson at cogsci.ucsd.edu (Seana Coulson) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:20:33 -0700 Subject: CSDL 2006 in San Diego Message-ID: Register now for CSDL 2006! 8th Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse & Language: Language in Action To be held at the University of California, San Diego November 3-5, 2006 http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/ Keynote Speakers: Benjamin Bergen, University of Hawaii at Manoa William Croft, University of New Mexico Charles Goodwin, UCLA Ronald Langacker, UCSD Mark Turner, Case Western Reserve University Plus over 60 talks on cognitive, functional, and discourse linguistics http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/schedule.html Associated Workshops: Language Evolution and Evolutionary Linguistics November 3, 2006 Dale Barr, University of California, Riverside William Croft, University of New Mexico Frank Landsbergen, Leiden University Arie Verhagen, Leiden University Constructions and Language Change November 4, 2006 Ronald Langacker, UCSD Michael Israel, University of Maryland Elizabeth Traugott, Stanford University Peter Petre & Hubert Cuyckens, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Martin Hilpert, Rice University Suzanne Kemmer, Rice University Experimental Methods in Cognitive Linguistics: >>From Theoretical Questions to Research Hypotheses November 6, 2006 Raymond Becker, University of California, Merced Seana Coulson, University of California, San Diego Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Cornell University Teenie Matlock, University of California, Merced http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/workshop-schedule.html The official meeting of the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language Association (CSDLA), CSDL 2006 is sponsored by the Cognitive Science Department, the Linguistics Department, the Center for Research on Language, and the Social Sciences Division at the University of California, San Diego. http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/ From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Thu Oct 19 02:27:57 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:27:57 -0400 Subject: Newest stupid use of 'grammar' notions- designer antibiotics Message-ID: See http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_sc/anti_bacterial_grammar Or is it so stupid??? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From tono at ualberta.ca Sun Oct 22 03:54:32 2006 From: tono at ualberta.ca (T Ono) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 21:54:32 -0600 Subject: Chinese position In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > CHINESE LINGUISTICS/APPLIED LINGUISTICS/SECOND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY > Department of East Asian Studies > University of Alberta > > The Department of East Asian Studies in the Faculty of Arts invites > applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level in > the area of Chinese Linguistics/Chinese Applied Linguistics/Chinese Second > Language Acquisition. Qualified candidates should hold the degree of Ph.D. > and demonstrate native or near-native fluency in spoken and written Mandarin > and English. Experience in teaching Chinese at the college/university level > in North America is also essential. Interest in instructional technology and > experience in coordinating a Chinese language program would also be an asset. > Responsibilities will include teaching in both undergraduate and graduate > student programs, and maintaining an active research program. > > The Department of East Asian Studies (established in 1979) offers degree > programs at the undergraduate and graduate level in Chinese and Japanese > language, linguistics, and literature. There are currently six full-time > faculty members in addition to two full-time and ten part-time sessional > instructors serving an average of 1200 undergraduate and graduate students. > For more information on the department, please consult the departmental > website at www.arts.ualberta.ca/~eastasia > > Salary is commensurate with qualifications and experience. Applicants should > send curriculum vitae, a letter describing their areas of research interest, > samples of publications, and, if available, a teaching dossier and > evaluations of teaching performance to: > Professor Janice Brown > Chair > Department of East Asian Studies > Room 400 Arts > University of Alberta > Edmonton, Alberta > Canada T6G 2E1 > > Applicants must also arrange for three letters of reference to be sent to the > Chair. > Closing Date: November 15, 2006 > The effective date of employment will be July 1, 2007. > > All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and > permanent residents will be given priority. If suitable Canadian citizens or > permanent residents cannot be found, other individuals will be considered. > > The University of Alberta hires on the basis of merit. We are committed to > the principle of equity in employment. We welcome diversity and encourage > applications from all qualified women and men, including persons with > disabilities, members of visible minorities, and Aboriginal persons. > > From language at sprynet.com Tue Oct 24 02:05:52 2006 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross2) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:05:52 -0400 Subject: A query... Message-ID: It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am curious to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any similarity, however remote, between an article in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine and the field of Linguistics. In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html?pagewanted=all with best wishes and apologies in advance, alex From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 02:23:02 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 21:23:02 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <001c01c6f710$ef66b1a0$6401a8c0@v7t0g4> Message-ID: Alexander Gross2 wrote: > It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am curious > to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any similarity, however > remote, between an article in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine > and the field of Linguistics. Not really. I think it's still pretty easy to have a career in linguistics without reference to any kind of data, fabricated or otherwise. On a more cheery note, I have no evidence that the peer review system is not just as broken in linguistics as it seems to be in other fields. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX > In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html?pagewanted=all > > with best wishes and apologies in advance, > > alex > > From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 13:01:36 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 08:01:36 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <001c01c6f710$ef66b1a0$6401a8c0@v7t0g4> Message-ID: Thanks to Alex for pointing this out. There are some obvious dissimilarities between linguistics and fields that use lots of glass and metal. First, linguistic grants tend to be smaller, especially in the US (compared to the UK and EU). Second, linguists don't usually have labs with lots of postdocs. Third, as Mark Line says, data is often not as important to many linguists. (Take it third-hand or fourth-hand and just use it as an illustration at the appropriate times of your main theoretical point). On the other hand, there are similarities. Some researchers do get large grants in linguistics, with large teams (e.g. Peter Ladefoged's grants in many of his years at UCLA). And many of the more important research projects, grammars & documentation projects, produce data that will be cited for years, perhaps centuries to come. In the case of the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th centuries all our evidence suggests that the integrity of their data-collection and presentation is first-rate, an example that has produced useful data for research on American Indian languages at least for centuries. On the other hand, I think that there is a strong possibility that in some more modern grammars a 'principle of charity' might have guided what data to present, where 'charity' refers to how the author would like the data to look for other points they want to make. Perhaps not falsification, but omission of problematic results. And failure to follow-up with experiments. Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available on- line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the field. Funding agencies in Europe are beginning to require this kind of documentation. I think that the NSF should too, certainly in field research projects. Dan On Oct 23, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Alexander Gross2 wrote: > It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am > curious to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any > similarity, however remote, between an article in yesterday's New > York Times Sunday Magazine and the field of Linguistics. > > In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html? > pagewanted=all > > with best wishes and apologies in advance, > > alex ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From macw at cmu.edu Tue Oct 24 14:19:12 2006 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:19:12 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <7ACD7D9B-0525-4739-B21A-AD28ED8BFF80@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Folks, Dan's points about data charity are very good. The idea of creating a standard open-access, open-source repository for linguistic data is one that has motivated much of my own research for 25 years. This work began with the establishment of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database in 1984 and continued with the establishment of TalkBank in 1999. Catherine Snow collaborated on CHILDES and Steven Bird and Mark Liberman collaborated on TalkBank. The web sites are childes.psy.cmu.edu and talkbank.org. I totally agree with Dan about the Jesuits and the issue of data charity. I believe that it is crucial to make the original data available in all linguistic work. However, I think it is crucial that individual projects should not do this on their own without regard to universal access and universal coding standards. For that reason, we provide full web-based access and downloadability for all TalkBank corpora and a standardized XML-based schema that covers and translate between all current coding systems. This facility is now the default data sharing and storage mechanism for child language, aphasia, child phonology, classroom discourse, bilingualism, and much of conversational analysis. Unfortunately, field linguistics is not making use of this facility and that is a real pity. Moreover, it is not clear that any parallel archive/sharing facility has arisen for field linguistics. Dan refers to activitiy of NSF and agencies in Europe. But, in reality, there is no publicly available system outside of TalkBank for this type of sharing and TalkBank is not being used by field linguists. To be honest, a lot of the problem here is my time. I have so much funded support for child language, conversation analysis, and aphasia that adding on a project for achiving/sharing in field linguistics is not possible, given my current system for project organization. However, all of the TalkBank tools are totally open and it would be easy for someone to take the model, get the funding, and apply the system to data from field linguistics. I really wish someone would do this. Dan, are you interested? --Brian MacWhinney On Oct 24, 2006, at 9:01 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Thanks to Alex for pointing this out. > > There are some obvious dissimilarities between linguistics and > fields that use lots of glass and metal. First, linguistic grants > tend to be smaller, especially in the US (compared to the UK and > EU). Second, linguists don't usually have labs with lots of > postdocs. Third, as Mark Line says, data is often not as important > to many linguists. (Take it third-hand or fourth-hand and just use > it as an illustration at the appropriate times of your main > theoretical point). > > On the other hand, there are similarities. Some researchers do get > large grants in linguistics, with large teams (e.g. Peter > Ladefoged's grants in many of his years at UCLA). And many of the > more important research projects, grammars & documentation > projects, produce data that will be cited for years, perhaps > centuries to come. In the case of the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th > centuries all our evidence suggests that the integrity of their > data-collection and presentation is first-rate, an example that has > produced useful data for research on American Indian languages at > least for centuries. On the other hand, I think that there is a > strong possibility that in some more modern grammars a 'principle > of charity' might have guided what data to present, where 'charity' > refers to how the author would like the data to look for other > points they want to make. Perhaps not falsification, but omission > of problematic results. And failure to follow-up with experiments. > > Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available on- > line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > field. > > Funding agencies in Europe are beginning to require this kind of > documentation. I think that the NSF should too, certainly in field > research projects. > > Dan > > On Oct 23, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Alexander Gross2 wrote: > >> It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am >> curious to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any >> similarity, however remote, between an article in yesterday's New >> York Times Sunday Magazine and the field of Linguistics. >> >> In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: >> >> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html? >> pagewanted=all >> >> with best wishes and apologies in advance, >> >> alex > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 15:28:14 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:28:14 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <58AB828E-DFAC-434F-82C0-5CB58AD8DA83@cmu.edu> Message-ID: > Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available > on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > field. Dear all, Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from people who've never used a computer? I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution. Claire ----------------- Dr Claire Bowern Department of Linguistics Rice University From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 15:40:32 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:40:32 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E310E.4090705@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do this kind of archiving and data processing. But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have given less service in the past by not doing these things. Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if it comes to that. It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer science. I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to take up the challenge. I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: >> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >> field. > > > Dear all, > Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: > > . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant > expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be > disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for > digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. > That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, web- > storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. > > . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the > roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics > grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more > people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization > component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to > choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language > Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. > > . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials > are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I > can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even > assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd > give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that > the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, > because it would take time away from doing work that counts in > tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I think is wise > on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I want to write > about on the language, and I'd rather do that than let someone else > do it because I've spent my time making data available. After all, > that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. > > Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. > How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on > the web from people who've never used a computer? > > I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution. > > Claire > > ----------------- > Dr Claire Bowern > Department of Linguistics > Rice University ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:01:23 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:01:23 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in progress for CUP. If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do > this kind of archiving and data processing. > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have > given less service in the past by not doing these things. > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if > it comes to that. > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > science. > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to > take up the challenge. > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > Dan > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >>> field. >> >> >> Dear all, >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: >> >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. >> >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. >> >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an >> academic linguist. >> >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on >> the web from people who've never used a computer? >> >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some >> caution. >> >> Claire >> >> ----------------- >> Dr Claire Bowern >> Department of Linguistics >> Rice University > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 16:08:59 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:08:59 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E310E.4090705@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Dan Everett wrote: >> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >> field. > > (snip) > > . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. > Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, > etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply > for bigger grants which include a large digitization component (on top > of other expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording > the last speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of > Yish on the web. Is all linguistic fieldwork currently limited to recording the last speakers of previously undescribed languages? Should it be? > Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are > recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend > time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got > speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it > would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can > access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time > away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as > much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things > that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than > let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. > After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. In my view, making data available to other researchers is part of doing science. Even salvage science is science. Looking at one's own day-planner is not really the big picture. You can go ahead and do salvage linguistics at breakneck speed and still make the data available sooner or later -- if there's an infrastructure in place that's adequate to the task and easy for you to use. So what I think Dan was suggesting is that the field linguistics community should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of data online. Even the busiest field linguist keeps her data *somewhere*. The engineering problem is therefore to provide media and venues in which she can keep her data such that it is visible to other researchers. Technical issues such as data formats and controlled access can be addressed and resolved. You keep audio recordings of Bardi speakers? If you do, it's because audio technology exists to do so, because you've learned to use it, and because you've found that the medium is useful. What Dan and others (including myself) foresee is that you will keep online collections of Bardi data -- because the online technology exists to do so, you will have learned to use it, and you will have found that the medium is useful. > Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do > you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from > people who've never used a computer? That is an ethical issue, and one I'd like to see the grey eminences among us discuss and resolve. (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have never studied linguistics.) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu Tue Oct 24 16:09:47 2006 From: andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu (Andrew Koontz-Garboden) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:09:47 -0700 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing the best documentation of a language, since these activities would ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that "solution" either... Andrew -- Andrew Koontz-Garboden Department of Linguistics Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in > progress for CUP. > > If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. > > Dan > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does > > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do > > this kind of archiving and data processing. > > > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be > > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to > > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check > > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are > > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or > > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not > > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have > > given less service in the past by not doing these things. > > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, > > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would > > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if > > it comes to that. > > > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that > > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field > > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write > > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can > > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, > > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > > science. > > > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming > > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field > > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am > > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I > > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language > > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained > > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this > > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to > > take up the challenge. > > > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > > > Dan > > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > > > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available > >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > >>> field. > >> > >> > >> Dear all, > >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: > >> > >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant > >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be > >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for > >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. > >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, > >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. > >> > >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the > >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics > >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more > >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization > >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to > >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language > >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. > >> > >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials > >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I > >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even > >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd > >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that > >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure > >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that > >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I > >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I > >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than > >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data > >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an > >> academic linguist. > >> > >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. > >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on > >> the web from people who've never used a computer? > >> > >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some > >> caution. > >> > >> Claire > >> > >> ----------------- > >> Dr Claire Bowern > >> Department of Linguistics > >> Rice University > > > > ********************** > > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > > Campus Box 4300 > > Illinois State University > > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > > FAX: 309-438-8038 > > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > > > and > > > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > > University of Manchester > > Manchester, UK > > > > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From sasha at cs.uoregon.edu Tue Oct 24 16:10:06 2006 From: sasha at cs.uoregon.edu (Gwen Alexandra Frishkoff) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:10:06 -0700 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hello. I agree that there is a good case to be made for databasing in linguistics. Moreover, there is a healthy & growing field in computational science that can support these kinds of activities. Linguists should not feel that they need to go it alone. I think NSF would be pleased to support well-conceived proposals for linguists and computational scientists to collaborate. Best wishes, Gwen F ************************************************************************** Gwen Alexandra ("Sasha") Frishkoff, Ph.D. Research Fellow Research Scientist Learning Research and Development Center NeuroInformatics Center 3939 O'Hara St, room 642 University of Oregon University of Pittsburgh 1600 Millrace Drive Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Eugene, OR 97403 gwenf at pitt.edu OR sasha at cs.uoregon.edu tel 412-260-8010 (cell) 412-624-7081 (office) fax 412-624-9149 ************************************************************************** "Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself. MANKIND. Basically, it's made up of two separate words 'mank' and 'ind.' What do these words mean? It's a mystery and that's why so is mankind." -- Jack Handy On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does fieldwork > knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do this kind of archiving > and data processing. > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be a goal, a > very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to document data > precisely in a way that any third-party could check it simply because it is > too hard and time-consuming. These are certainly factors to consider in > preparing for field research or deciding whether one is cut out for that. But > they are not decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have given > less service in the past by not doing these things. Linguistics research, > especially grammars, should involve teams, not individuals only, and need to > have higher budgets. I would rather see fewer languages studied and grants > more competitive if it comes to that. > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that perhaps it > should be. It won't be of course unless field researchers begin to reconceive > their task. Why do we write grammars? If there isn't documentation that > future generations can use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. > Money, personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > science. > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming to have any > moral high ground in this. I have been doing field research for 30 years, > every year (and every year I wonder why I am still putting up with bugs, mud, > humidity, and accusations that I am with the CIA). This 'quality control' > movement in language documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't > been trained for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this regard that I > haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to take up the challenge. > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > Dan > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >>> field. >> >> >> Dear all, >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: >> >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant expense. >> ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be disbursed for things >> like paying someone to get files ready for digital archiving or metadata >> documentation, so I have to do it. That obviously puts a limit on what can >> be done. And of course, web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, >> and both need doing. >> >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. Not >> only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, etc, the >> pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply for bigger >> grants which include a large digitization component (on top of other >> expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording the last >> speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of Yish on the >> web. >> >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are >> recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend >> time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got speakers' >> permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it would take time >> away from doing things that the Bardi community can access; b) it would >> hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time away from doing work >> that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I think is >> wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I want to write about >> on the language, and I'd rather do that than let someone else do it because >> I've spent my time making data available. After all, that sort of work is >> the main reason I'm an academic linguist. >> >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do you >> get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from people >> who've never used a computer? >> >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution. >> >> Claire >> >> ----------------- >> Dr Claire Bowern >> Department of Linguistics >> Rice University > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > From hstahlke at bsu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:21:54 2006 From: hstahlke at bsu.edu (Stahlke, Herbert F.W.) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:21:54 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <65f2c76a0610240909l43be20eex82e3215b4a1268f5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Like many of us, I've served on and chaired Promotion and Tenure Committees at several levels in my university. The tenure implications of this discussion strikes me as analogous, at least in their effects, to the technology debates of the late 80s and early 90s, when many faculty members were, for the first time, creating computer-based tools for various of their classes and research projects. A similar case was made then for the necessity of this work, its relationship to scholarship, and the need to reward it in the P&T process. I worked with colleagues at a number of universities at the time to explore ways of doing this, and I finally had to report that unless a major activity could be made to look like peer-reviewed scholarship it would not only not help a junior faculty member towards tenure but would actually do harm. I saw a number of promising junior faculty members fail to win tenure because they chose to devote time to developing pedagogical and research applications. In a few, later, cases, they did this against the advice of their mentors and senior colleagues and so are to that extent responsible for the consequences themselves. We can't ask junior colleagues like Claire to risk their tenure by breaking new ground in areas that their colleagues in other fields don't understand as recognized scholarship. Those of us who are terminally promoted can take those risks and break that ground for our younger colleagues, and it's a responsibility that we have. Herb Stahlke Ball State University -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew Koontz-Garboden Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:10 PM To: Daniel L. Everett Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] A query... I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing the best documentation of a language, since these activities would ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that "solution" either... Andrew -- Andrew Koontz-Garboden Department of Linguistics Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in > progress for CUP. > > If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. > > Dan > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does > > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do > > this kind of archiving and data processing. > > > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be > > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to > > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check > > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are > > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or > > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not > > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have > > given less service in the past by not doing these things. > > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, > > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would > > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if > > it comes to that. > > > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that > > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field > > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write > > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can > > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, > > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > > science. > > > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming > > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field > > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am > > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I > > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language > > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained > > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this > > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to > > take up the challenge. > > > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > > > Dan > > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > > > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available > >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > >>> field. > >> > >> > >> Dear all, > >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: > >> > >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant > >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be > >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for > >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. > >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, > >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. > >> > >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the > >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics > >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more > >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization > >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to > >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language > >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. > >> > >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials > >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I > >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even > >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd > >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that > >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure > >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that > >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I > >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I > >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than > >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data > >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an > >> academic linguist. > >> > >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. > >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on > >> the web from people who've never used a computer? > >> > >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some > >> caution. > >> > >> Claire > >> > >> ----------------- > >> Dr Claire Bowern > >> Department of Linguistics > >> Rice University > > > > ********************** > > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > > Campus Box 4300 > > Illinois State University > > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > > FAX: 309-438-8038 > > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > > > and > > > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > > University of Manchester > > Manchester, UK > > > > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:22:46 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:22:46 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <65f2c76a0610240909l43be20eex82e3215b4a1268f5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Andrew, There is no easy way around the tenure problem. One might propose: 1. pre-tenure faculty (not PhD students!) should truncate this kind of project, unless they have something in writing from their university guaranteeing them that it will award tenure for data-bases in progress, etc. - - these folks could save the data-base/on-line aspects until after they have tenure. 2. tenured faculty - no excuses. Do it the long way. I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people and do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I have visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina, for which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like all the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random example). Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote: > I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by > Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible > documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have > invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the > kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it > seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing > the best documentation of a language, since these activities would > ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. > > Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure > committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, > though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does > what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And > that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... > > Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on > endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that > "solution" either... > > Andrew > > -- > Andrew Koontz-Garboden > Department of Linguistics > Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 > Stanford University > Stanford, CA 94305-2150 > > andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu > http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 16:42:55 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:42:55 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <65f2c76a0610240909l43be20eex82e3215b4a1268f5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote: > I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by > Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible > documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have > invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the > kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it > seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing > the best documentation of a language, since these activities would > ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. Actually, if tenure decisions are based on antequated and unscientific premises, then it must be the case that we can and must argue in favor of giving tenure to young scholars who do good science. Giving tenure to young scholars who do good science does seem to be a concept that has worked fairly well in other fields, so maybe we should try it in linguistics. Of course, linguistics is still crawling out of a decades-long period during which scientific method had no place in the mainstream -- so we're still playing catch-up for time lost. Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. > Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure > committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, > though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does > what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And > that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I think that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science, any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical dilemma, just a biographical choice. I'm rather close to this issue, because I had to make the choice in my early twenties. The likelihood of me getting a university job in linguistics and being allowed to spend my time doing good science was so slim in the mid 1970's, I wound up pursuing a career outside of linguistics until a few years ago. > Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on > endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that > "solution" either... Of course they should do salvage and other fieldwork if they want to. If they have no way of getting the support and rewards for doing it *right*, then the system is broken and needs to be fixed. What happens to a university whose chemistry department awards tenure only to young scholars specializing in medieval alchemy? What happens to a university whose medical school frequently awards tenure only to young scholars specializing in shamanic rituals? So, one way to implement the kinds of changes towards better science in linguistics departments that Dan suggests might be to make sure the university accreditation bodies understand exactly how we think linguistics departments should be evaluated towards university accreditation. Unless that happens, we may wind up with alchemists and shamans running around putting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on all of our linguistics departments. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 16:44:39 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:44:39 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1227.69.91.14.68.1161706139.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: > > Is all linguistic fieldwork currently limited to recording the last > speakers of previously undescribed languages? > > Should it be? no, and no, but it is a fairly large part of current fieldwork and a high priority, since there are so many languages in danger of extinction and so few languages with good documentation. In some parts of the world, just about all the fieldwork is like this. > > >> Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are >> recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend >> time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got >> speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it >> would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can >> access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time >> away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as >> much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things >> that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. >> After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. > > > In my view, making data available to other researchers is part of doing > science. Even salvage science is science. Sure, but there are many ways of making data available, and what is made available has huge ethical implications. Medical studies almost never publish the complete data for each subject, because of the ethical implications of publishing sensitive and traceable (individually identifiable) patient information. Linguists do science, but some also do work with communities which have a history of being experimented on, and who dislike it intensely. We ignore that at our peril. > > Looking at one's own day-planner is not really the big picture. You can go > ahead and do salvage linguistics at breakneck speed and still make the > data available sooner or later -- if there's an infrastructure in place > that's adequate to the task and easy for you to use. I wasn't suggesting it was the big picture. I was using a personal example but this is an issue that affects a lot of people at my career stage (a few years out of grad school with the tenure clock ticking). > > So what I think Dan was suggesting is that the field linguistics community > should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of data online. Even > the busiest field linguist keeps her data *somewhere*. The engineering > problem is therefore to provide media and venues in which she can keep her > data such that it is visible to other researchers. Technical issues such > as data formats and controlled access can be addressed and resolved. This paragraph is an excellent illustration of why I was urging caution. The technical issues aren't just minor technical issues. To take one example, Brian mentioned using international standards. There are three international xml metadata encoding standards. And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication aren't the same thing. > > You keep audio recordings of Bardi speakers? If you do, it's because audio > technology exists to do so, because you've learned to use it, and because > you've found that the medium is useful. > > What Dan and others (including myself) foresee is that you will keep > online collections of Bardi data -- because the online technology exists > to do so, you will have learned to use it, and you will have found that > the medium is useful. Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite and I'm all in favour of this, I just wanted to point out some very real limitations which need to be discussed as well, not just as minor throwaway technical issues but as potential deal-breakers. This is especially true in areas where language is regarded as a tangible entity which can be owned. > > >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do >> you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from >> people who've never used a computer? > > That is an ethical issue, and one I'd like to see the grey eminences among > us discuss and resolve. Do my 5 grey hairs I acquired dealing with our IRB count? :) > > (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if > you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have > never studied linguistics.) > Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the consequences would most likely be, and so on. Claire From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 16:49:59 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:49:59 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <3CF041DE-FA4B-4DCF-83E3-F9D13F93E9F1@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: > > I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I > have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people and > do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I have > visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing > phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read > seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to > visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina, for > which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no > syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like all > the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I > am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that > some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were > on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random > example). > You could also email the author of the grammar. For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference between making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and sharing it with colleagues. Claire From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:55:26 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:55:26 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4437.6020002@gmail.com> Message-ID: That is not a good solution. You need independence when you are verifying people's claims. You cannot let them pick and choose the data, etc. on a question by question basis. Because I didn't have Piraha data on line or the right kind available, Peter Ladefoged came to the field to check it out. The first thing he said when I picked him up at the airport was that he was skeptical about my analyses. I said that then it would be nice to see him return to UCLA supporting my analysis, which I predicted that he would. But more seriously, when it came time to do the experiments, I helped him set them up and then left the area and went swimming. Investigators have a vested interest in the checking of their analyses so the data should be available, all of it, for perusal without going through them as middle-people. I can't really see any excuses for not doing this. Except senility. I will claim this if anyone looks for data that I collected 30 years ago. Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:49 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: >> I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But >> I have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the >> people and do my own field research (which in phonology I have >> done - i.e. I have visited villages and spent a few days recording >> and analyzing phonological data, especially prosody, because the >> claims I had read seemed unlikely. For example one language/people >> that I still want to visit or would like sound files of is the >> Arawan language, Culina, for which Pike - many, many years ago - >> claimed that there were no syllables. Since the dictionary of >> Culina has words that look like all the other Arawan languages >> (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I am betting that >> Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that some claim) >> like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were on-line, it >> would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random example). > > You could also email the author of the grammar. For many people > (and speech communities) there's a big difference between making > large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and > sharing it with colleagues. > > Claire ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:15:43 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:15:43 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E42F7.5060007@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark P. Line wrote: >> >> Is all linguistic fieldwork currently limited to recording the last >> speakers of previously undescribed languages? >> >> Should it be? > > no, and no, but it is a fairly large part of current fieldwork and a > high priority, since there are so many languages in danger of extinction > and so few languages with good documentation. In some parts of the > world, just about all the fieldwork is like this. Okay. I guess I was asking whether or not the needs of salvage linguistics should be driving the way the greater linguistics community operates. I think the answer is 'no'. I do understand that the usual scientific methodologies must often be bent (but not broken) in salvage science. >> In my view, making data available to other researchers is part of doing >> science. Even salvage science is science. > > Sure, but there are many ways of making data available, and what is made > available has huge ethical implications. Medical studies almost never > publish the complete data for each subject, because of the ethical > implications of publishing sensitive and traceable (individually > identifiable) patient information. Right. As I said before, it's an ethical issue that needs to be addressed and resolved. Forebearance due to lack of ethically viable means due to lack of ethical analysis would not be the best choice. > Linguists do science, but some also do work with communities which have > a history of being experimented on, and who dislike it intensely. We > ignore that at our peril. Absolutely. That means that people who intensely dislike having linguists in their midst probably shouldn't have to have linguists in their midst. That's another ethical issue, and another cross-cultural one to boot. >> So what I think Dan was suggesting is that the field linguistics >> community >> should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of data online. Even >> the busiest field linguist keeps her data *somewhere*. The engineering >> problem is therefore to provide media and venues in which she can keep >> her >> data such that it is visible to other researchers. Technical issues such >> as data formats and controlled access can be addressed and resolved. > > This paragraph is an excellent illustration of why I was urging caution. > The technical issues aren't just minor technical issues. I don't know of any major technical issues in this area. > To take one example, Brian mentioned using international standards. There > are three international xml metadata encoding standards. That is certainly a minor issue from where I'm sitting. > And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication aren't > the same thing. If the archive is located in webspace, what differences are you thinking of? >> You keep audio recordings of Bardi speakers? If you do, it's because >> audio >> technology exists to do so, because you've learned to use it, and >> because >> you've found that the medium is useful. >> >> What Dan and others (including myself) foresee is that you will keep >> online collections of Bardi data -- because the online technology exists >> to do so, you will have learned to use it, and you will have found that >> the medium is useful. > > Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite and I'm all in favour of this, I just > wanted to point out some very real limitations which need to be > discussed as well, not just as minor throwaway technical issues but as > potential deal-breakers. This is especially true in areas where language > is regarded as a tangible entity which can be owned. Right, the cross-cultural ethics already mentioned. I even ran into that particular problem myself with Maori. >>> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do >>> you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from >>> people who've never used a computer? >> >> That is an ethical issue, and one I'd like to see the grey eminences >> among us discuss and resolve. > > Do my 5 grey hairs I acquired dealing with our IRB count? :) Hehe. >> (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if >> you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have >> never studied linguistics.) > > Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, > and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people > involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the > consequences would most likely be, and so on. So, did you go into the electronics of your audio equipment so that they understood all about semiconductors and stuff? No, of course not. So why isn't it possible to gain the same level of "informed" consent with respect to the way you wish to allow other researchers like you look at the data sometimes? -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 17:19:42 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:19:42 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1245.69.91.14.68.1161708175.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: Mark P. Line wrote: > Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote: >> I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by >> Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible >> documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have >> invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the >> kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it >> seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing >> the best documentation of a language, since these activities would >> ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. > > Actually, if tenure decisions are based on antequated and unscientific > premises, then it must be the case that we can and must argue in favor of > giving tenure to young scholars who do good science. > > Giving tenure to young scholars who do good science does seem to be a > concept that has worked fairly well in other fields, so maybe we should > try it in linguistics. Of course, linguistics is still crawling out of a > decades-long period during which scientific method had no place in the > mainstream -- so we're still playing catch-up for time lost. > > Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we > think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. > > Perhaps a better analogy is that scientists in the natural sciences don't get tenure for collecting data, but for what they do with it. >> Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure >> committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, >> though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does >> what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And >> that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... > > I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I think > that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science, > any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in > tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical > dilemma, just a biographical choice. It's not that simple at all (and it doesn't just apply to females...) I don't think for a minute that what I do is "purely" science - it can't be, simply because of the nature of the data and the methodology used to collect it. We don't have anything exactly akin to double-blind experimentation in descriptive fieldwork. Sure, we do participant observation and hypothesis testing on different data-sets, but most descriptive fieldwork is not impartially collected. Isn't part of doing science seeing where the methodology fails? And it is an ethical dilemma for anyone who is walking the tight-rope between accountability to an academic community and accountability to a speech community with very different (and sometimes contradictory) expectations. We're talking about two different things - data accountability, and widespread data access. Full accountability of the researcher and replicability of results is one thing, and I'd argue that this is one of the things which makes any particular piece of research "scientific" versus "humanistic". How data are disseminated is another question. In the article that started this discussion, for example, the issues wasn't that the guy didn't put his data on the web, it's that he fabricated the results and then lied about it. If he'd put the fabricated data on the web, no one would have been better off. From tgivon at uoregon.edu Tue Oct 24 17:21:45 2006 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:21:45 -0700 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Good points, Herb. Tho I still think there's a lot of unnecessary carping about the Evil System and how it screws up enterprising/creative young folks. When you're looking for boogy men (or conspiracies), you will surely find them. And in a highly competitive market, paranoia is not exactly unnatural. On the particular point, one way of handling pedagogical/research tools is to list them in the "service-to the-field" category, and then to weight that category higher. On what seems to be the/a larger issue, I'm not sure Alex referred to the article I just read in the *New Yorker* (Oct. 23rd issue, p. 82-86) on the social dynamics of research universities (& their history; a book review by Anthony Grafton). There are some uncomfortable questions raised there too. But why is it that, as I read through such "exposE" articles, they always sound to me like sour grapes? From, primarily, the humanities? We all know the many unpleasant aspects of academe. But have you tried the business world, or "public service", recently? And the bitching seems to always ignore the fact that many of us are really, honestly, entranced with discovering more and more about our--admittedly somewhat parochial--corner of the universe. For every three power-hungry academic infighters I know, I know maybe one honest scholar/scientist who is impatient for discovery, for understanding, for enlarging our joint sphere of coherence. And I know how much I owe those guys for my own intellectual growth (such as is is...). So, is 25% such a bad ratio? On what baseline? Best, TG ================ Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: >Like many of us, I've served on and chaired Promotion and Tenure >Committees at several levels in my university. The tenure implications >of this discussion strikes me as analogous, at least in their effects, >to the technology debates of the late 80s and early 90s, when many >faculty members were, for the first time, creating computer-based tools >for various of their classes and research projects. A similar case was >made then for the necessity of this work, its relationship to >scholarship, and the need to reward it in the P&T process. I worked >with colleagues at a number of universities at the time to explore ways >of doing this, and I finally had to report that unless a major activity >could be made to look like peer-reviewed scholarship it would not only >not help a junior faculty member towards tenure but would actually do >harm. I saw a number of promising junior faculty members fail to win >tenure because they chose to devote time to developing pedagogical and >research applications. In a few, later, cases, they did this against >the advice of their mentors and senior colleagues and so are to that >extent responsible for the consequences themselves. We can't ask junior >colleagues like Claire to risk their tenure by breaking new ground in >areas that their colleagues in other fields don't understand as >recognized scholarship. Those of us who are terminally promoted can >take those risks and break that ground for our younger colleagues, and >it's a responsibility that we have. > >Herb Stahlke >Ball State University > >-----Original Message----- >From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu >[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew >Koontz-Garboden >Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:10 PM >To: Daniel L. Everett >Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu >Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] A query... > >I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by >Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible >documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have >invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the >kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it >seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing >the best documentation of a language, since these activities would >ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. > >Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure >committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, >though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does >what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And >that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... > >Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on >endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that >"solution" either... > >Andrew > >-- >Andrew Koontz-Garboden >Department of Linguistics >Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 >Stanford University >Stanford, CA 94305-2150 > >andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu >http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ > > >On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > >>By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in >>progress for CUP. >> >>If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. >> >>Dan >> >> >>On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: >> >> >> >>>Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does >>>fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do >>>this kind of archiving and data processing. >>> >>>But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be >>>a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to >>>document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check >>>it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are >>>certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or >>>deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not >>>decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. >>>But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have >>>given less service in the past by not doing these things. >>>Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, >>>not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would >>>rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if >>>it comes to that. >>> >>>It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that >>>perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field >>>researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write >>>grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can >>>use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, >>>personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer >>>science. >>> >>>I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming >>>to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field >>>research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am >>>still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I >>>am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language >>>documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained >>>for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to >>>hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this >>>regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to >>>take up the challenge. >>> >>>I have always found that the money is there if the case is made >>> >>> >well. > > >>>Dan >>> >>>On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>>>>Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe >>>>> >>>>> >that > > >>>>>it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >>>>>replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >>>>>like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >>>>>native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >>>>>on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >>>>>would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >>>>>data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >>>>>field. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>Dear all, >>>>Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: >>>> >>>>. Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant >>>>expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be >>>>disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for >>>>digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. >>>>That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, >>>>web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need >>>> >>>> >doing. > > >>>>. Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the >>>>roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics >>>>grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more >>>>people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization >>>>component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to >>>>choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language >>>>Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. >>>> >>>>. Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials >>>>are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I >>>>can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even >>>>assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd >>>>give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that >>>>the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure >>>>chances, because it would take time away from doing work that >>>>counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I >>>>think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I >>>>want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than >>>>let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data >>>>available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an >>>>academic linguist. >>>> >>>>Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. >>>>How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on >>>>the web from people who've never used a computer? >>>> >>>>I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some >>>>caution. >>>> >>>>Claire >>>> >>>>----------------- >>>>Dr Claire Bowern >>>>Department of Linguistics >>>>Rice University >>>> >>>> >>>********************** >>>Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and >>> >>> >Chair, > > >>>Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures >>>Campus Box 4300 >>>Illinois State University >>>Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 >>>OFFICE: 309-438-3604 >>>FAX: 309-438-8038 >>>Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp >>>Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ >>>Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ >>> >>>and >>> >>>Honorary Professor of Linguistics >>>University of Manchester >>>Manchester, UK >>> >>> >>> >>> >>********************** >>Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, >>Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures >>Campus Box 4300 >>Illinois State University >>Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 >>OFFICE: 309-438-3604 >>FAX: 309-438-8038 >>Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp >>Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ >>Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ >> >>and >> >>Honorary Professor of Linguistics >>University of Manchester >>Manchester, UK >> >> >> >> >> > > > From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:23:01 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:23:01 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4437.6020002@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Dan Everett wrote: >> >> I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I >> have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people and >> do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I have >> visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing >> phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read >> seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to >> visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina, for >> which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no >> syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like all >> the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I >> am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that >> some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were >> on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random >> example). >> > > You could also email the author of the grammar. (Only if the author is still alive.) > For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference between > making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and > sharing it with colleagues. As for speech communities for which this holds, that's the ethical issue we've already identified. As for linguists for whom this holds, I've always wanted to meet one in person so I could ask them 'why'. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 17:25:46 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:25:46 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4B2E.4060301@gmail.com> Message-ID: > > We're talking about two different things - data accountability, and > widespread data access. Full accountability of the researcher and > replicability of results is one thing, and I'd argue that this is > one of the things which makes any particular piece of research > "scientific" versus "humanistic". How data are disseminated is > another question. In the article that started this discussion, for > example, the issues wasn't that the guy didn't put his data on the > web, it's that he fabricated the results and then lied about it. If > he'd put the fabricated data on the web, no one would have been > better off. To fabricate linguistic sound files would be hard to pull off well, though. We wouldn't be putting up statistics. Our data is more concrete in that sense. Of course, someone can fail to include information that is contrary to them. So we need to do as much as we can to ensure that the bonds of trust in the field stay as strong as possible. How can you hope to replicate results in a grammar (which is never fully replicable, of course) unless the data are available in a neutral space or you make your own field trip. Ultimately, I think we need both. All the data available to all and more fieldwork on every grammar. Dan From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 17:30:22 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:30:22 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1258.69.91.14.68.1161710143.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: >> And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication aren't >> the same thing. > > If the archive is located in webspace, what differences are you thinking of? > > well, the difference between 80 hours of recordings digitised at 44.1 KHz /16bit versus the same amount of data as mp3s, for a start (the difference is about 14 gig, give or take). Try that on dialup! >>> (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if >>> you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have >>> never studied linguistics.) >> Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, >> and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people >> involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the >> consequences would most likely be, and so on. > > So, did you go into the electronics of your audio equipment so that they > understood all about semiconductors and stuff? > > No, of course not. So why isn't it possible to gain the same level of > "informed" consent with respect to the way you wish to allow other > researchers like you look at the data sometimes? > aah, you don't know my gukulngu, yapamittji and marmuku. We did actually have a very interesting discussion of how analogue tape recorders work versus digital recording at one stage. I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible, just that it's probably one of the biggest issues in web dissemination (at least where I work). Claire From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:32:00 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:32:00 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <86B4645C-04AB-4862-AC56-F7EF705FC4E8@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Daniel L. Everett wrote: > That is not a good solution. You need independence when you are > verifying people's claims. You cannot let them pick and choose the > data, etc. on a question by question basis. (You can't even do that if they're dead.) > Because I didn't have Piraha data on line or the right kind > available, Peter Ladefoged came to the field to check it out. The > first thing he said when I picked him up at the airport was that he > was skeptical about my analyses. I said that then it would be nice to > see him return to UCLA supporting my analysis, which I predicted that > he would. But more seriously, when it came time to do the > experiments, I helped him set them up and then left the area and went > swimming. Investigators have a vested interest in the checking of > their analyses so the data should be available, all of it, for > perusal without going through them as middle-people. If I wanted to wax sarcastic, I'd point to medical researchers, economists, sociologists and others who have been caught cooking up their own data, and claim "Oh, but no *linguist* would *ever* do *that*." It's best to simply fail to leave open the opportunity. (In other spheres, this is called "accountability" and considered a good thing by all but those who are in greatest need of more of it.) But of course I'm one of those people who locks his house and car when he's not inside it, and keeps his cash in a bank. > I can't really see any excuses for not doing this. Except senility. I > will claim this if anyone looks for data that I collected 30 years ago. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Dan, could I see the data you collected 30 years ago? While you're at it, could I see the data I collected 30 years ago? -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX > On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:49 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But >>> I have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the >>> people and do my own field research (which in phonology I have >>> done - i.e. I have visited villages and spent a few days recording >>> and analyzing phonological data, especially prosody, because the >>> claims I had read seemed unlikely. For example one language/people >>> that I still want to visit or would like sound files of is the >>> Arawan language, Culina, for which Pike - many, many years ago - >>> claimed that there were no syllables. Since the dictionary of >>> Culina has words that look like all the other Arawan languages >>> (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I am betting that >>> Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that some claim) >>> like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were on-line, it >>> would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random example). >> >> You could also email the author of the grammar. For many people >> (and speech communities) there's a big difference between making >> large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and >> sharing it with colleagues. >> >> Claire > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > > -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 17:51:16 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:51:16 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1271.69.91.14.68.1161710581.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: >> For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference between >> making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and >> sharing it with colleagues. > > As for speech communities for which this holds, that's the ethical issue > we've already identified. > > As for linguists for whom this holds, I've always wanted to meet one in > person so I could ask them 'why'. > > One is not being willing to be identified as a speaker of the language (e.g. Laz in Turkey). Another is a strong feeling of association between language and place (i.e. that a particular language belongs to a particular country and is looked after by a group of people), so reading mythology in that language away from that area would be inappropriate. Another is a worry that others will learn the language and steal it. Another was a worry that publishing secret language would cause harm to come to come to people who read it (e.g. I was warned not to tell blokes about women's business because the ra:galk would rip their throat out, and they didn't want that to happen to anyone). Then there's cultural knowledge that could be used as evidence in land claims (there have been cases of people going through archives and claiming another group's cultural knowledge as their own, and so publishing information such as the GPS coordinates of sites has potentially harmful consequences). People don't always give a reason beyond general misgivings and lack of trust of what "White people" will do with the data. This is balanced by wanting to have someone work on the language to help record it for the community's own use, with a recognition that in order to do that the linguist usually has to (or wants to) also do work that relates to their role within a university. And there's usually multiple different reasons within the same community, and different degrees to which people want data made available. Claire From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:55:30 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:55:30 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4B2E.4060301@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark P. Line wrote: >> >> Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we >> think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. > > Perhaps a better analogy is that scientists in the natural sciences > don't get tenure for collecting data, but for what they do with it. I can't imagine how that can be true in, say, experimental physics, observational astronomy or field biology. >>> Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure >>> committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, >>> though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does >>> what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And >>> that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... >> >> I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I >> think >> that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science, >> any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in >> tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical >> dilemma, just a biographical choice. > > It's not that simple at all (and it doesn't just apply to females...) I > don't think for a minute that what I do is "purely" science - it can't > be, simply because of the nature of the data and the methodology used to > collect it. We don't have anything exactly akin to double-blind > experimentation in descriptive fieldwork. Sure, we do participant > observation and hypothesis testing on different data-sets, but most > descriptive fieldwork is not impartially collected. Isn't part of doing > science seeing where the methodology fails? I see no reason why linguistics couldn't have a community of practice in which science and only science is practiced (and funded) as well as a community of practice in which more than just science is practiced (and funded). So I guess my complaint is that the former community is not being allowed to flourish -- you can't even get tenure in that one, apparently. That's where the change would have to set in. > We're talking about two different things - data accountability, and > widespread data access. Full accountability of the researcher and > replicability of results is one thing, and I'd argue that this is one of > the things which makes any particular piece of research "scientific" > versus "humanistic". How data are disseminated is another question. In > the article that started this discussion, for example, the issues wasn't > that the guy didn't put his data on the web, it's that he fabricated the > results and then lied about it. If he'd put the fabricated data on the > web, no one would have been better off. Can you record your own voice speaking Bardi such that everybody here would be convinced that it's a recording of a native speaker? -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 18:04:23 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:04:23 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4DAE.5020507@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication >>> aren't >>> the same thing. >> >> If the archive is located in webspace, what differences are you thinking >> of? > > well, the difference between 80 hours of recordings digitised at 44.1 > KHz /16bit versus the same amount of data as mp3s, for a start (the > difference is about 14 gig, give or take). Try that on dialup! So, the technological infrastructure of linguistic science should be predicated on dialup? If certain online data cannot be used in any meaningful way at dialup speeds, then those who would use such data in a meaningful way need a faster connection. The dog wags the tail. >>>> (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering >>>> if >>>> you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who >>>> have >>>> never studied linguistics.) >>> Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, >>> and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people >>> involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the >>> consequences would most likely be, and so on. >> >> So, did you go into the electronics of your audio equipment so that they >> understood all about semiconductors and stuff? >> >> No, of course not. So why isn't it possible to gain the same level of >> "informed" consent with respect to the way you wish to allow other >> researchers like you look at the data sometimes? >> > > aah, you don't know my gukulngu, yapamittji and marmuku. We did actually > have a very interesting discussion of how analogue tape recorders work > versus digital recording at one stage. > > I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible, just that it's probably > one of the biggest issues in web dissemination (at least where I work). Okay. If you can talk to them about analogue versus digital audio recording, then I simply see no excuse not to talk to them about computers and web-based dissemination of data. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 18:09:19 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:09:19 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E5294.2000302@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark wrote: >> Claire wrote: >>> >>> For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference >>> between >>> making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and >>> sharing it with colleagues. >> >> As for speech communities for which this holds, that's the ethical issue >> we've already identified. >> >> As for linguists for whom this holds, I've always wanted to meet one in >> person so I could ask them 'why'. >> >> > > One is not being willing to be identified as a speaker of the language > (e.g. Laz in Turkey). Another is a strong feeling of association between > language and place (i.e. that a particular language belongs to a > particular country and is looked after by a group of people), so reading > mythology in that language away from that area would be inappropriate. > Another is a worry that others will learn the language and steal it. > Another was a worry that publishing secret language would cause harm to > come to come to people who read it (e.g. I was warned not to tell blokes > about women's business because the ra:galk would rip their throat out, > and they didn't want that to happen to anyone). Then there's cultural > knowledge that could be used as evidence in land claims (there have been > cases of people going through archives and claiming another group's > cultural knowledge as their own, and so publishing information such as > the GPS coordinates of sites has potentially harmful consequences). > People don't always give a reason beyond general misgivings and lack of > trust of what "White people" will do with the data. This is balanced by > wanting to have someone work on the language to help record it for the > community's own use, with a recognition that in order to do that the > linguist usually has to (or wants to) also do work that relates to their > role within a university. And there's usually multiple different reasons > within the same community, and different degrees to which people want > data made available. I wrote the two sentences quoted above hoping that I could make you split apart the issues of the speech community from the issues of the linguist. I failed. :) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 18:17:35 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:17:35 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1305.69.91.14.68.1161713359.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: > > I wrote the two sentences quoted above hoping that I could make you split > apart the issues of the speech community from the issues of the linguist. > > I failed. :) > I know :), but that's because many field linguists can't split them when it comes to the dissemination of data, no matter how much they would like to. The speech community are stakeholders in research too. Claire From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 18:52:45 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:52:45 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E58BF.5070604@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark wrote: >> >> I wrote the two sentences quoted above hoping that I could make you >> split >> apart the issues of the speech community from the issues of the >> linguist. >> >> I failed. :) >> > > I know :), but that's because many field linguists can't split them when > it comes to the dissemination of data, no matter how much they would > like to. The speech community are stakeholders in research too. Perhaps that is the source of our misunderstanding. What kind of ethical argument could possibly make out the speech community as anything but the *primary* stakeholder, whose needs and wishes must be allowed to trump all others? (Alternative: "Shut up and hold still. This is not going to hurt much. We're professionals, you know. It'll be over soon and then we'll be gone.") It seems to me that the ethical dilemma arises when one feels driven to do salvage linguistics even if it goes against the speech community's wishes (they'll thank you later, you know). There's an ethical difference between "Please come and record our language!" and "Move aside there, we're coming in to record your language!". -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk Tue Oct 24 21:06:07 2006 From: mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:06:07 +0100 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E58BF.5070604@gmail.com> Message-ID: At the risk of returning this discussion to general topics of discussion (rather than personal proclamations of what outstandingly caring and responsible researchers we are as individuals -- of course we are, this is Funknet, right? -- and whether or not untenured members of our community are or are not paranoid about how much time they ought to spend on peer-reviewed papers vs creating web-based archives) ... I was interested in the off-hand way in which the emergence of different archiving systems was glossed over in the debate. Someone (Dan Everett, I believe -- forgive me if I am misattributing, the thread was very long by the time I joined it) made some comment to the effect that they would prefer it if funding were given to thoroughly document (and archive through to public access) fewer languages than to document in less open archives a larger number of languages. I'm interested by this for several reasons. One is that I have started to get the impression that the very limited NSF funding for linguistics is doubling-up on different archiving systems. My own area of research is sociolinguistics, and I am dismayed when I see funding going on digitising different sociolinguistics archives to different standards when so much basic research in sociolinguistics is left unfunded. We have standards or systems emerging in North Carolina, Philadelphia, to say nothing of the International Corpora of English which do not (sadly) all adhere to the same mark-up norms. In Oceanic linguistics (my other research interest) there is the excellent PARADISEC archive which has been set up, but the discussants on this list are clearly thinking of many others, and Helen Dry and Anthony Aristar have been trying to lead with archiving and mark-up standards for years. Is it being too unbearably cynical to suggest that people are pursuing their own archive projects because this suits the current priorities/worries of funding agencies (and, not coincidentally, enhances our own professional standing or mana), rather than because it best serves the immediate and long-term goals fo the user groups (whether speakers of these languages or linguists)? The example of the Jesuit grammars was raised early in the piece -- I have no experience whatsoever with these, so I will simply take it as writ that they are exemplary -- but surely these guys did not have a standardised format that they presented data in? If they did, or to the extent that they did, surely the standard was something more like the "archiving" standard adopted by Malcolm Ross, Andy Pawley and Darrell Tryon at Pacific Linguistics years ago: if you go to a Pacific Linguistics grammar now, you know what to expect to find in section 4.3.2 and you know what to expect to find in section 4.3.2.1. etc. etc. No, I know we don't have easy access to the authors' original notebooks or recordings in all cases so we can't check where they have perhaps made honest category errors (though -- by the way -- PARADISEC does make written records and recordings available...). But notebooks are bloody good ways of archiving data (Peter Ladefoged's name has been invoked in this discussion and he was quite clear in the last few years that hard copy is absolutely essential for sustaining further research). And yes, I agree that there are some things we can and should be more forthcoming about sharing with the academic community more widely. But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her rape -- you can't have that. Not because I promised her the conversation was private, but because it is quite simply not my story to share. But sure, the argument about who should have won the beauty contest ... when I have time, because she understood the recordings would be used for academic research. But I hope that is not time that is funded at the expense of some energetic, and fresh-minded new researcher in the field, whose work will challenge me and mine. In short... my point is: I disagree the idea that the extremely limited funding to linguistics should go principally to projects feeding labour-intensive digital archiving. Yes, it would be lovely if there were more and larger grants in linguistics so we didn't have to make this kind of choice. But at the moment we do and I think we would be doing our community a dis-service if we backed the Big Few at the expense of the Small Many. And no, I have nothing to do with PARADISEC, but their web page is here if you don't know about their enterprise and would like to learn more: http://paradisec.org.au/ best, Miriam -- Miriam Meyerhoff Professor of Sociolinguistics Linguistics & English Language University of Edinburgh 14 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LN SCOTLAND ph.: +44 131 650-3961/3628 (main office) or 651-1836 (direct line) fax: +44 131 650-6883 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 21:32:58 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:32:58 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Miriam, You correctly attributed the things to me that I said. We have to change the culture of the field if we are going to provide the documentation for replicability that we need. Lack of money is not an excuse. We need more - more money and more replicability. In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants that far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by and large. So the UK might actually set the standard on these things. As to what files you can make available or should make available, of course there are limits. No one says that 100% of data should be there. This is the decision of the speech community in any case. The ideal for us as linguists is that there be enough data available for any of us with an interest to redo any study you have done, at least for languages in which access is very difficult and especially for endangered languages. For English this is not as crucial, perhaps. I am quite concerned about linguistic typology and theory when they base their conclusions on grammars that we haven't got the data to replicate the analysis of. And that is what we generally do. Mainly because that is what we are forced to do. We 'take the word' of the grammar writer for their data because we have no record of it accessible to us. How do we know that the old Jesuit grammars, often of extinct languages, are good? Partially by archiving. In the case of Anchieta's grammar of Tupinamba, for example, we have additional data, the data in his own catechism and dictionary and the conversations 'recorded' by Jean de Lery, the French Calvinist. Ffor most of the others, we have the modern languages to compare their grammars against. It is true that we would be better served if there were a standard. But if the archiving system is non-proprietary and if it has clear instructions, then I am very glad for its existence, even if it has problems and is non-standard. There are problems and they won't be overcome in a year or two. More money for linguistics research may not be forthcoming. But I'd rather see bigger grants going to fewer research projects that lots of small grants that leave little hope for replicability of the results. I just cannot see the problem here. -- Dan P.S. Some readers might find it instructive to compare grant sizes of the different funding agencies. In the UK linguistic awards of up to roughly one million dollars (AHRC) or 1.5 million (ESRC) for five years are allowed. For the NSF linguistics awards are usually less than one hundred thousand dollars per year, for a preferred three- year maximum as I understand it. Things may have changed. More money is available from the NSF in principle since, last award I had at least, it had few explicit caps. Here are three pages, for NSF, AHRC, and ESRC. NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=BCS (then go to award search and just type in linguistics and scroll down) AHRC: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/awards/ ESRC: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/help/research_list.aspx#skip ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 21:44:20 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:44:20 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > > But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her > rape -- you can't have that. If the subject of rape is integral to your research, then it seems like you you would have addressed ethical issues relating to data dissemination before you chose your informants. If the subject of rape is not integral to your research, then it seems like you could do without that particular story in your dataset. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From macw at cmu.edu Tue Oct 24 22:34:31 2006 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:34:31 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Miriam, You ask some very good questions. Mark-up is certainly an important consideration. The TalkBank approach to this has been to develop a highly structured and heavily semantic underlying XML mark-up language called CHAT. During the last 12 years, CHAT has been extended to include CA, ISL, Discourse Transcription, and four other coding systems. We are currently working on translators from LDC formats such as SLX and Switchboard. The underlying XML Schema is published at http://www.talkbank.org/ talkbank.xsd and documented in readable English in the manuals that are available from childes.psy.cmu.edu. All of the data in CHILDES and TalkBank, which come from some 12 different disciplines, including some of sociolinguistics, are in CHAT. These CHAT files can be automatically converted to XML by program, validated, and then reformatted back to CHAT to make sure that they are the same as the originals (round-tripping). The CHILDES and TalkBank databases include perhaps 40 languages, many with non-Roman orthographies (Thai, Chinese, Japanese) and lots and lots of different types of people. The tools include methods for linking transcripts to audio and video which allow for playback from individual sentences both locally and over the web. Should the various projects you mention that are emerging in North Carolina and Philadelphia use these tools and formats? Obviously, I am biased. But one has to ask the simple question: why not? Some people seem to confuse the issue of metadata with specific transcription markup. TalkBank and CHILDES use the OLAC metadata format. However, they are also included in the MPI IMDI format too. But settling on these metadata formats is really not the core issue. The core issue is transcription. When I look at the various databases emerging in field linguistics, I see none that have treated transcription as a structured object. Instead, the idea is typically to post some PDF or Word files on the web. Even though this format is far from optimal, when these documents are accompanied by audio, they do at least provide a great community resource. But we can and should do better. I have spent hours trying to rework a PDF into a CHAT file. It would make a lot of sense to put the structure in during the process of transcription to allow for the full power of computational linguistics. --Brian MacWhinney On Oct 24, 2006, at 5:06 PM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > At the risk of returning this discussion to general topics of > discussion (rather than personal proclamations of what > outstandingly caring and responsible researchers we are as > individuals -- of course we are, this is Funknet, right? -- and > whether or not untenured members of our community are or are not > paranoid about how much time they ought to spend on peer-reviewed > papers vs creating web-based archives) ... > > I was interested in the off-hand way in which the emergence of > different archiving systems was glossed over in the debate. Someone > (Dan Everett, I believe -- forgive me if I am misattributing, the > thread was very long by the time I joined it) made some comment to > the effect that they would prefer it if funding were given to > thoroughly document (and archive through to public access) fewer > languages than to document in less open archives a larger number of > languages. > > I'm interested by this for several reasons. One is that I have > started to get the impression that the very limited NSF funding for > linguistics is doubling-up on different archiving systems. My own > area of research is sociolinguistics, and I am dismayed when I see > funding going on digitising different sociolinguistics archives to > different standards when so much basic research in sociolinguistics > is left unfunded. We have standards or systems emerging in North > Carolina, Philadelphia, to say nothing of the International Corpora > of English which do not (sadly) all adhere to the same mark-up > norms. In Oceanic linguistics (my other research interest) there is > the excellent PARADISEC archive which has been set up, but the > discussants on this list are clearly thinking of many others, and > Helen Dry and Anthony Aristar have been trying to lead with > archiving and mark-up standards for years. > > Is it being too unbearably cynical to suggest that people are > pursuing their own archive projects because this suits the current > priorities/worries of funding agencies (and, not coincidentally, > enhances our own professional standing or mana), rather than > because it best serves the immediate and long-term goals fo the > user groups (whether speakers of these languages or linguists)? > > The example of the Jesuit grammars was raised early in the piece -- > I have no experience whatsoever with these, so I will simply take > it as writ that they are exemplary -- but surely these guys did not > have a standardised format that they presented data in? If they > did, or to the extent that they did, surely the standard was > something more like the "archiving" standard adopted by Malcolm > Ross, Andy Pawley and Darrell Tryon at Pacific Linguistics years > ago: if you go to a Pacific Linguistics grammar now, you know what > to expect to find in section 4.3.2 and you know what to expect to > find in section 4.3.2.1. etc. etc. > > No, I know we don't have easy access to the authors' original > notebooks or recordings in all cases so we can't check where they > have perhaps made honest category errors (though -- by the way -- > PARADISEC does make written records and recordings available...). > But notebooks are bloody good ways of archiving data (Peter > Ladefoged's name has been invoked in this discussion and he was > quite clear in the last few years that hard copy is absolutely > essential for sustaining further research). And yes, I agree that > there are some things we can and should be more forthcoming about > sharing with the academic community more widely. But I'm sorry, > people, the recording of the woman telling me about her rape -- you > can't have that. Not because I promised her the conversation was > private, but because it is quite simply not my story to share. But > sure, the argument about who should have won the beauty contest ... > when I have time, because she understood the recordings would be > used for academic research. But I hope that is not time that is > funded at the expense of some energetic, and fresh-minded new > researcher in the field, whose work will challenge me and mine. > > In short... my point is: I disagree the idea that the extremely > limited funding to linguistics should go principally to projects > feeding labour-intensive digital archiving. Yes, it would be lovely > if there were more and larger grants in linguistics so we didn't > have to make this kind of choice. But at the moment we do and I > think we would be doing our community a dis-service if we backed > the Big Few at the expense of the Small Many. > > And no, I have nothing to do with PARADISEC, but their web page is > here if you don't know about their enterprise and would like to > learn more: http://paradisec.org.au/ > > best, Miriam > -- > Miriam Meyerhoff > Professor of Sociolinguistics > Linguistics & English Language > University of Edinburgh > 14 Buccleuch Place > Edinburgh EH8 9LN > SCOTLAND > > ph.: +44 131 650-3961/3628 (main office) or 651-1836 (direct line) > fax: +44 131 650-6883 > > http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff > > From spike at darkwing.uoregon.edu Wed Oct 25 01:02:22 2006 From: spike at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Spike Gildea) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:02:22 +1000 Subject: Linguistics as science and as academic discipline Message-ID: This discussion is really interesting for me, both as a field worker and as someone who has been a department head, working with junior colleagues to present a strong case for tenure. I'd like to take on Mark's question, and try to speak *just* to the issues that confront the linguist in the domain of the academic world (trying to set aside, for the moment, the ethical and human issues that are more specific to engaging with speech communities). Both field methods (i.e., doing good science) and the tenure and promotion process (success in an academic job) are evolving constantly, both attempting to respond to changes in the world of research (many brought on by rapid advances in technology). I appreciate the desire to leap ahead to a better new world, and to lambaste the stodgy old "system" that holds us back, but there are limitations to how fast change happens in the real world, and there are limitations to how much individuals can do -- as Claire says, we have to make choices, both those driven by our professional context (including the needs of tenure review committees) and those driven by our individual needs (the desire to publish on one aspect of a language takes time away from further work on another aspect). With regard to field work, I think it is indisputable that linguistics has relied overmuch on analyzing black marks (sometimes in multiple colors in my data books) on a page. These black marks are a partial representation of speech, which allow errors of representation (mistranscriptions and outright fabrications) to be introduced without providing a means for external reviewers to find and correct them short of going to the field themselves (prohibitively expensive, in both money and time -- we don't have near enough linguists to do the job once, much less to do it twice!). Further, in some field methods traditions, a data sentence can represent nothing more than a speaker responding "yes" to a linguist asking if the utterance could be said, but the black marks do not distinguish between such "data" (which in my tradition would not count as data) and actual utterances made in conversations between native speakers (which I hope everyone would agree counts as data). In the last few years, technology has leaped ahead so quickly that it is now economically feasible to carry digital recording equipment and a laptop (and solar panels, where necessary) to the field, so that it is now possible to provide sound files for every utterance collected in field work. Morey (2005) [Morey, Stephen. 2005. The Tai languages of Assam - a Grammar and texts, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University] provides an excellent example of a grammar that improves on the "black marks" method: he provides an accompanying CD where every example in the grammar and every line of every text is linked to a sound file, a recording of a native speaker saying the utterance. Anyone with the CD can check all of these examples to verify any empirical detail that is relevant for a given analysis. This sort of work provides a standard that all fieldworkers should aspire to, regardless of their position on web publishing. But I am far from being able to achieve this standard in my own work and I have spoken about it with enough colleagues to know that, especially for those of us who were trained before this technology was available, even learning to use it at all is not a trivial issue. In fact, not many people have done it, most that I know have developed idiosyncratic methods that work for them, but that may not be more generally applicable, and there are few (if any) venues where we can get training from someone who has a tested, generally applicable method. As more individuals in the field try to engage with this new technology, there will be fewer unknowns, but while people with a greater affinity for technology jump in and experiment and debate about formats and methods, those of us who just want to be end users, who just want good tools and a straightforward model to follow, are concerned about entering into a massive project with no assurance that five years from now, we won't look back and see five years essentially wasted putting data into a format that didn't become generally accepted. In addition, field workers already require years to organize the black marks on paper (or in a computerized database) into grammars -- there is no question that adding the digital sound layer to this work will require a lot more time. It is already a lot just to cut out sound files of examples, then link these sound files to written examples in some format (a toolbox database, Childes, even a simple Word document). Putting up our raw notes is unthinkable: we all have our own standards about how much of our "mess" we are willing to show to friends or strangers, but nobody will be able to just put up their database online, to make it accessible to others to read, without a lot of polishing work. I agree, making recorded data available is the right thing to do, and I hope (and expect) that it's the future in linguistics, but right now, it's not established territory, and it's sure not a trivial decision for any individual field worker to start doing it. There's only so many hours in the day, and most of us already have more on our plates than we can do justice to (more on this in a moment), and if we decide to dedicate a chunk of time to learning and then implementing this new technology, we'll have to make some hard choices about what to give up. And ultimately, there are limits to how many skills one individual can master -- as Dan points out, to have enough work-hours and enough specialized knowledge to do this new, more extensive job, future models for field linguistics will almost certainly require teams of specialists to work together. The other question is how academia rewards our labors. First, most departments of linguistics do not have positions for those of us who view field work as our specialty -- most of us get hired for our theoretical specialty, for the classes in syntax or phonology (or whatever) that we can teach, in addition to the occasional field methods class. Once you've landed the tenure-line job, the tenure system is heavily stacked against fieldworkers even doing the more limited "traditional" kind of fieldwork. The behaviors that are rewarded all involve refereed publications on paper (a few electronic journals are underway, but they are greatly outnumbered by print journals and, like any new journals, their value for tenure is still uncertain), and field work already takes substantial time away from that behavior. Further, we must engage in disproportionate publishing activity in the specialty that we are hired for. WIth that as the goal, field data collection provides a rather poor return for time spent. While much of the time we spend collecting data and processing data is important to our understanding of the language, most of the data produced via this investment of time will not be important enough to show up even in a grammar; further, much of the data that will merit inclusion in a grammar will not prove relevant for current theoretical/typological debates, and hence the process of collecting and analyzing them is not rewarded until the grammar is published, which may not be prior to the deadline for consideration for tenure. Time spent building extensive searchable databases of annotated material pays off down the road by making it easier to access the examples that are relevant for publishable articles, but the work of creating these databases doesn't count at all until the publications follow. Until the system recognizes the validity of the contribution made by electronically accessible archives of organized data, untenured faculty really are not wise to put much time into cleaning up a database for web publication, and even tenured faculty might hesitate unless they are willing to set aside some professional ambitions. So how can we effect some change, help the system evolve so as to make it easier (and more rewarding) to do fieldwork in the more reliable ways that current technology makes possible. To start with, I'd like to see a push for an academic culture that acknowledges the value (even the necessity) of CDs with sound files to accompany printed language data -- under that standard, I might not be able to publish anything for a few years, but I believe the reliability of the database available to typologists and theoreticians would increase sharply. We also need to start a refereeing process for databases that are made available on the web -- they are as accessible as traditional publications, but they don't count for the tenure system because there is no peer-review-based gate-keeping mechanism to regulate the quality of the works that are disseminated. This problem is not unique to field linguistics, but it might be a bigger issue for field workers to the extent that we are trying to create a new genre of publication, one that would not be possible offline. Something like a reviews section in a journal, that lists and evaluates such sites, might provide the first steps towards gaining academic acknowledgment for such work. On the side, we also really need to think about how to engage with non-fieldworker academics to convince them that what we do is scientifically valuable, and to educate them about how our activities differ from those of some other academics (including those who practice the currently dominant models of linguistics). Recently, popular publicity about language endangerment has gone some distance towards justifying our work, but fieldworkers (and functionalists) have been out of power politically in linguistics departments for quite some time, which means our needs have not been made a priority inside most departments, and also that we have had little opportunity to shape the perception of the field on the part of academic administrators. To implement changes in the system that will meet our needs, we will need the support not just of university administrators, but also of the less fieldwork-oriented colleagues in our own departments (and in departments that have not yet opened their doors to fieldworkers). Put more bluntly, we need to figure out how to get theoretical linguists to (a) decide to replace a retiring colleague, say a phonologist or a syntactician, or a psycholinguist, with a fieldworker, (b) agree as a department to establish a separate standard for reviewing the academic output of fieldworkers, and (c) argue to the Dean, the Provost, and the various Promotion and Tenure committees that these standards are justifiable. Whew! Thanks for a stimulating and diverting discussion! I'm going back to work some more on my black marks on a screen... Spike From mark at polymathix.com Wed Oct 25 02:19:37 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:19:37 -0500 Subject: Linguistics as science and as academic discipline In-Reply-To: <453EB79E.6050201@darkwing.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Thanks, Spike. There are a number of remarks I might make (and may make later in the ensuing thread), but I've picked out just a couple of your more technical points to comment on here. Spike Gildea wrote: > > As more > individuals in the field try to engage with this new technology, there > will be fewer unknowns, but while people with a greater affinity for > technology jump in and experiment and debate about formats and methods, > those of us who just want to be end users, who just want good tools and > a straightforward model to follow, are concerned about entering into a > massive project with no assurance that five years from now, we won't > look back and see five years essentially wasted putting data into a > format that didn't become generally accepted. There are a couple of deep, dark secrets that computer experts (and OEM's) jealously guard against merely mortal end users, and I'm going to tell you what they are. (I've left the employ of those keepers of arcane secrets, so I have nothing to lose anymore...) Here they are. Wait for them....... Okay. 1. If you can capture your data consistently in *any* documented digital format, then I can transform your data consistently into any other documented digital format. If both formats are XML vocabularies, I'll get one of my cats to do it. If anybody tells you differently, then they're after more of your grant money than they deserve. 2. Given a set of requirements, I can invent and document a new digital format overnight that meets those requirements. So, the task of the fieldworker is NOT to second-guess the evolution of technology by trying to put her data into *the* format that somebody has convinced her is the one that is going to "win". The task of the fieldworker is to put her data consistently into any documented digital format of her choosing. (She'll be wise to choose one that allows her to capture every salient feature of her data, or hire somebody to invent one that does.) People who like to fuss with the technical issues can then take it from there. You've written books and gotten them published. Did you operate the printing press yourself? Did you worry a lot about whether or not the printing press might run out of ink while your book was running? > So how can we effect some change, help the system evolve so as to make > it easier (and more rewarding) to do fieldwork in the more reliable ways > that current technology makes possible. To start with, I'd like to see > a push for an academic culture that acknowledges the value (even the > necessity) of CDs with sound files to accompany printed language data -- > under that standard, I might not be able to publish anything for a few > years, but I believe the reliability of the database available to > typologists and theoreticians would increase sharply. Publishing on CD's is much inferior to publishing online, for quite a large number of reasons. I can think of a few reasons right off the top of my head, and those here who are in the thick of online archive management can surely add many more: -- corrections can be made directly to an online dataset, which then become immediately available; CD's have to be remastered, reburned and re-snail-mailed -- corrections and other changes to an online dataset can be managed under version control -- users can be notified of changes to an online dataset if they wish -- the population of permitted users of an online dataset can be easily restricted -- CD's are platform-dependent or must support multiple platforms, while browser-based online access is functionally platform-independent -- CD's cost money to produce; the marginal cost for online access to the amount of data that fits on a CD is negligible -- not much data fits on a CD; online servers can handle enormous volumes of data -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk Wed Oct 25 08:59:25 2006 From: mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:59:25 +0100 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1584.69.91.14.68.1161726260.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: Precisely. I'm glad you agree. best, mm At 16:44 -0500 24/10/06, Mark P. Line wrote: >Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: >> >> But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her >> rape -- you can't have that. > >If the subject of rape is integral to your research, then it seems like >you you would have addressed ethical issues relating to data dissemination >before you chose your informants. > >If the subject of rape is not integral to your research, then it seems >like you could do without that particular story in your dataset. > > >-- Mark > >Mark P. Line >Polymathix >San Antonio, TX -- Miriam Meyerhoff Professor of Sociolinguistics Linguistics & English Language University of Edinburgh 14 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LN SCOTLAND, UK ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) fax: +44 131 650-6883 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ From mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk Wed Oct 25 10:50:48 2006 From: mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:50:48 +0100 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <165F28D6-E50C-4225-9707-E4927E139038@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Dear Dan, >In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants that >far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by and >large. I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US (I restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that point the contributors were all US-based). The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based on individual researcher's agreements with the people they are recording. As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is concerned: This is an interesting question, since the average size of the grants to academics on the three links you provided seems very similar. My impression (based on my own limited experience) is not the researchers are more likely to get large sums in the UK, but that the success rate for grant submissions is perhaps higher (c. 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what the ratio is for the NSF). chrz, mm -- Miriam Meyerhoff Professor of Sociolinguistics Linguistics & English Language University of Edinburgh 14 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LN SCOTLAND, UK ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) fax: +44 131 650-6883 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ From dlevere at ilstu.edu Wed Oct 25 13:02:36 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:02:36 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Miriam, Interesting take on the size of UK grants. I guess some of this has to do with experience. Maybe NSF grants have gotten somewhat larger over the past few years. I served on the AHRC funding reform panel and had grants with the ESRC and AHRC far in excess of anything I have had from the NSF (I have had NSF funding for most of the past 22 years and have mainly had grants that fall within what I was once informed to be the 'normal' range for linguistics, i.e. below 300,000 for three years). The UK granting agencies let you know what the percentage of applicants receiving grants that year was. I was told by both ESRC and AHRC that about 26% of applicants received funding, so this accords with what you say. I would say that that is likely better than the NSF. (Paul Chapin has an excellent book from CUP on NSF grants.) Most universities in the US and UK will pay (out of central university funds) for their faculty to visit the relevant funding agencies and discuss projects with them. And in the US at least NSF representatives have been very helpful in discussing proposals with folks at the LSA annual meetings. I am sure that they are well aware of the need for more funds for 'proper archiving' of field data. Dan On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:50 AM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > Dear Dan, > >> In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants that >> far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by and >> large. > > I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US (I > restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that point > the contributors were all US-based). > > The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC > (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected > using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT > TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based on > individual researcher's agreements with the people they are recording. > > As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is concerned: > This is an interesting question, since the average size of the > grants to academics on the three links you provided seems very > similar. My impression (based on my own limited experience) is not > the researchers are more likely to get large sums in the UK, but > that the success rate for grant submissions is perhaps higher (c. > 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what the ratio is for the NSF). > > chrz, mm > -- > > Miriam Meyerhoff > Professor of Sociolinguistics > Linguistics & English Language > University of Edinburgh > 14 Buccleuch Place > Edinburgh EH8 9LN > SCOTLAND, UK > > ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) > fax: +44 131 650-6883 > > http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From yves.peirsman at arts.kuleuven.be Wed Oct 25 13:06:14 2006 From: yves.peirsman at arts.kuleuven.be (Yves Peirsman) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:06:14 +0200 Subject: Last CfP for Theme Session at ICLC2007: Cognitive Sociolinguistics Message-ID: Last Call for Papers for a Theme Session at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference *********** DEADLINE TUESDAY OCTOBER 31 *********** THEME: Cognitive Sociolinguistics URL: wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/cs.htm ORGANISERS: Dirk Geeraerts, University of Leuven, dirk.geeraerts [at] arts.kuleuven.be Gitte Kristiansen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, gkristia [at] filol.ucm.es Yves Peirsman, University of Leuven, yves.peirsman [at] arts.kuleuven.be EVENT: 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland 15-20 July 2007 www.iclc2007.pl INTRODUCTION Although there is a growing interest within Cognitive Linguistics for language-internal variation (see Kristiansen and Dirven, forthcoming: Cognitive Sociolinguistics, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), it remains an understudied area in Cognitive Linguistics. Too often linguistic analyses (or cross-linguistic comparisons) are carried out at the level of 'a language', disregarding rich and complex patterns of intralingual variation. Such a level of granularity ultimately amounts to that of a homogeneous and thus idealized speech community. Cognitive Linguistics, to the extent that it takes the claim that it is a usage-based approach to language and cognition seriously, cannot afford to work with language situated taxonomically at an almost Chomskyan level of abstraction. The purpose of the theme session is therefore to bring together examples of outstanding sociolinguistic research within the field of Cognitive Linguistics. THE SCOPE OF COGNITIVE SOCIOLINGUISTICS The domain of investigation of Cognitive Sociolinguistics may be roughly divided into three main areas, each of which represents a specific relationship between cognition and language-internal linguistic diversity (which we will henceforth refer to as "lectal variation"). We invite abstracts for presentations in all three areas: 1. LECTAL VARIATION AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE How does language-internal variation affect the occurrence of linguistic phenomena, and in particular, how does it affect the occurrence of linguistic phenomena that have the specific attention of Cognitive Linguistics? The question involves not only active knowledge of the language (i.e. language use), but also passive knowledge (i.e. reading and understanding skills). Existing examples of Cognitive Linguistic work in this area may be found in Berthele's work on verbal framing in the Swiss dialects, the work by Gries and Stefanowitsch on register variation in collostructions, and Croft's views on the importance of social variation for a theory of linguistic change. Topics of specific interest within this domain of research include - lectal factors in language acquisition: how does the change in an individual's knowledge of the language interact with social factors? - language variation and change: how do changes spread over a linguistic community, what is the role of distributed linguistic cognition in these processes, and how does the feedback loop between individual acts and common systemic changes actually work? - multivariate models of language variation: what analytical and descriptive tools do we need to arrive at an adequate description of linguistic variation? 2. LECTAL VARIATION, LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT A lot of front-edge research is looking into the relationship between language and thought (Slobin, Bowerman etc.), but this is basically done from an interlingual (typological) point of view. What happens if you conduct similar research from an intralingual point of view? Does lectal variation have the same effect on the relationship between language and thought as typological variation? Although this is only an emerging trend, a clear example of Cognitive Linguistic work in this area is Grondelaers' work on the psycholinguistic correlates of the multifactorial distribution of Dutch "er". Topics of specific interest within this domain of research involve - the relationship between language and culture: do language-internal differences in the relationship between language and thought reflect differences of "culture" ? - the relationship between cultural models and thought: to what extent does variation in cultural models within a community correlate with cognitive differences? 3. THE COGNITIVE REPRESENTATION OF LECTAL VARIATION How do language users perceive lectal differences, and how do they evaluate them attitudinally? What models do they use to categorize linguistic diversity? Examples of this kind of work within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics are Kristiansen's work on the socially informed prototype structure of phonemes, or Geeraerts' work on cultural models of standardization. Topics of specific interest within this domain of research include - stereotyping: how do language users categorize other groups of speakers? - subjective and objective linguistic distances: is there a correlation between objective linguistic distances, perceived distances, and language attitudes? - cultural models of language diversity: what models of lectal variation, standardization, and language change do people work with? - attitudes, perception, and change: to what extent do attitudinal and perceptual factors have an influence on language change? STRUCTURE OF THE SESSION Our theme session will consist of (1) presentations of the selected papers, (2) presentations by a number of invited specialists, (3) three 20-minute thematic discussion slots. PROCEDURE We invite abstracts of max. 500 words for 20-minute presentations in the three areas described above. Your abstract should contain: - The title of the presentation - Your name(s), affiliation(s) and e-mail address(es) - The research question(s) that you address - A discussion of the methodology - A description of the data - A summary of the obtained results Abstracts should be sent to all three theme session organisers before October 31, 2006. SCHEDULE Deadline call for abstracts: October 31, 2006 Notification of acceptance/rejection of abstracts: November 15, 2006 Submission of the theme session proposal to the conference organisers: November 15, 2006 Notification of acceptance/rejection of theme session: February 1, 2007 Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm From shanley at bu.edu Wed Oct 25 13:12:40 2006 From: shanley at bu.edu (Shanley Allen) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:12:40 +0200 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1E96A770-5117-49B5-97DD-CB69C204AADD@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Another difference may be due to differences in the way that faculty salary and university overhead are treated. In the US, it's typical for faculty to include in their grants money to buy out teaching and to pay summer salary, since US professors virtually all have 9-month contracts so aren't paid for the 3 summer months. In Canada, in contrast, professors are paid by the university for the full 12 months, and typically don't buy out of teaching unless the funded project is very large. In the US, it's also typical for universities to charge high overhead on grants from federal funding agencies - at my university (BU) the rate is 63%. In Canada, I don't think this overhead is factored into the individual grant but gets to the university in some other way (although I may be wrong about this). So US grants that look large don't cover as much actual work because so much of the money goes to overhead and faculty salary. Shanley. On 25 Oct 2006, at 15:02, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Miriam, > > Interesting take on the size of UK grants. I guess some of this has > to do with experience. Maybe NSF grants have gotten somewhat larger > over the past few years. > > I served on the AHRC funding reform panel and had grants with the > ESRC and AHRC far in excess of anything I have had from the NSF (I > have had NSF funding for most of the past 22 years and have mainly > had grants that fall within what I was once informed to be the > 'normal' range for linguistics, i.e. below 300,000 for three years). > > The UK granting agencies let you know what the percentage of > applicants receiving grants that year was. I was told by both ESRC > and AHRC that about 26% of applicants received funding, so this > accords with what you say. I would say that that is likely better > than the NSF. (Paul Chapin has an excellent book from CUP on NSF > grants.) > > Most universities in the US and UK will pay (out of central > university funds) for their faculty to visit the relevant funding > agencies and discuss projects with them. And in the US at least NSF > representatives have been very helpful in discussing proposals with > folks at the LSA annual meetings. I am sure that they are well > aware of the need for more funds for 'proper archiving' of field data. > > Dan > > > > On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:50 AM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > >> Dear Dan, >> >>> In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants >>> that far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by >>> and large. >> >> I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US (I >> restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that point >> the contributors were all US-based). >> >> The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC >> (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected >> using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT >> TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based >> on individual researcher's agreements with the people they are >> recording. >> >> As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is >> concerned: This is an interesting question, since the average size >> of the grants to academics on the three links you provided seems >> very similar. My impression (based on my own limited experience) >> is not the researchers are more likely to get large sums in the >> UK, but that the success rate for grant submissions is perhaps >> higher (c. 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what the ratio is >> for the NSF). >> >> chrz, mm >> -- >> >> Miriam Meyerhoff >> Professor of Sociolinguistics >> Linguistics & English Language >> University of Edinburgh >> 14 Buccleuch Place >> Edinburgh EH8 9LN >> SCOTLAND, UK >> >> ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main >> office) >> fax: +44 131 650-6883 >> >> http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > ************************************************ Shanley Allen, Associate Professor Acting Chair, Department of Literacy and Language, Counseling and Development School of Education, Boston University 2 Sherborn Street, Boston, MA, 02215, USA e-mail: shanley at bu.edu ************************************************ From Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com Wed Oct 25 13:22:44 2006 From: Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com (Ulrich, Julia) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:22:44 +0200 Subject: Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives (Ed. by Kristiansen et al.) Message-ID: NEW PUBLICATION BY MOUTON DE GRUYTER COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS: CURRENT APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES Edited by Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, René Dirven, and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibánez 2006. xi, 499 pages. Paperback. € 24.95 / sFr 40.00 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 33.70 ISBN: 3-11-018951-8 ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018951-3 (Mouton Reader) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?isbn=978-3-11-018951-3&fg=SK&L=E Cloth. € 98.00 / sFr 157.00 / *US$ 132.30 ISBN 3-11-018950-X ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018950-6 (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics 1) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-9783110189506-1&l=E&ad=he Date of publication: 10/2006 Subjects: Cognitive Linguistics; Applied Linguistics “Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives” is an up-to-date survey of recent research in Cognitive Linguistics and its applications by prominent researchers. The volume brings together generally accessible syntheses and special studies of Cognitive Linguistics strands in a sizable format and is thus an asset not only to the cognitive linguistics community, but also to neighbouring disciplines and linguists in general. The volume covers a wide range of fields and combines wide accessibility with a highly specific information value. KEY FEATURES * An excellent source for the study of Applied Cognitive Linguistics, one of the most popular and fastest growing areas in linguistics. * Authoritative and detailed survey articles by leading scholars in the field. * Accessible to a general audience, yet also characterized by a highly specific information value. FROM THE CONTENTS Introduction: Cognitive Linguistics: Current applications and future perspectives Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, René Dirven and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez Part one: The cognitive base Methodology in Cognitive Linguistics Dirk Geeraerts Polysemy and the lexicon John R. Taylor Cognitive approaches to grammar Cristiano Broccias Part two: The conceptual leap Three dogmas of embodiment: Cognitive linguistics as a cognitive science Tim Rohrer Metonymy as a usage event Klaus-Uwe Panther Conceptual blending in thought, rhetoric, and ideology Seana Coulson Part three: The psychological basis The contested impact of cognitive linguistic research on the psycholinguistics of metaphor understanding Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Marcus Perlman X IS LIKE Y: The emergence of similarity mappings in children’s early speech and gesture Seyda Özcalskan and Susan Goldin-Meadow Part four: Go, tell it on the mountain Energy through fusion at last: Synergies in cognitive anthropology and cognitive linguistics Gary B. Palmer Cognitive linguistic applications in second or foreign language instruction: rationale, proposals, and evaluation Frank Boers and Seth Lindstromberg Part five: Verbal and beyond: Vision and imagination Visual communication: Signed language and cognition Terry Janzen Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework:Agendas for research Charles Forceville The fall of the wall between literary studies and linguistics: Cognitive poetics Margaret H. Freeman Part six: Virtual reality as a new experience Artificial intelligence, figurative language and cognitive linguistics John A. Barnden Computability as a test on linguistics theories Tony Veale EDITORS Gitte Kristiansen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; Michel Achard, Rice University, USA; René Dirven, University of Duisburg, Germany; Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, University of La Rioja, Spain. TO ORDER, PLEASE CONTACT Rhenus Medien Logistik GmbH & Co. KG Justus-von-Liebig-Str. 1 86899 Landsberg, Germany Fax: +49-(0)8191-97000-560 E-mail: degruyter at rhenus.de For USA, Canada, Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. PO Box 960 Herndon, VA 20172-0960 Tel.: +1 (703) 661 1589 Tel. Toll-free +1 (800) 208 8144 Fax: +1 (703) 661 1501 E-mail: degruytermail at presswarehouse.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: www.mouton-publishers.com For free demo versions of Mouton de Gruyter’s multimedia products, please visit www.mouton-online.com (Prices are subject to change. Prices do not include postage and handling.) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Diese E-Mail und ihre Dateianhaenge sind fuer den angegebenen Empfaenger und/oder die Empfaengergruppe bestimmt. Wenn Sie diese E-Mail versehentlich erhalten haben, setzen Sie sich bitte mit dem Absender oder Ihrem Systembetreuer in Verbindung. Diese Fusszeile bestaetigt ausserdem, dass die E-Mail auf bekannte Viren ueberprueft wurde. This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender or the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses. From dlevere at ilstu.edu Wed Oct 25 13:25:12 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:25:12 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <74D71143-3C3A-4B28-8948-5349BC90BBEC@bu.edu> Message-ID: Shanley, I don't know about Canada's indirect costs for grants, etc. but in the UK there certainly are high indirect costs. However, the UK Research Council's have now gone to a program called FEC (often pronounced with a different vowel in the middle by some disgruntled grant writers), 'Full Economic Costing', which means that your grant proposal must include an estimate of the cost to the University of every hour you plan to work on the grant, the square footage of University space (including your office) that will be dedicated to the grant, and so on. This has pushed up the costs of grants. The overhead return policy of some UK universities, e.g. the University of Manchester, is much more generous than in the US, meaning that, for example, in my last UK grants 15% of the total indirect costs came to me, allowing me to really do a lot more with the project and fund more graduate student research than I could have done otherwise. Some of this is part of the Blair-Brown push to put UK universities in research leadership worldwide and I think it is working at the level of grants. But, like Canada, there are no summer salaries available for PIs in the UK, since everyone is on a 12-month salary. However, speaking of summer PI salaries, there is an immediate way in which every grant-applying/holding linguist can help the field: don't request summer salaries on your grants from the NSF and ask for the amount that would have gone to salary to go to better archiving, for example. Jr. linguists might need the salary support. But senior linguists could set a solid example by not asking for grant-based salary - except for buy-outs to do more research. Summer salary, though I used to always ask for it, really uses funds that could do better work elsewhere, at least if the linguist is earning a good salary already. Just a suggestion. Dan On Oct 25, 2006, at 8:12 AM, Shanley Allen wrote: > Another difference may be due to differences in the way that > faculty salary and university overhead are treated. In the US, > it's typical for faculty to include in their grants money to buy > out teaching and to pay summer salary, since US professors > virtually all have 9-month contracts so aren't paid for the 3 > summer months. In Canada, in contrast, professors are paid by the > university for the full 12 months, and typically don't buy out of > teaching unless the funded project is very large. In the US, it's > also typical for universities to charge high overhead on grants > from federal funding agencies - at my university (BU) the rate is > 63%. In Canada, I don't think this overhead is factored into the > individual grant but gets to the university in some other way > (although I may be wrong about this). So US grants that look large > don't cover as much actual work because so much of the money goes > to overhead and faculty salary. > Shanley. > > > On 25 Oct 2006, at 15:02, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > >> Miriam, >> >> Interesting take on the size of UK grants. I guess some of this >> has to do with experience. Maybe NSF grants have gotten somewhat >> larger over the past few years. >> >> I served on the AHRC funding reform panel and had grants with the >> ESRC and AHRC far in excess of anything I have had from the NSF (I >> have had NSF funding for most of the past 22 years and have mainly >> had grants that fall within what I was once informed to be the >> 'normal' range for linguistics, i.e. below 300,000 for three years). >> >> The UK granting agencies let you know what the percentage of >> applicants receiving grants that year was. I was told by both ESRC >> and AHRC that about 26% of applicants received funding, so this >> accords with what you say. I would say that that is likely better >> than the NSF. (Paul Chapin has an excellent book from CUP on NSF >> grants.) >> >> Most universities in the US and UK will pay (out of central >> university funds) for their faculty to visit the relevant funding >> agencies and discuss projects with them. And in the US at least >> NSF representatives have been very helpful in discussing proposals >> with folks at the LSA annual meetings. I am sure that they are >> well aware of the need for more funds for 'proper archiving' of >> field data. >> >> Dan >> >> >> >> On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:50 AM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: >> >>> Dear Dan, >>> >>>> In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants >>>> that far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF >>>> by and large. >>> >>> I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US >>> (I restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that >>> point the contributors were all US-based). >>> >>> The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC >>> (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected >>> using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT >>> TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based >>> on individual researcher's agreements with the people they are >>> recording. >>> >>> As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is >>> concerned: This is an interesting question, since the average >>> size of the grants to academics on the three links you provided >>> seems very similar. My impression (based on my own limited >>> experience) is not the researchers are more likely to get large >>> sums in the UK, but that the success rate for grant submissions >>> is perhaps higher (c. 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what >>> the ratio is for the NSF). >>> >>> chrz, mm >>> -- >>> >>> Miriam Meyerhoff >>> Professor of Sociolinguistics >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> University of Edinburgh >>> 14 Buccleuch Place >>> Edinburgh EH8 9LN >>> SCOTLAND, UK >>> >>> ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main >>> office) >>> fax: +44 131 650-6883 >>> >>> http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ >> >> ********************** >> Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, >> Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures >> Campus Box 4300 >> Illinois State University >> Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 >> OFFICE: 309-438-3604 >> FAX: 309-438-8038 >> Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp >> Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ >> Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ >> >> and >> >> Honorary Professor of Linguistics >> University of Manchester >> Manchester, UK >> > > ************************************************ > Shanley Allen, Associate Professor > Acting Chair, Department of Literacy and > Language, Counseling and Development > School of Education, Boston University > 2 Sherborn Street, Boston, MA, 02215, USA > > e-mail: shanley at bu.edu > ************************************************ > > ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com Wed Oct 25 13:26:33 2006 From: Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com (Ulrich, Julia) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:26:33 +0200 Subject: Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings, edited by Dirk Geeraerts (Mouton de Gruyter) Message-ID: NEW FROM MOUTON DE GRUYTER COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS: BASIC READINGS Edited by Dirk Geeraerts 2006. viii, 485 pages. Paperback. € 24.95 / sFr 40.00 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 33.70 ISBN: 3-11-019085-0 (Mouton Reader ) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?isbn=978-3-11-019085-4&fg=SK&L=E Cloth. € 98.00 / sFr 157.00 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 132.30 ISBN 3-11-019084-2 (Cognitive Linguistics Research 34) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?isbn=978-3-11-019084-7&fg=SK&L=E Date of publication: 09/2006 Over the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has grown to be one of the most broadly appealing and dynamic frameworks for the study of natural language. Essentially, this new school of linguistics focuses on the meaning side of language: linguistic form is analysed as an expression of meaning. And meaning itself is not something that exists in isolation, but it is integrated with the full spectrum of human experience: the fact that we are embodied beings just as much as the fact that we are cultural beings. Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings brings together twelve foundational articles, each of which introduces one of the basic concepts of Cognitive Linguistics, such as conceptual metaphor, image schemas, mental spaces, construction grammar, prototypicality and radial sets. The collection features the founding fathers of Cognitive Linguistics: George Lakoff, Ron Langacker, Len Talmy, Gilles Fauconnier, and Charles Fillmore, together with some of the most influential younger scholars. By its choice of seminal papers and leading authors, this book is specifically suited for an introductory course in Cognitive Linguistics. This is further supported by a general introduction to the theory and, specifically, the practice of Cognitive Linguistics and by trajectories for further reading that start out from the individual chapters. EDITOR: Dirk Geeraerts, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. FROM THE CONTENTS Introduction: A rough guide to cognitive linguistics Dirk Geeraerts Cognitive Grammar: Introduction to “concept, image, and symbol” Ronald W. Langacker Grammatical construal: The relation of grammar to cognition Leonard Talmy Radial network: Cognitive topology and lexical networks Claudia Brugman and George Lakoff Prototype theory: Prospects and problems of prototype theory Dirk Geeraerts Schematic network: Ambiguity, polysemy, and vagueness David Tuggy Conceptual metaphor: The contemporary theory of metaphor George Lakoff Image schema: The cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Herbert L. Colston Metonymy: The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies William Croft Mental spaces: Conceptual integration networks Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner Frame semantics Charles J.Fillmore Construction Grammar: The inherent semantics of argument structure: The case of the English ditransitive construction Adele E. Goldberg Usage-based linguistics: First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition Michael Tomasello Epilogue: Trajectories for further reading Dirk Geeraerts TO ORDER, PLEASE CONTACT Rhenus Medien Logistik GmbH & Co. KG Justus-von-Liebig-Str. 1 86899 Landsberg, Germany Fax: +49-(0)8191-97000-560 E-mail: degruyter at rhenus.de For USA, Canada, Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. PO Box 960 Herndon, VA 20172-0960 Tel.: +1 (703) 661 1589 Tel. Toll-free +1 (800) 208 8144 Fax: +1 (703) 661 1501 E-mail: degruytermail at presswarehouse.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: www.mouton-publishers.com For free demo versions of Mouton de Gruyter’s multimedia products, please visit www.mouton-online.com (Prices are subject to change. Prices do not include postage and handling.) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Diese E-Mail und ihre Dateianhaenge sind fuer den angegebenen Empfaenger und/oder die Empfaengergruppe bestimmt. Wenn Sie diese E-Mail versehentlich erhalten haben, setzen Sie sich bitte mit dem Absender oder Ihrem Systembetreuer in Verbindung. Diese Fusszeile bestaetigt ausserdem, dass die E-Mail auf bekannte Viren ueberprueft wurde. This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender or the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses. From mark at polymathix.com Wed Oct 25 17:55:17 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:55:17 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Actually, I'm not sure we do agree. I was trying to say that if you have a story that can't be disseminated to other researchers, then you can't use it as data for published studies. What I thought you were saying was that there can be stories that you use as data for published studies but which you cannot disseminate. That's what I would disagree with, because I believe that the data used for a published study has to be made available for the reasons Dan pointed out. If that's not what you were saying, then carry on and ignore me. :) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > Precisely. I'm glad you agree. > > best, mm > > At 16:44 -0500 24/10/06, Mark P. Line wrote: >>Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: >>> >>> But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her >>> rape -- you can't have that. >> >>If the subject of rape is integral to your research, then it seems like >>you you would have addressed ethical issues relating to data >> dissemination >>before you chose your informants. >> >>If the subject of rape is not integral to your research, then it seems >>like you could do without that particular story in your dataset. >> >> >>-- Mark >> >>Mark P. Line >>Polymathix >>San Antonio, TX > > > -- > > Miriam Meyerhoff > Professor of Sociolinguistics > Linguistics & English Language > University of Edinburgh > 14 Buccleuch Place > Edinburgh EH8 9LN > SCOTLAND, UK > > ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) > fax: +44 131 650-6883 > > http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ > > From Salvador.Pons at uv.es Wed Oct 25 22:27:33 2006 From: Salvador.Pons at uv.es (Salvador Pons) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:27:33 +0200 Subject: Call for contributors: Book "Meaning Changes in Approximatives" Message-ID: BOOK PROPOSAL: MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (Proposal submitted to John Benjamins Publisher) Salvador Pons Bordería Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, Spain http://www.uv.es/~ponss This is a call for contributions to the book `Meaning Changes in Approximatives' edited by S. Pons Bordería, which will be submitted to John Benjamins publisher. This volume aims at describing a process of semantic-pragmatic change which affects the word class of approximatives (almost, hardly, barely, and so on). The semantic change involved implies a reverse in the polarity of the approximatives, whereby almost assumes the meaning of barely, and viceversa (see a more detailed description in the outline below). Literature on approximatives has focussed on English (Sadock 1981, Horn 2000) or on Romance languages (Schwenter 2002, Pons & Schwenter 2005, Albelda forthcoming, Matos Amaral forthcoming). There is evidence, however, that this phenomenon, albeit hardly studied, has a wider typological extension (Li 1976, Ziegler forthcoming). This volume intends to explore the spread of such a change by collecting a wide array of papers dealing with approximatives in different, typologically unrelated languages. Contributions should conform to the following features: -provide the description of an approximative. -show that there is/has been a semantic change, whereby an approximative with positive meaning comes to express negative meaning. Also, changes like “still” ‡ “not yet”, or “since” ‡ to, are welcome (if you have different cases in mind, you can contact me). -discuss the implications of the meaning change you have studied, either for the language described (especially if it is a minority language), or for the field of approximatives. Interested contributors, please send Salvador Pons Bordería, before DECEMBER, 15th, an abstract containing: –Full name, email and academic address –Title –Summary of your paper (outline of the problem, its relation to the issue of approximatives and, when possible, possible conclusions) Salvador Pons Bordería Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, Spain Salvador.pons at uv.es http://www.uv.es/~ponss MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (OUTLINE) The literature on pragmatic scales has paid attention to certain elements which signal proximity to a limit, called approximatives (Sadock 1981). Approximatives usually belong to the word class of adverbs (Engl. almost, barely, hardly, Sp. casi, apenas, por poco, Port. mal, and so on). Literature on approximatives has dealt mainly with the semantic vs. pragmatic character of the relation they entertain with negation. For instance, ex. (1) means that the speaker did not lose the train: 1. I almost lost the train Meaning relationship (I did not lose the train) It seems that an approximative (entails/presupposes ) a meaning relationship with its host proposition p, so that Approximative (p) ‡ ~p Approximative (~p) ‡ p Nevertheless, recent research on approximatives has raised an interesting issue: some approximatives can invert this meaning relationship (ex. 2): 2. Por poco no se mata “She was almost not-killed” Meaning rel.: No se ha matado “She wasn’t killed giving rise to a different relationship between the approximative and its host utterance: Approximative (~p) ‡ ~p Here a polysemy has arosen, which can be diachronically studied as a process of grammaticalization (Pons & Schwenter 2005). In this new meaning, the approximative “inverts” its reading, showing that the border between positive and negative has been exceeded (Horn 2000). The literature on approximatives has reported similar paths of change in other particles: ~p to p (Chinese cha-yadar –Li 1976–, Valencian Spanish casi –Schwenter 2002–, Portuguese mal –Matos Amaral 2005–); not yet p to still p (Andean Spanish todavía –Pons 2005–) or even to p to from p (Mexican Spanish hasta): 3. (The speaker is trying to get out of his car. When he finally gets out, he says): ¡Casi salgo! “I-almost-get-out” Meaning relationship: “I was about not getting out (of the car)” (Schwenter 2002) 4. O João mal acabou de jantar. ‘João barely finished dinner.’ Meaning relationship: “João finished dinner” 4’. Mal sabia eu que havia de morar aqui! ‘I hardly knew that I was going to live here!’ Meaning relationship: “I did not know that I was going to live here” 5. A: ¿Has acabado de comer? “Have you finished eating? B: Todavía “Still” Meaning relationship: “I still have not finished eating” (Pons 2005) 6. Las tiendas están abiertas hasta las 9 de la mañana “The shops are open to 9 o’clock in the morning” Meaning relationship: “The shops are open since 9 o’clock in the morning” The polysemies developed in these particles seem to be part of a wider, not described yet, set of phenomena. The aim of this book is to shed light on the nature of this reversing process, by collecting a set of papers which study different (kinds of) approximatives in typologically unrelated languages. -- -- ******************************** Salvador Pons Bordería Dpto. Filología Española Avda. Blasco Ibáñez, 32 46010 Valencia salvador.pons at uv.es ******************************** From hopper at cmu.edu Wed Oct 25 23:57:01 2006 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:57:01 -0400 Subject: Call for contributors: Book 'Meaning Changes in Approximatives' In-Reply-To: <5231853289ponss@uv.es> Message-ID: I was like to faint, not seeing the work of Tania Kuteva and of Suzanne Romaine mentioned. Paul > BOOK PROPOSAL: MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (Proposal submitted to > John Benjamins Publisher) > > Salvador Pons Bordería Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, > Spain http://www.uv.es/~ponss > > This is a call for contributions to the book `Meaning Changes in > Approximatives' edited by S. Pons Bordería, which will be submitted to > John Benjamins publisher. > > This volume aims at describing a process of semantic-pragmatic change > which affects the word class of approximatives (almost, hardly, barely, > and so on). The semantic change involved implies a reverse in the polarity > of the approximatives, whereby almost assumes the meaning of barely, and > viceversa (see a more detailed description in the outline below). > Literature on approximatives has focussed on English (Sadock 1981, Horn > 2000) or on Romance languages (Schwenter 2002, Pons & Schwenter 2005, > Albelda forthcoming, Matos Amaral forthcoming). There is evidence, > however, that this phenomenon, albeit hardly studied, has a wider > typological extension (Li 1976, Ziegler forthcoming). This volume intends > to explore the spread of such a change by collecting a wide array of > papers dealing with approximatives in different, typologically unrelated > languages. Contributions should conform to the following features: -provide > the description of an approximative. -show that there is/has been a > semantic change, whereby an approximative with positive meaning comes to > express negative meaning. Also, changes like “still” ‡ “not yet”, or > “since” ‡ to, are welcome (if you have different cases in mind, you can > contact me). -discuss the implications of the meaning change you have > studied, either for the language described (especially if it is a minority > language), or for the field of approximatives. > > Interested contributors, please send Salvador Pons Bordería, before > DECEMBER, 15th, an abstract containing: –Full name, email and academic > address –Title –Summary of your paper (outline of the problem, its relation > to the issue of approximatives and, when possible, possible conclusions) > > Salvador Pons Bordería Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, > Spain Salvador.pons at uv.es http://www.uv.es/~ponss > > MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (OUTLINE) > > The literature on pragmatic scales has paid attention to certain elements > which signal proximity to a limit, called approximatives (Sadock 1981). > Approximatives usually belong to the word class of adverbs (Engl. almost, > barely, hardly, Sp. casi, apenas, por poco, Port. mal, and so on). > Literature on approximatives has dealt mainly with the semantic vs. > pragmatic character of the relation they entertain with negation. For > instance, ex. (1) means that the speaker did not lose the train: > > 1. I almost lost the train Meaning relationship (I did not lose the train) > > > It seems that an approximative (entails/presupposes ) a meaning > relationship with its host proposition p, so that > > Approximative (p) ‡ ~p Approximative (~p) ‡ p > > Nevertheless, recent research on approximatives has raised an interesting > issue: some approximatives can invert this meaning relationship (ex. 2): > > 2. Por poco no se mata “She was almost not-killed” Meaning rel.: No se ha > matado “She wasn’t killed > > giving rise to a different relationship between the approximative and its > host utterance: Approximative (~p) ‡ ~p > > Here a polysemy has arosen, which can be diachronically studied as a > process of grammaticalization (Pons & Schwenter 2005). In this new > meaning, the approximative “inverts” its reading, showing that the border > between positive and negative has been exceeded (Horn 2000). The literature > on approximatives has reported similar paths of change in other > particles: ~p to p (Chinese cha-yadar –Li 1976–, Valencian Spanish casi > –Schwenter 2002–, Portuguese mal –Matos Amaral 2005–); not yet p to still > p (Andean Spanish todavía –Pons 2005–) or even to p to from p (Mexican > Spanish hasta): > > 3. (The speaker is trying to get out of his car. When he finally gets > out, he says): ¡Casi salgo! “I-almost-get-out” Meaning relationship: “I was > about not getting out (of the car)” (Schwenter 2002) > > 4. O João mal acabou de jantar. ‘João barely finished dinner.’ Meaning > relationship: “João finished dinner” 4’. Mal sabia eu que havia de morar > aqui! ‘I hardly knew that I was going to live here!’ Meaning relationship: > “I did not know that I was going to live here” > > 5. A: ¿Has acabado de comer? “Have you finished eating? B: Todavía “Still” > Meaning relationship: “I still have not finished eating” (Pons 2005) > > 6. Las tiendas están abiertas hasta las 9 de la mañana “The shops are open > to 9 o’clock in the morning” Meaning relationship: “The shops are open > since 9 o’clock in the morning” > > The polysemies developed in these particles seem to be part of a wider, > not described yet, set of phenomena. The aim of this book is to shed light > on the nature of this reversing process, by collecting a set of papers > which study different (kinds of) approximatives in typologically unrelated > languages. > > > -- -- ******************************** Salvador Pons Bordería Dpto. Filología > Española Avda. Blasco Ibáñez, 32 46010 Valencia salvador.pons at uv.es > ******************************** > > > From dcyr at yorku.ca Sat Oct 28 16:00:00 2006 From: dcyr at yorku.ca (dcyr at yorku.ca) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:00:00 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <165F28D6-E50C-4225-9707-E4927E139038@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Dan wrote: > P.S. Some readers might find it instructive to compare grant sizes of > the different funding agencies. In the UK linguistic awards of up to > roughly one million dollars (AHRC) or 1.5 million (ESRC) for five > years are allowed. For the NSF linguistics awards are usually less > than one hundred thousand dollars per year, for a preferred three- > year maximum as I understand it. Things may have changed. More money > is available from the NSF in principle since, last award I had at > least, it had few explicit caps. > > Here are three pages, for NSF, AHRC, and ESRC. > > NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=BCS > (then go to award search and just type in linguistics and scroll down) > > AHRC: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/awards/ > > ESRC: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/help/research_list.aspx#skip To this you could add the Canadian granting agency SSHRC and check the available grants at http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/ Danielle E. Cyr York University Tortonto, ON, Canada > > > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk Mon Oct 30 15:12:54 2006 From: Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk (Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:12:54 -0000 Subject: New MAs in Language and Cognition at Brighton Message-ID: Dear Colleagues. I'm delighted to announce two new MA programmes at the University of Brighton. These are in 'Cognitive Linguistics' and 'Language, Communication and Cognition'. Both MAs will inaugurate from September 2007. Preliminary details are available from my website, together with details of the new PhD programme in Cognitive Linguistics. www.vyvevans.net All enquiries and application queries should, at this stage, be directed to me. Other relevant web links are below: School of Languages (University of Brighton): http://www.brighton.ac.uk/languages/ Linguistics research: http://www.brighton.ac.uk/languages/research/linguistics.htm Vyv Evans From bergen at hawaii.edu Wed Oct 4 02:04:48 2006 From: bergen at hawaii.edu (Benjamin K Bergen) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 16:04:48 -1000 Subject: Job opening in Language Documentation and Conservation Message-ID: ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS IN LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION AND CONSERVATION. The Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position (position no. 83078) in Language Documentation and Conservation, to begin August 1, 2007, or as soon as possible thereafter, pending availability of position and funding. Minimum qualifications: Ph.D. in linguistics or related field. (Those currently pursuing a Ph.D. must provide evidence that all degree requirements will have been met by the date of hire). Applicants are expected to have practical fieldwork experience and a demonstrated commitment to the goals of language documentation and conservation, as well as a high-quality research record in these areas. Desirable qualifications: Prior knowledge of one or more Asian and/or Pacific languages would be an important asset, as would expertise in computational methods of data manipulation, storage, and dissemination. We are especially interested in candidates who are willing to participate fully in the departments many language documentation activities, and whose research and teaching interests allow them to interact with faculty and students in the department, in other departments, and within the community as well. Pay range: Commensurate with experience. To apply: Submit cover letter indicating how you satisfy the minimum and desirable qualifications, 3 letters of recommendation, a copy of your CV, copies of key, relevant publications. Application address: Chair, Department Personnel Committee, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Inquiries: Michael Forman, Chair, Department Personnel Committee, Department of Linguistics, 808-956-8602, linguist at hawaii.edu. Closing date: tentatively Dec-01-2006. The University of Hawai'i is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution. All qualified applicants will be considered, regardless of race, sex, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or status as disabled veteran or veteran of Vietnam era. +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ Benjamin K. Bergen Associate Professor Department of Linguistics University of Hawai`i, Manoa bergen at hawaii.edu http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ From giuliana.fiorentino at unimol.it Sat Oct 7 18:39:49 2006 From: giuliana.fiorentino at unimol.it (Giuliana Fiorentino) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 20:39:49 +0200 Subject: Symposium: Nouns Cross-linguistically Message-ID: The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany) and the University of Molise, (Italy), are jointly organizing a Symposium on Nouns Cross-linguistically to be held at Campobasso, University of Molise, June, 22-23, 2007. The focus of the Symposium is on the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of nouns, nominalizations and other strategies that are used by languages in order to 'name' things and events. Our aim is to adopt a broad and interdisciplinary approach to this topic. List of participants: a.. Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Nominalizations between verbs and nouns a.. Giuliana Fiorentino, University of Molise Nouns, nominalizations and complex NP between speech and writing: a syntactic approach a.. Livio Gaeta, University of Naples, Federico II Action nouns: at a cross-road of morphology, syntax and semantics a.. David Gil, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Nouns May Belong to Different Syntactic Categories in Different Languages a.. Martin Haspelmath, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Substantivizations cross-linguistically a.. John Hawkins, University of Cambridge Nouns and Noun Phrases: Grammatical Variation and Language processing a.. Kees Hengeveld, University of Amsterdam Non-prototypical noun phrases a.. Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, University of Stockholm Proper-name compounds: meanings and uses a.. Romano Lazzeroni, University of Pisa Title to be announced a.. Christian Lehmann, University of Erfurt Nominal Concepts a.. Andrej Malchukov, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Constraining nominalization: functional and structural factors in interaction a.. Johanna Mattissen, University of Cologne Morphological Complexity in Nouns a.. Frans Plank, University of Konstanz About nameworthiness a.. Jan Rijkhoff, University of Aarhus Directionality in the grammaticalization of noun modifiers a.. Frank Seifart, University of Bochum Shape-based noun classes in Mira?a (North West Amazon) For further information, consult the following websites: http://serviziweb.unimol.it/pls/unimol/consultazione.mostra_pagina?id_pagina=2585 and soon: http://www.eva.mpg.de/english/events.htm Organizers: Bernard Comrie comrie at eva.mpg.de Giuliana Fiorentino giuliana.fiorentino at unimol.it From langconf at bu.edu Wed Oct 11 13:22:45 2006 From: langconf at bu.edu (bucld) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:22:45 -0400 Subject: BUCLD 31 Pre-Registration Reminder Message-ID: Dear Colleague, We would like to friendly remind you that the deadline for pre- registering for BUCLD 31 is on October 20 (Please disregard this message if you have already registered). The pre-registration information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/ BUCLD/prereg.htm The 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development will be held at Boston University, November 3-5, 2006. Our invited speakers are: Roberta Golinkoff, University of Delaware Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University "Breaking the Language Barrier: The View from the Radical Middle." Keynote address, Friday, November 3 at 8:00 pm J?rgen M. Meisel, University of Hamburg & University of Calgary ?Multiple First Language Acquisition: A Case for Autonomous Syntactic Development in the Simultaneous Acquisition of More Than One Language.? Plenary address, Saturday, November 4 at 5:45 pm Mabel Rice, University of Kansas Helen Tager-Flusberg, Boston University Simon Fisher, University of Oxford Discussant: Gary Marcus, New York University ?Future Directions in Search of Genes that Influence Language: Phenotypes, Molecules, Brains, and Growth.? Lunchtime symposium, Saturday, November 4 at 12:00 pm The Society for Language Development (SLD) will be holding its third annual symposium on Thursday, November 2, in conjunction with the BUCLD meeting. BUCLD 31 is offering a pre-registration option for this event. Onsite registration will also be available. The Symposium will be on "Learning Verbs." Speakers: Lila Gleitman, Cynthia Fisher,Adele Goldberg, and Dedre Gentner. More information on the SLD symposium can be found at: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/sld/symposium.html The pre-registration information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/prereg.htm The full conference schedule is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/schedule.htm More information about BUCLD is available at our website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD We look forward to seeing you at BUCLD 31. Sincerely, Heather Caunt-Nulton, Samantha Kulatilake, I-hao Woo BUCLD 31 Co-Organizers From melba at rice.edu Fri Oct 13 18:35:26 2006 From: melba at rice.edu (Melissa Bailar) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:35:26 -0500 Subject: Rice Humanities Research Center External Faculty Fellowships Message-ID: Rice University's Humanities Research Center will award up to four external faculty fellowships during the academic year 2007-2008. Fellows will be in residence at the Center for one semester, give a series of three lectures or teach one course, and participate in the Center's intellectual life. Both junior and senior faculty with appointments at universities other than Rice are eligible but must be at least three years beyond receipt of the PhD by the beginning of their fellowship term. Fellows are awarded a stipend ranging from 40K to 75K, depending on rank, and a moving allowance. Application Deadline: December 18, 2006 Application information is available at http://hrc.rice.edu. These fellowships are generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lynette S. Autrey Endowment. -- Melissa Bailar, PhD Project Coordinator Humanities Research Center MS-620 713-348-4227 From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Sun Oct 15 07:36:40 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 03:36:40 -0400 Subject: More parallels? Sub- and super-languages Message-ID: When "world" languages (as some have called them) are examined, we often see extra goodies they have cumulated (extra large vocabularies, perhaps more registers, genres, grammatical elaborations, and so on). Conversely, moribund endangered languages appear to have undergone opposite trends (lost vocabulary, reduced grammatical possibilities, etc.). Not surprisingly, speakers of endangered languages often find themselves absorbed other cultures- pressures created by living within those other cultures have led to the loss of content and structure in their languages. The 'world' languages, on the other hand, have benefitted from great expansion of speaker territory and material economies, often at the expense of weaker societies. Cheap labor seems often to derive from those whose languages are in trouble (at least in the country of residence, if not origin). I was led to think about this after reading today an article (Researchers Find Smallest Cellular Genome http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061012184647.htm) about research which suggests that an insect endosymbiotic bacterium is slowly losing its genes to the host and headed towards organelle status. Organelles are semi-independent structures within cells that do jobs the cells could not do alone, or as efficiently (such as making ATP, photosynthesis, breaking down waste products, and so on). Research has shown that such structures for the most part evolved from free-living organisms that had their own full-sized genomes. In some cases organelles have been reduced to almost no genetic material left. What they can't make on their own they get from the host- usually chemical 'finished goods' of higher complexity. So the bacteria end up running the mills, sweeping the floors, and other menial labor, losing their own 'language' and 'culture' in the process, ending up dependent on the larger host 'language' and 'culture', spoken in the big shining city of the nucleus, which maintains control of most of the economic decisions and resources. At the same time full integration is prevented- often the organelles have their own 'accent' (variants in the DNA coding paradigm). Seems like a bit of ghettoization going on. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr Sun Oct 15 08:11:17 2006 From: maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr (Maarten Lemmens) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:11:17 +0200 Subject: Call for Papers: CogLing conference, France Message-ID: ==== Apologies for cross-posting ==== SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS (version fran?aise ci-dessous) Second International conference of the Association Fran?aise de Linguistique Cognitive (AFLiCo), with general sessions and special thematic sessions on "Typology, Gesture, and Sign". University of Lille 3, Lille, France 10-12 May 2007 http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ ****** PLEASE NOTE: - the conference is not restricted to the three themes, but welcomes more general topics as well (see below) - addition of "cognitive phonology" and "cognitive language pedagogy" for general sessions - provisional conference structure available on conference website ***** PLENARY SPEAKERS : William CROFT (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque) Christian CUXAC (Univ. Paris 8) Susan GOLDIN-MEADOW (Univ. de Chicago) Colette GRINEVALD (Univ. Lyon 2) Scott LIDDELL (Univ. of San Diego) Irit MEIR (Univ de Tel-Aviv) Christian PLANTIN (Univ. Lyon 2) Dan SLOBIN (Univ. de Californie, Berkeley) Eve SWEETSER (Univ. of California, Berkeley) Sherman WILCOX (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque) OBJECTIVES The conference aims at bringing together and strengthening the network of cognitive linguistics working in France and abroad, to continue the network of discussion and collaboration set in motion by the inaugural conference of AFLiCo ("From Grammar to Mind"), held in Bordeaux, May 2007. This second conference will offer a forum both thematic sessions and general sessions. THEMATIC SESSIONS The conference will devote special attention to three major themes of research, viz. typology, gesture and sign language. The last topic ties in with the LSF Interpreter training at the University of Lille. These three themes all pertain to the relationship between language and cognition. The typological and comparative studies tie in with the question of universal grammar and linguistic relativity. Sign languages are essential to better understand the cognitive dimensions of language. Cognitive Linguistics offers a well-suited model to account for iconicity, metaphor and metonymy that are central to the study of the sign languages of the world. The study of co-verbal gestures, which straddle the boarder between the verbal and the non-verbal offer another window into the mind, revealing cognitive strategies which may or may not be identical to those that one finds in language. The study of gesture, still relatively young, finds a natural place within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. GENERAL SESSIONS However, the conference will not be limited to these three domains of research. The organisers encourage researchers to submit proposals within other areas of cognitive linguistics, to be presented in the general parallel sessions. In addition to the three thematic areas, these topics include (but are not limited to): - interaction between lexicon and syntax - corpus linguistics and cognitive linguistics - grammaticalization and diachronic linguistics - semantic ? pragmatic interface - linguistic relativism - iconicity - cognitive phonology - cognitive applications in language pedagadogy In line with one of the main goals of AFLiCo, we welcome papers elaborating the affinities between cognitive linguistics and Culioli?s "th?orie des op?rations ?noniciatives". The organisers further encourage young researchers to submit an abstract. NOTE: for organisational reasons, the thematic sessions on sign languages will be grouped on the first day of the conference (10 May). SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Abstracts will be submitted to a double, blind review. They should be fully anonymous and not exceed 500 words (references excluded). To be sent via email as attachment (MS-WORD doc or rtf, OpenOffice, PDF) to: aflico at univ-lille3.fr Please put in the subject line: "abstract AFLICO" In the body of the mail, please specify: - author(s) - title - affiliation of author(s) - presentation or poster - thematic sessions (typology, gesture, sign) or general session - 3 - 5 keywords to help organisers arrange presentations thematically. - need for sign language interpreter IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline: 15 Nov., 2006 Notification of acceptance: 15 Jan., 2007 Satellite event (workshop "Space & Language"): May 9, 2007 Conference dates : May 10-12, 2007 (TBC : registration & welcome reception : May 9, from 17h00) REGISTRATION Details about the registration procedure and registration deadlines will be posted on the conference website as soon as they become available. There will be reduced registration fee for AFLiCo members and students. CONFERENCE LANGUAGES English (preferred), French, LSF (please notify the organisers in advance) Conference website http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ SATELLITE EVENT Prior to the conference (May 9), there will be a thematic workshop on "Space and Language in typological perspective", with as speakers, Dan Slobin (Univ. of California), Maya Hickmann (Univ. Paris 5), Catherine Fuchs (CNRS), Laure Sarda (CNRS), Dejan Stosic (Univ. d?Artois), among others. Further details will be posted on the conference website. ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Maarten Lemmens, Universit? Lille3 Annie Risler, Universit? Lille3 Rudy Loock, Universit? Lille 3 Dejan Stosic, Univ. d?Artois Anne Jugnet, Univ. Lille3 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Michel Achard, Univ. de Rice, Houston, Tx, USA Marion Blondel, Dyalang, Univ. Rouen St?phanie Bonnefille, Univ. de Tour Bert Cornilie, Universit? de Leuven, Belgique Christian Cuxac, Univ. Paris 8 Georgette Dal, Universit? Lille3 Caroline David, Universit? Montpellier Liesbeth Degand, Universit? de Louvain, Belgique Nicole Delbecque, Universit? de Leuven, Belgique Jean-Pierre Descl?s, Universit? Paris 4 Dagmar Divjak, FWO Belgique & Universit? de Sheffield, Angleterre Jean-Michel Fortis, Univ. de Paris 7 Cath?rine Fuchs, ENS Ulm, Paris Stefan Gries, Univ. de Californie, Santa Barbara, USA Colette Grinevald, Universit? de Lyon 2. Maya Hickmann, Univ. Paris 5 Bernard Laks, Univ. Paris 10 Jean-R?mi Lapaire, Univ. Bordeaux 3 Scott Liddell, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA Wilfrid Rotg?, Univ. Paris X Nanterre Marie-Anne Sallandre, Univ. Paris 8 Anatol Stefanowitsch, Univ. de Bremen, Allemagne Eve Sweetser, Univ. de Californie, Berkeley, USA Phyllis Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Sherman Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA === version fran?aise === DEUXIEME APPEL A PROPOSITIONS Deuxi?me Colloque International de l?Association Fran?aise de Linguistique Cognitive (AFLiCo), avec des session g?n?rales et avec des sessions th?matiques sur "Typologie, Gestes, et Signes" Universit? Lille 3, Lille, France 10-12 mai 2007 http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ ****** VEUILLEZ NOTER: - le colloque n?est pas limit? aux trois th?mes, mais accueille ?galement des communications sur des sujets plus g?n?raux (voir ci-dessous) - l?addition de "phonologie cognitive" et "didactique des langues cognitive" pour les sessions g?n?rales - structure du colloque pr?visionnel disponible sur le site du colloque ***** INTERVENANTS PLENIERES INVITES : William CROFT (Univ. de New Mexico, Albuquerque) Christian CUXAC (Univ. Paris 8) Susan GOLDIN-MEADOW (Univ. de Chicago) Colette GRINEVALD (Univ. Lyon 2) Scott LIDDELL (Univ. de San Diego) Irit MEIR (Univ de Tel-Aviv) Christian PLANTIN (Univ. Lyon 2) Dan SLOBIN (Univ. de Californie, Berkeley) Eve SWEETSER (Univ. de Californie, Berkeley) Sherman WILCOX (Univ. de New Mexico, Albuquerque) L?objectif principal de ce colloque consiste ? renforcer le r?seau de collaboration et de discussion des linguistes cognitivistes en France dans un cadre international, comme a pu le faire le premier colloque de l?AFLiCo (? Du fait grammatical au fait cognitif ?), tenu ? Bordeaux en mai 2005. Le deuxi?me colloque comprendra des sessions th?matiques et des sessions g?n?rales. SESSIONS THEMATIQUES Comme l?indique le sous-titre, ce colloque vise ? regrouper des chercheurs internationaux autour des trois th?mes suivants : la recherche typologique et comparative, l??tude des gestes co-verbaux et la langue des signes. Ce dernier axe s?int?gre dans la fili?re langue des signes fran?aise (LSF) ? l?Universit? Lille3. Ces trois th?mes concernent tous la relation entre le langage et la cognition. Les ?tudes typologiques et comparatives cognitives touchent ? la question de la grammaire universelle et la relativit? linguistique. Les langues de signes sont essentielles pour mieux comprendre les dimensions cognitives du langage ; la Linguistique Cognitive offre un cadre parfaitement ad?quat pour rendre compte des ph?nom?nes d?iconicit? dans l?utilisation de l?espace, de m?taphore et de m?tonymie ? l??uvre dans les langues des signes du monde. L??tude des gestes co-verbaux, qui transgressent la fronti?re entre le verbal et le non-verbal, pourrait fournir un autre acc?s aux strat?gies cognitives (identiques ou non ? ce qu?on trouve dans le verbal et dans le gestuel) ; l??tude gestuelle, relativement jeune encore, trouve sa place naturelle dans le cadre de la Linguistique Cognitive. SESSIONS GENERALES Bien ?videmment, le colloque ne se limite pas ? des sessions th?matiques. Les organisateurs encouragent des chercheurs ? soumettre des propositions dans d?autres domaines de la Linguistique Cognitive. Ces communications pourront ?tre pr?sent?es dans les sessions parall?les non th?matiques. Voici quelques uns de ces domaines, la liste n??tant pas limitative : - interaction entre lexique et syntaxe - linguistique de corpus et linguistique cognitive - grammaticalisation et linguistique diachronique - interface entre la s?mantique et la pragmatique - relativit? linguistique - subjectification - iconicit? - phonologie cognitive - didactique des langues cognitive En accord avec les buts g?n?raux de l?AFLiCo, seront ?galement accueillies des pr?sentations qui ?laborent les points de convergence et de divergence entre la linguistique cognitive et la Th?orie des Op?rations Enonciatives. Les organisateurs encouragent des jeunes chercheurs ? soumettre des propositions. NOTE: pour des raisons d?organisation, les sessions th?matiques sur la langue des signes seront group?es sur le premier jour du colloque (10 mai). PROCEDURE DE SOUMISSION Chaque proposition sera ?valu?e par deux relecteurs. Les textes doivent ?tre anonymes et ne pas d?passer 500 mots (hors bibliographie). Ils sont ? envoyer par email en fichier attach? (MS-WORD (doc ou rtf), OpenOffice, PDF) ? l?adresse suivante : aflico at univ-lille3.fr Dans l?objet de votre message, sp?cifiez : "abstract AFLICO" Dans le corps du message, pr?cisez : - le nom de l?auteur / des auteurs - titre - affiliation et adresse de l?auteur / des auteurs - pr?sentation ou poster - sessions th?matiques (typologie, gestes, signes) ou session g?n?rale - 3 ? 5 mots - cl?s qui aideraient ? mettre la communication dans une session adapt?e. - besoin d?interpr?te LSF (ou LSA) DATES IMPORTANTES Date limite de soumission : 15 novembre 2006 Notification d?acceptation : 15 janvier 2007 Satellite event (journ?e d??tude "Espace & Langage"): 9 mai 2007 Colloque : 10-12 mai 2007 (? confirmer : inscription & pot d?accueil : 9 mai, ? partir d?env. 17h00) INSCRIPTION Des renseignements sp?cifiques concernant la proc?dure d?inscription et les dates limites seront affich?s d?s que possible sur le site. Frais d?inscription r?duits pour les membres de l?AFLiCo et les ?tudiants. LANGUES DU COLLOQUE Anglais (pr?f?r?), Fran?ais, LSF (merci de le signaler) SITE DU COLLOQUE http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/Events/colloque2007/ EVENEMENT SATELLITE La veille du colloque (le 9 mai 2007) se tiendra une journ?e d??tude sur "L?espace et la langue dans une perspective typologique" ; les intervenants seront, entre autres, Dan Slobin (Univ. of California), Maya Hickmann (Univ. Paris 5), Catherine Fuchs (CNRS), Laure Sarda (CNRS), Dejan Stosic (Univ. d?Artois). Plus de d?tails seront affich?s sur le site du colloque. COMITE D?ORGANISATION: Maarten Lemmens, Universit? Lille3 Annie Risler, Universit? Lille3 Rudy Loock, Universit? Lille 3 Dejan Stosic, Univ. d?Artois Anne Jugnet, Univ. Lille3 COMITE SCIENTIFIQUE Michel Achard, Univ. de Rice, Houston, Tx, USA Marion Blondel, Dyalang, Univ. Rouen St?phanie Bonnefille, Univ. de Tour Bert Cornilie, Universit? de Leuven, Belgique Christian Cuxac, Univ. Paris 8 Georgette Dal, Universit? Lille3 Caroline David, Universit? Montpellier Liesbeth Degand, Universit? de Louvain, Belgique Nicole Delbecque, Universit? de Leuven, Belgique Jean-Pierre Descl?s, Universit? Paris 4 Dagmar Divjak, FWO Belgique & Universit? de Sheffield, Angleterre Jean-Michel Fortis, Univ. de Paris 7 Cath?rine Fuchs, ENS Ulm, Paris Stefan Gries, Univ. de Californie, Santa Barbara, USA Colette Grinevald, Universit? de Lyon 2. Maya Hickmann, Univ. Paris 5 Bernard Laks, Univ. Paris 10 Jean-R?mi Lapaire, Univ. Bordeaux 3 Scott Liddell, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA Wilfrid Rotg?, Univ. Paris X Nanterre Marie-Anne Sallandre, Univ. Paris 8 Anatol Stefanowitsch, Univ. de Bremen, Allemagne Eve Sweetser, Univ. de Californie, Berkeley, USA Phyllis Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Sherman Wilcox, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA From lstaum at stanford.edu Mon Oct 16 20:52:31 2006 From: lstaum at stanford.edu (Laura Staum) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:52:31 -0700 Subject: 2007 LSA Linguistic Institute Message-ID: On behalf of the Linguistics Department at Stanford University and the Linguistic Society of America, I am proud to announce the new website for the 2007 Linguistic Institute, July 1-27: http://linginst07.stanford.edu which includes information about courses and special lectures, and our teaching faculty, as well as information for participant and affiliate registration and accommodation. For all inquiries please contact linginst07 at stanford.edu. Peter Sells Director 2007 Linguistic Institute, Stanford University From kemmer at rice.edu Tue Oct 17 20:25:39 2006 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:25:39 -0500 Subject: Faculty Fellowships at Rice University Message-ID: The Linguistics Department at Rice wants to call your attention to the one-year faculty fellowships described below, for faculty at least 3 years beyond receipt of Ph.D. Recipients will be Humanities Center fellows, but will select a host department to interact with. The Humanities Center is in the same building as the Linguistics Department, just upstairs. These are NEH fellowships, and can be billed as such on your CV. If you have a chance to spend a year somewhere else besides your own university, Rice is a great environment to do so. We have a doctoral program in Linguistics, a great library collection and computer facilities, an Electronic Texts center with lots of linguistic corpora, and a beautiful campus with more trees than people. In addition to 7 full-time faculty and other teaching faculty, and 22 Linguistics Ph.D. students, we will also have 2 postdocs in Linguistics next year. There are fewer than 5,000 students at Rice and a faculty-student ratio of about 9 to 1. Our department regularly runs conferences and hosts a weekly colloquium series with many well-known visitors. In Spring 2007 the department will host one of our biennial Symposia on Language, this one organized by Matt Shibatani. See www.ruf.rice.edu/~ling for more info on our department. If you are interested in interacting outside the classroom with our first-rate undergraduates, we can pursue possibilities for housing in faculty accommodation in the residential colleges, which includes free room and board. Suzanne Kemmer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------- Rice Humanities Research Center External Faculty Fellowships Application Deadline: December 18, 2006 Rice University?s Humanities Research Center will award up to four external faculty fellowships during the academic year 2007-2008. Fellows will be in residence at the Center for one semester, give a series of three lectures OR teach one course, and participate in the Center?s intellectual life. Both junior and senior faculty with appointments at universities other than Rice are eligible but must be at least three years beyond receipt of the PhD by the beginning of their fellowship term. Fellows are awarded a stipend ranging from 40K to 75K, depending on rank, and a moving allowance. Application information is available at http://hrc.rice.edu . These fellowships are generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lynette S. Autrey Endowment. From coulson at cogsci.ucsd.edu Wed Oct 18 19:20:33 2006 From: coulson at cogsci.ucsd.edu (Seana Coulson) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:20:33 -0700 Subject: CSDL 2006 in San Diego Message-ID: Register now for CSDL 2006! 8th Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse & Language: Language in Action To be held at the University of California, San Diego November 3-5, 2006 http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/ Keynote Speakers: Benjamin Bergen, University of Hawaii at Manoa William Croft, University of New Mexico Charles Goodwin, UCLA Ronald Langacker, UCSD Mark Turner, Case Western Reserve University Plus over 60 talks on cognitive, functional, and discourse linguistics http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/schedule.html Associated Workshops: Language Evolution and Evolutionary Linguistics November 3, 2006 Dale Barr, University of California, Riverside William Croft, University of New Mexico Frank Landsbergen, Leiden University Arie Verhagen, Leiden University Constructions and Language Change November 4, 2006 Ronald Langacker, UCSD Michael Israel, University of Maryland Elizabeth Traugott, Stanford University Peter Petre & Hubert Cuyckens, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Martin Hilpert, Rice University Suzanne Kemmer, Rice University Experimental Methods in Cognitive Linguistics: >>From Theoretical Questions to Research Hypotheses November 6, 2006 Raymond Becker, University of California, Merced Seana Coulson, University of California, San Diego Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Cornell University Teenie Matlock, University of California, Merced http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/workshop-schedule.html The official meeting of the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language Association (CSDLA), CSDL 2006 is sponsored by the Cognitive Science Department, the Linguistics Department, the Center for Research on Language, and the Social Sciences Division at the University of California, San Diego. http://csdl.ucsd.edu/home/ From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Thu Oct 19 02:27:57 2006 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:27:57 -0400 Subject: Newest stupid use of 'grammar' notions- designer antibiotics Message-ID: See http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_sc/anti_bacterial_grammar Or is it so stupid??? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From tono at ualberta.ca Sun Oct 22 03:54:32 2006 From: tono at ualberta.ca (T Ono) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 21:54:32 -0600 Subject: Chinese position In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > CHINESE LINGUISTICS/APPLIED LINGUISTICS/SECOND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY > Department of East Asian Studies > University of Alberta > > The Department of East Asian Studies in the Faculty of Arts invites > applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level in > the area of Chinese Linguistics/Chinese Applied Linguistics/Chinese Second > Language Acquisition. Qualified candidates should hold the degree of Ph.D. > and demonstrate native or near-native fluency in spoken and written Mandarin > and English. Experience in teaching Chinese at the college/university level > in North America is also essential. Interest in instructional technology and > experience in coordinating a Chinese language program would also be an asset. > Responsibilities will include teaching in both undergraduate and graduate > student programs, and maintaining an active research program. > > The Department of East Asian Studies (established in 1979) offers degree > programs at the undergraduate and graduate level in Chinese and Japanese > language, linguistics, and literature. There are currently six full-time > faculty members in addition to two full-time and ten part-time sessional > instructors serving an average of 1200 undergraduate and graduate students. > For more information on the department, please consult the departmental > website at www.arts.ualberta.ca/~eastasia > > Salary is commensurate with qualifications and experience. Applicants should > send curriculum vitae, a letter describing their areas of research interest, > samples of publications, and, if available, a teaching dossier and > evaluations of teaching performance to: > Professor Janice Brown > Chair > Department of East Asian Studies > Room 400 Arts > University of Alberta > Edmonton, Alberta > Canada T6G 2E1 > > Applicants must also arrange for three letters of reference to be sent to the > Chair. > Closing Date: November 15, 2006 > The effective date of employment will be July 1, 2007. > > All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and > permanent residents will be given priority. If suitable Canadian citizens or > permanent residents cannot be found, other individuals will be considered. > > The University of Alberta hires on the basis of merit. We are committed to > the principle of equity in employment. We welcome diversity and encourage > applications from all qualified women and men, including persons with > disabilities, members of visible minorities, and Aboriginal persons. > > From language at sprynet.com Tue Oct 24 02:05:52 2006 From: language at sprynet.com (Alexander Gross2) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:05:52 -0400 Subject: A query... Message-ID: It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am curious to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any similarity, however remote, between an article in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine and the field of Linguistics. In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html?pagewanted=all with best wishes and apologies in advance, alex From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 02:23:02 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 21:23:02 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <001c01c6f710$ef66b1a0$6401a8c0@v7t0g4> Message-ID: Alexander Gross2 wrote: > It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am curious > to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any similarity, however > remote, between an article in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine > and the field of Linguistics. Not really. I think it's still pretty easy to have a career in linguistics without reference to any kind of data, fabricated or otherwise. On a more cheery note, I have no evidence that the peer review system is not just as broken in linguistics as it seems to be in other fields. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX > In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html?pagewanted=all > > with best wishes and apologies in advance, > > alex > > From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 13:01:36 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 08:01:36 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <001c01c6f710$ef66b1a0$6401a8c0@v7t0g4> Message-ID: Thanks to Alex for pointing this out. There are some obvious dissimilarities between linguistics and fields that use lots of glass and metal. First, linguistic grants tend to be smaller, especially in the US (compared to the UK and EU). Second, linguists don't usually have labs with lots of postdocs. Third, as Mark Line says, data is often not as important to many linguists. (Take it third-hand or fourth-hand and just use it as an illustration at the appropriate times of your main theoretical point). On the other hand, there are similarities. Some researchers do get large grants in linguistics, with large teams (e.g. Peter Ladefoged's grants in many of his years at UCLA). And many of the more important research projects, grammars & documentation projects, produce data that will be cited for years, perhaps centuries to come. In the case of the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th centuries all our evidence suggests that the integrity of their data-collection and presentation is first-rate, an example that has produced useful data for research on American Indian languages at least for centuries. On the other hand, I think that there is a strong possibility that in some more modern grammars a 'principle of charity' might have guided what data to present, where 'charity' refers to how the author would like the data to look for other points they want to make. Perhaps not falsification, but omission of problematic results. And failure to follow-up with experiments. Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available on- line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the field. Funding agencies in Europe are beginning to require this kind of documentation. I think that the NSF should too, certainly in field research projects. Dan On Oct 23, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Alexander Gross2 wrote: > It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am > curious to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any > similarity, however remote, between an article in yesterday's New > York Times Sunday Magazine and the field of Linguistics. > > In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html? > pagewanted=all > > with best wishes and apologies in advance, > > alex ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From macw at cmu.edu Tue Oct 24 14:19:12 2006 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:19:12 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <7ACD7D9B-0525-4739-B21A-AD28ED8BFF80@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Folks, Dan's points about data charity are very good. The idea of creating a standard open-access, open-source repository for linguistic data is one that has motivated much of my own research for 25 years. This work began with the establishment of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database in 1984 and continued with the establishment of TalkBank in 1999. Catherine Snow collaborated on CHILDES and Steven Bird and Mark Liberman collaborated on TalkBank. The web sites are childes.psy.cmu.edu and talkbank.org. I totally agree with Dan about the Jesuits and the issue of data charity. I believe that it is crucial to make the original data available in all linguistic work. However, I think it is crucial that individual projects should not do this on their own without regard to universal access and universal coding standards. For that reason, we provide full web-based access and downloadability for all TalkBank corpora and a standardized XML-based schema that covers and translate between all current coding systems. This facility is now the default data sharing and storage mechanism for child language, aphasia, child phonology, classroom discourse, bilingualism, and much of conversational analysis. Unfortunately, field linguistics is not making use of this facility and that is a real pity. Moreover, it is not clear that any parallel archive/sharing facility has arisen for field linguistics. Dan refers to activitiy of NSF and agencies in Europe. But, in reality, there is no publicly available system outside of TalkBank for this type of sharing and TalkBank is not being used by field linguists. To be honest, a lot of the problem here is my time. I have so much funded support for child language, conversation analysis, and aphasia that adding on a project for achiving/sharing in field linguistics is not possible, given my current system for project organization. However, all of the TalkBank tools are totally open and it would be easy for someone to take the model, get the funding, and apply the system to data from field linguistics. I really wish someone would do this. Dan, are you interested? --Brian MacWhinney On Oct 24, 2006, at 9:01 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Thanks to Alex for pointing this out. > > There are some obvious dissimilarities between linguistics and > fields that use lots of glass and metal. First, linguistic grants > tend to be smaller, especially in the US (compared to the UK and > EU). Second, linguists don't usually have labs with lots of > postdocs. Third, as Mark Line says, data is often not as important > to many linguists. (Take it third-hand or fourth-hand and just use > it as an illustration at the appropriate times of your main > theoretical point). > > On the other hand, there are similarities. Some researchers do get > large grants in linguistics, with large teams (e.g. Peter > Ladefoged's grants in many of his years at UCLA). And many of the > more important research projects, grammars & documentation > projects, produce data that will be cited for years, perhaps > centuries to come. In the case of the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th > centuries all our evidence suggests that the integrity of their > data-collection and presentation is first-rate, an example that has > produced useful data for research on American Indian languages at > least for centuries. On the other hand, I think that there is a > strong possibility that in some more modern grammars a 'principle > of charity' might have guided what data to present, where 'charity' > refers to how the author would like the data to look for other > points they want to make. Perhaps not falsification, but omission > of problematic results. And failure to follow-up with experiments. > > Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available on- > line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > field. > > Funding agencies in Europe are beginning to require this kind of > documentation. I think that the NSF should too, certainly in field > research projects. > > Dan > > On Oct 23, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Alexander Gross2 wrote: > >> It may well be that I am a bit overwraught about this, but I am >> curious to learn if anyone here besides myself detected any >> similarity, however remote, between an article in yesterday's New >> York Times Sunday Magazine and the field of Linguistics. >> >> In case you missed it, you'll find the article at: >> >> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22sciencefraud.html? >> pagewanted=all >> >> with best wishes and apologies in advance, >> >> alex > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 15:28:14 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:28:14 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <58AB828E-DFAC-434F-82C0-5CB58AD8DA83@cmu.edu> Message-ID: > Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available > on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > field. Dear all, Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from people who've never used a computer? I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution. Claire ----------------- Dr Claire Bowern Department of Linguistics Rice University From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 15:40:32 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:40:32 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E310E.4090705@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do this kind of archiving and data processing. But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have given less service in the past by not doing these things. Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if it comes to that. It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer science. I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to take up the challenge. I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: >> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >> field. > > > Dear all, > Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: > > . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant > expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be > disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for > digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. > That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, web- > storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. > > . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the > roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics > grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more > people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization > component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to > choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language > Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. > > . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials > are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I > can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even > assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd > give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that > the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, > because it would take time away from doing work that counts in > tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I think is wise > on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I want to write > about on the language, and I'd rather do that than let someone else > do it because I've spent my time making data available. After all, > that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. > > Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. > How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on > the web from people who've never used a computer? > > I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution. > > Claire > > ----------------- > Dr Claire Bowern > Department of Linguistics > Rice University ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:01:23 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:01:23 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in progress for CUP. If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do > this kind of archiving and data processing. > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have > given less service in the past by not doing these things. > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if > it comes to that. > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > science. > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to > take up the challenge. > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > Dan > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >>> field. >> >> >> Dear all, >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: >> >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. >> >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. >> >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an >> academic linguist. >> >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on >> the web from people who've never used a computer? >> >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some >> caution. >> >> Claire >> >> ----------------- >> Dr Claire Bowern >> Department of Linguistics >> Rice University > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 16:08:59 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:08:59 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E310E.4090705@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Dan Everett wrote: >> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >> field. > > (snip) > > . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. > Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, > etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply > for bigger grants which include a large digitization component (on top > of other expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording > the last speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of > Yish on the web. Is all linguistic fieldwork currently limited to recording the last speakers of previously undescribed languages? Should it be? > Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are > recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend > time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got > speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it > would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can > access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time > away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as > much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things > that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than > let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. > After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. In my view, making data available to other researchers is part of doing science. Even salvage science is science. Looking at one's own day-planner is not really the big picture. You can go ahead and do salvage linguistics at breakneck speed and still make the data available sooner or later -- if there's an infrastructure in place that's adequate to the task and easy for you to use. So what I think Dan was suggesting is that the field linguistics community should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of data online. Even the busiest field linguist keeps her data *somewhere*. The engineering problem is therefore to provide media and venues in which she can keep her data such that it is visible to other researchers. Technical issues such as data formats and controlled access can be addressed and resolved. You keep audio recordings of Bardi speakers? If you do, it's because audio technology exists to do so, because you've learned to use it, and because you've found that the medium is useful. What Dan and others (including myself) foresee is that you will keep online collections of Bardi data -- because the online technology exists to do so, you will have learned to use it, and you will have found that the medium is useful. > Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do > you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from > people who've never used a computer? That is an ethical issue, and one I'd like to see the grey eminences among us discuss and resolve. (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have never studied linguistics.) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu Tue Oct 24 16:09:47 2006 From: andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu (Andrew Koontz-Garboden) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:09:47 -0700 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing the best documentation of a language, since these activities would ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that "solution" either... Andrew -- Andrew Koontz-Garboden Department of Linguistics Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in > progress for CUP. > > If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. > > Dan > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does > > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do > > this kind of archiving and data processing. > > > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be > > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to > > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check > > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are > > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or > > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not > > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have > > given less service in the past by not doing these things. > > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, > > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would > > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if > > it comes to that. > > > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that > > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field > > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write > > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can > > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, > > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > > science. > > > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming > > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field > > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am > > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I > > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language > > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained > > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this > > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to > > take up the challenge. > > > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > > > Dan > > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > > > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available > >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > >>> field. > >> > >> > >> Dear all, > >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: > >> > >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant > >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be > >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for > >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. > >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, > >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. > >> > >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the > >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics > >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more > >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization > >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to > >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language > >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. > >> > >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials > >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I > >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even > >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd > >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that > >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure > >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that > >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I > >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I > >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than > >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data > >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an > >> academic linguist. > >> > >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. > >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on > >> the web from people who've never used a computer? > >> > >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some > >> caution. > >> > >> Claire > >> > >> ----------------- > >> Dr Claire Bowern > >> Department of Linguistics > >> Rice University > > > > ********************** > > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > > Campus Box 4300 > > Illinois State University > > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > > FAX: 309-438-8038 > > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > > > and > > > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > > University of Manchester > > Manchester, UK > > > > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From sasha at cs.uoregon.edu Tue Oct 24 16:10:06 2006 From: sasha at cs.uoregon.edu (Gwen Alexandra Frishkoff) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:10:06 -0700 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hello. I agree that there is a good case to be made for databasing in linguistics. Moreover, there is a healthy & growing field in computational science that can support these kinds of activities. Linguists should not feel that they need to go it alone. I think NSF would be pleased to support well-conceived proposals for linguists and computational scientists to collaborate. Best wishes, Gwen F ************************************************************************** Gwen Alexandra ("Sasha") Frishkoff, Ph.D. Research Fellow Research Scientist Learning Research and Development Center NeuroInformatics Center 3939 O'Hara St, room 642 University of Oregon University of Pittsburgh 1600 Millrace Drive Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Eugene, OR 97403 gwenf at pitt.edu OR sasha at cs.uoregon.edu tel 412-260-8010 (cell) 412-624-7081 (office) fax 412-624-9149 ************************************************************************** "Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself. MANKIND. Basically, it's made up of two separate words 'mank' and 'ind.' What do these words mean? It's a mystery and that's why so is mankind." -- Jack Handy On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does fieldwork > knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do this kind of archiving > and data processing. > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be a goal, a > very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to document data > precisely in a way that any third-party could check it simply because it is > too hard and time-consuming. These are certainly factors to consider in > preparing for field research or deciding whether one is cut out for that. But > they are not decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have given > less service in the past by not doing these things. Linguistics research, > especially grammars, should involve teams, not individuals only, and need to > have higher budgets. I would rather see fewer languages studied and grants > more competitive if it comes to that. > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that perhaps it > should be. It won't be of course unless field researchers begin to reconceive > their task. Why do we write grammars? If there isn't documentation that > future generations can use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. > Money, personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > science. > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming to have any > moral high ground in this. I have been doing field research for 30 years, > every year (and every year I wonder why I am still putting up with bugs, mud, > humidity, and accusations that I am with the CIA). This 'quality control' > movement in language documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't > been trained for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this regard that I > haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to take up the challenge. > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > Dan > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >>> field. >> >> >> Dear all, >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: >> >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant expense. >> ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be disbursed for things >> like paying someone to get files ready for digital archiving or metadata >> documentation, so I have to do it. That obviously puts a limit on what can >> be done. And of course, web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, >> and both need doing. >> >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. Not >> only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, etc, the >> pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply for bigger >> grants which include a large digitization component (on top of other >> expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording the last >> speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of Yish on the >> web. >> >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are >> recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend >> time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got speakers' >> permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it would take time >> away from doing things that the Bardi community can access; b) it would >> hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time away from doing work >> that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I think is >> wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I want to write about >> on the language, and I'd rather do that than let someone else do it because >> I've spent my time making data available. After all, that sort of work is >> the main reason I'm an academic linguist. >> >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do you >> get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from people >> who've never used a computer? >> >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution. >> >> Claire >> >> ----------------- >> Dr Claire Bowern >> Department of Linguistics >> Rice University > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > From hstahlke at bsu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:21:54 2006 From: hstahlke at bsu.edu (Stahlke, Herbert F.W.) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:21:54 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <65f2c76a0610240909l43be20eex82e3215b4a1268f5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Like many of us, I've served on and chaired Promotion and Tenure Committees at several levels in my university. The tenure implications of this discussion strikes me as analogous, at least in their effects, to the technology debates of the late 80s and early 90s, when many faculty members were, for the first time, creating computer-based tools for various of their classes and research projects. A similar case was made then for the necessity of this work, its relationship to scholarship, and the need to reward it in the P&T process. I worked with colleagues at a number of universities at the time to explore ways of doing this, and I finally had to report that unless a major activity could be made to look like peer-reviewed scholarship it would not only not help a junior faculty member towards tenure but would actually do harm. I saw a number of promising junior faculty members fail to win tenure because they chose to devote time to developing pedagogical and research applications. In a few, later, cases, they did this against the advice of their mentors and senior colleagues and so are to that extent responsible for the consequences themselves. We can't ask junior colleagues like Claire to risk their tenure by breaking new ground in areas that their colleagues in other fields don't understand as recognized scholarship. Those of us who are terminally promoted can take those risks and break that ground for our younger colleagues, and it's a responsibility that we have. Herb Stahlke Ball State University -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew Koontz-Garboden Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:10 PM To: Daniel L. Everett Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] A query... I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing the best documentation of a language, since these activities would ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that "solution" either... Andrew -- Andrew Koontz-Garboden Department of Linguistics Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in > progress for CUP. > > If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. > > Dan > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > > Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does > > fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do > > this kind of archiving and data processing. > > > > But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be > > a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to > > document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check > > it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are > > certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or > > deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not > > decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. > > But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have > > given less service in the past by not doing these things. > > Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, > > not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would > > rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if > > it comes to that. > > > > It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that > > perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field > > researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write > > grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can > > use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, > > personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer > > science. > > > > I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming > > to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field > > research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am > > still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I > > am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language > > documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained > > for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to > > hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this > > regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to > > take up the challenge. > > > > I have always found that the money is there if the case is made well. > > > > Dan > > > > On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > > > >>> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that > >>> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and > >>> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would > >>> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from > >>> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available > >>> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants > >>> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of > >>> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the > >>> field. > >> > >> > >> Dear all, > >> Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: > >> > >> . Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant > >> expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be > >> disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for > >> digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. > >> That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, > >> web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need doing. > >> > >> . Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the > >> roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics > >> grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more > >> people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization > >> component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to > >> choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language > >> Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. > >> > >> . Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials > >> are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I > >> can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even > >> assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd > >> give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that > >> the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure > >> chances, because it would take time away from doing work that > >> counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I > >> think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I > >> want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than > >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data > >> available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an > >> academic linguist. > >> > >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. > >> How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on > >> the web from people who've never used a computer? > >> > >> I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some > >> caution. > >> > >> Claire > >> > >> ----------------- > >> Dr Claire Bowern > >> Department of Linguistics > >> Rice University > > > > ********************** > > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > > Campus Box 4300 > > Illinois State University > > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > > FAX: 309-438-8038 > > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > > > and > > > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > > University of Manchester > > Manchester, UK > > > > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:22:46 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:22:46 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <65f2c76a0610240909l43be20eex82e3215b4a1268f5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Andrew, There is no easy way around the tenure problem. One might propose: 1. pre-tenure faculty (not PhD students!) should truncate this kind of project, unless they have something in writing from their university guaranteeing them that it will award tenure for data-bases in progress, etc. - - these folks could save the data-base/on-line aspects until after they have tenure. 2. tenured faculty - no excuses. Do it the long way. I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people and do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I have visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina, for which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like all the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random example). Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote: > I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by > Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible > documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have > invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the > kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it > seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing > the best documentation of a language, since these activities would > ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. > > Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure > committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, > though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does > what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And > that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... > > Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on > endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that > "solution" either... > > Andrew > > -- > Andrew Koontz-Garboden > Department of Linguistics > Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 > Stanford University > Stanford, CA 94305-2150 > > andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu > http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 16:42:55 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:42:55 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <65f2c76a0610240909l43be20eex82e3215b4a1268f5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote: > I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by > Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible > documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have > invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the > kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it > seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing > the best documentation of a language, since these activities would > ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. Actually, if tenure decisions are based on antequated and unscientific premises, then it must be the case that we can and must argue in favor of giving tenure to young scholars who do good science. Giving tenure to young scholars who do good science does seem to be a concept that has worked fairly well in other fields, so maybe we should try it in linguistics. Of course, linguistics is still crawling out of a decades-long period during which scientific method had no place in the mainstream -- so we're still playing catch-up for time lost. Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. > Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure > committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, > though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does > what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And > that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I think that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science, any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical dilemma, just a biographical choice. I'm rather close to this issue, because I had to make the choice in my early twenties. The likelihood of me getting a university job in linguistics and being allowed to spend my time doing good science was so slim in the mid 1970's, I wound up pursuing a career outside of linguistics until a few years ago. > Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on > endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that > "solution" either... Of course they should do salvage and other fieldwork if they want to. If they have no way of getting the support and rewards for doing it *right*, then the system is broken and needs to be fixed. What happens to a university whose chemistry department awards tenure only to young scholars specializing in medieval alchemy? What happens to a university whose medical school frequently awards tenure only to young scholars specializing in shamanic rituals? So, one way to implement the kinds of changes towards better science in linguistics departments that Dan suggests might be to make sure the university accreditation bodies understand exactly how we think linguistics departments should be evaluated towards university accreditation. Unless that happens, we may wind up with alchemists and shamans running around putting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on all of our linguistics departments. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 16:44:39 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:44:39 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1227.69.91.14.68.1161706139.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: > > Is all linguistic fieldwork currently limited to recording the last > speakers of previously undescribed languages? > > Should it be? no, and no, but it is a fairly large part of current fieldwork and a high priority, since there are so many languages in danger of extinction and so few languages with good documentation. In some parts of the world, just about all the fieldwork is like this. > > >> Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are >> recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend >> time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got >> speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it >> would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can >> access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time >> away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as >> much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things >> that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than >> let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. >> After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist. > > > In my view, making data available to other researchers is part of doing > science. Even salvage science is science. Sure, but there are many ways of making data available, and what is made available has huge ethical implications. Medical studies almost never publish the complete data for each subject, because of the ethical implications of publishing sensitive and traceable (individually identifiable) patient information. Linguists do science, but some also do work with communities which have a history of being experimented on, and who dislike it intensely. We ignore that at our peril. > > Looking at one's own day-planner is not really the big picture. You can go > ahead and do salvage linguistics at breakneck speed and still make the > data available sooner or later -- if there's an infrastructure in place > that's adequate to the task and easy for you to use. I wasn't suggesting it was the big picture. I was using a personal example but this is an issue that affects a lot of people at my career stage (a few years out of grad school with the tenure clock ticking). > > So what I think Dan was suggesting is that the field linguistics community > should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of data online. Even > the busiest field linguist keeps her data *somewhere*. The engineering > problem is therefore to provide media and venues in which she can keep her > data such that it is visible to other researchers. Technical issues such > as data formats and controlled access can be addressed and resolved. This paragraph is an excellent illustration of why I was urging caution. The technical issues aren't just minor technical issues. To take one example, Brian mentioned using international standards. There are three international xml metadata encoding standards. And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication aren't the same thing. > > You keep audio recordings of Bardi speakers? If you do, it's because audio > technology exists to do so, because you've learned to use it, and because > you've found that the medium is useful. > > What Dan and others (including myself) foresee is that you will keep > online collections of Bardi data -- because the online technology exists > to do so, you will have learned to use it, and you will have found that > the medium is useful. Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite and I'm all in favour of this, I just wanted to point out some very real limitations which need to be discussed as well, not just as minor throwaway technical issues but as potential deal-breakers. This is especially true in areas where language is regarded as a tangible entity which can be owned. > > >> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do >> you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from >> people who've never used a computer? > > That is an ethical issue, and one I'd like to see the grey eminences among > us discuss and resolve. Do my 5 grey hairs I acquired dealing with our IRB count? :) > > (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if > you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have > never studied linguistics.) > Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the consequences would most likely be, and so on. Claire From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 16:49:59 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:49:59 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <3CF041DE-FA4B-4DCF-83E3-F9D13F93E9F1@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: > > I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I > have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people and > do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I have > visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing > phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read > seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to > visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina, for > which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no > syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like all > the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I > am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that > some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were > on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random > example). > You could also email the author of the grammar. For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference between making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and sharing it with colleagues. Claire From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 16:55:26 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:55:26 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4437.6020002@gmail.com> Message-ID: That is not a good solution. You need independence when you are verifying people's claims. You cannot let them pick and choose the data, etc. on a question by question basis. Because I didn't have Piraha data on line or the right kind available, Peter Ladefoged came to the field to check it out. The first thing he said when I picked him up at the airport was that he was skeptical about my analyses. I said that then it would be nice to see him return to UCLA supporting my analysis, which I predicted that he would. But more seriously, when it came time to do the experiments, I helped him set them up and then left the area and went swimming. Investigators have a vested interest in the checking of their analyses so the data should be available, all of it, for perusal without going through them as middle-people. I can't really see any excuses for not doing this. Except senility. I will claim this if anyone looks for data that I collected 30 years ago. Dan On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:49 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: >> I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But >> I have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the >> people and do my own field research (which in phonology I have >> done - i.e. I have visited villages and spent a few days recording >> and analyzing phonological data, especially prosody, because the >> claims I had read seemed unlikely. For example one language/people >> that I still want to visit or would like sound files of is the >> Arawan language, Culina, for which Pike - many, many years ago - >> claimed that there were no syllables. Since the dictionary of >> Culina has words that look like all the other Arawan languages >> (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I am betting that >> Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that some claim) >> like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were on-line, it >> would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random example). > > You could also email the author of the grammar. For many people > (and speech communities) there's a big difference between making > large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and > sharing it with colleagues. > > Claire ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:15:43 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:15:43 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E42F7.5060007@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark P. Line wrote: >> >> Is all linguistic fieldwork currently limited to recording the last >> speakers of previously undescribed languages? >> >> Should it be? > > no, and no, but it is a fairly large part of current fieldwork and a > high priority, since there are so many languages in danger of extinction > and so few languages with good documentation. In some parts of the > world, just about all the fieldwork is like this. Okay. I guess I was asking whether or not the needs of salvage linguistics should be driving the way the greater linguistics community operates. I think the answer is 'no'. I do understand that the usual scientific methodologies must often be bent (but not broken) in salvage science. >> In my view, making data available to other researchers is part of doing >> science. Even salvage science is science. > > Sure, but there are many ways of making data available, and what is made > available has huge ethical implications. Medical studies almost never > publish the complete data for each subject, because of the ethical > implications of publishing sensitive and traceable (individually > identifiable) patient information. Right. As I said before, it's an ethical issue that needs to be addressed and resolved. Forebearance due to lack of ethically viable means due to lack of ethical analysis would not be the best choice. > Linguists do science, but some also do work with communities which have > a history of being experimented on, and who dislike it intensely. We > ignore that at our peril. Absolutely. That means that people who intensely dislike having linguists in their midst probably shouldn't have to have linguists in their midst. That's another ethical issue, and another cross-cultural one to boot. >> So what I think Dan was suggesting is that the field linguistics >> community >> should evolve a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of data online. Even >> the busiest field linguist keeps her data *somewhere*. The engineering >> problem is therefore to provide media and venues in which she can keep >> her >> data such that it is visible to other researchers. Technical issues such >> as data formats and controlled access can be addressed and resolved. > > This paragraph is an excellent illustration of why I was urging caution. > The technical issues aren't just minor technical issues. I don't know of any major technical issues in this area. > To take one example, Brian mentioned using international standards. There > are three international xml metadata encoding standards. That is certainly a minor issue from where I'm sitting. > And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication aren't > the same thing. If the archive is located in webspace, what differences are you thinking of? >> You keep audio recordings of Bardi speakers? If you do, it's because >> audio >> technology exists to do so, because you've learned to use it, and >> because >> you've found that the medium is useful. >> >> What Dan and others (including myself) foresee is that you will keep >> online collections of Bardi data -- because the online technology exists >> to do so, you will have learned to use it, and you will have found that >> the medium is useful. > > Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite and I'm all in favour of this, I just > wanted to point out some very real limitations which need to be > discussed as well, not just as minor throwaway technical issues but as > potential deal-breakers. This is especially true in areas where language > is regarded as a tangible entity which can be owned. Right, the cross-cultural ethics already mentioned. I even ran into that particular problem myself with Maori. >>> Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do >>> you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from >>> people who've never used a computer? >> >> That is an ethical issue, and one I'd like to see the grey eminences >> among us discuss and resolve. > > Do my 5 grey hairs I acquired dealing with our IRB count? :) Hehe. >> (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if >> you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have >> never studied linguistics.) > > Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, > and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people > involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the > consequences would most likely be, and so on. So, did you go into the electronics of your audio equipment so that they understood all about semiconductors and stuff? No, of course not. So why isn't it possible to gain the same level of "informed" consent with respect to the way you wish to allow other researchers like you look at the data sometimes? -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 17:19:42 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:19:42 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1245.69.91.14.68.1161708175.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: Mark P. Line wrote: > Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote: >> I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by >> Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible >> documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have >> invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the >> kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it >> seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing >> the best documentation of a language, since these activities would >> ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. > > Actually, if tenure decisions are based on antequated and unscientific > premises, then it must be the case that we can and must argue in favor of > giving tenure to young scholars who do good science. > > Giving tenure to young scholars who do good science does seem to be a > concept that has worked fairly well in other fields, so maybe we should > try it in linguistics. Of course, linguistics is still crawling out of a > decades-long period during which scientific method had no place in the > mainstream -- so we're still playing catch-up for time lost. > > Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we > think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. > > Perhaps a better analogy is that scientists in the natural sciences don't get tenure for collecting data, but for what they do with it. >> Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure >> committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, >> though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does >> what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And >> that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... > > I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I think > that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science, > any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in > tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical > dilemma, just a biographical choice. It's not that simple at all (and it doesn't just apply to females...) I don't think for a minute that what I do is "purely" science - it can't be, simply because of the nature of the data and the methodology used to collect it. We don't have anything exactly akin to double-blind experimentation in descriptive fieldwork. Sure, we do participant observation and hypothesis testing on different data-sets, but most descriptive fieldwork is not impartially collected. Isn't part of doing science seeing where the methodology fails? And it is an ethical dilemma for anyone who is walking the tight-rope between accountability to an academic community and accountability to a speech community with very different (and sometimes contradictory) expectations. We're talking about two different things - data accountability, and widespread data access. Full accountability of the researcher and replicability of results is one thing, and I'd argue that this is one of the things which makes any particular piece of research "scientific" versus "humanistic". How data are disseminated is another question. In the article that started this discussion, for example, the issues wasn't that the guy didn't put his data on the web, it's that he fabricated the results and then lied about it. If he'd put the fabricated data on the web, no one would have been better off. From tgivon at uoregon.edu Tue Oct 24 17:21:45 2006 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:21:45 -0700 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Good points, Herb. Tho I still think there's a lot of unnecessary carping about the Evil System and how it screws up enterprising/creative young folks. When you're looking for boogy men (or conspiracies), you will surely find them. And in a highly competitive market, paranoia is not exactly unnatural. On the particular point, one way of handling pedagogical/research tools is to list them in the "service-to the-field" category, and then to weight that category higher. On what seems to be the/a larger issue, I'm not sure Alex referred to the article I just read in the *New Yorker* (Oct. 23rd issue, p. 82-86) on the social dynamics of research universities (& their history; a book review by Anthony Grafton). There are some uncomfortable questions raised there too. But why is it that, as I read through such "exposE" articles, they always sound to me like sour grapes? From, primarily, the humanities? We all know the many unpleasant aspects of academe. But have you tried the business world, or "public service", recently? And the bitching seems to always ignore the fact that many of us are really, honestly, entranced with discovering more and more about our--admittedly somewhat parochial--corner of the universe. For every three power-hungry academic infighters I know, I know maybe one honest scholar/scientist who is impatient for discovery, for understanding, for enlarging our joint sphere of coherence. And I know how much I owe those guys for my own intellectual growth (such as is is...). So, is 25% such a bad ratio? On what baseline? Best, TG ================ Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: >Like many of us, I've served on and chaired Promotion and Tenure >Committees at several levels in my university. The tenure implications >of this discussion strikes me as analogous, at least in their effects, >to the technology debates of the late 80s and early 90s, when many >faculty members were, for the first time, creating computer-based tools >for various of their classes and research projects. A similar case was >made then for the necessity of this work, its relationship to >scholarship, and the need to reward it in the P&T process. I worked >with colleagues at a number of universities at the time to explore ways >of doing this, and I finally had to report that unless a major activity >could be made to look like peer-reviewed scholarship it would not only >not help a junior faculty member towards tenure but would actually do >harm. I saw a number of promising junior faculty members fail to win >tenure because they chose to devote time to developing pedagogical and >research applications. In a few, later, cases, they did this against >the advice of their mentors and senior colleagues and so are to that >extent responsible for the consequences themselves. We can't ask junior >colleagues like Claire to risk their tenure by breaking new ground in >areas that their colleagues in other fields don't understand as >recognized scholarship. Those of us who are terminally promoted can >take those risks and break that ground for our younger colleagues, and >it's a responsibility that we have. > >Herb Stahlke >Ball State University > >-----Original Message----- >From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu >[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew >Koontz-Garboden >Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:10 PM >To: Daniel L. Everett >Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu >Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] A query... > >I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by >Claire. Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible >documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have >invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted. If the >kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it >seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing >the best documentation of a language, since these activities would >ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars. > >Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure >committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, >though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does >what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And >that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... > >Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on >endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all? I don't like that >"solution" either... > >Andrew > >-- >Andrew Koontz-Garboden >Department of Linguistics >Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460 >Stanford University >Stanford, CA 94305-2150 > >andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu >http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/ > > >On 10/24/06, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > > >>By the way, these points are all part of my field work manual in >>progress for CUP. >> >>If anyone would like to see a .pdf file of the ms let me know. >> >>Dan >> >> >>On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: >> >> >> >>>Claire's objections are not unreasonable. Everyone of us who does >>>fieldwork knows that it horrendously complicates our jobs to do >>>this kind of archiving and data processing. >>> >>>But I still believe that what I have (vaguely) suggested should be >>>a goal, a very important one. People in the sciences cannot fail to >>>document data precisely in a way that any third-party could check >>>it simply because it is too hard and time-consuming. These are >>>certainly factors to consider in preparing for field research or >>>deciding whether one is cut out for that. But they are not >>>decisive. And, sure, this makes linguistics much more expensive. >>>But one reason that linguistics grants are lower is because we have >>>given less service in the past by not doing these things. >>>Linguistics research, especially grammars, should involve teams, >>>not individuals only, and need to have higher budgets. I would >>>rather see fewer languages studied and grants more competitive if >>>it comes to that. >>> >>>It is not part of linguistics culture to do this. I am saying that >>>perhaps it should be. It won't be of course unless field >>>researchers begin to reconceive their task. Why do we write >>>grammars? If there isn't documentation that future generations can >>>use, then we have provided a much-inferior service. Money, >>>personnel, and level of difficulty cannot be excuses for poorer >>>science. >>> >>>I have always used them as excuses, however! So I am not claiming >>>to have any moral high ground in this. I have been doing field >>>research for 30 years, every year (and every year I wonder why I am >>>still putting up with bugs, mud, humidity, and accusations that I >>>am with the CIA). This 'quality control' movement in language >>>documentation is relatively recent. Many of us haven't been trained >>>for it. But in my last grants I was able to get enough money to >>>hire postdocs and PhD students who can do all the stuff in this >>>regard that I haven't learned to do well. I think that we need to >>>take up the challenge. >>> >>>I have always found that the money is there if the case is made >>> >>> >well. > > >>>Dan >>> >>>On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>>>>Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe >>>>> >>>>> >that > > >>>>>it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and >>>>>replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would >>>>>like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from >>>>>native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available >>>>>on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants >>>>>would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of >>>>>data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the >>>>>field. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>Dear all, >>>>Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea: >>>> >>>>. Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant >>>>expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be >>>>disbursed for things like paying someone to get files ready for >>>>digital archiving or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. >>>>That obviously puts a limit on what can be done. And of course, >>>>web-storage and archiving aren't the same thing, and both need >>>> >>>> >doing. > > >>>>. Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the >>>>roof. Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics >>>>grants, etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more >>>>people apply for bigger grants which include a large digitization >>>>component (on top of other expenses) we're soon going to have to >>>>choose between recording the last speakers of undescribed language >>>>Xish and putting materials of Yish on the web. >>>> >>>>. Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials >>>>are recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I >>>>can't spend time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even >>>>assuming I got speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd >>>>give), because a) it would take time away from doing things that >>>>the Bardi community can access; b) it would hurt my tenure >>>>chances, because it would take time away from doing work that >>>>counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as much time as I >>>>think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things that I >>>>want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than >>>>let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data >>>>available. After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an >>>>academic linguist. >>>> >>>>Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. >>>>How do you get informed consent for putting language materials on >>>>the web from people who've never used a computer? >>>> >>>>I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some >>>>caution. >>>> >>>>Claire >>>> >>>>----------------- >>>>Dr Claire Bowern >>>>Department of Linguistics >>>>Rice University >>>> >>>> >>>********************** >>>Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and >>> >>> >Chair, > > >>>Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures >>>Campus Box 4300 >>>Illinois State University >>>Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 >>>OFFICE: 309-438-3604 >>>FAX: 309-438-8038 >>>Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp >>>Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ >>>Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ >>> >>>and >>> >>>Honorary Professor of Linguistics >>>University of Manchester >>>Manchester, UK >>> >>> >>> >>> >>********************** >>Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, >>Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures >>Campus Box 4300 >>Illinois State University >>Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 >>OFFICE: 309-438-3604 >>FAX: 309-438-8038 >>Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp >>Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ >>Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ >> >>and >> >>Honorary Professor of Linguistics >>University of Manchester >>Manchester, UK >> >> >> >> >> > > > From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:23:01 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:23:01 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4437.6020002@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Dan Everett wrote: >> >> I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I >> have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people and >> do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I have >> visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing >> phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read >> seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to >> visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina, for >> which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no >> syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like all >> the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I >> am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that >> some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were >> on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random >> example). >> > > You could also email the author of the grammar. (Only if the author is still alive.) > For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference between > making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and > sharing it with colleagues. As for speech communities for which this holds, that's the ethical issue we've already identified. As for linguists for whom this holds, I've always wanted to meet one in person so I could ask them 'why'. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 17:25:46 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:25:46 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4B2E.4060301@gmail.com> Message-ID: > > We're talking about two different things - data accountability, and > widespread data access. Full accountability of the researcher and > replicability of results is one thing, and I'd argue that this is > one of the things which makes any particular piece of research > "scientific" versus "humanistic". How data are disseminated is > another question. In the article that started this discussion, for > example, the issues wasn't that the guy didn't put his data on the > web, it's that he fabricated the results and then lied about it. If > he'd put the fabricated data on the web, no one would have been > better off. To fabricate linguistic sound files would be hard to pull off well, though. We wouldn't be putting up statistics. Our data is more concrete in that sense. Of course, someone can fail to include information that is contrary to them. So we need to do as much as we can to ensure that the bonds of trust in the field stay as strong as possible. How can you hope to replicate results in a grammar (which is never fully replicable, of course) unless the data are available in a neutral space or you make your own field trip. Ultimately, I think we need both. All the data available to all and more fieldwork on every grammar. Dan From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 17:30:22 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:30:22 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1258.69.91.14.68.1161710143.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: >> And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication aren't >> the same thing. > > If the archive is located in webspace, what differences are you thinking of? > > well, the difference between 80 hours of recordings digitised at 44.1 KHz /16bit versus the same amount of data as mp3s, for a start (the difference is about 14 gig, give or take). Try that on dialup! >>> (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering if >>> you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who have >>> never studied linguistics.) >> Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, >> and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people >> involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the >> consequences would most likely be, and so on. > > So, did you go into the electronics of your audio equipment so that they > understood all about semiconductors and stuff? > > No, of course not. So why isn't it possible to gain the same level of > "informed" consent with respect to the way you wish to allow other > researchers like you look at the data sometimes? > aah, you don't know my gukulngu, yapamittji and marmuku. We did actually have a very interesting discussion of how analogue tape recorders work versus digital recording at one stage. I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible, just that it's probably one of the biggest issues in web dissemination (at least where I work). Claire From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:32:00 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:32:00 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <86B4645C-04AB-4862-AC56-F7EF705FC4E8@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Daniel L. Everett wrote: > That is not a good solution. You need independence when you are > verifying people's claims. You cannot let them pick and choose the > data, etc. on a question by question basis. (You can't even do that if they're dead.) > Because I didn't have Piraha data on line or the right kind > available, Peter Ladefoged came to the field to check it out. The > first thing he said when I picked him up at the airport was that he > was skeptical about my analyses. I said that then it would be nice to > see him return to UCLA supporting my analysis, which I predicted that > he would. But more seriously, when it came time to do the > experiments, I helped him set them up and then left the area and went > swimming. Investigators have a vested interest in the checking of > their analyses so the data should be available, all of it, for > perusal without going through them as middle-people. If I wanted to wax sarcastic, I'd point to medical researchers, economists, sociologists and others who have been caught cooking up their own data, and claim "Oh, but no *linguist* would *ever* do *that*." It's best to simply fail to leave open the opportunity. (In other spheres, this is called "accountability" and considered a good thing by all but those who are in greatest need of more of it.) But of course I'm one of those people who locks his house and car when he's not inside it, and keeps his cash in a bank. > I can't really see any excuses for not doing this. Except senility. I > will claim this if anyone looks for data that I collected 30 years ago. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Dan, could I see the data you collected 30 years ago? While you're at it, could I see the data I collected 30 years ago? -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX > On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:49 AM, Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But >>> I have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the >>> people and do my own field research (which in phonology I have >>> done - i.e. I have visited villages and spent a few days recording >>> and analyzing phonological data, especially prosody, because the >>> claims I had read seemed unlikely. For example one language/people >>> that I still want to visit or would like sound files of is the >>> Arawan language, Culina, for which Pike - many, many years ago - >>> claimed that there were no syllables. Since the dictionary of >>> Culina has words that look like all the other Arawan languages >>> (and I have done fieldwork on all of those) I am betting that >>> Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V and CV that some claim) >>> like all the other Arawan languages. If the data were on-line, it >>> would help resolve this mystery - just to take a random example). >> >> You could also email the author of the grammar. For many people >> (and speech communities) there's a big difference between making >> large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and >> sharing it with colleagues. >> >> Claire > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > > -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 17:51:16 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:51:16 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1271.69.91.14.68.1161710581.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: >> For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference between >> making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and >> sharing it with colleagues. > > As for speech communities for which this holds, that's the ethical issue > we've already identified. > > As for linguists for whom this holds, I've always wanted to meet one in > person so I could ask them 'why'. > > One is not being willing to be identified as a speaker of the language (e.g. Laz in Turkey). Another is a strong feeling of association between language and place (i.e. that a particular language belongs to a particular country and is looked after by a group of people), so reading mythology in that language away from that area would be inappropriate. Another is a worry that others will learn the language and steal it. Another was a worry that publishing secret language would cause harm to come to come to people who read it (e.g. I was warned not to tell blokes about women's business because the ra:galk would rip their throat out, and they didn't want that to happen to anyone). Then there's cultural knowledge that could be used as evidence in land claims (there have been cases of people going through archives and claiming another group's cultural knowledge as their own, and so publishing information such as the GPS coordinates of sites has potentially harmful consequences). People don't always give a reason beyond general misgivings and lack of trust of what "White people" will do with the data. This is balanced by wanting to have someone work on the language to help record it for the community's own use, with a recognition that in order to do that the linguist usually has to (or wants to) also do work that relates to their role within a university. And there's usually multiple different reasons within the same community, and different degrees to which people want data made available. Claire From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 17:55:30 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:55:30 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4B2E.4060301@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark P. Line wrote: >> >> Surely we don't have to appease the status quo of tenure decisions if we >> think that status quo is broken. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. > > Perhaps a better analogy is that scientists in the natural sciences > don't get tenure for collecting data, but for what they do with it. I can't imagine how that can be true in, say, experimental physics, observational astronomy or field biology. >>> Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure >>> committees to consider these kinds of activities. In the short term, >>> though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does >>> what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no? And >>> that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi... >> >> I know Claire and I don't intend to pick on her specifically. But I >> think >> that for as long as tenure decisions do not tend to reward good science, >> any young linguist has to decide for herself if she's more interested in >> tenure or more interested in doing good science. It's not an ethical >> dilemma, just a biographical choice. > > It's not that simple at all (and it doesn't just apply to females...) I > don't think for a minute that what I do is "purely" science - it can't > be, simply because of the nature of the data and the methodology used to > collect it. We don't have anything exactly akin to double-blind > experimentation in descriptive fieldwork. Sure, we do participant > observation and hypothesis testing on different data-sets, but most > descriptive fieldwork is not impartially collected. Isn't part of doing > science seeing where the methodology fails? I see no reason why linguistics couldn't have a community of practice in which science and only science is practiced (and funded) as well as a community of practice in which more than just science is practiced (and funded). So I guess my complaint is that the former community is not being allowed to flourish -- you can't even get tenure in that one, apparently. That's where the change would have to set in. > We're talking about two different things - data accountability, and > widespread data access. Full accountability of the researcher and > replicability of results is one thing, and I'd argue that this is one of > the things which makes any particular piece of research "scientific" > versus "humanistic". How data are disseminated is another question. In > the article that started this discussion, for example, the issues wasn't > that the guy didn't put his data on the web, it's that he fabricated the > results and then lied about it. If he'd put the fabricated data on the > web, no one would have been better off. Can you record your own voice speaking Bardi such that everybody here would be convinced that it's a recording of a native speaker? -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 18:04:23 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:04:23 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E4DAE.5020507@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > >>> And to return to my earlier mantra, archiving and web publication >>> aren't >>> the same thing. >> >> If the archive is located in webspace, what differences are you thinking >> of? > > well, the difference between 80 hours of recordings digitised at 44.1 > KHz /16bit versus the same amount of data as mp3s, for a start (the > difference is about 14 gig, give or take). Try that on dialup! So, the technological infrastructure of linguistic science should be predicated on dialup? If certain online data cannot be used in any meaningful way at dialup speeds, then those who would use such data in a meaningful way need a faster connection. The dog wags the tail. >>>> (I have an opinion, but I'm not a grey eminence. I would be wondering >>>> if >>>> you had informed consent to collect linguistic data from people who >>>> have >>>> never studied linguistics.) >>> Yes, but only after a long discussion about what we were going to do, >>> and continual renegotiation throughout the fieldwork, once the people >>> involved had a better idea about what the work involves, what the >>> consequences would most likely be, and so on. >> >> So, did you go into the electronics of your audio equipment so that they >> understood all about semiconductors and stuff? >> >> No, of course not. So why isn't it possible to gain the same level of >> "informed" consent with respect to the way you wish to allow other >> researchers like you look at the data sometimes? >> > > aah, you don't know my gukulngu, yapamittji and marmuku. We did actually > have a very interesting discussion of how analogue tape recorders work > versus digital recording at one stage. > > I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible, just that it's probably > one of the biggest issues in web dissemination (at least where I work). Okay. If you can talk to them about analogue versus digital audio recording, then I simply see no excuse not to talk to them about computers and web-based dissemination of data. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 18:09:19 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:09:19 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E5294.2000302@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark wrote: >> Claire wrote: >>> >>> For many people (and speech communities) there's a big difference >>> between >>> making large amounts of raw data generally available and discussing and >>> sharing it with colleagues. >> >> As for speech communities for which this holds, that's the ethical issue >> we've already identified. >> >> As for linguists for whom this holds, I've always wanted to meet one in >> person so I could ask them 'why'. >> >> > > One is not being willing to be identified as a speaker of the language > (e.g. Laz in Turkey). Another is a strong feeling of association between > language and place (i.e. that a particular language belongs to a > particular country and is looked after by a group of people), so reading > mythology in that language away from that area would be inappropriate. > Another is a worry that others will learn the language and steal it. > Another was a worry that publishing secret language would cause harm to > come to come to people who read it (e.g. I was warned not to tell blokes > about women's business because the ra:galk would rip their throat out, > and they didn't want that to happen to anyone). Then there's cultural > knowledge that could be used as evidence in land claims (there have been > cases of people going through archives and claiming another group's > cultural knowledge as their own, and so publishing information such as > the GPS coordinates of sites has potentially harmful consequences). > People don't always give a reason beyond general misgivings and lack of > trust of what "White people" will do with the data. This is balanced by > wanting to have someone work on the language to help record it for the > community's own use, with a recognition that in order to do that the > linguist usually has to (or wants to) also do work that relates to their > role within a university. And there's usually multiple different reasons > within the same community, and different degrees to which people want > data made available. I wrote the two sentences quoted above hoping that I could make you split apart the issues of the speech community from the issues of the linguist. I failed. :) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 18:17:35 2006 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:17:35 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1305.69.91.14.68.1161713359.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: > > I wrote the two sentences quoted above hoping that I could make you split > apart the issues of the speech community from the issues of the linguist. > > I failed. :) > I know :), but that's because many field linguists can't split them when it comes to the dissemination of data, no matter how much they would like to. The speech community are stakeholders in research too. Claire From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 18:52:45 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:52:45 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E58BF.5070604@gmail.com> Message-ID: Claire Bowern wrote: > Mark wrote: >> >> I wrote the two sentences quoted above hoping that I could make you >> split >> apart the issues of the speech community from the issues of the >> linguist. >> >> I failed. :) >> > > I know :), but that's because many field linguists can't split them when > it comes to the dissemination of data, no matter how much they would > like to. The speech community are stakeholders in research too. Perhaps that is the source of our misunderstanding. What kind of ethical argument could possibly make out the speech community as anything but the *primary* stakeholder, whose needs and wishes must be allowed to trump all others? (Alternative: "Shut up and hold still. This is not going to hurt much. We're professionals, you know. It'll be over soon and then we'll be gone.") It seems to me that the ethical dilemma arises when one feels driven to do salvage linguistics even if it goes against the speech community's wishes (they'll thank you later, you know). There's an ethical difference between "Please come and record our language!" and "Move aside there, we're coming in to record your language!". -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk Tue Oct 24 21:06:07 2006 From: mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:06:07 +0100 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <453E58BF.5070604@gmail.com> Message-ID: At the risk of returning this discussion to general topics of discussion (rather than personal proclamations of what outstandingly caring and responsible researchers we are as individuals -- of course we are, this is Funknet, right? -- and whether or not untenured members of our community are or are not paranoid about how much time they ought to spend on peer-reviewed papers vs creating web-based archives) ... I was interested in the off-hand way in which the emergence of different archiving systems was glossed over in the debate. Someone (Dan Everett, I believe -- forgive me if I am misattributing, the thread was very long by the time I joined it) made some comment to the effect that they would prefer it if funding were given to thoroughly document (and archive through to public access) fewer languages than to document in less open archives a larger number of languages. I'm interested by this for several reasons. One is that I have started to get the impression that the very limited NSF funding for linguistics is doubling-up on different archiving systems. My own area of research is sociolinguistics, and I am dismayed when I see funding going on digitising different sociolinguistics archives to different standards when so much basic research in sociolinguistics is left unfunded. We have standards or systems emerging in North Carolina, Philadelphia, to say nothing of the International Corpora of English which do not (sadly) all adhere to the same mark-up norms. In Oceanic linguistics (my other research interest) there is the excellent PARADISEC archive which has been set up, but the discussants on this list are clearly thinking of many others, and Helen Dry and Anthony Aristar have been trying to lead with archiving and mark-up standards for years. Is it being too unbearably cynical to suggest that people are pursuing their own archive projects because this suits the current priorities/worries of funding agencies (and, not coincidentally, enhances our own professional standing or mana), rather than because it best serves the immediate and long-term goals fo the user groups (whether speakers of these languages or linguists)? The example of the Jesuit grammars was raised early in the piece -- I have no experience whatsoever with these, so I will simply take it as writ that they are exemplary -- but surely these guys did not have a standardised format that they presented data in? If they did, or to the extent that they did, surely the standard was something more like the "archiving" standard adopted by Malcolm Ross, Andy Pawley and Darrell Tryon at Pacific Linguistics years ago: if you go to a Pacific Linguistics grammar now, you know what to expect to find in section 4.3.2 and you know what to expect to find in section 4.3.2.1. etc. etc. No, I know we don't have easy access to the authors' original notebooks or recordings in all cases so we can't check where they have perhaps made honest category errors (though -- by the way -- PARADISEC does make written records and recordings available...). But notebooks are bloody good ways of archiving data (Peter Ladefoged's name has been invoked in this discussion and he was quite clear in the last few years that hard copy is absolutely essential for sustaining further research). And yes, I agree that there are some things we can and should be more forthcoming about sharing with the academic community more widely. But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her rape -- you can't have that. Not because I promised her the conversation was private, but because it is quite simply not my story to share. But sure, the argument about who should have won the beauty contest ... when I have time, because she understood the recordings would be used for academic research. But I hope that is not time that is funded at the expense of some energetic, and fresh-minded new researcher in the field, whose work will challenge me and mine. In short... my point is: I disagree the idea that the extremely limited funding to linguistics should go principally to projects feeding labour-intensive digital archiving. Yes, it would be lovely if there were more and larger grants in linguistics so we didn't have to make this kind of choice. But at the moment we do and I think we would be doing our community a dis-service if we backed the Big Few at the expense of the Small Many. And no, I have nothing to do with PARADISEC, but their web page is here if you don't know about their enterprise and would like to learn more: http://paradisec.org.au/ best, Miriam -- Miriam Meyerhoff Professor of Sociolinguistics Linguistics & English Language University of Edinburgh 14 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LN SCOTLAND ph.: +44 131 650-3961/3628 (main office) or 651-1836 (direct line) fax: +44 131 650-6883 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff From dlevere at ilstu.edu Tue Oct 24 21:32:58 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:32:58 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Miriam, You correctly attributed the things to me that I said. We have to change the culture of the field if we are going to provide the documentation for replicability that we need. Lack of money is not an excuse. We need more - more money and more replicability. In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants that far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by and large. So the UK might actually set the standard on these things. As to what files you can make available or should make available, of course there are limits. No one says that 100% of data should be there. This is the decision of the speech community in any case. The ideal for us as linguists is that there be enough data available for any of us with an interest to redo any study you have done, at least for languages in which access is very difficult and especially for endangered languages. For English this is not as crucial, perhaps. I am quite concerned about linguistic typology and theory when they base their conclusions on grammars that we haven't got the data to replicate the analysis of. And that is what we generally do. Mainly because that is what we are forced to do. We 'take the word' of the grammar writer for their data because we have no record of it accessible to us. How do we know that the old Jesuit grammars, often of extinct languages, are good? Partially by archiving. In the case of Anchieta's grammar of Tupinamba, for example, we have additional data, the data in his own catechism and dictionary and the conversations 'recorded' by Jean de Lery, the French Calvinist. Ffor most of the others, we have the modern languages to compare their grammars against. It is true that we would be better served if there were a standard. But if the archiving system is non-proprietary and if it has clear instructions, then I am very glad for its existence, even if it has problems and is non-standard. There are problems and they won't be overcome in a year or two. More money for linguistics research may not be forthcoming. But I'd rather see bigger grants going to fewer research projects that lots of small grants that leave little hope for replicability of the results. I just cannot see the problem here. -- Dan P.S. Some readers might find it instructive to compare grant sizes of the different funding agencies. In the UK linguistic awards of up to roughly one million dollars (AHRC) or 1.5 million (ESRC) for five years are allowed. For the NSF linguistics awards are usually less than one hundred thousand dollars per year, for a preferred three- year maximum as I understand it. Things may have changed. More money is available from the NSF in principle since, last award I had at least, it had few explicit caps. Here are three pages, for NSF, AHRC, and ESRC. NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=BCS (then go to award search and just type in linguistics and scroll down) AHRC: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/awards/ ESRC: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/help/research_list.aspx#skip ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From mark at polymathix.com Tue Oct 24 21:44:20 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:44:20 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > > But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her > rape -- you can't have that. If the subject of rape is integral to your research, then it seems like you you would have addressed ethical issues relating to data dissemination before you chose your informants. If the subject of rape is not integral to your research, then it seems like you could do without that particular story in your dataset. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From macw at cmu.edu Tue Oct 24 22:34:31 2006 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:34:31 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Miriam, You ask some very good questions. Mark-up is certainly an important consideration. The TalkBank approach to this has been to develop a highly structured and heavily semantic underlying XML mark-up language called CHAT. During the last 12 years, CHAT has been extended to include CA, ISL, Discourse Transcription, and four other coding systems. We are currently working on translators from LDC formats such as SLX and Switchboard. The underlying XML Schema is published at http://www.talkbank.org/ talkbank.xsd and documented in readable English in the manuals that are available from childes.psy.cmu.edu. All of the data in CHILDES and TalkBank, which come from some 12 different disciplines, including some of sociolinguistics, are in CHAT. These CHAT files can be automatically converted to XML by program, validated, and then reformatted back to CHAT to make sure that they are the same as the originals (round-tripping). The CHILDES and TalkBank databases include perhaps 40 languages, many with non-Roman orthographies (Thai, Chinese, Japanese) and lots and lots of different types of people. The tools include methods for linking transcripts to audio and video which allow for playback from individual sentences both locally and over the web. Should the various projects you mention that are emerging in North Carolina and Philadelphia use these tools and formats? Obviously, I am biased. But one has to ask the simple question: why not? Some people seem to confuse the issue of metadata with specific transcription markup. TalkBank and CHILDES use the OLAC metadata format. However, they are also included in the MPI IMDI format too. But settling on these metadata formats is really not the core issue. The core issue is transcription. When I look at the various databases emerging in field linguistics, I see none that have treated transcription as a structured object. Instead, the idea is typically to post some PDF or Word files on the web. Even though this format is far from optimal, when these documents are accompanied by audio, they do at least provide a great community resource. But we can and should do better. I have spent hours trying to rework a PDF into a CHAT file. It would make a lot of sense to put the structure in during the process of transcription to allow for the full power of computational linguistics. --Brian MacWhinney On Oct 24, 2006, at 5:06 PM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > At the risk of returning this discussion to general topics of > discussion (rather than personal proclamations of what > outstandingly caring and responsible researchers we are as > individuals -- of course we are, this is Funknet, right? -- and > whether or not untenured members of our community are or are not > paranoid about how much time they ought to spend on peer-reviewed > papers vs creating web-based archives) ... > > I was interested in the off-hand way in which the emergence of > different archiving systems was glossed over in the debate. Someone > (Dan Everett, I believe -- forgive me if I am misattributing, the > thread was very long by the time I joined it) made some comment to > the effect that they would prefer it if funding were given to > thoroughly document (and archive through to public access) fewer > languages than to document in less open archives a larger number of > languages. > > I'm interested by this for several reasons. One is that I have > started to get the impression that the very limited NSF funding for > linguistics is doubling-up on different archiving systems. My own > area of research is sociolinguistics, and I am dismayed when I see > funding going on digitising different sociolinguistics archives to > different standards when so much basic research in sociolinguistics > is left unfunded. We have standards or systems emerging in North > Carolina, Philadelphia, to say nothing of the International Corpora > of English which do not (sadly) all adhere to the same mark-up > norms. In Oceanic linguistics (my other research interest) there is > the excellent PARADISEC archive which has been set up, but the > discussants on this list are clearly thinking of many others, and > Helen Dry and Anthony Aristar have been trying to lead with > archiving and mark-up standards for years. > > Is it being too unbearably cynical to suggest that people are > pursuing their own archive projects because this suits the current > priorities/worries of funding agencies (and, not coincidentally, > enhances our own professional standing or mana), rather than > because it best serves the immediate and long-term goals fo the > user groups (whether speakers of these languages or linguists)? > > The example of the Jesuit grammars was raised early in the piece -- > I have no experience whatsoever with these, so I will simply take > it as writ that they are exemplary -- but surely these guys did not > have a standardised format that they presented data in? If they > did, or to the extent that they did, surely the standard was > something more like the "archiving" standard adopted by Malcolm > Ross, Andy Pawley and Darrell Tryon at Pacific Linguistics years > ago: if you go to a Pacific Linguistics grammar now, you know what > to expect to find in section 4.3.2 and you know what to expect to > find in section 4.3.2.1. etc. etc. > > No, I know we don't have easy access to the authors' original > notebooks or recordings in all cases so we can't check where they > have perhaps made honest category errors (though -- by the way -- > PARADISEC does make written records and recordings available...). > But notebooks are bloody good ways of archiving data (Peter > Ladefoged's name has been invoked in this discussion and he was > quite clear in the last few years that hard copy is absolutely > essential for sustaining further research). And yes, I agree that > there are some things we can and should be more forthcoming about > sharing with the academic community more widely. But I'm sorry, > people, the recording of the woman telling me about her rape -- you > can't have that. Not because I promised her the conversation was > private, but because it is quite simply not my story to share. But > sure, the argument about who should have won the beauty contest ... > when I have time, because she understood the recordings would be > used for academic research. But I hope that is not time that is > funded at the expense of some energetic, and fresh-minded new > researcher in the field, whose work will challenge me and mine. > > In short... my point is: I disagree the idea that the extremely > limited funding to linguistics should go principally to projects > feeding labour-intensive digital archiving. Yes, it would be lovely > if there were more and larger grants in linguistics so we didn't > have to make this kind of choice. But at the moment we do and I > think we would be doing our community a dis-service if we backed > the Big Few at the expense of the Small Many. > > And no, I have nothing to do with PARADISEC, but their web page is > here if you don't know about their enterprise and would like to > learn more: http://paradisec.org.au/ > > best, Miriam > -- > Miriam Meyerhoff > Professor of Sociolinguistics > Linguistics & English Language > University of Edinburgh > 14 Buccleuch Place > Edinburgh EH8 9LN > SCOTLAND > > ph.: +44 131 650-3961/3628 (main office) or 651-1836 (direct line) > fax: +44 131 650-6883 > > http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff > > From spike at darkwing.uoregon.edu Wed Oct 25 01:02:22 2006 From: spike at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Spike Gildea) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:02:22 +1000 Subject: Linguistics as science and as academic discipline Message-ID: This discussion is really interesting for me, both as a field worker and as someone who has been a department head, working with junior colleagues to present a strong case for tenure. I'd like to take on Mark's question, and try to speak *just* to the issues that confront the linguist in the domain of the academic world (trying to set aside, for the moment, the ethical and human issues that are more specific to engaging with speech communities). Both field methods (i.e., doing good science) and the tenure and promotion process (success in an academic job) are evolving constantly, both attempting to respond to changes in the world of research (many brought on by rapid advances in technology). I appreciate the desire to leap ahead to a better new world, and to lambaste the stodgy old "system" that holds us back, but there are limitations to how fast change happens in the real world, and there are limitations to how much individuals can do -- as Claire says, we have to make choices, both those driven by our professional context (including the needs of tenure review committees) and those driven by our individual needs (the desire to publish on one aspect of a language takes time away from further work on another aspect). With regard to field work, I think it is indisputable that linguistics has relied overmuch on analyzing black marks (sometimes in multiple colors in my data books) on a page. These black marks are a partial representation of speech, which allow errors of representation (mistranscriptions and outright fabrications) to be introduced without providing a means for external reviewers to find and correct them short of going to the field themselves (prohibitively expensive, in both money and time -- we don't have near enough linguists to do the job once, much less to do it twice!). Further, in some field methods traditions, a data sentence can represent nothing more than a speaker responding "yes" to a linguist asking if the utterance could be said, but the black marks do not distinguish between such "data" (which in my tradition would not count as data) and actual utterances made in conversations between native speakers (which I hope everyone would agree counts as data). In the last few years, technology has leaped ahead so quickly that it is now economically feasible to carry digital recording equipment and a laptop (and solar panels, where necessary) to the field, so that it is now possible to provide sound files for every utterance collected in field work. Morey (2005) [Morey, Stephen. 2005. The Tai languages of Assam - a Grammar and texts, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University] provides an excellent example of a grammar that improves on the "black marks" method: he provides an accompanying CD where every example in the grammar and every line of every text is linked to a sound file, a recording of a native speaker saying the utterance. Anyone with the CD can check all of these examples to verify any empirical detail that is relevant for a given analysis. This sort of work provides a standard that all fieldworkers should aspire to, regardless of their position on web publishing. But I am far from being able to achieve this standard in my own work and I have spoken about it with enough colleagues to know that, especially for those of us who were trained before this technology was available, even learning to use it at all is not a trivial issue. In fact, not many people have done it, most that I know have developed idiosyncratic methods that work for them, but that may not be more generally applicable, and there are few (if any) venues where we can get training from someone who has a tested, generally applicable method. As more individuals in the field try to engage with this new technology, there will be fewer unknowns, but while people with a greater affinity for technology jump in and experiment and debate about formats and methods, those of us who just want to be end users, who just want good tools and a straightforward model to follow, are concerned about entering into a massive project with no assurance that five years from now, we won't look back and see five years essentially wasted putting data into a format that didn't become generally accepted. In addition, field workers already require years to organize the black marks on paper (or in a computerized database) into grammars -- there is no question that adding the digital sound layer to this work will require a lot more time. It is already a lot just to cut out sound files of examples, then link these sound files to written examples in some format (a toolbox database, Childes, even a simple Word document). Putting up our raw notes is unthinkable: we all have our own standards about how much of our "mess" we are willing to show to friends or strangers, but nobody will be able to just put up their database online, to make it accessible to others to read, without a lot of polishing work. I agree, making recorded data available is the right thing to do, and I hope (and expect) that it's the future in linguistics, but right now, it's not established territory, and it's sure not a trivial decision for any individual field worker to start doing it. There's only so many hours in the day, and most of us already have more on our plates than we can do justice to (more on this in a moment), and if we decide to dedicate a chunk of time to learning and then implementing this new technology, we'll have to make some hard choices about what to give up. And ultimately, there are limits to how many skills one individual can master -- as Dan points out, to have enough work-hours and enough specialized knowledge to do this new, more extensive job, future models for field linguistics will almost certainly require teams of specialists to work together. The other question is how academia rewards our labors. First, most departments of linguistics do not have positions for those of us who view field work as our specialty -- most of us get hired for our theoretical specialty, for the classes in syntax or phonology (or whatever) that we can teach, in addition to the occasional field methods class. Once you've landed the tenure-line job, the tenure system is heavily stacked against fieldworkers even doing the more limited "traditional" kind of fieldwork. The behaviors that are rewarded all involve refereed publications on paper (a few electronic journals are underway, but they are greatly outnumbered by print journals and, like any new journals, their value for tenure is still uncertain), and field work already takes substantial time away from that behavior. Further, we must engage in disproportionate publishing activity in the specialty that we are hired for. WIth that as the goal, field data collection provides a rather poor return for time spent. While much of the time we spend collecting data and processing data is important to our understanding of the language, most of the data produced via this investment of time will not be important enough to show up even in a grammar; further, much of the data that will merit inclusion in a grammar will not prove relevant for current theoretical/typological debates, and hence the process of collecting and analyzing them is not rewarded until the grammar is published, which may not be prior to the deadline for consideration for tenure. Time spent building extensive searchable databases of annotated material pays off down the road by making it easier to access the examples that are relevant for publishable articles, but the work of creating these databases doesn't count at all until the publications follow. Until the system recognizes the validity of the contribution made by electronically accessible archives of organized data, untenured faculty really are not wise to put much time into cleaning up a database for web publication, and even tenured faculty might hesitate unless they are willing to set aside some professional ambitions. So how can we effect some change, help the system evolve so as to make it easier (and more rewarding) to do fieldwork in the more reliable ways that current technology makes possible. To start with, I'd like to see a push for an academic culture that acknowledges the value (even the necessity) of CDs with sound files to accompany printed language data -- under that standard, I might not be able to publish anything for a few years, but I believe the reliability of the database available to typologists and theoreticians would increase sharply. We also need to start a refereeing process for databases that are made available on the web -- they are as accessible as traditional publications, but they don't count for the tenure system because there is no peer-review-based gate-keeping mechanism to regulate the quality of the works that are disseminated. This problem is not unique to field linguistics, but it might be a bigger issue for field workers to the extent that we are trying to create a new genre of publication, one that would not be possible offline. Something like a reviews section in a journal, that lists and evaluates such sites, might provide the first steps towards gaining academic acknowledgment for such work. On the side, we also really need to think about how to engage with non-fieldworker academics to convince them that what we do is scientifically valuable, and to educate them about how our activities differ from those of some other academics (including those who practice the currently dominant models of linguistics). Recently, popular publicity about language endangerment has gone some distance towards justifying our work, but fieldworkers (and functionalists) have been out of power politically in linguistics departments for quite some time, which means our needs have not been made a priority inside most departments, and also that we have had little opportunity to shape the perception of the field on the part of academic administrators. To implement changes in the system that will meet our needs, we will need the support not just of university administrators, but also of the less fieldwork-oriented colleagues in our own departments (and in departments that have not yet opened their doors to fieldworkers). Put more bluntly, we need to figure out how to get theoretical linguists to (a) decide to replace a retiring colleague, say a phonologist or a syntactician, or a psycholinguist, with a fieldworker, (b) agree as a department to establish a separate standard for reviewing the academic output of fieldworkers, and (c) argue to the Dean, the Provost, and the various Promotion and Tenure committees that these standards are justifiable. Whew! Thanks for a stimulating and diverting discussion! I'm going back to work some more on my black marks on a screen... Spike From mark at polymathix.com Wed Oct 25 02:19:37 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:19:37 -0500 Subject: Linguistics as science and as academic discipline In-Reply-To: <453EB79E.6050201@darkwing.uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Thanks, Spike. There are a number of remarks I might make (and may make later in the ensuing thread), but I've picked out just a couple of your more technical points to comment on here. Spike Gildea wrote: > > As more > individuals in the field try to engage with this new technology, there > will be fewer unknowns, but while people with a greater affinity for > technology jump in and experiment and debate about formats and methods, > those of us who just want to be end users, who just want good tools and > a straightforward model to follow, are concerned about entering into a > massive project with no assurance that five years from now, we won't > look back and see five years essentially wasted putting data into a > format that didn't become generally accepted. There are a couple of deep, dark secrets that computer experts (and OEM's) jealously guard against merely mortal end users, and I'm going to tell you what they are. (I've left the employ of those keepers of arcane secrets, so I have nothing to lose anymore...) Here they are. Wait for them....... Okay. 1. If you can capture your data consistently in *any* documented digital format, then I can transform your data consistently into any other documented digital format. If both formats are XML vocabularies, I'll get one of my cats to do it. If anybody tells you differently, then they're after more of your grant money than they deserve. 2. Given a set of requirements, I can invent and document a new digital format overnight that meets those requirements. So, the task of the fieldworker is NOT to second-guess the evolution of technology by trying to put her data into *the* format that somebody has convinced her is the one that is going to "win". The task of the fieldworker is to put her data consistently into any documented digital format of her choosing. (She'll be wise to choose one that allows her to capture every salient feature of her data, or hire somebody to invent one that does.) People who like to fuss with the technical issues can then take it from there. You've written books and gotten them published. Did you operate the printing press yourself? Did you worry a lot about whether or not the printing press might run out of ink while your book was running? > So how can we effect some change, help the system evolve so as to make > it easier (and more rewarding) to do fieldwork in the more reliable ways > that current technology makes possible. To start with, I'd like to see > a push for an academic culture that acknowledges the value (even the > necessity) of CDs with sound files to accompany printed language data -- > under that standard, I might not be able to publish anything for a few > years, but I believe the reliability of the database available to > typologists and theoreticians would increase sharply. Publishing on CD's is much inferior to publishing online, for quite a large number of reasons. I can think of a few reasons right off the top of my head, and those here who are in the thick of online archive management can surely add many more: -- corrections can be made directly to an online dataset, which then become immediately available; CD's have to be remastered, reburned and re-snail-mailed -- corrections and other changes to an online dataset can be managed under version control -- users can be notified of changes to an online dataset if they wish -- the population of permitted users of an online dataset can be easily restricted -- CD's are platform-dependent or must support multiple platforms, while browser-based online access is functionally platform-independent -- CD's cost money to produce; the marginal cost for online access to the amount of data that fits on a CD is negligible -- not much data fits on a CD; online servers can handle enormous volumes of data -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX From mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk Wed Oct 25 08:59:25 2006 From: mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:59:25 +0100 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1584.69.91.14.68.1161726260.squirrel@webmail1.pair.com> Message-ID: Precisely. I'm glad you agree. best, mm At 16:44 -0500 24/10/06, Mark P. Line wrote: >Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: >> >> But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her >> rape -- you can't have that. > >If the subject of rape is integral to your research, then it seems like >you you would have addressed ethical issues relating to data dissemination >before you chose your informants. > >If the subject of rape is not integral to your research, then it seems >like you could do without that particular story in your dataset. > > >-- Mark > >Mark P. Line >Polymathix >San Antonio, TX -- Miriam Meyerhoff Professor of Sociolinguistics Linguistics & English Language University of Edinburgh 14 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LN SCOTLAND, UK ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) fax: +44 131 650-6883 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ From mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk Wed Oct 25 10:50:48 2006 From: mhoff at ling.ed.ac.uk (Miriam Meyerhoff) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:50:48 +0100 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <165F28D6-E50C-4225-9707-E4927E139038@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Dear Dan, >In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants that >far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by and >large. I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US (I restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that point the contributors were all US-based). The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based on individual researcher's agreements with the people they are recording. As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is concerned: This is an interesting question, since the average size of the grants to academics on the three links you provided seems very similar. My impression (based on my own limited experience) is not the researchers are more likely to get large sums in the UK, but that the success rate for grant submissions is perhaps higher (c. 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what the ratio is for the NSF). chrz, mm -- Miriam Meyerhoff Professor of Sociolinguistics Linguistics & English Language University of Edinburgh 14 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LN SCOTLAND, UK ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) fax: +44 131 650-6883 http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ From dlevere at ilstu.edu Wed Oct 25 13:02:36 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:02:36 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Miriam, Interesting take on the size of UK grants. I guess some of this has to do with experience. Maybe NSF grants have gotten somewhat larger over the past few years. I served on the AHRC funding reform panel and had grants with the ESRC and AHRC far in excess of anything I have had from the NSF (I have had NSF funding for most of the past 22 years and have mainly had grants that fall within what I was once informed to be the 'normal' range for linguistics, i.e. below 300,000 for three years). The UK granting agencies let you know what the percentage of applicants receiving grants that year was. I was told by both ESRC and AHRC that about 26% of applicants received funding, so this accords with what you say. I would say that that is likely better than the NSF. (Paul Chapin has an excellent book from CUP on NSF grants.) Most universities in the US and UK will pay (out of central university funds) for their faculty to visit the relevant funding agencies and discuss projects with them. And in the US at least NSF representatives have been very helpful in discussing proposals with folks at the LSA annual meetings. I am sure that they are well aware of the need for more funds for 'proper archiving' of field data. Dan On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:50 AM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > Dear Dan, > >> In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants that >> far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by and >> large. > > I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US (I > restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that point > the contributors were all US-based). > > The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC > (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected > using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT > TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based on > individual researcher's agreements with the people they are recording. > > As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is concerned: > This is an interesting question, since the average size of the > grants to academics on the three links you provided seems very > similar. My impression (based on my own limited experience) is not > the researchers are more likely to get large sums in the UK, but > that the success rate for grant submissions is perhaps higher (c. > 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what the ratio is for the NSF). > > chrz, mm > -- > > Miriam Meyerhoff > Professor of Sociolinguistics > Linguistics & English Language > University of Edinburgh > 14 Buccleuch Place > Edinburgh EH8 9LN > SCOTLAND, UK > > ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) > fax: +44 131 650-6883 > > http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From yves.peirsman at arts.kuleuven.be Wed Oct 25 13:06:14 2006 From: yves.peirsman at arts.kuleuven.be (Yves Peirsman) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:06:14 +0200 Subject: Last CfP for Theme Session at ICLC2007: Cognitive Sociolinguistics Message-ID: Last Call for Papers for a Theme Session at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference *********** DEADLINE TUESDAY OCTOBER 31 *********** THEME: Cognitive Sociolinguistics URL: wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/cs.htm ORGANISERS: Dirk Geeraerts, University of Leuven, dirk.geeraerts [at] arts.kuleuven.be Gitte Kristiansen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, gkristia [at] filol.ucm.es Yves Peirsman, University of Leuven, yves.peirsman [at] arts.kuleuven.be EVENT: 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland 15-20 July 2007 www.iclc2007.pl INTRODUCTION Although there is a growing interest within Cognitive Linguistics for language-internal variation (see Kristiansen and Dirven, forthcoming: Cognitive Sociolinguistics, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), it remains an understudied area in Cognitive Linguistics. Too often linguistic analyses (or cross-linguistic comparisons) are carried out at the level of 'a language', disregarding rich and complex patterns of intralingual variation. Such a level of granularity ultimately amounts to that of a homogeneous and thus idealized speech community. Cognitive Linguistics, to the extent that it takes the claim that it is a usage-based approach to language and cognition seriously, cannot afford to work with language situated taxonomically at an almost Chomskyan level of abstraction. The purpose of the theme session is therefore to bring together examples of outstanding sociolinguistic research within the field of Cognitive Linguistics. THE SCOPE OF COGNITIVE SOCIOLINGUISTICS The domain of investigation of Cognitive Sociolinguistics may be roughly divided into three main areas, each of which represents a specific relationship between cognition and language-internal linguistic diversity (which we will henceforth refer to as "lectal variation"). We invite abstracts for presentations in all three areas: 1. LECTAL VARIATION AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE How does language-internal variation affect the occurrence of linguistic phenomena, and in particular, how does it affect the occurrence of linguistic phenomena that have the specific attention of Cognitive Linguistics? The question involves not only active knowledge of the language (i.e. language use), but also passive knowledge (i.e. reading and understanding skills). Existing examples of Cognitive Linguistic work in this area may be found in Berthele's work on verbal framing in the Swiss dialects, the work by Gries and Stefanowitsch on register variation in collostructions, and Croft's views on the importance of social variation for a theory of linguistic change. Topics of specific interest within this domain of research include - lectal factors in language acquisition: how does the change in an individual's knowledge of the language interact with social factors? - language variation and change: how do changes spread over a linguistic community, what is the role of distributed linguistic cognition in these processes, and how does the feedback loop between individual acts and common systemic changes actually work? - multivariate models of language variation: what analytical and descriptive tools do we need to arrive at an adequate description of linguistic variation? 2. LECTAL VARIATION, LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT A lot of front-edge research is looking into the relationship between language and thought (Slobin, Bowerman etc.), but this is basically done from an interlingual (typological) point of view. What happens if you conduct similar research from an intralingual point of view? Does lectal variation have the same effect on the relationship between language and thought as typological variation? Although this is only an emerging trend, a clear example of Cognitive Linguistic work in this area is Grondelaers' work on the psycholinguistic correlates of the multifactorial distribution of Dutch "er". Topics of specific interest within this domain of research involve - the relationship between language and culture: do language-internal differences in the relationship between language and thought reflect differences of "culture" ? - the relationship between cultural models and thought: to what extent does variation in cultural models within a community correlate with cognitive differences? 3. THE COGNITIVE REPRESENTATION OF LECTAL VARIATION How do language users perceive lectal differences, and how do they evaluate them attitudinally? What models do they use to categorize linguistic diversity? Examples of this kind of work within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics are Kristiansen's work on the socially informed prototype structure of phonemes, or Geeraerts' work on cultural models of standardization. Topics of specific interest within this domain of research include - stereotyping: how do language users categorize other groups of speakers? - subjective and objective linguistic distances: is there a correlation between objective linguistic distances, perceived distances, and language attitudes? - cultural models of language diversity: what models of lectal variation, standardization, and language change do people work with? - attitudes, perception, and change: to what extent do attitudinal and perceptual factors have an influence on language change? STRUCTURE OF THE SESSION Our theme session will consist of (1) presentations of the selected papers, (2) presentations by a number of invited specialists, (3) three 20-minute thematic discussion slots. PROCEDURE We invite abstracts of max. 500 words for 20-minute presentations in the three areas described above. Your abstract should contain: - The title of the presentation - Your name(s), affiliation(s) and e-mail address(es) - The research question(s) that you address - A discussion of the methodology - A description of the data - A summary of the obtained results Abstracts should be sent to all three theme session organisers before October 31, 2006. SCHEDULE Deadline call for abstracts: October 31, 2006 Notification of acceptance/rejection of abstracts: November 15, 2006 Submission of the theme session proposal to the conference organisers: November 15, 2006 Notification of acceptance/rejection of theme session: February 1, 2007 Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm From shanley at bu.edu Wed Oct 25 13:12:40 2006 From: shanley at bu.edu (Shanley Allen) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:12:40 +0200 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <1E96A770-5117-49B5-97DD-CB69C204AADD@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Another difference may be due to differences in the way that faculty salary and university overhead are treated. In the US, it's typical for faculty to include in their grants money to buy out teaching and to pay summer salary, since US professors virtually all have 9-month contracts so aren't paid for the 3 summer months. In Canada, in contrast, professors are paid by the university for the full 12 months, and typically don't buy out of teaching unless the funded project is very large. In the US, it's also typical for universities to charge high overhead on grants from federal funding agencies - at my university (BU) the rate is 63%. In Canada, I don't think this overhead is factored into the individual grant but gets to the university in some other way (although I may be wrong about this). So US grants that look large don't cover as much actual work because so much of the money goes to overhead and faculty salary. Shanley. On 25 Oct 2006, at 15:02, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Miriam, > > Interesting take on the size of UK grants. I guess some of this has > to do with experience. Maybe NSF grants have gotten somewhat larger > over the past few years. > > I served on the AHRC funding reform panel and had grants with the > ESRC and AHRC far in excess of anything I have had from the NSF (I > have had NSF funding for most of the past 22 years and have mainly > had grants that fall within what I was once informed to be the > 'normal' range for linguistics, i.e. below 300,000 for three years). > > The UK granting agencies let you know what the percentage of > applicants receiving grants that year was. I was told by both ESRC > and AHRC that about 26% of applicants received funding, so this > accords with what you say. I would say that that is likely better > than the NSF. (Paul Chapin has an excellent book from CUP on NSF > grants.) > > Most universities in the US and UK will pay (out of central > university funds) for their faculty to visit the relevant funding > agencies and discuss projects with them. And in the US at least NSF > representatives have been very helpful in discussing proposals with > folks at the LSA annual meetings. I am sure that they are well > aware of the need for more funds for 'proper archiving' of field data. > > Dan > > > > On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:50 AM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > >> Dear Dan, >> >>> In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants >>> that far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF by >>> and large. >> >> I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US (I >> restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that point >> the contributors were all US-based). >> >> The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC >> (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected >> using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT >> TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based >> on individual researcher's agreements with the people they are >> recording. >> >> As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is >> concerned: This is an interesting question, since the average size >> of the grants to academics on the three links you provided seems >> very similar. My impression (based on my own limited experience) >> is not the researchers are more likely to get large sums in the >> UK, but that the success rate for grant submissions is perhaps >> higher (c. 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what the ratio is >> for the NSF). >> >> chrz, mm >> -- >> >> Miriam Meyerhoff >> Professor of Sociolinguistics >> Linguistics & English Language >> University of Edinburgh >> 14 Buccleuch Place >> Edinburgh EH8 9LN >> SCOTLAND, UK >> >> ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main >> office) >> fax: +44 131 650-6883 >> >> http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > ************************************************ Shanley Allen, Associate Professor Acting Chair, Department of Literacy and Language, Counseling and Development School of Education, Boston University 2 Sherborn Street, Boston, MA, 02215, USA e-mail: shanley at bu.edu ************************************************ From Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com Wed Oct 25 13:22:44 2006 From: Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com (Ulrich, Julia) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:22:44 +0200 Subject: Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives (Ed. by Kristiansen et al.) Message-ID: NEW PUBLICATION BY MOUTON DE GRUYTER COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS: CURRENT APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES Edited by Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, Ren? Dirven, and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ib?nez 2006. xi, 499 pages. Paperback. ? 24.95 / sFr 40.00 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 33.70 ISBN: 3-11-018951-8 ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018951-3 (Mouton Reader) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?isbn=978-3-11-018951-3&fg=SK&L=E Cloth. ? 98.00 / sFr 157.00 / *US$ 132.30 ISBN 3-11-018950-X ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018950-6 (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics 1) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-9783110189506-1&l=E&ad=he Date of publication: 10/2006 Subjects: Cognitive Linguistics; Applied Linguistics ?Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives? is an up-to-date survey of recent research in Cognitive Linguistics and its applications by prominent researchers. The volume brings together generally accessible syntheses and special studies of Cognitive Linguistics strands in a sizable format and is thus an asset not only to the cognitive linguistics community, but also to neighbouring disciplines and linguists in general. The volume covers a wide range of fields and combines wide accessibility with a highly specific information value. KEY FEATURES * An excellent source for the study of Applied Cognitive Linguistics, one of the most popular and fastest growing areas in linguistics. * Authoritative and detailed survey articles by leading scholars in the field. * Accessible to a general audience, yet also characterized by a highly specific information value. FROM THE CONTENTS Introduction: Cognitive Linguistics: Current applications and future perspectives Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, Ren? Dirven and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ib??ez Part one: The cognitive base Methodology in Cognitive Linguistics Dirk Geeraerts Polysemy and the lexicon John R. Taylor Cognitive approaches to grammar Cristiano Broccias Part two: The conceptual leap Three dogmas of embodiment: Cognitive linguistics as a cognitive science Tim Rohrer Metonymy as a usage event Klaus-Uwe Panther Conceptual blending in thought, rhetoric, and ideology Seana Coulson Part three: The psychological basis The contested impact of cognitive linguistic research on the psycholinguistics of metaphor understanding Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Marcus Perlman X IS LIKE Y: The emergence of similarity mappings in children?s early speech and gesture Seyda ?zcalskan and Susan Goldin-Meadow Part four: Go, tell it on the mountain Energy through fusion at last: Synergies in cognitive anthropology and cognitive linguistics Gary B. Palmer Cognitive linguistic applications in second or foreign language instruction: rationale, proposals, and evaluation Frank Boers and Seth Lindstromberg Part five: Verbal and beyond: Vision and imagination Visual communication: Signed language and cognition Terry Janzen Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework:Agendas for research Charles Forceville The fall of the wall between literary studies and linguistics: Cognitive poetics Margaret H. Freeman Part six: Virtual reality as a new experience Artificial intelligence, figurative language and cognitive linguistics John A. Barnden Computability as a test on linguistics theories Tony Veale EDITORS Gitte Kristiansen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; Michel Achard, Rice University, USA; Ren? Dirven, University of Duisburg, Germany; Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ib??ez, University of La Rioja, Spain. TO ORDER, PLEASE CONTACT Rhenus Medien Logistik GmbH & Co. KG Justus-von-Liebig-Str. 1 86899 Landsberg, Germany Fax: +49-(0)8191-97000-560 E-mail: degruyter at rhenus.de For USA, Canada, Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. PO Box 960 Herndon, VA 20172-0960 Tel.: +1 (703) 661 1589 Tel. Toll-free +1 (800) 208 8144 Fax: +1 (703) 661 1501 E-mail: degruytermail at presswarehouse.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: www.mouton-publishers.com For free demo versions of Mouton de Gruyter?s multimedia products, please visit www.mouton-online.com (Prices are subject to change. Prices do not include postage and handling.) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Diese E-Mail und ihre Dateianhaenge sind fuer den angegebenen Empfaenger und/oder die Empfaengergruppe bestimmt. Wenn Sie diese E-Mail versehentlich erhalten haben, setzen Sie sich bitte mit dem Absender oder Ihrem Systembetreuer in Verbindung. Diese Fusszeile bestaetigt ausserdem, dass die E-Mail auf bekannte Viren ueberprueft wurde. This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender or the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses. From dlevere at ilstu.edu Wed Oct 25 13:25:12 2006 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:25:12 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <74D71143-3C3A-4B28-8948-5349BC90BBEC@bu.edu> Message-ID: Shanley, I don't know about Canada's indirect costs for grants, etc. but in the UK there certainly are high indirect costs. However, the UK Research Council's have now gone to a program called FEC (often pronounced with a different vowel in the middle by some disgruntled grant writers), 'Full Economic Costing', which means that your grant proposal must include an estimate of the cost to the University of every hour you plan to work on the grant, the square footage of University space (including your office) that will be dedicated to the grant, and so on. This has pushed up the costs of grants. The overhead return policy of some UK universities, e.g. the University of Manchester, is much more generous than in the US, meaning that, for example, in my last UK grants 15% of the total indirect costs came to me, allowing me to really do a lot more with the project and fund more graduate student research than I could have done otherwise. Some of this is part of the Blair-Brown push to put UK universities in research leadership worldwide and I think it is working at the level of grants. But, like Canada, there are no summer salaries available for PIs in the UK, since everyone is on a 12-month salary. However, speaking of summer PI salaries, there is an immediate way in which every grant-applying/holding linguist can help the field: don't request summer salaries on your grants from the NSF and ask for the amount that would have gone to salary to go to better archiving, for example. Jr. linguists might need the salary support. But senior linguists could set a solid example by not asking for grant-based salary - except for buy-outs to do more research. Summer salary, though I used to always ask for it, really uses funds that could do better work elsewhere, at least if the linguist is earning a good salary already. Just a suggestion. Dan On Oct 25, 2006, at 8:12 AM, Shanley Allen wrote: > Another difference may be due to differences in the way that > faculty salary and university overhead are treated. In the US, > it's typical for faculty to include in their grants money to buy > out teaching and to pay summer salary, since US professors > virtually all have 9-month contracts so aren't paid for the 3 > summer months. In Canada, in contrast, professors are paid by the > university for the full 12 months, and typically don't buy out of > teaching unless the funded project is very large. In the US, it's > also typical for universities to charge high overhead on grants > from federal funding agencies - at my university (BU) the rate is > 63%. In Canada, I don't think this overhead is factored into the > individual grant but gets to the university in some other way > (although I may be wrong about this). So US grants that look large > don't cover as much actual work because so much of the money goes > to overhead and faculty salary. > Shanley. > > > On 25 Oct 2006, at 15:02, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > >> Miriam, >> >> Interesting take on the size of UK grants. I guess some of this >> has to do with experience. Maybe NSF grants have gotten somewhat >> larger over the past few years. >> >> I served on the AHRC funding reform panel and had grants with the >> ESRC and AHRC far in excess of anything I have had from the NSF (I >> have had NSF funding for most of the past 22 years and have mainly >> had grants that fall within what I was once informed to be the >> 'normal' range for linguistics, i.e. below 300,000 for three years). >> >> The UK granting agencies let you know what the percentage of >> applicants receiving grants that year was. I was told by both ESRC >> and AHRC that about 26% of applicants received funding, so this >> accords with what you say. I would say that that is likely better >> than the NSF. (Paul Chapin has an excellent book from CUP on NSF >> grants.) >> >> Most universities in the US and UK will pay (out of central >> university funds) for their faculty to visit the relevant funding >> agencies and discuss projects with them. And in the US at least >> NSF representatives have been very helpful in discussing proposals >> with folks at the LSA annual meetings. I am sure that they are >> well aware of the need for more funds for 'proper archiving' of >> field data. >> >> Dan >> >> >> >> On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:50 AM, Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: >> >>> Dear Dan, >>> >>>> In fact, there in Scotland you have access to research grants >>>> that far exceed the grants available to linguists from the NSF >>>> by and large. >>> >>> I'm grateful to Dan for opening up the discussion beyond the US >>> (I restricted my comments yesterday to the NSF, since at that >>> point the contributors were all US-based). >>> >>> The position of British funding agencies such as AHRC and ESRC >>> (and, I believe, also the Canadian SSHRC) is that data collected >>> using public money is a public asset, i.e. open access, *SUBJECT >>> TO* the usual restrictions re. confidentiality etc., etc., based >>> on individual researcher's agreements with the people they are >>> recording. >>> >>> As far as the question of who has access to more dosh is >>> concerned: This is an interesting question, since the average >>> size of the grants to academics on the three links you provided >>> seems very similar. My impression (based on my own limited >>> experience) is not the researchers are more likely to get large >>> sums in the UK, but that the success rate for grant submissions >>> is perhaps higher (c. 1:4 applications funded; I'm not sure what >>> the ratio is for the NSF). >>> >>> chrz, mm >>> -- >>> >>> Miriam Meyerhoff >>> Professor of Sociolinguistics >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> University of Edinburgh >>> 14 Buccleuch Place >>> Edinburgh EH8 9LN >>> SCOTLAND, UK >>> >>> ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main >>> office) >>> fax: +44 131 650-6883 >>> >>> http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ >> >> ********************** >> Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, >> Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures >> Campus Box 4300 >> Illinois State University >> Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 >> OFFICE: 309-438-3604 >> FAX: 309-438-8038 >> Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp >> Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ >> Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ >> >> and >> >> Honorary Professor of Linguistics >> University of Manchester >> Manchester, UK >> > > ************************************************ > Shanley Allen, Associate Professor > Acting Chair, Department of Literacy and > Language, Counseling and Development > School of Education, Boston University > 2 Sherborn Street, Boston, MA, 02215, USA > > e-mail: shanley at bu.edu > ************************************************ > > ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Campus Box 4300 Illinois State University Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 OFFICE: 309-438-3604 FAX: 309-438-8038 Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ and Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK From Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com Wed Oct 25 13:26:33 2006 From: Julia.Ulrich at degruyter.com (Ulrich, Julia) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:26:33 +0200 Subject: Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings, edited by Dirk Geeraerts (Mouton de Gruyter) Message-ID: NEW FROM MOUTON DE GRUYTER COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS: BASIC READINGS Edited by Dirk Geeraerts 2006. viii, 485 pages. Paperback. ? 24.95 / sFr 40.00 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 33.70 ISBN: 3-11-019085-0 (Mouton Reader ) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?isbn=978-3-11-019085-4&fg=SK&L=E Cloth. ? 98.00 / sFr 157.00 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 132.30 ISBN 3-11-019084-2 (Cognitive Linguistics Research 34) http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?isbn=978-3-11-019084-7&fg=SK&L=E Date of publication: 09/2006 Over the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has grown to be one of the most broadly appealing and dynamic frameworks for the study of natural language. Essentially, this new school of linguistics focuses on the meaning side of language: linguistic form is analysed as an expression of meaning. And meaning itself is not something that exists in isolation, but it is integrated with the full spectrum of human experience: the fact that we are embodied beings just as much as the fact that we are cultural beings. Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings brings together twelve foundational articles, each of which introduces one of the basic concepts of Cognitive Linguistics, such as conceptual metaphor, image schemas, mental spaces, construction grammar, prototypicality and radial sets. The collection features the founding fathers of Cognitive Linguistics: George Lakoff, Ron Langacker, Len Talmy, Gilles Fauconnier, and Charles Fillmore, together with some of the most influential younger scholars. By its choice of seminal papers and leading authors, this book is specifically suited for an introductory course in Cognitive Linguistics. This is further supported by a general introduction to the theory and, specifically, the practice of Cognitive Linguistics and by trajectories for further reading that start out from the individual chapters. EDITOR: Dirk Geeraerts, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. FROM THE CONTENTS Introduction: A rough guide to cognitive linguistics Dirk Geeraerts Cognitive Grammar: Introduction to ?concept, image, and symbol? Ronald W. Langacker Grammatical construal: The relation of grammar to cognition Leonard Talmy Radial network: Cognitive topology and lexical networks Claudia Brugman and George Lakoff Prototype theory: Prospects and problems of prototype theory Dirk Geeraerts Schematic network: Ambiguity, polysemy, and vagueness David Tuggy Conceptual metaphor: The contemporary theory of metaphor George Lakoff Image schema: The cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Herbert L. Colston Metonymy: The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies William Croft Mental spaces: Conceptual integration networks Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner Frame semantics Charles J.Fillmore Construction Grammar: The inherent semantics of argument structure: The case of the English ditransitive construction Adele E. Goldberg Usage-based linguistics: First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition Michael Tomasello Epilogue: Trajectories for further reading Dirk Geeraerts TO ORDER, PLEASE CONTACT Rhenus Medien Logistik GmbH & Co. KG Justus-von-Liebig-Str. 1 86899 Landsberg, Germany Fax: +49-(0)8191-97000-560 E-mail: degruyter at rhenus.de For USA, Canada, Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. PO Box 960 Herndon, VA 20172-0960 Tel.: +1 (703) 661 1589 Tel. Toll-free +1 (800) 208 8144 Fax: +1 (703) 661 1501 E-mail: degruytermail at presswarehouse.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: www.mouton-publishers.com For free demo versions of Mouton de Gruyter?s multimedia products, please visit www.mouton-online.com (Prices are subject to change. Prices do not include postage and handling.) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Diese E-Mail und ihre Dateianhaenge sind fuer den angegebenen Empfaenger und/oder die Empfaengergruppe bestimmt. Wenn Sie diese E-Mail versehentlich erhalten haben, setzen Sie sich bitte mit dem Absender oder Ihrem Systembetreuer in Verbindung. Diese Fusszeile bestaetigt ausserdem, dass die E-Mail auf bekannte Viren ueberprueft wurde. This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender or the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses. From mark at polymathix.com Wed Oct 25 17:55:17 2006 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:55:17 -0500 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Actually, I'm not sure we do agree. I was trying to say that if you have a story that can't be disseminated to other researchers, then you can't use it as data for published studies. What I thought you were saying was that there can be stories that you use as data for published studies but which you cannot disseminate. That's what I would disagree with, because I believe that the data used for a published study has to be made available for the reasons Dan pointed out. If that's not what you were saying, then carry on and ignore me. :) -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix San Antonio, TX Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: > Precisely. I'm glad you agree. > > best, mm > > At 16:44 -0500 24/10/06, Mark P. Line wrote: >>Miriam Meyerhoff wrote: >>> >>> But I'm sorry, people, the recording of the woman telling me about her >>> rape -- you can't have that. >> >>If the subject of rape is integral to your research, then it seems like >>you you would have addressed ethical issues relating to data >> dissemination >>before you chose your informants. >> >>If the subject of rape is not integral to your research, then it seems >>like you could do without that particular story in your dataset. >> >> >>-- Mark >> >>Mark P. Line >>Polymathix >>San Antonio, TX > > > -- > > Miriam Meyerhoff > Professor of Sociolinguistics > Linguistics & English Language > University of Edinburgh > 14 Buccleuch Place > Edinburgh EH8 9LN > SCOTLAND, UK > > ph. +44 131 651-1836 (direct line); 650-3628 or 651-1842 (main office) > fax: +44 131 650-6883 > > http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/ > > From Salvador.Pons at uv.es Wed Oct 25 22:27:33 2006 From: Salvador.Pons at uv.es (Salvador Pons) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:27:33 +0200 Subject: Call for contributors: Book "Meaning Changes in Approximatives" Message-ID: BOOK PROPOSAL: MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (Proposal submitted to John Benjamins Publisher) Salvador Pons Border?a Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, Spain http://www.uv.es/~ponss This is a call for contributions to the book `Meaning Changes in Approximatives' edited by S. Pons Border?a, which will be submitted to John Benjamins publisher. This volume aims at describing a process of semantic-pragmatic change which affects the word class of approximatives (almost, hardly, barely, and so on). The semantic change involved implies a reverse in the polarity of the approximatives, whereby almost assumes the meaning of barely, and viceversa (see a more detailed description in the outline below). Literature on approximatives has focussed on English (Sadock 1981, Horn 2000) or on Romance languages (Schwenter 2002, Pons & Schwenter 2005, Albelda forthcoming, Matos Amaral forthcoming). There is evidence, however, that this phenomenon, albeit hardly studied, has a wider typological extension (Li 1976, Ziegler forthcoming). This volume intends to explore the spread of such a change by collecting a wide array of papers dealing with approximatives in different, typologically unrelated languages. Contributions should conform to the following features: -provide the description of an approximative. -show that there is/has been a semantic change, whereby an approximative with positive meaning comes to express negative meaning. Also, changes like ?still? ? ?not yet?, or ?since? ? to, are welcome (if you have different cases in mind, you can contact me). -discuss the implications of the meaning change you have studied, either for the language described (especially if it is a minority language), or for the field of approximatives. Interested contributors, please send Salvador Pons Border?a, before DECEMBER, 15th, an abstract containing: ?Full name, email and academic address ?Title ?Summary of your paper (outline of the problem, its relation to the issue of approximatives and, when possible, possible conclusions) Salvador Pons Border?a Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, Spain Salvador.pons at uv.es http://www.uv.es/~ponss MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (OUTLINE) The literature on pragmatic scales has paid attention to certain elements which signal proximity to a limit, called approximatives (Sadock 1981). Approximatives usually belong to the word class of adverbs (Engl. almost, barely, hardly, Sp. casi, apenas, por poco, Port. mal, and so on). Literature on approximatives has dealt mainly with the semantic vs. pragmatic character of the relation they entertain with negation. For instance, ex. (1) means that the speaker did not lose the train: 1. I almost lost the train Meaning relationship (I did not lose the train) It seems that an approximative (entails/presupposes ) a meaning relationship with its host proposition p, so that Approximative (p) ? ~p Approximative (~p) ? p Nevertheless, recent research on approximatives has raised an interesting issue: some approximatives can invert this meaning relationship (ex. 2): 2. Por poco no se mata ?She was almost not-killed? Meaning rel.: No se ha matado ?She wasn?t killed giving rise to a different relationship between the approximative and its host utterance: Approximative (~p) ? ~p Here a polysemy has arosen, which can be diachronically studied as a process of grammaticalization (Pons & Schwenter 2005). In this new meaning, the approximative ?inverts? its reading, showing that the border between positive and negative has been exceeded (Horn 2000). The literature on approximatives has reported similar paths of change in other particles: ~p to p (Chinese cha-yadar ?Li 1976?, Valencian Spanish casi ?Schwenter 2002?, Portuguese mal ?Matos Amaral 2005?); not yet p to still p (Andean Spanish todav?a ?Pons 2005?) or even to p to from p (Mexican Spanish hasta): 3. (The speaker is trying to get out of his car. When he finally gets out, he says): ?Casi salgo! ?I-almost-get-out? Meaning relationship: ?I was about not getting out (of the car)? (Schwenter 2002) 4. O Jo?o mal acabou de jantar. ?Jo?o barely finished dinner.? Meaning relationship: ?Jo?o finished dinner? 4?. Mal sabia eu que havia de morar aqui! ?I hardly knew that I was going to live here!? Meaning relationship: ?I did not know that I was going to live here? 5. A: ?Has acabado de comer? ?Have you finished eating? B: Todav?a ?Still? Meaning relationship: ?I still have not finished eating? (Pons 2005) 6. Las tiendas est?n abiertas hasta las 9 de la ma?ana ?The shops are open to 9 o?clock in the morning? Meaning relationship: ?The shops are open since 9 o?clock in the morning? The polysemies developed in these particles seem to be part of a wider, not described yet, set of phenomena. The aim of this book is to shed light on the nature of this reversing process, by collecting a set of papers which study different (kinds of) approximatives in typologically unrelated languages. -- -- ******************************** Salvador Pons Border?a Dpto. Filolog?a Espa?ola Avda. Blasco Ib??ez, 32 46010 Valencia salvador.pons at uv.es ******************************** From hopper at cmu.edu Wed Oct 25 23:57:01 2006 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:57:01 -0400 Subject: Call for contributors: Book 'Meaning Changes in Approximatives' In-Reply-To: <5231853289ponss@uv.es> Message-ID: I was like to faint, not seeing the work of Tania Kuteva and of Suzanne Romaine mentioned. Paul > BOOK PROPOSAL: MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (Proposal submitted to > John Benjamins Publisher) > > Salvador Pons Border?a Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, > Spain http://www.uv.es/~ponss > > This is a call for contributions to the book `Meaning Changes in > Approximatives' edited by S. Pons Border?a, which will be submitted to > John Benjamins publisher. > > This volume aims at describing a process of semantic-pragmatic change > which affects the word class of approximatives (almost, hardly, barely, > and so on). The semantic change involved implies a reverse in the polarity > of the approximatives, whereby almost assumes the meaning of barely, and > viceversa (see a more detailed description in the outline below). > Literature on approximatives has focussed on English (Sadock 1981, Horn > 2000) or on Romance languages (Schwenter 2002, Pons & Schwenter 2005, > Albelda forthcoming, Matos Amaral forthcoming). There is evidence, > however, that this phenomenon, albeit hardly studied, has a wider > typological extension (Li 1976, Ziegler forthcoming). This volume intends > to explore the spread of such a change by collecting a wide array of > papers dealing with approximatives in different, typologically unrelated > languages. Contributions should conform to the following features: -provide > the description of an approximative. -show that there is/has been a > semantic change, whereby an approximative with positive meaning comes to > express negative meaning. Also, changes like ?still? ? ?not yet?, or > ?since? ? to, are welcome (if you have different cases in mind, you can > contact me). -discuss the implications of the meaning change you have > studied, either for the language described (especially if it is a minority > language), or for the field of approximatives. > > Interested contributors, please send Salvador Pons Border?a, before > DECEMBER, 15th, an abstract containing: ?Full name, email and academic > address ?Title ?Summary of your paper (outline of the problem, its relation > to the issue of approximatives and, when possible, possible conclusions) > > Salvador Pons Border?a Val.Es.Co Research Group. University of Valencia, > Spain Salvador.pons at uv.es http://www.uv.es/~ponss > > MEANING CHANGES IN APPROXIMATIVES (OUTLINE) > > The literature on pragmatic scales has paid attention to certain elements > which signal proximity to a limit, called approximatives (Sadock 1981). > Approximatives usually belong to the word class of adverbs (Engl. almost, > barely, hardly, Sp. casi, apenas, por poco, Port. mal, and so on). > Literature on approximatives has dealt mainly with the semantic vs. > pragmatic character of the relation they entertain with negation. For > instance, ex. (1) means that the speaker did not lose the train: > > 1. I almost lost the train Meaning relationship (I did not lose the train) > > > It seems that an approximative (entails/presupposes ) a meaning > relationship with its host proposition p, so that > > Approximative (p) ? ~p Approximative (~p) ? p > > Nevertheless, recent research on approximatives has raised an interesting > issue: some approximatives can invert this meaning relationship (ex. 2): > > 2. Por poco no se mata ?She was almost not-killed? Meaning rel.: No se ha > matado ?She wasn?t killed > > giving rise to a different relationship between the approximative and its > host utterance: Approximative (~p) ? ~p > > Here a polysemy has arosen, which can be diachronically studied as a > process of grammaticalization (Pons & Schwenter 2005). In this new > meaning, the approximative ?inverts? its reading, showing that the border > between positive and negative has been exceeded (Horn 2000). The literature > on approximatives has reported similar paths of change in other > particles: ~p to p (Chinese cha-yadar ?Li 1976?, Valencian Spanish casi > ?Schwenter 2002?, Portuguese mal ?Matos Amaral 2005?); not yet p to still > p (Andean Spanish todav?a ?Pons 2005?) or even to p to from p (Mexican > Spanish hasta): > > 3. (The speaker is trying to get out of his car. When he finally gets > out, he says): ?Casi salgo! ?I-almost-get-out? Meaning relationship: ?I was > about not getting out (of the car)? (Schwenter 2002) > > 4. O Jo?o mal acabou de jantar. ?Jo?o barely finished dinner.? Meaning > relationship: ?Jo?o finished dinner? 4?. Mal sabia eu que havia de morar > aqui! ?I hardly knew that I was going to live here!? Meaning relationship: > ?I did not know that I was going to live here? > > 5. A: ?Has acabado de comer? ?Have you finished eating? B: Todav?a ?Still? > Meaning relationship: ?I still have not finished eating? (Pons 2005) > > 6. Las tiendas est?n abiertas hasta las 9 de la ma?ana ?The shops are open > to 9 o?clock in the morning? Meaning relationship: ?The shops are open > since 9 o?clock in the morning? > > The polysemies developed in these particles seem to be part of a wider, > not described yet, set of phenomena. The aim of this book is to shed light > on the nature of this reversing process, by collecting a set of papers > which study different (kinds of) approximatives in typologically unrelated > languages. > > > -- -- ******************************** Salvador Pons Border?a Dpto. Filolog?a > Espa?ola Avda. Blasco Ib??ez, 32 46010 Valencia salvador.pons at uv.es > ******************************** > > > From dcyr at yorku.ca Sat Oct 28 16:00:00 2006 From: dcyr at yorku.ca (dcyr at yorku.ca) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:00:00 -0400 Subject: A query... In-Reply-To: <165F28D6-E50C-4225-9707-E4927E139038@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: Dan wrote: > P.S. Some readers might find it instructive to compare grant sizes of > the different funding agencies. In the UK linguistic awards of up to > roughly one million dollars (AHRC) or 1.5 million (ESRC) for five > years are allowed. For the NSF linguistics awards are usually less > than one hundred thousand dollars per year, for a preferred three- > year maximum as I understand it. Things may have changed. More money > is available from the NSF in principle since, last award I had at > least, it had few explicit caps. > > Here are three pages, for NSF, AHRC, and ESRC. > > NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=BCS > (then go to award search and just type in linguistics and scroll down) > > AHRC: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/awards/ > > ESRC: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/help/research_list.aspx#skip To this you could add the Canadian granting agency SSHRC and check the available grants at http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/ Danielle E. Cyr York University Tortonto, ON, Canada > > > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, > Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures > Campus Box 4300 > Illinois State University > Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 > OFFICE: 309-438-3604 > FAX: 309-438-8038 > Dept: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/default.asp > Recursion: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/rechul/ > Personal: http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/ > > and > > Honorary Professor of Linguistics > University of Manchester > Manchester, UK > > > From Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk Mon Oct 30 15:12:54 2006 From: Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk (Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:12:54 -0000 Subject: New MAs in Language and Cognition at Brighton Message-ID: Dear Colleagues. I'm delighted to announce two new MA programmes at the University of Brighton. These are in 'Cognitive Linguistics' and 'Language, Communication and Cognition'. Both MAs will inaugurate from September 2007. Preliminary details are available from my website, together with details of the new PhD programme in Cognitive Linguistics. www.vyvevans.net All enquiries and application queries should, at this stage, be directed to me. Other relevant web links are below: School of Languages (University of Brighton): http://www.brighton.ac.uk/languages/ Linguistics research: http://www.brighton.ac.uk/languages/research/linguistics.htm Vyv Evans