From maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr Mon Oct 1 15:09:32 2007 From: maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr (Maarten Lemmens) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:09:32 +0100 Subject: JOB (URGENT): Tenure track ESL, Univ. Lille3, France Message-ID: Tenure track position ESL, Université Lille3, France http://www.univ-lille3.fr !!! URGENT JOB NOTICE !!! Answer needed before Oct. 5, 2007 !!! Pending funding, the University of Lille 3, France, may have an opening for a tenure track position in English as a Second Language. REQUIREMENTS The candidate must hold a PhD, or be sure to have a PhD in hand by December 1, 2007 at the latest, in the field of Second Language Acquisition (English) and have demonstrated expertise in this domain, through quality publication and solid teaching experience. The ideal candidate will engage in the further expansion of the ESL teaching and research group at the Université Lille3. Normal teaching load is about 7 hours per week (2 terms of 13 weeks) and concerns English classes for non-specialists (ESP) exclusively (undergraduate level). Hiring will be done at the level of "Maître de Conférences" with a monthly salary scale ranging from 2,058 to 3,722 (before taxes and withholdings), depending on the number of years of experience at MCF level (i.e. most positions for which a PhD is required). (For a more detailed description of what an MCF position entails, see http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/rapport/2007/observatoirees9.pdf, p. 82-86) Initially, there is no requirement that candidates speak French fluently, but it is necessary that they at least have a sufficient knowledge to understand the procedures. The successful candidate must be authorized to work legally in France by Sept. 1, 2008, the start date of the position. PROCEDURE Candidates who are interested in this position should send their CV to Maarten Lemmens (maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and no later than FRIDAY, OCT. 5, 2007 !! (Note: the first official step for candidates is to register on-line by Octobre 16, 2007, 17:00 (Parisian time) on the official site of the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche.) -- Maarten Lemmens Professeur en linguistique et didactique des langues (Spécialités: linguistique anglaise & linguistique cognitive) 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/ Board member of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association http://www.cogling.org/ -- From tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu Mon Oct 1 20:16:44 2007 From: tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:16:44 -0700 Subject: Piraha, complexity & universal: Another shot Message-ID: Dear FUNK people, I was disappointed with the discussion that followed Dan Everett' submission on Piraha a while back, regarding syntactic complexity and universals. At the time I thought that the issues of more interest (at least to me) somehow got side-stepped. So, I am attaching (in two formats) an attempt to revive that discussion. I do this rather than making this a long message (3.5 pp.), so that y'all can decide whether you want to bother. At the very least, this will give Dan one more opportunity to convince the (sympathetic) skeptics Best, TG From kemmer at rice.edu Mon Oct 1 21:08:05 2007 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:08:05 -0500 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Funknet doesn't take email attachments (to avoid spreading viruses and for other technical reasons), so I got the following text from Tom and will disseminate it for him. I am leaving the page breaks in, in case people want to paste it back to a Word document. --Suzanne RE: DAN EVERETT ON PIRAHA AND UNIVERSALS T. Givón White Cloud Ranch Ignacio, Colorado When Dan Everett came out with his original peer-review article ("Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Piraha" , Current Anthropology 46.4, 2005), I was disappointed with the peer reviewers' response (or lack thereof) to one major area where he stakes his claims, so-called 'recursivity'. My disappointment centered first on the fact that Dan, while going after Chomsky (cf. Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch 2002) with the relish of a recent convert, let Chomsky–once again, alas--dictate both the agenda and terms of engagement. But I also thought that few of the peer respondents did justice to the issues of syntactic complexity that were either raised or implied in Dan's work. My disappointment persisted through the eventual discussion earlier this year on Funknet. So I thought it would perhaps be useful to raise the topic once again, and if nothing else give both Dan and y'all a second go at it. 1. Chomsky's 'recursivity' as a framework: It is indeed sad to see the Hauser et al. (2002) article being allowed to frame our discussion, indeed dictate its terms. That article was one more attempt, undisguised, to resurrect 'competence' as the bastion of pure innateness. This was presumably achieved by singling out one important property of human grammar(s)--syntactic complexity achieved through the embedding of clauses inside other clauses--as the real essence of human grammar, and then claiming that this unique property is not the product of adaptive-selective evolution. There are a zillion issues wrapped up in this tortuous intellectual exercise. First, there are many other major and minor functional and structural properties of human grammar that are just as species-unique--declarative speech acts, multi-propositional coherence, referential displacement, multiple grammatical morphologies and syntactic constructions (and their attendant semantic-pragmatic correlates). Why single out 'recursivity'? Never mind that recursive-hierarchic structure is actually the hallmark of complex, automated biological processing in motor-control, memory, vision and other complex behaviors, all predating homo sapiens by healthy margins. Next, by lumping up all complex/embedded constructions under the rubric of 'recursivity', one tends to obscures the fact, well- known from both child-language and diachronic-syntax research, that different complex constructions arise in different communicative contexts, under different adaptive pressures, at starkly different ages in children (Diessel 2005), and through distinctly different diachronic pathways of grammaticalization. By lumping them all together into 'recursivity', and by insulating 'recursivity' from both its adaptive (communicative) motivation and its developmental (diachronic, ontogenetic) sources, one guts the issue of syntactic complexity. All that is left is the abstract computational aspect (Simon 1962). 2/everett.07 Further, Chomsky's Generative approach to universals has always been distinctly Platonic and patently non-biological. Only properties of language that are attested in 100% of human languages are universal. A single 'exception' shoots down the rule. But neither biology nor behavior nor language are amenable to this pristine view of universals. They are notoriously subject to variation and gradation, and those are in turn introduced and mediated by the developmental processes that shape both structure and behavior-- evolution, ontogeny, diachrony. Indeed, in order to achieve his pristine universals, Chomsky has found in necessary to make universals more and more abstract and increasingly removed from the visible phenomenology of language. In one sense, however, Chomsky has had the right intuition about universals: They are not the mere list of visible properties manifest in extant (or extinct) languages. Rather, they are principles that 'govern'--or in our terms, explain--the visible phenomenology. And they manifest their 'government' through the developmental processes--acquisition and diachrony–in much the same way as universals of biology manifest themselves through phylogeny (evolution) and ontogeny (embryology). In both biology and language, the reason why variation and 'exceptions' are both possible and necessary is because the underlying adaptive principles are often in conflict ('conflicting motivation'), and pull structures in different directions, often in a see-saw fashion. Thus, in phonology, articulation & perception are at constant loggerhead with each other. And likewise in grammaticalization, similarity to related source construction pulls in one direction (analogical extension and synonymy), while communicative distinctness pulls in the other (specialization and differentiation). But Chomsky, much like Saussure, was not about to subject his principles and parameters to the messy vagaries of acquisition and diachrony. The entire Generative enterprise rests on this rejection of the relevance of change and variation. This is where 'competence' rides in to the rescue. 2. The diachrony of complex/embedded constructions Embedded constructions in both the verb-phase and the noun-phrase fall under the unified intonation contour of the host main-clause. This is the most general structural feature of embedding. Invariably, however, these syntactic constructions start their life as paratactic ones--two clauses under separate intonation contours but already performing the communicative function of embedded clauses. The condensation--or merger--under a single intonation contour is the earliest structural indication of the grammaticalization of complex clauses (Mithun 2006, 2007). The literature on this parataxis-to-syntaxis trend is massive, and some of it not all that recent (Givón 1971, 1979; Dahl 2004; Heine and Kouteva 2007; Givón 2006, 2007; inter alia). It involves a two-step developmental trend: (a) Parataxis to syntaxis (b) Syntaxis to morphology/lexis Each of those steps contributes to the rise of complex-hierarchic structure--syntactic and lexical, respectively. 3/everett.07 Grammaticalization is multi-stepped and 'cyclical', the latter meaning that it may move from the earliest 'source' stage to a 'mature' construction stage, and eventually to phonologically- induced deterioration and back to zero. Most syntactic constructions and morphologies grammaticalize independently of each other. Only in post-pidgin contexts do constructions start together from zero. And such seeming synchronicity is temporary. For each potentially- complex syntactic construction (REL-clause, V-complement, passive, cleft, WH-question, etc.), one can catch a language at any given point of the developmental cycle. Piraha is not exactly unique in showing an early paratactic stage of REL-clauses and V-complement. Serial-verb languages all over Africa and Southeast Asia are in the same typological bag. Bambara (Mendeic) and Supyire (Senufu) are there. In both, however, the earliest step of clausal complexity-- merger of intonation contours--is already discernable, more advanced in Bambara, less so in Supyire. The same is true of Hittite. The same of Mohawk. The same in scores of Southeast Asian languages. All you have to do is catch them at the early stage of the grammaticalization cycle. But cycles--and their stages-- come and go, often gradually, often piecemeal. Is it so unique to catch a language at a particular stage? 3. Does culture constrain grammaticalization? If the diachronic facts indeed hold, as I think they do, then the question about the role of culture in constraining grammar must be recast as 'the role of culture in constraining grammaticalization'. Put another way: Is the fact that we find a language at an early stage of the rise--most often renovation--of complex construction in any way correlated to culture? The challenge for Everett here is two-fold. First, of the languages that display, roughly, the same early paratactic stage of the rise of complex clauses, some are small hunting-and-gathering societies-of-intimates (Piraha), some are old- establish pre-industrial cultivators with much larger social units (Bambara, Supyire, Mohawk), some are agrarian city-states or even empires (Hittite, Han Chinese). What exactly does culture predict here? And second, grammatical constructions rise and fall. And their renovation seems to be motivated largely by communicative need. In most language where we have historical or reconstructive evidence, one could show two or even three generations of rise-and-fall of the same construction. And most often no cultural change is correlated with such diachronic cycles. Did German revert to a society-of- intimates ca. 300-400 years ago when it was renovating its REL- clause construction, reverting to parataxis? And did it then sprint back to the industrial revolution when it eventually proceeded to well-grammaticalized syntaxis (merged intonation contours, de- stressed REL-pronouns)? Did the ascendant Han empire change from an intimate hunting-and-gathering society to a complex society-of- strangers as it created, one piece at a time, the complex syntactic construction of Mandarin Chinese--in every case starting from parataxis of clause-chaining? And did Han culture collapse earlier on, back to an intimate small society of hunters-and- gatherers, when it expanded imperially, moved east and south, and took over the vast Austro-Asiatic 4/everett.07 substratum--and in the process 'regressed' from the highly-complex Bodic-Tibetan Syntax to the near-pidgin parataxis of the Tao The Ching? Did the Hittite empire change culturally between the paratactic REL-clause of Old Hittite and the embedded REL-clauses of Middle Hittite? If one advocates cultural constraints on grammaticalization, in this case on the presence or absence of complex/embedded, one needs to demonstrate some, hopefully consistent, correlations between cultural and linguistic traits. References Dahl, O. (2004) The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Diessel, H. (2005) The Acquisition of Complex Sentences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Everett, D. (2005) "Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Piraha", Current Anthropology, 46.4 Givón, T. (1971) "Historical syntax and synchronic morphology: An archaeologist's field trip", CLS #7, Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society Givón, T. (1979) On Understanding Grammar, NY: Academic Press Givón, T. (2006) "Multiple routes to clause union: On the diachrony of syntactic complexity", Seminario de Complexidad Sitáctica, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, November 2006 (ms) Givón, T. (2007) "Toward a diachronic typology of relative clauses", Symposium on the Genesis of Syntactic Complexity, Rice University, Houston, March 2008 (ms) Hauser, M., N. Chomsky and T. Fitch (2002) "The faculty of language: What it is, what it has, and how it evolved", Science, 298 Heine, B. and T. Kouteva (2007) The Genesis of Grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press Mithun, M. (2006) "Structural parameters of clause integration: Complementation in Mohawk", Seminario de Complejidad Sintáctica, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo (ms) Mithun, M. (2007) "Threads in the tapestry of syntax: Complementation and Mohawk", UC Santa Barbara (ms) Simon, H. (1962) "The architecture of complexity", Proc. Amer. Philos. Society, 106.6 From dlevere at ilstu.edu Mon Oct 1 21:48:21 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:48:21 -0400 Subject: My reply to Givon In-Reply-To: <1DBA7F8B-7695-4AE2-B159-DE54D81EB79B@rice.edu> Message-ID: Tom and I have agreed on many things and disagreed on many things. So when he told me that he would be posting a note to Funknet about my Current Anthropology article, I wasn't sure what to expect. Now that I have read it, however, I can say that I am in agreement with most of it. Before giving my reply, let me give a plug for a book to be released next year: Don't sleep, there are jaguars: Lessons on life, language, and belief from the Amazon (Pantheon Books in the US; Profile Books in the UK; DVA in Germany; Flammarion in France; and several other countries). This book discusses in detail Piraha culture, my life among them, and the implications of their language and culture for our understanding of Homo sapiens. It also discusses my journey from Christian missionary to atheist, as a result of the Pirahas' empiricism. Let me begin with a few points of clarification. First of all, I did not originally write my article as any kind of response to Hauser, Fitch, and Chomsky initial article on the broad vs. narrow faculties of language (FLB vs. FLN, respectively), certainly it was not written as a response to their idea of recursion. I didn't even know about their article at the time. I was busy beginning a new research program documenting another Amazonian language. But David Gil of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig had organized a conference on numerals in the world's languages and had invited me to come and hang around the MPI for a month, which I did (the MPI being the closest thing to Disneyland for academics, to use Robert Van Valin's description, that I have encountered. I had originally called it an academic monastery, but the Disneyland metaphor seems better). I wrote the Current Anthropology paper while I was at the Max Planck and only after finishing it learned of the HFC paper, so I went back and rewrote a couple of sentences. But the main reason that I wrote the CA paper was to account for a range of phenomena in Piraha, from the simplicity of the kinship system to lack of folktales to lack of numerals and lack of recursion in the syntax. I am happy to report that there is a team of people conducting new and exciting research on Piraha these days: Amy Perfors, Michael Frank, Evelina Fedorenko, and Ted Gibson at MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Jeanette Sakel of the University of the West of England, Miguel Oliveira at St. Andrews University in Scotland, and Eugenie Stapert at the University of Manchester. Frank, Fedorenko, Gibson, and I have a new paper tentatively accepted in Cognition on the lack of numerals and counting in Piraha. Sakel and Stapert have a paper submitted on the absence of recursion in Piraha. And the MIT group is continuing to interpret results for a number of experiments that we have already carried out on short-term memory, perceptions of two-dimensional representation, recursion, and so on. This is very good to see, whatever the results. I don't know why my style in the Current Anthropology piece would sound like I am recently converted to or from anything. Although my interest in Chomskyan linguistics was pretty much nil at the time that I wrote that piece, I hadn't done much in Chomskyan theory or formal linguistics, except some phonology, since the mid-90s. I had already been doing my own thing, more concerned with trying to think through my own evolving ideas on Ethnogrammar – the subject of my job talk at the University of Manchester in 2002, from ideas that I had been working on for a couple of years before that. So there was no recent conversion experience. I agree with Tom that it would be a shame if we allowed Chomsky or any other framework to regularly establish the bounds of our discussions. My own view is that if a linguist is being a good little boy or girl and doing fieldwork as they ought to, then plenty of ideas will emerge, which they can connect to current or ancient theoretical issues as their interests dictate. On Tom's view of grammaticalization, going, say, from parataxis to adjunction to embedding, so far as I can tell this is a very good idea. It was first suggested, I think, by Ken Hale in his 1976 paper on the lack of embedding in expected places in some Australian languages. Interestingly, this order mirrors Tom's even earlier ideas on the development of agreement in the process: pronouns to clitics to agreement affixes. I found this idea very useful in my own book Why there are no clitics, written in the generative style (I think a lot of so-called theorizing is little more than a style of writing). I am not claiming, or at least I do not intend to be claiming, that Piraha is unique in any respects other than in terms of documentation. Other languages might/probably will be documented that have a similar range of properties. I am happy to have my views interpreted such that culture constrains the grammaticalization process. On the other hand, this is an empirical issue and we need lots more data than we have. As to why culture has this effect in some languages and not others, Tom's question reveals a common misunderstanding, no doubt my fault, about what I am saying. I am not proposing that the cultural principal that constrains the Pirahas' grammar is a universal principle. It just is supposed to work for Piraha. I believe that every culture-grammar pairing is likely to have its own principles. There may be a theory in there, but maybe not. I don't know. From amnfn at well.com Mon Oct 1 22:03:15 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:03:15 -0700 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals In-Reply-To: <1DBA7F8B-7695-4AE2-B159-DE54D81EB79B@rice.edu> Message-ID: Tom Givon wrote: >And second, grammatical constructions rise and fall. And their >renovation seems to be motivated largely by communicative need. In >most language where we have historical or reconstructive evidence, >one could show two or even three generations of rise-and-fall of the >same construction. And most often no cultural change is correlated >with such diachronic cycles. Did German revert to a society-of- >intimates ca. 300-400 years ago when it was renovating its REL- >clause construction, reverting to parataxis? And did it then sprint >back to the industrial revolution when it eventually proceeded to >well-grammaticalized syntaxis (merged intonation contours, de- >stressed REL-pronouns)? Did the ascendant Han empire change from an >intimate hunting-and-gathering society to a complex society-of- >strangers as it created, one piece at a time, the complex syntactic >construction of Mandarin Chinese--in every case starting from >parataxis of clause-chaining? And did Han culture collapse earlier >on, back to an intimate small society of hunters-and- gatherers, >when it expanded imperially, moved east and south, and took over the >vast Austro-Asiatic My response: 1)_Grammaticalization is indeed cyclical, so much so that observing a language at a single point in time cannot determine whether it is on its way from an isolating typology to a more bound, agglutinative from, or wthether it is becoming less bound, on its way to an isolating typology from one that is fusional or affixing. You need to take a snapshot at several different points to see which place in the eternal cycle any given language, construction, or even word is. 2) Don't assume that a society of intimates would have a more isolating typology. Hunter gartherers, like their non-human primate brethren, tend to be able to express an entire clause in a very compact phonological form, but don't be too sure that this form is not syntactically complex. There are meaningful recurrent subcomponents, and that's where recursivity comes in. Best, --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Tue Oct 2 15:56:02 2007 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 11:56:02 -0400 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals Message-ID: Aya Katz i:kama:nude: <> My analysis of 'sound symbolism' in some of the analytical click languages reveals collapsed ancient morphological material within the supposed root. The meanings of Aya's 'recurrent subcomponents' here are quite different in flavor from the more expressive or lexical ones one often finds at the margins of words corresponding to old ideophone or lexical roots. Similar things seem to have been going on in a number of other families with isolating/analytical cast. Old productive morphology has left its now frozen and transformed mark on current lexicon. This makes sense from the POV of the Bybeean relevance principle- where meaningful internal stem changes are found late in the game of the analysis/synthesis cycle. How MUCH gets incorporated into the new analytical root is a variable, and even here one may see an increase in the ability to play with the form (as in Matisoff's Lahu). Recently I have speculated that such stem change may correlate with the size of the ideophone inventory (with some spectacular exceptions which seem motivated by areal influences)- the more synthetic a language is, and/or the more fusional it is, the smaller the ideophone inventory will tend to be. This may be because ideophones tend to code more 'relevant' information, and if such information is already redundantly marked either by productive or lexicalized morphology, economy will weed out ideophones as an unnecessary extravagance. As remnants of the old stem changes die away one should see the rise either of new equivalent morphology from set A of the lexicon (the usual grammaticalization resource suspects), or new ideophones from set B of the lexicon (more expressive forms)- the latter has been claimed for many languages. This may help to account for the fact that ideophones aren't a one-size-fits-all category- in some languages you get a short list with only completive aspectual senses, in others you get progressive, and so on. It remains to be seen whether one is dealing with an unprincipled mixture of formal means of expression, or something more akin to complementary distributions. I would suggest that knowledge of the structure of the lexicon of a particular language, by providing another yet related perspective, might help to differentiate supposed syntax-based cultural/grammatical property clusterings- for instance it has been hypothesized by Janis Nuckolls that cultures utilizing more ideophones would tend to see the world as more animistically organized, a more 'bottom up' approach to interpreting a world that requires far more negotiation on the part of the animate agent- the sort of place one would find less automaticization of behavior and more reliance instead on social memory and landmark-based navigation- where context looms large and fixed sets of rules may not work well. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu Tue Oct 2 16:22:54 2007 From: tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 09:22:54 -0700 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals In-Reply-To: <29310474.1191340563310.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nice comments, Jesse. As for automatization--every high-frequency behavior becomes automated, be it syntactic, lexical, motor, visual, etc. So if it is true (speculation is not proof...) that in some cultures the frequency balance shifts from grammar to contents (i.e. lexicon) or to some "embodied" experience, if that occurs in high enough frequency, it'll get automated just as any other behavior. Walter Kintsch had a nice paper (1992) about the balance between relying on grammar vs., relying on contents ("situational reasoning") in discourse processing. In both Pidgins & early child language (child pidgin), the balance is heavily tilted towards contents, given that they have little grammatical machinery. Both are, obviously, societies-of-intimates, where communications is tilted heaily towards the here-and-now, you-and-I, this-and-that-visible. In /On Understandiung Grammar /(1979, ch. 5), where I set out this conjecture, I also noted that in adult communication between intimates the same ought to apply. So e.g., spoken vs. written language shows a huge skewing in the frequency of complex constructions. Eli Ochs had a nice paper on just this topic(1977/1979). So in hunting-and-gathering or small-scale village societies, one would expect less reliance, in terms of frequency, on grammar. But there's a huge number of caveats that must be added here. The parts of grammar dedicated to deontic & epistepic modality are probably just as rich--or richer--in face-to-face communication in societies of intimates. This also shows up in earlier acquisition & high frequency of such modalities (marked by various "higher" verbs) in children ca. age 2-3, by the way. And of course, there's Revard Perkins' book (a TSL volume from way back) showing that small-scale, less-complex societies have much richer & more expanded deictic marking systems. So one has to be careful about frequency generalizations; they have to apply not to grammar at large, but to specific sub-systems. Best, TG ============= jess tauber wrote: > Aya Katz i:kama:nude: > > < to be able to express an entire clause in a very compact phonological > form, but don't be too sure that this form is not syntactically complex. > There are meaningful recurrent subcomponents, and that's where recursivity > comes in.>> > > > > My analysis of 'sound symbolism' in some of the analytical click languages reveals collapsed ancient morphological material within the supposed root. The meanings of Aya's 'recurrent subcomponents' here are quite different in flavor from the more expressive or lexical ones one often finds at the margins of words corresponding to old ideophone or lexical roots. Similar things seem to have been going on in a number of other families with isolating/analytical cast. Old productive morphology has left its now frozen and transformed mark on current lexicon. > > This makes sense from the POV of the Bybeean relevance principle- where meaningful internal stem changes are found late in the game of the analysis/synthesis cycle. How MUCH gets incorporated into the new analytical root is a variable, and even here one may see an increase in the ability to play with the form (as in Matisoff's Lahu). > > Recently I have speculated that such stem change may correlate with the size of the ideophone inventory (with some spectacular exceptions which seem motivated by areal influences)- the more synthetic a language is, and/or the more fusional it is, the smaller the ideophone inventory will tend to be. This may be because ideophones tend to code more 'relevant' information, and if such information is already redundantly marked either by productive or lexicalized morphology, economy will weed out ideophones as an unnecessary extravagance. > > As remnants of the old stem changes die away one should see the rise either of new equivalent morphology from set A of the lexicon (the usual grammaticalization resource suspects), or new ideophones from set B of the lexicon (more expressive forms)- the latter has been claimed for many languages. > > This may help to account for the fact that ideophones aren't a one-size-fits-all category- in some languages you get a short list with only completive aspectual senses, in others you get progressive, and so on. It remains to be seen whether one is dealing with an unprincipled mixture of formal means of expression, or something more akin to complementary distributions. > > I would suggest that knowledge of the structure of the lexicon of a particular language, by providing another yet related perspective, might help to differentiate supposed syntax-based cultural/grammatical property clusterings- for instance it has been hypothesized by Janis Nuckolls that cultures utilizing more ideophones would tend to see the world as more animistically organized, a more 'bottom up' approach to interpreting a world that requires far more negotiation on the part of the animate agent- the sort of place one would find less automaticization of behavior and more reliance instead on social memory and landmark-based navigation- where context looms large and fixed sets of rules may not work well. > > Jess Tauber > phonosemantics at earthlink.net > > > From meri.larjavaara at abo.fi Tue Oct 2 19:21:31 2007 From: meri.larjavaara at abo.fi (Meri Larjavaara) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 22:21:31 +0300 Subject: Representations du sens linguistique IV : nouvelle date pour la soumission des rsums In-Reply-To: <20070906101602.burntxdxcfwcoks8@webmail3.abo.fi> Message-ID: *** Propositions de communication demandées pour le 8 octobre *** Colloque REPRÉSENTATIONS DU SENS LINGUISTIQUE IV Helsinki, du mercredi 28 mai au vendredi 30 mai 2008 L'objectif du colloque est d'examiner les rapports entre les différents modèles de description linguistique et le traitement du sens. Nous proposons comme thème du colloque les articulations complexes entre la langue et les paramètres contextuels. Les linguistes distinguent, entre autres, les usages écrits/oraux de la langue, les usages privés/institutionnels, les discours interactionnels/monologaux... La question que nous nous posons est de savoir en quoi diffèrent les représentations du sens linguistique d'après le contexte d'utilisation ; est-ce que par exemple 'l'oralité' s'exprime de la même manière dans une publicité écrite et dans un dialogue spontané ? Quelles sont les réalisations concrètes de l'interactivité dans deux types d'écrits différents, tels le blog et le chat ? Comment se concrétise la confidentialité dans des contextes d'utilisation de la langue très différents (le journal intime et la session thérapeutique, par exemple) ? De quelle manière s'utilisent certaines structures grammaticales dans un texte littéraire et dans un texte journalistique, à l'oral et à l'écrit ? La problématique pourra être abordée d'un point de vue contrastif (différences entre deux langues ou entre deux genres), synchronique (un seul genre/type de texte dans une langue définie) ou diachronique (nouveaux sens donnés aux mots/structures dans un genre défini au cours de l'évolution). Propositions de communications *au plus tard le 8 octobre 2007* Pour tous les renseignements, veuillez consulter le site du colloque http://www.helsinki.fi/romaanisetkielet/congres/RSL/ From jjain at sfsu.edu Tue Oct 2 23:17:56 2007 From: jjain at sfsu.edu (Jagdish Jain) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 16:17:56 -0700 Subject: Givon on PirahaN and universals Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Givon wrote that the article (Hauser et al. 2002) was one more attempt "to resurrect 'competence' as the bastion of pure innateness." I am confused. The word "bastion" metaphorically means "a defensive stronghold." Is Givon trying to say that the notion of 'competence' is being resurrected as a defensive stronghold for "pure innateness." Further, what does the modifier "pure" mean in this context. Is there "impure" innateness? Chomsky used the term 'competence' in the 1960s in the sense of a native speaker's TACIT knowledge of his her language. The concept "tacit" has no connection with the concept "innate." Because of the confusion created by the term 'competence,' Chomsky has started using the term I-language (= internalized linguistic system) to label the concept of "a native speaker's tacit knowledge of his or her language." I think I-language is a much better term than competence to describe the concept. I-LANGUAGE IS NOT INNATE, NOR A BASTION TO INNATENESS. I-LANGUAGE IS ACQUIRED. The notion of 'recursion/recursiveness/recursivity' has a precise meaning: if you take two constituency principles that involve a category on the left of one rewrite rule and the same category on the right of the second rewrite rule, you have set up the property called 'recursion' For example, if a clause has a constituent called VP, and that VP has a constituent called clause, you have succeeded in creating the property called recursion. Informally, this kind of recursion is called 'clause embedding." Recursion is not limited to clause embedding. Recursion is a wide spread design feature of language; it is not a FRAMEWORK (as Givon calls it). I would like to emphasize that a "complex linguistic construction" (whatever that means) may not involve any recursion. Nobody has suggested any metric for "complexity" of a linguistic construction. Jagdish Jain From Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk Wed Oct 3 09:59:10 2007 From: Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk (Vyvyan Evans) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 10:59:10 +0100 Subject: 3rd CFP: Language, Communication & Cognition - Brighton Aug 4-7 2008. Message-ID: (apologies for cross-postings) THIRD CALL FOR PAPERS Conference on LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND COGNITION University of Brighton, August 4th-7th 2008, Brighton, UK Website: www.languageandcognition.net The conference on Language, Communication and Cognition aims to promote an interdisciplinary, comparative, multi-methodological approach to the study of language, communication and cognition, informed by method and practice as developed in Cognitive Linguistics. The objective is to contribute to our understanding of language as a key aspect of human cognition, using converging and multi-disciplinary methodologies, based upon cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, and cross-population comparisons. The conference will address the following themes: -Language, creativity and imagination -Language in use -Meaning and grammar -Communication, conceptualisation and gesture -Language and its influence on thought -Language acquisition and conceptual development -Origins and evolution of language and mind Keynote speakers The following distinguished scholars will be giving keynote lectures relating to the conference themes: Lera Boroditsky, Stanford University Herbert H. Clark, Stanford University Adele Goldberg, Princeton University Sotaro Kita, Birmingham University George Lakoff, University of California, Berkeley Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Theme Sessions In addition to a General Session and a Poster Session, there will be 6 specially-convened theme sessions, with specially invited discussants. These are as follows: 1. The socio-cultural, cognitive and neurological bases of metaphor Discussants: George Lakoff and Vyv Evans 2. Cognitive and social processes in language use Discussants: Herbert Clark and Paul Hopper 3. Constructional approaches to grammar and first language acquisition Discussants: Adele Goldberg and Eve Clark 4. The role of gesture in communication and cognition Discussants: Sotaro Kita and Alan Cienki 5. The social and cognitive bases of language evolution Discussants: Chris Sinha and Michael Tomasello 6. Linguistic relativity: Evidence and methods Discussants: Lera Boroditsky and Dan Slobin Submission of abstracts Submissions are solicited for the general session, the theme sessions, and the poster session. The abstract guidelines for all sessions are as follows: --Abstracts should not exceed 500 words - references are excluded from this count --Abstracts should clearly indicate a presentation title --Abstracts should be anonymous for purposes of blind peer-review --Abstracts should be formatted as Word, RTF or PDF documents --Abstracts should be submitted electronically to LCC at brighton.ac.uk Please include the following information in the main body of your email: --title and name of author(s) --affiliation --email address for correspondence --presentation title --3-5 keywords --preferred session for presentation: either general session, poster session, or theme session (please specify theme session number or title) Please include the following information in the subject header of your email: --"Abstract Submission - author(s) name(s)" ABSTRACT DEADLINE: November 26th 2007 For full details please consult the conference website: http://www.languageandcognition.net Organisers The conference is organised by Vyv Evans and Stéphanie Pourcel Contact The conference email address is LCC at brighton.ac.uk Web details are available at: www.languageandcognition.net From cxr1086 at louisiana.edu Wed Oct 3 13:52:08 2007 From: cxr1086 at louisiana.edu (Clai Rice) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 08:52:08 -0500 Subject: Givon on PirahaN and universals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Jagdish Jain wrote: > > I would like to emphasize that a "complex linguistic construction" > (whatever that means) may not involve any recursion. Nobody > has suggested any metric for "complexity" of a linguistic > construction. Attempts to measure linguistic complexity have been a cottage industry in linguistics for some time, very important to subfields like 1st/2nd language acquisition, creolistics, clinical applications, and reading. A well known proposal specifically for mesauring the complexity of a lingustic construction would be Gibson's dependency locality theory: Edward Gibson, Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies, Cognition 68 (1998) 1-76. He also wrote an entry on this in the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. --Clai Rice From Salinas17 at aol.com Wed Oct 3 15:32:09 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 11:32:09 EDT Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions Message-ID: Wolfgang - Thanks for the reply. Sorry I couldn't answer sooner. I wrote: "Looking at it from this point of view -- yes, cognition gave and gives rise to language. But not as an added bonus. Rather, language was and is a solution to the PROBLEM of the private nature of individual cognition. As a matter of evolutionary survival value, SHARED cognitions -- and information about their consequences -- supply the individual with much more useful information than the much smaller set of cognitions he might have on his own." You answered, in a message dated 9/29/07 3:51:24: <> You've surprised me here. First of all, "shared cognitions" -- shared through language -- would obviously tend to have some plain survival advantages over entirely individual cognitions -- just from the point-of-view of all the second-hand information that would not otherwise be available to an individual. You've definded cognition to include perceptual processes that "guarantee the individual's 'orientation' in the Outer World." The Outer World is a big place and there's an obvious advantage to not being limited to one's individual perceptions about external events. A sign that says that the bridge is out saves me from going forward and plunging to my death. That sign contains someone else's perception and cognition. And when I read it, it becomes a "shared cognition" -- one that I would not have generated on my own and is not based on my own experience about the bridge. Likewise, I've never been to Munich, but I'm confident that I know where it is and how to get there -- but not based on my individual perceptual processes or my personal orientation in the Outside World. In fact, I'm totally dependent on the "shared cognitions" of others for any such "orientation". Without them, I wouldn't even know there was such a place, much less know that there was an airplane that could take me there. I also do not understand why you would say that humans are not "marked for the same basic properties that enable the functioning of the network." The "network" of shared cognitions functions primarily through language -- and at least humans who can speak the same language certainly share properties that enable its functioning. I'm not sure that one needs to go to super-computers to find an analogy. We're not talking about many processors linked to make one big processor. The better analogy is a network of individual computers that are capable of sharing processed data. An example is what we are doing here on Funknet. I wrote: "In this view, language would have arisen as an answer to the disadvantage of individual information gathering and storage -- individual cognition, if you prefer." You replied: <> I'm also surprised that you call this the standard model. If language is in fact a solution to the poor information gathering and storage capabilities of individual "cognitions" -- then we might expect individual cognitions contributing very little to the overall information embedded in language. And, vice versa, language contributing a huge portion of the information used by individual cognitions. The entire Generativist movement is certainly a rejection of this idea -- because it locates the structure of language in the individual and not in the Outside World, where the great bulk of information is that needs to be gathered and structured (processed) -- and where communication, which demands a certain structure, occurs. The pressures that would shape language would come from the Outside World -- otherwise language would be very ineffective at -- in your words -- guaranteeing orientation -- or at least accurate orientation. And it's not accurate to call this model something like "interactionist" either. Because interacting with an environment does not necessarily account for unique flow of information that occurs with language. I interact with my toaster and its dials, but the flow of information is quite limited. You also wrote: <> I'm wondering, Wolfgang, whether some of the items you mention here aren't a backwash from language into "raw cognition." Consider your own definition of cognition which I quoted above -- it does not mention most of these, only neural and perceptual processes and orientation in the Outer World. When we bring in such things as "metaphorical potential," doesn't it possibly suggest that some if these attributes might be the gift of language to cognition, rather than the other way around? The processes that make a pile of stones are not the same processes that build a stone house. But in the process of building a stone house, we might cut the stones into blocks, so they serve that purpose better. In the same way, we might re-form our raw cognitions to make a better fit for language. This comes into focus more clearly I think when we consider non-human cognition. Your definition of cognition ("the continuum of those neuron-based and perception-guided processes that guarantee the individual's 'orientation' in the Outer World") does not appear to exclude non-humans. And yet so much research and common knowledge suggests a strong separation between human and non-human cognition. Perhaps the difference is the enormous quantitative differences in the use of language. Perhaps a human who has never acquired a human language will only have non-human cognitions. Also you wrote: <> Wolfgang, I'm not understanding why this forum would be less appropriate than that forum. Is there something in our subject matter that is inappropriate for FUNKNET? Regards, Steve Long


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See what's new at http://www.aol.com From amnfn at well.com Wed Oct 3 16:40:38 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 09:40:38 -0700 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The discussion between Steve Long and Wolfgang Schulze seems to turn on the distinction between cognition and language. Does language require cognition? Does cognition require language? Are they entirely separable, or does one subsume the other. If by cognition we mean animal consciousness (and the processing of perceptual data by organisms), then it appears there can be cognition without language, even in our own species. Humans aren't born with language, but they start processing perceptual data from day one. By the same token, if by language, we mean the coding of information using a limited number of recurring subunits that can be recombined to form an unlimited number of messages with an indeterminately large degree of complexity, then clearly there can be language without cognition. Computer code and DNA code are two examples. Even writing left behind by people long dead is evidence of this principle, at least in one direction. Every time we read a message without meeting the person who wrote it, we process language that we acquired from an inanimate object. So that settles it, right? Language and Cognition are separable. --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From Salinas17 at aol.com Thu Oct 4 01:48:02 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 21:48:02 EDT Subject: Givon and Chomsky Message-ID: Jagdish Jain wrote: <> Of course, recursiveness is NOTHING BUT A FRAMEWORK. It's a structural form, and that makes it only a framework in which to present "meaning", to convey information. The fact that a particular structure might be effective at presenting a particular information or "meaning" is no reason to confuse the FRAMEWORK with the CONTENT. <> The fact that "competence" created confusion is not Tom Givon's fault. It's Chomsky's. <> Whatever "tacit" is supposed to mean, Chomsky's "competence" had a lot to do with the supposed innateness of language, perhaps depending on whom he was talking to. In the Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind lecture (1968) -- in which he never uses the word "tacit" -- Chomsky makes it very clear that when he says competence is knowledge, that knowledge is not primarily based on experience (learning): "...we cannot avoid being struck by the enormous disparity between knowledge and experience – in the case of language, between the generative grammar that expresses the linguistic competence of the native speaker and the meagre and degenerate data on the basis of which he has constructed this grammar for himself." Not only does he say that experience supplies "meagre and degenerate data" and therefore can't be the source of generative grammar and linguistic knowledge (competence), he also tells us that competence is going to help settle the issue of innateness: "Putnam takes for granted that it is only general “learning strategies” that are innate.... As I have argued earlier, a non-dogmatic approach to this problem can be pursued... through the investigation of specific areas of human competence, such as language,..." So you are mistaken in thinking that Chomsky was not using competence to refer to innateness. Whether he himself was confused about it, or whether the word "tacit" or I-language idea somehow cleared up that confusion, is another matter. Steve Long


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See what's new at http://www.aol.com From Salinas17 at aol.com Fri Oct 5 02:17:21 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:17:21 EDT Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (2) Message-ID: In a message dated 10/3/07 12:42:03 PM, amnfn at well.com writes: << By the same token, if by language, we mean the coding of information using a limited number of recurring subunits that can be recombined to form an unlimited number of messages with an indeterminately large degree of complexity, then clearly there can be language without cognition. >> And that might be the problem with that definition of language. You speak of "messages" -- in the ordinary sense of that word -- messages from whom to whom? Can a message be from no one to nobody? Is this message part important to your definition of language? And why should the "recurring subunits" be limited? Why can't every bit of information be assigned its own non-recurring "subunit" -- on into infinity? So we have a language where every thing, every action and relationship or process is its own "subunit," its own code and its own syntactical slot. Wouldn't this kind of language be more efficient than juggling "recurring subunits"? And this coding business -- isn't the process --> information, encoding, transmission, de-coding, back to information? So where is the de-coding in this definition of language? And why does the information need coding in the first place? Why take the step of putting a stand-in -- a symbol -- in place of the raw data? Can't we make an "unlimited number of messages" right out of the raw data without unnecessary coding? Why is the language you are describing carrying so much baggage? Could it be that its constrained by a function? Could that function be communication? <> Actually we have the whole universe and everything in it. Coded information right down to our tiny recurring subunit atoms, hadrons, quarks, spin, gravity and dark matter, etc. In fact, in this view, language is just a form of computation - just a spec in the algorithmic theory of everything, not the other way around. (See Steven Weinberg's review of Stephen Wolfram, "Is the Universe a Computer? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15762 Also Jürgen Schmidhuber's web site on the Zuse Hypothesis: The Universe as Computer -- http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/digitalphysics.html Also Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos (2006)) <> Interesting idea. Some say that you can process language acquired from an inanimate object even if it doesn't have any writing on it. "Signatures of all things I am here to read," wrote James Joyce, courtesy of Jakob Boehme. On the other hand, I can be in the physical presence of at least half the people on this planet and not understand a word they are saying, because I don't understand the languages they are speaking -- even with my handy book of Universal Grammar tucked under my arm. Another interesting inanimate object is the computer I'm sitting in front of It is the culmination of thousands of thousands of separate "cognitions" on the part of thousands and thousands of individuals who go back in time to Euclid and before, the people who gradually worked out over a long, long time the materials, the numbers, the concepts, the electronics, the processes, the software, the distribution and even the marketing. I am, as an individual, incapable of building this machine from scratch, and so are my individual "cognitions." The machine is the culmination of thousands and thousands of "cognitions" on the part of thousands and thousands of individuals over along, long period of time. What linked them all together communally is, I believe, language. Regards, Steve Long


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See what's new at http://www.aol.com From amnfn at well.com Fri Oct 5 04:25:08 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 21:25:08 -0700 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (2) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Steve Long wrote: >The machine is the culmination of thousands and thousands of "cognitions" on >the part of thousands and thousands of individuals over along, long >period of time. What linked them all together communally is, I believe, >language. In the case of a computer that passes messages between people, just as in the case of a book whose author is long dead, the issue is not that no cognition was involved in creating the message. The point is that the cognition that created the message is no longer operating at the time of delivery. Hence the conclusion that language, however it may have come into being, is separable from the cognition that spawned it. It doesn't require high technology or even a writing system to make this point. A parrot could be trained to deliver a message from one person to another. The parrot need not understand the message. The sender can die before the message is delivered. The receiver can still learn important information -- and that is the power of language. If cognition and language were one and the same, none of these scenarios would work. --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From Salinas17 at aol.com Fri Oct 5 05:39:29 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 01:39:29 EDT Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (3) Message-ID: In a message dated 10/5/07 12:25:32 AM, amnfn at well.com writes: <> I see. You're connecting "cognition" to a particular person. The difference is that I see "cognitions" as information. They don't die or disappear. They are either communicated or not communicated. What I'm thinking today may not be what I think tomorrow -- you don't need death for individual cognitions to change. Whether I am alive or dead when you read this is irrelevant to the transfer of this particular piece of information. I might change my mind right after I send this post, but that will not change what I was "congnitioning" (ha) when I sent it. That information has already been transferred via our common language. <> Language is the transfer of "cognitions." When a cognition is communicated, it becomes a "shared cognition." The transfer of information does not depend upon whether the transferor died long ago or not, it depends on successful transfer by any media through which language can be used. Regards, Steve Long ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com From amnfn at well.com Fri Oct 5 14:35:40 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 07:35:40 -0700 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (3) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Steve, I think we are in agreement about most of the essential facts. Perhaps our use of different labels is largely a matter of style. I distinguish between cognition and its calcified remains, which I tend to think of as language in the case of a communicative tool, and culture in the case of shared belief systems. I don't believe humans have collective cognition, although that might theoretically be possible in a society of telepaths. When I understand a message sent by another, I do not necessarily share his cognition. I might totally disagree or disbelieve the message, but the information it contains has been passed along. Thus again, I distinguish between language and cognition. Best, --Aya ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= On Fri, 5 Oct 2007 Salinas17 at aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 10/5/07 12:25:32 AM, amnfn at well.com writes: > < the case of a book whose author is long dead, the issue is not that no > cognition was involved in creating the message. The point is that the cognition that > created the message is no longer operating at the time of delivery.>> > > I see. You're connecting "cognition" to a particular person. The > difference is that I see "cognitions" as information. They don't die or disappear. > They are either communicated or not communicated. What I'm thinking today > may not be what I think tomorrow -- you don't need death for individual > cognitions to change. Whether I am alive or dead when you read this is irrelevant > to the transfer of this particular piece of information. I might change my > mind right after I send this post, but that will not change what I was > "congnitioning" (ha) when I sent it. That information has already been transferred > via our common language. > > < would work.>> > > Language is the transfer of "cognitions." When a cognition is communicated, > it becomes a "shared cognition." The transfer of information does not > depend upon whether the transferor died long ago or not, it depends on successful > transfer by any media through which language can be used. > > Regards, > Steve Long > > > > > > > > > ************************************** > See what's new at http://www.aol.com > > From nagaya at rice.edu Sun Oct 7 11:14:02 2007 From: nagaya at rice.edu (Naonori Nagaya) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 06:14:02 -0500 Subject: The 12th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language Message-ID: (apologies for cross-postings) THE GENESIS OF SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM The 12th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language, co-organized by Matt Shibatani (Rice University) and T. Givón (University of Oregon), will be held in the Farnsworth Pavilion of the Ley Student Center on March 27th-29th, 2008. The topic-"The genesis of syntactic complexity"-in part builds on the success of the 11th biennial symposium on complex verb constructions and explores the genesis and nature of syntactic complexity from an interdisciplinary perspective. Structural complexity may be defined broadly as the "chunking" of linear-sequential structure into hierarchic one (cf. Herbert A. Simon 1962 "The architecture of complexity"). The creation of such hierarchic structure is a common process language shares with motor control, vision, memory, and music. It is often associated with the move from attended to automated processing. Our symposium will focus on one particular type of syntactic complexity, that of clauses ('propositions') embedded inside other clauses-under a unified intonation contour. We examine two syntactic domains in which such embedding structures are generally found to cluster: (i) in the verb phrase (complex predicates, clause-union, verb complementation), and (ii) in the noun phrase (relative clauses and noun complementation). The symposium will concern itself primarily with the genesis of these complex structures, comparing the three main developmental trends of language: Diachrony, child language development, and evolution. For all three, we will explore the linguistic, cognitive, neurological and biological aspects of the genesis and development of complex syntax. The symposium is open to the public. Further information will be posted shortly in the webpage: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~eivs/sympo/ Contributors: 1. Diachronic development: B. Heine (Koeln) & T. Kouteva (Duesseldorf) A. Pawley (Canberra) O. Dahl (Stockholm) G. Deutscher (Leiden) M. Mithun (Santa Barbara) C. Bowern (Rice) M. Hilpert & C. Koops (Rice) M. Shibatani (Rice) T. Givón (Oregon) 2. Child development: H. Diessel (Jena) C. Rojas (UNAM) T. Givón (Oregon) 3. Cognitive and & neurological aspects: B. MacWhinney (CMU) D. Fernandez-Duque (Villanova) F. Pulvermuller (Cambridge) E. Pederson & M. Barker (Oregon) D. Tucker (Oregon) 4. Biology and evolution: D. Bickerton (Hawaii) N. Tublitz (Oregon) From eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Oct 8 10:49:04 2007 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:49:04 +0300 Subject: On Everett on Givon (on Everett) Message-ID: In his reply to Givon, Dan Everett seems to be saying that Ken Hale was the first to claim (in 1976) that embedding/hypotaxis emerges from parataxis. I must have misunderstood him, but for the benefit of those who may be guilty of the same misunderstanding, I would like to add the following comment. Hermann Paul (1975 [1880]: 145) points out, first, that hypotaxis is generally thought to emerge from parataxis and, second, that this view (if meant to state the whole truth) is wrong: "Irrtuemlich ist ferner die gewoenliche Ansicht, dass die Hypotaxe durchgaengig aus der Parataxe entstanden sei." Thus, more than 100 years before Ken Hale, most people thought what he thought, but Paul thinks that they are wrong. But how, then, can hypotaxis come into being, if not from parataxis? The answer is not blowing in the wind, but is, rather, mentioned in the title of my 2005 book (published by Benjamins). Paul adduces several cases of parataxis from his own speech. Surely Germany under Bismarck is a less-than-ideal example of a hunter-gatherer community. So those seem to be right who doubt the plausiblity of a very close correlation between linguistic structure and social structure. Another thing. In 1816, Franz Bopp started his historical-comparative work by assuming that the Indo-European verb contains the end results of two grammaticalization processes: from copula to tense marker and from pronoun to person suffix. This is explains why, for those who learned this in their first student year, grammaticalization is no big deal. Besides, more should be said about the emergence of ablaut (which fails to conform with the lexical > grammatical cline) To conclude, I have to mention an important contribution by Vera da Silva and Chris Sinha on how to teach the Pirahas to read and write (sic!). Perhaps expectedly, the New Yorker refused to publish it. Fortunately, however, it is to be be found in Linguist List and Cogling (in late April, I think). Esa Itkonen Reference Paul, Hermann (1975 [first ed. 1880, fifth ed. 1920]): Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Tuebingen: Niemeyer. Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From dlevere at ilstu.edu Mon Oct 8 11:57:36 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 07:57:36 -0400 Subject: On Everett on Givon (on Everett) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I replied to the Sinha and Silva posting on LinguistList on April 23, 2007. I didn't mean to sound like Hale was the first person ever to have the idea that parataxis leads to embedding. It has been around for a while. Bloomfield even says some things about it. But Ken's paper is in the generative tradition and that is where most/ all of the controversy about the claims that a language can lack subordination/recursion come from. So it is particularly pertinent. Best, Dan On 8 Oct 2007, at 06:49, Esa Itkonen wrote: > In his reply to Givon, Dan Everett seems to be saying that Ken Hale > was the first to claim (in 1976) that embedding/hypotaxis emerges > from parataxis. I must have misunderstood him, but for the benefit > of those who may be guilty of the same misunderstanding, I would > like to add the following comment. > > Hermann Paul (1975 [1880]: 145) points out, first, that hypotaxis > is generally thought to emerge from parataxis and, second, that > this view (if meant to state the whole truth) is wrong: > "Irrtuemlich ist ferner die gewoenliche Ansicht, dass die Hypotaxe > durchgaengig aus der Parataxe entstanden sei." Thus, more than 100 > years before Ken Hale, most people thought what he thought, but > Paul thinks that they are wrong. But how, then, can hypotaxis come > into being, if not from parataxis? The answer is not blowing in the > wind, but is, rather, mentioned in the title of my 2005 book > (published by Benjamins). > > Paul adduces several cases of parataxis from his own speech. Surely > Germany under Bismarck is a less-than-ideal example of a hunter- > gatherer community. So those seem to be right who doubt the > plausiblity of a very close correlation between linguistic > structure and social structure. > > Another thing. In 1816, Franz Bopp started his historical- > comparative work by assuming that the Indo-European verb contains > the end results of two grammaticalization processes: from copula to > tense marker and from pronoun to person suffix. This is explains > why, for those who learned this in their first student year, > grammaticalization is no big deal. Besides, more should be said > about the emergence of ablaut (which fails to conform with the > lexical > grammatical cline) > > To conclude, I have to mention an important contribution by Vera da > Silva and Chris Sinha on how to teach the Pirahas to read and write > (sic!). Perhaps expectedly, the New Yorker refused to publish it. > Fortunately, however, it is to be be found in Linguist List and > Cogling (in late April, I think). > > Esa Itkonen > > Reference > Paul, Hermann (1975 [first ed. 1880, fifth ed. 1920]): Prinzipien > der Sprachgeschichte. Tuebingen: Niemeyer. > > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From lists at chaoticlanguage.com Mon Oct 8 12:40:39 2007 From: lists at chaoticlanguage.com (Rob Freeman) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:40:39 +0800 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (2) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Anyone interested in this perspective of "language as computation", and which is thus beyond abstraction into classes, which I assume Steve Long is hinting at here, should take a look at these recent threads on the Corpora list: Is a complete grammar possible (beyond the corpus itself)? ad-hoc generalization and meaning corpus syntax (and how we can use it to code meaning) http://www.uib.no/mailman/public/corpora/2007-September/thread.html And more recently the discussion here: http://groups.google.com/group/grammatical-incompleteness -Rob Freeman On 10/5/07, Salinas17 at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 10/3/07 12:42:03 PM, amnfn at well.com writes: > << By the same token, if by language, we mean the coding of information using > a limited number of recurring subunits that can be recombined to form an > unlimited number of messages with an indeterminately large degree of complexity, > then clearly there can be language without cognition. >> > > And that might be the problem with that definition of language. > > You speak of "messages" -- in the ordinary sense of that word -- messages > from whom to whom? Can a message be from no one to nobody? Is this message part > important to your definition of language? > > And why should the "recurring subunits" be limited? > > Why can't every bit of information be assigned its own non-recurring > "subunit" -- on into infinity? So we have a language where every thing, every action > and relationship or process is its own "subunit," its own code and its own > syntactical slot. Wouldn't this kind of language be more efficient than juggling > "recurring subunits"? > > And this coding business -- isn't the process --> information, encoding, > transmission, de-coding, back to information? So where is the de-coding in this > definition of language? > > And why does the information need coding in the first place? Why take the > step of putting a stand-in -- a symbol -- in place of the raw data? Can't we > make an "unlimited number of messages" right out of the raw data without > unnecessary coding? > > Why is the language you are describing carrying so much baggage? Could it be > that its constrained by a function? Could that function be communication? > > <> > > Actually we have the whole universe and everything in it. Coded information > right down to our tiny recurring subunit atoms, hadrons, quarks, spin, gravity > and dark matter, etc. In fact, in this view, language is just a form of > computation - just a spec in the algorithmic theory of everything, not the other > way around. > > (See Steven Weinberg's review of Stephen Wolfram, "Is the Universe a Computer? > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15762 > Also Jürgen Schmidhuber's web site on the Zuse Hypothesis: The Universe as > Computer -- http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/digitalphysics.html > Also Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes > on the Cosmos (2006)) > > < at least in one direction. Every time we read a message without meeting the > person who wrote it, we process language that we acquired from an inanimate > object.>> > > Interesting idea. > > Some say that you can process language acquired from an inanimate object even > if it doesn't have any writing on it. "Signatures of all things I am here to > read," wrote James Joyce, courtesy of Jakob Boehme. > > On the other hand, I can be in the physical presence of at least half the > people on this planet and not understand a word they are saying, because I don't > understand the languages they are speaking -- even with my handy book of > Universal Grammar tucked under my arm. > > Another interesting inanimate object is the computer I'm sitting in front of > It is the culmination of thousands of thousands of separate "cognitions" on > the part of thousands and thousands of individuals who go back in time to > Euclid and before, the people who gradually worked out over a long, long time the > materials, the numbers, the concepts, the electronics, the processes, the > software, the distribution and even the marketing. I am, as an individual, > incapable of building this machine from scratch, and so are my individual > "cognitions." > > The machine is the culmination of thousands and thousands of "cognitions" on > the part of thousands and thousands of individuals over along, long period of > time. What linked them all together communally is, I believe, language. > > Regards, > Steve Long From gert.desutter at hogent.be Mon Oct 8 13:07:40 2007 From: gert.desutter at hogent.be (Gert De Sutter) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:07:40 +0200 Subject: CFP - Discourse and Grammar 2008 (Ghent, Belgium) Message-ID: Illocutionary force, information structure and subordination between discourse and grammar Ghent University – University College Ghent May 23-24, 2008 Invited speakers: C. Lehmann, Universität Erfurt, Germany J.C. Verstraete, KULeuven, Belgium Call for Papers (PDF file attached) (French version: http://members.chello.be/gert.desutter1/enfrancais/index.htm) Since Matthiessen & Thompson (1988), it has been widely assumed that discourse structure and complex sentence structure have much in common and that the latter is a more grammaticalised way of representing relationships between states of affairs than the former. Both structures consist of a network of relationships between what we could call, avoiding too strong a terminological bias, more and less prominent states of affairs (background/foreground; nucleus/satellite; salient/non-salient; etc.). The issue which this conference wishes to address is the grammatical, pragmatic and semantic status of less prominent states of affairs in discourse and complex sentence structure and more in particular the interaction between grammatical properties of subordination, speech act properties and clausal information structure. In complex sentence structure, less prominent states of affairs are expressed in subordinate clauses, which are widely, but not unanimously, assumed to lack both speech act properties and information structure (cf. Lambrecht 1994; Cristofaro 2003). There are, however, some notable exceptions, viz. clauses which seem to have the grammatical properties of subordinate clauses, but are prominent in the sense that they provide the core of information of the sentence as a whole (Biber 1988). On the other hand, less prominent states of affairs operating as independent clauses in discourse structure, are not usually thought of as being deprived of speech act properties or information structure. It remains to be seen whether this is a tenable position. Conference papers are expected to address one or more of the following questions or another topic within the realm of the conference theme: - Is discourse structure best analysed as binary (salient/non-salient; foreground/background) or as a continuum and what are the criteria? - Is it feasible to describe the relationship between discourse structure and complex sentence structure as iconic? - Is it either necessary or feasible to distinguish between different types of less prominent information (Brandt 1996) such as subsidiary information (Nebeninformation) vs. background information (Hintergrundinformation)? Do we perhaps need to distinguish more types than these? - What is the exact distribution of illocutionary force in discourse? Are less prominent but independent states of affairs endowed with illocutionary force? - What is the role of discourse particles and connective devices in the organisation of the discourse in more and less prominent states of affairs? - Is clausal information structure a property specific to independent clauses? - Should information structure be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance? According to some authors, complex sentence structures have only one information structure partition (cf. Mathesius 1975, Komagata 2003), whereas others assume that certain complex sentence types have more than one (Brandt 1996). - If clausal information structure is absent from subordinate clauses, why do syntactic manifestations of information structure (dislocation, clefting) sometimes appear in subordinate clauses? - How can the interaction between clausal information structure and discourse information structure (cf. the difference between clausal topic and discourse topic) be described in a more comprehensive way? - Is there historical evidence of the “loss” of speech act properties or information structure? Can this be linked to a diachronic development from independent to dependent clauses, and if so, is it indeed feasible to describe this process as grammaticalisation (cf. Fischer 2007)? Comparative papers focussing on European languages are particularly welcome and will be favoured during the review process. Anonymous abstracts should be max. 2 pages long and be sent as a Word (.rtf) file to: bart.defrancq at hogent.be before 1 November 2007. Abstract and paper should be in English or French. Information about the author(s) should be given in the e-mail the abstract is attached to. Notification of acceptance is scheduled to 1 January 2008. Registration fee: 75 Euro More information: http://members.chello.be/gert.desutter1/ Programme committee (provisional): Christelle Cosme (University of Louvain, UCL) Hubert Cuyckens (University of Leuven, KULeuven) Bart Defrancq (University College Ghent) Liesbeth Degand (University of Louvain, UCL) Gert De Sutter (University College Ghent) Pascale Hadermann (Ghent University) Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen (Ghent University) Els Tobback (Ghent University) Dominique Willems (Ghent University) Organising committee (provisional): Joost Buysschaert (University College Ghent) Hubert Cuyckens (University of Leuven, KULeuven) Bart Defrancq (University College Ghent) Liesbeth Degand (University of Louvain, UCL) Gert De Sutter (University College Ghent) Gudrun Rawoens (University of Louvain, UCL/Ghent University) Els Tobback (Ghent University) Dominique Willems (Ghent University) From loenneke at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU Mon Oct 15 16:58:47 2007 From: loenneke at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Birte Loenneker-Rodman) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:58:47 -0700 Subject: Second announcement GCLA/DGKL 2008 Message-ID: Second announcement GCLA/DGKL 2008 Call for papers Third international conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association Leipzig, September, 25 - 27, 2008 The third international conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (GCLA/DGKL) will take place in Leipzig, Germany, from September, 25 to 27, 2008. It is organized by the Linguistics Department at the Institute of English and American Studies at Leipzig University. Special theme: Converging Evidence Topics Submissions are invited for papers addressing - from various perspectives - any facet of cognitive linguistics research, including research on meaning, conceptual structure, conceptual operations, cognitive processing, grammar, acquisition, language use, discourse function, and other issues. Papers supporting their arguments by various methodologies or drawing on evidence from various fields are especially welcome, though others are not excluded. The conference languages are English and German. Submissions Submissions may offer any of the following: 1. theme session; 2. paper presentation; 3. poster presentation; 4. paper or poster. Guidelines for papers and posters: Abstracts * should not exceed 500 words of text (exclusive of references) * should indicate a clear title * should meet the following criteria: - topic relevance - originality - clear structure - conclusive argumentation * should be anonymous for purposes of blind peer-review * should be formatted as Word, RTF or PDF documents * should be submitted electronically to the address given on the conference website, http://webapp.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/~DGKL/GCLA_08/ Please, include the following information in the main body of your e-mail: * Presentation title * Author name(s) * Affiliation * E-mail address for correspondence * 3-5 keywords * Preference re general or poster session Please, include the following information in the subject header of your e-mail: "Abstract submission - Author(s) name(s)". Abstract submission deadline: December 1st, 2007. Guidelines for theme sessions: Proposals for theme sessions should include * a brief description of the topic of the planned session (max. 500 words); * a list of the contributions already planned; * a list of further aspects expected to be discussed in the session, to allow for additional applications. Theme sessions will be organized as half-day sessions, with the time for presentations and discussions adapted to the schedule of the general session. Theme session organizers will take responsibility for the quality of the contributions to their sessions and will decide on the acceptance/rejection of the papers submitted (once the theme session has been accepted). Submission deadline: November 15th, 2007. Conference schedule Talks are scheduled in 30 minute slots: 20 minutes presentation, 5 minutes for discussion and 5 minutes to change sessions and/or change speakers. We anticipate 3 parallel sessions of regular papers, plus plenary lectures, plus 1 - 2 theme sessions. Keynote speakers We are happy to announce the following plenary speakers: * Seana Coulson, University of California at San Diego * Holger Diessel, Jena University * Stefan Th. Gries, University of California at St. Barbara * Günter Radden, Hamburg University * Gerard Steen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Important dates August, 2007: First Call for papers, posters and theme sessions 15th November 2007 (extended): Deadline for theme sessions 1st December 2007: Deadline for paper and poster submissions March, 2008: Notification of acceptance 25 - 27th September, 2008: Third GCLA/DGKL-Conference Local organizing committee Doris Schönefeld Institut für Anglistik, Universität Leipzig Beethovenstraße 15 04107 Leipzig, Germany schoenefeld at uni-leipzig.de From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Mon Oct 15 18:40:52 2007 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:40:52 +0200 Subject: SALC2007 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, We would like to inform you that the Scientific Program for the First Conference of the Swedish Association for Language and Cognition (SALC) to be held at Lund University between November 29 and December 1st 2007, has now been posted on the conference home site: http://www.salc-sssk.org/conference/ There will be - 5 plenary talks (by Susan Goldin-Meadow, Esa Itkonen, Chris Sinha, Peter Gärdenfors and Östen Dahl), - 45 oral presentations in the general session - 10 oral presentations each for the theme sessions: "Space in Language and Cognition", "Language and Gesture" and "The Dynamics of Symbolic Matter" - 15 poster presentations The Business Meeting of SALC will be held on Nov 30, 1-2 pm. We have registered over 100 participants, but have an additional 50 places left, so if you wish to participate, please use the homesite in order to register! We are looking forward to seeing all speakers and guests in Lund at the end of next month! For the Organizing Committee, Jordan Zlatev, President of SALC *************************************************** Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Center for Languages and Literature Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html *************************************************** From antti.arppe at helsinki.fi Thu Oct 18 18:44:40 2007 From: antti.arppe at helsinki.fi (Antti Arppe) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:44:40 +0300 Subject: ANN: Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics Message-ID: [Apologies for cross-postings] Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL-3) Date: 02-Jun-2008 - 04-Jun-2008 Location: Helsinki, Finland Contact Email: qitl-3helsinki.fi Meeting URL: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) in association with the Department of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki will be co-hosting the Third Workshop on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL-3), to be held on Mon-Wed, 2-4 June, 2008, in Helsinki, Finland. The official website of the workshop, with the forthcoming Call for Papers and other information, is to be found at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ This workshop is both a continuation of the two previous QITL events held in Osnabrück, Germany (http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/~qitl/), and the latest in the sequence of summer symposia arranged by SKY(http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumia.shtml). Important Dates: Announcement: 18 October 2007 1st Call for Papers: End of November 2007 Submission deadline: Early February 2008 Event: 2-4 June 2008 Organizing committee: Urpo Nikanne, Åbo Akademi University Kaius Sinnemäki, University of Helsinki Antti Arppe, University of Helsinki ----- From hougaard at language.sdu.dk Mon Oct 22 10:56:55 2007 From: hougaard at language.sdu.dk (Anders Hougaard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:56:55 +0200 Subject: LCM 3: 2nd CfP Message-ID: CONFERENCE: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND MIND 3 Odense, 14th-16th July 2008 2ND CALL FOR INDIVIDUAL PAPERS NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7th-11th July 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 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. Description of the LCM conference series: see bottom. NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7th-11th July DATES *First call for Theme Sessions: April 1, 2007 * Second call for Theme Sessions: May 1, 2007 * Third call for Theme Sessions: August 1, 2007 * Deadline for Theme Sessions submissions: September 1, 2007 * Notification for Theme Sessions : October 1, 2007 * Deadline for individual paper submissions : January 1, 2008 * Notification for Individual Papers : March 1, 2008 SUBMISSION 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 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) Meredith Williams (Johns Hopkins University) CONFERENCE WEBSITE: http://www.lcm.sdu.dk NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7-11th July Organizers: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Raymond Becker, Anders R Hougaard, Gitte R Hougaard and Todd Oakley More Information follows later! 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 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 Anne Salazar Orvig Meredith Williams Todd Oakley Jonathan Potter Robin Wooffitt Alan Cienki Cornellia Müller Ewa Dabrowska Edy Veneziano Shaun Gallagher Edwin Hutchins Johannes Wagner THE LCM CONFERENCES: The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue, and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language. Human natural languages are biologically based, cognitively motivated, affectively rich, socially shared, grammatically organized symbolic systems. They provide the principal semiotic means for the complexity and diversity of human cultural life. As has long been recognized, no single discipline or methodology is sufficient to capture all the dimensions of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which lies at the heart of what it is to be human. Theories of cognition and perception, and their neural foundations, are central to many current approaches in language science. However, a genuinely integrative perspective requires that attention also be paid to the foundations of cultural life in social interaction, empathy, mimesis, intersubjectivity, dialogicality, normativity, agentivity and narrativity. Significant theoretical, methodological and empirical advancements across relevant disciplines now provide a realistic basis for such a broadened perspective. This conference will articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive, affective and bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to share their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language sciences. NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7-11th July ***** 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 eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Oct 22 14:36:17 2007 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:36:17 +0300 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r Message-ID: Dear FUNKNETters: The following true story may have some not-just-personal interest. In 1981 the review editor of LANGUAGE asked me to write a review of 'On Language Change' (CUP, 1980) by Roger Lass. Since I felt that the topic was important enough, I wrote a lengthy review, which was subsequently promoted to the exalted status of a review article (= Language 1981, volume 57, number 3, pp. 688-697). Exactly 25 years later I was asked by the review editor of LANGUAGE (a different one, to be sure) to write a review of 'Context as Other Minds' (Benjamins, 2005) by Tom Givón. I was first worried that the review might turn out to be too long, but I got the reassurance that the length was just right. So I sent the review well before the end-of-May (or-June?) deadline. Then there was silence. After more than one year had passed, I asked about any possible news. So far, there has been no response. I find it difficult to believe that during these intervening 25 years my professional skills have deteriorated to the point that a review written by me is no longer fit to print. But even if this were the case, common courtesy demands that I should be told so. Then, in any case, I would have had the opportunity to offer the review to some other journal and to find out whether the reaction would be the same or - perhaps - different. What can we learn from this incident? I for one have learned the review policy of LANGUAGE: "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" In the meantime people - at least those who have not read the book - may still not know what Givón (2005) is all about. I am sure that some would like to know. Presumably there are other people around who are likewise displeased by arrogance coming from powers-that-be. Esa Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From hans.peters at uni-dortmund.de Mon Oct 22 15:25:35 2007 From: hans.peters at uni-dortmund.de (Hans Peters) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:25:35 +0200 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r Message-ID: Well - about a year ago, the same journal agreed to let me review a highly interesting book by Dirk Geeraerts - only the review copy never arrived. When I tried to point this out - no answer. So, no review ... H.Peters From john at research.haifa.ac.il Mon Oct 22 17:10:43 2007 From: john at research.haifa.ac.il (john at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:10:43 +0200 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r In-Reply-To: Message-ID: While we're on the topic, I was told by Language about a year ago that my Benjamins book on language, religion, and national identity would be reviewed, and since then I've heard nothing from them on the topic. I was just about to ask them what's happening. Esa, how about just posting your review here? John Myhill Quoting Esa Itkonen : > Dear FUNKNETters: > > The following true story may have some not-just-personal interest. > > In 1981 the review editor of LANGUAGE asked me to write a review of 'On > Language Change' (CUP, 1980) by Roger Lass. Since I felt that the topic was > important enough, I wrote a lengthy review, which was subsequently promoted > to the exalted status of a review article (= Language 1981, volume 57, number > 3, pp. 688-697). > > Exactly 25 years later I was asked by the review editor of LANGUAGE (a > different one, to be sure) to write a review of 'Context as Other Minds' > (Benjamins, 2005) by Tom Givףn. I was first worried that the review might > turn out to be too long, but I got the reassurance that the length was just > right. So I sent the review well before the end-of-May (or-June?) deadline. > Then there was silence. After more than one year had passed, I asked about > any possible news. So far, there has been no response. > > I find it difficult to believe that during these intervening 25 years my > professional skills have deteriorated to the point that a review written by > me is no longer fit to print. But even if this were the case, common courtesy > demands that I should be told so. Then, in any case, I would have had the > opportunity to offer the review to some other journal and to find out whether > the reaction would be the same or - perhaps - different. > > What can we learn from this incident? I for one have learned the review > policy of LANGUAGE: "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we > can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" In the meantime > people - at least those who have not read the book - may still not know what > Givףn (2005) is all about. I am sure that some would like to know. > > Presumably there are other people around who are likewise displeased by > arrogance coming from powers-that-be. > > Esa > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From amnfn at well.com Mon Oct 22 18:29:46 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:29:46 -0700 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Esa, Sometimes even when we do get a review published, there's the feeling that no one has read it. I, too, reviewed Givon's CONTEXT AS OTHER MINDS. The review came out in STUDIES IN LANGUAGE 31:3. Here is the URL for the Linguist List announcement: http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-2233.html So far, I haven't gotten a single comment on it, though. Best, --Aya On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Esa Itkonen wrote: > Dear FUNKNETters: > > The following true story may have some not-just-personal interest. > > In 1981 the review editor of LANGUAGE asked me to write a review of 'On Language Change' (CUP, 1980) by Roger Lass. Since I felt that the topic was important enough, I wrote a lengthy review, which was subsequently promoted to the exalted status of a review article (= Language 1981, volume 57, number 3, pp. 688-697). > > Exactly 25 years later I was asked by the review editor of LANGUAGE (a different one, to be sure) to write a review of 'Context as Other Minds' (Benjamins, 2005) by Tom Givón. I was first worried that the review might turn out to be too long, but I got the reassurance that the length was just right. So I sent the review well before the end-of-May (or-June?) deadline. Then there was silence. After more than one year had passed, I asked about any possible news. So far, there has been no response. > > I find it difficult to believe that during these intervening 25 years my professional skills have deteriorated to the point that a review written by me is no longer fit to print. But even if this were the case, common courtesy demands that I should be told so. Then, in any case, I would have had the opportunity to offer the review to some other journal and to find out whether the reaction would be the same or - perhaps - different. > > What can we learn from this incident? I for one have learned the review policy of LANGUAGE: "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" In the meantime people - at least those who have not read the book - may still not know what Givón (2005) is all about. I am sure that some would like to know. > > Presumably there are other people around who are likewise displeased by arrogance coming from powers-that-be. > > Esa > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > > From Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU Tue Oct 23 02:03:36 2007 From: Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:03:36 -0600 Subject: A Review That Wasn't Message-ID: Folks, LANGUAGE and other journals depend on volunteer labor for reviews. They have no way to extract them from people who request the book for review and then don't do it, you know. Each book review editor (and lots of other people who depend on volunteers, like NSF program officers) keeps notes, mental or otherwise, on who says they'll help and then doesn't deliver, but they never know with a new volunteer, and sometimes even reliables get overwhelmed by events and a review gets lost. The book review editor nags a bit now and then, and sometimes reviews come along 3 or 4 years late (look at a book review section and see what the dates of the books being reviewed are compared with the date of the issue that has the review). Or not... And publishers do a lousy job of keeping up with who the editors of journals are. Jeez, I still get the occasional book addressed to my late husband Bill Bright as editor of Language In Society, which he stopped editing about 10 years ago. So it can also be your publisher's fault. Sorry, I know, it's awful to have the feeling that you are shouting into a well. If we had the tradition of announcing who has been given the job of reviewing a book before the review appears, maybe peer pressure would get them to disgorge the review - but then, maybe not - and there would be dangers in that way of doing things too. Anyway, chalk it up to experience, and keep on truckin', or dancing, choose your metaphor. I happen to be overdue on a review myself, by a couple of months now...but to the editor who is waiting for it, yes, I will get it done. Lise Menn From john at research.haifa.ac.il Tue Oct 23 05:28:29 2007 From: john at research.haifa.ac.il (john at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:28:29 +0200 Subject: A Review That Wasn't In-Reply-To: <20071022200336.AHV14925@catwoman.int.colorado.edu> Message-ID: Actually, I was told that the review for my book would be 'commissioned.' I assumed that involved a fee... John Quoting Lise Menn : > Folks, LANGUAGE and other journals depend on volunteer labor for reviews. > They have no way to extract them from people who request the book for review > and then don't do it, you know. Each book review editor (and lots of other > people who depend on volunteers, like NSF program officers) keeps notes, > mental or otherwise, on who says they'll help and then doesn't deliver, but > they never know with a new volunteer, and sometimes even reliables get > overwhelmed by events and a review gets lost. The book review editor nags a > bit now and then, and sometimes reviews come along 3 or 4 years late (look at > a book review section and see what the dates of the books being reviewed are > compared with the date of the issue that has the review). Or not... > And publishers do a lousy job of keeping up with who the editors of > journals are. Jeez, I still get the occasional book addressed to my late > husband Bill Bright as editor of Language In Society, which he stopped > editing about 10 years ago. So it can also be your publisher's fault. > Sorry, I know, it's awful to have the feeling that you are shouting into a > well. If we had the tradition of announcing who has been given the job of > reviewing a book before the review appears, maybe peer pressure would get > them to disgorge the review - but then, maybe not - and there would be > dangers in that way of doing things too. > Anyway, chalk it up to experience, and keep on truckin', or dancing, > choose your metaphor. I happen to be overdue on a review myself, by a couple > of months now...but to the editor who is waiting for it, yes, I will get it > done. > Lise Menn > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU Tue Oct 23 14:23:31 2007 From: Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:23:31 -0600 Subject: A Review That Wasn't Message-ID: As far as I know, the only paid reviews (in our area of academia, anyway) come from the publisher: they usually pay one fairly decently to PRE-review a book ms. to help them decide whether to publish it, and they typically pay a small fee for people who are willing to say something nice for the promotional materials. Does anyone know of exceptions to this? "Commissioned" in the context of a review by a linguistics journal just means that the review editor will undertake to get an appropriate scholar to review the book, nothing more. Lise From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Tue Oct 23 14:57:11 2007 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:57:11 +0200 Subject: Reviews That Were In-Reply-To: <20071023082331.AHV68618@catwoman.int.colorado.edu> Message-ID: I think it would be good if we as a field realized -- sooner rather than later -- that the traditional way of commenting publicly on each other's work, in the form of book reviews that sometimes appear many years after the book, is becoming rapidly outdated. The future of scientific communication evidently lies in online publications, blogs, etc., and online publications can easily be enhanced by online reviews, online comments, etc. In a few years' time, we will probably have the first linguistics journals that work in the following way: As soon as a paper is submitted, it is made available on the journal's site, and public comments are invited. After a brief veetting procedure, most of these are published alongside the paper, and after a while the editors decide whether to give the contribution "officially published" status (perhaps after suitable revision). If a paper is denied that status, it can stay there (in limbo, but still accessible) or it can be withdrawn and submitted elsewhere. Well, this is just one model of so many possibilities. But we should not invest many energies into the good old book review anymore. It will be a nice memory for the older generation, but the future lies elsewhere. Greetings, Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics (http://www.glottopedia.org) From john at research.haifa.ac.il Tue Oct 23 16:24:26 2007 From: john at research.haifa.ac.il (john at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:24:26 +0200 Subject: Reviews That Were In-Reply-To: <471E0BC7.304@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: That's why I suggested Esa simply post his review on Funknet. John Quoting Martin Haspelmath : > I think it would be good if we as a field realized -- sooner rather than > later -- that the traditional way of commenting publicly on each other's > work, in the form of book reviews that sometimes appear many years after > the book, is becoming rapidly outdated. > > The future of scientific communication evidently lies in online > publications, blogs, etc., and online publications can easily be > enhanced by online reviews, online comments, etc. > > In a few years' time, we will probably have the first linguistics > journals that work in the following way: As soon as a paper is > submitted, it is made available on the journal's site, and public > comments are invited. After a brief veetting procedure, most of these > are published alongside the paper, and after a while the editors decide > whether to give the contribution "officially published" status (perhaps > after suitable revision). If a paper is denied that status, it can stay > there (in limbo, but still accessible) or it can be withdrawn and > submitted elsewhere. > > Well, this is just one model of so many possibilities. But we should not > invest many energies into the good old book review anymore. It will be a > nice memory for the older generation, but the future lies elsewhere. > > Greetings, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 > D-04103 Leipzig > Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 > > Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics > (http://www.glottopedia.org) > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From kemmer at rice.edu Wed Oct 24 03:49:50 2007 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 -0500 Subject: Reviews That ARE In-Reply-To: <471E0BC7.304@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: There's still a role for the "good old book review". Its place is online, as Martin said, but it doesn't have to be connected to any journal. It's easier for a scientific association to run a website than a whole journal, even an online journal, so any association in Linguistics can easily have an active website with news, events, and reviews to keep its members abreast of the latest publications. (Early linguistics associations published bulletins which served the same function.) The International Cognitive Linguistics Association has such a website and in the last year the review part of the site has developed quite well under Martin Hilpert's web editorship: http://www.cogling.org/bookreviews.shtml There are about 30 reviews that have been posted since the review part of the ICLA website started up last year, 25 more titles are under review, and many more are awaiting reviewers to offer to review them. I read reviews online on the Linguist, but the site's too broad to cover any specific area well. I recommend the ICLA's review site as a model for those who want to get their specialized association to serve them in a similar way. An association is as active as its members. Suzanne Kemmer confessedly, the ICLA webmaster On Oct 23, 2007, at 9:57 AM, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > I think it would be good if we as a field realized -- sooner rather > than later -- that the traditional way of commenting publicly on > each other's work, in the form of book reviews that sometimes > appear many years after the book, is becoming rapidly outdated. > > The future of scientific communication evidently lies in online > publications, blogs, etc., and online publications can easily be > enhanced by online reviews, online comments, etc. > > In a few years' time, we will probably have the first linguistics > journals that work in the following way: As soon as a paper is > submitted, it is made available on the journal's site, and public > comments are invited. After a brief veetting procedure, most of > these are published alongside the paper, and after a while the > editors decide whether to give the contribution "officially > published" status (perhaps after suitable revision). If a paper is > denied that status, it can stay there (in limbo, but still > accessible) or it can be withdrawn and submitted elsewhere. > > Well, this is just one model of so many possibilities. But we > should not invest many energies into the good old book review > anymore. It will be a nice memory for the older generation, but the > future lies elsewhere. > > Greetings, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher > Platz 6 > D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) > +49-341-980 1616 > > Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics > (http://www.glottopedia.org) > > > > > > From jbybee at unm.edu Thu Oct 25 15:20:33 2007 From: jbybee at unm.edu (Joan Bybee) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:20:33 -0600 Subject: [Fwd: RE: FUNKNET reply re itkonen] Message-ID: Dear friends. I forward here a message from Brian Joseph, Editor of Language and Greg Stump, Review Editor. I let them know about the complaints posted on Funknet and they asked me to forward a reply to you all. Having been a member of the Executive Committee of the LSA (the body that oversees the journal, Language) for a total of six years I can assure everyone that the editors and staff try very hard (with limited resources) to produce a fair and professional journal. One way to have a say in this is for members of the LSA to vote in the ongoing election of Executive Committee members, and if you are not a member, please join. Joan Bybee To FUNKNET readers: As the editors of LANGUAGE, we feel that the accusations made in this forum by Esa Itkonen and Hans Peters about how we run the review section of the journal cannot go unaddressed. We first of all feel it is unfortunate that they chose to air their alleged grievances in a public forum instead of bringing them to our attention, but since they have done so, we feel obliged to respond. We work very hard to ensure that all aspects of LANGUAGE's operations are fair, professional, and transparent (note the "Letters to LANGUAGE" section and the many Editor's Departments explaining procedures and policies). For the record, reviews that are commissioned are *always* published; Dr. Itkonen's suggestion that our policy is "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" has no foundation whatsoever. It is true that we do have a backlog of reviews; the review editor from 2002 through 2005, Stanley Dubinsky, did such an excellent job of reeling in reviews from authors that for the past several years we have had far more reviews on hand than we could publish in any given issue, leading to a backlog and, unfortunately, to some delays in publication. Moreover, our production process, aimed at maintaining the high standards that LANGUAGE has always aspired to, involves several stages of editorial review (this holds for article submissions as well as reviews), by the review editor, the main editor, and an independent copyeditor, and this process itself takes time. Some authors, understandably, wonder what has become of their review once it is submitted; we answer all such inquiries promptly. We received no such inquiry from Dr. Itkonen, despite what he says in his posted message. Dr. Itkonen's review, which we received via e-mail on May 23 2006 in the review editor's office, has been in the queue for publication since then, and is scheduled to enter the first stage of the process within a few months, once other reviews that were received in the review editor's office before his have entered into the production process. It is likely to appear therefore in the June or September issue of 2008. As for Dr. Peters' complaint that he never received the book we supposedly commissioned him to review and that his inquiry about it went unanswered, we frankly are puzzled. Our records show that we never commissioned a review by him, or by anyone, for the book in question. He must have confused LANGUAGE with some other journal. If we sound defensive here it is only because we feel that we as editors, and the journal as an institution, have been unfairly criticized in this forum, and we hope to have set the record straight with this message. LANGUAGE is the journal of the Linguistic Society of America and thus is responsive to the needs and interests of some 6,000 members of the world's linguistic community who belong to the LSA, not to mention the larger community of nonmember linguists who read the journal. We welcome genuine and constructive criticism, as our goal is to maintain the preeminent position the journal has occupied in our field, and to work constantly to improve our "product", the c. 250-page quarterly issues of the journal and the scientific material pertaining to the study of language that they contain. Brian D. Joseph & Gregory T. Stump Editor Review Editor LANGUAGE From maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr Mon Oct 1 15:09:32 2007 From: maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr (Maarten Lemmens) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:09:32 +0100 Subject: JOB (URGENT): Tenure track ESL, Univ. Lille3, France Message-ID: Tenure track position ESL, Universit? Lille3, France http://www.univ-lille3.fr !!! URGENT JOB NOTICE !!! Answer needed before Oct. 5, 2007 !!! Pending funding, the University of Lille 3, France, may have an opening for a tenure track position in English as a Second Language. REQUIREMENTS The candidate must hold a PhD, or be sure to have a PhD in hand by December 1, 2007 at the latest, in the field of Second Language Acquisition (English) and have demonstrated expertise in this domain, through quality publication and solid teaching experience. The ideal candidate will engage in the further expansion of the ESL teaching and research group at the Universit? Lille3. Normal teaching load is about 7 hours per week (2 terms of 13 weeks) and concerns English classes for non-specialists (ESP) exclusively (undergraduate level). Hiring will be done at the level of "Ma?tre de Conf?rences" with a monthly salary scale ranging from 2,058 to 3,722 (before taxes and withholdings), depending on the number of years of experience at MCF level (i.e. most positions for which a PhD is required). (For a more detailed description of what an MCF position entails, see http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/rapport/2007/observatoirees9.pdf, p. 82-86) Initially, there is no requirement that candidates speak French fluently, but it is necessary that they at least have a sufficient knowledge to understand the procedures. The successful candidate must be authorized to work legally in France by Sept. 1, 2008, the start date of the position. PROCEDURE Candidates who are interested in this position should send their CV to Maarten Lemmens (maarten.lemmens at univ-lille3.fr) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and no later than FRIDAY, OCT. 5, 2007 !! (Note: the first official step for candidates is to register on-line by Octobre 16, 2007, 17:00 (Parisian time) on the official site of the Minist?re de l'Enseignement sup?rieur et de la Recherche.) -- Maarten Lemmens Professeur en linguistique et didactique des langues (Sp?cialit?s: linguistique anglaise & linguistique cognitive) 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/ Board member of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association http://www.cogling.org/ -- From tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu Mon Oct 1 20:16:44 2007 From: tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:16:44 -0700 Subject: Piraha, complexity & universal: Another shot Message-ID: Dear FUNK people, I was disappointed with the discussion that followed Dan Everett' submission on Piraha a while back, regarding syntactic complexity and universals. At the time I thought that the issues of more interest (at least to me) somehow got side-stepped. So, I am attaching (in two formats) an attempt to revive that discussion. I do this rather than making this a long message (3.5 pp.), so that y'all can decide whether you want to bother. At the very least, this will give Dan one more opportunity to convince the (sympathetic) skeptics Best, TG From kemmer at rice.edu Mon Oct 1 21:08:05 2007 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:08:05 -0500 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Funknet doesn't take email attachments (to avoid spreading viruses and for other technical reasons), so I got the following text from Tom and will disseminate it for him. I am leaving the page breaks in, in case people want to paste it back to a Word document. --Suzanne RE: DAN EVERETT ON PIRAHA AND UNIVERSALS T. Giv?n White Cloud Ranch Ignacio, Colorado When Dan Everett came out with his original peer-review article ("Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Piraha" , Current Anthropology 46.4, 2005), I was disappointed with the peer reviewers' response (or lack thereof) to one major area where he stakes his claims, so-called 'recursivity'. My disappointment centered first on the fact that Dan, while going after Chomsky (cf. Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch 2002) with the relish of a recent convert, let Chomsky?once again, alas--dictate both the agenda and terms of engagement. But I also thought that few of the peer respondents did justice to the issues of syntactic complexity that were either raised or implied in Dan's work. My disappointment persisted through the eventual discussion earlier this year on Funknet. So I thought it would perhaps be useful to raise the topic once again, and if nothing else give both Dan and y'all a second go at it. 1. Chomsky's 'recursivity' as a framework: It is indeed sad to see the Hauser et al. (2002) article being allowed to frame our discussion, indeed dictate its terms. That article was one more attempt, undisguised, to resurrect 'competence' as the bastion of pure innateness. This was presumably achieved by singling out one important property of human grammar(s)--syntactic complexity achieved through the embedding of clauses inside other clauses--as the real essence of human grammar, and then claiming that this unique property is not the product of adaptive-selective evolution. There are a zillion issues wrapped up in this tortuous intellectual exercise. First, there are many other major and minor functional and structural properties of human grammar that are just as species-unique--declarative speech acts, multi-propositional coherence, referential displacement, multiple grammatical morphologies and syntactic constructions (and their attendant semantic-pragmatic correlates). Why single out 'recursivity'? Never mind that recursive-hierarchic structure is actually the hallmark of complex, automated biological processing in motor-control, memory, vision and other complex behaviors, all predating homo sapiens by healthy margins. Next, by lumping up all complex/embedded constructions under the rubric of 'recursivity', one tends to obscures the fact, well- known from both child-language and diachronic-syntax research, that different complex constructions arise in different communicative contexts, under different adaptive pressures, at starkly different ages in children (Diessel 2005), and through distinctly different diachronic pathways of grammaticalization. By lumping them all together into 'recursivity', and by insulating 'recursivity' from both its adaptive (communicative) motivation and its developmental (diachronic, ontogenetic) sources, one guts the issue of syntactic complexity. All that is left is the abstract computational aspect (Simon 1962). 2/everett.07 Further, Chomsky's Generative approach to universals has always been distinctly Platonic and patently non-biological. Only properties of language that are attested in 100% of human languages are universal. A single 'exception' shoots down the rule. But neither biology nor behavior nor language are amenable to this pristine view of universals. They are notoriously subject to variation and gradation, and those are in turn introduced and mediated by the developmental processes that shape both structure and behavior-- evolution, ontogeny, diachrony. Indeed, in order to achieve his pristine universals, Chomsky has found in necessary to make universals more and more abstract and increasingly removed from the visible phenomenology of language. In one sense, however, Chomsky has had the right intuition about universals: They are not the mere list of visible properties manifest in extant (or extinct) languages. Rather, they are principles that 'govern'--or in our terms, explain--the visible phenomenology. And they manifest their 'government' through the developmental processes--acquisition and diachrony?in much the same way as universals of biology manifest themselves through phylogeny (evolution) and ontogeny (embryology). In both biology and language, the reason why variation and 'exceptions' are both possible and necessary is because the underlying adaptive principles are often in conflict ('conflicting motivation'), and pull structures in different directions, often in a see-saw fashion. Thus, in phonology, articulation & perception are at constant loggerhead with each other. And likewise in grammaticalization, similarity to related source construction pulls in one direction (analogical extension and synonymy), while communicative distinctness pulls in the other (specialization and differentiation). But Chomsky, much like Saussure, was not about to subject his principles and parameters to the messy vagaries of acquisition and diachrony. The entire Generative enterprise rests on this rejection of the relevance of change and variation. This is where 'competence' rides in to the rescue. 2. The diachrony of complex/embedded constructions Embedded constructions in both the verb-phase and the noun-phrase fall under the unified intonation contour of the host main-clause. This is the most general structural feature of embedding. Invariably, however, these syntactic constructions start their life as paratactic ones--two clauses under separate intonation contours but already performing the communicative function of embedded clauses. The condensation--or merger--under a single intonation contour is the earliest structural indication of the grammaticalization of complex clauses (Mithun 2006, 2007). The literature on this parataxis-to-syntaxis trend is massive, and some of it not all that recent (Giv?n 1971, 1979; Dahl 2004; Heine and Kouteva 2007; Giv?n 2006, 2007; inter alia). It involves a two-step developmental trend: (a) Parataxis to syntaxis (b) Syntaxis to morphology/lexis Each of those steps contributes to the rise of complex-hierarchic structure--syntactic and lexical, respectively. 3/everett.07 Grammaticalization is multi-stepped and 'cyclical', the latter meaning that it may move from the earliest 'source' stage to a 'mature' construction stage, and eventually to phonologically- induced deterioration and back to zero. Most syntactic constructions and morphologies grammaticalize independently of each other. Only in post-pidgin contexts do constructions start together from zero. And such seeming synchronicity is temporary. For each potentially- complex syntactic construction (REL-clause, V-complement, passive, cleft, WH-question, etc.), one can catch a language at any given point of the developmental cycle. Piraha is not exactly unique in showing an early paratactic stage of REL-clauses and V-complement. Serial-verb languages all over Africa and Southeast Asia are in the same typological bag. Bambara (Mendeic) and Supyire (Senufu) are there. In both, however, the earliest step of clausal complexity-- merger of intonation contours--is already discernable, more advanced in Bambara, less so in Supyire. The same is true of Hittite. The same of Mohawk. The same in scores of Southeast Asian languages. All you have to do is catch them at the early stage of the grammaticalization cycle. But cycles--and their stages-- come and go, often gradually, often piecemeal. Is it so unique to catch a language at a particular stage? 3. Does culture constrain grammaticalization? If the diachronic facts indeed hold, as I think they do, then the question about the role of culture in constraining grammar must be recast as 'the role of culture in constraining grammaticalization'. Put another way: Is the fact that we find a language at an early stage of the rise--most often renovation--of complex construction in any way correlated to culture? The challenge for Everett here is two-fold. First, of the languages that display, roughly, the same early paratactic stage of the rise of complex clauses, some are small hunting-and-gathering societies-of-intimates (Piraha), some are old- establish pre-industrial cultivators with much larger social units (Bambara, Supyire, Mohawk), some are agrarian city-states or even empires (Hittite, Han Chinese). What exactly does culture predict here? And second, grammatical constructions rise and fall. And their renovation seems to be motivated largely by communicative need. In most language where we have historical or reconstructive evidence, one could show two or even three generations of rise-and-fall of the same construction. And most often no cultural change is correlated with such diachronic cycles. Did German revert to a society-of- intimates ca. 300-400 years ago when it was renovating its REL- clause construction, reverting to parataxis? And did it then sprint back to the industrial revolution when it eventually proceeded to well-grammaticalized syntaxis (merged intonation contours, de- stressed REL-pronouns)? Did the ascendant Han empire change from an intimate hunting-and-gathering society to a complex society-of- strangers as it created, one piece at a time, the complex syntactic construction of Mandarin Chinese--in every case starting from parataxis of clause-chaining? And did Han culture collapse earlier on, back to an intimate small society of hunters-and- gatherers, when it expanded imperially, moved east and south, and took over the vast Austro-Asiatic 4/everett.07 substratum--and in the process 'regressed' from the highly-complex Bodic-Tibetan Syntax to the near-pidgin parataxis of the Tao The Ching? Did the Hittite empire change culturally between the paratactic REL-clause of Old Hittite and the embedded REL-clauses of Middle Hittite? If one advocates cultural constraints on grammaticalization, in this case on the presence or absence of complex/embedded, one needs to demonstrate some, hopefully consistent, correlations between cultural and linguistic traits. References Dahl, O. (2004) The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Diessel, H. (2005) The Acquisition of Complex Sentences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Everett, D. (2005) "Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Piraha", Current Anthropology, 46.4 Giv?n, T. (1971) "Historical syntax and synchronic morphology: An archaeologist's field trip", CLS #7, Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society Giv?n, T. (1979) On Understanding Grammar, NY: Academic Press Giv?n, T. (2006) "Multiple routes to clause union: On the diachrony of syntactic complexity", Seminario de Complexidad Sit?ctica, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, November 2006 (ms) Giv?n, T. (2007) "Toward a diachronic typology of relative clauses", Symposium on the Genesis of Syntactic Complexity, Rice University, Houston, March 2008 (ms) Hauser, M., N. Chomsky and T. Fitch (2002) "The faculty of language: What it is, what it has, and how it evolved", Science, 298 Heine, B. and T. Kouteva (2007) The Genesis of Grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press Mithun, M. (2006) "Structural parameters of clause integration: Complementation in Mohawk", Seminario de Complejidad Sint?ctica, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo (ms) Mithun, M. (2007) "Threads in the tapestry of syntax: Complementation and Mohawk", UC Santa Barbara (ms) Simon, H. (1962) "The architecture of complexity", Proc. Amer. Philos. Society, 106.6 From dlevere at ilstu.edu Mon Oct 1 21:48:21 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:48:21 -0400 Subject: My reply to Givon In-Reply-To: <1DBA7F8B-7695-4AE2-B159-DE54D81EB79B@rice.edu> Message-ID: Tom and I have agreed on many things and disagreed on many things. So when he told me that he would be posting a note to Funknet about my Current Anthropology article, I wasn't sure what to expect. Now that I have read it, however, I can say that I am in agreement with most of it. Before giving my reply, let me give a plug for a book to be released next year: Don't sleep, there are jaguars: Lessons on life, language, and belief from the Amazon (Pantheon Books in the US; Profile Books in the UK; DVA in Germany; Flammarion in France; and several other countries). This book discusses in detail Piraha culture, my life among them, and the implications of their language and culture for our understanding of Homo sapiens. It also discusses my journey from Christian missionary to atheist, as a result of the Pirahas' empiricism. Let me begin with a few points of clarification. First of all, I did not originally write my article as any kind of response to Hauser, Fitch, and Chomsky initial article on the broad vs. narrow faculties of language (FLB vs. FLN, respectively), certainly it was not written as a response to their idea of recursion. I didn't even know about their article at the time. I was busy beginning a new research program documenting another Amazonian language. But David Gil of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig had organized a conference on numerals in the world's languages and had invited me to come and hang around the MPI for a month, which I did (the MPI being the closest thing to Disneyland for academics, to use Robert Van Valin's description, that I have encountered. I had originally called it an academic monastery, but the Disneyland metaphor seems better). I wrote the Current Anthropology paper while I was at the Max Planck and only after finishing it learned of the HFC paper, so I went back and rewrote a couple of sentences. But the main reason that I wrote the CA paper was to account for a range of phenomena in Piraha, from the simplicity of the kinship system to lack of folktales to lack of numerals and lack of recursion in the syntax. I am happy to report that there is a team of people conducting new and exciting research on Piraha these days: Amy Perfors, Michael Frank, Evelina Fedorenko, and Ted Gibson at MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Jeanette Sakel of the University of the West of England, Miguel Oliveira at St. Andrews University in Scotland, and Eugenie Stapert at the University of Manchester. Frank, Fedorenko, Gibson, and I have a new paper tentatively accepted in Cognition on the lack of numerals and counting in Piraha. Sakel and Stapert have a paper submitted on the absence of recursion in Piraha. And the MIT group is continuing to interpret results for a number of experiments that we have already carried out on short-term memory, perceptions of two-dimensional representation, recursion, and so on. This is very good to see, whatever the results. I don't know why my style in the Current Anthropology piece would sound like I am recently converted to or from anything. Although my interest in Chomskyan linguistics was pretty much nil at the time that I wrote that piece, I hadn't done much in Chomskyan theory or formal linguistics, except some phonology, since the mid-90s. I had already been doing my own thing, more concerned with trying to think through my own evolving ideas on Ethnogrammar ? the subject of my job talk at the University of Manchester in 2002, from ideas that I had been working on for a couple of years before that. So there was no recent conversion experience. I agree with Tom that it would be a shame if we allowed Chomsky or any other framework to regularly establish the bounds of our discussions. My own view is that if a linguist is being a good little boy or girl and doing fieldwork as they ought to, then plenty of ideas will emerge, which they can connect to current or ancient theoretical issues as their interests dictate. On Tom's view of grammaticalization, going, say, from parataxis to adjunction to embedding, so far as I can tell this is a very good idea. It was first suggested, I think, by Ken Hale in his 1976 paper on the lack of embedding in expected places in some Australian languages. Interestingly, this order mirrors Tom's even earlier ideas on the development of agreement in the process: pronouns to clitics to agreement affixes. I found this idea very useful in my own book Why there are no clitics, written in the generative style (I think a lot of so-called theorizing is little more than a style of writing). I am not claiming, or at least I do not intend to be claiming, that Piraha is unique in any respects other than in terms of documentation. Other languages might/probably will be documented that have a similar range of properties. I am happy to have my views interpreted such that culture constrains the grammaticalization process. On the other hand, this is an empirical issue and we need lots more data than we have. As to why culture has this effect in some languages and not others, Tom's question reveals a common misunderstanding, no doubt my fault, about what I am saying. I am not proposing that the cultural principal that constrains the Pirahas' grammar is a universal principle. It just is supposed to work for Piraha. I believe that every culture-grammar pairing is likely to have its own principles. There may be a theory in there, but maybe not. I don't know. From amnfn at well.com Mon Oct 1 22:03:15 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:03:15 -0700 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals In-Reply-To: <1DBA7F8B-7695-4AE2-B159-DE54D81EB79B@rice.edu> Message-ID: Tom Givon wrote: >And second, grammatical constructions rise and fall. And their >renovation seems to be motivated largely by communicative need. In >most language where we have historical or reconstructive evidence, >one could show two or even three generations of rise-and-fall of the >same construction. And most often no cultural change is correlated >with such diachronic cycles. Did German revert to a society-of- >intimates ca. 300-400 years ago when it was renovating its REL- >clause construction, reverting to parataxis? And did it then sprint >back to the industrial revolution when it eventually proceeded to >well-grammaticalized syntaxis (merged intonation contours, de- >stressed REL-pronouns)? Did the ascendant Han empire change from an >intimate hunting-and-gathering society to a complex society-of- >strangers as it created, one piece at a time, the complex syntactic >construction of Mandarin Chinese--in every case starting from >parataxis of clause-chaining? And did Han culture collapse earlier >on, back to an intimate small society of hunters-and- gatherers, >when it expanded imperially, moved east and south, and took over the >vast Austro-Asiatic My response: 1)_Grammaticalization is indeed cyclical, so much so that observing a language at a single point in time cannot determine whether it is on its way from an isolating typology to a more bound, agglutinative from, or wthether it is becoming less bound, on its way to an isolating typology from one that is fusional or affixing. You need to take a snapshot at several different points to see which place in the eternal cycle any given language, construction, or even word is. 2) Don't assume that a society of intimates would have a more isolating typology. Hunter gartherers, like their non-human primate brethren, tend to be able to express an entire clause in a very compact phonological form, but don't be too sure that this form is not syntactically complex. There are meaningful recurrent subcomponents, and that's where recursivity comes in. Best, --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Tue Oct 2 15:56:02 2007 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 11:56:02 -0400 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals Message-ID: Aya Katz i:kama:nude: <> My analysis of 'sound symbolism' in some of the analytical click languages reveals collapsed ancient morphological material within the supposed root. The meanings of Aya's 'recurrent subcomponents' here are quite different in flavor from the more expressive or lexical ones one often finds at the margins of words corresponding to old ideophone or lexical roots. Similar things seem to have been going on in a number of other families with isolating/analytical cast. Old productive morphology has left its now frozen and transformed mark on current lexicon. This makes sense from the POV of the Bybeean relevance principle- where meaningful internal stem changes are found late in the game of the analysis/synthesis cycle. How MUCH gets incorporated into the new analytical root is a variable, and even here one may see an increase in the ability to play with the form (as in Matisoff's Lahu). Recently I have speculated that such stem change may correlate with the size of the ideophone inventory (with some spectacular exceptions which seem motivated by areal influences)- the more synthetic a language is, and/or the more fusional it is, the smaller the ideophone inventory will tend to be. This may be because ideophones tend to code more 'relevant' information, and if such information is already redundantly marked either by productive or lexicalized morphology, economy will weed out ideophones as an unnecessary extravagance. As remnants of the old stem changes die away one should see the rise either of new equivalent morphology from set A of the lexicon (the usual grammaticalization resource suspects), or new ideophones from set B of the lexicon (more expressive forms)- the latter has been claimed for many languages. This may help to account for the fact that ideophones aren't a one-size-fits-all category- in some languages you get a short list with only completive aspectual senses, in others you get progressive, and so on. It remains to be seen whether one is dealing with an unprincipled mixture of formal means of expression, or something more akin to complementary distributions. I would suggest that knowledge of the structure of the lexicon of a particular language, by providing another yet related perspective, might help to differentiate supposed syntax-based cultural/grammatical property clusterings- for instance it has been hypothesized by Janis Nuckolls that cultures utilizing more ideophones would tend to see the world as more animistically organized, a more 'bottom up' approach to interpreting a world that requires far more negotiation on the part of the animate agent- the sort of place one would find less automaticization of behavior and more reliance instead on social memory and landmark-based navigation- where context looms large and fixed sets of rules may not work well. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu Tue Oct 2 16:22:54 2007 From: tgivon at smtp.uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 09:22:54 -0700 Subject: Here's Givon text: Dan Everett on Piraha and Universals In-Reply-To: <29310474.1191340563310.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: Nice comments, Jesse. As for automatization--every high-frequency behavior becomes automated, be it syntactic, lexical, motor, visual, etc. So if it is true (speculation is not proof...) that in some cultures the frequency balance shifts from grammar to contents (i.e. lexicon) or to some "embodied" experience, if that occurs in high enough frequency, it'll get automated just as any other behavior. Walter Kintsch had a nice paper (1992) about the balance between relying on grammar vs., relying on contents ("situational reasoning") in discourse processing. In both Pidgins & early child language (child pidgin), the balance is heavily tilted towards contents, given that they have little grammatical machinery. Both are, obviously, societies-of-intimates, where communications is tilted heaily towards the here-and-now, you-and-I, this-and-that-visible. In /On Understandiung Grammar /(1979, ch. 5), where I set out this conjecture, I also noted that in adult communication between intimates the same ought to apply. So e.g., spoken vs. written language shows a huge skewing in the frequency of complex constructions. Eli Ochs had a nice paper on just this topic(1977/1979). So in hunting-and-gathering or small-scale village societies, one would expect less reliance, in terms of frequency, on grammar. But there's a huge number of caveats that must be added here. The parts of grammar dedicated to deontic & epistepic modality are probably just as rich--or richer--in face-to-face communication in societies of intimates. This also shows up in earlier acquisition & high frequency of such modalities (marked by various "higher" verbs) in children ca. age 2-3, by the way. And of course, there's Revard Perkins' book (a TSL volume from way back) showing that small-scale, less-complex societies have much richer & more expanded deictic marking systems. So one has to be careful about frequency generalizations; they have to apply not to grammar at large, but to specific sub-systems. Best, TG ============= jess tauber wrote: > Aya Katz i:kama:nude: > > < to be able to express an entire clause in a very compact phonological > form, but don't be too sure that this form is not syntactically complex. > There are meaningful recurrent subcomponents, and that's where recursivity > comes in.>> > > > > My analysis of 'sound symbolism' in some of the analytical click languages reveals collapsed ancient morphological material within the supposed root. The meanings of Aya's 'recurrent subcomponents' here are quite different in flavor from the more expressive or lexical ones one often finds at the margins of words corresponding to old ideophone or lexical roots. Similar things seem to have been going on in a number of other families with isolating/analytical cast. Old productive morphology has left its now frozen and transformed mark on current lexicon. > > This makes sense from the POV of the Bybeean relevance principle- where meaningful internal stem changes are found late in the game of the analysis/synthesis cycle. How MUCH gets incorporated into the new analytical root is a variable, and even here one may see an increase in the ability to play with the form (as in Matisoff's Lahu). > > Recently I have speculated that such stem change may correlate with the size of the ideophone inventory (with some spectacular exceptions which seem motivated by areal influences)- the more synthetic a language is, and/or the more fusional it is, the smaller the ideophone inventory will tend to be. This may be because ideophones tend to code more 'relevant' information, and if such information is already redundantly marked either by productive or lexicalized morphology, economy will weed out ideophones as an unnecessary extravagance. > > As remnants of the old stem changes die away one should see the rise either of new equivalent morphology from set A of the lexicon (the usual grammaticalization resource suspects), or new ideophones from set B of the lexicon (more expressive forms)- the latter has been claimed for many languages. > > This may help to account for the fact that ideophones aren't a one-size-fits-all category- in some languages you get a short list with only completive aspectual senses, in others you get progressive, and so on. It remains to be seen whether one is dealing with an unprincipled mixture of formal means of expression, or something more akin to complementary distributions. > > I would suggest that knowledge of the structure of the lexicon of a particular language, by providing another yet related perspective, might help to differentiate supposed syntax-based cultural/grammatical property clusterings- for instance it has been hypothesized by Janis Nuckolls that cultures utilizing more ideophones would tend to see the world as more animistically organized, a more 'bottom up' approach to interpreting a world that requires far more negotiation on the part of the animate agent- the sort of place one would find less automaticization of behavior and more reliance instead on social memory and landmark-based navigation- where context looms large and fixed sets of rules may not work well. > > Jess Tauber > phonosemantics at earthlink.net > > > From meri.larjavaara at abo.fi Tue Oct 2 19:21:31 2007 From: meri.larjavaara at abo.fi (Meri Larjavaara) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 22:21:31 +0300 Subject: Representations du sens linguistique IV : nouvelle date pour la soumission des rsums In-Reply-To: <20070906101602.burntxdxcfwcoks8@webmail3.abo.fi> Message-ID: *** Propositions de communication demand?es pour le 8 octobre *** Colloque REPR?SENTATIONS DU SENS LINGUISTIQUE IV Helsinki, du mercredi 28 mai au vendredi 30 mai 2008 L'objectif du colloque est d'examiner les rapports entre les diff?rents mod?les de description linguistique et le traitement du sens. Nous proposons comme th?me du colloque les articulations complexes entre la langue et les param?tres contextuels. Les linguistes distinguent, entre autres, les usages ?crits/oraux de la langue, les usages priv?s/institutionnels, les discours interactionnels/monologaux... La question que nous nous posons est de savoir en quoi diff?rent les repr?sentations du sens linguistique d'apr?s le contexte d'utilisation ; est-ce que par exemple 'l'oralit?' s'exprime de la m?me mani?re dans une publicit? ?crite et dans un dialogue spontan? ? Quelles sont les r?alisations concr?tes de l'interactivit? dans deux types d'?crits diff?rents, tels le blog et le chat ? Comment se concr?tise la confidentialit? dans des contextes d'utilisation de la langue tr?s diff?rents (le journal intime et la session th?rapeutique, par exemple) ? De quelle mani?re s'utilisent certaines structures grammaticales dans un texte litt?raire et dans un texte journalistique, ? l'oral et ? l'?crit ? La probl?matique pourra ?tre abord?e d'un point de vue contrastif (diff?rences entre deux langues ou entre deux genres), synchronique (un seul genre/type de texte dans une langue d?finie) ou diachronique (nouveaux sens donn?s aux mots/structures dans un genre d?fini au cours de l'?volution). Propositions de communications *au plus tard le 8 octobre 2007* Pour tous les renseignements, veuillez consulter le site du colloque http://www.helsinki.fi/romaanisetkielet/congres/RSL/ From jjain at sfsu.edu Tue Oct 2 23:17:56 2007 From: jjain at sfsu.edu (Jagdish Jain) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 16:17:56 -0700 Subject: Givon on PirahaN and universals Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, Givon wrote that the article (Hauser et al. 2002) was one more attempt "to resurrect 'competence' as the bastion of pure innateness." I am confused. The word "bastion" metaphorically means "a defensive stronghold." Is Givon trying to say that the notion of 'competence' is being resurrected as a defensive stronghold for "pure innateness." Further, what does the modifier "pure" mean in this context. Is there "impure" innateness? Chomsky used the term 'competence' in the 1960s in the sense of a native speaker's TACIT knowledge of his her language. The concept "tacit" has no connection with the concept "innate." Because of the confusion created by the term 'competence,' Chomsky has started using the term I-language (= internalized linguistic system) to label the concept of "a native speaker's tacit knowledge of his or her language." I think I-language is a much better term than competence to describe the concept. I-LANGUAGE IS NOT INNATE, NOR A BASTION TO INNATENESS. I-LANGUAGE IS ACQUIRED. The notion of 'recursion/recursiveness/recursivity' has a precise meaning: if you take two constituency principles that involve a category on the left of one rewrite rule and the same category on the right of the second rewrite rule, you have set up the property called 'recursion' For example, if a clause has a constituent called VP, and that VP has a constituent called clause, you have succeeded in creating the property called recursion. Informally, this kind of recursion is called 'clause embedding." Recursion is not limited to clause embedding. Recursion is a wide spread design feature of language; it is not a FRAMEWORK (as Givon calls it). I would like to emphasize that a "complex linguistic construction" (whatever that means) may not involve any recursion. Nobody has suggested any metric for "complexity" of a linguistic construction. Jagdish Jain From Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk Wed Oct 3 09:59:10 2007 From: Vyv.Evans at brighton.ac.uk (Vyvyan Evans) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 10:59:10 +0100 Subject: 3rd CFP: Language, Communication & Cognition - Brighton Aug 4-7 2008. Message-ID: (apologies for cross-postings) THIRD CALL FOR PAPERS Conference on LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND COGNITION University of Brighton, August 4th-7th 2008, Brighton, UK Website: www.languageandcognition.net The conference on Language, Communication and Cognition aims to promote an interdisciplinary, comparative, multi-methodological approach to the study of language, communication and cognition, informed by method and practice as developed in Cognitive Linguistics. The objective is to contribute to our understanding of language as a key aspect of human cognition, using converging and multi-disciplinary methodologies, based upon cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, and cross-population comparisons. The conference will address the following themes: -Language, creativity and imagination -Language in use -Meaning and grammar -Communication, conceptualisation and gesture -Language and its influence on thought -Language acquisition and conceptual development -Origins and evolution of language and mind Keynote speakers The following distinguished scholars will be giving keynote lectures relating to the conference themes: Lera Boroditsky, Stanford University Herbert H. Clark, Stanford University Adele Goldberg, Princeton University Sotaro Kita, Birmingham University George Lakoff, University of California, Berkeley Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Theme Sessions In addition to a General Session and a Poster Session, there will be 6 specially-convened theme sessions, with specially invited discussants. These are as follows: 1. The socio-cultural, cognitive and neurological bases of metaphor Discussants: George Lakoff and Vyv Evans 2. Cognitive and social processes in language use Discussants: Herbert Clark and Paul Hopper 3. Constructional approaches to grammar and first language acquisition Discussants: Adele Goldberg and Eve Clark 4. The role of gesture in communication and cognition Discussants: Sotaro Kita and Alan Cienki 5. The social and cognitive bases of language evolution Discussants: Chris Sinha and Michael Tomasello 6. Linguistic relativity: Evidence and methods Discussants: Lera Boroditsky and Dan Slobin Submission of abstracts Submissions are solicited for the general session, the theme sessions, and the poster session. The abstract guidelines for all sessions are as follows: --Abstracts should not exceed 500 words - references are excluded from this count --Abstracts should clearly indicate a presentation title --Abstracts should be anonymous for purposes of blind peer-review --Abstracts should be formatted as Word, RTF or PDF documents --Abstracts should be submitted electronically to LCC at brighton.ac.uk Please include the following information in the main body of your email: --title and name of author(s) --affiliation --email address for correspondence --presentation title --3-5 keywords --preferred session for presentation: either general session, poster session, or theme session (please specify theme session number or title) Please include the following information in the subject header of your email: --"Abstract Submission - author(s) name(s)" ABSTRACT DEADLINE: November 26th 2007 For full details please consult the conference website: http://www.languageandcognition.net Organisers The conference is organised by Vyv Evans and St?phanie Pourcel Contact The conference email address is LCC at brighton.ac.uk Web details are available at: www.languageandcognition.net From cxr1086 at louisiana.edu Wed Oct 3 13:52:08 2007 From: cxr1086 at louisiana.edu (Clai Rice) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 08:52:08 -0500 Subject: Givon on PirahaN and universals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Jagdish Jain wrote: > > I would like to emphasize that a "complex linguistic construction" > (whatever that means) may not involve any recursion. Nobody > has suggested any metric for "complexity" of a linguistic > construction. Attempts to measure linguistic complexity have been a cottage industry in linguistics for some time, very important to subfields like 1st/2nd language acquisition, creolistics, clinical applications, and reading. A well known proposal specifically for mesauring the complexity of a lingustic construction would be Gibson's dependency locality theory: Edward Gibson, Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies, Cognition 68 (1998) 1-76. He also wrote an entry on this in the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. --Clai Rice From Salinas17 at aol.com Wed Oct 3 15:32:09 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 11:32:09 EDT Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions Message-ID: Wolfgang - Thanks for the reply. Sorry I couldn't answer sooner. I wrote: "Looking at it from this point of view -- yes, cognition gave and gives rise to language. But not as an added bonus. Rather, language was and is a solution to the PROBLEM of the private nature of individual cognition. As a matter of evolutionary survival value, SHARED cognitions -- and information about their consequences -- supply the individual with much more useful information than the much smaller set of cognitions he might have on his own." You answered, in a message dated 9/29/07 3:51:24: <> You've surprised me here. First of all, "shared cognitions" -- shared through language -- would obviously tend to have some plain survival advantages over entirely individual cognitions -- just from the point-of-view of all the second-hand information that would not otherwise be available to an individual. You've definded cognition to include perceptual processes that "guarantee the individual's 'orientation' in the Outer World." The Outer World is a big place and there's an obvious advantage to not being limited to one's individual perceptions about external events. A sign that says that the bridge is out saves me from going forward and plunging to my death. That sign contains someone else's perception and cognition. And when I read it, it becomes a "shared cognition" -- one that I would not have generated on my own and is not based on my own experience about the bridge. Likewise, I've never been to Munich, but I'm confident that I know where it is and how to get there -- but not based on my individual perceptual processes or my personal orientation in the Outside World. In fact, I'm totally dependent on the "shared cognitions" of others for any such "orientation". Without them, I wouldn't even know there was such a place, much less know that there was an airplane that could take me there. I also do not understand why you would say that humans are not "marked for the same basic properties that enable the functioning of the network." The "network" of shared cognitions functions primarily through language -- and at least humans who can speak the same language certainly share properties that enable its functioning. I'm not sure that one needs to go to super-computers to find an analogy. We're not talking about many processors linked to make one big processor. The better analogy is a network of individual computers that are capable of sharing processed data. An example is what we are doing here on Funknet. I wrote: "In this view, language would have arisen as an answer to the disadvantage of individual information gathering and storage -- individual cognition, if you prefer." You replied: <> I'm also surprised that you call this the standard model. If language is in fact a solution to the poor information gathering and storage capabilities of individual "cognitions" -- then we might expect individual cognitions contributing very little to the overall information embedded in language. And, vice versa, language contributing a huge portion of the information used by individual cognitions. The entire Generativist movement is certainly a rejection of this idea -- because it locates the structure of language in the individual and not in the Outside World, where the great bulk of information is that needs to be gathered and structured (processed) -- and where communication, which demands a certain structure, occurs. The pressures that would shape language would come from the Outside World -- otherwise language would be very ineffective at -- in your words -- guaranteeing orientation -- or at least accurate orientation. And it's not accurate to call this model something like "interactionist" either. Because interacting with an environment does not necessarily account for unique flow of information that occurs with language. I interact with my toaster and its dials, but the flow of information is quite limited. You also wrote: <> I'm wondering, Wolfgang, whether some of the items you mention here aren't a backwash from language into "raw cognition." Consider your own definition of cognition which I quoted above -- it does not mention most of these, only neural and perceptual processes and orientation in the Outer World. When we bring in such things as "metaphorical potential," doesn't it possibly suggest that some if these attributes might be the gift of language to cognition, rather than the other way around? The processes that make a pile of stones are not the same processes that build a stone house. But in the process of building a stone house, we might cut the stones into blocks, so they serve that purpose better. In the same way, we might re-form our raw cognitions to make a better fit for language. This comes into focus more clearly I think when we consider non-human cognition. Your definition of cognition ("the continuum of those neuron-based and perception-guided processes that guarantee the individual's 'orientation' in the Outer World") does not appear to exclude non-humans. And yet so much research and common knowledge suggests a strong separation between human and non-human cognition. Perhaps the difference is the enormous quantitative differences in the use of language. Perhaps a human who has never acquired a human language will only have non-human cognitions. Also you wrote: <> Wolfgang, I'm not understanding why this forum would be less appropriate than that forum. Is there something in our subject matter that is inappropriate for FUNKNET? Regards, Steve Long


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See what's new at http://www.aol.com From amnfn at well.com Wed Oct 3 16:40:38 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 09:40:38 -0700 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The discussion between Steve Long and Wolfgang Schulze seems to turn on the distinction between cognition and language. Does language require cognition? Does cognition require language? Are they entirely separable, or does one subsume the other. If by cognition we mean animal consciousness (and the processing of perceptual data by organisms), then it appears there can be cognition without language, even in our own species. Humans aren't born with language, but they start processing perceptual data from day one. By the same token, if by language, we mean the coding of information using a limited number of recurring subunits that can be recombined to form an unlimited number of messages with an indeterminately large degree of complexity, then clearly there can be language without cognition. Computer code and DNA code are two examples. Even writing left behind by people long dead is evidence of this principle, at least in one direction. Every time we read a message without meeting the person who wrote it, we process language that we acquired from an inanimate object. So that settles it, right? Language and Cognition are separable. --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From Salinas17 at aol.com Thu Oct 4 01:48:02 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 21:48:02 EDT Subject: Givon and Chomsky Message-ID: Jagdish Jain wrote: <> Of course, recursiveness is NOTHING BUT A FRAMEWORK. It's a structural form, and that makes it only a framework in which to present "meaning", to convey information. The fact that a particular structure might be effective at presenting a particular information or "meaning" is no reason to confuse the FRAMEWORK with the CONTENT. <> The fact that "competence" created confusion is not Tom Givon's fault. It's Chomsky's. <> Whatever "tacit" is supposed to mean, Chomsky's "competence" had a lot to do with the supposed innateness of language, perhaps depending on whom he was talking to. In the Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind lecture (1968) -- in which he never uses the word "tacit" -- Chomsky makes it very clear that when he says competence is knowledge, that knowledge is not primarily based on experience (learning): "...we cannot avoid being struck by the enormous disparity between knowledge and experience ? in the case of language, between the generative grammar that expresses the linguistic competence of the native speaker and the meagre and degenerate data on the basis of which he has constructed this grammar for himself." Not only does he say that experience supplies "meagre and degenerate data" and therefore can't be the source of generative grammar and linguistic knowledge (competence), he also tells us that competence is going to help settle the issue of innateness: "Putnam takes for granted that it is only general ?learning strategies? that are innate.... As I have argued earlier, a non-dogmatic approach to this problem can be pursued... through the investigation of specific areas of human competence, such as language,..." So you are mistaken in thinking that Chomsky was not using competence to refer to innateness. Whether he himself was confused about it, or whether the word "tacit" or I-language idea somehow cleared up that confusion, is another matter. Steve Long


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See what's new at http://www.aol.com From Salinas17 at aol.com Fri Oct 5 02:17:21 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:17:21 EDT Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (2) Message-ID: In a message dated 10/3/07 12:42:03 PM, amnfn at well.com writes: << By the same token, if by language, we mean the coding of information using a limited number of recurring subunits that can be recombined to form an unlimited number of messages with an indeterminately large degree of complexity, then clearly there can be language without cognition. >> And that might be the problem with that definition of language. You speak of "messages" -- in the ordinary sense of that word -- messages from whom to whom? Can a message be from no one to nobody? Is this message part important to your definition of language? And why should the "recurring subunits" be limited? Why can't every bit of information be assigned its own non-recurring "subunit" -- on into infinity? So we have a language where every thing, every action and relationship or process is its own "subunit," its own code and its own syntactical slot. Wouldn't this kind of language be more efficient than juggling "recurring subunits"? And this coding business -- isn't the process --> information, encoding, transmission, de-coding, back to information? So where is the de-coding in this definition of language? And why does the information need coding in the first place? Why take the step of putting a stand-in -- a symbol -- in place of the raw data? Can't we make an "unlimited number of messages" right out of the raw data without unnecessary coding? Why is the language you are describing carrying so much baggage? Could it be that its constrained by a function? Could that function be communication? <> Actually we have the whole universe and everything in it. Coded information right down to our tiny recurring subunit atoms, hadrons, quarks, spin, gravity and dark matter, etc. In fact, in this view, language is just a form of computation - just a spec in the algorithmic theory of everything, not the other way around. (See Steven Weinberg's review of Stephen Wolfram, "Is the Universe a Computer? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15762 Also J?rgen Schmidhuber's web site on the Zuse Hypothesis: The Universe as Computer -- http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/digitalphysics.html Also Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos (2006)) <> Interesting idea. Some say that you can process language acquired from an inanimate object even if it doesn't have any writing on it. "Signatures of all things I am here to read," wrote James Joyce, courtesy of Jakob Boehme. On the other hand, I can be in the physical presence of at least half the people on this planet and not understand a word they are saying, because I don't understand the languages they are speaking -- even with my handy book of Universal Grammar tucked under my arm. Another interesting inanimate object is the computer I'm sitting in front of It is the culmination of thousands of thousands of separate "cognitions" on the part of thousands and thousands of individuals who go back in time to Euclid and before, the people who gradually worked out over a long, long time the materials, the numbers, the concepts, the electronics, the processes, the software, the distribution and even the marketing. I am, as an individual, incapable of building this machine from scratch, and so are my individual "cognitions." The machine is the culmination of thousands and thousands of "cognitions" on the part of thousands and thousands of individuals over along, long period of time. What linked them all together communally is, I believe, language. Regards, Steve Long


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See what's new at http://www.aol.com From amnfn at well.com Fri Oct 5 04:25:08 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 21:25:08 -0700 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (2) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Steve Long wrote: >The machine is the culmination of thousands and thousands of "cognitions" on >the part of thousands and thousands of individuals over along, long >period of time. What linked them all together communally is, I believe, >language. In the case of a computer that passes messages between people, just as in the case of a book whose author is long dead, the issue is not that no cognition was involved in creating the message. The point is that the cognition that created the message is no longer operating at the time of delivery. Hence the conclusion that language, however it may have come into being, is separable from the cognition that spawned it. It doesn't require high technology or even a writing system to make this point. A parrot could be trained to deliver a message from one person to another. The parrot need not understand the message. The sender can die before the message is delivered. The receiver can still learn important information -- and that is the power of language. If cognition and language were one and the same, none of these scenarios would work. --Aya Katz ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= From Salinas17 at aol.com Fri Oct 5 05:39:29 2007 From: Salinas17 at aol.com (Salinas17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 01:39:29 EDT Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (3) Message-ID: In a message dated 10/5/07 12:25:32 AM, amnfn at well.com writes: <> I see. You're connecting "cognition" to a particular person. The difference is that I see "cognitions" as information. They don't die or disappear. They are either communicated or not communicated. What I'm thinking today may not be what I think tomorrow -- you don't need death for individual cognitions to change. Whether I am alive or dead when you read this is irrelevant to the transfer of this particular piece of information. I might change my mind right after I send this post, but that will not change what I was "congnitioning" (ha) when I sent it. That information has already been transferred via our common language. <> Language is the transfer of "cognitions." When a cognition is communicated, it becomes a "shared cognition." The transfer of information does not depend upon whether the transferor died long ago or not, it depends on successful transfer by any media through which language can be used. Regards, Steve Long ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com From amnfn at well.com Fri Oct 5 14:35:40 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 07:35:40 -0700 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (3) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Steve, I think we are in agreement about most of the essential facts. Perhaps our use of different labels is largely a matter of style. I distinguish between cognition and its calcified remains, which I tend to think of as language in the case of a communicative tool, and culture in the case of shared belief systems. I don't believe humans have collective cognition, although that might theoretically be possible in a society of telepaths. When I understand a message sent by another, I do not necessarily share his cognition. I might totally disagree or disbelieve the message, but the information it contains has been passed along. Thus again, I distinguish between language and cognition. Best, --Aya ================================================================ Dr. Aya Katz, Inverted-A, Inc, P.O. Box 267, Licking, MO 65542 USA (417) 457-6652 (573) 247-0055 http://www.well.com/user/amnfn ================================================================= On Fri, 5 Oct 2007 Salinas17 at aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 10/5/07 12:25:32 AM, amnfn at well.com writes: > < the case of a book whose author is long dead, the issue is not that no > cognition was involved in creating the message. The point is that the cognition that > created the message is no longer operating at the time of delivery.>> > > I see. You're connecting "cognition" to a particular person. The > difference is that I see "cognitions" as information. They don't die or disappear. > They are either communicated or not communicated. What I'm thinking today > may not be what I think tomorrow -- you don't need death for individual > cognitions to change. Whether I am alive or dead when you read this is irrelevant > to the transfer of this particular piece of information. I might change my > mind right after I send this post, but that will not change what I was > "congnitioning" (ha) when I sent it. That information has already been transferred > via our common language. > > < would work.>> > > Language is the transfer of "cognitions." When a cognition is communicated, > it becomes a "shared cognition." The transfer of information does not > depend upon whether the transferor died long ago or not, it depends on successful > transfer by any media through which language can be used. > > Regards, > Steve Long > > > > > > > > > ************************************** > See what's new at http://www.aol.com > > From nagaya at rice.edu Sun Oct 7 11:14:02 2007 From: nagaya at rice.edu (Naonori Nagaya) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 06:14:02 -0500 Subject: The 12th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language Message-ID: (apologies for cross-postings) THE GENESIS OF SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM The 12th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language, co-organized by Matt Shibatani (Rice University) and T. Giv?n (University of Oregon), will be held in the Farnsworth Pavilion of the Ley Student Center on March 27th-29th, 2008. The topic-"The genesis of syntactic complexity"-in part builds on the success of the 11th biennial symposium on complex verb constructions and explores the genesis and nature of syntactic complexity from an interdisciplinary perspective. Structural complexity may be defined broadly as the "chunking" of linear-sequential structure into hierarchic one (cf. Herbert A. Simon 1962 "The architecture of complexity"). The creation of such hierarchic structure is a common process language shares with motor control, vision, memory, and music. It is often associated with the move from attended to automated processing. Our symposium will focus on one particular type of syntactic complexity, that of clauses ('propositions') embedded inside other clauses-under a unified intonation contour. We examine two syntactic domains in which such embedding structures are generally found to cluster: (i) in the verb phrase (complex predicates, clause-union, verb complementation), and (ii) in the noun phrase (relative clauses and noun complementation). The symposium will concern itself primarily with the genesis of these complex structures, comparing the three main developmental trends of language: Diachrony, child language development, and evolution. For all three, we will explore the linguistic, cognitive, neurological and biological aspects of the genesis and development of complex syntax. The symposium is open to the public. Further information will be posted shortly in the webpage: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~eivs/sympo/ Contributors: 1. Diachronic development: B. Heine (Koeln) & T. Kouteva (Duesseldorf) A. Pawley (Canberra) O. Dahl (Stockholm) G. Deutscher (Leiden) M. Mithun (Santa Barbara) C. Bowern (Rice) M. Hilpert & C. Koops (Rice) M. Shibatani (Rice) T. Giv?n (Oregon) 2. Child development: H. Diessel (Jena) C. Rojas (UNAM) T. Giv?n (Oregon) 3. Cognitive and & neurological aspects: B. MacWhinney (CMU) D. Fernandez-Duque (Villanova) F. Pulvermuller (Cambridge) E. Pederson & M. Barker (Oregon) D. Tucker (Oregon) 4. Biology and evolution: D. Bickerton (Hawaii) N. Tublitz (Oregon) From eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Oct 8 10:49:04 2007 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:49:04 +0300 Subject: On Everett on Givon (on Everett) Message-ID: In his reply to Givon, Dan Everett seems to be saying that Ken Hale was the first to claim (in 1976) that embedding/hypotaxis emerges from parataxis. I must have misunderstood him, but for the benefit of those who may be guilty of the same misunderstanding, I would like to add the following comment. Hermann Paul (1975 [1880]: 145) points out, first, that hypotaxis is generally thought to emerge from parataxis and, second, that this view (if meant to state the whole truth) is wrong: "Irrtuemlich ist ferner die gewoenliche Ansicht, dass die Hypotaxe durchgaengig aus der Parataxe entstanden sei." Thus, more than 100 years before Ken Hale, most people thought what he thought, but Paul thinks that they are wrong. But how, then, can hypotaxis come into being, if not from parataxis? The answer is not blowing in the wind, but is, rather, mentioned in the title of my 2005 book (published by Benjamins). Paul adduces several cases of parataxis from his own speech. Surely Germany under Bismarck is a less-than-ideal example of a hunter-gatherer community. So those seem to be right who doubt the plausiblity of a very close correlation between linguistic structure and social structure. Another thing. In 1816, Franz Bopp started his historical-comparative work by assuming that the Indo-European verb contains the end results of two grammaticalization processes: from copula to tense marker and from pronoun to person suffix. This is explains why, for those who learned this in their first student year, grammaticalization is no big deal. Besides, more should be said about the emergence of ablaut (which fails to conform with the lexical > grammatical cline) To conclude, I have to mention an important contribution by Vera da Silva and Chris Sinha on how to teach the Pirahas to read and write (sic!). Perhaps expectedly, the New Yorker refused to publish it. Fortunately, however, it is to be be found in Linguist List and Cogling (in late April, I think). Esa Itkonen Reference Paul, Hermann (1975 [first ed. 1880, fifth ed. 1920]): Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Tuebingen: Niemeyer. Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From dlevere at ilstu.edu Mon Oct 8 11:57:36 2007 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 07:57:36 -0400 Subject: On Everett on Givon (on Everett) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I replied to the Sinha and Silva posting on LinguistList on April 23, 2007. I didn't mean to sound like Hale was the first person ever to have the idea that parataxis leads to embedding. It has been around for a while. Bloomfield even says some things about it. But Ken's paper is in the generative tradition and that is where most/ all of the controversy about the claims that a language can lack subordination/recursion come from. So it is particularly pertinent. Best, Dan On 8 Oct 2007, at 06:49, Esa Itkonen wrote: > In his reply to Givon, Dan Everett seems to be saying that Ken Hale > was the first to claim (in 1976) that embedding/hypotaxis emerges > from parataxis. I must have misunderstood him, but for the benefit > of those who may be guilty of the same misunderstanding, I would > like to add the following comment. > > Hermann Paul (1975 [1880]: 145) points out, first, that hypotaxis > is generally thought to emerge from parataxis and, second, that > this view (if meant to state the whole truth) is wrong: > "Irrtuemlich ist ferner die gewoenliche Ansicht, dass die Hypotaxe > durchgaengig aus der Parataxe entstanden sei." Thus, more than 100 > years before Ken Hale, most people thought what he thought, but > Paul thinks that they are wrong. But how, then, can hypotaxis come > into being, if not from parataxis? The answer is not blowing in the > wind, but is, rather, mentioned in the title of my 2005 book > (published by Benjamins). > > Paul adduces several cases of parataxis from his own speech. Surely > Germany under Bismarck is a less-than-ideal example of a hunter- > gatherer community. So those seem to be right who doubt the > plausiblity of a very close correlation between linguistic > structure and social structure. > > Another thing. In 1816, Franz Bopp started his historical- > comparative work by assuming that the Indo-European verb contains > the end results of two grammaticalization processes: from copula to > tense marker and from pronoun to person suffix. This is explains > why, for those who learned this in their first student year, > grammaticalization is no big deal. Besides, more should be said > about the emergence of ablaut (which fails to conform with the > lexical > grammatical cline) > > To conclude, I have to mention an important contribution by Vera da > Silva and Chris Sinha on how to teach the Pirahas to read and write > (sic!). Perhaps expectedly, the New Yorker refused to publish it. > Fortunately, however, it is to be be found in Linguist List and > Cogling (in late April, I think). > > Esa Itkonen > > Reference > Paul, Hermann (1975 [first ed. 1880, fifth ed. 1920]): Prinzipien > der Sprachgeschichte. Tuebingen: Niemeyer. > > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From lists at chaoticlanguage.com Mon Oct 8 12:40:39 2007 From: lists at chaoticlanguage.com (Rob Freeman) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:40:39 +0800 Subject: Criticizing Linguistics/Shared Cognitions (2) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Anyone interested in this perspective of "language as computation", and which is thus beyond abstraction into classes, which I assume Steve Long is hinting at here, should take a look at these recent threads on the Corpora list: Is a complete grammar possible (beyond the corpus itself)? ad-hoc generalization and meaning corpus syntax (and how we can use it to code meaning) http://www.uib.no/mailman/public/corpora/2007-September/thread.html And more recently the discussion here: http://groups.google.com/group/grammatical-incompleteness -Rob Freeman On 10/5/07, Salinas17 at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 10/3/07 12:42:03 PM, amnfn at well.com writes: > << By the same token, if by language, we mean the coding of information using > a limited number of recurring subunits that can be recombined to form an > unlimited number of messages with an indeterminately large degree of complexity, > then clearly there can be language without cognition. >> > > And that might be the problem with that definition of language. > > You speak of "messages" -- in the ordinary sense of that word -- messages > from whom to whom? Can a message be from no one to nobody? Is this message part > important to your definition of language? > > And why should the "recurring subunits" be limited? > > Why can't every bit of information be assigned its own non-recurring > "subunit" -- on into infinity? So we have a language where every thing, every action > and relationship or process is its own "subunit," its own code and its own > syntactical slot. Wouldn't this kind of language be more efficient than juggling > "recurring subunits"? > > And this coding business -- isn't the process --> information, encoding, > transmission, de-coding, back to information? So where is the de-coding in this > definition of language? > > And why does the information need coding in the first place? Why take the > step of putting a stand-in -- a symbol -- in place of the raw data? Can't we > make an "unlimited number of messages" right out of the raw data without > unnecessary coding? > > Why is the language you are describing carrying so much baggage? Could it be > that its constrained by a function? Could that function be communication? > > <> > > Actually we have the whole universe and everything in it. Coded information > right down to our tiny recurring subunit atoms, hadrons, quarks, spin, gravity > and dark matter, etc. In fact, in this view, language is just a form of > computation - just a spec in the algorithmic theory of everything, not the other > way around. > > (See Steven Weinberg's review of Stephen Wolfram, "Is the Universe a Computer? > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15762 > Also J?rgen Schmidhuber's web site on the Zuse Hypothesis: The Universe as > Computer -- http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/digitalphysics.html > Also Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes > on the Cosmos (2006)) > > < at least in one direction. Every time we read a message without meeting the > person who wrote it, we process language that we acquired from an inanimate > object.>> > > Interesting idea. > > Some say that you can process language acquired from an inanimate object even > if it doesn't have any writing on it. "Signatures of all things I am here to > read," wrote James Joyce, courtesy of Jakob Boehme. > > On the other hand, I can be in the physical presence of at least half the > people on this planet and not understand a word they are saying, because I don't > understand the languages they are speaking -- even with my handy book of > Universal Grammar tucked under my arm. > > Another interesting inanimate object is the computer I'm sitting in front of > It is the culmination of thousands of thousands of separate "cognitions" on > the part of thousands and thousands of individuals who go back in time to > Euclid and before, the people who gradually worked out over a long, long time the > materials, the numbers, the concepts, the electronics, the processes, the > software, the distribution and even the marketing. I am, as an individual, > incapable of building this machine from scratch, and so are my individual > "cognitions." > > The machine is the culmination of thousands and thousands of "cognitions" on > the part of thousands and thousands of individuals over along, long period of > time. What linked them all together communally is, I believe, language. > > Regards, > Steve Long From gert.desutter at hogent.be Mon Oct 8 13:07:40 2007 From: gert.desutter at hogent.be (Gert De Sutter) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:07:40 +0200 Subject: CFP - Discourse and Grammar 2008 (Ghent, Belgium) Message-ID: Illocutionary force, information structure and subordination between discourse and grammar Ghent University ? University College Ghent May 23-24, 2008 Invited speakers: C. Lehmann, Universit?t Erfurt, Germany J.C. Verstraete, KULeuven, Belgium Call for Papers (PDF file attached) (French version: http://members.chello.be/gert.desutter1/enfrancais/index.htm) Since Matthiessen & Thompson (1988), it has been widely assumed that discourse structure and complex sentence structure have much in common and that the latter is a more grammaticalised way of representing relationships between states of affairs than the former. Both structures consist of a network of relationships between what we could call, avoiding too strong a terminological bias, more and less prominent states of affairs (background/foreground; nucleus/satellite; salient/non-salient; etc.). The issue which this conference wishes to address is the grammatical, pragmatic and semantic status of less prominent states of affairs in discourse and complex sentence structure and more in particular the interaction between grammatical properties of subordination, speech act properties and clausal information structure. In complex sentence structure, less prominent states of affairs are expressed in subordinate clauses, which are widely, but not unanimously, assumed to lack both speech act properties and information structure (cf. Lambrecht 1994; Cristofaro 2003). There are, however, some notable exceptions, viz. clauses which seem to have the grammatical properties of subordinate clauses, but are prominent in the sense that they provide the core of information of the sentence as a whole (Biber 1988). On the other hand, less prominent states of affairs operating as independent clauses in discourse structure, are not usually thought of as being deprived of speech act properties or information structure. It remains to be seen whether this is a tenable position. Conference papers are expected to address one or more of the following questions or another topic within the realm of the conference theme: - Is discourse structure best analysed as binary (salient/non-salient; foreground/background) or as a continuum and what are the criteria? - Is it feasible to describe the relationship between discourse structure and complex sentence structure as iconic? - Is it either necessary or feasible to distinguish between different types of less prominent information (Brandt 1996) such as subsidiary information (Nebeninformation) vs. background information (Hintergrundinformation)? Do we perhaps need to distinguish more types than these? - What is the exact distribution of illocutionary force in discourse? Are less prominent but independent states of affairs endowed with illocutionary force? - What is the role of discourse particles and connective devices in the organisation of the discourse in more and less prominent states of affairs? - Is clausal information structure a property specific to independent clauses? - Should information structure be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance? According to some authors, complex sentence structures have only one information structure partition (cf. Mathesius 1975, Komagata 2003), whereas others assume that certain complex sentence types have more than one (Brandt 1996). - If clausal information structure is absent from subordinate clauses, why do syntactic manifestations of information structure (dislocation, clefting) sometimes appear in subordinate clauses? - How can the interaction between clausal information structure and discourse information structure (cf. the difference between clausal topic and discourse topic) be described in a more comprehensive way? - Is there historical evidence of the ?loss? of speech act properties or information structure? Can this be linked to a diachronic development from independent to dependent clauses, and if so, is it indeed feasible to describe this process as grammaticalisation (cf. Fischer 2007)? Comparative papers focussing on European languages are particularly welcome and will be favoured during the review process. Anonymous abstracts should be max. 2 pages long and be sent as a Word (.rtf) file to: bart.defrancq at hogent.be before 1 November 2007. Abstract and paper should be in English or French. Information about the author(s) should be given in the e-mail the abstract is attached to. Notification of acceptance is scheduled to 1 January 2008. Registration fee: 75 Euro More information: http://members.chello.be/gert.desutter1/ Programme committee (provisional): Christelle Cosme (University of Louvain, UCL) Hubert Cuyckens (University of Leuven, KULeuven) Bart Defrancq (University College Ghent) Liesbeth Degand (University of Louvain, UCL) Gert De Sutter (University College Ghent) Pascale Hadermann (Ghent University) Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen (Ghent University) Els Tobback (Ghent University) Dominique Willems (Ghent University) Organising committee (provisional): Joost Buysschaert (University College Ghent) Hubert Cuyckens (University of Leuven, KULeuven) Bart Defrancq (University College Ghent) Liesbeth Degand (University of Louvain, UCL) Gert De Sutter (University College Ghent) Gudrun Rawoens (University of Louvain, UCL/Ghent University) Els Tobback (Ghent University) Dominique Willems (Ghent University) From loenneke at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU Mon Oct 15 16:58:47 2007 From: loenneke at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Birte Loenneker-Rodman) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:58:47 -0700 Subject: Second announcement GCLA/DGKL 2008 Message-ID: Second announcement GCLA/DGKL 2008 Call for papers Third international conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association Leipzig, September, 25 - 27, 2008 The third international conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (GCLA/DGKL) will take place in Leipzig, Germany, from September, 25 to 27, 2008. It is organized by the Linguistics Department at the Institute of English and American Studies at Leipzig University. Special theme: Converging Evidence Topics Submissions are invited for papers addressing - from various perspectives - any facet of cognitive linguistics research, including research on meaning, conceptual structure, conceptual operations, cognitive processing, grammar, acquisition, language use, discourse function, and other issues. Papers supporting their arguments by various methodologies or drawing on evidence from various fields are especially welcome, though others are not excluded. The conference languages are English and German. Submissions Submissions may offer any of the following: 1. theme session; 2. paper presentation; 3. poster presentation; 4. paper or poster. Guidelines for papers and posters: Abstracts * should not exceed 500 words of text (exclusive of references) * should indicate a clear title * should meet the following criteria: - topic relevance - originality - clear structure - conclusive argumentation * should be anonymous for purposes of blind peer-review * should be formatted as Word, RTF or PDF documents * should be submitted electronically to the address given on the conference website, http://webapp.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/~DGKL/GCLA_08/ Please, include the following information in the main body of your e-mail: * Presentation title * Author name(s) * Affiliation * E-mail address for correspondence * 3-5 keywords * Preference re general or poster session Please, include the following information in the subject header of your e-mail: "Abstract submission - Author(s) name(s)". Abstract submission deadline: December 1st, 2007. Guidelines for theme sessions: Proposals for theme sessions should include * a brief description of the topic of the planned session (max. 500 words); * a list of the contributions already planned; * a list of further aspects expected to be discussed in the session, to allow for additional applications. Theme sessions will be organized as half-day sessions, with the time for presentations and discussions adapted to the schedule of the general session. Theme session organizers will take responsibility for the quality of the contributions to their sessions and will decide on the acceptance/rejection of the papers submitted (once the theme session has been accepted). Submission deadline: November 15th, 2007. Conference schedule Talks are scheduled in 30 minute slots: 20 minutes presentation, 5 minutes for discussion and 5 minutes to change sessions and/or change speakers. We anticipate 3 parallel sessions of regular papers, plus plenary lectures, plus 1 - 2 theme sessions. Keynote speakers We are happy to announce the following plenary speakers: * Seana Coulson, University of California at San Diego * Holger Diessel, Jena University * Stefan Th. Gries, University of California at St. Barbara * G?nter Radden, Hamburg University * Gerard Steen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Important dates August, 2007: First Call for papers, posters and theme sessions 15th November 2007 (extended): Deadline for theme sessions 1st December 2007: Deadline for paper and poster submissions March, 2008: Notification of acceptance 25 - 27th September, 2008: Third GCLA/DGKL-Conference Local organizing committee Doris Sch?nefeld Institut f?r Anglistik, Universit?t Leipzig Beethovenstra?e 15 04107 Leipzig, Germany schoenefeld at uni-leipzig.de From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Mon Oct 15 18:40:52 2007 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:40:52 +0200 Subject: SALC2007 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, We would like to inform you that the Scientific Program for the First Conference of the Swedish Association for Language and Cognition (SALC) to be held at Lund University between November 29 and December 1st 2007, has now been posted on the conference home site: http://www.salc-sssk.org/conference/ There will be - 5 plenary talks (by Susan Goldin-Meadow, Esa Itkonen, Chris Sinha, Peter G?rdenfors and ?sten Dahl), - 45 oral presentations in the general session - 10 oral presentations each for the theme sessions: "Space in Language and Cognition", "Language and Gesture" and "The Dynamics of Symbolic Matter" - 15 poster presentations The Business Meeting of SALC will be held on Nov 30, 1-2 pm. We have registered over 100 participants, but have an additional 50 places left, so if you wish to participate, please use the homesite in order to register! We are looking forward to seeing all speakers and guests in Lund at the end of next month! For the Organizing Committee, Jordan Zlatev, President of SALC *************************************************** Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Center for Languages and Literature Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html *************************************************** From antti.arppe at helsinki.fi Thu Oct 18 18:44:40 2007 From: antti.arppe at helsinki.fi (Antti Arppe) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:44:40 +0300 Subject: ANN: Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics Message-ID: [Apologies for cross-postings] Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL-3) Date: 02-Jun-2008 - 04-Jun-2008 Location: Helsinki, Finland Contact Email: qitl-3helsinki.fi Meeting URL: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) in association with the Department of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki will be co-hosting the Third Workshop on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL-3), to be held on Mon-Wed, 2-4 June, 2008, in Helsinki, Finland. The official website of the workshop, with the forthcoming Call for Papers and other information, is to be found at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ This workshop is both a continuation of the two previous QITL events held in Osnabr?ck, Germany (http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/~qitl/), and the latest in the sequence of summer symposia arranged by SKY(http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumia.shtml). Important Dates: Announcement: 18 October 2007 1st Call for Papers: End of November 2007 Submission deadline: Early February 2008 Event: 2-4 June 2008 Organizing committee: Urpo Nikanne, ?bo Akademi University Kaius Sinnem?ki, University of Helsinki Antti Arppe, University of Helsinki ----- From hougaard at language.sdu.dk Mon Oct 22 10:56:55 2007 From: hougaard at language.sdu.dk (Anders Hougaard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:56:55 +0200 Subject: LCM 3: 2nd CfP Message-ID: CONFERENCE: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND MIND 3 Odense, 14th-16th July 2008 2ND CALL FOR INDIVIDUAL PAPERS NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7th-11th July 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 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. Description of the LCM conference series: see bottom. NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7th-11th July DATES *First call for Theme Sessions: April 1, 2007 * Second call for Theme Sessions: May 1, 2007 * Third call for Theme Sessions: August 1, 2007 * Deadline for Theme Sessions submissions: September 1, 2007 * Notification for Theme Sessions : October 1, 2007 * Deadline for individual paper submissions : January 1, 2008 * Notification for Individual Papers : March 1, 2008 SUBMISSION 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 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) Meredith Williams (Johns Hopkins University) CONFERENCE WEBSITE: http://www.lcm.sdu.dk NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7-11th July Organizers: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Raymond Becker, Anders R Hougaard, Gitte R Hougaard and Todd Oakley More Information follows later! 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 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 Anne Salazar Orvig Meredith Williams Todd Oakley Jonathan Potter Robin Wooffitt Alan Cienki Cornellia M?ller Ewa Dabrowska Edy Veneziano Shaun Gallagher Edwin Hutchins Johannes Wagner THE LCM CONFERENCES: The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue, and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language. Human natural languages are biologically based, cognitively motivated, affectively rich, socially shared, grammatically organized symbolic systems. They provide the principal semiotic means for the complexity and diversity of human cultural life. As has long been recognized, no single discipline or methodology is sufficient to capture all the dimensions of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which lies at the heart of what it is to be human. Theories of cognition and perception, and their neural foundations, are central to many current approaches in language science. However, a genuinely integrative perspective requires that attention also be paid to the foundations of cultural life in social interaction, empathy, mimesis, intersubjectivity, dialogicality, normativity, agentivity and narrativity. Significant theoretical, methodological and empirical advancements across relevant disciplines now provide a realistic basis for such a broadened perspective. This conference will articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive, affective and bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to share their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language sciences. NEW! LCM III satellite event: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 7-11th July ***** 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 eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Oct 22 14:36:17 2007 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:36:17 +0300 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r Message-ID: Dear FUNKNETters: The following true story may have some not-just-personal interest. In 1981 the review editor of LANGUAGE asked me to write a review of 'On Language Change' (CUP, 1980) by Roger Lass. Since I felt that the topic was important enough, I wrote a lengthy review, which was subsequently promoted to the exalted status of a review article (= Language 1981, volume 57, number 3, pp. 688-697). Exactly 25 years later I was asked by the review editor of LANGUAGE (a different one, to be sure) to write a review of 'Context as Other Minds' (Benjamins, 2005) by Tom Giv?n. I was first worried that the review might turn out to be too long, but I got the reassurance that the length was just right. So I sent the review well before the end-of-May (or-June?) deadline. Then there was silence. After more than one year had passed, I asked about any possible news. So far, there has been no response. I find it difficult to believe that during these intervening 25 years my professional skills have deteriorated to the point that a review written by me is no longer fit to print. But even if this were the case, common courtesy demands that I should be told so. Then, in any case, I would have had the opportunity to offer the review to some other journal and to find out whether the reaction would be the same or - perhaps - different. What can we learn from this incident? I for one have learned the review policy of LANGUAGE: "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" In the meantime people - at least those who have not read the book - may still not know what Giv?n (2005) is all about. I am sure that some would like to know. Presumably there are other people around who are likewise displeased by arrogance coming from powers-that-be. Esa Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From hans.peters at uni-dortmund.de Mon Oct 22 15:25:35 2007 From: hans.peters at uni-dortmund.de (Hans Peters) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:25:35 +0200 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r Message-ID: Well - about a year ago, the same journal agreed to let me review a highly interesting book by Dirk Geeraerts - only the review copy never arrived. When I tried to point this out - no answer. So, no review ... H.Peters From john at research.haifa.ac.il Mon Oct 22 17:10:43 2007 From: john at research.haifa.ac.il (john at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:10:43 +0200 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r In-Reply-To: Message-ID: While we're on the topic, I was told by Language about a year ago that my Benjamins book on language, religion, and national identity would be reviewed, and since then I've heard nothing from them on the topic. I was just about to ask them what's happening. Esa, how about just posting your review here? John Myhill Quoting Esa Itkonen : > Dear FUNKNETters: > > The following true story may have some not-just-personal interest. > > In 1981 the review editor of LANGUAGE asked me to write a review of 'On > Language Change' (CUP, 1980) by Roger Lass. Since I felt that the topic was > important enough, I wrote a lengthy review, which was subsequently promoted > to the exalted status of a review article (= Language 1981, volume 57, number > 3, pp. 688-697). > > Exactly 25 years later I was asked by the review editor of LANGUAGE (a > different one, to be sure) to write a review of 'Context as Other Minds' > (Benjamins, 2005) by Tom Giv?n. I was first worried that the review might > turn out to be too long, but I got the reassurance that the length was just > right. So I sent the review well before the end-of-May (or-June?) deadline. > Then there was silence. After more than one year had passed, I asked about > any possible news. So far, there has been no response. > > I find it difficult to believe that during these intervening 25 years my > professional skills have deteriorated to the point that a review written by > me is no longer fit to print. But even if this were the case, common courtesy > demands that I should be told so. Then, in any case, I would have had the > opportunity to offer the review to some other journal and to find out whether > the reaction would be the same or - perhaps - different. > > What can we learn from this incident? I for one have learned the review > policy of LANGUAGE: "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we > can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" In the meantime > people - at least those who have not read the book - may still not know what > Giv?n (2005) is all about. I am sure that some would like to know. > > Presumably there are other people around who are likewise displeased by > arrogance coming from powers-that-be. > > Esa > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From amnfn at well.com Mon Oct 22 18:29:46 2007 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:29:46 -0700 Subject: A Review That Wasn'r In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Esa, Sometimes even when we do get a review published, there's the feeling that no one has read it. I, too, reviewed Givon's CONTEXT AS OTHER MINDS. The review came out in STUDIES IN LANGUAGE 31:3. Here is the URL for the Linguist List announcement: http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-2233.html So far, I haven't gotten a single comment on it, though. Best, --Aya On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Esa Itkonen wrote: > Dear FUNKNETters: > > The following true story may have some not-just-personal interest. > > In 1981 the review editor of LANGUAGE asked me to write a review of 'On Language Change' (CUP, 1980) by Roger Lass. Since I felt that the topic was important enough, I wrote a lengthy review, which was subsequently promoted to the exalted status of a review article (= Language 1981, volume 57, number 3, pp. 688-697). > > Exactly 25 years later I was asked by the review editor of LANGUAGE (a different one, to be sure) to write a review of 'Context as Other Minds' (Benjamins, 2005) by Tom Giv?n. I was first worried that the review might turn out to be too long, but I got the reassurance that the length was just right. So I sent the review well before the end-of-May (or-June?) deadline. Then there was silence. After more than one year had passed, I asked about any possible news. So far, there has been no response. > > I find it difficult to believe that during these intervening 25 years my professional skills have deteriorated to the point that a review written by me is no longer fit to print. But even if this were the case, common courtesy demands that I should be told so. Then, in any case, I would have had the opportunity to offer the review to some other journal and to find out whether the reaction would be the same or - perhaps - different. > > What can we learn from this incident? I for one have learned the review policy of LANGUAGE: "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" In the meantime people - at least those who have not read the book - may still not know what Giv?n (2005) is all about. I am sure that some would like to know. > > Presumably there are other people around who are likewise displeased by arrogance coming from powers-that-be. > > Esa > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > > From Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU Tue Oct 23 02:03:36 2007 From: Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:03:36 -0600 Subject: A Review That Wasn't Message-ID: Folks, LANGUAGE and other journals depend on volunteer labor for reviews. They have no way to extract them from people who request the book for review and then don't do it, you know. Each book review editor (and lots of other people who depend on volunteers, like NSF program officers) keeps notes, mental or otherwise, on who says they'll help and then doesn't deliver, but they never know with a new volunteer, and sometimes even reliables get overwhelmed by events and a review gets lost. The book review editor nags a bit now and then, and sometimes reviews come along 3 or 4 years late (look at a book review section and see what the dates of the books being reviewed are compared with the date of the issue that has the review). Or not... And publishers do a lousy job of keeping up with who the editors of journals are. Jeez, I still get the occasional book addressed to my late husband Bill Bright as editor of Language In Society, which he stopped editing about 10 years ago. So it can also be your publisher's fault. Sorry, I know, it's awful to have the feeling that you are shouting into a well. If we had the tradition of announcing who has been given the job of reviewing a book before the review appears, maybe peer pressure would get them to disgorge the review - but then, maybe not - and there would be dangers in that way of doing things too. Anyway, chalk it up to experience, and keep on truckin', or dancing, choose your metaphor. I happen to be overdue on a review myself, by a couple of months now...but to the editor who is waiting for it, yes, I will get it done. Lise Menn From john at research.haifa.ac.il Tue Oct 23 05:28:29 2007 From: john at research.haifa.ac.il (john at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:28:29 +0200 Subject: A Review That Wasn't In-Reply-To: <20071022200336.AHV14925@catwoman.int.colorado.edu> Message-ID: Actually, I was told that the review for my book would be 'commissioned.' I assumed that involved a fee... John Quoting Lise Menn : > Folks, LANGUAGE and other journals depend on volunteer labor for reviews. > They have no way to extract them from people who request the book for review > and then don't do it, you know. Each book review editor (and lots of other > people who depend on volunteers, like NSF program officers) keeps notes, > mental or otherwise, on who says they'll help and then doesn't deliver, but > they never know with a new volunteer, and sometimes even reliables get > overwhelmed by events and a review gets lost. The book review editor nags a > bit now and then, and sometimes reviews come along 3 or 4 years late (look at > a book review section and see what the dates of the books being reviewed are > compared with the date of the issue that has the review). Or not... > And publishers do a lousy job of keeping up with who the editors of > journals are. Jeez, I still get the occasional book addressed to my late > husband Bill Bright as editor of Language In Society, which he stopped > editing about 10 years ago. So it can also be your publisher's fault. > Sorry, I know, it's awful to have the feeling that you are shouting into a > well. If we had the tradition of announcing who has been given the job of > reviewing a book before the review appears, maybe peer pressure would get > them to disgorge the review - but then, maybe not - and there would be > dangers in that way of doing things too. > Anyway, chalk it up to experience, and keep on truckin', or dancing, > choose your metaphor. I happen to be overdue on a review myself, by a couple > of months now...but to the editor who is waiting for it, yes, I will get it > done. > Lise Menn > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU Tue Oct 23 14:23:31 2007 From: Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:23:31 -0600 Subject: A Review That Wasn't Message-ID: As far as I know, the only paid reviews (in our area of academia, anyway) come from the publisher: they usually pay one fairly decently to PRE-review a book ms. to help them decide whether to publish it, and they typically pay a small fee for people who are willing to say something nice for the promotional materials. Does anyone know of exceptions to this? "Commissioned" in the context of a review by a linguistics journal just means that the review editor will undertake to get an appropriate scholar to review the book, nothing more. Lise From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Tue Oct 23 14:57:11 2007 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:57:11 +0200 Subject: Reviews That Were In-Reply-To: <20071023082331.AHV68618@catwoman.int.colorado.edu> Message-ID: I think it would be good if we as a field realized -- sooner rather than later -- that the traditional way of commenting publicly on each other's work, in the form of book reviews that sometimes appear many years after the book, is becoming rapidly outdated. The future of scientific communication evidently lies in online publications, blogs, etc., and online publications can easily be enhanced by online reviews, online comments, etc. In a few years' time, we will probably have the first linguistics journals that work in the following way: As soon as a paper is submitted, it is made available on the journal's site, and public comments are invited. After a brief veetting procedure, most of these are published alongside the paper, and after a while the editors decide whether to give the contribution "officially published" status (perhaps after suitable revision). If a paper is denied that status, it can stay there (in limbo, but still accessible) or it can be withdrawn and submitted elsewhere. Well, this is just one model of so many possibilities. But we should not invest many energies into the good old book review anymore. It will be a nice memory for the older generation, but the future lies elsewhere. Greetings, Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics (http://www.glottopedia.org) From john at research.haifa.ac.il Tue Oct 23 16:24:26 2007 From: john at research.haifa.ac.il (john at research.haifa.ac.il) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:24:26 +0200 Subject: Reviews That Were In-Reply-To: <471E0BC7.304@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: That's why I suggested Esa simply post his review on Funknet. John Quoting Martin Haspelmath : > I think it would be good if we as a field realized -- sooner rather than > later -- that the traditional way of commenting publicly on each other's > work, in the form of book reviews that sometimes appear many years after > the book, is becoming rapidly outdated. > > The future of scientific communication evidently lies in online > publications, blogs, etc., and online publications can easily be > enhanced by online reviews, online comments, etc. > > In a few years' time, we will probably have the first linguistics > journals that work in the following way: As soon as a paper is > submitted, it is made available on the journal's site, and public > comments are invited. After a brief veetting procedure, most of these > are published alongside the paper, and after a while the editors decide > whether to give the contribution "officially published" status (perhaps > after suitable revision). If a paper is denied that status, it can stay > there (in limbo, but still accessible) or it can be withdrawn and > submitted elsewhere. > > Well, this is just one model of so many possibilities. But we should not > invest many energies into the good old book review anymore. It will be a > nice memory for the older generation, but the future lies elsewhere. > > Greetings, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 > D-04103 Leipzig > Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 > > Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics > (http://www.glottopedia.org) > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University From kemmer at rice.edu Wed Oct 24 03:49:50 2007 From: kemmer at rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 -0500 Subject: Reviews That ARE In-Reply-To: <471E0BC7.304@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: There's still a role for the "good old book review". Its place is online, as Martin said, but it doesn't have to be connected to any journal. It's easier for a scientific association to run a website than a whole journal, even an online journal, so any association in Linguistics can easily have an active website with news, events, and reviews to keep its members abreast of the latest publications. (Early linguistics associations published bulletins which served the same function.) The International Cognitive Linguistics Association has such a website and in the last year the review part of the site has developed quite well under Martin Hilpert's web editorship: http://www.cogling.org/bookreviews.shtml There are about 30 reviews that have been posted since the review part of the ICLA website started up last year, 25 more titles are under review, and many more are awaiting reviewers to offer to review them. I read reviews online on the Linguist, but the site's too broad to cover any specific area well. I recommend the ICLA's review site as a model for those who want to get their specialized association to serve them in a similar way. An association is as active as its members. Suzanne Kemmer confessedly, the ICLA webmaster On Oct 23, 2007, at 9:57 AM, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > I think it would be good if we as a field realized -- sooner rather > than later -- that the traditional way of commenting publicly on > each other's work, in the form of book reviews that sometimes > appear many years after the book, is becoming rapidly outdated. > > The future of scientific communication evidently lies in online > publications, blogs, etc., and online publications can easily be > enhanced by online reviews, online comments, etc. > > In a few years' time, we will probably have the first linguistics > journals that work in the following way: As soon as a paper is > submitted, it is made available on the journal's site, and public > comments are invited. After a brief veetting procedure, most of > these are published alongside the paper, and after a while the > editors decide whether to give the contribution "officially > published" status (perhaps after suitable revision). If a paper is > denied that status, it can stay there (in limbo, but still > accessible) or it can be withdrawn and submitted elsewhere. > > Well, this is just one model of so many possibilities. But we > should not invest many energies into the good old book review > anymore. It will be a nice memory for the older generation, but the > future lies elsewhere. > > Greetings, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher > Platz 6 > D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) > +49-341-980 1616 > > Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics > (http://www.glottopedia.org) > > > > > > From jbybee at unm.edu Thu Oct 25 15:20:33 2007 From: jbybee at unm.edu (Joan Bybee) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:20:33 -0600 Subject: [Fwd: RE: FUNKNET reply re itkonen] Message-ID: Dear friends. I forward here a message from Brian Joseph, Editor of Language and Greg Stump, Review Editor. I let them know about the complaints posted on Funknet and they asked me to forward a reply to you all. Having been a member of the Executive Committee of the LSA (the body that oversees the journal, Language) for a total of six years I can assure everyone that the editors and staff try very hard (with limited resources) to produce a fair and professional journal. One way to have a say in this is for members of the LSA to vote in the ongoing election of Executive Committee members, and if you are not a member, please join. Joan Bybee To FUNKNET readers: As the editors of LANGUAGE, we feel that the accusations made in this forum by Esa Itkonen and Hans Peters about how we run the review section of the journal cannot go unaddressed. We first of all feel it is unfortunate that they chose to air their alleged grievances in a public forum instead of bringing them to our attention, but since they have done so, we feel obliged to respond. We work very hard to ensure that all aspects of LANGUAGE's operations are fair, professional, and transparent (note the "Letters to LANGUAGE" section and the many Editor's Departments explaining procedures and policies). For the record, reviews that are commissioned are *always* published; Dr. Itkonen's suggestion that our policy is "Write a review, one that WE have solicited, so that we can throw it away, and you'll never hear from us again!" has no foundation whatsoever. It is true that we do have a backlog of reviews; the review editor from 2002 through 2005, Stanley Dubinsky, did such an excellent job of reeling in reviews from authors that for the past several years we have had far more reviews on hand than we could publish in any given issue, leading to a backlog and, unfortunately, to some delays in publication. Moreover, our production process, aimed at maintaining the high standards that LANGUAGE has always aspired to, involves several stages of editorial review (this holds for article submissions as well as reviews), by the review editor, the main editor, and an independent copyeditor, and this process itself takes time. Some authors, understandably, wonder what has become of their review once it is submitted; we answer all such inquiries promptly. We received no such inquiry from Dr. Itkonen, despite what he says in his posted message. Dr. Itkonen's review, which we received via e-mail on May 23 2006 in the review editor's office, has been in the queue for publication since then, and is scheduled to enter the first stage of the process within a few months, once other reviews that were received in the review editor's office before his have entered into the production process. It is likely to appear therefore in the June or September issue of 2008. As for Dr. Peters' complaint that he never received the book we supposedly commissioned him to review and that his inquiry about it went unanswered, we frankly are puzzled. Our records show that we never commissioned a review by him, or by anyone, for the book in question. He must have confused LANGUAGE with some other journal. If we sound defensive here it is only because we feel that we as editors, and the journal as an institution, have been unfairly criticized in this forum, and we hope to have set the record straight with this message. LANGUAGE is the journal of the Linguistic Society of America and thus is responsive to the needs and interests of some 6,000 members of the world's linguistic community who belong to the LSA, not to mention the larger community of nonmember linguists who read the journal. We welcome genuine and constructive criticism, as our goal is to maintain the preeminent position the journal has occupied in our field, and to work constantly to improve our "product", the c. 250-page quarterly issues of the journal and the scientific material pertaining to the study of language that they contain. Brian D. Joseph & Gregory T. Stump Editor Review Editor LANGUAGE