From Marie.Fellbaum at anu.edu.au Sat Mar 3 09:45:45 2007 From: Marie.Fellbaum at anu.edu.au (Marie Fellbaum) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 20:45:45 +1100 Subject: Second call for papers - Workshop on Definiteness and Referentiality Message-ID: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS DEFINITENESS AND REFERENTIALITY: THEORY AND DESCRIPTION WORKSHOP Sept. 26-28, 2007 University of Adelaide Adelaide, Australia A one day workshop on Definiteness and Referentiality will be held in conjunction with ALS 2007 at the University of Adelaide. We welcome papers on Australian, Austronesian, Asian and other natural languages, and in all areas of linguistics including sociolinguistics, language variation and change, first/second language acquisition, conversational analysis, and cognitive (including psycho-/neurolinguistic) processing of definiteness. The following topics are of particular interest: --data based studies of definiteness properties in particular languages --theoretical aspects of definiteness and/or specificity --the article systems of a language group(s) --the interaction of definiteness/specificity with the grammar of a language --the behavior of subsystems within languages, e.g. polarity references and number and quantification of nouns --the acquisition and development of definiteness and/or referentiality in child and second languages --language change in progress with respect to a property or subsystem of a language. Proposals for both a General Session and a Poster Session should include the author's name and affiliation, contact details (including e-mail and postal addresses), title of the paper, keywords, and a one page abstract of no more than 500 words, excluding examples and references. Key references may include, but not limited to, the work of Irene Heim, M. Enç, Kamp & Reyle (DRT), B. Partee, Donka Farkas, T.Givon, Christopher Lyons, J. Hawkins, and M. Haspelmath. In your submission, please indicate your preference, and, if your choice is a General Session, please state if you would be willing to do a poster. Each abstract will be blind reviewed on the basis of the following criteria: --Topic appropriate to the workshop theme --Paper contributing new knowledge on the topic --Argument supported by data from natural language --Clear statement of results Abstracts should be sent electronically in the body of the e-mail message and also as an attachment in PDF or rtf format to Korpi.DefWorkshop at anu.edu.au. In the e-mail subject line, please write ‘NAME ALSDEFworkshop’ where NAME is your surname. DEADLINE for abstracts is March 16th with notification of acceptance by April 30. The format of the sessions will be 20 minutes for each paper, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Posters will be displayed for one whole day, with a time slot for discussing them. Selected papers from the workshop will be peer reviewed and published in a special volume devoted to the workshop theme. Workshop organizers: Brett Baker (University of New England) Marie Fellbaum Korpi (The Australian National University) Harumi Minagawa (The University of Auckland) Lesley Stirling (The University of Melbourne) http://defworkshop.als.asn.au From ekapia at bu.edu Wed Mar 7 01:22:10 2007 From: ekapia at bu.edu (ekapia at bu.edu) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 20:22:10 -0500 Subject: posting at Funknet Message-ID: Hi, I would like to post the call for Papers for BUCLD 2007. Can you please guide me on how to do that at your earliest convinience? Many thanks, Enkeleida Kapia Co-Organizer BUCLD 2007 From ekapia at bu.edu Wed Mar 7 15:25:10 2007 From: ekapia at bu.edu (ekapia at bu.edu) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 10:25:10 -0500 Subject: Call for Papers - BUCLD 2007 Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS THE 32nd ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT NOVEMBER 2-4, 2007 Keynote Speaker: Ellen Bialystok, York University "Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism Across the Lifespan" Plenary Speaker: William O?Grady, University of Hawai?i at Manoa "Does Emergentism Have a Chance?" Lunch Symposium: ?Perspectives on the Production, Perception, and Processing of Grammatical Morphemes? Katherine Demuth, Brown University Anne Fernald, Stanford University Lee Osterhout, University of Washington Discussant: Virginia Valian, Hunter College, and CUNY Graduate Center Submissions which present research on any topic in the fields of first and second language acquisition from any theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: * Bilingualism * Cognition & Language * Creoles & Pidgins * Dialects * Discourse and Narrative * Gesture * Hearing Impairment and Deafness * Input & Interaction * Language Disorders (Autism, Down Syndrome, SLI, Williams Syndrome, etc.) * Linguistic Theory (Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon) * Neurolinguistics * Pragmatics * Pre-linguistic Development * Reading and Literacy * Signed Languages * Sociolinguistics * Speech Perception & Production Presentations will be 20 minutes long followed by a 10 minute question period. Posters will be on display for a full day with two attended sessions during the day. ABSTRACT FORMAT AND CONTENT * Abstracts submitted must represent original, unpublished research. * Abstracts should be anonymous, clearly titled and no more than 500 words in length. Text of abstract should fit on one page, with a second page for examples, figures, or references. Abstracts longer than 500 words will be rejected without being evaluated. * Please note the word count at the bottom of the abstract. Note that word counts should not include the abstract title, figure or table titles, examples, or the list of references. * A suggested format and style for abstracts is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/template.html * Three examples of how to formulate the content of the abstract can be found at: http://www.lsadc.org/info/dec02bulletin/model.html http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/sociocultural/abstracttips.html http://www.ulcl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=5&c=124 * The criteria used by the reviewers to evaluate abstracts can be found at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html#rate * All abstracts must be submitted as PDF documents. Specific instructions for how to create PDF documents are available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/pdfinfo.html. If you encounter a problem creating a PDF file, please contact us for further assistance. Please use the first author's last name as the file name (eg. Smith.pdf). No author information should appear anywhere in the contents of the PDF file itself. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS * Electronic submission: To facilitate the abstract submission process, abstracts will be submitted using the form available at the conference website at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/abstract.htm. * Specific instructions for abstract submission are available on this website. * Abstracts will be accepted between April 1 and May 15. * Contact information for each author must be submitted via webform. No author information should appear anywhere in the abstract PDF. * At the time of submission you will be asked whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a poster, a paper, or both. Note that this preference is not revealed to the reviewers, and thus is not considered in the review process. * Although each author may submit as many abstracts as desired, we will accept for presentation by each author: (a) a maximum of 1 first authored paper/poster, and (b) a maximum of 2 papers/posters in any authorship status. Note that no changes in authorship (including deleting an author or changing author order) will be possible after the review process is completed or for publication in the conference proceedings. DEADLINE * All submissions must be received by 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2007. * Late abstracts will not be considered, whatever the reason for the delay. * We regret that we cannot accept abstract submissions by fax or email. * Submissions via surface mail will only be accepted in special circumstances, on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us well in advance of the submission deadline (May 15, 2007) to make these arrangements. ABSTRACT SELECTION * Each abstract is blind reviewed by 5 reviewers from a panel of approximately 140 international scholars. Further information about the review process is available at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html. * Acknowledgment of receipt of the abstract will be sent by email as soon as possible after receipt. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent to first authors only, in early August, by email. Pre-registration materials and preliminary schedule will be available in late August, 2007. * If your abstract is accepted, you will need to submit a 150-word abstract including title, author(s) and affiliation(s) for inclusion in the conference handbook. Guidelines will be provided along with notification of acceptance. * Abstracts accepted as papers will be invited for publication in the BUCLD Proceedings. * Abstracts accepted as posters will be invited for publication online only, but not in the printed version. * All conference papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Although each abstract will be evaluated individually, we will attempt to honor requests to schedule accepted papers together in group sessions. * No schedule changes will be possible once the schedule is set. Scheduling requests for religious reasons only must be made before the review process is complete (i.e. at the time of submission). A space is provided on the abstract submission webform to specify such requests. FURTHER INFORMATION Information regarding the conference may be accessed on the BUCLD website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/ Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Room 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 e-mail: langconf at bu.edu From andrea.schalley at une.edu.au Thu Mar 8 01:57:05 2007 From: andrea.schalley at une.edu.au (Andrea Schalley) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:57:05 +1100 Subject: CIL 18 workshop on Linguistic Studies of Ontology: Call for papers Message-ID: **************************************************************** Call for papers: closing May 31 2007 —LINGUISTIC STUDIES OF ONTOLOGY— From Lexical Semantics to Formal Ontologies and Back Workshop at the 18th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF LINGUISTS (CIL 18) Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea July 21-26, 2008 **************************************************************** —DESCRIPTION— Recent developments in the study of ontology have important implications for cognitive science, knowledge engineering, and theoretical linguistics. In particular, research on lexical ontology deals with how concepts are lexicalized and organized across languages and cultures. This workshop aims to explore this new departure in linguistic studies by building upon the three important premises assumed in Fellbaum (1998), Schalley and Zaefferer (2007), and Huang et al. (2007): First, that lexicalized concepts have a special status in every language (as opposed to concepts that require complex coding), second that lexically coded concepts can be shared by different languages, and third that lexicalization universals are relevant for the construction of cross-lingually portable formal ontologies. Following the references cited above, topics of this workshop include foundational issues pertaining to the relation between formal ontology and linguistic ontologies, as well as descriptive issues pertaining to the interface between conceptual ontologies and lexica. In particular, we would like to focus on the following issues during this workshop: - Cross-lingual portability of upper-ontologies - Ontology-based approaches to comparative linguistics - Ontology enrichment: from concept formation via complex coding to lexicalisation - Possible relevance of formal ontological principles (e.g. Roles cannot subsume Types) to psychological/linguistic reality REFERENCES Fellbaum, Christiane. 1998. WordNet: An electronic lexical database. MIT Press. Huang, Chu-Ren et al. Eds. 2007. Ontologies and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press. Schalley, Andrea C. and Zaefferer, Dietmar. Eds. 2007. Ontolinguistics. Mouton de Gruyter. —SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS— A two-page abstract including everything should be sent electronically to both and . An MS Word and/or .pdf file may be accepted. —IMPORTANT DATES— Deadline for Abstract Submission: May 31, 2007 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: August 31, 2007 For more information, visit the website () or contact the organizer at . —ORGANIZER— Chu-Ren Huang Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan E-mail address: Fax: 886-2-27856622, Tel: 886-2-26523108 —PROGRAM COMMITTEE— Christiane Fellbaum (Princeton) Shu-kai Hsieh (I-Lan) Alessandro Lenci (Pisa) Adam Pease (San Francisco) Alessandro Oltramari (Trento) Laurent Prévot (Toulouse) James Pustejovsky (Brandies) Andrea C. Schalley (Armidale) Piek Vossen (Amsterdam) Dietmar Zaefferer (Munich) From feldmana at mail.montclair.edu Sun Mar 11 02:38:24 2007 From: feldmana at mail.montclair.edu (Anna Feldman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:38:24 -0500 Subject: MA program in Applied Linguistics Message-ID: **************************** Please, advertise *********************************** Montclair State University Department of Linguistics MA in Applied Linguistics The Department of Linguistics at Montclair State University invites applications for admission to the MA program in Applied Linguistics. Teaching/research assistantships are available for highly qualified applicants. Application deadline for assistantships is April 30, 2007. Our MA program is distinguished by its grounding in theoretical linguistics while offering a wide variety of specializations within the field of Applied Linguistics including: Second Language Acquisition Culture and Communication Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing Applicants should hold a Bachelor's degree. No prior background in linguistics is required. Montclair State is New Jersey’s second-largest and fastest-growing university. It is located in vibrant Montclair, on a ridge overlooking New York City, which is in easy commuting distance. Further information can be found at http://www.chss.montclair.edu/linguistics/ . or contact Dr. Eileen Fitzpatrick: fitzpatricke at mail.montclair.edu Applications are due by April 30, 2007. Anna Feldman Assistant Professor Linguistics and Computer Science Montclair State University Dickson Hall, Room 126 Upper Montclair, NJ, 07043 http://www.purl.org/NET/fa From schiering at uni-leipzig.de Tue Mar 13 11:27:24 2007 From: schiering at uni-leipzig.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Ren=E9_Schiering?=) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:27:24 +0100 Subject: CfP: Phonological Words in South Asia and Southeast Asia Message-ID: Phonological Words in South Asia and Southeast Asia Workshop to be held at the University of Leipzig, Germany, September 19-20, 2007 (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG) Invited Speakers: Gregory D. S. Anderson (University of Oregon & Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) Ashwini Deo (Yale University) Martine Mazaudon (LACITO, UMR 7107 CNRS-Paris 3 & 4) Broadly speaking, the study of word structure is concerned with two distinct but interdependent aspects of grammar. First, a word may be prosodically defined by phonological patterns, e.g. assimilation, stress, or tone, which reference a particular domain in morphological structure (e.g. a combination of stem plus suffixes, excluding prefixes). Second, the grammatical word may be defined with reference to syntactic and morphological patterns that apply exclusively to a particular domain in morphological structure (e.g. a stem plus affixes, excluding clitics). In recent years, the relationship between prosodic and grammatical words has received increased attention (e.g. Hall & Kleinhenz 1999, Dixon & Aikhenvald 2002). Research on the cross-linguistic variation of word domains shed doubt on approaches which aim at formulating a universal architecture of prosodic structure and its dependence on morphological and syntactic components of grammar. The assumptions of Prosodic Phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986), for instance, are contradicted by current research in a typological project on word domains at the University of Leipzig (see http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp/projects/wd_dom/wd_dom.html for recent publications). The languages of South and Southeast Asia provide a particular challenge because in a number of South Asian languages sound patterns do not converge on a single domain of 'phonological word' as predicted by theories, and in a number of Southeast Asian languages, no or almost no sound pattern seems to target a domain intermediate between the phrases and the foot. In our project we found that the distribution of phonological domains is however best predicted not by areal connections but by genealogical affiliation and thus ultimately by the individual diachrony behind each language. We invite abstracts for a two-day workshop on word domains in South and Southeast Asian languages. The meeting aims at bringing together research which focuses on the prosodic and morphological word structure of languages spoken in these areas. Contributions are expected to be theoretically and typologically informed and should either concentrate on the analysis of word domains in individual languages or address areal and/or diachronic aspects of word structure by means of cross-linguistic comparison. One-page abstracts for 45-minutes presentations (30 min. talk + 15 min. discussion) should be submitted electronically via e-mail attachment (mail to: schiering at uni-leipzig.de) and should reach the organizers no later than April 16, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be circulated in late April 2007. The organizing committee: René Schiering (schiering at uni-leipzig.de) Balthasar Bickel (bickel at uni-leipzig.de) Kristine A. Hildebrandt (Kristine.Hildebrandt at manchester.ac.uk) From bergen at hawaii.edu Tue Mar 13 20:28:26 2007 From: bergen at hawaii.edu (Benjamin K Bergen) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:28:26 -1000 Subject: Evolution of language summer school Message-ID: With apologies for cross-posting... From: Luc Steels Anouncement: Sicily Evolution of Language Summer School Date: 14-Jul-2007 - 19-Jul-2007 Organisers: Vittorio Loreto and Luc Steels An exciting summerschool is being organised this summer in Erice, sicily. The school focuses on recent research in modeling language evolution using computational, robotic, and mathematical approaches. The main school (http://pil.phys.uniroma1.it/erice2007/index.html) brings together about 30 lecturers, with linguists including: Ben Bergen, Bill Croft, Bruno Galantucci, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Jean-Marie Hombert, Jim Hurford, Laura Michaelis, Bill Wang. There is a specialised atelier (http://www.csl.sony.fr/erice2007/) on using computational Construction Grammar for modeling language evolution with exercises and hands-on experience. interested participants should email as soon as possible to tagora2007 at csl.sony.fr and check out the websites. From kemmer at rice.edu Tue Mar 13 21:26:57 2007 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:26:57 -0500 Subject: John Sinclair Message-ID: Dear functional linguists and corpus linguists: John Sinclair passed away this morning, at the age of 73. A sad loss! For those who don't know about his groundbreaking role in developing the first large language corpora, and the first large corpus-based language reference works, I clipped this from the Univ. of Birmingham English Lg. Research site: www.english.bham.ac.uk/research/events/sinclair.htm "By the late 1970s, when acting as a consultant to their Dictionary division, he persuaded Collins to invest in a radical new research project in computational lexicography, which involved the creation of the largest corpus of English language texts in the world. To support this, at the time by far the largest single research project the University of Birmingham had ever had, one of the first ever text scanners was bought at a cost of £70,000 and impoverished students worked day and night scanning in texts. This massive effort produced a corpus of amazing size - some 8 million words. By 2001 scanners cost £80, one-million-word personal corpora are ten a penny and the Bank of English contains some 400 million words. The first COBUILD dictionary was published in 1987, and a steady stream of corpus-based dictionaries, grammars and usage books followed, based on principles which have radically changed the way all publishers produce foreign- learner reference books." From sylvester.osu at wanadoo.fr Tue Mar 13 22:16:03 2007 From: sylvester.osu at wanadoo.fr (Sylvester Osu) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:16:03 +0100 Subject: Call for papers - Universit Franois Ra belais, Tours, France Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS CONFERENCE "CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY AND THE PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION" 29 & 30 NOVEMBER 2007 Université François Rabelais, Tours UFR Lettres et Langues, « Langues & Représentations » Research Group 3 rue des Tanneurs 37041 Tours Cedex 1, France http://langrep.univ-tours.fr ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Sylvester Osu, Gilles Col, Nathalie Garric, Fabienne Toupin DESCRIPTION The world's languages use diverse means to construct and express the identity of people and objects. These means include denomination (e.g. proper nouns, noun phrases, denominal adjectives, etc.) in the sense of categorising living beings and/or inanimate objects through the act of naming, and reduplication (e.g. a salad salad, I mean up-up, etc.) which in some of its uses amounts to typifying. Categorisation is a way of identifying an element with a group while marking its singularity (see e.g. Folkbiology). On the other hand, to produce a sequence like 'un parfum pour les femmes femmes' is tantamount to setting up a subcategory of women par excellence and consequently, introducing a difference among women. In recent years, identification has received a great deal of attention in linguistics. In some theoretical models it has even come to be regarded as a form of linguistic operation. The aim of this conference is to outline the different linguistic operations of identification insofar as they involve the construction of identity and the different linguistic devices through which the identity of a person or object is constructed. We welcome contributions that show how the two notions of identity and identification are articulated in both language and discourse. Contributions can stem from any theoretical background, be based upon any methodological approach and address the issue in any of the world's languages. LANGUAGES The conference will feature presentations in French as well as in English. ABSTRACTS Please submit your abstracts in both RTF and PDF (2 pages minimum and 3 max, in 12-point Times New Roman, simple spacing) by e-mail to the following address: langrep at univ-tours.fr no later than 31 May 2007, submission deadline. Please include the title of the paper but do not mention the name of the author as abstracts will be refereed anonymously. A separate page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, affiliation, postal and email addresses. PUBLICATIONS We intend to publish the papers accepted for the conference. To this effect, revised versions will be reviewed anew by the members of the scientific committee. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Gabriel Bergounioux (Université d'Orléans/CORAL, Orléans) Isabelle Bril (LACITO-CNRS, Paris) Pierre Cadiot (Université d'Orléans/CORAL, Orléans) Gilles Col (Université François Rabelais, Tours/FORELL, Poitiers) Jean-Michel Fournier (Université François Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Jean-Jacques Franckel (Université de Paris X, Nanterre/ LLF (UMR 7110) CNRS, Paris) Jacques François (Université de Caen Basse-Normandie/CRISCO, FRE 2805) Nathalie Garric (Université François Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Thierry Grass (Université François Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Bernhard Hurch (Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Graz, Austria) Raphaël Kabore (Université Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle/LACITO-CNRS, Paris) Georges Kleiber (Université Marc Bloch Strasbourg & EA 1339 LDL- Scolia) Daniel Lebaud (Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon) Fiona McLaughlin (University of Florida, USA) François Nemo (Université d'Orléans/CORAL, Orléans) Sylvester Osu (Université François Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Denis Paillard (LLF (UMR 7110) CNRS - Université Paris 7, Paris) Michel Paillard (Université de Poitiers/FORELL, Poitiers) Fabienne Toupin (Université François Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Bernard Victorri (LATTICE (UMR 8094) CNRS-ENS, Montrouge) IMPORTANT DATES Abstract deadline: 31 May 2007 Notification: 15 July 2007 Conference dates: Thursday 29 & Friday 30 November 2007 Deadline for registration: 15 September 2007 VENUE : Tours (France). The halls will be announced with the programme. REGISTRATION: 80 EUR FURTHER INFORMATION Sylvester Osu Phone: 336.78.34.13.51 Email: Sylvester.osu at univ-tours.fr http://langrep.univ-tours.fr Université François Rabelais, Tours UFR Lettres et Langues Département des Sciences du Langage 3 rue des Tanneurs 37041 Tours Cedex 1, France From auwera at chello.be Wed Mar 14 20:03:21 2007 From: auwera at chello.be (auwera at chello.be) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:03:21 +0000 Subject: TAM at CIL18, July 2008 Message-ID: Parallel Session at the 18th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF LINGUISTS (CIL 18) July 21-26 2008, Seoul, Republic of Korea TENSE, ASPECT AND MODALITY Organizer: Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp, Belgium) The study of tense, aspect and modality (and mood) remains an important field of linguistics, not least also because of our increased knowledge of the variety found in the world’s languages (see e.g. the World Atlas of Language Structures, ed. by M. Haspelmath et al, Oxford University Press, 2005). Submissions are invited for twenty minute talks (15 minutes for presentation plus 5 minutes for questions), in either English or French, on any topic relating to the general domain of tense, aspect, modality, and mood. Of particular interest will be research that takes one or more of the following perspectives: - the synchronic relation between the three (or four) domains: e.g., do choices in one demain (e.g. modality) restrict the choices in another one (e.g aspect)? what is the relation between modality (mininally understood as the study of necessity and possibility and maximally also including volition and evidentially) and mood (distinctions such as indicative vs. subjunctive)? what is the relation between the concept of irrealis and those of mood and modality? - the diachronic relations between the domains: e.g., how do aspect systems develop into tense systems? how does a tense acquire a modal meaning? - the cross-linguistic study of tense of tense, aspect, modality and mood, either from a global point of view or a more restricted one (language family or linguistic area) Preference is given to presentations that will achieve a cross-theoretical understanding. Important dates: Deadline for Abstract Submission: May 31, 2007 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: August 31, 2007 Submission of Abstracts: A two-page abstract including everything should be sent electronically to both cil18 at cil18.org and johan.vanderauwera at ua.ac.be. Special characters should be in UNICODE. An MS Word and/or PDF file is strongly preferred. From lilianguerrero at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 15:46:28 2007 From: lilianguerrero at yahoo.com (Lilian Guerrero) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:46:28 -0700 Subject: 2007 RRG Confererence, Second Call Message-ID: The deadline for submitting abstracts for the 2007 Role and Reference Grammar, hosted at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, has been extended to April 13. Confirmation of acceptance will be communicated by May 1. Information about submitting abstracts and the conference itself can be found on the conference website: http://www.filologicas.unam.mx/2007rrg.html Some time next week, the website will be updated with info about hotels and fees. Please check. Lilián Guerrero Seminario de Lenguas Indígenas Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Circuito Mario de la Cueva Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 México, D.F. Tlf. +52-(55)-5622-7489 Fax: +52-(55)-5622-7496 ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news From maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr Mon Mar 19 17:46:03 2007 From: maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr (Maarten Lemmens) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:46:03 +0100 Subject: CONF: Reminder deadline Cogling, France, 10-12 May, 2007 Message-ID: ******************************************* ONLY 2 WEEKS LEFT TILL REGISTRATION DEADLINE (APRIL 1, 2007) ******************************************* Second International Conference of the French Association for Cognitive Linguistics (AFLiCo) University of Lille 3, Lille, France 10-12 May 2007 http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/colloque2007/ INVITED SPEAKERS (see the conference web site for titles and abstracts) Jean-Marc COLLETTA (Univ. de Grenoble, France) William CROFT (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA) Christan CUXAC (Univ. Paris 8, France) Susan GOLDIN-MEADOW (Univ of Chicago, Chicago, USA) Nini HOITING (Royal Effatha-Guyot Group Haren, Netherlands) Scott LIDDELL (Gallaudet Univ., Washington, DC, USA) Irit MEIR (Univ. of Haifa, Israel) Dan SLOBIN (Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA) Eve SWEETSER (Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA) Phyllis WILCOX (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA) Sherman WILCOX (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA) PROGRAMME The detailed programme is downloadable from the conference web site. There will be 4 parallel sessions, of which one is always a thematic session (devoted to sign, gesture or typology), depending on the day. The other sessions deal with different topics in cognitive linguistics. There will also be two special thematic sessions, one on the Lexical-Grammar interface (Lexical bootstrapping), the other on metonymy in gesture. There will also be a poster session on the first two days. CONFERENCE VENUE The conference is hosted by the University of Lille3, France. All talks will be held in the B building. For more info on how to come to Lille or to campus, please check the conference web site. LANGUAGES The official languages of the conference are French, English and French Sign Language (LSF), the latter at least for the first two days. Given the overall international character of the participants, English will generally be preferred. REGISTRATION PROCEDURE See the website for details. REGISTRATION FEE Upon registration, you will have to specify on the form which fee applies to you. To encourage deaf people to attend the conference, especially the first two days, when the sessions on sign language will be held, a special formula has been set up for them (not open to others): - Regular : 80 euros - Student : 40 euros - Member AFLiCo : 60 euros (membership effective at time of registration !) - AFLiCo student : 30 euros (membership effective at time of registration !) - Deaf person attending Thursday, May 10 & Friday, May 11: 50 euros SATELLITE EVENT On the day before the conference, May 9, 9h00 ­ 18h00, there will be a workshop on “Language and Space”, with renowned invited speakers (see the conference web site for full details). The regular fee for this conference is 30 euros (including lunch and coffee), but people also registered for the AFLiCo conference only pay 15 euros. Registration for the workshop is to be done via the same form as that for the conference. SOCIAL PROGRAMME (1) WELCOME RECEPTION & REGISTRATION: Wednesday, May 9, 17h00 ­ 20h00 Given the tight conference schedule and given that many participants will already have arrived, registration will be on the day before the conference. We plan to have a small welcome reception. (2) CONFERENCE Dinner: Thursday, May 10, 20h30, Restaurant "Le Flore", Lille. The price for the diner is 30 euros (unlimited beverages during the meal). (3) CONCERT with French-Flemish Renaissance music, Friday May 11, 21h00 This concert will be a unique occasion to hear magnificent polyphonic Renaissance music from the region. It will further have a nice personal touch, in that it will be brought by the vocal ensemble OrSeCante from Leuven, Belgium, the choir of which one of the conference organisers, Maarten Lemmens, has been a member since 1991. The choir is specialized in Renaissance and Baroque music. The concert would be free for the conference participants. (4) GUIDED TOUR IN OLD LILLE, Sunday May 12, 10h00-12h00 To offer visitors a view of the beautiful city of Lille and its rich history, the organisers plan to have a guided tour of old Lille, the day after the conference. Whether this guided tour takes place depends on the number of people who sign up (minimally 15); the price is 8 euros per person. CONTACT - organisers : aflico at univ-lille3.fr - secretary : emmanuelle.jablonski at univ-lille3.fr --- Maarten Lemmens Maître de Conférences habilité, Université Lille 3, U.F.R. Angellier (anglais), B.P. 60149, 59653 Villeneuve d'Ascq Cedex, France Membre de l'UMR 8163 Savoirs, Textes, Langage http://perso.univ-lille3.fr/~mlemmens Président de l'Association Française de Linguistique Cognitive http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/ Editor-in-Chief "CogniTextes" http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/cognitextes/ From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Mar 22 15:27:03 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:27:03 -0500 Subject: Recursion conference Message-ID: Folks, The final program for the conference Recursion in Human Languages, the first conference on this subject, is attached below. Online registration for the conference can be done at: http:// www.peopleware.net/index.cfm? siteCode=2390&eventDisp=107recurs&CFID=6447358&CFTOKEN=81329298 Bloomington-Normal airport is a 20 minute flight from O'Hare or Midway airports in Chicago and the ISU campus can be reached also by Amtrak (5 times daily) or car (123 miles) from Chicago. Dan Everett *** Recursion in Human Languages Final Schedule 0900 Aravind Joshi, Penn: 'Does recursion in language work the same way as in formal systems?' 1000 COFFEE 1015 Hans-Joerg Tiede & Lawrence Stout, Illinois Wesleyan University: 'Recursion, infinity, and modeling' 1050 Arie Verhagen, University of Leiden: 'What do you think is the proper location of recursion? An empirical exploration' 1125 D. Terence Langendoen, National Science Foundation & University of Arizona: 'Are human languages transrecursive?' 1200 Ljiljana Progovac, Wayne State University: 'Grammar without recursion: implications for evolutionary studies' 1235 LUNCH 1335 Simon Levy, Washington & Lee University: 'Becoming recursive' 1410 Ritva Laury, University of Helsinki, & Tsuyoshi Ono, University of Alberta: 'Recursion in conversation: what speakers of Finnish and Japanese know how to do" 1445 Anna Parker, University of Edinburgh: 'Was recursion the key step in the evolution of the human language faculty?' 1520 COFFEE 1535 Robert Futrelle, Northeastern University: 'Recursion in animal behavior: the origin of recursion in human language' 1610 Amy Perfors, Josh Tennenbaum, Terry Regier, MIT: ' Hierarchical phrase structure and recursion: A Bayesian exploration of learnability' 1645 - 1745 Marianne Mithun, UCSB: A typology of recursion SATURDAY, April 28 0900 Edward Gibson, MIT: Processing Recursive Structures 1000 COFFEE 1015 Jeanette Sakel & Eugenie Stapert, University of Manchester: 'Possible markers of embedding in Pirahã: evidence for recursion?' 1050 Eva Juarros-Daussá, University at Buffalo, SUNY: 'Lack of recursion in the lexicon: the two-argument restriction' 1125 Jan Koster, University of Groningen: 'Recursion and the lexicon' 1200 Fred Karlsson, University of Helsinki: 'Empirically motivated constraints on clausal recursion' 1235 LUNCH 1335 Alec Marantz, New York University: Recursion in Morphology 1435 Yury Lander, Institute for Oriental Studies, Moscow, & Alexander Letuchiny, Russian State University for the Humanities: 'Kinds of recursion in Adyghe morphology' 1510 Yoad Winter, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study: 'Recursion in the semantics of coordination' 1545 Harry Howard, Tulane University: 'Recursion and the computational modeling of prefrontal cortex' 1620 Bart Hollebrandse, University of Groningen, & Thomas Roeper, University of Massachusetts: 'Recursion and propositional exclusivity' 1655 Michael Wagner, Cornell University: 'Prosody and recursion in coordinate structures and beyond' 1730 COFFEE 1745 Laszlo Hunyadi, University of Debrecen, Hungary: 'Cognitive grouping and prosodic recursion' 1820 - 1920 D. Robert Ladd, Edinburgh: What would 'recursion' mean in phonology? SUNDAY, April 29 0900 Daniel L. Everett, ISU: Cultural constraints on recursion 1000 Coffee and snacks 1020 Damir Cavar & Malgorzata E. Cavar, University of Zadar, Croatia: 'Inducing recursion' 1055 Vitor Zimmerer & Rosemary Varley, University of Sheffield: 'Recursive syntax in patients with severe agrammatism' 1130 James Rogers, Earlham College, & Marc Hauser, Harvard University: 'Potential distinguishing characteristics and human aural pattern recognition' 1205 COFFEE 1220 Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen: ' Over the top: recursion as a functional option' 1255 Geoffrey K. Pullum, UCSC: Recursion and the infinitude claim 1355 CONFERENCE ENDS From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Mar 22 16:12:23 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L.Everett) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:12:23 -0500 Subject: Recursion conference In-Reply-To: <03BAE753-1448-43F2-9399-AE15774EE0F5@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: I forgot to include the dates! APril 27-29 Dan On Mar 22, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Folks, > > The final program for the conference Recursion in Human Languages, > the first conference on this subject, is attached below. Online > registration for the conference can be done at: http:// > www.peopleware.net/index.cfm? > siteCode=2390&eventDisp=107recurs&CFID=6447358&CFTOKEN=81329298 > > > Bloomington-Normal airport is a 20 minute flight from O'Hare or > Midway airports in Chicago and the ISU campus can be reached also > by Amtrak (5 times daily) or car (123 miles) from Chicago. > > Dan Everett > > *** > > Recursion in Human Languages > > Final Schedule > > > > 0900 > > Aravind Joshi, Penn: 'Does recursion in language work the same way > as in formal systems?' > > > 1000 > > COFFEE > > > 1015 > > Hans-Joerg Tiede & Lawrence Stout, Illinois Wesleyan University: > 'Recursion, infinity, and modeling' > > > 1050 > > Arie Verhagen, University of Leiden: 'What do you think is the > proper location of recursion? An empirical > exploration' > > > 1125 > > D. Terence Langendoen, National Science Foundation & University of > Arizona: 'Are human languages transrecursive?' > > > 1200 > > Ljiljana Progovac, Wayne State University: 'Grammar without > recursion: implications for evolutionary studies' > > > 1235 > > LUNCH > > > 1335 > > Simon Levy, Washington & Lee University: 'Becoming recursive' > > > 1410 > > Ritva Laury, University of Helsinki, & Tsuyoshi Ono, University of > Alberta: 'Recursion in conversation: what speakers of Finnish and > Japanese know how to do" > > > 1445 > > Anna Parker, University of Edinburgh: 'Was recursion the key step > in the evolution of the human language faculty?' > > > 1520 > > COFFEE > > > 1535 > > Robert Futrelle, Northeastern University: 'Recursion in animal > behavior: the origin of recursion in human language' > > > > 1610 > > Amy Perfors, Josh Tennenbaum, Terry Regier, MIT: ' Hierarchical > phrase structure and recursion: A Bayesian exploration of > learnability' > > > 1645 - 1745 > > Marianne Mithun, UCSB: A typology of recursion > > > > SATURDAY, April 28 > > > > 0900 > > Edward Gibson, MIT: Processing Recursive Structures > > > 1000 > > COFFEE > > > 1015 > > Jeanette Sakel & Eugenie Stapert, University of Manchester: > 'Possible markers of embedding in Pirahã: evidence for > recursion?' > > > 1050 > > Eva Juarros-Daussá, University at Buffalo, SUNY: 'Lack of recursion > in the lexicon: the two-argument restriction' > > > 1125 > > Jan Koster, University of Groningen: 'Recursion and the lexicon' > > > 1200 > > Fred Karlsson, University of Helsinki: 'Empirically motivated > constraints on clausal recursion' > > 1235 > > LUNCH > > > 1335 > > Alec Marantz, New York University: Recursion in Morphology > > > 1435 > > Yury Lander, Institute for Oriental Studies, Moscow, & Alexander > Letuchiny, Russian State University for the > Humanities: 'Kinds of recursion in Adyghe morphology' > > > > 1510 > > Yoad Winter, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study: 'Recursion > in the semantics of coordination' > > > 1545 > > Harry Howard, Tulane University: 'Recursion and the computational > modeling of prefrontal cortex' > > > 1620 > > Bart Hollebrandse, University of Groningen, & Thomas Roeper, > University of Massachusetts: 'Recursion and propositional exclusivity' > > > 1655 > > Michael Wagner, Cornell University: 'Prosody and recursion in > coordinate structures and beyond' > > > 1730 > > COFFEE > > > 1745 > > Laszlo Hunyadi, University of Debrecen, Hungary: 'Cognitive > grouping and prosodic recursion' > > > 1820 - 1920 > > D. Robert Ladd, Edinburgh: What would 'recursion' mean in phonology? > > > > SUNDAY, April 29 > > > > 0900 > > Daniel L. Everett, ISU: Cultural constraints on recursion > > > 1000 > > Coffee and snacks > > > 1020 > > Damir Cavar & Malgorzata E. Cavar, University of Zadar, Croatia: > 'Inducing recursion' > > > 1055 > > Vitor Zimmerer & Rosemary Varley, University of Sheffield: > 'Recursive syntax in patients with severe agrammatism' > > > 1130 > > James Rogers, Earlham College, & Marc Hauser, Harvard University: > 'Potential distinguishing characteristics and human > aural pattern recognition' > > > 1205 > > COFFEE > > > > 1220 > > Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen: ' Over the top: recursion > as a functional option' > > > > 1255 > > Geoffrey K. Pullum, UCSC: Recursion and the infinitude claim > > > 1355 > > CONFERENCE ENDS > > ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics, Anthropology, and Biological Sciences 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/ Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK *********** “The notion that the essence of what it means to be human is most clearly revealed in those features of human culture that are universal rather than in those that are distinctive to this people or that is a prejudice that we are not obliged to share... It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.” Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) From wilcox at unm.edu Fri Mar 23 02:10:49 2007 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:10:49 -0600 Subject: Fwd: ASL and foreign languages: Critical Update Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I wonder if I could solicit your assistance. I am forwarding to this list an email message I received from P. Vincent Riley, who contacted me for assistance regarding the issue of accepting American Sign Language (ASL) in fulfillment of foreign language requirements. As you'll see from his message, he had been in contact with an organization called the American Academy for Liberal Education. If you will read through the message from Jeff A. Martineau with that organization, you'll see that he and his organization hold some astoundingly misinformed ideas about ASL: that it is a visual form of English, that it is universal (does he not see the contradiction in those two statements?), that it is "not a separate frame of reference for thinking." No matter your position on whether ASL should meet foreign language requirements -- I happen to think it should, but I also recognize that reasonable people might disagree on exactly which languages should meet undergraduate FL requirements -- I hope you will agree that these kinds of misinformed views need to be corrected. If you agree would you consider writing a message to Mr. Martineau? Thank you, -- Sherman Wilcox, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox 505-277-0928 Begin forwarded message: > From: "P. Vincent Riley" > Date: March 22, 2007 7:45:24 PM MDT > To: wilcox at unm.edu > Subject: ASL and foreign languages: Critical Update > > Dear Professor Wilcox, > > I am forwarding to you the following communication > from me to Jeff A. Martineau, the Director for Higher > Education for the American Academy of Libereal > Education, an organization that accredits the general > education component of college and university courses, > as well as liberal arts and liberal studies programs. > > Neumann College, which has appeared on your list for a > few years, for example, has recently elected to drop > recognition of ASL as a substitute for the foreign > language requirement. One reason given was that they > would not be able to receive accreditation of their > liberal arts programs from the AALE, and they want > that accreditation for their liberal arts and general > education programs (although they already have > regional acceditation for the institution). > > When I checked with the AALE about their position, it > was finally confirmed. The reasons given for their > position seem rather ill-informed to me, because I > have reviewed Sheryl Cooper's 1997 doctoral thesis, > and I assumed that it and other evidence that you > refer to on your web site contradict the assertions > made by Mr. Martineau. > > If other institutions that are also not well-informed > about the unique linguistic nature of American Sign > Language and the culture that practices it, and > instead believe that it is a branch of American > English tied to American culture, I fear for the > progress that has been made in recognizing ASL at > academic instituions. > > On the other hand, I am pleased to note that some > states have started to call for recognition of the > academic status of ASL. > > I hope that you and other linguistic and social > scientific scholars can assist the AALE in making > well-informed decisions for the betterment of all our > institutions of higher education. > > > > --- "P. Vincent Riley" wrote: > >> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:46:37 -0700 (PDT) >> From: "P. Vincent Riley" >> Subject: Re: ASL and foreign languages >> To: "Jeff A. Martineau" >> CC: Jeffrey Wallin >> >> Mr. Martineau, >> >> Thank you for the courtesy of your reply. >> >> As you occupy a pivotal role in your institution, I >> will try to see that some of the assertions in your >> letter regarding ASL are addressed by competent >> linguistic scholars. >> >> Noteworthy among these are the following: >> >> "[ASL} is really a visual form of English." >> >> "[ASL] not a separate frame of reference for >> thinking, >> as >> reading or speaking a foreign language or being >> immersed in a foreign culture." >> >> "ASL is part of the American culture and is in fact >> a >> form of >> English." >> >> Should any of my contacts try to address these to >> you >> at the American Academy of Liberal Education, I will >> suggest that they indicate their affiliation. It is >> clear that a great deal of education lies before us. >> >> Once again, thank you for clarifying the position of >> the AALE. >> >> Sincerely, >> >> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" wrote: >> >>> Mr. Riley, >>> >>> I am sure you can understand why one might have >>> reservations about >>> responding to inquiries that have no name or >>> affiliation. >>> >>> It is my understanding that in fact my name and >>> affiliation do appear at >>> the bottom of all emails. I will take it for >> granted >>> that in this case >>> it did not. >>> >>> I am the Director overseeing our Higher Education >>> division. >>> >>> With regard to ASL v. spoken foreign languages, >> your >>> are correct, the >>> Academy has not previously seen ASL as an adequate >>> replacement, in part >>> because it is really a visual form of English. It >> is >>> the way one >>> communicates, it is not a separate frame of >>> reference for thinking, as >>> reading or speaking a foreign language or being >>> immersed in a foreign >>> culture. ASL is part of the American culture and >> is >>> in fact a form of >>> English. One might envision a universal form of >> sign >>> language that went >>> beyond these borders. >>> >>> However, any college can attempt to make an >> argument >>> within their >>> self-study as to why the various components, >>> together, form a curriculum >>> that does in fact meet the Standards and Criteria. >>> The Board of >>> Trustees, which makes all final decisions with >>> regard to standards would >>> certainly take up such a debate, though without >>> knowing the program more >>> specifically, I can not offer a judgment as to the >>> over quality of a >>> program that included ASL as an option to foreign >>> languages. Bear in >>> mind, that our requirement is that all students in >>> the program must meet >>> the requirements, e.g., all students are required >> to >>> meet the language >>> component. >>> >>> I hope this offers some guidance. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: >>>> Dear Sir, >>>> >>>> Thank you for taking the time to not respond to >>> our >>>> email. Although you did indicate an affiliation, >>> your >>>> email was no more signed than our own. Hence, we >>> will >>>> not respond to your email either. >>>> >>>> I am surprised that a request for simple >>> information >>>> is subject to such bureaucratic rigor. It seems >>> like >>>> an interesting higher education management >> system. >>>> >>>> For your information, the email system on your >> web >>>> site did not seem to function properly when I >>>> initially tried to contact your organization. It >>> might >>>> be wise to place a notice on your contact page >>> that no >>>> response will be given to contacts initiated >>> without >>>> an affiliation and a signature. >>>> >>>> As I am an educational consultant who retired >> from >>>> Northern Marianas College, I no longer am >>> affiliated >>>> with that institution. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> >>>> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" >>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> --------------------------------- >>>> Dear Sir, >>>> >>>> We do not respond to emails that are not signed >>> and >>>> without anaffiliation. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: I have been >> informed >>> by >>>> others that the AALE refuses to regard American >>> Sign >>>> Language as a "foreign language" for purposes of >>>> generaleducation when it accredits institutions >>> and/or >>>> programs. >>>> >>>> Since it has been well-documented that deaf >>> culture >>>> is a unique culture, and that ASL has its own >>>> grammatical structure and"vocabulary," I am >>> curious to >>>> know the basis for the AALE's position,if, in >>> fact, I >>>> understand it correctly. >>>> >>>> I know of an institution that is dropping the >>>> acceptance of ASLcourses in fulfillment of the >>>> "foreign language" requirement, because its >>>> administration believes it must do this to >> receive >>>> accreditation of its liberal arts general >>> education >>>> program by the AALE. >>>> >>>> Thank you for your consideration. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> P. Vincent Riley Jr. >>>> Educational Consultant >>>> Oceania Pacific Educational Networking >>>> P.O. Box 501916 >>>> Saipan, MP 96950-1916 >>>> (484)-886-9128 >>>> >>>> >> >> >> >> P. Vincent Riley Jr. >> Educational Consultant >> Oceania Pacific Educational Networking >> P.O. Box 501916 >> Saipan, MP 96950-1916 >> (484)-886-9128 >> >> >> >> > ______________________________________________________________________ > ______________ >> Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 >> hotels >> in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your >> fit. >> http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097 >> > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > ______________ > No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go > with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started. > http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail From hopper at cmu.edu Fri Mar 23 13:05:20 2007 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:05:20 -0400 Subject: Makaton In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Re. Sherman's posting on ASL: By coincidence I was about to post an inquiry to FunkNet on a related matter. So that my own posting doesn't distract from the important questions in Sherman's message, I'm presenting my own inquiry as a separate thread. I have just returned from the UK, and a big thing over there is "Makaton". It's a combination of spoken English and manual signs borrowed from British Sign Language. It was developed originally for learning-disabled kids (autistic, retarded), where it was so successful that teachers have been introducing it into the normal classrooms, and it has become something of a fad, spreading into the playgrounds and streets among grade-schoolers. My question is: does anyone know of any _linguistic_ studies of Makaton? Its grammar, etc.? "Cheers", Paul > Dear colleagues, > > I wonder if I could solicit your assistance. I am forwarding to this list > an email message I received from P. Vincent Riley, who contacted me for > assistance regarding the issue of accepting American Sign Language (ASL) > in fulfillment of foreign language requirements. As you'll see from his > message, he had been in contact with an organization called the American > Academy for Liberal Education. > > If you will read through the message from Jeff A. Martineau with that > organization, you'll see that he and his organization hold some > astoundingly misinformed ideas about ASL: that it is a visual form of > English, that it is universal (does he not see the contradiction in those > two statements?), that it is "not a separate frame of reference for > thinking." > > No matter your position on whether ASL should meet foreign language > requirements -- I happen to think it should, but I also recognize that > reasonable people might disagree on exactly which languages should meet > undergraduate FL requirements -- I hope you will agree that these kinds of > misinformed views need to be corrected. If you agree would you consider > writing a message to Mr. Martineau? > > Thank you, > > -- Sherman Wilcox, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Linguistics > University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 > > http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox 505-277-0928 > > > > Begin forwarded message: > >> From: "P. Vincent Riley" Date: March 22, 2007 >> 7:45:24 PM MDT To: wilcox at unm.edu Subject: ASL and foreign languages: >> Critical Update >> >> Dear Professor Wilcox, >> >> I am forwarding to you the following communication from me to Jeff A. >> Martineau, the Director for Higher Education for the American Academy of >> Libereal Education, an organization that accredits the general education >> component of college and university courses, as well as liberal arts and >> liberal studies programs. >> >> Neumann College, which has appeared on your list for a few years, for >> example, has recently elected to drop recognition of ASL as a substitute >> for the foreign language requirement. One reason given was that they >> would not be able to receive accreditation of their liberal arts >> programs from the AALE, and they want that accreditation for their >> liberal arts and general education programs (although they already have >> regional acceditation for the institution). >> >> When I checked with the AALE about their position, it was finally >> confirmed. The reasons given for their position seem rather ill-informed >> to me, because I have reviewed Sheryl Cooper's 1997 doctoral thesis, and >> I assumed that it and other evidence that you refer to on your web site >> contradict the assertions made by Mr. Martineau. >> >> If other institutions that are also not well-informed about the unique >> linguistic nature of American Sign Language and the culture that >> practices it, and instead believe that it is a branch of American English >> tied to American culture, I fear for the progress that has been made in >> recognizing ASL at academic instituions. >> >> On the other hand, I am pleased to note that some states have started to >> call for recognition of the academic status of ASL. >> >> I hope that you and other linguistic and social scientific scholars can >> assist the AALE in making well-informed decisions for the betterment of >> all our institutions of higher education. >> >> >> >> --- "P. Vincent Riley" wrote: >> >>> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:46:37 -0700 (PDT) From: "P. Vincent Riley" >>> Subject: Re: ASL and foreign languages To: "Jeff A. >>> Martineau" CC: Jeffrey Wallin >>> >>> >>> Mr. Martineau, >>> >>> Thank you for the courtesy of your reply. >>> >>> As you occupy a pivotal role in your institution, I will try to see >>> that some of the assertions in your letter regarding ASL are addressed >>> by competent linguistic scholars. >>> >>> Noteworthy among these are the following: >>> >>> "[ASL} is really a visual form of English." >>> >>> "[ASL] not a separate frame of reference for thinking, as reading or >>> speaking a foreign language or being immersed in a foreign culture." >>> >>> "ASL is part of the American culture and is in fact a form of English." >>> >>> Should any of my contacts try to address these to you at the American >>> Academy of Liberal Education, I will suggest that they indicate their >>> affiliation. It is clear that a great deal of education lies before >>> us. >>> >>> Once again, thank you for clarifying the position of the AALE. >>> >>> Sincerely, >>> >>> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" wrote: >>> >>>> Mr. Riley, >>>> >>>> I am sure you can understand why one might have reservations about >>>> responding to inquiries that have no name or affiliation. >>>> >>>> It is my understanding that in fact my name and affiliation do >>>> appear at the bottom of all emails. I will take it for >>> granted >>>> that in this case it did not. >>>> >>>> I am the Director overseeing our Higher Education division. >>>> >>>> With regard to ASL v. spoken foreign languages, >>> your >>>> are correct, the Academy has not previously seen ASL as an adequate >>>> replacement, in part because it is really a visual form of English. >>>> It >>> is >>>> the way one communicates, it is not a separate frame of reference for >>>> thinking, as reading or speaking a foreign language or being immersed >>>> in a foreign culture. ASL is part of the American culture and >>> is >>>> in fact a form of English. One might envision a universal form of >>> sign >>>> language that went beyond these borders. >>>> >>>> However, any college can attempt to make an >>> argument >>>> within their self-study as to why the various components, together, >>>> form a curriculum that does in fact meet the Standards and Criteria. >>>> The Board of Trustees, which makes all final decisions with regard >>>> to standards would certainly take up such a debate, though without >>>> knowing the program more specifically, I can not offer a judgment as >>>> to the over quality of a program that included ASL as an option to >>>> foreign languages. Bear in mind, that our requirement is that all >>>> students in the program must meet the requirements, e.g., all >>>> students are required >>> to >>>> meet the language component. >>>> >>>> I hope this offers some guidance. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: >>>>> Dear Sir, >>>>> >>>>> Thank you for taking the time to not respond to >>>> our >>>>> email. Although you did indicate an affiliation, >>>> your >>>>> email was no more signed than our own. Hence, we >>>> will >>>>> not respond to your email either. >>>>> >>>>> I am surprised that a request for simple >>>> information >>>>> is subject to such bureaucratic rigor. It seems >>>> like >>>>> an interesting higher education management >>> system. >>>>> >>>>> For your information, the email system on your >>> web >>>>> site did not seem to function properly when I initially tried to >>>>> contact your organization. It >>>> might >>>>> be wise to place a notice on your contact page >>>> that no >>>>> response will be given to contacts initiated >>>> without >>>>> an affiliation and a signature. >>>>> >>>>> As I am an educational consultant who retired >>> from >>>>> Northern Marianas College, I no longer am >>>> affiliated >>>>> with that institution. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> --------------------------------- Dear Sir, >>>>> >>>>> We do not respond to emails that are not signed >>>> and >>>>> without anaffiliation. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: I have been >>> informed >>>> by >>>>> others that the AALE refuses to regard American >>>> Sign >>>>> Language as a "foreign language" for purposes of generaleducation >>>>> when it accredits institutions >>>> and/or >>>>> programs. >>>>> >>>>> Since it has been well-documented that deaf >>>> culture >>>>> is a unique culture, and that ASL has its own grammatical >>>>> structure and"vocabulary," I am >>>> curious to >>>>> know the basis for the AALE's position,if, in >>>> fact, I >>>>> understand it correctly. >>>>> >>>>> I know of an institution that is dropping the acceptance of >>>>> ASLcourses in fulfillment of the "foreign language" requirement, >>>>> because its administration believes it must do this to >>> receive >>>>> accreditation of its liberal arts general >>>> education >>>>> program by the AALE. >>>>> >>>>> Thank you for your consideration. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> P. Vincent Riley Jr. Educational Consultant Oceania Pacific >>>>> Educational Networking P.O. Box 501916 Saipan, MP 96950-1916 >>>>> (484)-886-9128 >>>>> >>>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> P. Vincent Riley Jr. Educational Consultant Oceania Pacific Educational >>> Networking P.O. Box 501916 Saipan, MP 96950-1916 (484)-886-9128 >>> >>> >>> >>> >> ______________________________________________________________________ >> ______________ >>> Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 hotels in 45,000 >>> destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit. >>> http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097 >>> >> >> >> >> >> ______________________________________________________________________ >> ______________ No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with Yahoo! >> Mail for Mobile. Get started. http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail > > > > From wilcox at unm.edu Fri Mar 23 13:16:30 2007 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:16:30 -0600 Subject: Makaton In-Reply-To: <2716.72.95.238.177.1174655120.squirrel@72.95.238.177> Message-ID: How interesting. Paul, I have some colleagues in Britain who do signed language research. I'll forward this to them and ask if they know of anyone doing this kind of work. Coincidentally, I was flipping through TV channels here last night (trying to find some news and avoid yet another Anna Nicole Smith story), and spotted a commercial with kids signing. It was some book, or DVD, or something for teaching young hearing children to sign as a way to improve their language skills. This is becoming quite a fad here too. On the one hand it's neat. On the other... Do you know how frustrating it is for Deaf people, and for parents (Deaf or hearing) with deaf children, to see this happening when deaf children and their parents are still being told that signing will harm their child's language development? As for my original posting on the AALE's position on ASL as a FL: THANK YOU to ALL who have responded. Let's hope that we can nudge AALE a bit towards the enlightenment that we hope a liberal education should provide. On Mar 23, 2007, at 7:05 AM, Paul Hopper wrote: > I have just returned from the UK, and a big thing over there is > "Makaton". It's a combination of spoken English and manual signs > borrowed from British Sign Language. It was developed originally > for learning-disabled kids (autistic, retarded), where it was so > successful that teachers have been introducing it into the normal > classrooms, and it has become something of a fad, spreading into > the playgrounds and streets among grade-schoolers. My question is: > does anyone know of any _linguistic_ studies of Makaton? Its > grammar, etc.? > -- Sherman From jrubba at calpoly.edu Fri Mar 23 20:22:28 2007 From: jrubba at calpoly.edu (Johanna Rubba) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:22:28 -0800 Subject: American Sign Language Message-ID: Dear Mr. Martineau, I feel compelled to write to you after reading a forward of your communications with P. Vincent Reilly regarding the nature of American Sign Language (ASL). As I'm sure you will be hearing from a number of academic linguists, your understanding of ASL is somewhat behind the times. ASL has been intensively studied for several decades now, and it is eminently clear that it is not a form of English; it is not based on English. ASL is a completely independent and full-fledged language, as are other sign languages found around the globe. It has its own distinct vocabulary, word order, system for signaling tenses, inflection (related gesturally), and so on. Acquisition of sign language in deaf children, both normal and abnormal, has been extensively studied at the highly revered Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (you can find many references to the work of Ursula Bellugi and her associates in academic databases). You have, I'm sure, heard from Sherman Wilcox, and eminent sign language expert at the University of New Mexico; you may also hear from linguists at Gallaudet University who study and teach (in and about) ASL. As to the connection of ASL to American culture -- ASL originated in France and was imported to the USA as a means of educating deaf children. Over the decades, a culture of the Deaf (yes, they capitalize it) has evolved which has its own practices and traditions. There are many Deaf people who feel that they are simply a different group of people, analogous to an ethnic minority, and do not see themselves as disabled. Their culture is surely very similar to American culture, but so is the culture of a country like Canada, South Africa, or Australia. ASL certainly does have a quite different frame of reference for thinking. The way time and space are viewed is quite different from English, and ASL has its own set of rules for polite interaction, etc., just as other languages and cultures do. In many ways, ASL is structurally more "foreign" than other European languages such as Spanish or Danish. The general public is only minimally aware of linguistics as a discipline of the human sciences, but scholars of linguistics have been amassing an extraordinary base of knowledge about human language for over two hundred years. Much of the most revealing research has taken place in the last 50-60 years. Because of the discipline's low profile, and because of the robustness of popular (but incorrect) "wisdom" about language in general, misunderstanding of ASL is widespread. Personally, I believe ASL should be acceptable as fulfilling a high-school or college language requirement. I have had many students who have found ASL both fascinating and enriching, and have broadened their understanding of humanity greatly by learning to communicate with the deaf, and seeing how ASL provides many new frames for seeing the world. American children are so often reluctant to study a "foreign" language (in many parts of the USA, Spanish can hardly be considered foreign), we should welcome a language that students are eager to learn. Consider also that most students will have little to no opportunity to use the German, French, or Italian they study in high school or college after graduation, while they can find many opportunities to use ASL right here in the United States. Students who study ASL are also often service-oriented and wish to enter professions like education, where ASL users are needed. Legislation and policies that require the availability of ASL interpreters also abound, and need recruits. We should be encouraging the study of ASL, not discouraging it. I hope you and your colleagues at the American Academy for Liberal Education will research the many scientifically-sound resources on ASL. Whether or not you decide to accept ASL as fulfilling any education requirements, it is crucial that an institution with power such as yours be up to date on the science that underlies your decisions. Thank you for taking the time to read this message. Sincerely, Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba From hougaard at language.sdu.dk Fri Mar 30 11:05:12 2007 From: hougaard at language.sdu.dk (Anders Hougaard) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:05:12 +0200 Subject: Language, Culture and Mind 3: 1st Theme Sessions Call Message-ID: Language Culture and Mind 3 1st Theme sessions call The LCM committee and local organizers call for theme session proposals for the third conference in the series Language, Culture and Mind. The conference will be held in modern and comfortable conference facilities at University of Southern Denmark in Odense 14th - 16th July 2008. The conference aims at establishing an interdisciplinary forum for an integration of cognitive, social and cultural perspectives in theoretical and empirical studies of language and communication The special theme of the conference is Social Life and Meaning Construction. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, social interaction, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to impart their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between social life, culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language and communication sciences. Dates *First call for Theme Sessions: April 1, 2007 * Second call for Theme Sessions: May 1, 2007 * Third call for Theme Sessions: June 1, 2007 * Deadline for Theme Sessions submissions: July 1, 2007 * Notification for Theme Sessions : August 1, 2007 NOTICE: calls for the general session and for posters will be made later. Submissions guidelines Max. 500 words (including references) To be submitted to lcm at language.sdu.dk Submissions will be evaluated according to their * Relevance * Quality * Coherence * Originality * Organization Once your suggestion is approved, you will need to arrange for Theme Session Contributors for your theme. They will need to submit abstracts for their contributions and as Theme Session Organizer you will be responsible for their review. More than one person may organize a theme. NOTICE: The LCM reserves the right to reject papers accepted by Theme Session reviewers. However, this right will only be exercised if accepted papers deviate too far from the goals of LCM with respect to their content and/or quality. Plenary speakers: Michael Chandler (University of British Columbia) Alessandro Duranti (University of California at Los Angeles) Derek Edwards (University of Loughborough) Marianne Gullberg (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) Esa Itkonen (University of Turku) Conference Website: http://www.lcm.sdu.dk (under constructon!) Earlier LCM conferences: 1st LCM conference: Portsmouth 2004 2nd LCM conference: Paris 2006 The international LCM committee: Raphael Berthele Carlos Cornejo Caroline David Merlin Donald Barbara Fultner Anders R. Hougaard Jean Lassègue John A Lucy Aliyah Morgenstern Eve Pinsker Vera da Silva Sinha Chris Sinha Jordan Zlatev The local organizing committee: Center for Social Practises and Cognition (SoPraCon): Rineke Brouwer Dennis Day Annette Grindsted Anders R. Hougaard Gitte R. Hougaard (Director) Kristian Mortensen Scientific Committee (incomplete list) Anne Salazar Orvig Meredith Williams Todd Oakley Jonathan Potter Robin Wooffitt Alan Cienki Cornellia Müller Ewa Dabrowska Edy Veneziano Shaun Gallagher Edwin Hutchins Anders R. Hougaard Assistant professor, PhD Institute of Language and Communication University of Southern Denmark, Odense hougaard at language.sdu.dk Phone: +45 65503154 Fax: + 45 65932483 From Marie.Fellbaum at anu.edu.au Sat Mar 3 09:45:45 2007 From: Marie.Fellbaum at anu.edu.au (Marie Fellbaum) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 20:45:45 +1100 Subject: Second call for papers - Workshop on Definiteness and Referentiality Message-ID: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS DEFINITENESS AND REFERENTIALITY: THEORY AND DESCRIPTION WORKSHOP Sept. 26-28, 2007 University of Adelaide Adelaide, Australia A one day workshop on Definiteness and Referentiality will be held in conjunction with ALS 2007 at the University of Adelaide. We welcome papers on Australian, Austronesian, Asian and other natural languages, and in all areas of linguistics including sociolinguistics, language variation and change, first/second language acquisition, conversational analysis, and cognitive (including psycho-/neurolinguistic) processing of definiteness. The following topics are of particular interest: --data based studies of definiteness properties in particular languages --theoretical aspects of definiteness and/or specificity --the article systems of a language group(s) --the interaction of definiteness/specificity with the grammar of a language --the behavior of subsystems within languages, e.g. polarity references and number and quantification of nouns --the acquisition and development of definiteness and/or referentiality in child and second languages --language change in progress with respect to a property or subsystem of a language. Proposals for both a General Session and a Poster Session should include the author's name and affiliation, contact details (including e-mail and postal addresses), title of the paper, keywords, and a one page abstract of no more than 500 words, excluding examples and references. Key references may include, but not limited to, the work of Irene Heim, M. En?, Kamp & Reyle (DRT), B. Partee, Donka Farkas, T.Givon, Christopher Lyons, J. Hawkins, and M. Haspelmath. In your submission, please indicate your preference, and, if your choice is a General Session, please state if you would be willing to do a poster. Each abstract will be blind reviewed on the basis of the following criteria: --Topic appropriate to the workshop theme --Paper contributing new knowledge on the topic --Argument supported by data from natural language --Clear statement of results Abstracts should be sent electronically in the body of the e-mail message and also as an attachment in PDF or rtf format to Korpi.DefWorkshop at anu.edu.au. In the e-mail subject line, please write ?NAME ALSDEFworkshop? where NAME is your surname. DEADLINE for abstracts is March 16th with notification of acceptance by April 30. The format of the sessions will be 20 minutes for each paper, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Posters will be displayed for one whole day, with a time slot for discussing them. Selected papers from the workshop will be peer reviewed and published in a special volume devoted to the workshop theme. Workshop organizers: Brett Baker (University of New England) Marie Fellbaum Korpi (The Australian National University) Harumi Minagawa (The University of Auckland) Lesley Stirling (The University of Melbourne) http://defworkshop.als.asn.au From ekapia at bu.edu Wed Mar 7 01:22:10 2007 From: ekapia at bu.edu (ekapia at bu.edu) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 20:22:10 -0500 Subject: posting at Funknet Message-ID: Hi, I would like to post the call for Papers for BUCLD 2007. Can you please guide me on how to do that at your earliest convinience? Many thanks, Enkeleida Kapia Co-Organizer BUCLD 2007 From ekapia at bu.edu Wed Mar 7 15:25:10 2007 From: ekapia at bu.edu (ekapia at bu.edu) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 10:25:10 -0500 Subject: Call for Papers - BUCLD 2007 Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS THE 32nd ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT NOVEMBER 2-4, 2007 Keynote Speaker: Ellen Bialystok, York University "Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism Across the Lifespan" Plenary Speaker: William O?Grady, University of Hawai?i at Manoa "Does Emergentism Have a Chance?" Lunch Symposium: ?Perspectives on the Production, Perception, and Processing of Grammatical Morphemes? Katherine Demuth, Brown University Anne Fernald, Stanford University Lee Osterhout, University of Washington Discussant: Virginia Valian, Hunter College, and CUNY Graduate Center Submissions which present research on any topic in the fields of first and second language acquisition from any theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: * Bilingualism * Cognition & Language * Creoles & Pidgins * Dialects * Discourse and Narrative * Gesture * Hearing Impairment and Deafness * Input & Interaction * Language Disorders (Autism, Down Syndrome, SLI, Williams Syndrome, etc.) * Linguistic Theory (Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon) * Neurolinguistics * Pragmatics * Pre-linguistic Development * Reading and Literacy * Signed Languages * Sociolinguistics * Speech Perception & Production Presentations will be 20 minutes long followed by a 10 minute question period. Posters will be on display for a full day with two attended sessions during the day. ABSTRACT FORMAT AND CONTENT * Abstracts submitted must represent original, unpublished research. * Abstracts should be anonymous, clearly titled and no more than 500 words in length. Text of abstract should fit on one page, with a second page for examples, figures, or references. Abstracts longer than 500 words will be rejected without being evaluated. * Please note the word count at the bottom of the abstract. Note that word counts should not include the abstract title, figure or table titles, examples, or the list of references. * A suggested format and style for abstracts is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/template.html * Three examples of how to formulate the content of the abstract can be found at: http://www.lsadc.org/info/dec02bulletin/model.html http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/sociocultural/abstracttips.html http://www.ulcl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=5&c=124 * The criteria used by the reviewers to evaluate abstracts can be found at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html#rate * All abstracts must be submitted as PDF documents. Specific instructions for how to create PDF documents are available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/pdfinfo.html. If you encounter a problem creating a PDF file, please contact us for further assistance. Please use the first author's last name as the file name (eg. Smith.pdf). No author information should appear anywhere in the contents of the PDF file itself. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS * Electronic submission: To facilitate the abstract submission process, abstracts will be submitted using the form available at the conference website at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/abstract.htm. * Specific instructions for abstract submission are available on this website. * Abstracts will be accepted between April 1 and May 15. * Contact information for each author must be submitted via webform. No author information should appear anywhere in the abstract PDF. * At the time of submission you will be asked whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a poster, a paper, or both. Note that this preference is not revealed to the reviewers, and thus is not considered in the review process. * Although each author may submit as many abstracts as desired, we will accept for presentation by each author: (a) a maximum of 1 first authored paper/poster, and (b) a maximum of 2 papers/posters in any authorship status. Note that no changes in authorship (including deleting an author or changing author order) will be possible after the review process is completed or for publication in the conference proceedings. DEADLINE * All submissions must be received by 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2007. * Late abstracts will not be considered, whatever the reason for the delay. * We regret that we cannot accept abstract submissions by fax or email. * Submissions via surface mail will only be accepted in special circumstances, on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us well in advance of the submission deadline (May 15, 2007) to make these arrangements. ABSTRACT SELECTION * Each abstract is blind reviewed by 5 reviewers from a panel of approximately 140 international scholars. Further information about the review process is available at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html. * Acknowledgment of receipt of the abstract will be sent by email as soon as possible after receipt. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent to first authors only, in early August, by email. Pre-registration materials and preliminary schedule will be available in late August, 2007. * If your abstract is accepted, you will need to submit a 150-word abstract including title, author(s) and affiliation(s) for inclusion in the conference handbook. Guidelines will be provided along with notification of acceptance. * Abstracts accepted as papers will be invited for publication in the BUCLD Proceedings. * Abstracts accepted as posters will be invited for publication online only, but not in the printed version. * All conference papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Although each abstract will be evaluated individually, we will attempt to honor requests to schedule accepted papers together in group sessions. * No schedule changes will be possible once the schedule is set. Scheduling requests for religious reasons only must be made before the review process is complete (i.e. at the time of submission). A space is provided on the abstract submission webform to specify such requests. FURTHER INFORMATION Information regarding the conference may be accessed on the BUCLD website: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/ Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Room 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 e-mail: langconf at bu.edu From andrea.schalley at une.edu.au Thu Mar 8 01:57:05 2007 From: andrea.schalley at une.edu.au (Andrea Schalley) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:57:05 +1100 Subject: CIL 18 workshop on Linguistic Studies of Ontology: Call for papers Message-ID: **************************************************************** Call for papers: closing May 31 2007 ?LINGUISTIC STUDIES OF ONTOLOGY? From Lexical Semantics to Formal Ontologies and Back Workshop at the 18th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF LINGUISTS (CIL 18) Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea July 21-26, 2008 **************************************************************** ?DESCRIPTION? Recent developments in the study of ontology have important implications for cognitive science, knowledge engineering, and theoretical linguistics. In particular, research on lexical ontology deals with how concepts are lexicalized and organized across languages and cultures. This workshop aims to explore this new departure in linguistic studies by building upon the three important premises assumed in Fellbaum (1998), Schalley and Zaefferer (2007), and Huang et al. (2007): First, that lexicalized concepts have a special status in every language (as opposed to concepts that require complex coding), second that lexically coded concepts can be shared by different languages, and third that lexicalization universals are relevant for the construction of cross-lingually portable formal ontologies. Following the references cited above, topics of this workshop include foundational issues pertaining to the relation between formal ontology and linguistic ontologies, as well as descriptive issues pertaining to the interface between conceptual ontologies and lexica. In particular, we would like to focus on the following issues during this workshop: - Cross-lingual portability of upper-ontologies - Ontology-based approaches to comparative linguistics - Ontology enrichment: from concept formation via complex coding to lexicalisation - Possible relevance of formal ontological principles (e.g. Roles cannot subsume Types) to psychological/linguistic reality REFERENCES Fellbaum, Christiane. 1998. WordNet: An electronic lexical database. MIT Press. Huang, Chu-Ren et al. Eds. 2007. Ontologies and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press. Schalley, Andrea C. and Zaefferer, Dietmar. Eds. 2007. Ontolinguistics. Mouton de Gruyter. ?SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS? A two-page abstract including everything should be sent electronically to both and . An MS Word and/or .pdf file may be accepted. ?IMPORTANT DATES? Deadline for Abstract Submission: May 31, 2007 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: August 31, 2007 For more information, visit the website () or contact the organizer at . ?ORGANIZER? Chu-Ren Huang Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan E-mail address: Fax: 886-2-27856622, Tel: 886-2-26523108 ?PROGRAM COMMITTEE? Christiane Fellbaum (Princeton) Shu-kai Hsieh (I-Lan) Alessandro Lenci (Pisa) Adam Pease (San Francisco) Alessandro Oltramari (Trento) Laurent Pr?vot (Toulouse) James Pustejovsky (Brandies) Andrea C. Schalley (Armidale) Piek Vossen (Amsterdam) Dietmar Zaefferer (Munich) From feldmana at mail.montclair.edu Sun Mar 11 02:38:24 2007 From: feldmana at mail.montclair.edu (Anna Feldman) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:38:24 -0500 Subject: MA program in Applied Linguistics Message-ID: **************************** Please, advertise *********************************** Montclair State University Department of Linguistics MA in Applied Linguistics The Department of Linguistics at Montclair State University invites applications for admission to the MA program in Applied Linguistics. Teaching/research assistantships are available for highly qualified applicants. Application deadline for assistantships is April 30, 2007. Our MA program is distinguished by its grounding in theoretical linguistics while offering a wide variety of specializations within the field of Applied Linguistics including: Second Language Acquisition Culture and Communication Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing Applicants should hold a Bachelor's degree. No prior background in linguistics is required. Montclair State is New Jersey?s second-largest and fastest-growing university. It is located in vibrant Montclair, on a ridge overlooking New York City, which is in easy commuting distance. Further information can be found at http://www.chss.montclair.edu/linguistics/ . or contact Dr. Eileen Fitzpatrick: fitzpatricke at mail.montclair.edu Applications are due by April 30, 2007. Anna Feldman Assistant Professor Linguistics and Computer Science Montclair State University Dickson Hall, Room 126 Upper Montclair, NJ, 07043 http://www.purl.org/NET/fa From schiering at uni-leipzig.de Tue Mar 13 11:27:24 2007 From: schiering at uni-leipzig.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Ren=E9_Schiering?=) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:27:24 +0100 Subject: CfP: Phonological Words in South Asia and Southeast Asia Message-ID: Phonological Words in South Asia and Southeast Asia Workshop to be held at the University of Leipzig, Germany, September 19-20, 2007 (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG) Invited Speakers: Gregory D. S. Anderson (University of Oregon & Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) Ashwini Deo (Yale University) Martine Mazaudon (LACITO, UMR 7107 CNRS-Paris 3 & 4) Broadly speaking, the study of word structure is concerned with two distinct but interdependent aspects of grammar. First, a word may be prosodically defined by phonological patterns, e.g. assimilation, stress, or tone, which reference a particular domain in morphological structure (e.g. a combination of stem plus suffixes, excluding prefixes). Second, the grammatical word may be defined with reference to syntactic and morphological patterns that apply exclusively to a particular domain in morphological structure (e.g. a stem plus affixes, excluding clitics). In recent years, the relationship between prosodic and grammatical words has received increased attention (e.g. Hall & Kleinhenz 1999, Dixon & Aikhenvald 2002). Research on the cross-linguistic variation of word domains shed doubt on approaches which aim at formulating a universal architecture of prosodic structure and its dependence on morphological and syntactic components of grammar. The assumptions of Prosodic Phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986), for instance, are contradicted by current research in a typological project on word domains at the University of Leipzig (see http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp/projects/wd_dom/wd_dom.html for recent publications). The languages of South and Southeast Asia provide a particular challenge because in a number of South Asian languages sound patterns do not converge on a single domain of 'phonological word' as predicted by theories, and in a number of Southeast Asian languages, no or almost no sound pattern seems to target a domain intermediate between the phrases and the foot. In our project we found that the distribution of phonological domains is however best predicted not by areal connections but by genealogical affiliation and thus ultimately by the individual diachrony behind each language. We invite abstracts for a two-day workshop on word domains in South and Southeast Asian languages. The meeting aims at bringing together research which focuses on the prosodic and morphological word structure of languages spoken in these areas. Contributions are expected to be theoretically and typologically informed and should either concentrate on the analysis of word domains in individual languages or address areal and/or diachronic aspects of word structure by means of cross-linguistic comparison. One-page abstracts for 45-minutes presentations (30 min. talk + 15 min. discussion) should be submitted electronically via e-mail attachment (mail to: schiering at uni-leipzig.de) and should reach the organizers no later than April 16, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be circulated in late April 2007. The organizing committee: Ren? Schiering (schiering at uni-leipzig.de) Balthasar Bickel (bickel at uni-leipzig.de) Kristine A. Hildebrandt (Kristine.Hildebrandt at manchester.ac.uk) From bergen at hawaii.edu Tue Mar 13 20:28:26 2007 From: bergen at hawaii.edu (Benjamin K Bergen) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:28:26 -1000 Subject: Evolution of language summer school Message-ID: With apologies for cross-posting... From: Luc Steels Anouncement: Sicily Evolution of Language Summer School Date: 14-Jul-2007 - 19-Jul-2007 Organisers: Vittorio Loreto and Luc Steels An exciting summerschool is being organised this summer in Erice, sicily. The school focuses on recent research in modeling language evolution using computational, robotic, and mathematical approaches. The main school (http://pil.phys.uniroma1.it/erice2007/index.html) brings together about 30 lecturers, with linguists including: Ben Bergen, Bill Croft, Bruno Galantucci, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Jean-Marie Hombert, Jim Hurford, Laura Michaelis, Bill Wang. There is a specialised atelier (http://www.csl.sony.fr/erice2007/) on using computational Construction Grammar for modeling language evolution with exercises and hands-on experience. interested participants should email as soon as possible to tagora2007 at csl.sony.fr and check out the websites. From kemmer at rice.edu Tue Mar 13 21:26:57 2007 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:26:57 -0500 Subject: John Sinclair Message-ID: Dear functional linguists and corpus linguists: John Sinclair passed away this morning, at the age of 73. A sad loss! For those who don't know about his groundbreaking role in developing the first large language corpora, and the first large corpus-based language reference works, I clipped this from the Univ. of Birmingham English Lg. Research site: www.english.bham.ac.uk/research/events/sinclair.htm "By the late 1970s, when acting as a consultant to their Dictionary division, he persuaded Collins to invest in a radical new research project in computational lexicography, which involved the creation of the largest corpus of English language texts in the world. To support this, at the time by far the largest single research project the University of Birmingham had ever had, one of the first ever text scanners was bought at a cost of ?70,000 and impoverished students worked day and night scanning in texts. This massive effort produced a corpus of amazing size - some 8 million words. By 2001 scanners cost ?80, one-million-word personal corpora are ten a penny and the Bank of English contains some 400 million words. The first COBUILD dictionary was published in 1987, and a steady stream of corpus-based dictionaries, grammars and usage books followed, based on principles which have radically changed the way all publishers produce foreign- learner reference books." From sylvester.osu at wanadoo.fr Tue Mar 13 22:16:03 2007 From: sylvester.osu at wanadoo.fr (Sylvester Osu) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:16:03 +0100 Subject: Call for papers - Universit Franois Ra belais, Tours, France Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS CONFERENCE "CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY AND THE PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION" 29 & 30 NOVEMBER 2007 Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais, Tours UFR Lettres et Langues, ? Langues & Repr?sentations ? Research Group 3 rue des Tanneurs 37041 Tours Cedex 1, France http://langrep.univ-tours.fr ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Sylvester Osu, Gilles Col, Nathalie Garric, Fabienne Toupin DESCRIPTION The world's languages use diverse means to construct and express the identity of people and objects. These means include denomination (e.g. proper nouns, noun phrases, denominal adjectives, etc.) in the sense of categorising living beings and/or inanimate objects through the act of naming, and reduplication (e.g. a salad salad, I mean up-up, etc.) which in some of its uses amounts to typifying. Categorisation is a way of identifying an element with a group while marking its singularity (see e.g. Folkbiology). On the other hand, to produce a sequence like 'un parfum pour les femmes femmes' is tantamount to setting up a subcategory of women par excellence and consequently, introducing a difference among women. In recent years, identification has received a great deal of attention in linguistics. In some theoretical models it has even come to be regarded as a form of linguistic operation. The aim of this conference is to outline the different linguistic operations of identification insofar as they involve the construction of identity and the different linguistic devices through which the identity of a person or object is constructed. We welcome contributions that show how the two notions of identity and identification are articulated in both language and discourse. Contributions can stem from any theoretical background, be based upon any methodological approach and address the issue in any of the world's languages. LANGUAGES The conference will feature presentations in French as well as in English. ABSTRACTS Please submit your abstracts in both RTF and PDF (2 pages minimum and 3 max, in 12-point Times New Roman, simple spacing) by e-mail to the following address: langrep at univ-tours.fr no later than 31 May 2007, submission deadline. Please include the title of the paper but do not mention the name of the author as abstracts will be refereed anonymously. A separate page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, affiliation, postal and email addresses. PUBLICATIONS We intend to publish the papers accepted for the conference. To this effect, revised versions will be reviewed anew by the members of the scientific committee. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Gabriel Bergounioux (Universit? d'Orl?ans/CORAL, Orl?ans) Isabelle Bril (LACITO-CNRS, Paris) Pierre Cadiot (Universit? d'Orl?ans/CORAL, Orl?ans) Gilles Col (Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais, Tours/FORELL, Poitiers) Jean-Michel Fournier (Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Jean-Jacques Franckel (Universit? de Paris X, Nanterre/ LLF (UMR 7110) CNRS, Paris) Jacques Fran?ois (Universit? de Caen Basse-Normandie/CRISCO, FRE 2805) Nathalie Garric (Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Thierry Grass (Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Bernhard Hurch (Institut f?r Sprachwissenschaft, Universit?t Graz, Austria) Rapha?l Kabore (Universit? Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle/LACITO-CNRS, Paris) Georges Kleiber (Universit? Marc Bloch Strasbourg & EA 1339 LDL- Scolia) Daniel Lebaud (Universit? de Franche-Comt?, Besan?on) Fiona McLaughlin (University of Florida, USA) Fran?ois Nemo (Universit? d'Orl?ans/CORAL, Orl?ans) Sylvester Osu (Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Denis Paillard (LLF (UMR 7110) CNRS - Universit? Paris 7, Paris) Michel Paillard (Universit? de Poitiers/FORELL, Poitiers) Fabienne Toupin (Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais/L&R, Tours) Bernard Victorri (LATTICE (UMR 8094) CNRS-ENS, Montrouge) IMPORTANT DATES Abstract deadline: 31 May 2007 Notification: 15 July 2007 Conference dates: Thursday 29 & Friday 30 November 2007 Deadline for registration: 15 September 2007 VENUE : Tours (France). The halls will be announced with the programme. REGISTRATION: 80 EUR FURTHER INFORMATION Sylvester Osu Phone: 336.78.34.13.51 Email: Sylvester.osu at univ-tours.fr http://langrep.univ-tours.fr Universit? Fran?ois Rabelais, Tours UFR Lettres et Langues D?partement des Sciences du Langage 3 rue des Tanneurs 37041 Tours Cedex 1, France From auwera at chello.be Wed Mar 14 20:03:21 2007 From: auwera at chello.be (auwera at chello.be) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:03:21 +0000 Subject: TAM at CIL18, July 2008 Message-ID: Parallel Session at the 18th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF LINGUISTS (CIL 18) July 21-26 2008, Seoul, Republic of Korea TENSE, ASPECT AND MODALITY Organizer: Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp, Belgium) The study of tense, aspect and modality (and mood) remains an important field of linguistics, not least also because of our increased knowledge of the variety found in the world?s languages (see e.g. the World Atlas of Language Structures, ed. by M. Haspelmath et al, Oxford University Press, 2005). Submissions are invited for twenty minute talks (15 minutes for presentation plus 5 minutes for questions), in either English or French, on any topic relating to the general domain of tense, aspect, modality, and mood. Of particular interest will be research that takes one or more of the following perspectives: - the synchronic relation between the three (or four) domains: e.g., do choices in one demain (e.g. modality) restrict the choices in another one (e.g aspect)? what is the relation between modality (mininally understood as the study of necessity and possibility and maximally also including volition and evidentially) and mood (distinctions such as indicative vs. subjunctive)? what is the relation between the concept of irrealis and those of mood and modality? - the diachronic relations between the domains: e.g., how do aspect systems develop into tense systems? how does a tense acquire a modal meaning? - the cross-linguistic study of tense of tense, aspect, modality and mood, either from a global point of view or a more restricted one (language family or linguistic area) Preference is given to presentations that will achieve a cross-theoretical understanding. Important dates: Deadline for Abstract Submission: May 31, 2007 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: August 31, 2007 Submission of Abstracts: A two-page abstract including everything should be sent electronically to both cil18 at cil18.org and johan.vanderauwera at ua.ac.be. Special characters should be in UNICODE. An MS Word and/or PDF file is strongly preferred. From lilianguerrero at yahoo.com Thu Mar 15 15:46:28 2007 From: lilianguerrero at yahoo.com (Lilian Guerrero) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:46:28 -0700 Subject: 2007 RRG Confererence, Second Call Message-ID: The deadline for submitting abstracts for the 2007 Role and Reference Grammar, hosted at the Universidad Nacional Aut?noma de M?xico, has been extended to April 13. Confirmation of acceptance will be communicated by May 1. Information about submitting abstracts and the conference itself can be found on the conference website: http://www.filologicas.unam.mx/2007rrg.html Some time next week, the website will be updated with info about hotels and fees. Please check. Lili?n Guerrero Seminario de Lenguas Ind?genas Instituto de Investigaciones Filol?gicas Universidad Nacional Aut?noma de M?xico Circuito Mario de la Cueva Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 M?xico, D.F. Tlf. +52-(55)-5622-7489 Fax: +52-(55)-5622-7496 ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news From maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr Mon Mar 19 17:46:03 2007 From: maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr (Maarten Lemmens) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:46:03 +0100 Subject: CONF: Reminder deadline Cogling, France, 10-12 May, 2007 Message-ID: ******************************************* ONLY 2 WEEKS LEFT TILL REGISTRATION DEADLINE (APRIL 1, 2007) ******************************************* Second International Conference of the French Association for Cognitive Linguistics (AFLiCo) University of Lille 3, Lille, France 10-12 May 2007 http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/colloque2007/ INVITED SPEAKERS (see the conference web site for titles and abstracts) Jean-Marc COLLETTA (Univ. de Grenoble, France) William CROFT (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA) Christan CUXAC (Univ. Paris 8, France) Susan GOLDIN-MEADOW (Univ of Chicago, Chicago, USA) Nini HOITING (Royal Effatha-Guyot Group Haren, Netherlands) Scott LIDDELL (Gallaudet Univ., Washington, DC, USA) Irit MEIR (Univ. of Haifa, Israel) Dan SLOBIN (Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA) Eve SWEETSER (Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA) Phyllis WILCOX (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA) Sherman WILCOX (Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA) PROGRAMME The detailed programme is downloadable from the conference web site. There will be 4 parallel sessions, of which one is always a thematic session (devoted to sign, gesture or typology), depending on the day. The other sessions deal with different topics in cognitive linguistics. There will also be two special thematic sessions, one on the Lexical-Grammar interface (Lexical bootstrapping), the other on metonymy in gesture. There will also be a poster session on the first two days. CONFERENCE VENUE The conference is hosted by the University of Lille3, France. All talks will be held in the B building. For more info on how to come to Lille or to campus, please check the conference web site. LANGUAGES The official languages of the conference are French, English and French Sign Language (LSF), the latter at least for the first two days. Given the overall international character of the participants, English will generally be preferred. REGISTRATION PROCEDURE See the website for details. REGISTRATION FEE Upon registration, you will have to specify on the form which fee applies to you. To encourage deaf people to attend the conference, especially the first two days, when the sessions on sign language will be held, a special formula has been set up for them (not open to others): - Regular : 80 euros - Student : 40 euros - Member AFLiCo : 60 euros (membership effective at time of registration !) - AFLiCo student : 30 euros (membership effective at time of registration !) - Deaf person attending Thursday, May 10 & Friday, May 11: 50 euros SATELLITE EVENT On the day before the conference, May 9, 9h00 ? 18h00, there will be a workshop on ?Language and Space?, with renowned invited speakers (see the conference web site for full details). The regular fee for this conference is 30 euros (including lunch and coffee), but people also registered for the AFLiCo conference only pay 15 euros. Registration for the workshop is to be done via the same form as that for the conference. SOCIAL PROGRAMME (1) WELCOME RECEPTION & REGISTRATION: Wednesday, May 9, 17h00 ? 20h00 Given the tight conference schedule and given that many participants will already have arrived, registration will be on the day before the conference. We plan to have a small welcome reception. (2) CONFERENCE Dinner: Thursday, May 10, 20h30, Restaurant "Le Flore", Lille. The price for the diner is 30 euros (unlimited beverages during the meal). (3) CONCERT with French-Flemish Renaissance music, Friday May 11, 21h00 This concert will be a unique occasion to hear magnificent polyphonic Renaissance music from the region. It will further have a nice personal touch, in that it will be brought by the vocal ensemble OrSeCante from Leuven, Belgium, the choir of which one of the conference organisers, Maarten Lemmens, has been a member since 1991. The choir is specialized in Renaissance and Baroque music. The concert would be free for the conference participants. (4) GUIDED TOUR IN OLD LILLE, Sunday May 12, 10h00-12h00 To offer visitors a view of the beautiful city of Lille and its rich history, the organisers plan to have a guided tour of old Lille, the day after the conference. Whether this guided tour takes place depends on the number of people who sign up (minimally 15); the price is 8 euros per person. CONTACT - organisers : aflico at univ-lille3.fr - secretary : emmanuelle.jablonski at univ-lille3.fr --- Maarten Lemmens Ma?tre de Conf?rences habilit?, Universit? Lille 3, U.F.R. Angellier (anglais), B.P. 60149, 59653 Villeneuve d'Ascq Cedex, France Membre de l'UMR 8163 Savoirs, Textes, Langage http://perso.univ-lille3.fr/~mlemmens Pr?sident de l'Association Fran?aise de Linguistique Cognitive http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/ Editor-in-Chief "CogniTextes" http://aflico.asso.univ-lille3.fr/cognitextes/ From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Mar 22 15:27:03 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L. Everett) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:27:03 -0500 Subject: Recursion conference Message-ID: Folks, The final program for the conference Recursion in Human Languages, the first conference on this subject, is attached below. Online registration for the conference can be done at: http:// www.peopleware.net/index.cfm? siteCode=2390&eventDisp=107recurs&CFID=6447358&CFTOKEN=81329298 Bloomington-Normal airport is a 20 minute flight from O'Hare or Midway airports in Chicago and the ISU campus can be reached also by Amtrak (5 times daily) or car (123 miles) from Chicago. Dan Everett *** Recursion in Human Languages Final Schedule 0900 Aravind Joshi, Penn: 'Does recursion in language work the same way as in formal systems?' 1000 COFFEE 1015 Hans-Joerg Tiede & Lawrence Stout, Illinois Wesleyan University: 'Recursion, infinity, and modeling' 1050 Arie Verhagen, University of Leiden: 'What do you think is the proper location of recursion? An empirical exploration' 1125 D. Terence Langendoen, National Science Foundation & University of Arizona: 'Are human languages transrecursive?' 1200 Ljiljana Progovac, Wayne State University: 'Grammar without recursion: implications for evolutionary studies' 1235 LUNCH 1335 Simon Levy, Washington & Lee University: 'Becoming recursive' 1410 Ritva Laury, University of Helsinki, & Tsuyoshi Ono, University of Alberta: 'Recursion in conversation: what speakers of Finnish and Japanese know how to do" 1445 Anna Parker, University of Edinburgh: 'Was recursion the key step in the evolution of the human language faculty?' 1520 COFFEE 1535 Robert Futrelle, Northeastern University: 'Recursion in animal behavior: the origin of recursion in human language' 1610 Amy Perfors, Josh Tennenbaum, Terry Regier, MIT: ' Hierarchical phrase structure and recursion: A Bayesian exploration of learnability' 1645 - 1745 Marianne Mithun, UCSB: A typology of recursion SATURDAY, April 28 0900 Edward Gibson, MIT: Processing Recursive Structures 1000 COFFEE 1015 Jeanette Sakel & Eugenie Stapert, University of Manchester: 'Possible markers of embedding in Pirah?: evidence for recursion?' 1050 Eva Juarros-Dauss?, University at Buffalo, SUNY: 'Lack of recursion in the lexicon: the two-argument restriction' 1125 Jan Koster, University of Groningen: 'Recursion and the lexicon' 1200 Fred Karlsson, University of Helsinki: 'Empirically motivated constraints on clausal recursion' 1235 LUNCH 1335 Alec Marantz, New York University: Recursion in Morphology 1435 Yury Lander, Institute for Oriental Studies, Moscow, & Alexander Letuchiny, Russian State University for the Humanities: 'Kinds of recursion in Adyghe morphology' 1510 Yoad Winter, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study: 'Recursion in the semantics of coordination' 1545 Harry Howard, Tulane University: 'Recursion and the computational modeling of prefrontal cortex' 1620 Bart Hollebrandse, University of Groningen, & Thomas Roeper, University of Massachusetts: 'Recursion and propositional exclusivity' 1655 Michael Wagner, Cornell University: 'Prosody and recursion in coordinate structures and beyond' 1730 COFFEE 1745 Laszlo Hunyadi, University of Debrecen, Hungary: 'Cognitive grouping and prosodic recursion' 1820 - 1920 D. Robert Ladd, Edinburgh: What would 'recursion' mean in phonology? SUNDAY, April 29 0900 Daniel L. Everett, ISU: Cultural constraints on recursion 1000 Coffee and snacks 1020 Damir Cavar & Malgorzata E. Cavar, University of Zadar, Croatia: 'Inducing recursion' 1055 Vitor Zimmerer & Rosemary Varley, University of Sheffield: 'Recursive syntax in patients with severe agrammatism' 1130 James Rogers, Earlham College, & Marc Hauser, Harvard University: 'Potential distinguishing characteristics and human aural pattern recognition' 1205 COFFEE 1220 Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen: ' Over the top: recursion as a functional option' 1255 Geoffrey K. Pullum, UCSC: Recursion and the infinitude claim 1355 CONFERENCE ENDS From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Mar 22 16:12:23 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel L.Everett) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:12:23 -0500 Subject: Recursion conference In-Reply-To: <03BAE753-1448-43F2-9399-AE15774EE0F5@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: I forgot to include the dates! APril 27-29 Dan On Mar 22, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote: > Folks, > > The final program for the conference Recursion in Human Languages, > the first conference on this subject, is attached below. Online > registration for the conference can be done at: http:// > www.peopleware.net/index.cfm? > siteCode=2390&eventDisp=107recurs&CFID=6447358&CFTOKEN=81329298 > > > Bloomington-Normal airport is a 20 minute flight from O'Hare or > Midway airports in Chicago and the ISU campus can be reached also > by Amtrak (5 times daily) or car (123 miles) from Chicago. > > Dan Everett > > *** > > Recursion in Human Languages > > Final Schedule > > > > 0900 > > Aravind Joshi, Penn: 'Does recursion in language work the same way > as in formal systems?' > > > 1000 > > COFFEE > > > 1015 > > Hans-Joerg Tiede & Lawrence Stout, Illinois Wesleyan University: > 'Recursion, infinity, and modeling' > > > 1050 > > Arie Verhagen, University of Leiden: 'What do you think is the > proper location of recursion? An empirical > exploration' > > > 1125 > > D. Terence Langendoen, National Science Foundation & University of > Arizona: 'Are human languages transrecursive?' > > > 1200 > > Ljiljana Progovac, Wayne State University: 'Grammar without > recursion: implications for evolutionary studies' > > > 1235 > > LUNCH > > > 1335 > > Simon Levy, Washington & Lee University: 'Becoming recursive' > > > 1410 > > Ritva Laury, University of Helsinki, & Tsuyoshi Ono, University of > Alberta: 'Recursion in conversation: what speakers of Finnish and > Japanese know how to do" > > > 1445 > > Anna Parker, University of Edinburgh: 'Was recursion the key step > in the evolution of the human language faculty?' > > > 1520 > > COFFEE > > > 1535 > > Robert Futrelle, Northeastern University: 'Recursion in animal > behavior: the origin of recursion in human language' > > > > 1610 > > Amy Perfors, Josh Tennenbaum, Terry Regier, MIT: ' Hierarchical > phrase structure and recursion: A Bayesian exploration of > learnability' > > > 1645 - 1745 > > Marianne Mithun, UCSB: A typology of recursion > > > > SATURDAY, April 28 > > > > 0900 > > Edward Gibson, MIT: Processing Recursive Structures > > > 1000 > > COFFEE > > > 1015 > > Jeanette Sakel & Eugenie Stapert, University of Manchester: > 'Possible markers of embedding in Pirah?: evidence for > recursion?' > > > 1050 > > Eva Juarros-Dauss?, University at Buffalo, SUNY: 'Lack of recursion > in the lexicon: the two-argument restriction' > > > 1125 > > Jan Koster, University of Groningen: 'Recursion and the lexicon' > > > 1200 > > Fred Karlsson, University of Helsinki: 'Empirically motivated > constraints on clausal recursion' > > 1235 > > LUNCH > > > 1335 > > Alec Marantz, New York University: Recursion in Morphology > > > 1435 > > Yury Lander, Institute for Oriental Studies, Moscow, & Alexander > Letuchiny, Russian State University for the > Humanities: 'Kinds of recursion in Adyghe morphology' > > > > 1510 > > Yoad Winter, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study: 'Recursion > in the semantics of coordination' > > > 1545 > > Harry Howard, Tulane University: 'Recursion and the computational > modeling of prefrontal cortex' > > > 1620 > > Bart Hollebrandse, University of Groningen, & Thomas Roeper, > University of Massachusetts: 'Recursion and propositional exclusivity' > > > 1655 > > Michael Wagner, Cornell University: 'Prosody and recursion in > coordinate structures and beyond' > > > 1730 > > COFFEE > > > 1745 > > Laszlo Hunyadi, University of Debrecen, Hungary: 'Cognitive > grouping and prosodic recursion' > > > 1820 - 1920 > > D. Robert Ladd, Edinburgh: What would 'recursion' mean in phonology? > > > > SUNDAY, April 29 > > > > 0900 > > Daniel L. Everett, ISU: Cultural constraints on recursion > > > 1000 > > Coffee and snacks > > > 1020 > > Damir Cavar & Malgorzata E. Cavar, University of Zadar, Croatia: > 'Inducing recursion' > > > 1055 > > Vitor Zimmerer & Rosemary Varley, University of Sheffield: > 'Recursive syntax in patients with severe agrammatism' > > > 1130 > > James Rogers, Earlham College, & Marc Hauser, Harvard University: > 'Potential distinguishing characteristics and human > aural pattern recognition' > > > 1205 > > COFFEE > > > > 1220 > > Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen: ' Over the top: recursion > as a functional option' > > > > 1255 > > Geoffrey K. Pullum, UCSC: Recursion and the infinitude claim > > > 1355 > > CONFERENCE ENDS > > ********************** Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics, Anthropology, and Biological Sciences 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/ Honorary Professor of Linguistics University of Manchester Manchester, UK *********** ?The notion that the essence of what it means to be human is most clearly revealed in those features of human culture that are universal rather than in those that are distinctive to this people or that is a prejudice that we are not obliged to share... It may be in the cultural particularities of people ? in their oddities ? that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.? Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) From wilcox at unm.edu Fri Mar 23 02:10:49 2007 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:10:49 -0600 Subject: Fwd: ASL and foreign languages: Critical Update Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I wonder if I could solicit your assistance. I am forwarding to this list an email message I received from P. Vincent Riley, who contacted me for assistance regarding the issue of accepting American Sign Language (ASL) in fulfillment of foreign language requirements. As you'll see from his message, he had been in contact with an organization called the American Academy for Liberal Education. If you will read through the message from Jeff A. Martineau with that organization, you'll see that he and his organization hold some astoundingly misinformed ideas about ASL: that it is a visual form of English, that it is universal (does he not see the contradiction in those two statements?), that it is "not a separate frame of reference for thinking." No matter your position on whether ASL should meet foreign language requirements -- I happen to think it should, but I also recognize that reasonable people might disagree on exactly which languages should meet undergraduate FL requirements -- I hope you will agree that these kinds of misinformed views need to be corrected. If you agree would you consider writing a message to Mr. Martineau? Thank you, -- Sherman Wilcox, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Linguistics University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox 505-277-0928 Begin forwarded message: > From: "P. Vincent Riley" > Date: March 22, 2007 7:45:24 PM MDT > To: wilcox at unm.edu > Subject: ASL and foreign languages: Critical Update > > Dear Professor Wilcox, > > I am forwarding to you the following communication > from me to Jeff A. Martineau, the Director for Higher > Education for the American Academy of Libereal > Education, an organization that accredits the general > education component of college and university courses, > as well as liberal arts and liberal studies programs. > > Neumann College, which has appeared on your list for a > few years, for example, has recently elected to drop > recognition of ASL as a substitute for the foreign > language requirement. One reason given was that they > would not be able to receive accreditation of their > liberal arts programs from the AALE, and they want > that accreditation for their liberal arts and general > education programs (although they already have > regional acceditation for the institution). > > When I checked with the AALE about their position, it > was finally confirmed. The reasons given for their > position seem rather ill-informed to me, because I > have reviewed Sheryl Cooper's 1997 doctoral thesis, > and I assumed that it and other evidence that you > refer to on your web site contradict the assertions > made by Mr. Martineau. > > If other institutions that are also not well-informed > about the unique linguistic nature of American Sign > Language and the culture that practices it, and > instead believe that it is a branch of American > English tied to American culture, I fear for the > progress that has been made in recognizing ASL at > academic instituions. > > On the other hand, I am pleased to note that some > states have started to call for recognition of the > academic status of ASL. > > I hope that you and other linguistic and social > scientific scholars can assist the AALE in making > well-informed decisions for the betterment of all our > institutions of higher education. > > > > --- "P. Vincent Riley" wrote: > >> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:46:37 -0700 (PDT) >> From: "P. Vincent Riley" >> Subject: Re: ASL and foreign languages >> To: "Jeff A. Martineau" >> CC: Jeffrey Wallin >> >> Mr. Martineau, >> >> Thank you for the courtesy of your reply. >> >> As you occupy a pivotal role in your institution, I >> will try to see that some of the assertions in your >> letter regarding ASL are addressed by competent >> linguistic scholars. >> >> Noteworthy among these are the following: >> >> "[ASL} is really a visual form of English." >> >> "[ASL] not a separate frame of reference for >> thinking, >> as >> reading or speaking a foreign language or being >> immersed in a foreign culture." >> >> "ASL is part of the American culture and is in fact >> a >> form of >> English." >> >> Should any of my contacts try to address these to >> you >> at the American Academy of Liberal Education, I will >> suggest that they indicate their affiliation. It is >> clear that a great deal of education lies before us. >> >> Once again, thank you for clarifying the position of >> the AALE. >> >> Sincerely, >> >> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" wrote: >> >>> Mr. Riley, >>> >>> I am sure you can understand why one might have >>> reservations about >>> responding to inquiries that have no name or >>> affiliation. >>> >>> It is my understanding that in fact my name and >>> affiliation do appear at >>> the bottom of all emails. I will take it for >> granted >>> that in this case >>> it did not. >>> >>> I am the Director overseeing our Higher Education >>> division. >>> >>> With regard to ASL v. spoken foreign languages, >> your >>> are correct, the >>> Academy has not previously seen ASL as an adequate >>> replacement, in part >>> because it is really a visual form of English. It >> is >>> the way one >>> communicates, it is not a separate frame of >>> reference for thinking, as >>> reading or speaking a foreign language or being >>> immersed in a foreign >>> culture. ASL is part of the American culture and >> is >>> in fact a form of >>> English. One might envision a universal form of >> sign >>> language that went >>> beyond these borders. >>> >>> However, any college can attempt to make an >> argument >>> within their >>> self-study as to why the various components, >>> together, form a curriculum >>> that does in fact meet the Standards and Criteria. >>> The Board of >>> Trustees, which makes all final decisions with >>> regard to standards would >>> certainly take up such a debate, though without >>> knowing the program more >>> specifically, I can not offer a judgment as to the >>> over quality of a >>> program that included ASL as an option to foreign >>> languages. Bear in >>> mind, that our requirement is that all students in >>> the program must meet >>> the requirements, e.g., all students are required >> to >>> meet the language >>> component. >>> >>> I hope this offers some guidance. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: >>>> Dear Sir, >>>> >>>> Thank you for taking the time to not respond to >>> our >>>> email. Although you did indicate an affiliation, >>> your >>>> email was no more signed than our own. Hence, we >>> will >>>> not respond to your email either. >>>> >>>> I am surprised that a request for simple >>> information >>>> is subject to such bureaucratic rigor. It seems >>> like >>>> an interesting higher education management >> system. >>>> >>>> For your information, the email system on your >> web >>>> site did not seem to function properly when I >>>> initially tried to contact your organization. It >>> might >>>> be wise to place a notice on your contact page >>> that no >>>> response will be given to contacts initiated >>> without >>>> an affiliation and a signature. >>>> >>>> As I am an educational consultant who retired >> from >>>> Northern Marianas College, I no longer am >>> affiliated >>>> with that institution. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> >>>> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" >>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> --------------------------------- >>>> Dear Sir, >>>> >>>> We do not respond to emails that are not signed >>> and >>>> without anaffiliation. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: I have been >> informed >>> by >>>> others that the AALE refuses to regard American >>> Sign >>>> Language as a "foreign language" for purposes of >>>> generaleducation when it accredits institutions >>> and/or >>>> programs. >>>> >>>> Since it has been well-documented that deaf >>> culture >>>> is a unique culture, and that ASL has its own >>>> grammatical structure and"vocabulary," I am >>> curious to >>>> know the basis for the AALE's position,if, in >>> fact, I >>>> understand it correctly. >>>> >>>> I know of an institution that is dropping the >>>> acceptance of ASLcourses in fulfillment of the >>>> "foreign language" requirement, because its >>>> administration believes it must do this to >> receive >>>> accreditation of its liberal arts general >>> education >>>> program by the AALE. >>>> >>>> Thank you for your consideration. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> P. Vincent Riley Jr. >>>> Educational Consultant >>>> Oceania Pacific Educational Networking >>>> P.O. Box 501916 >>>> Saipan, MP 96950-1916 >>>> (484)-886-9128 >>>> >>>> >> >> >> >> P. Vincent Riley Jr. >> Educational Consultant >> Oceania Pacific Educational Networking >> P.O. Box 501916 >> Saipan, MP 96950-1916 >> (484)-886-9128 >> >> >> >> > ______________________________________________________________________ > ______________ >> Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 >> hotels >> in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your >> fit. >> http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097 >> > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > ______________ > No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go > with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started. > http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail From hopper at cmu.edu Fri Mar 23 13:05:20 2007 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:05:20 -0400 Subject: Makaton In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Re. Sherman's posting on ASL: By coincidence I was about to post an inquiry to FunkNet on a related matter. So that my own posting doesn't distract from the important questions in Sherman's message, I'm presenting my own inquiry as a separate thread. I have just returned from the UK, and a big thing over there is "Makaton". It's a combination of spoken English and manual signs borrowed from British Sign Language. It was developed originally for learning-disabled kids (autistic, retarded), where it was so successful that teachers have been introducing it into the normal classrooms, and it has become something of a fad, spreading into the playgrounds and streets among grade-schoolers. My question is: does anyone know of any _linguistic_ studies of Makaton? Its grammar, etc.? "Cheers", Paul > Dear colleagues, > > I wonder if I could solicit your assistance. I am forwarding to this list > an email message I received from P. Vincent Riley, who contacted me for > assistance regarding the issue of accepting American Sign Language (ASL) > in fulfillment of foreign language requirements. As you'll see from his > message, he had been in contact with an organization called the American > Academy for Liberal Education. > > If you will read through the message from Jeff A. Martineau with that > organization, you'll see that he and his organization hold some > astoundingly misinformed ideas about ASL: that it is a visual form of > English, that it is universal (does he not see the contradiction in those > two statements?), that it is "not a separate frame of reference for > thinking." > > No matter your position on whether ASL should meet foreign language > requirements -- I happen to think it should, but I also recognize that > reasonable people might disagree on exactly which languages should meet > undergraduate FL requirements -- I hope you will agree that these kinds of > misinformed views need to be corrected. If you agree would you consider > writing a message to Mr. Martineau? > > Thank you, > > -- Sherman Wilcox, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Linguistics > University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 > > http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox 505-277-0928 > > > > Begin forwarded message: > >> From: "P. Vincent Riley" Date: March 22, 2007 >> 7:45:24 PM MDT To: wilcox at unm.edu Subject: ASL and foreign languages: >> Critical Update >> >> Dear Professor Wilcox, >> >> I am forwarding to you the following communication from me to Jeff A. >> Martineau, the Director for Higher Education for the American Academy of >> Libereal Education, an organization that accredits the general education >> component of college and university courses, as well as liberal arts and >> liberal studies programs. >> >> Neumann College, which has appeared on your list for a few years, for >> example, has recently elected to drop recognition of ASL as a substitute >> for the foreign language requirement. One reason given was that they >> would not be able to receive accreditation of their liberal arts >> programs from the AALE, and they want that accreditation for their >> liberal arts and general education programs (although they already have >> regional acceditation for the institution). >> >> When I checked with the AALE about their position, it was finally >> confirmed. The reasons given for their position seem rather ill-informed >> to me, because I have reviewed Sheryl Cooper's 1997 doctoral thesis, and >> I assumed that it and other evidence that you refer to on your web site >> contradict the assertions made by Mr. Martineau. >> >> If other institutions that are also not well-informed about the unique >> linguistic nature of American Sign Language and the culture that >> practices it, and instead believe that it is a branch of American English >> tied to American culture, I fear for the progress that has been made in >> recognizing ASL at academic instituions. >> >> On the other hand, I am pleased to note that some states have started to >> call for recognition of the academic status of ASL. >> >> I hope that you and other linguistic and social scientific scholars can >> assist the AALE in making well-informed decisions for the betterment of >> all our institutions of higher education. >> >> >> >> --- "P. Vincent Riley" wrote: >> >>> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:46:37 -0700 (PDT) From: "P. Vincent Riley" >>> Subject: Re: ASL and foreign languages To: "Jeff A. >>> Martineau" CC: Jeffrey Wallin >>> >>> >>> Mr. Martineau, >>> >>> Thank you for the courtesy of your reply. >>> >>> As you occupy a pivotal role in your institution, I will try to see >>> that some of the assertions in your letter regarding ASL are addressed >>> by competent linguistic scholars. >>> >>> Noteworthy among these are the following: >>> >>> "[ASL} is really a visual form of English." >>> >>> "[ASL] not a separate frame of reference for thinking, as reading or >>> speaking a foreign language or being immersed in a foreign culture." >>> >>> "ASL is part of the American culture and is in fact a form of English." >>> >>> Should any of my contacts try to address these to you at the American >>> Academy of Liberal Education, I will suggest that they indicate their >>> affiliation. It is clear that a great deal of education lies before >>> us. >>> >>> Once again, thank you for clarifying the position of the AALE. >>> >>> Sincerely, >>> >>> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" wrote: >>> >>>> Mr. Riley, >>>> >>>> I am sure you can understand why one might have reservations about >>>> responding to inquiries that have no name or affiliation. >>>> >>>> It is my understanding that in fact my name and affiliation do >>>> appear at the bottom of all emails. I will take it for >>> granted >>>> that in this case it did not. >>>> >>>> I am the Director overseeing our Higher Education division. >>>> >>>> With regard to ASL v. spoken foreign languages, >>> your >>>> are correct, the Academy has not previously seen ASL as an adequate >>>> replacement, in part because it is really a visual form of English. >>>> It >>> is >>>> the way one communicates, it is not a separate frame of reference for >>>> thinking, as reading or speaking a foreign language or being immersed >>>> in a foreign culture. ASL is part of the American culture and >>> is >>>> in fact a form of English. One might envision a universal form of >>> sign >>>> language that went beyond these borders. >>>> >>>> However, any college can attempt to make an >>> argument >>>> within their self-study as to why the various components, together, >>>> form a curriculum that does in fact meet the Standards and Criteria. >>>> The Board of Trustees, which makes all final decisions with regard >>>> to standards would certainly take up such a debate, though without >>>> knowing the program more specifically, I can not offer a judgment as >>>> to the over quality of a program that included ASL as an option to >>>> foreign languages. Bear in mind, that our requirement is that all >>>> students in the program must meet the requirements, e.g., all >>>> students are required >>> to >>>> meet the language component. >>>> >>>> I hope this offers some guidance. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: >>>>> Dear Sir, >>>>> >>>>> Thank you for taking the time to not respond to >>>> our >>>>> email. Although you did indicate an affiliation, >>>> your >>>>> email was no more signed than our own. Hence, we >>>> will >>>>> not respond to your email either. >>>>> >>>>> I am surprised that a request for simple >>>> information >>>>> is subject to such bureaucratic rigor. It seems >>>> like >>>>> an interesting higher education management >>> system. >>>>> >>>>> For your information, the email system on your >>> web >>>>> site did not seem to function properly when I initially tried to >>>>> contact your organization. It >>>> might >>>>> be wise to place a notice on your contact page >>>> that no >>>>> response will be given to contacts initiated >>>> without >>>>> an affiliation and a signature. >>>>> >>>>> As I am an educational consultant who retired >>> from >>>>> Northern Marianas College, I no longer am >>>> affiliated >>>>> with that institution. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> --- "Jeff A. Martineau" >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> --------------------------------- Dear Sir, >>>>> >>>>> We do not respond to emails that are not signed >>>> and >>>>> without anaffiliation. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> P. Vincent Riley wrote: I have been >>> informed >>>> by >>>>> others that the AALE refuses to regard American >>>> Sign >>>>> Language as a "foreign language" for purposes of generaleducation >>>>> when it accredits institutions >>>> and/or >>>>> programs. >>>>> >>>>> Since it has been well-documented that deaf >>>> culture >>>>> is a unique culture, and that ASL has its own grammatical >>>>> structure and"vocabulary," I am >>>> curious to >>>>> know the basis for the AALE's position,if, in >>>> fact, I >>>>> understand it correctly. >>>>> >>>>> I know of an institution that is dropping the acceptance of >>>>> ASLcourses in fulfillment of the "foreign language" requirement, >>>>> because its administration believes it must do this to >>> receive >>>>> accreditation of its liberal arts general >>>> education >>>>> program by the AALE. >>>>> >>>>> Thank you for your consideration. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> P. Vincent Riley Jr. Educational Consultant Oceania Pacific >>>>> Educational Networking P.O. Box 501916 Saipan, MP 96950-1916 >>>>> (484)-886-9128 >>>>> >>>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> P. Vincent Riley Jr. Educational Consultant Oceania Pacific Educational >>> Networking P.O. Box 501916 Saipan, MP 96950-1916 (484)-886-9128 >>> >>> >>> >>> >> ______________________________________________________________________ >> ______________ >>> Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 hotels in 45,000 >>> destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit. >>> http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097 >>> >> >> >> >> >> ______________________________________________________________________ >> ______________ No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with Yahoo! >> Mail for Mobile. Get started. http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail > > > > From wilcox at unm.edu Fri Mar 23 13:16:30 2007 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:16:30 -0600 Subject: Makaton In-Reply-To: <2716.72.95.238.177.1174655120.squirrel@72.95.238.177> Message-ID: How interesting. Paul, I have some colleagues in Britain who do signed language research. I'll forward this to them and ask if they know of anyone doing this kind of work. Coincidentally, I was flipping through TV channels here last night (trying to find some news and avoid yet another Anna Nicole Smith story), and spotted a commercial with kids signing. It was some book, or DVD, or something for teaching young hearing children to sign as a way to improve their language skills. This is becoming quite a fad here too. On the one hand it's neat. On the other... Do you know how frustrating it is for Deaf people, and for parents (Deaf or hearing) with deaf children, to see this happening when deaf children and their parents are still being told that signing will harm their child's language development? As for my original posting on the AALE's position on ASL as a FL: THANK YOU to ALL who have responded. Let's hope that we can nudge AALE a bit towards the enlightenment that we hope a liberal education should provide. On Mar 23, 2007, at 7:05 AM, Paul Hopper wrote: > I have just returned from the UK, and a big thing over there is > "Makaton". It's a combination of spoken English and manual signs > borrowed from British Sign Language. It was developed originally > for learning-disabled kids (autistic, retarded), where it was so > successful that teachers have been introducing it into the normal > classrooms, and it has become something of a fad, spreading into > the playgrounds and streets among grade-schoolers. My question is: > does anyone know of any _linguistic_ studies of Makaton? Its > grammar, etc.? > -- Sherman From jrubba at calpoly.edu Fri Mar 23 20:22:28 2007 From: jrubba at calpoly.edu (Johanna Rubba) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:22:28 -0800 Subject: American Sign Language Message-ID: Dear Mr. Martineau, I feel compelled to write to you after reading a forward of your communications with P. Vincent Reilly regarding the nature of American Sign Language (ASL). As I'm sure you will be hearing from a number of academic linguists, your understanding of ASL is somewhat behind the times. ASL has been intensively studied for several decades now, and it is eminently clear that it is not a form of English; it is not based on English. ASL is a completely independent and full-fledged language, as are other sign languages found around the globe. It has its own distinct vocabulary, word order, system for signaling tenses, inflection (related gesturally), and so on. Acquisition of sign language in deaf children, both normal and abnormal, has been extensively studied at the highly revered Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (you can find many references to the work of Ursula Bellugi and her associates in academic databases). You have, I'm sure, heard from Sherman Wilcox, and eminent sign language expert at the University of New Mexico; you may also hear from linguists at Gallaudet University who study and teach (in and about) ASL. As to the connection of ASL to American culture -- ASL originated in France and was imported to the USA as a means of educating deaf children. Over the decades, a culture of the Deaf (yes, they capitalize it) has evolved which has its own practices and traditions. There are many Deaf people who feel that they are simply a different group of people, analogous to an ethnic minority, and do not see themselves as disabled. Their culture is surely very similar to American culture, but so is the culture of a country like Canada, South Africa, or Australia. ASL certainly does have a quite different frame of reference for thinking. The way time and space are viewed is quite different from English, and ASL has its own set of rules for polite interaction, etc., just as other languages and cultures do. In many ways, ASL is structurally more "foreign" than other European languages such as Spanish or Danish. The general public is only minimally aware of linguistics as a discipline of the human sciences, but scholars of linguistics have been amassing an extraordinary base of knowledge about human language for over two hundred years. Much of the most revealing research has taken place in the last 50-60 years. Because of the discipline's low profile, and because of the robustness of popular (but incorrect) "wisdom" about language in general, misunderstanding of ASL is widespread. Personally, I believe ASL should be acceptable as fulfilling a high-school or college language requirement. I have had many students who have found ASL both fascinating and enriching, and have broadened their understanding of humanity greatly by learning to communicate with the deaf, and seeing how ASL provides many new frames for seeing the world. American children are so often reluctant to study a "foreign" language (in many parts of the USA, Spanish can hardly be considered foreign), we should welcome a language that students are eager to learn. Consider also that most students will have little to no opportunity to use the German, French, or Italian they study in high school or college after graduation, while they can find many opportunities to use ASL right here in the United States. Students who study ASL are also often service-oriented and wish to enter professions like education, where ASL users are needed. Legislation and policies that require the availability of ASL interpreters also abound, and need recruits. We should be encouraging the study of ASL, not discouraging it. I hope you and your colleagues at the American Academy for Liberal Education will research the many scientifically-sound resources on ASL. Whether or not you decide to accept ASL as fulfilling any education requirements, it is crucial that an institution with power such as yours be up to date on the science that underlies your decisions. Thank you for taking the time to read this message. Sincerely, Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba From hougaard at language.sdu.dk Fri Mar 30 11:05:12 2007 From: hougaard at language.sdu.dk (Anders Hougaard) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:05:12 +0200 Subject: Language, Culture and Mind 3: 1st Theme Sessions Call Message-ID: Language Culture and Mind 3 1st Theme sessions call The LCM committee and local organizers call for theme session proposals for the third conference in the series Language, Culture and Mind. The conference will be held in modern and comfortable conference facilities at University of Southern Denmark in Odense 14th - 16th July 2008. The conference aims at establishing an interdisciplinary forum for an integration of cognitive, social and cultural perspectives in theoretical and empirical studies of language and communication The special theme of the conference is Social Life and Meaning Construction. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, social interaction, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to impart their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between social life, culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language and communication sciences. Dates *First call for Theme Sessions: April 1, 2007 * Second call for Theme Sessions: May 1, 2007 * Third call for Theme Sessions: June 1, 2007 * Deadline for Theme Sessions submissions: July 1, 2007 * Notification for Theme Sessions : August 1, 2007 NOTICE: calls for the general session and for posters will be made later. Submissions guidelines Max. 500 words (including references) To be submitted to lcm at language.sdu.dk Submissions will be evaluated according to their * Relevance * Quality * Coherence * Originality * Organization Once your suggestion is approved, you will need to arrange for Theme Session Contributors for your theme. They will need to submit abstracts for their contributions and as Theme Session Organizer you will be responsible for their review. More than one person may organize a theme. NOTICE: The LCM reserves the right to reject papers accepted by Theme Session reviewers. However, this right will only be exercised if accepted papers deviate too far from the goals of LCM with respect to their content and/or quality. Plenary speakers: Michael Chandler (University of British Columbia) Alessandro Duranti (University of California at Los Angeles) Derek Edwards (University of Loughborough) Marianne Gullberg (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) Esa Itkonen (University of Turku) Conference Website: http://www.lcm.sdu.dk (under constructon!) Earlier LCM conferences: 1st LCM conference: Portsmouth 2004 2nd LCM conference: Paris 2006 The international LCM committee: Raphael Berthele Carlos Cornejo Caroline David Merlin Donald Barbara Fultner Anders R. Hougaard Jean Lass?gue John A Lucy Aliyah Morgenstern Eve Pinsker Vera da Silva Sinha Chris Sinha Jordan Zlatev The local organizing committee: Center for Social Practises and Cognition (SoPraCon): Rineke Brouwer Dennis Day Annette Grindsted Anders R. Hougaard Gitte R. Hougaard (Director) Kristian Mortensen Scientific Committee (incomplete list) Anne Salazar Orvig Meredith Williams Todd Oakley Jonathan Potter Robin Wooffitt Alan Cienki Cornellia M?ller Ewa Dabrowska Edy Veneziano Shaun Gallagher Edwin Hutchins Anders R. Hougaard Assistant professor, PhD Institute of Language and Communication University of Southern Denmark, Odense hougaard at language.sdu.dk Phone: +45 65503154 Fax: + 45 65932483