From emcl4.2008 at gmail.com Thu May 1 20:10:47 2008 From: emcl4.2008 at gmail.com (Monica Gonzalez-Marquez) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 15:10:47 -0500 Subject: EMCL 4 - Deadline extended to May 11 In-Reply-To: <89f6d9420805011310j5c35c63cye2b5ae36e9b52e44@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics IV Integration - Methods and Perspectives University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Dk July 7 – 12, 2008 ******* FACULTY MEMBERS: Please Distribute This Call To Your Students For more info visit: http://emcl4.2008.googlepages.com/home Flyers available above for download and posting. ****** Given that some perspective applicants received the call notice late, we are extending the application deadline as follows: ***********Application deadline extended: May 11, 2008 *********** Applications must be submitted by email to EMCL4.2008 at gmail.com Acceptance notifications will be sent on or before June 1, 2008. The Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (EMCL) Workshops have emerged out of the desire of many language researchers to incorporate empirical methods into their investigative repertoire. While theoretical work in cognitive linguistics has yielded significant insights, they still await empirical validation. To that end, we seek to further develop an empirically valid account of the connection between language and cognition through the continuous merging of theoretical and empirical research. Our goal is to help train language scholars in empirical methodology. Our workshops are set up to take small groups of scholars through the steps involved in conducting empirical research. This includes, 1. learning how to ask empirical questions, 2. choose an experimental paradigm, 3. collect and analyze data and 4. present it to an audience. Our theme for this, the fourth EMCL, is integration of methodologies and perspectives. Language is a complex phenomenon, "too human to be confined to a single discipline" (Hunt & Agnoli, 1991) or to be understood using a single methodology. Although using one perspective or method can be quite informative, pursuit of corroborating evidence via multiple means is substantially more illuminating. Our goal with this workshop is to provide a setting where integration is considered from the onset of a research project. The basic unit of the workshop will therefore be hands-on sessions led by pairs of researchers who will work together to provide complementary perspectives on a problem's investigation. In this setting, invited students will learn how to apply different approaches to a given question, as well as how to carry out a research project from conception to implementation. Intended Audience: This workshop is aimed specifically at scholars with sound theoretical knowledge in their field though lacking in empirical training, including experimental research. Participants are not expected to have any background in empirical work. Candidates should at least have completed initial university training, a B.A. in the US, or be working on a Masters degree if training in Europe, in theoretical linguistics or a similar field, and be familiar with cognitive linguistics or embodiment (this familiarity need not have occurred in a formal university setting). Graduate students, i.e. post-grads, pre-doctoral, etc., as well as post-doctoral researchers and junior faculty, are invited to apply. The only real prerequisite is a background in cognitive linguistics or embodiment, and a desire to gain empirical research experience. Workshop Topics: Gesture & Simulation Semantics Alan Cienki, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Ben Bergen, University of Hawai'i at Manoa Lexical Semantics & Multidimensional Scaling Steven Clancy, University of Chicago Michele Feist, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Linguistic Relativity & Meaning John Lucy, University of Chicago Gabriella Vigliocco, University College London Bilingualism Viorica Marian, Northwestern University Kathryn Kohnert, University of Minnesota Cost: 125 Euros (Scholarships consisting of registration fee reductions will be available for students traveling from Eastern Europe and developing countries) To precede Language, Culture and Mind 3 http://www.lcm.sdu.dk EMCL 4 Organizing Committee: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Chair, Cornell University (EMCL4.2008 at gmail.com); Raymond Becker, University of California, Merced; Michele Feist, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Todd Oakley, Case Western Reserve University; Anders R. Hougaard, University of Southern Denmark; Gitte R. Hougaard, University of Southern Denmark From john.bowden at anu.edu.au Tue May 6 03:49:44 2008 From: john.bowden at anu.edu.au (John Bowden) Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 13:49:44 +1000 Subject: Research Fellow Position at Australian National University Message-ID: Apologies for cross-postings Research Fellow in Papuan Linguistics Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Division of Society and Environment Department of Linguistics Academic Level B Salary Range: $68,767 - $81,135 pa plus 17% super **Reference: PA4795 The Department of Linguistics seeks to appoint a scholar to carry out research on Papuan languages and their broader scientific implications. Applicants with relevant field experience from any part of the world are welcome to apply, provided they put forward a detailed and compelling proposal for a research program whose major focus is on one or more Papuan languages. The successful candidate will have an outstanding record of publication in relevant field(s), relative to their early career status. Candidates should provide a detailed statement of the research project(s) they plan in the short, medium and long terms, putting together an exciting, innovative and plausible program based on fieldwork and analysis, and including likely plans for future project funding. The research outlined should be compatible but complementary with the Department’s range of research interests, as outlined in the further particulars. The successful candidate will also be expected to serve on the editorial board of the publication series, Pacific Linguistics, to engage in the supervision of postgraduate students and occasional advanced teaching as needed, and to serve as an attraction point for the development of major research initiatives in the area. Women are particularly encouraged to apply. Selection Criteria: http://info.anu.edu.au/hr/jobs/ or from Human Resources (Academic), CAP; T: 02 6125 4444, E: jobsacademic.cap at anu.edu.au Enquiries: Nicholas Evans, T: 02 6125 0028, E: Nicholas.Evans at anu.edu.au or John Bowden, T: 02 6125 3281, E: John.Bowden at anu.edu.au College of Asia and the Pacific Information for Applicants and Job Cover Sheet: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/jobs/CAP_info_applicants.pdf http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/jobs/CAP_job_coversheet.xls Please submit your application directly to jobsacademic.cap at anu.edu.au * by no later than the advertised closing date. Closing Date: Friday 25 July 2008 From fey.parrill at case.edu Wed May 7 15:10:58 2008 From: fey.parrill at case.edu (Fey Parrill) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 11:10:58 -0400 Subject: Final call for papers: CSDL 9 Message-ID: The deadline for abstract submission for CSDL 9 is next Thursday, May 15th! ***Conference details below.*** The ninth conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language will be held October 18-20, 2008, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. We are now accepting abstracts. The theme of CSDL 9 is "Meaning, Form, and Body." The focus is on two central, related research areas in the study of language: (1) the integration of form and meaning, and (2) language and the human body. These topics intersect naturally, as in the study of grammatical constructions, of conceptual integration, and of gesture. PLENARY SPEAKERS Seana Coulson: Department of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego Gilles Fauconnier: Department of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego Adele Goldberg: Program in Linguistics, Princeton University Michael Spivey: Department of Psychology, Cornell University Eve Sweetser: Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley ABSTRACT SUBMISSION We welcome abstracts for papers in the fields of cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, discourse, corpus linguistics, and speech and language processing, especially among scholars exploring the interface between language and cognition. The deadline for proposals to the general session is May 15, 2008. Please submit abstracts of no longer than 500 words, in English, via our online submission system, at http://artsci.case.edu/csdl9. Acceptance notices will be sent by email by June 30, 2008. All papers will be scheduled for 20 minutes, with an additional 5 minutes for questions and discussion. -- Fey Parrill, Vera Tobin, and Mark Turner Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language 9 http://artsci.case.edu/csdl9 From Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl Fri May 9 09:29:21 2008 From: Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl (Amiridze, Nino) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 11:29:21 +0200 Subject: Call for Abstracts: Language Change in Bilingual Communities. Focus on the Post-Soviet Countries and their Immigrant Communities Elsewhere. Message-ID: [Apologies for multiple posting] ***************************************************************************************************** Language Change in Bilingual Communities. Focus on the Post-Soviet Countries and Their Immigrant Communities Elsewhere. Workshop at The 23rd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics October 3, 2008, Uppsala, Sweden http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nino.Amiridze/personal/organization/PSB08.html ****************************************************************************************************** Call for Abstracts ================== The workshop aims at giving a perspective on post-Soviet bilingualism while concentrating on the typology of linguistic changes under language contact. During the Soviet era, languages of the former Soviet republics have been influenced by Russian, the Soviet lingua franca. The collapse and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union has caused reshaping of the relations between various ethnic groups within individual States, on the one hand, and between Russia and the rest of the States, on the other hand. Language situation and linguistic hierarchy within the newly independent countries have considerably changed, depending on the relations with Russia, and the growing influence of wider globalization. The fall of the Soviet Union has caused unprecedented waves of immigrants from the former Soviet republics to various parts of the world. Immigrant communities from the former Soviet Union do not always have institutional support for their native languages in the host countries. Keeping mother languages exclusively as a means of communication in the family and within the community, the speakers used to preserve some features of the languages that eventually got changed in the varieties spoken back at home by their compatriots. On the other hand, under the influence of the language(s) of the host countries, changes have occurred in the immigrant languages. Globalisation has influenced the area into a more open attitude with respect to sign language and bimodal bilingualism. The former Soviet Union maintained the medical model of disability, treating the deaf as a disabled group. However, in some of these States there are attempts to change the medical model with the social one, and view the deaf as a cultural and linguistic minority. One of the positive consequences of changing the approach is the promotion of bilingual education in the schools for deaf, rather than pursuing exclusively oralist educational policy. As a result of the changing attitudes towards sign language and Deaf culture, deaf people in the Post-Soviet States will become bilingual in a sign and a spoken language (a case of bimodal bilinguality). The following three topics will be addressed during the workshop: * contact-induced changes that have occurred in the languages of the Post-Soviet States under the declining role of Russian as a dominant language and the growing influence of other regionally and globally dominant languages; * contact-induced changes and contact-induced preservation in the language varieties spoken by communities that have immigrated from the Post-Soviet countries since 1991 to various parts of the world. * bimodal bilingualism and language situation in deaf communities of the Post-Soviet States. How changing of attitudes towards deafness affects sociolinguistic situation of users of sign languages across the former Soviet Union. Influences of the structure of one of their languages over that of the other language. Invited Speakers ================ * Anna Komarova (hearing) (Moscow Centre for Deaf Studies and Bilingual Education), Development of Bilingual Education of the Deaf in Post-Soviet Countries. * Tatiana Davidenko (Deaf) (Moscow Centre for Deaf Studies and Bilingual Education), Sign Language Diversity in Post-Soviet Countries (translation from the RSL into English by Anna Komarova). * Kristina Svartholm (hearing) (Stockholm University), Bilingual Education for the Deaf. A Swedish Experience. Important Dates =============== Abstract submission: June 16, 2008 Notification: July 7, 2008 Workshop: October 3, 2008 Organizers ========== * Nino Amiridze, Utrecht University (The Netherlands) * Anne Tamm, University of Florence (Italy) and Institute for the Estonian Language * Manana Topadze, University of Pavia (Italy) * Inge Zwitserlood, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Publication =========== If after the workshop there will be interest in publishing either a proceedings or a special journal issue, then the organizers will take responsibility of finding a suitable forum and will act as editors. Submission ========== Abstracts (in English, maximum 3 pages, including data and references) have to be submitted electronically as portable document format (.pdf) or Microsoft Word (.doc) files via the EasyChair conference management system: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=psb08 If you do not have an EasyChair account, click on the button "I have no EasyChair Account" on that page and follow the instructions. When you receive a password, you can enter the site and upload your abstract. Workshop Web Page ================= http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nino.Amiridze/personal/organization/PSB08.html From jeaaron at ufl.edu Sat May 10 22:26:32 2008 From: jeaaron at ufl.edu (Jessi Elana Aaron) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 18:26:32 -0400 Subject: Request for support from UF linguists Message-ID: Dear fellow Funknetters, As some of you may have heard, the University of Florida has recently taken $47 million in cuts. An article on this is in the Chronicle, at http://chronicle.com/news/article/4435/u-of-florida-plans-layoffs-and-enrollment-cuts-as-state-funds-fall The President's plan for cuts falls disproportionately heavily on the Humanities, in particular on the language programs. As a linguist in Romance Languages (Spanish), I fear that these proposed cuts will permanently damage our ability to provide quality education in linguistics, especially for those interested in languages other than English. The proposed cuts include: Elimination of PhD program in French Elimination of PhD program in German Elimination of PhD program in Philosophy Elimination of language instruction in Vietnamese and Korean The current departments of African & Asian Languages and Literatures, Germanic & Slavic Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures will be reformulated into a Department of Modern Foreign Languages and a Department of Spanish Language and Literature Many members of the humanities faculty are concerned with the elimination of the PhD programs in particular. In the case of French, it is one of few in the nation to offer a French linguistics track at the PhD level, and this will be lost. Also lost will be the possibility for doctoral students interested in cross-linguistic Romance to benefit from collaboration with both Spanish and French faculty. Many of us are also dismayed by the bundling of all modern languages--except Spanish--into one department, which sends a message to students that languages are not as diverse or as important as we all know them to be. Many feel that the faculty and chairs were not adequately consulted (see http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080509/NEWS/805090323/0/FRONTPAGE ), and are asking for support from the professional community to provide evidence that such cuts are damaging to UF's reputation and therefore detrimental to the long-term health of UF as an institution of higher education. If you would like to comment on these cuts, please visit http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/antes/Comments%20French%20PhD.html Thank you for your support, Jessi Elana Aaron -- Jessi Elana Aaron, PhD Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures University of Florida http://plaza.ufl.edu/jeaaron/ From janemc at bu.edu Tue May 13 20:47:58 2008 From: janemc at bu.edu (Jane M. Chandlee) Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 16:47:58 -0400 Subject: Deadline approaching - BUCLD 33 Message-ID: DEADLINE APPROACHING - CALL FOR PAPERS THE 33rd ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 2, 2008 Keynote Speaker: Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University "Spatial Language and Spatial Cognition: Origins, Development, and Interaction" Plenary Speaker: Tom Roeper, University of Massachusetts - Amherst "From Input to Mind: How Acquisition work captures the heart of linguistic theory and the soul of practical application" Lunch Symposium: "Brain mechanisms of language development: The promise and pitfalls of neuroimaging" Dick Aslin, University of Rochester Debra Mills, Emory University Colin Phillips, University of Maryland Helen Tager-Flusberg, Boston University Submissions which present research on any topic in the fields of first and second language acquisition from any theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: * Bilingualism * Cognition & Language * Creoles & Pidgins * Dialects * Discourse and Narrative * Gesture * Hearing Impairment and Deafness * Input & Interaction * Language Disorders (Autism, Down Syndrome, SLI, Williams Syndrome, etc.) * Linguistic Theory (Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon) * Neurolinguistics * Pragmatics * Pre-linguistic Development * Reading and Literacy * Signed Languages * Sociolinguistics * Speech Perception & Production Presentations will be 20 minutes long followed by a 10-minute question period. Posters will be on display for a full day with two attended sessions during the day. ABSTRACT FORMAT AND CONTENT * Abstracts submitted must represent original, unpublished research. * Abstracts should be anonymous, clearly titled and no more than 500 words in length. Text of abstract should fit on one page, with a second page for examples, figures, or references. Abstracts longer than 500 words will be rejected without being evaluated. * Please note the word count at the bottom of the abstract. Note that word counts should not include the abstract title, figure or table titles, examples, or the list of references. * A suggested format and style for abstracts is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/template.html * Three examples of how to formulate the content of the abstract can be found at: http://www.lsadc.org/info/dec02bulletin/model.html http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/sociocultural/abstracttips.html http://www.ulcl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=5&c=124 * The criteria used by the reviewers to evaluate abstracts can be found at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html#rate * All abstracts must be submitted as PDF documents. Specific instructions for how to create PDF documents are available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/pdfinfo.html. If you encounter a problem creating a PDF file, please contact us for further assistance. Please use the first author's last name as the file name (eg. Smith.pdf). No author information should appear anywhere in the contents of the PDF file itself. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS * Electronic submission: To facilitate the abstract submission process, abstracts will be submitted using the form available at the conference website at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/abstract.htm. * Specific instructions for abstract submission are available on this website. * Contact information for each author must be submitted via webform. No author information should appear anywhere in the abstract PDF. * At the time of submission you will be asked whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a poster, a paper, or both. Note that this preference is not revealed to the reviewers, and thus is not considered in the review process. * Although each author may submit as many abstracts as desired, we will accept for presentation by each author: (a) a maximum of 1 first authored paper/poster, and (b) a maximum of 2 papers/posters in any authorship status. Note that no changes in authorship (including deleting an author or changing author order) will be possible after the review process is completed or for publication in the conference proceedings. DEADLINE * All submissions must be received by 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2008. * Late abstracts will not be considered, whatever the reason for the delay. * We regret that we cannot accept abstract submissions by fax or email. * Submissions via surface mail will only be accepted in special circumstances, on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us well in advance of the submission deadline (May 15, 2008) to make these arrangements. ABSTRACT SELECTION * Each abstract is blind reviewed by 5 reviewers from a panel of approximately 180 international scholars. Further information about the review process is available at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html. * Acknowledgment of receipt of the abstract will be sent by email as soon as possible after receipt. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent to first authors only, in early August, by email. Pre-registration materials and preliminary schedule will be available in late August 2008. * If your abstract is accepted, you will need to submit a 150-word abstract including title, author(s) and affiliation(s) for inclusion in the conference handbook. Guidelines will be provided along with notification of acceptance. * Abstracts accepted as papers will be invited for publication in the BUCLD Proceedings. * Abstracts accepted as posters will be invited for publication online only, but not in the printed version. * All conference papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Although each abstract will be evaluated individually, we will attempt to honor requests to schedule accepted papers together in group sessions. * No schedule changes will be possible once the schedule is set. Scheduling requests for religious reasons only must be made before the review process is complete (i.e. at the time of submission). A space is provided on the abstract submission webform to specify such requests. FURTHER INFORMATION General conference information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/ Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Room 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 Questions about abstracts should be sent to abstract at bu.edu From antti.arppe at helsinki.fi Wed May 14 15:37:04 2008 From: antti.arppe at helsinki.fi (Antti Arppe) Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 18:37:04 +0300 Subject: 2nd Call for Participation: 3rd Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL3) Message-ID: [apologies for cross-postings] 2nd CALL FOR PARTICIPATION and PROGRAM announcement Third Workshop on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL3) 2-4 June, 2008 Helsinki, Finland We would like to inform linguists of the upcoming QITL3 workshop to be co-hosted by the Linguistic Association of Finland and the Department of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for linguistic research which combines a theoretical outlook with sophisticated use of quantitative methods. We invite interested linguists from all subfields and theoretical persuasions to take part in this event. Invited Talks: Michael Cysouw, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Gary Marcus, New York University Richard Sproat, University of Indiana at Urbana/Champaign The final program and timetable with the authors and titles of the presentations, registration guidelines, as well as other information are available on the Workshop website (which will always contain the latest up-to-date information) at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ ----- Programme Committee: Harald Baayen, University of Alberta Marco Baroni, University of Trento/CIMeC Peter Bosch, University of Osnabrück Michael Cysouw, Max Planck Institute/Leipzig Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp Stefan Evert, University of Osnabrück Stefan Th. Gries, University of California, Santa Barbara Stefan Grondelaers, Radboud University Nijmegen Jennifer Hay, University of Canterbury Timo Honkela, Helsinki University of Technology Juhani Järvikivi, Max Planck Institute/Nijmegen Brigitte Krenn, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (ÖFAI) Jonas Kuhn, University of Potsdam Merja Kytö, University of Uppsala Roger Levy, University of California, San Diego Anke Lüdeling, Humboldt University in Berlin Elena Maslova, Bielefeld University Detmar Meurers, Ohio State University Matti Miestamo, University of Helsinki Jussi Niemi, University of Joensuu Martti Vainio, University of Helsinki Yi Xu, University College London ----- Organizing Committee: Laura Arola, University of Oulu Antti Arppe, University of Helsinki, co-chair Maria Metsä-Ketelä, University of Tampere Maarit Niemelä, University of Oulu Alexandre Nikolaev, University of Joensuu Urpo Nikanne, Åbo Akademi University, co-chair Kaius Sinnemäki, University of Helsinki, co-chair Ulla Vanhatalo, University of Helsinki ----- Contact information: Contact Email: "qitl-3 at helsinki.fi" Meeting URL: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ ----- From paul at benjamins.com Sun May 18 18:44:03 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 14:44:03 -0400 Subject: New Book: Detges & Waltereit: The Pardox of Language Change Message-ID: This work is of relevance to the list: The Paradox of Grammatical Change Perspectives from Romance Cover image Edited by Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München / Newcastle University Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 293 2008. vi, 252 pp. This book is Available Hardbound ISBN 978 90 272 4808 4 EUR 110.00 / USD 165.00 [] Recent years have seen intense debates between formal (generative) and functional linguists, particularly with respect to the relation between grammar and usage. This debate is directly relevant to diachronic linguistics, where one and the same phenomenon of language change can be explained from various theoretical perspectives. In this, a close look at the divergent and/or convergent evolution of a richly documented language family such as Romance promises to be useful. The basic problem for any approach to language change is what Eugenio Coseriu has termed the paradox of change: if synchronically, languages can be viewed as perfectly running systems, then there is no reason why they should change in the first place. And yet, as everyone knows, languages are changing constantly. In nine case studies, a number of renowned scholars of Romance linguistics address the explanation of grammatical change either within a broadly generative or a functional framework. ---------- Table of contents Introduction Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit 1–12 Syntactic change from within and from without syntax: A usage-based analysis Richard Waltereit and Ulrich Detges 13–30 On explaining the rise of c'est-clefts in French Andreas Dufter 31–56 The role of the plural system in Romance Elisabeth Stark 57–84 Morphological developments affecting syntactic change Maria Goldbach 85–106 Grammaticalisation within the IP-domain Susann Fischer 107–126 Imperfect systems and diachronic change Giampaolo Salvi 127–146 From temporal to modal: Divergent fates of the Latin synthetic pluperfect in Spanish and Portuguese Martin Becker 147–180 Non-lexical core-arguments in Basque, Romance and German: How (and why) Spanish syntax is shifting towards clausal headmarking and morphological cross-reference Hans-Ingo Radatz 181–214 Towards a comprehensive view of language change: Three recent evolutionary approaches Esme Winter-Froemel 215–250 Subject Index 251–252 Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Sun May 18 19:24:11 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 15:24:11 -0400 Subject: New Book: Adolphs: Corpus and Context Message-ID: This work is of relevance to the list: Corpus and Context Investigating pragmatic functions in spoken discourse Cover image Svenja Adolphs University of Nottingham Studies in Corpus Linguistics 30 2008. xi, 151 pp. Hardbound ISBN 978 90 272 2304 3 EUR 99.00 / USD 149.00 [] Corpus and Context explores the relationship between corpus linguistics and pragmatics by discussing possible frameworks for analysing utterance function on the basis of spoken corpora. The book articulates the challenges and opportunities associated with a change of focus in corpus research, from lexical to functional units, from concordance lines to extended stretches of discourse, and from the purely textual to multi-modal analysis of spoken corpus data. Drawing on a number of spoken corpora including the five million word Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE, funded by CUP (c)), a specific speech act function is being explored using different approaches and different levels of analysis. This involves a close analysis of contextual variables in relation to lexico-grammatical and discoursal patterns that emerge from the corpus data, as well as a wider discussion of the role of context in spoken corpus research. ---------- Table of contents Acknowledgements ix–x Tables and figures xi Chapter 1. Introduction 1–17 Chapter 2. Spoken discourse and corpus analysis 19–42 Chapter 3. Pragmatic functions, conventionalised speech acts expressions and corpus evidence 43–72 Chapter 4. Pragmatic functions in context 73–88 Chapter 5. Exploring pragmatic functions in discourse: The speech act episode 89–116 Chapter 6. Pragmatic functions beyond the text 117–130 Chapter 7. Concluding remarks 131–136 Appendix: Transcription conventions for the CANCODE data used in this book 137–138 References 139–148 Index 149–151 Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From pakendorf at eva.mpg.de Tue May 20 13:47:55 2008 From: pakendorf at eva.mpg.de (Brigitte Pakendorf) Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 15:47:55 +0200 Subject: PhD position, documentation of Even dialects Message-ID: Apologies for multiple postings. ****Ph.D. position in Language Documentation**** Applications are invited for a PhD scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to participate in the DoBeS project “Documentation of the dialectal and cultural diversity among the Ėvens in Siberia”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (http://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/index.php?id=172&L=1). The successful applicant will be expected to divide his/her time between documentation (consisting of the recording, transcription and interlinearisation of different genres of spoken Ėven), and a detailed comparative study of Ėven phonetics/phonology. Applicants need to have a master’s degree or equivalent in a relevant field to be eligible. Experience in linguistic fieldwork and with languages of Siberia is desirable, though not a prerequisite. A good knowledge of Russian is imperative. The project on the documentation of Ėven dialects is led by Dr. Brigitte Pakendorf and Dr. Dejan Matić from the Junior Research Group on Comparative Population Linguistics (http://www.eva.mpg.de/cpl/), which is affiliated with the Department of Linguistics at MPI EVA in Leipzig (http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/). It will be conducted in collaboration with native Ėven linguists at the Institute of Humanitarian Studies and the Indigenous Peoples of the North in Yakutsk, Russian Federation. Interested individuals should send a letter of application, a sample of their writing (in the absence of publications, term papers are acceptable), curriculum vitae, and the names and FAX numbers or e-mail addresses of two referees to Brigitte Pakendorf by e-mail (pakendorf at eva.mpg.de). The deadline for applications is June 15th; shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview in the first half of July. The position will be available from January 2009. Further information regarding this position can be requested from Brigitte Pakendorf (pakendorf at eva.mpg.de) or Dejan Matic (dejan_matic at eva.mpg.de). The Max Planck Society is an equal opportunity employer. -- ************************************************************************ Dr. Dr. Brigitte Pakendorf (Ph.D. Molecular Anthropology, Ph.D. Linguistics) Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 phone +49 (0) 341 35 50 308 D-04103 Leipzig fax +49 (0) 341 35 50 333 Germany e-mail pakendorf at eva.mpg.de http://www.eva.mpg.de/cpl/ ************************************************************************ From tgivon at uoregon.edu Mon May 26 03:38:09 2008 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 20:38:09 -0700 Subject: book reviews Message-ID: Dear Funk folks, Sometime last fall there was an interesting exchange on Funknet, about book reviewing. It was initiated, I think, by Esa Itkonen, with Suzanne Kemmer and Martin Haspelmath pitching in. I think Werner Abraham was on it too, tho this may have been in private. What transpired, leastwise for me, was Martin's suggestion that Internet reviewing was the was of the future, and was sooner or later going to supplant traditional journal book reviews. I had long before come to the sad conclusion that journal book reviewing was a negative, destructive genre. As I kept reading reviews, it seemed clear that reviewers were seldom writing about the book they were commissioned to review. Rather, their reviews were mostly about themselves. What they seemed to be doing was use the occasion of reviewing someone else's work as a platform from which to display their own work, erudition, smarts or sarcasm. My own sad experience with book reviewing, discontinued in utter self-disgust thirty years ago, was alas no exception. Perhaps I was young and didn't know better. But the last one, in 1978, almost cost me one of my dearest friends. Ever since then, I have steadfastly turned down requests to review books for journals. On one of the last occasions, ca. 1990, an editor asked me to review a 1989 book about pragmatics, written by a notorious blunt-axe reviewer. I smelled a rat, and asked him point blank: Did you by any chance ask her to review my 1989 book for the same issue? He hemmed an hawed, I could hear him fairly fidgeting over the phone. I declined the offer. Then I found out that many reviews are handled this way by journal editors. Or worse: people with an axe to grind ask editors to review books by authors they bear a grudge toward. What a way to settle scores, with the connivance (or worse, innocence) of journal editors. One idea stuck, though: If I were ever to review a book again, I'd only review one I really, really, liked. For what is the point of doing otherwise? If we don't like a book, shouldn't we perhaps just let it be? In this spirit, I am sharing with you five short and somewhat non-traditional reviews, of five books I have read this last year. They all bear, directly or indirectly, on one topic dear to my heart--the evolution of language. What is more, I can say without the slightest reservation that I recommend these books most highly. In one way or another, they each combine three features that make a book, any book, most enjoyable: They deal with exciting, relevant subject matter; they churn out terrific ideas; and they are exceptionally well written. In order: *Frans deWaal (2001) "The Ape and the Sushi Master", NY: Basic Books* For anyone who knows deWaal's previous work ("Chimpanzee Politics", 1982; "Peacemaking Among the Apes", 1989; inter alia), this book is not a surprise. What you get, in addition to the lively story telling, is a tour de force of the apparently-still-controversial topic of the evolution of culture, rolled together with an astute introduction to Darwinian evolutionary thinking, Cosmides/Tooby's Evolutionary Psychology, E.O. Wilson and Sociobiology, and more. In the dualist Cartesian tradition that still infests much of the humanities and social sciences, evolution has been conceded only grudgingly--as long as it stops at the neck. The body may be subject to its deterministic base 'laws', but not the mind, culture or language. This has tended to short-change both biology and the humanities. In biology, the evidence of pre-human cultural evolution had tended to be ignored. In the social sciences and the humanities, the manifest evolutionary foundations of culture were dismissed as crude determinism, biological reductionism, Freudian "science envy", Social Darwinism, or just plain insult to the unconstrained freedom of the human spirit. What Frans DeWaal does in this wonderful book is take you through the history, the controversies, the recalcitrant issues, and above all, the evidence of pre-human culture. What you come out with is a sense of the fine-grained interpenetrability of biology and culture, and the profound unity of all living things. You also come out with the bracing feeling that we are not alone, and that being a biological species does not in any way slight out vertiginous uniqueness. *David Geary (2005) "The Origin of Mind", Washington, DC: American Psychological Association* This book does not have the story-telling spice of deWaal's work, so that its excitement is considerably more subtle. It is a decidedly scholarly romp through the several interlocking traditions that feed into the study of the evolution of mind. It is, first, a superb introduction to Darwinian bio-evolution. It is an accessible primer to Cognitive Neuroscience. It is also a sober elucidation of Evolutionary Psychology, of which Geary himself is a respected practitioner. In the bargain, you get a strong whiff of deWaal's sense of culture as a biological phenomenon, and of biology as the deepest, thus often most subtle, undergirding of culture. You also get an evolutionary perspective on the brain, a perspective that takes for granted the reciprocal mapping of structural and functional organization. A particularly strong feature is the initial division of mental representation into folk physics, folk biology and folk psychology, three categories of adaptive experience that are familiar to both anthropologists and linguists. Within this enlightened framework, the adaptively-selected evolution of mental representation ceases to be arbitrary; it makes a terrific amount of sense. And the table on p. 129 is a most helpful, if schematic, division of adaptive-functional domains that have acquired neuro-structural expression. Geary's treatment of language is not all that comprehensive, and is scattered all over the map, something one has gotten used to in books written by psychologists. But for the discerning reader, the language-relevant stuff is there, hiding in plain sight. And the discussion of Theories of Mind (mind reading), in part a crucial pre-condition to, in part a consequence of the evolution of language, is reviewed extensively and integrated well into the evolutionary narrative. It you have the stomach for uncompromising scholarship and an exhaustive bibliography, this book will keep you going. *Dorothy Cheyney and Robert Seyfarth (2007) "Baboon Metaphysics", Chicago: University of Chicago Press* In their "How Monkeys See the World" (1990), this pair of long-time collaborators--a biologist and a psychologist, respectively and field primatologists as a team--gave us the social and communicative world of the vervet monkeys of the East African Veld and their inimitable vocal predator calls. In their latest book they have taken on the baboons of the inland Okavango delta in Botswana. Their research methodology remains the same--painstaking, long-term on-site field observations combined with sophisticated, ingeniously designed field experiments. They are after what underlies the social structure of the baboon society--the social-communicative mind. With a title that could have more aptly been given as Baboon Epistemology, Cheyney, Seyfarth and their team probe the intricate social structure of the large Baboon social group (up to 150, largest among primates), contrasting the tight stability of female-headed matrilinial families with the ever-shifting, harsh milieu of the adjunct itinerant males. Having established who is whose kin, who talks to who, who outranks who and who-all are friends and allies, their real quest is the social mind: What do these baboons know about each other's beliefs (epistemics) and intentions (deontics). The agenda is thus well embedded in the burgeoning literature of Theories of Mind, and the method is unimpeachably experimental. In the process, you get an extensive, scintillating review of Darwin's evolutionary agenda and Evolutionary Psychology, of cultural anthropology, social primatology and more. Above all, you get to know the monkeys in their natural ecology, with their insecurities, ingenuity, joy and grief. It is a rude world they inhabit, among feline, canine, reptilian--and on occasion human--predators. Both the monkeys and the research team acquit themselves admirably. Between them, they teach us not only what it feels like being an Okavango baboon, but also what it might mean to be human. *Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva (2007) "The Genesis of Grammar", Oxford: Oxford University Press* I have saved for last two books by old friends, hoping to have convinced you that my admiration for a book is not contingent on personal bonds. Heine and Kuteva's book is unabashedly about language evolution, damn the torpedoes--but not full speed ahead. For before expounding on the central theme, the authors run you through the mill--an impeccable review of the LangEvol lit, a grand tour of diachrony and grammaticalization, of pidginization and animal communication. Two whole chapters are given to the genesis of complexity and recursion, courtesy of Chomsky's latest, regrettable foray into the field of language evolution (Hauser et al. 2002). They don't argue that the comparative data base is compellingly relevant--they simply lay the data out, side by side, with meticulous care and with only one regrettable omission, ontogeny (child language acquisition). When the evolutionary hypotheses come at the end (ch. 7, "Early Language"), they are handled with the due care and modesty that befits true scholarship. This is a source-book in the best sense, it guides you through the complexity of the topic, and the diversity of approaches. It is a pleasure to read and a privilege to recommend. *Derek Bickerton (2008) "Bastard Tongues", NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux* This book, a gem by a linguist's linguist, is two books rolled into one. It is first a personal memoir of a restless, swashbuckling, globe-trotting linguist in the grand ol' tradition of the great 19th Century explorers--Richard Burton, Henry Stanley, John Wesley Powell. This Bickerton shows you that there are still wild places to roam and great watering holes to splash in; all you need is an ounce of passion, a spark of the imagination. It is, second, the story of Pidgin and Creole languages and what they might mean to our understanding of human language and its genesis. One of the few unabashed evolutionist in linguistics, ever since his "Roots of Language (1981) and "Language and Species" (1990), Bickerton landed upon the staid, smug, self-satisfied Creolist scene in 1975 like a ton of bricks, shaking the parapets but, as one could imagine, making few converts. It was then and still is now a field rife--perhaps ripe--with the celebration of local peculiarity and minutely-documented diversity, an empiricist mistrust for theory and a monumental disdain for universals; thanks but no thanks, old boy; not in my back-yard. On this conservative , self-conserving backdrop, Bickerton had the audacity, indeed the temerity, to suggest that there was an exciting theoretical story lurking behind the mind-numbing diversity of Pidgins and Creoles. All you needed was a modicum of imagination. Some pizzaz. He pointed to the obvious but got nowhere. The rest is a story of academic warfare, of intellectual victories snatched from the jaws of bureaucratic defeats. The centerpiece is a rare jewel--a front-seat account of the infamous Island Project. It is colorful, convoluted and sad; a morality tale of an audacious research proposal that was yanked off the gravy train just in the nick of time; and of how lively ideas that beg to be explored can bog down in the timidity and small-mindedness of the academic review process. Above all, it is a tale of grand-scale science, of a hypothesis still begging to be tested. A lesser man would have been deflated. Bickerton just keeps forging on. Best, TG From e.pascual at let.vu.nl Mon May 26 12:37:25 2008 From: e.pascual at let.vu.nl (Esther Pascual) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 14:37:25 +0200 Subject: Dutch Coglingdag'08 Message-ID: Please forward to interested parties. Thank You. CogLingDag, Leiden, 19 en 20 december 2008 Geachte collega, Na de bijeenkomsten in Utrecht (2004) en Leuven (2006), wordt op 19 en 20 december in Leiden de derde Cognitieve Linguïstiek Dag (Coglingdag) georganiseerd. Het doel van deze dag is om een platform te bieden aan het werk van cognitief en functioneel georiënteerde taalwetenschappers. Onderzoekers die werken in het kader van de Cognitieve Linguïstiek of verwante kaders worden uitgenodigd hun (lopend) onderzoek te presenteren. Op zaterdag is er naast een algemene sessie ook een parallelsessie over de relatie tussen Cognitieve Taalkunde en Structuralisme. Ook hiervoor worden onderzoekers uitgenodigd een voorstel voor een lezing in te sturen. Plenaire sprekers: -Felix Ameka (Universiteit Leiden) -Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek, Nijmegen) -Kurt Feyaerts (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) -Ad Foolen (Universiteit Nijmegen) Abstracts mogen maximaal 500 woorden bevatten (inclusief referenties). Deadline inzending: 1 juli 2008 Mededeling selectie: uiterlijk 1 oktober 2008 Contactadres: coglingdag at let.leidenuniv.nl Adviserend Comité : Frank Brisard (Antwerpen), Alan Cienki (VU Amsterdam), Bert Cornillie (Leuven), Hubert Cuyckens (Leuven), Ad Foolen (Nijmegen), Dirk Geeraerts (Leuven), Theo Janssen (VU Amsterdam), Frederike van der Leek (UvA), Jan Nuyts (Antwerpen), Ted Sanders (Utrecht), Joost Schilperoord (Tilburg), Wilbert Spooren (VU Amsterdam), Gerard Steen (VU Amsterdam), Marjolein Verspoor (Groningen), Ton van der Wouden (Leiden). Helaas is er overlap met het VIOT-congres op de VU. Het VIOT is wel op zaterdag afgelopen, dus graag aanmelden of u graag uw lezing op zaterdag wilt geven! Wij hopen u op 19 december in Leiden te kunnen ontmoeten! Praktische informatie over de Coglingdag zal op een later tijdstip op de website worden geplaatst: Website CoglingDag: http://www.lucl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=15&c=599. Met vriendelijke groeten, Ronny Boogaart (Leiden) Egbert Fortuin (Leiden) Esther Pascual (VU Amsterdam) Elena Tribushinina (Leiden) Het organiserend comité Coglingdag From amnfn at well.com Mon May 26 13:53:28 2008 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 06:53:28 -0700 Subject: Reviews Message-ID: The problem with reviews that have only positive things to say is that they don't really help to start a dialogue about the material. When I write a book or an article, I am far less gratified by "good book, good article" to which there is no possible response except "Thank You" and the conversation is over. Whereas if someone comes up to me and says: "I read your book/ article, but I didn't understand (or agree with) this part", then we can have a real conversation, and we can both come away enriched by it. This may reveal my naturally argumentative nature, but the thing is that logical argument is not a bad thing. In the sciences, it's encouraged. How else are we ever going to get at the truth? Best, --Aya From jim.mischler at okstate.edu Tue May 27 15:11:25 2008 From: jim.mischler at okstate.edu (Mischler, Jim) Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 10:11:25 -0500 Subject: Reviews In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The posts by Katz and Givon bring up the question of the purposes of a book review. Both posts highlighted important aspects of the answer--the goals of a book review are to discuss what the author found about an topic important to the academic field and to engage the reader to think seriously about that topic. A review can be either negative or positive and still reach both goals, but in my mind the best reviews present *both* the strengths and the weaknesses of a work. Striving for a balanced view of a book (and topic) can help to reduce the problems that the previous posts pointed out. Methods to achieve balance can be found in both Katz's and Givon's solutions: the book reviewer must work to get at the truth about the issue presented in a book and must choose books to review that that the reviewer personally likes and respects. Weaknesses can be found if the writer has a positive view of the work (assuming the writer is committed to the truth), but it is much more difficult to find strengths when the writer has a negative view. The only "truth" often expressed in a review of a book the writer does not like is "the book is not worth reading." That kind of review misses the point. It is also more difficult to engage the reader when the writer's view of the work is negative. In my experience, highly negative reviews tend to discourage serious consideration of the topic rather than start or continue discussion. Jim Mischler Oklahoma State University jim.mischler at okstate.edu ________________________________________ From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of A. Katz [amnfn at well.com] Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 8:53 AM To: FUNKNET at mailman.rice.edu Subject: [FUNKNET] Reviews The problem with reviews that have only positive things to say is that they don't really help to start a dialogue about the material. When I write a book or an article, I am far less gratified by "good book, good article" to which there is no possible response except "Thank You" and the conversation is over. Whereas if someone comes up to me and says: "I read your book/ article, but I didn't understand (or agree with) this part", then we can have a real conversation, and we can both come away enriched by it. This may reveal my naturally argumentative nature, but the thing is that logical argument is not a bad thing. In the sciences, it's encouraged. How else are we ever going to get at the truth? Best, --Aya From ebabaii at gmail.com Wed May 28 06:10:17 2008 From: ebabaii at gmail.com (Esmat Babaii) Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 09:40:17 +0330 Subject: Reviews In-Reply-To: <4D772DF13EFA5844B81E7C304ED0093C305BA3848F@STWEXE1.ad.okstate.edu> Message-ID: I hate to disagree with Professor Givon, but I've had a different > experience with this genre, and evaluative discourse, in general. > While I'm not denying the destructive effects of unfair, ad hominem > reviews done by certain characters who feel great only when they can > put/see others in inferior position, book review can be a service to > the academic discourse community by providing a good ground for > further exchange of ideas. This is at least what I had in mind in a > couple of reviews I published. Specifically, I am so glad that I > reviewed John Myhill's book (2006) on nationalism, language and > religion; because through a set of discussions he started as a > reaction to my comments, I learned a lot. A particular genre cannot be > inherently good or bad, it depends on a lot of parameters, including > the people using it. > > Esmat Babaii > University for teacher Education > Iran > From Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:24:10 2008 From: Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk (Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 13:24:10 +0100 Subject: FW: GTF appointment in French at Manchester University Message-ID: Generator Microsoft Word 11 (filtered medium) The University of Manchester School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures Postgraduate Funding Opportunities 2008-9 GUIDELINES FOR APPLICANTS The School' s postgraduate community is one of the UK's largest and most diverse in the UK, enjoying state-of-the-art facilities and excellent support within a high-quality research environment. In step with our continuing expansion, we are enhancing our support for students registering for a research degree (PhD) in 2008-9. In addition to our current 20 Graduate Teaching Fellowships (GTFs), we are offering: A Graduate Teaching Fellowship in: French (Full-time) Please note, the GTF must be undertaken in conjunction with a PhD programme of study at the University of Manchester and applicants for the GTF MUST possess relevant teaching experience. The full-time GTF will be required to teach for 6 hours per week and the part-time GTF will be required to teach for 3 hours per week. The full-time GTF is open to Home/EU and International applicants and comprises three elements: the payment of full Home/EU or International fees [2008-9 academic session £3300 per annum (Home/EU) or £10500 per annum (International)], which is paid directly to the University, a monthly salary for teaching (2007-8 academic session: £5806.92 per annum), which is paid directly into your bank account in 10 monthly instalments and a bursary (£6754.80 per annum) paid in quarterly instalments by bank transfer (by arrangement with the Student Services Centre) or by cheque, which is normally collected the first week of October, January, April and July. The part-time GTF will be paid pro-rata, ie. the above amounts will be halved. The application criteria for the GTF are as follows: 1. You must apply and have been accepted for a PhD programme of study in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures. Applicants must be holding an offer of a place by the closing date specified below in order to be included in the competition. 2. You must possess previous teaching experience. For further information regarding the teaching element of French* GTF please contact Mr John Morley, Director, University-wide Language Programmes, University Language Centre, email john.morley at manchester.ac.uk *Please note that the holder of the French GTF will be required to register for a Linguistics PhD under the supervision of Professor Maj-Britt Hansen, email Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk For general information and guidance regarding entry requirements and applying for a PhD programme of study, please contact Michelle Fenlon, the Postgraduate Admissions Officer; telephone +44 (0)161 275 3559, email michelle.fenlon at manchester.ac.uk The closing date for receipt of the GTF Application Form is Monday 9 June 2008. Short-listed applicants will be invited for interview before the end of June 2008. Please note, strong preference will be given to new PhD applicants and only short-listed candidates will be contacted. HOW TO APPLY · Applications for postgraduate PhD programmes must be submitted (with all the required documentation) using the online application formfrom the University' s website: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/howtoapply/ · The Funding Application Form and the University of Manchester GTF Application Form must be downloaded and submitted to the Postgraduate Office (details overleaf). The Forms are available from: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/ Please remember to enclose a full CV with the GTF Application Form Return the GTF Application Form and Funding Application Form to the following address: Postgraduate Office, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, Samuel Alexander Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom Please quote reference number GTF/2102 Please note, for successful applicants the GTF award will be made only if you are unsuccessful in obtaining full funding in external funding competitions (AHRC/ESRC or any other external body). Therefore applicants cannot hold a full AHRC/ESRC or any other external award and a Manchester University School award simultaneously. If you have accepted a GTF and are notified of success in an external funding competition after Friday 5 September 2008, you will be expected to take up the GTF award and fulfil the teaching commitments for that one year only The fee/bursary element of the GTF will then be adjusted accordingly to take account of the external award. A week long teaching induction programme which is specifically designed and compulsory for all GTFs will be held in the first or second week of September. Candidates who accept GTF posts have to make themselves available to attend the full teaching induction course during this period. From akbari_r at yahoo.com Fri May 30 07:46:02 2008 From: akbari_r at yahoo.com (Ramin Akbari) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 00:46:02 -0700 Subject: Call for submissions Message-ID:   Apologies for cross-postings     TELL is a peer reviewed journal published by Iran's Association of Applied Linguists. For our January 2009, we are planning a special issue on critical pedagogy (CP), and we hope to get contributions that explore different applications of CP in L2 teaching, testing, materials development, teacher education… We would also like to receive argumentative papers that might question the applicability of CP to mainstream L2 contexts.   Contributions need to be within the word-count range of 4000 to 8000, in Word 2003 format, and sent as email attachments to the address below.  Please use APA guidelines for references. The deadline for submissions is September 25th, 2008.   Please send your papers to Ramin Akbari (Guest editor) at:  akbari_ram at yahoo.com   Ramin Akbari Assistant Professor of TEFL English Department, TMU Tehran, Iran       From paul at benjamins.com Fri May 30 19:50:13 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:50:13 -0400 Subject: New Book from Benjamins: Hannay/Steen: Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar Message-ID: This is a new functionally-relevant book from John Benjamins Publishing: Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar In honour of Lachlan Mackenzie Cover image Edited by Mike Hannay and Gerard J. Steen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Studies in Language Companion Series 83 URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=SLCS%2083 2007. vi, 393 pp. Hardbound 978 90 272 3093 5 / EUR 125.00 / USD 188.00 [] This collection presents a number of studies in the lexico-grammar of English which focus on the one hand on close reading of language in context and on the other hand on current functional theoretical concerns. The various contributions represent distinct functionalist models of language, including Functional Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar, Systemic-Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar. Taken together, however, they typify current work being conducted from the grammatical perspective within the functionalist enterprise, emphasizing on the relation between structure and usage. A fundamental goal of the enterprise is to identify linguistic structures which are constrained by specific features of use, or which actually encode specific features of use, as many of the contributions here show. ---------- Table of contents Introduction 1–5 Part I. Corpus-based studies No doubt and related expressions: A functional account Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen 9–34 On certainly and zeker Pieter Byloo, Richard Kastein and Jan Nuyts 35–57 Prenominal possessives in English: Function and use Evelien Keizer 59–82 Ditransitive clauses in English with special reference to Lancashire dialect Anna Siewierska and Willem Hollmann 83–102 'It was you that told me that, wasn't it?' It-clefts revisited in discourse María de los Ángeles Gómez González 103–139 Another take on the notion Subject Dik Bakker and Anna Siewierska 141–158 The modal auxiliaries of English, -operators in Functional Grammar and "grounding" Louis Goossens 159–173 The king is on huntunge: on the relation between progressive and absentive in Old and Early Modern English Casper de Groot 175–190 Part II. The architecture of functional models Mental context and the expression of terms within the English clause: An approach based on Functional Discourse Grammar John H. Connolly 193–208 Adverbial conjunctions in Functional Discourse Grammar Kees Hengeveld and Gerry Wanders 209–226 Tree tigers and tree elephants: a constructional account of English nominal compounds Matthew Anstey 227–256 English constructions from a Dutch perspective: where are the differences? Arie Verhagen 257–274 Notes towards an incremental implementation of the Role and Reference Grammar semantics-to-syntax linking algorithm for English Christopher S. Butler 275–307 Grammar, flow and procedural knowledge: structure and function at the interface between grammar and discourse Peter Harder 309–335 The non-linearity of speech production Michael Fortescue 337–351 A speaker/hearer-based grammar: the case of possessives and compounds Theo Janssen 353–387 Index 389–393 ---------- Subject classification [] Linguistics [] English linguistics [] Functional linguistics [] Germanic linguistics [] Theoretical linguistics Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Fri May 30 19:46:37 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:46:37 -0400 Subject: New Book from Benjamins: Penke/Rosenbach: What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics Message-ID: This is new functionally-relevant book from John Benjamins Publishing: What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics The case of innateness Cover image Edited by Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf Benjamins Current Topics 7 URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=BCT%207 2007. x, 297 pp. Hardbound 978 90 272 2237 4 / EUR 95.00 / USD 143.00 [] What counts as evidence in linguistics? This question is addressed by the contributions to the present volume (originally published as a Special Issue of Studies in Language 28:3 (2004). Focusing on the innateness debate, what is illustrated is how formal and functional approaches to linguistics have different perspectives on linguistic evidence. While special emphasis is paid to the status of typological evidence and universals for the construction of Universal Grammar (UG), this volume also highlights more general issues such as the roles of (non)-standard language and historical evidence. To address the overall topic, the following three guiding questions are raised: What type of evidence can be used for innateness claims (or UG)?; What is the content of such innate features (or UG)?; and, How can UG be used as a theory guiding empirical research? A combination of articles and peer commentaries yields a lively discussion between leading representatives of formal and functional approaches. ---------- Table of contents Preface vii–ix What counts as evidence in linguistics? An introduction Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach 1–49 Typological evidence and Universal Grammar Frederick J. Newmeyer 51–73 Remarks on the relation between language typology and Universal Grammar: Commentary on Newmeyer Mark Baltin 75–79 Does linguistic explanation presuppose linguistic description? Martin Haspelmath 81–107 Remarks on description and explanation in grammar: Commentary on Haspelmath Judith Aissen and Joan Bresnan 109–112 Author's response Martin Haspelmath 113–115 From UG to Universals: Linguistic adaptation through iterated learning Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith and Henry Brighton 117–138 Form, meaning and speakers in the evolution of language: Commentary on Kirby, Smith and Brighton William Croft 139–142 Author's response Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith and Henry Brighton 143–145 Why assume UG? Dieter Wunderlich 147–174 What kind of evidence could refute the UG hypothesis? Commentary on Wunderlich Michael Tomasello 175–178 Author's response: Is there any evidence that refutes the UG hypothesis? Dieter Wunderlich 179–180 A question of relevance: Some remarks on standard languages Helmut Weiß 181–208 The Relevance of Variation: Remarks on Weiß's Standard-Dialect-Problem Horst J. Simon 209–213 Author's response Helmut Weiß 215–216 Universals, innateness and explanation in second language acquisition Fred R. Eckman 217–239 'Internal' versus 'external' universals: Commentary on Eckman Lydia White 241–243 Author's response: 'External' universals and explanation in SLA Fred R. Eckman 245–248 What counts as evidence in historical linguistics? Olga Fischer 249–281 Abstraction and performance: Commentary on Fischer David W. Lightfoot 283–286 Author's response Olga Fischer 287–289 Index 291–297 ---------- Subject classification [] Linguistics [] Syntax [] Theoretical linguistics Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Fri May 30 19:52:42 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:52:42 -0400 Subject: New Book from Benjamins: Naess: Protypical Transitivity Message-ID: Prototypical Transitivity Cover image Åshild Næss University of Oslo Typological Studies in Language 72 URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=TSL%2072 2007. x, 240 pp. Hardbound 978 90 272 2984 7 / EUR 115.00 / USD 173.00 [] This book presents a functional analysis of a notion which has gained considerable importance in cognitive and functional linguistics over the last couple of decades, namely 'prototypical transitivity'. It discusses what prototypical transitivity is, why it should exist, and how it should be defined, as well as how this definition can be employed in the analysis of a number of phenomena of language, such as case-marking, experiencer constructions, and so-called ambitransitives. Also discussed is how a prototype analysis relates to other approaches to transitivity, such as that based on markedness. The basic claim is that transitivity is iconic: a construction with two distinct, independent arguments is prototypically used to refer to an event with two distinct, independent participants. From this principle, a unified account of the properties typically associated with transitivity can be derived, and an explanation for why these properties tend to correlate across languages can be given. ---------- Table of contents Preface ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1–9 1.1. Why transitivity? 1 1.2. Theoretical preliminaries 3 1.3. Structure of the book 8 Chapter 2: Why a transitive prototype? 11–26 2.1. Introduction 11 2.2. Prototype models 11 2.3. Markedness vs. prototypicality 17 2.4. Conclusion 26 Chapter 3: Defining the transitive prototype: The Maximally Distinguished Arguments Hypothesis 27–49 3.1. Introduction 27 3.2. The Maximally Distinguished Arguments Hypothesis 27 3.3. Maximal distinction and functional explanations 46 Chapter 4: The Affected Agent 51–84 4.1. Introduction 51 4.2. "Ingestive verbs" and affected agents 52 4.3. Crosslinguistic data 54 4. 4. 'Eat' and markers of agent affectedness 72 4.5. Alternative analyses 77 4.6. Other affected-agent constructions 82 4.7 Concluding remarks 83 Chapter 5: Transitivity in verbs and clauses 85–122 5.1. Introduction 85 5.2. Previous feature-decompositional accounts 86 5.3. Semantic specifications of participant types 89 5.4. Semantic features in verb subcategorisation 107 5.5. Properties of argument NPs 111 5.6. Clause-level properties 114 5.7. Formal correlates 119 5.8. Conclusion 122 Chapter 6: Ambitransitivity and indefinite object deletion 123–151 6.1. Introduction 123 6.2. Indefinite object deletion 124 6.3. Transitivity and indefinite object deletion 134 6.4. IOD and S/O ambitransitives 145 Chapter 7: Maximal semantic distinction in core case-marking 153–184 7.1. Introduction 153 7.2. The discriminatory analysis 154 7.3. The indexing analysis 159 7.4. Case and the maximal semantic distinction of arguments 161 7.5. Case and semantic transitivity: Unifying discrimination and indexing 166 7.6. Semantic extensions 168 7.7. Discriminatory extensions 173 7.8. Split ergativity 175 7.9. A note on case-marking labels 182 Chapter 8: Experiencers and the dative 185–208 8.1. Introduction 185 8.2. The semantic diversity of experience events 185 8.3. Experience clauses and the transitive prototype 189 8.4. The dative case 197 Chapter 9: Beyond prototypical transitivity 209–218 9.1. From Agent and Patient to subject and object 209 9.2. Structural vs. semantic case 211 9.3. Other prototypes 213 9.4. Concluding remarks 217 Appendix: Nonstandard abbreviations in glosses 219 References 221–231 Author index 233–235 Language index 237–238 Subject index 239–240 ---------- "A major and highly original contribution to the understanding of an area of morphosyntax which has, through the last decades, come to be known as notoriously complex." Leon Stassen, University of Utrecht ---------- Subject classification [] Linguistics [] Semantics [] Syntax [] Theoretical linguistics [] Typology Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From emcl4.2008 at gmail.com Thu May 1 20:10:47 2008 From: emcl4.2008 at gmail.com (Monica Gonzalez-Marquez) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 15:10:47 -0500 Subject: EMCL 4 - Deadline extended to May 11 In-Reply-To: <89f6d9420805011310j5c35c63cye2b5ae36e9b52e44@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics IV Integration - Methods and Perspectives University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Dk July 7 ? 12, 2008 ******* FACULTY MEMBERS: Please Distribute This Call To Your Students For more info visit: http://emcl4.2008.googlepages.com/home Flyers available above for download and posting. ****** Given that some perspective applicants received the call notice late, we are extending the application deadline as follows: ***********Application deadline extended: May 11, 2008 *********** Applications must be submitted by email to EMCL4.2008 at gmail.com Acceptance notifications will be sent on or before June 1, 2008. The Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (EMCL) Workshops have emerged out of the desire of many language researchers to incorporate empirical methods into their investigative repertoire. While theoretical work in cognitive linguistics has yielded significant insights, they still await empirical validation. To that end, we seek to further develop an empirically valid account of the connection between language and cognition through the continuous merging of theoretical and empirical research. Our goal is to help train language scholars in empirical methodology. Our workshops are set up to take small groups of scholars through the steps involved in conducting empirical research. This includes, 1. learning how to ask empirical questions, 2. choose an experimental paradigm, 3. collect and analyze data and 4. present it to an audience. Our theme for this, the fourth EMCL, is integration of methodologies and perspectives. Language is a complex phenomenon, "too human to be confined to a single discipline" (Hunt & Agnoli, 1991) or to be understood using a single methodology. Although using one perspective or method can be quite informative, pursuit of corroborating evidence via multiple means is substantially more illuminating. Our goal with this workshop is to provide a setting where integration is considered from the onset of a research project. The basic unit of the workshop will therefore be hands-on sessions led by pairs of researchers who will work together to provide complementary perspectives on a problem's investigation. In this setting, invited students will learn how to apply different approaches to a given question, as well as how to carry out a research project from conception to implementation. Intended Audience: This workshop is aimed specifically at scholars with sound theoretical knowledge in their field though lacking in empirical training, including experimental research. Participants are not expected to have any background in empirical work. Candidates should at least have completed initial university training, a B.A. in the US, or be working on a Masters degree if training in Europe, in theoretical linguistics or a similar field, and be familiar with cognitive linguistics or embodiment (this familiarity need not have occurred in a formal university setting). Graduate students, i.e. post-grads, pre-doctoral, etc., as well as post-doctoral researchers and junior faculty, are invited to apply. The only real prerequisite is a background in cognitive linguistics or embodiment, and a desire to gain empirical research experience. Workshop Topics: Gesture & Simulation Semantics Alan Cienki, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Ben Bergen, University of Hawai'i at Manoa Lexical Semantics & Multidimensional Scaling Steven Clancy, University of Chicago Michele Feist, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Linguistic Relativity & Meaning John Lucy, University of Chicago Gabriella Vigliocco, University College London Bilingualism Viorica Marian, Northwestern University Kathryn Kohnert, University of Minnesota Cost: 125 Euros (Scholarships consisting of registration fee reductions will be available for students traveling from Eastern Europe and developing countries) To precede Language, Culture and Mind 3 http://www.lcm.sdu.dk EMCL 4 Organizing Committee: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Chair, Cornell University (EMCL4.2008 at gmail.com); Raymond Becker, University of California, Merced; Michele Feist, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Todd Oakley, Case Western Reserve University; Anders R. Hougaard, University of Southern Denmark; Gitte R. Hougaard, University of Southern Denmark From john.bowden at anu.edu.au Tue May 6 03:49:44 2008 From: john.bowden at anu.edu.au (John Bowden) Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 13:49:44 +1000 Subject: Research Fellow Position at Australian National University Message-ID: Apologies for cross-postings Research Fellow in Papuan Linguistics Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Division of Society and Environment Department of Linguistics Academic Level B Salary Range: $68,767 - $81,135 pa plus 17% super **Reference: PA4795 The Department of Linguistics seeks to appoint a scholar to carry out research on Papuan languages and their broader scientific implications. Applicants with relevant field experience from any part of the world are welcome to apply, provided they put forward a detailed and compelling proposal for a research program whose major focus is on one or more Papuan languages. The successful candidate will have an outstanding record of publication in relevant field(s), relative to their early career status. Candidates should provide a detailed statement of the research project(s) they plan in the short, medium and long terms, putting together an exciting, innovative and plausible program based on fieldwork and analysis, and including likely plans for future project funding. The research outlined should be compatible but complementary with the Department?s range of research interests, as outlined in the further particulars. The successful candidate will also be expected to serve on the editorial board of the publication series, Pacific Linguistics, to engage in the supervision of postgraduate students and occasional advanced teaching as needed, and to serve as an attraction point for the development of major research initiatives in the area. Women are particularly encouraged to apply. Selection Criteria: http://info.anu.edu.au/hr/jobs/ or from Human Resources (Academic), CAP; T: 02 6125 4444, E: jobsacademic.cap at anu.edu.au Enquiries: Nicholas Evans, T: 02 6125 0028, E: Nicholas.Evans at anu.edu.au or John Bowden, T: 02 6125 3281, E: John.Bowden at anu.edu.au College of Asia and the Pacific Information for Applicants and Job Cover Sheet: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/jobs/CAP_info_applicants.pdf http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/jobs/CAP_job_coversheet.xls Please submit your application directly to jobsacademic.cap at anu.edu.au * by no later than the advertised closing date. Closing Date: Friday 25 July 2008 From fey.parrill at case.edu Wed May 7 15:10:58 2008 From: fey.parrill at case.edu (Fey Parrill) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 11:10:58 -0400 Subject: Final call for papers: CSDL 9 Message-ID: The deadline for abstract submission for CSDL 9 is next Thursday, May 15th! ***Conference details below.*** The ninth conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language will be held October 18-20, 2008, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. We are now accepting abstracts. The theme of CSDL 9 is "Meaning, Form, and Body." The focus is on two central, related research areas in the study of language: (1) the integration of form and meaning, and (2) language and the human body. These topics intersect naturally, as in the study of grammatical constructions, of conceptual integration, and of gesture. PLENARY SPEAKERS Seana Coulson: Department of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego Gilles Fauconnier: Department of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego Adele Goldberg: Program in Linguistics, Princeton University Michael Spivey: Department of Psychology, Cornell University Eve Sweetser: Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley ABSTRACT SUBMISSION We welcome abstracts for papers in the fields of cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, discourse, corpus linguistics, and speech and language processing, especially among scholars exploring the interface between language and cognition. The deadline for proposals to the general session is May 15, 2008. Please submit abstracts of no longer than 500 words, in English, via our online submission system, at http://artsci.case.edu/csdl9. Acceptance notices will be sent by email by June 30, 2008. All papers will be scheduled for 20 minutes, with an additional 5 minutes for questions and discussion. -- Fey Parrill, Vera Tobin, and Mark Turner Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language 9 http://artsci.case.edu/csdl9 From Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl Fri May 9 09:29:21 2008 From: Nino.Amiridze at let.uu.nl (Amiridze, Nino) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 11:29:21 +0200 Subject: Call for Abstracts: Language Change in Bilingual Communities. Focus on the Post-Soviet Countries and their Immigrant Communities Elsewhere. Message-ID: [Apologies for multiple posting] ***************************************************************************************************** Language Change in Bilingual Communities. Focus on the Post-Soviet Countries and Their Immigrant Communities Elsewhere. Workshop at The 23rd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics October 3, 2008, Uppsala, Sweden http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nino.Amiridze/personal/organization/PSB08.html ****************************************************************************************************** Call for Abstracts ================== The workshop aims at giving a perspective on post-Soviet bilingualism while concentrating on the typology of linguistic changes under language contact. During the Soviet era, languages of the former Soviet republics have been influenced by Russian, the Soviet lingua franca. The collapse and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union has caused reshaping of the relations between various ethnic groups within individual States, on the one hand, and between Russia and the rest of the States, on the other hand. Language situation and linguistic hierarchy within the newly independent countries have considerably changed, depending on the relations with Russia, and the growing influence of wider globalization. The fall of the Soviet Union has caused unprecedented waves of immigrants from the former Soviet republics to various parts of the world. Immigrant communities from the former Soviet Union do not always have institutional support for their native languages in the host countries. Keeping mother languages exclusively as a means of communication in the family and within the community, the speakers used to preserve some features of the languages that eventually got changed in the varieties spoken back at home by their compatriots. On the other hand, under the influence of the language(s) of the host countries, changes have occurred in the immigrant languages. Globalisation has influenced the area into a more open attitude with respect to sign language and bimodal bilingualism. The former Soviet Union maintained the medical model of disability, treating the deaf as a disabled group. However, in some of these States there are attempts to change the medical model with the social one, and view the deaf as a cultural and linguistic minority. One of the positive consequences of changing the approach is the promotion of bilingual education in the schools for deaf, rather than pursuing exclusively oralist educational policy. As a result of the changing attitudes towards sign language and Deaf culture, deaf people in the Post-Soviet States will become bilingual in a sign and a spoken language (a case of bimodal bilinguality). The following three topics will be addressed during the workshop: * contact-induced changes that have occurred in the languages of the Post-Soviet States under the declining role of Russian as a dominant language and the growing influence of other regionally and globally dominant languages; * contact-induced changes and contact-induced preservation in the language varieties spoken by communities that have immigrated from the Post-Soviet countries since 1991 to various parts of the world. * bimodal bilingualism and language situation in deaf communities of the Post-Soviet States. How changing of attitudes towards deafness affects sociolinguistic situation of users of sign languages across the former Soviet Union. Influences of the structure of one of their languages over that of the other language. Invited Speakers ================ * Anna Komarova (hearing) (Moscow Centre for Deaf Studies and Bilingual Education), Development of Bilingual Education of the Deaf in Post-Soviet Countries. * Tatiana Davidenko (Deaf) (Moscow Centre for Deaf Studies and Bilingual Education), Sign Language Diversity in Post-Soviet Countries (translation from the RSL into English by Anna Komarova). * Kristina Svartholm (hearing) (Stockholm University), Bilingual Education for the Deaf. A Swedish Experience. Important Dates =============== Abstract submission: June 16, 2008 Notification: July 7, 2008 Workshop: October 3, 2008 Organizers ========== * Nino Amiridze, Utrecht University (The Netherlands) * Anne Tamm, University of Florence (Italy) and Institute for the Estonian Language * Manana Topadze, University of Pavia (Italy) * Inge Zwitserlood, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Publication =========== If after the workshop there will be interest in publishing either a proceedings or a special journal issue, then the organizers will take responsibility of finding a suitable forum and will act as editors. Submission ========== Abstracts (in English, maximum 3 pages, including data and references) have to be submitted electronically as portable document format (.pdf) or Microsoft Word (.doc) files via the EasyChair conference management system: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=psb08 If you do not have an EasyChair account, click on the button "I have no EasyChair Account" on that page and follow the instructions. When you receive a password, you can enter the site and upload your abstract. Workshop Web Page ================= http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nino.Amiridze/personal/organization/PSB08.html From jeaaron at ufl.edu Sat May 10 22:26:32 2008 From: jeaaron at ufl.edu (Jessi Elana Aaron) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 18:26:32 -0400 Subject: Request for support from UF linguists Message-ID: Dear fellow Funknetters, As some of you may have heard, the University of Florida has recently taken $47 million in cuts. An article on this is in the Chronicle, at http://chronicle.com/news/article/4435/u-of-florida-plans-layoffs-and-enrollment-cuts-as-state-funds-fall The President's plan for cuts falls disproportionately heavily on the Humanities, in particular on the language programs. As a linguist in Romance Languages (Spanish), I fear that these proposed cuts will permanently damage our ability to provide quality education in linguistics, especially for those interested in languages other than English. The proposed cuts include: Elimination of PhD program in French Elimination of PhD program in German Elimination of PhD program in Philosophy Elimination of language instruction in Vietnamese and Korean The current departments of African & Asian Languages and Literatures, Germanic & Slavic Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures will be reformulated into a Department of Modern Foreign Languages and a Department of Spanish Language and Literature Many members of the humanities faculty are concerned with the elimination of the PhD programs in particular. In the case of French, it is one of few in the nation to offer a French linguistics track at the PhD level, and this will be lost. Also lost will be the possibility for doctoral students interested in cross-linguistic Romance to benefit from collaboration with both Spanish and French faculty. Many of us are also dismayed by the bundling of all modern languages--except Spanish--into one department, which sends a message to students that languages are not as diverse or as important as we all know them to be. Many feel that the faculty and chairs were not adequately consulted (see http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080509/NEWS/805090323/0/FRONTPAGE ), and are asking for support from the professional community to provide evidence that such cuts are damaging to UF's reputation and therefore detrimental to the long-term health of UF as an institution of higher education. If you would like to comment on these cuts, please visit http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/antes/Comments%20French%20PhD.html Thank you for your support, Jessi Elana Aaron -- Jessi Elana Aaron, PhD Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures University of Florida http://plaza.ufl.edu/jeaaron/ From janemc at bu.edu Tue May 13 20:47:58 2008 From: janemc at bu.edu (Jane M. Chandlee) Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 16:47:58 -0400 Subject: Deadline approaching - BUCLD 33 Message-ID: DEADLINE APPROACHING - CALL FOR PAPERS THE 33rd ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 2, 2008 Keynote Speaker: Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University "Spatial Language and Spatial Cognition: Origins, Development, and Interaction" Plenary Speaker: Tom Roeper, University of Massachusetts - Amherst "From Input to Mind: How Acquisition work captures the heart of linguistic theory and the soul of practical application" Lunch Symposium: "Brain mechanisms of language development: The promise and pitfalls of neuroimaging" Dick Aslin, University of Rochester Debra Mills, Emory University Colin Phillips, University of Maryland Helen Tager-Flusberg, Boston University Submissions which present research on any topic in the fields of first and second language acquisition from any theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: * Bilingualism * Cognition & Language * Creoles & Pidgins * Dialects * Discourse and Narrative * Gesture * Hearing Impairment and Deafness * Input & Interaction * Language Disorders (Autism, Down Syndrome, SLI, Williams Syndrome, etc.) * Linguistic Theory (Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon) * Neurolinguistics * Pragmatics * Pre-linguistic Development * Reading and Literacy * Signed Languages * Sociolinguistics * Speech Perception & Production Presentations will be 20 minutes long followed by a 10-minute question period. Posters will be on display for a full day with two attended sessions during the day. ABSTRACT FORMAT AND CONTENT * Abstracts submitted must represent original, unpublished research. * Abstracts should be anonymous, clearly titled and no more than 500 words in length. Text of abstract should fit on one page, with a second page for examples, figures, or references. Abstracts longer than 500 words will be rejected without being evaluated. * Please note the word count at the bottom of the abstract. Note that word counts should not include the abstract title, figure or table titles, examples, or the list of references. * A suggested format and style for abstracts is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/template.html * Three examples of how to formulate the content of the abstract can be found at: http://www.lsadc.org/info/dec02bulletin/model.html http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/sociocultural/abstracttips.html http://www.ulcl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=5&c=124 * The criteria used by the reviewers to evaluate abstracts can be found at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html#rate * All abstracts must be submitted as PDF documents. Specific instructions for how to create PDF documents are available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/pdfinfo.html. If you encounter a problem creating a PDF file, please contact us for further assistance. Please use the first author's last name as the file name (eg. Smith.pdf). No author information should appear anywhere in the contents of the PDF file itself. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS * Electronic submission: To facilitate the abstract submission process, abstracts will be submitted using the form available at the conference website at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/abstract.htm. * Specific instructions for abstract submission are available on this website. * Contact information for each author must be submitted via webform. No author information should appear anywhere in the abstract PDF. * At the time of submission you will be asked whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a poster, a paper, or both. Note that this preference is not revealed to the reviewers, and thus is not considered in the review process. * Although each author may submit as many abstracts as desired, we will accept for presentation by each author: (a) a maximum of 1 first authored paper/poster, and (b) a maximum of 2 papers/posters in any authorship status. Note that no changes in authorship (including deleting an author or changing author order) will be possible after the review process is completed or for publication in the conference proceedings. DEADLINE * All submissions must be received by 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2008. * Late abstracts will not be considered, whatever the reason for the delay. * We regret that we cannot accept abstract submissions by fax or email. * Submissions via surface mail will only be accepted in special circumstances, on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us well in advance of the submission deadline (May 15, 2008) to make these arrangements. ABSTRACT SELECTION * Each abstract is blind reviewed by 5 reviewers from a panel of approximately 180 international scholars. Further information about the review process is available at http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/reviewprocess.html. * Acknowledgment of receipt of the abstract will be sent by email as soon as possible after receipt. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent to first authors only, in early August, by email. Pre-registration materials and preliminary schedule will be available in late August 2008. * If your abstract is accepted, you will need to submit a 150-word abstract including title, author(s) and affiliation(s) for inclusion in the conference handbook. Guidelines will be provided along with notification of acceptance. * Abstracts accepted as papers will be invited for publication in the BUCLD Proceedings. * Abstracts accepted as posters will be invited for publication online only, but not in the printed version. * All conference papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Although each abstract will be evaluated individually, we will attempt to honor requests to schedule accepted papers together in group sessions. * No schedule changes will be possible once the schedule is set. Scheduling requests for religious reasons only must be made before the review process is complete (i.e. at the time of submission). A space is provided on the abstract submission webform to specify such requests. FURTHER INFORMATION General conference information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/APPLIED/BUCLD/ Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Room 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 Questions about abstracts should be sent to abstract at bu.edu From antti.arppe at helsinki.fi Wed May 14 15:37:04 2008 From: antti.arppe at helsinki.fi (Antti Arppe) Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 18:37:04 +0300 Subject: 2nd Call for Participation: 3rd Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL3) Message-ID: [apologies for cross-postings] 2nd CALL FOR PARTICIPATION and PROGRAM announcement Third Workshop on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL3) 2-4 June, 2008 Helsinki, Finland We would like to inform linguists of the upcoming QITL3 workshop to be co-hosted by the Linguistic Association of Finland and the Department of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for linguistic research which combines a theoretical outlook with sophisticated use of quantitative methods. We invite interested linguists from all subfields and theoretical persuasions to take part in this event. Invited Talks: Michael Cysouw, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Gary Marcus, New York University Richard Sproat, University of Indiana at Urbana/Champaign The final program and timetable with the authors and titles of the presentations, registration guidelines, as well as other information are available on the Workshop website (which will always contain the latest up-to-date information) at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ ----- Programme Committee: Harald Baayen, University of Alberta Marco Baroni, University of Trento/CIMeC Peter Bosch, University of Osnabr?ck Michael Cysouw, Max Planck Institute/Leipzig Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp Stefan Evert, University of Osnabr?ck Stefan Th. Gries, University of California, Santa Barbara Stefan Grondelaers, Radboud University Nijmegen Jennifer Hay, University of Canterbury Timo Honkela, Helsinki University of Technology Juhani J?rvikivi, Max Planck Institute/Nijmegen Brigitte Krenn, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (?FAI) Jonas Kuhn, University of Potsdam Merja Kyt?, University of Uppsala Roger Levy, University of California, San Diego Anke L?deling, Humboldt University in Berlin Elena Maslova, Bielefeld University Detmar Meurers, Ohio State University Matti Miestamo, University of Helsinki Jussi Niemi, University of Joensuu Martti Vainio, University of Helsinki Yi Xu, University College London ----- Organizing Committee: Laura Arola, University of Oulu Antti Arppe, University of Helsinki, co-chair Maria Mets?-Ketel?, University of Tampere Maarit Niemel?, University of Oulu Alexandre Nikolaev, University of Joensuu Urpo Nikanne, ?bo Akademi University, co-chair Kaius Sinnem?ki, University of Helsinki, co-chair Ulla Vanhatalo, University of Helsinki ----- Contact information: Contact Email: "qitl-3 at helsinki.fi" Meeting URL: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/tapahtumat/qitl/ ----- From paul at benjamins.com Sun May 18 18:44:03 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 14:44:03 -0400 Subject: New Book: Detges & Waltereit: The Pardox of Language Change Message-ID: This work is of relevance to the list: The Paradox of Grammatical Change Perspectives from Romance Cover image Edited by Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen / Newcastle University Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 293 2008. vi, 252 pp. This book is Available Hardbound ISBN 978 90 272 4808 4 EUR 110.00 / USD 165.00 [] Recent years have seen intense debates between formal (generative) and functional linguists, particularly with respect to the relation between grammar and usage. This debate is directly relevant to diachronic linguistics, where one and the same phenomenon of language change can be explained from various theoretical perspectives. In this, a close look at the divergent and/or convergent evolution of a richly documented language family such as Romance promises to be useful. The basic problem for any approach to language change is what Eugenio Coseriu has termed the paradox of change: if synchronically, languages can be viewed as perfectly running systems, then there is no reason why they should change in the first place. And yet, as everyone knows, languages are changing constantly. In nine case studies, a number of renowned scholars of Romance linguistics address the explanation of grammatical change either within a broadly generative or a functional framework. ---------- Table of contents Introduction Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit 1?12 Syntactic change from within and from without syntax: A usage-based analysis Richard Waltereit and Ulrich Detges 13?30 On explaining the rise of c'est-clefts in French Andreas Dufter 31?56 The role of the plural system in Romance Elisabeth Stark 57?84 Morphological developments affecting syntactic change Maria Goldbach 85?106 Grammaticalisation within the IP-domain Susann Fischer 107?126 Imperfect systems and diachronic change Giampaolo Salvi 127?146 From temporal to modal: Divergent fates of the Latin synthetic pluperfect in Spanish and Portuguese Martin Becker 147?180 Non-lexical core-arguments in Basque, Romance and German: How (and why) Spanish syntax is shifting towards clausal headmarking and morphological cross-reference Hans-Ingo Radatz 181?214 Towards a comprehensive view of language change: Three recent evolutionary approaches Esme Winter-Froemel 215?250 Subject Index 251?252 Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Sun May 18 19:24:11 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 15:24:11 -0400 Subject: New Book: Adolphs: Corpus and Context Message-ID: This work is of relevance to the list: Corpus and Context Investigating pragmatic functions in spoken discourse Cover image Svenja Adolphs University of Nottingham Studies in Corpus Linguistics 30 2008. xi, 151 pp. Hardbound ISBN 978 90 272 2304 3 EUR 99.00 / USD 149.00 [] Corpus and Context explores the relationship between corpus linguistics and pragmatics by discussing possible frameworks for analysing utterance function on the basis of spoken corpora. The book articulates the challenges and opportunities associated with a change of focus in corpus research, from lexical to functional units, from concordance lines to extended stretches of discourse, and from the purely textual to multi-modal analysis of spoken corpus data. Drawing on a number of spoken corpora including the five million word Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE, funded by CUP (c)), a specific speech act function is being explored using different approaches and different levels of analysis. This involves a close analysis of contextual variables in relation to lexico-grammatical and discoursal patterns that emerge from the corpus data, as well as a wider discussion of the role of context in spoken corpus research. ---------- Table of contents Acknowledgements ix?x Tables and figures xi Chapter 1. Introduction 1?17 Chapter 2. Spoken discourse and corpus analysis 19?42 Chapter 3. Pragmatic functions, conventionalised speech acts expressions and corpus evidence 43?72 Chapter 4. Pragmatic functions in context 73?88 Chapter 5. Exploring pragmatic functions in discourse: The speech act episode 89?116 Chapter 6. Pragmatic functions beyond the text 117?130 Chapter 7. Concluding remarks 131?136 Appendix: Transcription conventions for the CANCODE data used in this book 137?138 References 139?148 Index 149?151 Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From pakendorf at eva.mpg.de Tue May 20 13:47:55 2008 From: pakendorf at eva.mpg.de (Brigitte Pakendorf) Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 15:47:55 +0200 Subject: PhD position, documentation of Even dialects Message-ID: Apologies for multiple postings. ****Ph.D. position in Language Documentation**** Applications are invited for a PhD scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to participate in the DoBeS project ?Documentation of the dialectal and cultural diversity among the ?vens in Siberia?, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (http://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/index.php?id=172&L=1). The successful applicant will be expected to divide his/her time between documentation (consisting of the recording, transcription and interlinearisation of different genres of spoken ?ven), and a detailed comparative study of ?ven phonetics/phonology. Applicants need to have a master?s degree or equivalent in a relevant field to be eligible. Experience in linguistic fieldwork and with languages of Siberia is desirable, though not a prerequisite. A good knowledge of Russian is imperative. The project on the documentation of ?ven dialects is led by Dr. Brigitte Pakendorf and Dr. Dejan Mati? from the Junior Research Group on Comparative Population Linguistics (http://www.eva.mpg.de/cpl/), which is affiliated with the Department of Linguistics at MPI EVA in Leipzig (http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/). It will be conducted in collaboration with native ?ven linguists at the Institute of Humanitarian Studies and the Indigenous Peoples of the North in Yakutsk, Russian Federation. Interested individuals should send a letter of application, a sample of their writing (in the absence of publications, term papers are acceptable), curriculum vitae, and the names and FAX numbers or e-mail addresses of two referees to Brigitte Pakendorf by e-mail (pakendorf at eva.mpg.de). The deadline for applications is June 15th; shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview in the first half of July. The position will be available from January 2009. Further information regarding this position can be requested from Brigitte Pakendorf (pakendorf at eva.mpg.de) or Dejan Matic (dejan_matic at eva.mpg.de). The Max Planck Society is an equal opportunity employer. -- ************************************************************************ Dr. Dr. Brigitte Pakendorf (Ph.D. Molecular Anthropology, Ph.D. Linguistics) Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 phone +49 (0) 341 35 50 308 D-04103 Leipzig fax +49 (0) 341 35 50 333 Germany e-mail pakendorf at eva.mpg.de http://www.eva.mpg.de/cpl/ ************************************************************************ From tgivon at uoregon.edu Mon May 26 03:38:09 2008 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 20:38:09 -0700 Subject: book reviews Message-ID: Dear Funk folks, Sometime last fall there was an interesting exchange on Funknet, about book reviewing. It was initiated, I think, by Esa Itkonen, with Suzanne Kemmer and Martin Haspelmath pitching in. I think Werner Abraham was on it too, tho this may have been in private. What transpired, leastwise for me, was Martin's suggestion that Internet reviewing was the was of the future, and was sooner or later going to supplant traditional journal book reviews. I had long before come to the sad conclusion that journal book reviewing was a negative, destructive genre. As I kept reading reviews, it seemed clear that reviewers were seldom writing about the book they were commissioned to review. Rather, their reviews were mostly about themselves. What they seemed to be doing was use the occasion of reviewing someone else's work as a platform from which to display their own work, erudition, smarts or sarcasm. My own sad experience with book reviewing, discontinued in utter self-disgust thirty years ago, was alas no exception. Perhaps I was young and didn't know better. But the last one, in 1978, almost cost me one of my dearest friends. Ever since then, I have steadfastly turned down requests to review books for journals. On one of the last occasions, ca. 1990, an editor asked me to review a 1989 book about pragmatics, written by a notorious blunt-axe reviewer. I smelled a rat, and asked him point blank: Did you by any chance ask her to review my 1989 book for the same issue? He hemmed an hawed, I could hear him fairly fidgeting over the phone. I declined the offer. Then I found out that many reviews are handled this way by journal editors. Or worse: people with an axe to grind ask editors to review books by authors they bear a grudge toward. What a way to settle scores, with the connivance (or worse, innocence) of journal editors. One idea stuck, though: If I were ever to review a book again, I'd only review one I really, really, liked. For what is the point of doing otherwise? If we don't like a book, shouldn't we perhaps just let it be? In this spirit, I am sharing with you five short and somewhat non-traditional reviews, of five books I have read this last year. They all bear, directly or indirectly, on one topic dear to my heart--the evolution of language. What is more, I can say without the slightest reservation that I recommend these books most highly. In one way or another, they each combine three features that make a book, any book, most enjoyable: They deal with exciting, relevant subject matter; they churn out terrific ideas; and they are exceptionally well written. In order: *Frans deWaal (2001) "The Ape and the Sushi Master", NY: Basic Books* For anyone who knows deWaal's previous work ("Chimpanzee Politics", 1982; "Peacemaking Among the Apes", 1989; inter alia), this book is not a surprise. What you get, in addition to the lively story telling, is a tour de force of the apparently-still-controversial topic of the evolution of culture, rolled together with an astute introduction to Darwinian evolutionary thinking, Cosmides/Tooby's Evolutionary Psychology, E.O. Wilson and Sociobiology, and more. In the dualist Cartesian tradition that still infests much of the humanities and social sciences, evolution has been conceded only grudgingly--as long as it stops at the neck. The body may be subject to its deterministic base 'laws', but not the mind, culture or language. This has tended to short-change both biology and the humanities. In biology, the evidence of pre-human cultural evolution had tended to be ignored. In the social sciences and the humanities, the manifest evolutionary foundations of culture were dismissed as crude determinism, biological reductionism, Freudian "science envy", Social Darwinism, or just plain insult to the unconstrained freedom of the human spirit. What Frans DeWaal does in this wonderful book is take you through the history, the controversies, the recalcitrant issues, and above all, the evidence of pre-human culture. What you come out with is a sense of the fine-grained interpenetrability of biology and culture, and the profound unity of all living things. You also come out with the bracing feeling that we are not alone, and that being a biological species does not in any way slight out vertiginous uniqueness. *David Geary (2005) "The Origin of Mind", Washington, DC: American Psychological Association* This book does not have the story-telling spice of deWaal's work, so that its excitement is considerably more subtle. It is a decidedly scholarly romp through the several interlocking traditions that feed into the study of the evolution of mind. It is, first, a superb introduction to Darwinian bio-evolution. It is an accessible primer to Cognitive Neuroscience. It is also a sober elucidation of Evolutionary Psychology, of which Geary himself is a respected practitioner. In the bargain, you get a strong whiff of deWaal's sense of culture as a biological phenomenon, and of biology as the deepest, thus often most subtle, undergirding of culture. You also get an evolutionary perspective on the brain, a perspective that takes for granted the reciprocal mapping of structural and functional organization. A particularly strong feature is the initial division of mental representation into folk physics, folk biology and folk psychology, three categories of adaptive experience that are familiar to both anthropologists and linguists. Within this enlightened framework, the adaptively-selected evolution of mental representation ceases to be arbitrary; it makes a terrific amount of sense. And the table on p. 129 is a most helpful, if schematic, division of adaptive-functional domains that have acquired neuro-structural expression. Geary's treatment of language is not all that comprehensive, and is scattered all over the map, something one has gotten used to in books written by psychologists. But for the discerning reader, the language-relevant stuff is there, hiding in plain sight. And the discussion of Theories of Mind (mind reading), in part a crucial pre-condition to, in part a consequence of the evolution of language, is reviewed extensively and integrated well into the evolutionary narrative. It you have the stomach for uncompromising scholarship and an exhaustive bibliography, this book will keep you going. *Dorothy Cheyney and Robert Seyfarth (2007) "Baboon Metaphysics", Chicago: University of Chicago Press* In their "How Monkeys See the World" (1990), this pair of long-time collaborators--a biologist and a psychologist, respectively and field primatologists as a team--gave us the social and communicative world of the vervet monkeys of the East African Veld and their inimitable vocal predator calls. In their latest book they have taken on the baboons of the inland Okavango delta in Botswana. Their research methodology remains the same--painstaking, long-term on-site field observations combined with sophisticated, ingeniously designed field experiments. They are after what underlies the social structure of the baboon society--the social-communicative mind. With a title that could have more aptly been given as Baboon Epistemology, Cheyney, Seyfarth and their team probe the intricate social structure of the large Baboon social group (up to 150, largest among primates), contrasting the tight stability of female-headed matrilinial families with the ever-shifting, harsh milieu of the adjunct itinerant males. Having established who is whose kin, who talks to who, who outranks who and who-all are friends and allies, their real quest is the social mind: What do these baboons know about each other's beliefs (epistemics) and intentions (deontics). The agenda is thus well embedded in the burgeoning literature of Theories of Mind, and the method is unimpeachably experimental. In the process, you get an extensive, scintillating review of Darwin's evolutionary agenda and Evolutionary Psychology, of cultural anthropology, social primatology and more. Above all, you get to know the monkeys in their natural ecology, with their insecurities, ingenuity, joy and grief. It is a rude world they inhabit, among feline, canine, reptilian--and on occasion human--predators. Both the monkeys and the research team acquit themselves admirably. Between them, they teach us not only what it feels like being an Okavango baboon, but also what it might mean to be human. *Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva (2007) "The Genesis of Grammar", Oxford: Oxford University Press* I have saved for last two books by old friends, hoping to have convinced you that my admiration for a book is not contingent on personal bonds. Heine and Kuteva's book is unabashedly about language evolution, damn the torpedoes--but not full speed ahead. For before expounding on the central theme, the authors run you through the mill--an impeccable review of the LangEvol lit, a grand tour of diachrony and grammaticalization, of pidginization and animal communication. Two whole chapters are given to the genesis of complexity and recursion, courtesy of Chomsky's latest, regrettable foray into the field of language evolution (Hauser et al. 2002). They don't argue that the comparative data base is compellingly relevant--they simply lay the data out, side by side, with meticulous care and with only one regrettable omission, ontogeny (child language acquisition). When the evolutionary hypotheses come at the end (ch. 7, "Early Language"), they are handled with the due care and modesty that befits true scholarship. This is a source-book in the best sense, it guides you through the complexity of the topic, and the diversity of approaches. It is a pleasure to read and a privilege to recommend. *Derek Bickerton (2008) "Bastard Tongues", NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux* This book, a gem by a linguist's linguist, is two books rolled into one. It is first a personal memoir of a restless, swashbuckling, globe-trotting linguist in the grand ol' tradition of the great 19th Century explorers--Richard Burton, Henry Stanley, John Wesley Powell. This Bickerton shows you that there are still wild places to roam and great watering holes to splash in; all you need is an ounce of passion, a spark of the imagination. It is, second, the story of Pidgin and Creole languages and what they might mean to our understanding of human language and its genesis. One of the few unabashed evolutionist in linguistics, ever since his "Roots of Language (1981) and "Language and Species" (1990), Bickerton landed upon the staid, smug, self-satisfied Creolist scene in 1975 like a ton of bricks, shaking the parapets but, as one could imagine, making few converts. It was then and still is now a field rife--perhaps ripe--with the celebration of local peculiarity and minutely-documented diversity, an empiricist mistrust for theory and a monumental disdain for universals; thanks but no thanks, old boy; not in my back-yard. On this conservative , self-conserving backdrop, Bickerton had the audacity, indeed the temerity, to suggest that there was an exciting theoretical story lurking behind the mind-numbing diversity of Pidgins and Creoles. All you needed was a modicum of imagination. Some pizzaz. He pointed to the obvious but got nowhere. The rest is a story of academic warfare, of intellectual victories snatched from the jaws of bureaucratic defeats. The centerpiece is a rare jewel--a front-seat account of the infamous Island Project. It is colorful, convoluted and sad; a morality tale of an audacious research proposal that was yanked off the gravy train just in the nick of time; and of how lively ideas that beg to be explored can bog down in the timidity and small-mindedness of the academic review process. Above all, it is a tale of grand-scale science, of a hypothesis still begging to be tested. A lesser man would have been deflated. Bickerton just keeps forging on. Best, TG From e.pascual at let.vu.nl Mon May 26 12:37:25 2008 From: e.pascual at let.vu.nl (Esther Pascual) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 14:37:25 +0200 Subject: Dutch Coglingdag'08 Message-ID: Please forward to interested parties. Thank You. CogLingDag, Leiden, 19 en 20 december 2008 Geachte collega, Na de bijeenkomsten in Utrecht (2004) en Leuven (2006), wordt op 19 en 20 december in Leiden de derde Cognitieve Lingu?stiek Dag (Coglingdag) georganiseerd. Het doel van deze dag is om een platform te bieden aan het werk van cognitief en functioneel geori?nteerde taalwetenschappers. Onderzoekers die werken in het kader van de Cognitieve Lingu?stiek of verwante kaders worden uitgenodigd hun (lopend) onderzoek te presenteren. Op zaterdag is er naast een algemene sessie ook een parallelsessie over de relatie tussen Cognitieve Taalkunde en Structuralisme. Ook hiervoor worden onderzoekers uitgenodigd een voorstel voor een lezing in te sturen. Plenaire sprekers: -Felix Ameka (Universiteit Leiden) -Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholingu?stiek, Nijmegen) -Kurt Feyaerts (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) -Ad Foolen (Universiteit Nijmegen) Abstracts mogen maximaal 500 woorden bevatten (inclusief referenties). Deadline inzending: 1 juli 2008 Mededeling selectie: uiterlijk 1 oktober 2008 Contactadres: coglingdag at let.leidenuniv.nl Adviserend Comit? : Frank Brisard (Antwerpen), Alan Cienki (VU Amsterdam), Bert Cornillie (Leuven), Hubert Cuyckens (Leuven), Ad Foolen (Nijmegen), Dirk Geeraerts (Leuven), Theo Janssen (VU Amsterdam), Frederike van der Leek (UvA), Jan Nuyts (Antwerpen), Ted Sanders (Utrecht), Joost Schilperoord (Tilburg), Wilbert Spooren (VU Amsterdam), Gerard Steen (VU Amsterdam), Marjolein Verspoor (Groningen), Ton van der Wouden (Leiden). Helaas is er overlap met het VIOT-congres op de VU. Het VIOT is wel op zaterdag afgelopen, dus graag aanmelden of u graag uw lezing op zaterdag wilt geven! Wij hopen u op 19 december in Leiden te kunnen ontmoeten! Praktische informatie over de Coglingdag zal op een later tijdstip op de website worden geplaatst: Website CoglingDag: http://www.lucl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=15&c=599. Met vriendelijke groeten, Ronny Boogaart (Leiden) Egbert Fortuin (Leiden) Esther Pascual (VU Amsterdam) Elena Tribushinina (Leiden) Het organiserend comit? Coglingdag From amnfn at well.com Mon May 26 13:53:28 2008 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 06:53:28 -0700 Subject: Reviews Message-ID: The problem with reviews that have only positive things to say is that they don't really help to start a dialogue about the material. When I write a book or an article, I am far less gratified by "good book, good article" to which there is no possible response except "Thank You" and the conversation is over. Whereas if someone comes up to me and says: "I read your book/ article, but I didn't understand (or agree with) this part", then we can have a real conversation, and we can both come away enriched by it. This may reveal my naturally argumentative nature, but the thing is that logical argument is not a bad thing. In the sciences, it's encouraged. How else are we ever going to get at the truth? Best, --Aya From jim.mischler at okstate.edu Tue May 27 15:11:25 2008 From: jim.mischler at okstate.edu (Mischler, Jim) Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 10:11:25 -0500 Subject: Reviews In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The posts by Katz and Givon bring up the question of the purposes of a book review. Both posts highlighted important aspects of the answer--the goals of a book review are to discuss what the author found about an topic important to the academic field and to engage the reader to think seriously about that topic. A review can be either negative or positive and still reach both goals, but in my mind the best reviews present *both* the strengths and the weaknesses of a work. Striving for a balanced view of a book (and topic) can help to reduce the problems that the previous posts pointed out. Methods to achieve balance can be found in both Katz's and Givon's solutions: the book reviewer must work to get at the truth about the issue presented in a book and must choose books to review that that the reviewer personally likes and respects. Weaknesses can be found if the writer has a positive view of the work (assuming the writer is committed to the truth), but it is much more difficult to find strengths when the writer has a negative view. The only "truth" often expressed in a review of a book the writer does not like is "the book is not worth reading." That kind of review misses the point. It is also more difficult to engage the reader when the writer's view of the work is negative. In my experience, highly negative reviews tend to discourage serious consideration of the topic rather than start or continue discussion. Jim Mischler Oklahoma State University jim.mischler at okstate.edu ________________________________________ From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of A. Katz [amnfn at well.com] Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 8:53 AM To: FUNKNET at mailman.rice.edu Subject: [FUNKNET] Reviews The problem with reviews that have only positive things to say is that they don't really help to start a dialogue about the material. When I write a book or an article, I am far less gratified by "good book, good article" to which there is no possible response except "Thank You" and the conversation is over. Whereas if someone comes up to me and says: "I read your book/ article, but I didn't understand (or agree with) this part", then we can have a real conversation, and we can both come away enriched by it. This may reveal my naturally argumentative nature, but the thing is that logical argument is not a bad thing. In the sciences, it's encouraged. How else are we ever going to get at the truth? Best, --Aya From ebabaii at gmail.com Wed May 28 06:10:17 2008 From: ebabaii at gmail.com (Esmat Babaii) Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 09:40:17 +0330 Subject: Reviews In-Reply-To: <4D772DF13EFA5844B81E7C304ED0093C305BA3848F@STWEXE1.ad.okstate.edu> Message-ID: I hate to disagree with Professor Givon, but I've had a different > experience with this genre, and evaluative discourse, in general. > While I'm not denying the destructive effects of unfair, ad hominem > reviews done by certain characters who feel great only when they can > put/see others in inferior position, book review can be a service to > the academic discourse community by providing a good ground for > further exchange of ideas. This is at least what I had in mind in a > couple of reviews I published. Specifically, I am so glad that I > reviewed John Myhill's book (2006) on nationalism, language and > religion; because through a set of discussions he started as a > reaction to my comments, I learned a lot. A particular genre cannot be > inherently good or bad, it depends on a lot of parameters, including > the people using it. > > Esmat Babaii > University for teacher Education > Iran > From Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:24:10 2008 From: Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk (Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 13:24:10 +0100 Subject: FW: GTF appointment in French at Manchester University Message-ID: Generator Microsoft Word 11 (filtered medium) The University of Manchester School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures Postgraduate Funding Opportunities 2008-9 GUIDELINES FOR APPLICANTS The School' s postgraduate community is one of the UK's largest and most diverse in the UK, enjoying state-of-the-art facilities and excellent support within a high-quality research environment. In step with our continuing expansion, we are enhancing our support for students registering for a research degree (PhD) in 2008-9. In addition to our current 20 Graduate Teaching Fellowships (GTFs), we are offering: A Graduate Teaching Fellowship in: French (Full-time) Please note, the GTF must be undertaken in conjunction with a PhD programme of study at the University of Manchester and applicants for the GTF MUST possess relevant teaching experience. The full-time GTF will be required to teach for 6 hours per week and the part-time GTF will be required to teach for 3 hours per week. The full-time GTF is open to Home/EU and International applicants and comprises three elements: the payment of full Home/EU or International fees [2008-9 academic session ?3300 per annum (Home/EU) or ?10500 per annum (International)], which is paid directly to the University, a monthly salary for teaching (2007-8 academic session: ?5806.92 per annum), which is paid directly into your bank account in 10 monthly instalments and a bursary (?6754.80 per annum) paid in quarterly instalments by bank transfer (by arrangement with the Student Services Centre) or by cheque, which is normally collected the first week of October, January, April and July. The part-time GTF will be paid pro-rata, ie. the above amounts will be halved. The application criteria for the GTF are as follows: 1. You must apply and have been accepted for a PhD programme of study in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures. Applicants must be holding an offer of a place by the closing date specified below in order to be included in the competition. 2. You must possess previous teaching experience. For further information regarding the teaching element of French* GTF please contact Mr John Morley, Director, University-wide Language Programmes, University Language Centre, email john.morley at manchester.ac.uk *Please note that the holder of the French GTF will be required to register for a Linguistics PhD under the supervision of Professor Maj-Britt Hansen, email Maj-Britt.MosegaardHansen at manchester.ac.uk For general information and guidance regarding entry requirements and applying for a PhD programme of study, please contact Michelle Fenlon, the Postgraduate Admissions Officer; telephone +44 (0)161 275 3559, email michelle.fenlon at manchester.ac.uk The closing date for receipt of the GTF Application Form is Monday 9 June 2008. Short-listed applicants will be invited for interview before the end of June 2008. Please note, strong preference will be given to new PhD applicants and only short-listed candidates will be contacted. HOW TO APPLY ? Applications for postgraduate PhD programmes must be submitted (with all the required documentation) using the online application formfrom the University' s website: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/howtoapply/ ? The Funding Application Form and the University of Manchester GTF Application Form must be downloaded and submitted to the Postgraduate Office (details overleaf). The Forms are available from: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/ Please remember to enclose a full CV with the GTF Application Form Return the GTF Application Form and Funding Application Form to the following address: Postgraduate Office, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, Samuel Alexander Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom Please quote reference number GTF/2102 Please note, for successful applicants the GTF award will be made only if you are unsuccessful in obtaining full funding in external funding competitions (AHRC/ESRC or any other external body). Therefore applicants cannot hold a full AHRC/ESRC or any other external award and a Manchester University School award simultaneously. If you have accepted a GTF and are notified of success in an external funding competition after Friday 5 September 2008, you will be expected to take up the GTF award and fulfil the teaching commitments for that one year only The fee/bursary element of the GTF will then be adjusted accordingly to take account of the external award. A week long teaching induction programme which is specifically designed and compulsory for all GTFs will be held in the first or second week of September. Candidates who accept GTF posts have to make themselves available to attend the full teaching induction course during this period. From akbari_r at yahoo.com Fri May 30 07:46:02 2008 From: akbari_r at yahoo.com (Ramin Akbari) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 00:46:02 -0700 Subject: Call for submissions Message-ID:   Apologies for cross-postings     TELL is a peer reviewed journal published by Iran's Association of Applied Linguists. For our January 2009, we are planning a special issue on critical pedagogy (CP), and we hope to get contributions that explore different applications of CP in L2 teaching, testing, materials development, teacher education? We would also like to receive argumentative papers that might question the applicability of CP to mainstream L2 contexts.   Contributions need to be within the word-count range of 4000 to 8000, in Word 2003 format, and sent as email attachments to the address below.  Please use APA guidelines for references. The deadline for submissions is September 25th, 2008.   Please send your papers to Ramin Akbari (Guest editor) at:  akbari_ram at yahoo.com   Ramin Akbari Assistant Professor of TEFL English Department, TMU Tehran, Iran       From paul at benjamins.com Fri May 30 19:50:13 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:50:13 -0400 Subject: New Book from Benjamins: Hannay/Steen: Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar Message-ID: This is a new functionally-relevant book from John Benjamins Publishing: Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar In honour of Lachlan Mackenzie Cover image Edited by Mike Hannay and Gerard J. Steen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Studies in Language Companion Series 83 URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=SLCS%2083 2007. vi, 393 pp. Hardbound 978 90 272 3093 5 / EUR 125.00 / USD 188.00 [] This collection presents a number of studies in the lexico-grammar of English which focus on the one hand on close reading of language in context and on the other hand on current functional theoretical concerns. The various contributions represent distinct functionalist models of language, including Functional Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar, Systemic-Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar. Taken together, however, they typify current work being conducted from the grammatical perspective within the functionalist enterprise, emphasizing on the relation between structure and usage. A fundamental goal of the enterprise is to identify linguistic structures which are constrained by specific features of use, or which actually encode specific features of use, as many of the contributions here show. ---------- Table of contents Introduction 1?5 Part I. Corpus-based studies No doubt and related expressions: A functional account Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen 9?34 On certainly and zeker Pieter Byloo, Richard Kastein and Jan Nuyts 35?57 Prenominal possessives in English: Function and use Evelien Keizer 59?82 Ditransitive clauses in English with special reference to Lancashire dialect Anna Siewierska and Willem Hollmann 83?102 'It was you that told me that, wasn't it?' It-clefts revisited in discourse Mar?a de los ?ngeles G?mez Gonz?lez 103?139 Another take on the notion Subject Dik Bakker and Anna Siewierska 141?158 The modal auxiliaries of English, -operators in Functional Grammar and "grounding" Louis Goossens 159?173 The king is on huntunge: on the relation between progressive and absentive in Old and Early Modern English Casper de Groot 175?190 Part II. The architecture of functional models Mental context and the expression of terms within the English clause: An approach based on Functional Discourse Grammar John H. Connolly 193?208 Adverbial conjunctions in Functional Discourse Grammar Kees Hengeveld and Gerry Wanders 209?226 Tree tigers and tree elephants: a constructional account of English nominal compounds Matthew Anstey 227?256 English constructions from a Dutch perspective: where are the differences? Arie Verhagen 257?274 Notes towards an incremental implementation of the Role and Reference Grammar semantics-to-syntax linking algorithm for English Christopher S. Butler 275?307 Grammar, flow and procedural knowledge: structure and function at the interface between grammar and discourse Peter Harder 309?335 The non-linearity of speech production Michael Fortescue 337?351 A speaker/hearer-based grammar: the case of possessives and compounds Theo Janssen 353?387 Index 389?393 ---------- Subject classification [] Linguistics [] English linguistics [] Functional linguistics [] Germanic linguistics [] Theoretical linguistics Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Fri May 30 19:46:37 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:46:37 -0400 Subject: New Book from Benjamins: Penke/Rosenbach: What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics Message-ID: This is new functionally-relevant book from John Benjamins Publishing: What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics The case of innateness Cover image Edited by Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach Heinrich-Heine-University D?sseldorf Benjamins Current Topics 7 URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=BCT%207 2007. x, 297 pp. Hardbound 978 90 272 2237 4 / EUR 95.00 / USD 143.00 [] What counts as evidence in linguistics? This question is addressed by the contributions to the present volume (originally published as a Special Issue of Studies in Language 28:3 (2004). Focusing on the innateness debate, what is illustrated is how formal and functional approaches to linguistics have different perspectives on linguistic evidence. While special emphasis is paid to the status of typological evidence and universals for the construction of Universal Grammar (UG), this volume also highlights more general issues such as the roles of (non)-standard language and historical evidence. To address the overall topic, the following three guiding questions are raised: What type of evidence can be used for innateness claims (or UG)?; What is the content of such innate features (or UG)?; and, How can UG be used as a theory guiding empirical research? A combination of articles and peer commentaries yields a lively discussion between leading representatives of formal and functional approaches. ---------- Table of contents Preface vii?ix What counts as evidence in linguistics? An introduction Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach 1?49 Typological evidence and Universal Grammar Frederick J. Newmeyer 51?73 Remarks on the relation between language typology and Universal Grammar: Commentary on Newmeyer Mark Baltin 75?79 Does linguistic explanation presuppose linguistic description? Martin Haspelmath 81?107 Remarks on description and explanation in grammar: Commentary on Haspelmath Judith Aissen and Joan Bresnan 109?112 Author's response Martin Haspelmath 113?115 From UG to Universals: Linguistic adaptation through iterated learning Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith and Henry Brighton 117?138 Form, meaning and speakers in the evolution of language: Commentary on Kirby, Smith and Brighton William Croft 139?142 Author's response Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith and Henry Brighton 143?145 Why assume UG? Dieter Wunderlich 147?174 What kind of evidence could refute the UG hypothesis? Commentary on Wunderlich Michael Tomasello 175?178 Author's response: Is there any evidence that refutes the UG hypothesis? Dieter Wunderlich 179?180 A question of relevance: Some remarks on standard languages Helmut Wei? 181?208 The Relevance of Variation: Remarks on Wei?'s Standard-Dialect-Problem Horst J. Simon 209?213 Author's response Helmut Wei? 215?216 Universals, innateness and explanation in second language acquisition Fred R. Eckman 217?239 'Internal' versus 'external' universals: Commentary on Eckman Lydia White 241?243 Author's response: 'External' universals and explanation in SLA Fred R. Eckman 245?248 What counts as evidence in historical linguistics? Olga Fischer 249?281 Abstraction and performance: Commentary on Fischer David W. Lightfoot 283?286 Author's response Olga Fischer 287?289 Index 291?297 ---------- Subject classification [] Linguistics [] Syntax [] Theoretical linguistics Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Fri May 30 19:52:42 2008 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:52:42 -0400 Subject: New Book from Benjamins: Naess: Protypical Transitivity Message-ID: Prototypical Transitivity Cover image ?shild N?ss University of Oslo Typological Studies in Language 72 URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=TSL%2072 2007. x, 240 pp. Hardbound 978 90 272 2984 7 / EUR 115.00 / USD 173.00 [] This book presents a functional analysis of a notion which has gained considerable importance in cognitive and functional linguistics over the last couple of decades, namely 'prototypical transitivity'. It discusses what prototypical transitivity is, why it should exist, and how it should be defined, as well as how this definition can be employed in the analysis of a number of phenomena of language, such as case-marking, experiencer constructions, and so-called ambitransitives. Also discussed is how a prototype analysis relates to other approaches to transitivity, such as that based on markedness. The basic claim is that transitivity is iconic: a construction with two distinct, independent arguments is prototypically used to refer to an event with two distinct, independent participants. From this principle, a unified account of the properties typically associated with transitivity can be derived, and an explanation for why these properties tend to correlate across languages can be given. ---------- Table of contents Preface ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1?9 1.1. Why transitivity? 1 1.2. Theoretical preliminaries 3 1.3. Structure of the book 8 Chapter 2: Why a transitive prototype? 11?26 2.1. Introduction 11 2.2. Prototype models 11 2.3. Markedness vs. prototypicality 17 2.4. Conclusion 26 Chapter 3: Defining the transitive prototype: The Maximally Distinguished Arguments Hypothesis 27?49 3.1. Introduction 27 3.2. The Maximally Distinguished Arguments Hypothesis 27 3.3. Maximal distinction and functional explanations 46 Chapter 4: The Affected Agent 51?84 4.1. Introduction 51 4.2. "Ingestive verbs" and affected agents 52 4.3. Crosslinguistic data 54 4. 4. 'Eat' and markers of agent affectedness 72 4.5. Alternative analyses 77 4.6. Other affected-agent constructions 82 4.7 Concluding remarks 83 Chapter 5: Transitivity in verbs and clauses 85?122 5.1. Introduction 85 5.2. Previous feature-decompositional accounts 86 5.3. Semantic specifications of participant types 89 5.4. Semantic features in verb subcategorisation 107 5.5. Properties of argument NPs 111 5.6. Clause-level properties 114 5.7. Formal correlates 119 5.8. Conclusion 122 Chapter 6: Ambitransitivity and indefinite object deletion 123?151 6.1. Introduction 123 6.2. Indefinite object deletion 124 6.3. Transitivity and indefinite object deletion 134 6.4. IOD and S/O ambitransitives 145 Chapter 7: Maximal semantic distinction in core case-marking 153?184 7.1. Introduction 153 7.2. The discriminatory analysis 154 7.3. The indexing analysis 159 7.4. Case and the maximal semantic distinction of arguments 161 7.5. Case and semantic transitivity: Unifying discrimination and indexing 166 7.6. Semantic extensions 168 7.7. Discriminatory extensions 173 7.8. Split ergativity 175 7.9. A note on case-marking labels 182 Chapter 8: Experiencers and the dative 185?208 8.1. Introduction 185 8.2. The semantic diversity of experience events 185 8.3. Experience clauses and the transitive prototype 189 8.4. The dative case 197 Chapter 9: Beyond prototypical transitivity 209?218 9.1. From Agent and Patient to subject and object 209 9.2. Structural vs. semantic case 211 9.3. Other prototypes 213 9.4. Concluding remarks 217 Appendix: Nonstandard abbreviations in glosses 219 References 221?231 Author index 233?235 Language index 237?238 Subject index 239?240 ---------- "A major and highly original contribution to the understanding of an area of morphosyntax which has, through the last decades, come to be known as notoriously complex." Leon Stassen, University of Utrecht ---------- Subject classification [] Linguistics [] Semantics [] Syntax [] Theoretical linguistics [] Typology Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) General Manager John Benjamins Publishing Company 763 N. 24th St. Philadelphia PA 19130 Phone: 215 769-3444 Fax: 215 769-3446 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com