From mg246 at cornell.edu Tue Jul 5 08:00:49 2011 From: mg246 at cornell.edu (monica gonzalez-marquez) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:00:49 +0200 Subject: CITEC Summer School 2011, Mechanisms of Attention - Call for Application Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR APPLICATION - *CITEC Summer School 2011 Mechanisms of Attention - From Experimental Studies to Technical Systems* CITEC, Bielefeld University, Germany, October 3rd-8th, 2011 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perception and action in biological and technical systems are intimately coupled by a wealth of attentive mechanisms. These mechanisms operate at different stages of cognition, allowing salient information to be flexibly extracted and readily used. How does attention contribute to understanding of scenes, language processing, social interaction, and motor control? To gain insights in these topics, the Graduate School in "Cognitive Interaction Technology" invites top PhD students to apply for the 2011 Summer School entitled "Mechanisms of attention - From experimental studies to technical systems". It will take place from 3rd (day of arrival) to 8th of October 2011 at Bielefeld University. The vision of CITEC is to create interactive tools that can be operated easily and intuitively - to fit future technology more seamlessly into daily human life. In order to accomplish this, such technology needs to be endowed with cognitive capabilities, and so part of CITEC's mission is the study of the fundamental architectural principles of cognitive interaction. We believe this goal can only be realized through intense interdisciplinary cooperation. The proposed summer school series aims to bring together researchers from a wide range of fields for discussion and exchange of ideas. The CITEC summer school will comprise small-group workshops on practical, experimental and theoretical topics, plenary lectures held by the invited speakers, as well as discussion groups, evening lectures and an activities program. For the afternoon courses, you may select one from the following four streams: 1. Mechanisms Of Active Exploration And Multisensory Integration; 2. Attentional Mechanisms In Language Processing And Communication: From Humans To Virtual Agents; 3. Structuring And Coordinating Attention; 4. Motion And Attention. Guest speakers: Ehud Ahissar -- Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovt Dana Ballard -- University of Texas at Austin Gustavo Deco -- University Pompeu Fabra Mary Hayhoe -- University of Texas at Austin Gordon Logan -- Vanderbilt University John Tsotsos -- York University Mark Williams -- John Moores University Liverpool We hope to offer a rich curriculum, which will promote discussion across the boundaries of different branches of science. Please find details for the online application here: http://www.cit-ec.de/summerschool/application2011 * Deadline for applications is the 14th August 2011 * For more information, please visit: http://www.cit-ec.de/summerschool/ Prof. Dr. Thomas Schack - Head of Graduate School Cognitive Interaction Technology, Neurocognition and Action - Biomechanics Group Prof. Dr. Helge Ritter - Coordinator of the Centre of Excellence CITEC, Neuroinformatics Group Claudia Muhl - Graduate School Manager -- Claudia Muhl Graduate School Manager Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence - (CITEC) Bielefeld University, Germany web: http://www.cit-ec.de email: cmuhl at cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de phone: +49 521-106-65 66 fax: +49 521-106-65 60 -- So that the form takes as many risks as the content. From, "Ava" by Carole Maso Monica Gonzalez-Marquez Psychology Department Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Currently visiting at: Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) Bielefeld University Universitaetsstr. 25, Gebaeudeteil Q 33615 Bielefeld Germany From mg246 at cornell.edu Thu Jul 7 14:08:32 2011 From: mg246 at cornell.edu (monica gonzalez-marquez) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 16:08:32 +0200 Subject: U of Louisiana tenured fac fired due to budget cuts Message-ID: Hello Everyone, This affects us all. Text of the news article below. http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20110701/NEWS01/107010324/UL-terminating-two-professors -m UL terminating two professors Two tenured faculty members at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette received termination notices this week, and university officials would not rule out the possibility of more such notices being given in the short-term future. "We deeply regret having to terminate tenured faculty, but in these budget cuts, we've been driven to close programs with low enrollment," Carolyn Bruder, interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, said during a phone interview Thursday evening. "It is possible that we will have one to two more professors get such notices in the near term." Bruder said the university is phasing out the doctoral degree program in cognitive science as part of results of the Board of Regents' effort to eliminate "low completer" programs across the state. "Two faculty members with tenure in the program have received notice that their appointments will not be continued after May 2013," Bruder said in a prepared statement issued by UL's communications department after The Daily Advertiser questioned the termination notices. Istvan Berkeley, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science, is the head of UL's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He is not one of the professors who received a termination notice, but he said he is "very, very unhappy" with the decision. "This is a classic case of sinking the ship to save a pittance of tar," Berkeley said Thursday evening. Bruder said the university wanted to let the professors know about the terminations two years in advance and will give those two professors letters of support to help find another job as well as offer them reduced-tuition course enrollment as well. Bruder said about 14 students are currently enrolled in the cognitive science program, and all will be given the chance to graduate. The university stopped admitting students into that program after the fall 2010 semester. The Board of Regents looked at the "low completer" programs earlier this year. Bruder said the Board of Regents increased the frequency at which these programs are reviewed during the recent budget crunch as officials realized some programs would have to be shutdown. For undergraduate programs, that means degree programs with a three-year average of eight or fewer graduates per year, or five students for master's degree programs and two students for doctorate programs. "In this 'low completer' review, the Ph.D. in cognitive science, which has been on their review before, was terminated," Bruder said. In early March, Ellen Cook, UL's assistant vice president for academic affairs, told The Daily Advertiser that the board sent the university a list of all such programs last year and required it to put them into one of three areas --- termination, consolidation or justification. In UL's case, only three programs are down for termination. Cook said at that time doing away with the campus' agricultural education, consumer science education and technical and industrial arts education programs makes sense. Eliminating the programs will allow resources and faculty to be assigned to other areas, though in many cases the faculty may simply disappear. Bruder said the university will offer a job to the terminated tenured faculty if there is any opening in a department in which those professors are qualified to teach. However, she said she "can't imagine" those professors wanting to take an instructorship. At its January meeting in preparation for program cuts, the Board of Regents adopted new rules making it easier for universities to fire both tenured and nontenured faculty members. Michael Berube, chairman of the subcommittee on program closures for the AAUP, said in a June 6 letter that he was "deeply disturbed" by an "unprecedented and unwarranted assault" on faculty in the UL System. "If senior professors with tenure can be fired and then immediately offered employment as short-term instructors, then tenure is essentially meaningless in the University of Louisiana System," Berube wrote. "Faculty nationwide should be advised that the UL System has effectively nullified its tenure procedures." -- So that the form takes as many risks as the content. From, "Ava" by Carole Maso Monica Gonzalez-Marquez Psychology Department Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Currently visiting at: Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) Bielefeld University Universitaetsstr. 25, Gebaeudeteil Q 33615 Bielefeld Germany From amnfn at well.com Thu Jul 7 16:39:34 2011 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 09:39:34 -0700 Subject: U of Louisiana tenured fac fired due to budget cuts In-Reply-To: <4E15BDE0.80605@cornell.edu> Message-ID: Monica, Thanks for sharing that article. It inspired me to write this editorial: http://www.pubwages.com/20/tenured-faculty-members-receive-termination-notices-at-ul --Aya On Thu, 7 Jul 2011, monica gonzalez-marquez wrote: > Hello Everyone, > > This affects us all. Text of the news article below. > > http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20110701/NEWS01/107010324/UL-terminating-two-professors > > -m > > > UL terminating two professors > > Two tenured faculty members at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette > received termination notices this week, and university officials would not > rule out the possibility of more such notices being given in the short-term > future. > > "We deeply regret having to terminate tenured faculty, but in these budget > cuts, we've been driven to close programs with low enrollment," Carolyn > Bruder, interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, said during a > phone interview Thursday evening. "It is possible that we will have one to > two more professors get such notices in the near term." > > Bruder said the university is phasing out the doctoral degree program in > cognitive science as part of results of the Board of Regents' effort to > eliminate "low completer" programs across the state. > > "Two faculty members with tenure in the program have received notice that > their appointments will not be continued after May 2013," Bruder said in a > prepared statement issued by UL's communications department after The Daily > Advertiser questioned the termination notices. > > Istvan Berkeley, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science, is the head > of UL's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He is > not one of the professors who received a termination notice, but he said he > is "very, very unhappy" with the decision. > > "This is a classic case of sinking the ship to save a pittance of tar," > Berkeley said Thursday evening. > > Bruder said the university wanted to let the professors know about the > terminations two years in advance and will give those two professors letters > of support to help find another job as well as offer them reduced-tuition > course enrollment as well. > > Bruder said about 14 students are currently enrolled in the cognitive science > program, and all will be given the chance to graduate. The university stopped > admitting students into that program after the fall 2010 semester. > > The Board of Regents looked at the "low completer" programs earlier this > year. Bruder said the Board of Regents increased the frequency at which these > programs are reviewed during the recent budget crunch as officials realized > some programs would have to be shutdown. > > For undergraduate programs, that means degree programs with a three-year > average of eight or fewer graduates per year, or five students for master's > degree programs and two students for doctorate programs. > > "In this 'low completer' review, the Ph.D. in cognitive science, which has > been on their review before, was terminated," Bruder said. > > In early March, Ellen Cook, UL's assistant vice president for academic > affairs, told The Daily Advertiser that the board sent the university a list > of all such programs last year and required it to put them into one of three > areas --- termination, consolidation or justification. > > In UL's case, only three programs are down for termination. Cook said at that > time doing away with the campus' agricultural education, consumer science > education and technical and industrial arts education programs makes sense. > > Eliminating the programs will allow resources and faculty to be assigned to > other areas, though in many cases the faculty may simply disappear. > > Bruder said the university will offer a job to the terminated tenured faculty > if there is any opening in a department in which those professors are > qualified to teach. However, she said she "can't imagine" those professors > wanting to take an instructorship. > > At its January meeting in preparation for program cuts, the Board of Regents > adopted new rules making it easier for universities to fire both tenured and > nontenured faculty members. > > Michael Berube, chairman of the subcommittee on program closures for the > AAUP, said in a June 6 letter that he was "deeply disturbed" by an > "unprecedented and unwarranted assault" on faculty in the UL System. > > "If senior professors with tenure can be fired and then immediately offered > employment as short-term instructors, then tenure is essentially meaningless > in the University of Louisiana System," Berube wrote. "Faculty nationwide > should be advised that the UL System has effectively nullified its tenure > procedures." > > > > > -- > > So that the form takes as many risks as the content. > From, "Ava" by Carole Maso > > Monica Gonzalez-Marquez > Psychology Department > Cornell University > Ithaca, NY 14853 > > Currently visiting at: > > Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) > Bielefeld University > Universitaetsstr. 25, Gebaeudeteil Q > 33615 Bielefeld > Germany > > > From bischoff.st at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 18:11:35 2011 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 14:11:35 -0400 Subject: CELP URGENT: Need list of theoretical advancements of DEL grants in next 22 hours! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Perhaps some of you have already seen this... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation < lsa.celp at gmail.com> Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:13 PM Subject: CELP URGENT: Need list of theoretical advancements of DEL grants in next 22 hours! To: Alexander King , Alice Gaby , Andrea Berez , Arienne Dwyer , Benjamin Tucker , Brad McDonnell < bradley.mcdonnell at gmail.com>, Carmen Jany , Carolyn Mackay , Claire Bowern , Colleen Fitzgerald , Daniel Hieber , Elliott Hoey , Emerson Odango , Gabriela Perez Baez , Gary Holton , Gwendolyn Hyslop , Jack Martin , Jorge Emilio Roses Labrada , Joyce McDonough < joyce.mcdonough at rochester.edu>, Ken Rehg , Kristen Perry < kristencperry at gmail.com>, Lenore Grenoble , Liberty Lidz , Lisa Conathan , Lise Dobrin , Marcia Haag , Marianne Mithun < mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu>, Mary Linn , Mike Cahill < mike_cahill at sil.org>, Onna Nelson , Pat Shaw < shawpa at interchange.ubc.ca>, Peter Austin , Peter Cole < pcole at udel.edu>, Richard Littauer , Ryan Shosted , Seunghun Lee , Stephanie Gamble-Morse , Tim Thornes , Wilson Silva Cc: Alyson Reed , Keren Rice , Lyle Campbell , Michael Krauss , Spike Gildea , Susan Penfield Dear all, I've just learned that the elimination of the NSF-DEL program is indeed under discussion at NSF right now. The decision to have another call this year was apparently quite tenuous, but they went through with it. A decision to eliminate the program could be made at any point. I have written a letter on behalf of the committee, with input from Peter Cole and Claire Bowern, and I want to get it to the LSA Directorate FRIDAY JULY 8TH and, once they've seen it, send it to the Director of NSF immediately. We need to make the case that DEL is a discovery-based science-intensive unit, as opposed to just something that creates data that is interesting. (!!!!! Isn't this a no-brainer?) It would be very helpful if I could have*concrete examples of specific discoveries or theoretical innovations that arose directly from DEL grants.* (Example: based on this grant, I was able to demonstrate a new type of reduplication; data from this grant allowed for a refinement in the historical sub-branching of this family -- I don't need details, at least at this point). But I need examples **right now**. I would like to write a sentence saying "DEL grants have advanced linguistic theory in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, language change, historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics (etc.)". But I want to have the empirical basis for the statement established, so if one of these people at NSF ask for specifics, I know I've got them. IF YOU HAVE HAD A DEL GRANT, OR KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS, please ask for examples like this and send them back. I will base my sentence in this letter on the examples that I receive *in the next 22 hours. *That means by 5 a.m. on July 9th here in Cairns, Australia. That is noon on July 8th in Pacific Standard Time and 3 p.m. July 8th in Eastern Standard Time. I know this is very abbreviated, but this committee can work fast under pressure. if I can get enough examples by then, I'll finish this up and get it to the LSA tomorrow afternoon. If all goes well, our letter will be awaiting the attention of Director Suresh when he gets to his office on Monday morning. Thanks, everyone! Best, Carol From tgivon at uoregon.edu Fri Jul 8 19:08:06 2011 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 13:08:06 -0600 Subject: recent paper Message-ID: Dear FUNK folks, A month ago David Kronenfeld sent me a recently-published paper ("Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals", Nature, 473:79-82, by M. Dunn, S.J. Greenhill, S. C. Levinson & R.D. Gray) that made some interesting claims about the cross-language distribution of word-order universals (henceforth "Greenberg correlations"). David asked me to comment on the paper, which is not all that easy to interpret--primarily because of methodology and terminology imported from quantitative evolutionary biology. However, since one of the co-authors is a well-known & thoughtful linguist (Steve Levinson, MPI-Nijmegen), I thought that the effort might be worth while. I am still not sure I understand the paper's conclusions correctly. But I see, tentatively, a way of interpreting them that would make sense. The paper notes first that the "standard" functional-cognitive explanation of Greenberg's correlation did not pan out, be they Lehmann's "harmony", Vennemann's "operator-operand", or their formal equivalents (X-bar, GB parameters). Alas ignoring a well-established alternative explanation (see below), the paper then shows that statistically, word-order-cum-morphology correlations are lineage-specific, i.e. family-specific. Using data from four families--Indo-European, Austronesian Bantu (a sub-family of Niger-Congo) and Uto-Aztecan, the paper concludes that only within historically-related groups or sub-groups can one find predictable "Greenberg correlations". The conclusion the authors draw is that "Greenberg correlations" are not universal, but depend on "cultural evolution". Or, de-jargonized, that languages that share more of their diachronic history also share more of their "Greenberg correlations". For the past 40 years (Givon 1971, 1974, 1979 chs 5-6-7, 2001 ch. 5, 2009 chs 3-4-5), and following the illustrious tradition of F. Bopp, H. Paul and A. Meillet, I have attempted, apparently in vain, to convince y'all that word-order-cum-morphology "Greenberg correlations" are the direct product of diachronic pathways of grammaticalization. And that apparent exception to those correlations are due to two major factors: (a) the existence of alternative grammaticalization patterns for the same construction or morpheme; and (b) word-order change that leaves recalcitrant old morphology "harmonized" with the old word-order, thus "incompatible" with the current word-order. The overall conclusion is that synchronic typology is the direct and straight-forward product of diachrony, and that typological universals are mediated by diachrony (as well as, to a lesser extent, by acquisition and evolution). Of course, it may well be that I have misinterpreted the thrust of the Nature paper altogether, but if it means anything coherent to me, then it simply re-states well-know diachronic observations. From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Sat Jul 9 09:21:19 2011 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 11:21:19 +0200 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <4E175596.5000507@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: It seems to me that (at least for FUNKNET readers) the crucial question is to what extent general functional factors, in particular processing-ease considerations as proposed by Dryer (1992) and Hawkins (1990, 1994, 2004, 2007), can be taken to explain cross-linguistic word order tendencies. For extraposition due to heaviness, probably nobody would doubt the relevance of processing ease. But Dryer and Hawkins have argued that processing ease also explains the Greenbergian correlations. Tom Givón’s proposal that these correlations are the “direct product of diachronic pathways of grammaticalization” does not contradict the functional Dryer-Hawkins account. It could be that the relevant diachronic changes are functionally constrained, i.e. that those grammaticalizations that yield the most processable structures occur most often. There are at least three ways in which synchronic patterns could be explained in “evolutionary” terms: (1) unconstrained evolutionary: Synchronic states are the result of diachronic changes, but there are no particular constraints on the latter (2) constrained evolutionary: Synchronic states are the result of diachronic changes, and only certain kinds of diachronic changes are possible, but the contraints on changes are not functional (e.g. Blevins 2004) (3) diachronic-functional: Diachronic changes are typically functionally constrained, and hence synchronic states can be said to be functionally adapted I always thought that Tom Givón’s diachronic view of synchronic states was of type (3) (and similar views have been expressed by Greenberg, Bybee, Croft, and many others). By contrast, the paper by Dunn et al. that Givón mentions (see http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/wordorder/, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7345/full/nature09923.html) says that it found only family-specific linkages of traits, and the authors do not endorse a diachronic-functional account of the Greenbergian correlations. One gets the impression that Dunn et al. opt for view (1) above. However, I think that the available evidence is still fully compatible with the Dryer-Hawkins explanation in functional terms (and hence with view (3)), and I know of no alternative explanation of the Greenbergian correlations (the generative headedness parameter has been abandoned by the genertivists themselves). It is true that we would expect to find systematic evidence for linked changes in diachrony if we look systematically (e.g. adposition-noun order changing once verb-object order changes, or vice versa). Dunn et al. did not find good evidence of this kind, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist – maybe it exists only at greater time depths than is provided by the four families they look at. Consider the following data cited by Matthew Dryer in a recent presentation in Leipzig: Looking only at families (most of them isolates) that have only a single type, we find the following distribution: OVVO Postp883 Prep026 We thus see a very striking synchronic correlation, which cannot be due to accident. We cannot have certainty that prepositional OV languages and postpositional VO languages are disfavoured for functional reasons, and clearly there are other important factors such as language contact, but the functional account still seems to be the best story that is available. (It seems that the primary goal of the Dunn et al. paper was to apply their phylogentic methods, and that because of these new methods and the paper’s anti-Chomskyan conclusion, startling to some readers, the paper was accepted by Nature. For typologists and functionalists, there is nothing surprising there, as far as I can tell.) Martin **************** References Dr Blevins, Juliette. 2004. /Evolutionary phonology: the emergence of sound patterns/. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. /Language/ 68(1). 81–138. Dunn, Michael, Simon J Greenhill, Stephen C Levinson & Russell D Gray. 2011. Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. /Nature/ 473:79-82 Hawkins, John A. 1990. A parsing theory of word order universals. /Linguistic Inquiry/ 21(2). 223–261. Hawkins, John A. 1994. /A performance theory of order and constituency/. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkins, John A. 2004. /Efficiency and complexity in grammars/. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hawkins, John A. 2007. Processing typology and why psychologists need to know about it. /New Ideas in Psychology/ 25(2). 124–144. On 08/07/2011 21:08, Tom Givon wrote: > > Dear FUNK folks, > > A month ago David Kronenfeld sent me a recently-published paper > ("Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in > word-order universals", Nature, 473:79-82, by M. Dunn, S.J. Greenhill, > S. C. Levinson & R.D. Gray) that made some interesting claims about > the cross-language distribution of word-order universals (henceforth > "Greenberg correlations"). David asked me to comment on the paper, > which is not all that easy to interpret--primarily because of > methodology and terminology imported from quantitative evolutionary > biology. However, since one of the co-authors is a well-known & > thoughtful linguist (Steve Levinson, MPI-Nijmegen), I thought that the > effort might be worth while. I am still not sure I understand the > paper's conclusions correctly. But I see, tentatively, a way of > interpreting them that would make sense. > The paper notes first that the "standard" functional-cognitive > explanation of Greenberg's correlation did not pan out, be they > Lehmann's "harmony", Vennemann's "operator-operand", or their formal > equivalents (X-bar, GB parameters). Alas ignoring a well-established > alternative explanation (see below), the paper then shows that > statistically, word-order-cum-morphology correlations are > lineage-specific, i.e. family-specific. Using data from four > families--Indo-European, Austronesian Bantu (a sub-family of > Niger-Congo) and Uto-Aztecan, the paper concludes that only within > historically-related groups or sub-groups can one find predictable > "Greenberg correlations". The conclusion the authors draw is that > "Greenberg correlations" are not universal, but depend on "cultural > evolution". Or, de-jargonized, that languages that share more of their > diachronic history also share more of their "Greenberg correlations". > For the past 40 years (Givon 1971, 1974, 1979 chs 5-6-7, 2001 ch. > 5, 2009 chs 3-4-5), and following the illustrious tradition of F. > Bopp, H. Paul and A. Meillet, I have attempted, apparently in vain, to > convince y'all that word-order-cum-morphology "Greenberg correlations" > are the direct product of diachronic pathways of grammaticalization. > And that apparent exception to those correlations are due to two major > factors: (a) the existence of alternative grammaticalization patterns > for the same construction or morpheme; and (b) word-order change that > leaves recalcitrant old morphology "harmonized" with the old > word-order, thus "incompatible" with the current word-order. The > overall conclusion is that synchronic typology is the direct and > straight-forward product of diachrony, and that typological universals > are mediated by diachrony (as well as, to a lesser extent, by > acquisition and evolution). > Of course, it may well be that I have misinterpreted the thrust of > the Nature paper altogether, but if it means anything coherent to > me, then it simply re-states well-know diachronic observations. > > > -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Sat Jul 9 19:47:16 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 13:47:16 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) Message-ID: Hi, I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I submitted to LT (see link below). This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being explored. I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo (2011, https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. Florian Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper contains all references mentioned above: Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals Fedzechkina et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals Tily et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Sat Jul 9 20:57:19 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 14:57:19 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Apologies for the copy and paste error at the end of my email (thanks, Anne for pointing that out). The last three references should have read: Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals Fedzechkina et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/564568/Fedzechkina_M._Jaeger_T.F._and_Newport_E._2011_._Functional_Biases_in_Language_Learning_Evidence_from_Word_Order_and_Case-Marking_Interaction._The_33rd_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Cognitive_Science_Society_CogSci11_._Boston_MA._July_2011 Tily et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/564659/Tily_H.J._Frank_M.C._and_Jaeger_T.F._2011_._The_learnability_of_constructed_languages_reflects_typological_patterns._The_33rd_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Cognitive_Science_Society_CogSci11_._Boston_MA._July_2011 From tgivon at uoregon.edu Mon Jul 11 11:46:40 2011 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:46:40 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) functional theories is that they are usually observations about the final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG ================== On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > Hi, > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I > submitted to LT (see link below). > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > explored. > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > (2011, > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > Florian > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > contains all references mentioned above: > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > Tily et al (2011): > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals From eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Jul 11 12:53:35 2011 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:53:35 +0300 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <4E1AE2A0.7040503@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Terms like 'harmony' (à la Lehmann) or 'operator-operand [generalization]' (à la Vennemann) seem ad hoc and therefore easy to ignore, until one realizes (assuming that one is savvy enough to do so) that they are just more or less arbitrary designations for ANALOGY; and this may well turn out to be true of 'regularization' as well. In the tradition of von Humboldt, Whitney, and Paul, analogy is the single most important force in language. I have tried to prove this in my 2005 book 'Analogy as structure and process' (where Lehmann and Vennemann are duly mentioned among many, many others). Incidentally, this book was characterized as "the summa of current analogy research" by one (clearly very competent) reviewer. Now, important as it is, analogy does not of course explain everything, and maybe this is the case with Greenberg correlations. But one should never rule it out a priori. This is one lesson that can be safely drawn from the history of our discipline. Esa Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen ----- Original Message ----- From: Tom Givon Date: Monday, July 11, 2011 2:46 pm Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward > to > reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of > us's) > functional theories is that they are usually observations about the > final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) > that > create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look > at > how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In > > other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and > exact > loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging > structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation > are > both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity > era" > of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging > > structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological > processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who > would > like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the > real > challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior > are a > big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > ================== > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the > direct > > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional > > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in > detail). > > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial > > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' > (reduce the > > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, > > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian > universals in the > > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, > b; Tily > > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly > > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication > (not > > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is > summarized in > > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily > and I > > submitted to LT (see link below). > > > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition > > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). > > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > > explored. > > > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic > accounts > > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information > > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as > quite > > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for > example, > > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in > Genzel and > > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and > Levy and > > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; > for a > > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but > Maurits > > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > > (2011, > > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > > > Florian > > > > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > > contains all references mentioned above: > > > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Tily et al (2011): > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Mon Jul 11 19:26:29 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:26:29 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Tom, I recently started drafting a position paper for Language and Cognitive Processes that outlines what I perceive to be the major challenges to what I might loosely call functionalist linguistics (the paper is not on functional linguistics, but rather on language production and to what extent it is driven by considerations about communicative efficiency). I should send it to you for feedback once it's ready (like, 2018 ;). But here's the gist of the introduction to that paper. I think the first big challenge is to define 'utility' in principled terms. That's where, I think, recent work building on information theory and Bayesian models has made much progress (although there is still tons to do). This work picks upon ideas that have been around for some time and tries to make provide a formal backbone to them. This line of work aims derive what speakers and comprehenders should do *under the assumption that language use is set up to facilitate *efficient and robust communication from basic assumptions about communication through a noisy channel (for example, Genzel and Charniak's 2002 Constant Entropy Rate hypothesis, which is derived from Shannon's noisy channel theorem; van Son and Pols work on the amount of information a segment carries and its phonetic realization; Aylett and Turk's 2004 Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis and their test against phonetic reduction; Levy and Jaeger's 2007 proof that a uniform distribution of Shannon information across the linguistic signal minimizes processing costs under certain assumption, etc.; that work is summarized briefly in Jaeger and Tily, 2011-WIRE and in much more detail in Jaeger, 2010-Cognitive Psychology, both refs were given in my previous email). As you said, notions of utility (which I am using as a placeholder term for all kinds of ideas as to what's good for language usage) also need to be supported empirically, e.g. by psycho-linguistic studies (the Jaeger and Tily 2011 paper aims to provide a 7 page summary of work on sentence processing over the last four decades that, we think, linguists working on language usage would benefit from knowing about). The second big challenge is to identify how functional (and perhaps also non-functional) biases affect the transmission of language from generation to generation. There's two basic logical possibilities that are mutually compatible. Biases can operate during language acquisition and they can operate during language production (cf. Bates and MacWhinney 1982), possibly involving long lasting changes due to implicit learning over previous productions. The artificial language learning and iterated artificial language learning studies I mentioned in my previous email provide a great (though definitely not perfect!) way to study the first possibility and I very much hope that researchers with training in linguistics and, in particular, typology will have a strong presence in this line of work. Crucially, I don't just mean iterated language learning simulations, but learning experiments with actual people (or better, actual infants). Today, we received the reviews on our summary on this line of work from LT, so we should soon have the final version with additional references up at the address I mentioned in my previous email. There's also a rather active line of work on language adaptation in adults that can be seen as addressing the second possible transmission route. Most adaptation work has been conduction on perception (there's, of course, a long tradition of this work on phonetic perception going back at least until the late 60s; more recently, we have also started to show that similar effects are observed during syntactic processing). However, somewhat unsurprisingly to anyone who ever tried to learn another language ;), this work has found that changes in perception do not necessarily affect production. To the best of my knowledge, there's relatively few studies that investigate in a controlled way how production changes through exposure. Most of them seems to be focused on phonetic production (actually, I'd be curious to hear references, if people don't mind sending them to me). Of course, there's tons of evidence for syntactic priming - but almost all of that has focused on rapid effects, where "long lived" means that the effects of priming can survive for a few minutes (e.g. Bock and Griffin, 2000; Chang et al., 2006; Reitter et al., 2011 - searches for these names with the keyword "syntactic priming" will give you the relevant references). I think it's only recently that folks started to look at longer-lasting changes in morpho-syntactic productions as a function of exposure. For example, Kaschak and Glenberg (2004) showed how repeated exposure to novel structures (needs washed) actually increases the probability that speakers later use the structure themselves. These studies do, however, not yet show that there* *are *functional* biases at work during such adaptive changes to one's productions. But maybe readers of this list know of other work (e.g. in sociolinguistics) that addresses this question? This is something I am very much interested in and we have several studies running in the lab that try to get at this question. apologies for the long email. Florian From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Mon Jul 11 21:03:07 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:03:07 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Joan, I think I understood that point. But it seems to me that any diachronic change must be created through one of the two possibilities of transmission I outlined in my reply (biases on acquisition or direct or indirect biases on production). Actually, a third possibility is that noisy production creates sufficient variability from which comprehenders/learners than might generalize in one or the other direction. But in any case, we need to explain the *cognitive *mechanisms that explain deviation from the input. I understand that once a certain bias is assumed to operate, we can derive the direction of change over diachronic times (the subject of many simulation studies on language change and the subject of work on grammaticalization, unidirectionality, etc.). Perhaps I misunderstand your point, but I do believe that the study of diachronic processes in isolation would not provide sufficiently constraining evidence to understand what plausible functional biases could be. Of course, I agree that a lot is known about these processes and that "no findings about functional utility, noisy channels, etc. are applicable to explaining language structure unless they correspond to known paths and mechanisms of change", but the existing data is still compatible with a large number of hypotheses that vary greatly in their cognitive plausibility and their compatibility with existing data on what's easy and hard to process, to produce, and to acquire. In short, both diachronic pathways of change and what is known about cognitive mechanisms of language acquisition, production, and comprehension constraint functional theories. Of course, there is work that acknowledges this, but part of the motivation for the article with Hal Tily (the WIRE article) was that we felt that there was much room for further collaborations and knowledge transfer between research on psycholinguistis mechanisms and research on diachronic processes. Maybe we're talking about the same thing, using different terminology? Sorry, if I am misunderstanding you. Florian On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Joan Bybee wrote: > Dear Florian, > > In case you didn't get Tom's point about diachrony: no findings about > functional utility, noisy channels, etc. are applicable to explaining > language structure unless they correspond to known paths and mechanisms of > change. And we do know a lot about how languages change so it is easy enough > to seek functional explanations that correspond to known changes. These, by > the way, rarely involve 'language transmission' if by that you mean language > acquisition. The best way to start is to study change in progress and then > try to find what cognitive/processing mechanisms have to be involved. That > is the way American functionalism has been operating since the 1970's. > > Joan Bybee > > > On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:26 PM, T. Florian Jaeger < > tiflo at csli.stanford.edu> wrote: > >> Dear Tom, >> >> I recently started drafting a position paper for Language and Cognitive >> Processes that outlines what I perceive to be the major challenges to what >> I >> might loosely call functionalist linguistics (the paper is not on >> functional >> linguistics, but rather on language production and to what extent it is >> driven by considerations about communicative efficiency). I should send it >> to you for feedback once it's ready (like, 2018 ;). But here's the gist of >> the introduction to that paper. >> >> I think the first big challenge is to define 'utility' in principled >> terms. >> That's where, I think, recent work building on information theory and >> Bayesian models has made much progress (although there is still tons to >> do). >> This work picks upon ideas that have been around for some time and tries >> to >> make provide a formal backbone to them. This line of work aims derive what >> speakers and comprehenders should do *under the assumption that language >> use >> is set up to facilitate *efficient and robust communication from basic >> assumptions about communication through a noisy channel (for example, >> Genzel >> and Charniak's 2002 Constant Entropy Rate hypothesis, which is derived >> from >> Shannon's noisy channel theorem; van Son and Pols work on the amount of >> information a segment carries and its phonetic realization; Aylett and >> Turk's 2004 Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis and their test against >> phonetic reduction; Levy and Jaeger's 2007 proof that a uniform >> distribution >> of Shannon information across the linguistic signal minimizes processing >> costs under certain assumption, etc.; that work is summarized briefly in >> Jaeger and Tily, 2011-WIRE and in much more detail in Jaeger, >> 2010-Cognitive >> Psychology, both refs were given in my previous email). >> >> As you said, notions of utility (which I am using as a placeholder term >> for >> all kinds of ideas as to what's good for language usage) also need to be >> supported empirically, e.g. by psycho-linguistic studies (the Jaeger and >> Tily 2011 paper aims to provide a 7 page summary of work on sentence >> processing over the last four decades that, we think, linguists working on >> language usage would benefit from knowing about). >> >> The second big challenge is to identify how functional (and perhaps also >> non-functional) biases affect the transmission of language from generation >> to generation. There's two basic logical possibilities that are mutually >> compatible. Biases can operate during language acquisition and they can >> operate during language production (cf. Bates and MacWhinney 1982), >> possibly >> involving long lasting changes due to implicit learning over previous >> productions. The artificial language learning and iterated artificial >> language learning studies I mentioned in my previous email provide a great >> (though definitely not perfect!) way to study the first possibility and I >> very much hope that researchers with training in linguistics and, in >> particular, typology will have a strong presence in this line of work. >> Crucially, I don't just mean iterated language learning simulations, but >> learning experiments with actual people (or better, actual infants). >> Today, >> we received the reviews on our summary on this line of work from LT, so we >> should soon have the final version with additional references up at the >> address I mentioned in my previous email. >> >> There's also a rather active line of work on language adaptation in adults >> that can be seen as addressing the second possible transmission route. >> Most >> adaptation work has been conduction on perception (there's, of course, a >> long tradition of this work on phonetic perception going back at least >> until >> the late 60s; more recently, we have also started to show that similar >> effects are observed during syntactic processing). However, somewhat >> unsurprisingly to anyone who ever tried to learn another language ;), this >> work has found that changes in perception do not necessarily affect >> production. To the best of my knowledge, there's relatively few studies >> that >> investigate in a controlled way how production changes through exposure. >> Most of them seems to be focused on phonetic production (actually, I'd be >> curious to hear references, if people don't mind sending them to me). Of >> course, there's tons of evidence for syntactic priming - but almost all of >> that has focused on rapid effects, where "long lived" means that the >> effects >> of priming can survive for a few minutes (e.g. Bock and Griffin, 2000; >> Chang >> et al., 2006; Reitter et al., 2011 - searches for these names with the >> keyword "syntactic priming" will give you the relevant references). I >> think >> it's only recently that folks started to look at longer-lasting changes in >> morpho-syntactic productions as a function of exposure. For example, >> Kaschak >> and Glenberg (2004) showed how repeated exposure to novel structures >> (needs >> washed) actually increases the probability that speakers later use the >> structure themselves. These studies do, however, not yet show that there* >> *are >> *functional* biases at work during such adaptive changes to one's >> productions. But maybe readers of this list know of other work (e.g. in >> sociolinguistics) that addresses this question? This is something I am >> very >> much interested in and we have several studies running in the lab that try >> to get at this question. >> >> apologies for the long email. >> >> Florian >> > > From macw at cmu.edu Mon Jul 11 21:03:57 2011 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:03:57 -0400 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <4E1AE2A0.7040503@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Tom, Esa, and Florian, I'm having some trouble matching up the email commentary on Dunn et al. with the specific findings of that article. They show, for example a really tight linkage of genitive-noun order with adjective-noun order for Indo-European and no such linkage at all for Uto-Aztecan. There are perhaps 10 other lineage specific findings, each of them rather interesting. To explain this, they invoke "lineage-specific processes" which is, of course, just a restatement of the findings. Then they attribute this to "cultural evolution". I have no idea what they might be talking about here. The movement from hunter-gatherer to feudal societies? I totally agree with Florian that psycholinguistic forces may be at play, with Tom that diachronic pathways may be at play, and with Esa that analogy may be at play. But can anyone get a bit more specific? To take a relatively easy one, what is it in Indo-European that links the adjective-noun order to the genitive-noun order. I would guess it is the presence in Indo-European of modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking, right? And I assume that this just doesn't hold in Uto-Aztecan, right? Can any of your folks work out some of this for the less typologically-well-versed of us? They refer specifically to eight lineage-specific dependencies. Can each of these be given similar accounts and when and where do we also need to invoke accounts based on learning, processing, and analogy. -- Brian MacWhinney On Jul 11, 2011, at 7:46 AM, Tom Givon wrote: > > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) functional theories is that they are usually observations about the final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > ================== > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct >> product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional >> and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT >> discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). >> There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more >> directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial >> grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the >> conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. >> Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, >> 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the >> lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology >> (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily >> et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly >> addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not >> quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking >> systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in >> a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I >> submitted to LT (see link below). >> >> This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition >> and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). >> Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being >> explored. >> >> I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's >> processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts >> that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) >> alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information >> transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite >> similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, >> Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, >> http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). >> These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and >> Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and >> Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to >> considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy >> channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. >> relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, >> phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a >> overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, >> http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits >> et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo >> (2011, >> https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) >> for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. >> >> Florian >> >> >> Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper >> contains all references mentioned above: >> >> Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): >> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >> >> Fedzechkina et al (2011): >> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >> >> Tily et al (2011): >> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Tue Jul 12 05:51:16 2011 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:51:16 +0200 Subject: Dunn et al.'s lineage-specific linkages In-Reply-To: <984F184D-0159-466C-9EB3-0ED439F02DD0@cmu.edu> Message-ID: Yes, Brian, you're right: This is the one thing in the paper that seems to be somewhat unexpected. And you're right that one conceivable explanation of such "lineage-specific linkages" is that they are really typological linkages after all (and thus not really not lineage-specific): If a language has noun-like adjectives, it might be expected to treat its adjectives like genitives also for word order. But in reality, a better explanation seems to be language contact: Languages that belong to the same lineage are also usually spoken in geographic vicinity and are thus likely to be in contact with their relatives. In fact it seems that most of the word order changes that can be seen in the Austronesian, Indo-European and Uto-Aztecan data are in fact due to contact influence. Martin Am 7/11/11 11:03 PM, schrieb Brian MacWhinney: > Tom, Esa, and Florian, > > I'm having some trouble matching up the email commentary on Dunn et al. with the specific findings of that article. They show, for example a really tight linkage of genitive-noun order with adjective-noun order for Indo-European and no such linkage at all for Uto-Aztecan. There are perhaps 10 other lineage specific findings, each of them rather interesting. To explain this, they invoke "lineage-specific processes" which is, of course, just a restatement of the findings. Then they attribute this to "cultural evolution". I have no idea what they might be talking about here. The movement from hunter-gatherer to feudal societies? > I totally agree with Florian that psycholinguistic forces may be at play, with Tom that diachronic pathways may be at play, and with Esa that analogy may be at play. But can anyone get a bit more specific? To take a relatively easy one, what is it in Indo-European that links the adjective-noun order to the genitive-noun order. I would guess it is the presence in Indo-European of modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking, right? And I assume that this just doesn't hold in Uto-Aztecan, right? Can any of your folks work out some of this for the less typologically-well-versed of us? They refer specifically to eight lineage-specific dependencies. Can each of these be given similar accounts and when and where do we also need to invoke accounts based on learning, processing, and analogy. > > -- Brian MacWhinney From d.f.lesley-neuman at umail.leidenuniv.nl Tue Jul 12 12:10:55 2011 From: d.f.lesley-neuman at umail.leidenuniv.nl (Diane Lesley-Neuman) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:10:55 +0200 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) (Tom Givon) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In support of Tom's comment, this problem spills into the neglect of phonology in grammaticalization processes. I am actually responding to reviewer's comments for a paper of mine which has been accepted to throw out all of the phonetic detail that point to mechanisms of attrition of phonological material and impact changes in the morphology. -- Diane F. Lesley-Neuman c/o Phonetics Laboratory Leiden University Cleveringaplaats 1 Room 111 2311 RA Leiden The Netherlands Quoting funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu: > Send FUNKNET mailing list submissions to > funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/funknet > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > funknet-owner at mailman.rice.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of FUNKNET digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) (Tom Givon) > 2. Re: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) (Esa Itkonen) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:46:40 -0600 > From: Tom Givon > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: <4E1AE2A0.7040503 at uoregon.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to > reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) > functional theories is that they are usually observations about the > final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that > create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at > how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In > other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact > loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging > structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are > both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" > of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging > structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological > processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would > like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real > challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a > big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > ================== > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct > > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both > functional > > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). > > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of > artificial > > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the > > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, > > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in > the > > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily > > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly > > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not > > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in > > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I > > submitted to LT (see link below). > > > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition > > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). > > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > > explored. > > > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic > accounts > > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information > > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite > > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for > example, > > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > > > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and > > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and > > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a > > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits > > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > > (2011, > > > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > > > Florian > > > > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > > contains all references mentioned above: > > > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Tily et al (2011): > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:53:35 +0300 > From: Esa Itkonen > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) > To: Tom Givon > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > > Terms like 'harmony' (? la Lehmann) or 'operator-operand [generalization]' (? > la Vennemann) > seem ad hoc and therefore easy to ignore, until one realizes (assuming that > one is savvy enough > to do so) that they are just more or less arbitrary designations for ANALOGY; > and this may well > turn out to be true of 'regularization' as well. In the tradition of von > Humboldt, Whitney, and Paul, > analogy is the single most important force in language. I have tried to prove > this in my 2005 book > 'Analogy as structure and process' (where Lehmann and Vennemann are duly > mentioned > among many, many others). Incidentally, this book was characterized as "the > summa of current > analogy research" by one (clearly very competent) reviewer. Now, important > as it is, analogy does > not of course explain everything, and maybe this is the case with Greenberg > correlations. But one should > never rule it out a priori. This is one lesson that can be safely drawn from > the history of our discipline. > > Esa > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Tom Givon > Date: Monday, July 11, 2011 2:46 pm > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > > > > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward > > to > > reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of > > us's) > > functional theories is that they are usually observations about the > > final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) > > that > > create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look > > at > > how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In > > > > other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and > > exact > > loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging > > structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation > > are > > both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity > > era" > > of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging > > > > structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological > > processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who > > would > > like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the > > real > > challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior > > are a > > big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > > > ================== > > > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the > > direct > > > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both > functional > > > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > > > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in > > detail). > > > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > > > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of > artificial > > > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' > > (reduce the > > > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > > > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and > Wonnacut, > > > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian > > universals in the > > > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > > > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, > > b; Tily > > > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also > directly > > > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication > > (not > > > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > > > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is > > summarized in > > > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily > > and I > > > submitted to LT (see link below). > > > > > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between > acquisition > > > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language > learning). > > > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > > > explored. > > > > > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > > > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic > > accounts > > > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > > > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust > information > > > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as > > quite > > > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for > > example, > > > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > > > > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > > > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in > > Genzel and > > > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and > > Levy and > > > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > > > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > > > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > > > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > > > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; > > for a > > > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > > > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but > > Maurits > > > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > > > (2011, > > > > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > > > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > > > > > Florian > > > > > > > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > > > contains all references mentioned above: > > > > > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > > > Tily et al (2011): > > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > > > > End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 94, Issue 5 > ************************************** > > From tgivon at uoregon.edu Tue Jul 12 12:41:33 2011 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:41:33 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <984F184D-0159-466C-9EB3-0ED439F02DD0@cmu.edu> Message-ID: Brian-- My guess would be that in IE the adjectival paradigm was derived from the genitive paradigm, so the original connection was from OV to genitive via VP nominalization, and only then extention from GEN to ADJ by analogy. I cannot speak to all UA languages, but for the one I know well (Ute) the connection of OV to Gnitive via VP nominalization is the same as in IE; but the adjectival paradigm developed through two independent channels, one with the verb 'have' ("(he) who has whiteness"; with 'whiteness' originally probably a concrete noun that has the typical color), and the other directly as a REL-clause without the verb 'have' ("(he) who is big"). And--while Genitives are pre-nominal (like pre-verbal objects), adjectives are post-nominal, like REL clauses. So the position of both GEN and ADJ in the NP is fully predicted from their diachronic source. TG ===================== On 7/11/2011 3:03 PM, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > Tom, Esa, and Florian, > > I'm having some trouble matching up the email commentary on Dunn et al. with the specific findings of that article. They show, for example a really tight linkage of genitive-noun order with adjective-noun order for Indo-European and no such linkage at all for Uto-Aztecan. There are perhaps 10 other lineage specific findings, each of them rather interesting. To explain this, they invoke "lineage-specific processes" which is, of course, just a restatement of the findings. Then they attribute this to "cultural evolution". I have no idea what they might be talking about here. The movement from hunter-gatherer to feudal societies? > I totally agree with Florian that psycholinguistic forces may be at play, with Tom that diachronic pathways may be at play, and with Esa that analogy may be at play. But can anyone get a bit more specific? To take a relatively easy one, what is it in Indo-European that links the adjective-noun order to the genitive-noun order. I would guess it is the presence in Indo-European of modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking, right? And I assume that this just doesn't hold in Uto-Aztecan, right? Can any of your folks work out some of this for the less typologically-well-versed of us? They refer specifically to eight lineage-specific dependencies. Can each of these be given similar accounts and when and where do we also need to invoke accounts based on learning, processing, and analogy. > > -- Brian MacWhinney > > On Jul 11, 2011, at 7:46 AM, Tom Givon wrote: > >> >> I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) functional theories is that they are usually observations about the final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are both ad-hoc& post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG >> >> ================== >> >> On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct >>> product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional >>> and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT >>> discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). >>> There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more >>> directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial >>> grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the >>> conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. >>> Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, >>> 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the >>> lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology >>> (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily >>> et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly >>> addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not >>> quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking >>> systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in >>> a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I >>> submitted to LT (see link below). >>> >>> This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition >>> and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). >>> Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being >>> explored. >>> >>> I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's >>> processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts >>> that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) >>> alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information >>> transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite >>> similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, >>> Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, >>> http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). >>> These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and >>> Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and >>> Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to >>> considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy >>> channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. >>> relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, >>> phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a >>> overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, >>> http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits >>> et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo >>> (2011, >>> https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) >>> for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. >>> >>> Florian >>> >>> >>> Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper >>> contains all references mentioned above: >>> >>> Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): >>> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >>> >>> Fedzechkina et al (2011): >>> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >>> >>> Tily et al (2011): >>> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >> > From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Tue Jul 12 21:45:49 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:45:49 -0600 Subject: Reply to Tom, Brian, and Martin about Dunn et al Message-ID: Hi Brian, the Dunn et al article is problematic both in terms of the theoretical interpretation (as you pointed out) and in terms of the relation between what they *claim* to test and what they actually test. That latter problem is addressed in detail in Bill's contribution to the LT commentaries (Croft, Bhattacharya, Kleinschmidt, Smith, and Jaeger, to appear). I think you will find that this commentary is helpful in understanding what Dunn et al do and do not show. One thing that follows from that critique of Dunn et al is that we should be cautious to accept the claimed lack of cross-family correlations for many of the features. So, just because Dunn et al find two word order features (e.g. adj-noun, gen-noun) correlate in one language family but not the other, it does not mean that there is actually enough evidence to reject the hypothesis that the correlation is equally strong across language families (Dunn et al do not test this hypothesis even though it is arguably an important test before one rejects the hypothesis that the correlations are identical across language families). Another things (in line with Martin's comment) that we point out in the Croft et al commentary is that Dunn et al did not control for language contact as an explanation for change. This will likely make the observed correlations between different word order features weaker than they would be if language contact was taken into consideration in the model (as language contact adds a source of 'noise' that is unaccounted for by the Dunn et al model). Bill, please correct me if I am misrepresenting the commentary =). I think the point that Tom, Brian and Martin made that language-specific properties addition to those accounted for in the model (e.g. modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking) might affect the likely diachronic development of languages is a great one. If Dunn et al (or, for that matter, anybody) has enormous amounts of data, this shouldn't matter as such differences between languages would get 'averaged out', but given available data, such between-language difference, if unaccounted for, are likely to be a problem for their analysis (again leading to an under-estimation of the stability of whatever biases and processes cause gradient universals). Florian From hallowel at ohio.edu Tue Jul 12 23:28:06 2011 From: hallowel at ohio.edu (Hallowell, Brooke) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:28:06 -0400 Subject: Invitation to the CAPCSD 2012 Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders Message-ID: Dear Colleague: The Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CAPCSD) invites you to the Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD), to be held in Newport Beach, California on Thursday, April 19, 2012. The summit will be a vital component of the CAPCSD annual conference (Wednesday, April 18 through Saturday, Apri1 21, 2012). Please join us! Participants will engage in information exchange on ways to foster international collaboration and experiential opportunities for education and research in CSD as well as foster global networking among CSD academic programs and related professional organizations. A flyer is appended below. Examples of topic areas to be discussed include: * Help for newly developing programs * Funding for international collaborations in teaching, education, and research * Global initiative updates from related professional associations * Resources for accreditation and certification projects * Student and faculty international exchange possibilities in CSD * International grant programs * Study abroad programs with relevance to CSD * Student competency assessments * Strategies for success in integrating international students into CSD academic programs * Admission considerations for international students * Challenges, pitfalls, and successes in international research collaborations * Fostering student and faculty learning about global efforts in CSD There will be just one registration fee for the conference, which will include the Global Summit. Non-member academic program representatives from non-US institutions will be offered a $100 registration discount. The Summit will include panel presentations, small networking groups on topics of common interest, poster and table displays, and opportunities for programs to share content about their current global initiatives. We will be coordinating presentations on topics that will be useful to international program development (see below). We will also enjoy rich networking opportunities and a international welcome banquet and celebration. Registration materials will be available on the CAPCSD web site by December 2011. If you are interested in contributing to the program as a presenter or panelist, please email the CAPCSD Global Outreach Committee at CAPCSDGlobalOurtreach at gmail.com by September 1, 2011 so that we may work to officially invite you as a Summit presenter. Please share this invitation and flyer with colleagues who may be interested. We look forward to seeing you in April 2012! Sincerely, The CAPCSD Global Outreach Committee * Prof. Brooke Hallowell, Ohio University, Chair * Prof. Michael Robb, University of Canterbury * Prof. Loraine Obler, City University of New York * Prof. Linda Louko, University of Iowa * Prof. Nan Bernstein Ratner, University of Maryland Topic themes for the CAPCSD Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders Developing new programs in CSD Help for newly developing programs * Making use of visiting professors and guest lecturers to meet teaching demands as new programs struggle with limited teaching manpower during their development * Incorporating external examiners from more established programs * Sharing of curricula across programs * Meeting new Ph.D. program faculty requirements through creative collaborations * Working with governing bodies and university administration to launch new programs * Developing a clinic with few resources Mutual Recognition Agreements * Sharing information about the Mutual Recognition Agreement between ASHA, CASLPA, RCSLT, IALST and NZSTA, SPA. Funding for international work * Funding for individuals, groups and institutions (through Fulbright, WHO, AID and other organizations) IALP, ASHA, AAA and other related professional association global initiative updates Information sharing about: * Student and faculty international exchange possibilities in CSD * International grant programs * Study abroad programs with relevance to CSD * Student competency assessments (key tools used in non-US programs) * Strategies for success in integrating international students into CSD academic programs * Admission considerations for international students (e.g., 3-year degree undergraduate degrees, addressing intelligibility and writing proficiency) * Challenges, pitfalls, and successes in international research collaborations Resources about accreditation and certification * Facilitating academic program accreditation processes in countries where these are not established * Facilitating clinical certification processes in countries where these are desired Fostering student and faculty learning about global efforts in CSD * Linking with web sites and fostering contributions of content to those sites * Means of promoting global perspectives in CSD curricula * Promoting global public education in CSD COUNCIL OF ACADEMIC PROGRAMS INCOMMUNICATION SCIENCES AND DISORDERS P.O. Box 26532 Minneapolis, MN 55426 (952) 920-0966 Fax: (952) 920-6098 E-Mail: cap at incnet.com Website: www.capcsd.org Please join us Thursday, April 19, 2012 for the Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders In Newport Beach, California, USA Marriott Beach Hotel and Spa The summit will be held on the first full day of the 2012 CAPCSD annual conference.* The goal of the summit is to foster collaboration and information exchange to enhance international education and research in communication sciences and disorders (CSD). Examples of topic areas to be discussed include: * Help for newly developing programs * Funding for international collaborations in teaching, education, and research * Global initiative updates from related professional associations * Resources for accreditation and certification projects * Student and faculty international exchange possibilities in CSD * Study abroad programs with relevance to CSD * Student competency assessments * Strategies for success in integrating international students into CSD academic programs * Admission considerations for international students * Challenges, pitfalls, and successes in international research collaborations * We'll also enjoy rich networking opportunities and an international welcome banquet and celebration. Founded in 1979, the Council represents over 260 academic programs that educate undergraduate and graduate students in CSD. CAPCSD's mission is to: promote quality, accessibility and innovation in communication sciences and disorders in higher education; advance the highest standards in pedagogy, clinical education and research; and facilitate the recruitment, education and retention of faculty and students to meet the public need. Over 2,000 academic, clinical and administrative staff members affiliated with member institutions use their CAPCSD membership to keep ahead of the challenges that face programs, faculty, staff, and students. The Council's vibrant annual conferences enable academic program representatives to share ideas, learn new strategies, network with colleagues who have similar concerns, share solutions, and foster collaboration. We welcome members throughout the world. Your academic program is not required to be a member for you to participate. Non-member academic program representatives from non-US institutions will be offered a registration discount at the 2012 CAPCSD annual conference. For more information, see the Council web site (www.capcsd.org). For inquiries regarding letters of invitation and opportunities to serve as a panelist or presenter, please contact the CAPCSD Global Outreach Committee at capcsdglobalsummit at gmail.com. Updated July 12, 2011 *Dates for the 2012 CAPCSD Annual Conference are Wednesday, April 18 through Saturday, April 21. From alifarghaly at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 07:26:49 2011 From: alifarghaly at yahoo.com (Ali Farghaly) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:26:49 -0700 Subject: Second Call for Papers Message-ID: **Apologies for cross postings. Please redistribute to other interested parties** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                            SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The Seventh Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference (AIRS 2011)                           December 18th -20th, 2011                          Dubai (United Arab Emirates)                          www.uowdubai.ac.ae/airs2011                         *NEW SUBMISSION DUE*:  July 27th, 2011 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference (AIRS) aims to bring together researchers and developers to exchange new ideas and latest achievements in the field of information retrieval (IR). The scope of the conference covers applications, systems, technologies and theory aspects of information retrieval in text, audio, image, video, and multimedia data. The AIRS 2011 welcomes submissions of original papers in the broad field of information retrieval. Technical issues covered include, but are not limited to the following: 1. IR Models and Theories 2. User Study, IR Evaluation, and Interactive IR 3. Web IR, Scalability, and Adversarial IR 4. Multimedia IR 5. NLP for IR (eg. Cross-/Multi- Language IR, Question Answering, Summarization, Information Extraction) 6. Machine Learning and Data Mining for IR (eg. Learning to Rank, Classification, Clustering) 7. IR Applications (eg. Digital Libraries, Vertical Search, Mobile IR) 8. Arabic-Script based IR 9. Cross Language IR IMPORTANT DATES * Submission Due: July 27th, 2011 * Notification of acceptance: Sept 1st, 2011 * Camera-ready due: Sept 17th , 2011 * Registration: November 1st, 2011 * AIRS2011: December 18th-20th SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS The AIRS 2011 proceedings will be published as an LNCS volume, so please follow the default author instructions available at http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0 . In addition, please anonymize your paper to facilitate blind reviewing, and make sure your paper is no longer than 12 pages in the LNCS format. Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will be rejected unconditionally. Duplicate submissions (the same paper being submitted to AIRS 2011 and to another conference at the same time) are strictly forbidden; if detected, these submissions will be unconditionally rejected. Program Committee Chair Khaled Shaalan, British University in Dubai khaled.shaalan at buid.ac.ae Conference Co-Chairs Mohamed Val Salem, University of Wollongong in Dubai MohamedSalem at UOWDubai.ac.ae Farhad Oroumchian, University of Wollongong in Dubai FarhadOroumchian at UOWDubai.ac.ae Publicity Chair Asma Damankesh, University of Wollongong in Dubai AsmaDamankesh at UOWDubai.ac.ae Abolfazl AleAhmad, University of Tehran a.aleahmad at ece.ut.ac.ir Publication Chair Kathy Shen, University of Wollongong in Dubai Dr. Azadeh Shakery, University of Tehran AREA CHAIRS Arabic Script text Processing and Retrieval Ali Farghaly, Oracle, USA IR Models and Theories Minjie Zhang, University of Wollongong, Australia Multimedia IR Joemon M Jose, University of Glasgow, UK User Study, IR Evaluation, and Interactive IR Tetsuya Sakai, Microsoft Research Asia Web IR, scalability and adversarial IR Min Zhang, Tsinghua University, China IR Applications Kazunari Sugiyama, National University of Singapore, Singapore Machine learning for IR Tie-Yan Liu, Microsoft Research Asia Natural Language Processing for Information retrieval Chia-Hui Chang, National Central University, Taiwan From ritva.laury at helsinki.fi Wed Jul 20 08:08:23 2011 From: ritva.laury at helsinki.fi (Ritva Laury) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:08:23 +0300 Subject: New book on clause combining Message-ID: I am happy to announce a new book on clause combining, titled Subordination in Conversation. Details can be found at http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=SLSI%202 and below. This volume inaugurates the new series Studies in Language and Social Interaction, edited by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Sandra Thompson. It is the continuation of the series Studies in Discourse and Grammar, also published by Benjamins and edited by Paul Hopper and Sandy Thompson. Ritva Laury New book information JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY www.benjamins.com [SLSI 24] Linguistics Subordination in Conversation A cross-linguistic perspective Edited by Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki University of Helsinki / Keio University The articles in this volume examine the notion of clausal subordination based on English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Japanese conversational data. Some of the articles approach ‘subordination’ in terms of social action, taking into account what participants are doing with their talk, considering topics such as the use of clauses as projector phrases and as devices for organizing the participant structure of the conversation. Other articles focus on the emergence of clause combinations diachronically and synchronically, taking on topics such as the grammaticalization of clauses and conjunctions into discourse markers, and the continuum nature of syntactic subordination. In all of the articles, linguistic forms are considered to be emergent from recurrent practices engaged in by participants in conversation. The contributions critically examine central syntactic notions in interclausal relations and their relevance to the description of clause combining in conversational language, to the structure of conversation, and to the interactional functions of language. [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 24] 2011. viii, 244 pp. Hb 978 90 272 2634 1 EUR 95.00 E-book 978 90 272 8696 3 EUR 95.00 Table of contents List of contributors Introduction Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki N be that-constructions in everyday German conversation: A reanalysis of ‘die Sache ist/das Ding ist’ (‘the thing is’)-clauses as projector phrases Susanne Günthner Interrogative “complements” and question design in Estonian Leelo Keevallik Syntactic and actional characteristics of Finnish että-clauses Aino Koivisto, Ritva Laury and Eeva-Leena Seppänen Clause-combining and the sequencing of actions: Projector constructions in French talk-in-interaction Simona Pekarek Doehler A note on the emergence of quotative constructions in Japanese conversation Ryoko Suzuki Clines of subordination – constructions with the German ‘complement-taking predicate’ glauben Wolfgang Imo Are kara ‘because’-clauses causal subordinate clauses in present-day Japanese? Yuko Higashiizumi Teyuuka and I mean as pragmatic parentheticals in Japanese and English Ritva Laury and Shigeko Okamoto Name index Subject index From ritva.laury at helsinki.fi Thu Jul 21 10:22:30 2011 From: ritva.laury at helsinki.fi (Ritva Laury) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:22:30 +0300 Subject: Link to Subordination in Conversation Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, It appears that there is a problem with the link to the new clause combining volume I posted yesterday. Here is the link, again - this time it should work: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=SLSI%2024 Sorry for the confusion. Ritva From dan at daneverett.org Sun Jul 24 15:39:07 2011 From: dan at daneverett.org (Daniel Everett) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:39:07 -0400 Subject: Quantifiers Message-ID: Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the next village over/etc)." Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one "domain-restricted." Is any language known that has only the latter? To put this in a different way, would there be any principle barring the existence of only the restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the absence of the unrestricted? Dan ********************** Daniel L. Everett http://daneverettbooks.com From amnfn at well.com Sun Jul 24 16:03:18 2011 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:03:18 -0700 Subject: Quantifiers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dan, If you've never conceived of any men you have never seen, then by definition you end up with the resttricted set. --Aya On Sun, 24 Jul 2011, Daniel Everett wrote: > Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the next village over/etc)." > > Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one "domain-restricted." > > Is any language known that has only the latter? To put this in a different way, would there be any principle barring the existence of only the restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the absence of the unrestricted? > > Dan > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett > > http://daneverettbooks.com > > From dan at daneverett.org Sun Jul 24 16:21:21 2011 From: dan at daneverett.org (Dan Everett) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:21:21 -0400 Subject: Quantifiers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: So we could call that one the Marilyn Monroe quantifier. But I do get your point. Dan Sent from my iPhone On Jul 24, 2011, at 12:03 PM, "A. Katz" wrote: > Dan, > > If you've never conceived of any men you have never seen, then by definition you end up with the resttricted set. > > --Aya > > > > On Sun, 24 Jul 2011, Daniel Everett wrote: > >> Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the next village over/etc)." >> >> Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one "domain-restricted." >> >> Is any language known that has only the latter? To put this in a different way, would there be any principle barring the existence of only the restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the absence of the unrestricted? >> >> Dan >> >> >> ********************** >> Daniel L. Everett >> >> http://daneverettbooks.com >> >> > From dan at daneverett.org Sun Jul 24 21:25:25 2011 From: dan at daneverett.org (Daniel Everett) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:25:25 -0400 Subject: Fwd: Quantifiers Message-ID: Dick and all, Because David posted this to a public forum, I will forward it on to Funknet - because I asked the same question to both Funknet and LingTyp. Note that I am completely aware that quantifiers may take the kinds of restricted readings that I mentioned in the original query. What I was inquiring about was exactly what David responded with - lexical distinctions. All the best, Dan > From: David Gil > Date: July 24, 2011 12:10:12 PM EDT > To: "Everett, Daniel" > Cc: "LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" > Subject: Re: Quantifiers > > Not quite what you're asking for, Dan, but Turkish has two universal > quantifiers, "bütün" and "hepsi", whose usage corresponds roughly to > what you're calling "unrestricted" and "domain-restricted" respectively. > > In fact, if you add the feature of distributivity into the mix, you get > a similar (though perhaps not identical) semantic contrast in English, > between "every" and "each". > > One might predict the absence of languages with "domain-restricted" but > no "unrestricted" universal quantifiers on the basis of general > principles of markedness: if "domain-restricted" quantifiers involve > the presence of an additional feature, then one would expect them to > occur only in the presence of their unmarked counterparts lacking said > feature. > > I wrote about this some time back, in > > Gil, David (1991) "Universal Quantifiers: A Typological Study", EUROTYP > Working Papers, Series 7, Number 12, The European Science Foundation, > EUROTYP Programme, Berlin. > > >> Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of >> "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used >> in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the >> next village over/those in the immediate context of discourse/etc)." >> >> Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one >> "domain-restricted." >> >> Is any language known that has only the latter? For semanticists, >> would there be any principle barring the existence of only the >> restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the >> absence of the unrestricted? >> >> Dan >> >> >> ********************** >> Daniel L. Everett >> >> http://daneverettbooks.com > > > -- > David Gil > > Department of Linguistics > Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology > Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany > > Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550119 > Email: gil at eva.mpg.de > Webpage: http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/ > > From edith at uwm.edu Fri Jul 29 20:29:38 2011 From: edith at uwm.edu (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:29:38 -0500 Subject: Conference on endangered languages In-Reply-To: <1379493913.185642.1311971211120.JavaMail.root@mail12.pantherlink.uwm.edu> Message-ID: The program of our conference titled “Language death, endangerment, documentation, and revitalization” is now available at the following website: http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/conferences/linguistics2011 Dedicated to the memory of Michael Noonan, the event will be held October 20-22 ‘11, Thursday through Saturday, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The program consists of 45 abstract-based papers from various parts of the world and of talks by nine key-note speakers: Daryl Baldwin, Daniel L. Everett, Carol Genetti, Lenore Grenoble, K. David Harrison, Iren Hartmann, Marianne Mithun, Fernando Ramallo, and Sarah Thomason. In addition to the detailed program, the website also provides information about housing and registration. The deadline for pre-registration is September 1 Thursday. Questions? Please e-mail us at: 26thlinguistics-symposium at uwm.edu -- Edith A. Moravcsik Professor Emerita of Linguistics Department of Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA From mg246 at cornell.edu Tue Jul 5 08:00:49 2011 From: mg246 at cornell.edu (monica gonzalez-marquez) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:00:49 +0200 Subject: CITEC Summer School 2011, Mechanisms of Attention - Call for Application Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR APPLICATION - *CITEC Summer School 2011 Mechanisms of Attention - From Experimental Studies to Technical Systems* CITEC, Bielefeld University, Germany, October 3rd-8th, 2011 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perception and action in biological and technical systems are intimately coupled by a wealth of attentive mechanisms. These mechanisms operate at different stages of cognition, allowing salient information to be flexibly extracted and readily used. How does attention contribute to understanding of scenes, language processing, social interaction, and motor control? To gain insights in these topics, the Graduate School in "Cognitive Interaction Technology" invites top PhD students to apply for the 2011 Summer School entitled "Mechanisms of attention - From experimental studies to technical systems". It will take place from 3rd (day of arrival) to 8th of October 2011 at Bielefeld University. The vision of CITEC is to create interactive tools that can be operated easily and intuitively - to fit future technology more seamlessly into daily human life. In order to accomplish this, such technology needs to be endowed with cognitive capabilities, and so part of CITEC's mission is the study of the fundamental architectural principles of cognitive interaction. We believe this goal can only be realized through intense interdisciplinary cooperation. The proposed summer school series aims to bring together researchers from a wide range of fields for discussion and exchange of ideas. The CITEC summer school will comprise small-group workshops on practical, experimental and theoretical topics, plenary lectures held by the invited speakers, as well as discussion groups, evening lectures and an activities program. For the afternoon courses, you may select one from the following four streams: 1. Mechanisms Of Active Exploration And Multisensory Integration; 2. Attentional Mechanisms In Language Processing And Communication: From Humans To Virtual Agents; 3. Structuring And Coordinating Attention; 4. Motion And Attention. Guest speakers: Ehud Ahissar -- Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovt Dana Ballard -- University of Texas at Austin Gustavo Deco -- University Pompeu Fabra Mary Hayhoe -- University of Texas at Austin Gordon Logan -- Vanderbilt University John Tsotsos -- York University Mark Williams -- John Moores University Liverpool We hope to offer a rich curriculum, which will promote discussion across the boundaries of different branches of science. Please find details for the online application here: http://www.cit-ec.de/summerschool/application2011 * Deadline for applications is the 14th August 2011 * For more information, please visit: http://www.cit-ec.de/summerschool/ Prof. Dr. Thomas Schack - Head of Graduate School Cognitive Interaction Technology, Neurocognition and Action - Biomechanics Group Prof. Dr. Helge Ritter - Coordinator of the Centre of Excellence CITEC, Neuroinformatics Group Claudia Muhl - Graduate School Manager -- Claudia Muhl Graduate School Manager Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence - (CITEC) Bielefeld University, Germany web: http://www.cit-ec.de email: cmuhl at cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de phone: +49 521-106-65 66 fax: +49 521-106-65 60 -- So that the form takes as many risks as the content. From, "Ava" by Carole Maso Monica Gonzalez-Marquez Psychology Department Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Currently visiting at: Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) Bielefeld University Universitaetsstr. 25, Gebaeudeteil Q 33615 Bielefeld Germany From mg246 at cornell.edu Thu Jul 7 14:08:32 2011 From: mg246 at cornell.edu (monica gonzalez-marquez) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 16:08:32 +0200 Subject: U of Louisiana tenured fac fired due to budget cuts Message-ID: Hello Everyone, This affects us all. Text of the news article below. http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20110701/NEWS01/107010324/UL-terminating-two-professors -m UL terminating two professors Two tenured faculty members at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette received termination notices this week, and university officials would not rule out the possibility of more such notices being given in the short-term future. "We deeply regret having to terminate tenured faculty, but in these budget cuts, we've been driven to close programs with low enrollment," Carolyn Bruder, interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, said during a phone interview Thursday evening. "It is possible that we will have one to two more professors get such notices in the near term." Bruder said the university is phasing out the doctoral degree program in cognitive science as part of results of the Board of Regents' effort to eliminate "low completer" programs across the state. "Two faculty members with tenure in the program have received notice that their appointments will not be continued after May 2013," Bruder said in a prepared statement issued by UL's communications department after The Daily Advertiser questioned the termination notices. Istvan Berkeley, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science, is the head of UL's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He is not one of the professors who received a termination notice, but he said he is "very, very unhappy" with the decision. "This is a classic case of sinking the ship to save a pittance of tar," Berkeley said Thursday evening. Bruder said the university wanted to let the professors know about the terminations two years in advance and will give those two professors letters of support to help find another job as well as offer them reduced-tuition course enrollment as well. Bruder said about 14 students are currently enrolled in the cognitive science program, and all will be given the chance to graduate. The university stopped admitting students into that program after the fall 2010 semester. The Board of Regents looked at the "low completer" programs earlier this year. Bruder said the Board of Regents increased the frequency at which these programs are reviewed during the recent budget crunch as officials realized some programs would have to be shutdown. For undergraduate programs, that means degree programs with a three-year average of eight or fewer graduates per year, or five students for master's degree programs and two students for doctorate programs. "In this 'low completer' review, the Ph.D. in cognitive science, which has been on their review before, was terminated," Bruder said. In early March, Ellen Cook, UL's assistant vice president for academic affairs, told The Daily Advertiser that the board sent the university a list of all such programs last year and required it to put them into one of three areas --- termination, consolidation or justification. In UL's case, only three programs are down for termination. Cook said at that time doing away with the campus' agricultural education, consumer science education and technical and industrial arts education programs makes sense. Eliminating the programs will allow resources and faculty to be assigned to other areas, though in many cases the faculty may simply disappear. Bruder said the university will offer a job to the terminated tenured faculty if there is any opening in a department in which those professors are qualified to teach. However, she said she "can't imagine" those professors wanting to take an instructorship. At its January meeting in preparation for program cuts, the Board of Regents adopted new rules making it easier for universities to fire both tenured and nontenured faculty members. Michael Berube, chairman of the subcommittee on program closures for the AAUP, said in a June 6 letter that he was "deeply disturbed" by an "unprecedented and unwarranted assault" on faculty in the UL System. "If senior professors with tenure can be fired and then immediately offered employment as short-term instructors, then tenure is essentially meaningless in the University of Louisiana System," Berube wrote. "Faculty nationwide should be advised that the UL System has effectively nullified its tenure procedures." -- So that the form takes as many risks as the content. From, "Ava" by Carole Maso Monica Gonzalez-Marquez Psychology Department Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Currently visiting at: Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) Bielefeld University Universitaetsstr. 25, Gebaeudeteil Q 33615 Bielefeld Germany From amnfn at well.com Thu Jul 7 16:39:34 2011 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 09:39:34 -0700 Subject: U of Louisiana tenured fac fired due to budget cuts In-Reply-To: <4E15BDE0.80605@cornell.edu> Message-ID: Monica, Thanks for sharing that article. It inspired me to write this editorial: http://www.pubwages.com/20/tenured-faculty-members-receive-termination-notices-at-ul --Aya On Thu, 7 Jul 2011, monica gonzalez-marquez wrote: > Hello Everyone, > > This affects us all. Text of the news article below. > > http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20110701/NEWS01/107010324/UL-terminating-two-professors > > -m > > > UL terminating two professors > > Two tenured faculty members at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette > received termination notices this week, and university officials would not > rule out the possibility of more such notices being given in the short-term > future. > > "We deeply regret having to terminate tenured faculty, but in these budget > cuts, we've been driven to close programs with low enrollment," Carolyn > Bruder, interim provost and vice president of academic affairs, said during a > phone interview Thursday evening. "It is possible that we will have one to > two more professors get such notices in the near term." > > Bruder said the university is phasing out the doctoral degree program in > cognitive science as part of results of the Board of Regents' effort to > eliminate "low completer" programs across the state. > > "Two faculty members with tenure in the program have received notice that > their appointments will not be continued after May 2013," Bruder said in a > prepared statement issued by UL's communications department after The Daily > Advertiser questioned the termination notices. > > Istvan Berkeley, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science, is the head > of UL's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He is > not one of the professors who received a termination notice, but he said he > is "very, very unhappy" with the decision. > > "This is a classic case of sinking the ship to save a pittance of tar," > Berkeley said Thursday evening. > > Bruder said the university wanted to let the professors know about the > terminations two years in advance and will give those two professors letters > of support to help find another job as well as offer them reduced-tuition > course enrollment as well. > > Bruder said about 14 students are currently enrolled in the cognitive science > program, and all will be given the chance to graduate. The university stopped > admitting students into that program after the fall 2010 semester. > > The Board of Regents looked at the "low completer" programs earlier this > year. Bruder said the Board of Regents increased the frequency at which these > programs are reviewed during the recent budget crunch as officials realized > some programs would have to be shutdown. > > For undergraduate programs, that means degree programs with a three-year > average of eight or fewer graduates per year, or five students for master's > degree programs and two students for doctorate programs. > > "In this 'low completer' review, the Ph.D. in cognitive science, which has > been on their review before, was terminated," Bruder said. > > In early March, Ellen Cook, UL's assistant vice president for academic > affairs, told The Daily Advertiser that the board sent the university a list > of all such programs last year and required it to put them into one of three > areas --- termination, consolidation or justification. > > In UL's case, only three programs are down for termination. Cook said at that > time doing away with the campus' agricultural education, consumer science > education and technical and industrial arts education programs makes sense. > > Eliminating the programs will allow resources and faculty to be assigned to > other areas, though in many cases the faculty may simply disappear. > > Bruder said the university will offer a job to the terminated tenured faculty > if there is any opening in a department in which those professors are > qualified to teach. However, she said she "can't imagine" those professors > wanting to take an instructorship. > > At its January meeting in preparation for program cuts, the Board of Regents > adopted new rules making it easier for universities to fire both tenured and > nontenured faculty members. > > Michael Berube, chairman of the subcommittee on program closures for the > AAUP, said in a June 6 letter that he was "deeply disturbed" by an > "unprecedented and unwarranted assault" on faculty in the UL System. > > "If senior professors with tenure can be fired and then immediately offered > employment as short-term instructors, then tenure is essentially meaningless > in the University of Louisiana System," Berube wrote. "Faculty nationwide > should be advised that the UL System has effectively nullified its tenure > procedures." > > > > > -- > > So that the form takes as many risks as the content. > From, "Ava" by Carole Maso > > Monica Gonzalez-Marquez > Psychology Department > Cornell University > Ithaca, NY 14853 > > Currently visiting at: > > Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) > Bielefeld University > Universitaetsstr. 25, Gebaeudeteil Q > 33615 Bielefeld > Germany > > > From bischoff.st at gmail.com Fri Jul 8 18:11:35 2011 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 14:11:35 -0400 Subject: CELP URGENT: Need list of theoretical advancements of DEL grants in next 22 hours! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Perhaps some of you have already seen this... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation < lsa.celp at gmail.com> Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:13 PM Subject: CELP URGENT: Need list of theoretical advancements of DEL grants in next 22 hours! To: Alexander King , Alice Gaby , Andrea Berez , Arienne Dwyer , Benjamin Tucker , Brad McDonnell < bradley.mcdonnell at gmail.com>, Carmen Jany , Carolyn Mackay , Claire Bowern , Colleen Fitzgerald , Daniel Hieber , Elliott Hoey , Emerson Odango , Gabriela Perez Baez , Gary Holton , Gwendolyn Hyslop , Jack Martin , Jorge Emilio Roses Labrada , Joyce McDonough < joyce.mcdonough at rochester.edu>, Ken Rehg , Kristen Perry < kristencperry at gmail.com>, Lenore Grenoble , Liberty Lidz , Lisa Conathan , Lise Dobrin , Marcia Haag , Marianne Mithun < mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu>, Mary Linn , Mike Cahill < mike_cahill at sil.org>, Onna Nelson , Pat Shaw < shawpa at interchange.ubc.ca>, Peter Austin , Peter Cole < pcole at udel.edu>, Richard Littauer , Ryan Shosted , Seunghun Lee , Stephanie Gamble-Morse , Tim Thornes , Wilson Silva Cc: Alyson Reed , Keren Rice , Lyle Campbell , Michael Krauss , Spike Gildea , Susan Penfield Dear all, I've just learned that the elimination of the NSF-DEL program is indeed under discussion at NSF right now. The decision to have another call this year was apparently quite tenuous, but they went through with it. A decision to eliminate the program could be made at any point. I have written a letter on behalf of the committee, with input from Peter Cole and Claire Bowern, and I want to get it to the LSA Directorate FRIDAY JULY 8TH and, once they've seen it, send it to the Director of NSF immediately. We need to make the case that DEL is a discovery-based science-intensive unit, as opposed to just something that creates data that is interesting. (!!!!! Isn't this a no-brainer?) It would be very helpful if I could have*concrete examples of specific discoveries or theoretical innovations that arose directly from DEL grants.* (Example: based on this grant, I was able to demonstrate a new type of reduplication; data from this grant allowed for a refinement in the historical sub-branching of this family -- I don't need details, at least at this point). But I need examples **right now**. I would like to write a sentence saying "DEL grants have advanced linguistic theory in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, language change, historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics (etc.)". But I want to have the empirical basis for the statement established, so if one of these people at NSF ask for specifics, I know I've got them. IF YOU HAVE HAD A DEL GRANT, OR KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS, please ask for examples like this and send them back. I will base my sentence in this letter on the examples that I receive *in the next 22 hours. *That means by 5 a.m. on July 9th here in Cairns, Australia. That is noon on July 8th in Pacific Standard Time and 3 p.m. July 8th in Eastern Standard Time. I know this is very abbreviated, but this committee can work fast under pressure. if I can get enough examples by then, I'll finish this up and get it to the LSA tomorrow afternoon. If all goes well, our letter will be awaiting the attention of Director Suresh when he gets to his office on Monday morning. Thanks, everyone! Best, Carol From tgivon at uoregon.edu Fri Jul 8 19:08:06 2011 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 13:08:06 -0600 Subject: recent paper Message-ID: Dear FUNK folks, A month ago David Kronenfeld sent me a recently-published paper ("Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals", Nature, 473:79-82, by M. Dunn, S.J. Greenhill, S. C. Levinson & R.D. Gray) that made some interesting claims about the cross-language distribution of word-order universals (henceforth "Greenberg correlations"). David asked me to comment on the paper, which is not all that easy to interpret--primarily because of methodology and terminology imported from quantitative evolutionary biology. However, since one of the co-authors is a well-known & thoughtful linguist (Steve Levinson, MPI-Nijmegen), I thought that the effort might be worth while. I am still not sure I understand the paper's conclusions correctly. But I see, tentatively, a way of interpreting them that would make sense. The paper notes first that the "standard" functional-cognitive explanation of Greenberg's correlation did not pan out, be they Lehmann's "harmony", Vennemann's "operator-operand", or their formal equivalents (X-bar, GB parameters). Alas ignoring a well-established alternative explanation (see below), the paper then shows that statistically, word-order-cum-morphology correlations are lineage-specific, i.e. family-specific. Using data from four families--Indo-European, Austronesian Bantu (a sub-family of Niger-Congo) and Uto-Aztecan, the paper concludes that only within historically-related groups or sub-groups can one find predictable "Greenberg correlations". The conclusion the authors draw is that "Greenberg correlations" are not universal, but depend on "cultural evolution". Or, de-jargonized, that languages that share more of their diachronic history also share more of their "Greenberg correlations". For the past 40 years (Givon 1971, 1974, 1979 chs 5-6-7, 2001 ch. 5, 2009 chs 3-4-5), and following the illustrious tradition of F. Bopp, H. Paul and A. Meillet, I have attempted, apparently in vain, to convince y'all that word-order-cum-morphology "Greenberg correlations" are the direct product of diachronic pathways of grammaticalization. And that apparent exception to those correlations are due to two major factors: (a) the existence of alternative grammaticalization patterns for the same construction or morpheme; and (b) word-order change that leaves recalcitrant old morphology "harmonized" with the old word-order, thus "incompatible" with the current word-order. The overall conclusion is that synchronic typology is the direct and straight-forward product of diachrony, and that typological universals are mediated by diachrony (as well as, to a lesser extent, by acquisition and evolution). Of course, it may well be that I have misinterpreted the thrust of the Nature paper altogether, but if it means anything coherent to me, then it simply re-states well-know diachronic observations. From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Sat Jul 9 09:21:19 2011 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 11:21:19 +0200 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <4E175596.5000507@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: It seems to me that (at least for FUNKNET readers) the crucial question is to what extent general functional factors, in particular processing-ease considerations as proposed by Dryer (1992) and Hawkins (1990, 1994, 2004, 2007), can be taken to explain cross-linguistic word order tendencies. For extraposition due to heaviness, probably nobody would doubt the relevance of processing ease. But Dryer and Hawkins have argued that processing ease also explains the Greenbergian correlations. Tom Giv?n?s proposal that these correlations are the ?direct product of diachronic pathways of grammaticalization? does not contradict the functional Dryer-Hawkins account. It could be that the relevant diachronic changes are functionally constrained, i.e. that those grammaticalizations that yield the most processable structures occur most often. There are at least three ways in which synchronic patterns could be explained in ?evolutionary? terms: (1) unconstrained evolutionary: Synchronic states are the result of diachronic changes, but there are no particular constraints on the latter (2) constrained evolutionary: Synchronic states are the result of diachronic changes, and only certain kinds of diachronic changes are possible, but the contraints on changes are not functional (e.g. Blevins 2004) (3) diachronic-functional: Diachronic changes are typically functionally constrained, and hence synchronic states can be said to be functionally adapted I always thought that Tom Giv?n?s diachronic view of synchronic states was of type (3) (and similar views have been expressed by Greenberg, Bybee, Croft, and many others). By contrast, the paper by Dunn et al. that Giv?n mentions (see http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/wordorder/, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7345/full/nature09923.html) says that it found only family-specific linkages of traits, and the authors do not endorse a diachronic-functional account of the Greenbergian correlations. One gets the impression that Dunn et al. opt for view (1) above. However, I think that the available evidence is still fully compatible with the Dryer-Hawkins explanation in functional terms (and hence with view (3)), and I know of no alternative explanation of the Greenbergian correlations (the generative headedness parameter has been abandoned by the genertivists themselves). It is true that we would expect to find systematic evidence for linked changes in diachrony if we look systematically (e.g. adposition-noun order changing once verb-object order changes, or vice versa). Dunn et al. did not find good evidence of this kind, but that doesn?t mean that it doesn?t exist ? maybe it exists only at greater time depths than is provided by the four families they look at. Consider the following data cited by Matthew Dryer in a recent presentation in Leipzig: Looking only at families (most of them isolates) that have only a single type, we find the following distribution: OVVO Postp883 Prep026 We thus see a very striking synchronic correlation, which cannot be due to accident. We cannot have certainty that prepositional OV languages and postpositional VO languages are disfavoured for functional reasons, and clearly there are other important factors such as language contact, but the functional account still seems to be the best story that is available. (It seems that the primary goal of the Dunn et al. paper was to apply their phylogentic methods, and that because of these new methods and the paper?s anti-Chomskyan conclusion, startling to some readers, the paper was accepted by Nature. For typologists and functionalists, there is nothing surprising there, as far as I can tell.) Martin **************** References Dr Blevins, Juliette. 2004. /Evolutionary phonology: the emergence of sound patterns/. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. /Language/ 68(1). 81?138. Dunn, Michael, Simon J Greenhill, Stephen C Levinson & Russell D Gray. 2011. Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. /Nature/ 473:79-82 Hawkins, John A. 1990. A parsing theory of word order universals. /Linguistic Inquiry/ 21(2). 223?261. Hawkins, John A. 1994. /A performance theory of order and constituency/. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkins, John A. 2004. /Efficiency and complexity in grammars/. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hawkins, John A. 2007. Processing typology and why psychologists need to know about it. /New Ideas in Psychology/ 25(2). 124?144. On 08/07/2011 21:08, Tom Givon wrote: > > Dear FUNK folks, > > A month ago David Kronenfeld sent me a recently-published paper > ("Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in > word-order universals", Nature, 473:79-82, by M. Dunn, S.J. Greenhill, > S. C. Levinson & R.D. Gray) that made some interesting claims about > the cross-language distribution of word-order universals (henceforth > "Greenberg correlations"). David asked me to comment on the paper, > which is not all that easy to interpret--primarily because of > methodology and terminology imported from quantitative evolutionary > biology. However, since one of the co-authors is a well-known & > thoughtful linguist (Steve Levinson, MPI-Nijmegen), I thought that the > effort might be worth while. I am still not sure I understand the > paper's conclusions correctly. But I see, tentatively, a way of > interpreting them that would make sense. > The paper notes first that the "standard" functional-cognitive > explanation of Greenberg's correlation did not pan out, be they > Lehmann's "harmony", Vennemann's "operator-operand", or their formal > equivalents (X-bar, GB parameters). Alas ignoring a well-established > alternative explanation (see below), the paper then shows that > statistically, word-order-cum-morphology correlations are > lineage-specific, i.e. family-specific. Using data from four > families--Indo-European, Austronesian Bantu (a sub-family of > Niger-Congo) and Uto-Aztecan, the paper concludes that only within > historically-related groups or sub-groups can one find predictable > "Greenberg correlations". The conclusion the authors draw is that > "Greenberg correlations" are not universal, but depend on "cultural > evolution". Or, de-jargonized, that languages that share more of their > diachronic history also share more of their "Greenberg correlations". > For the past 40 years (Givon 1971, 1974, 1979 chs 5-6-7, 2001 ch. > 5, 2009 chs 3-4-5), and following the illustrious tradition of F. > Bopp, H. Paul and A. Meillet, I have attempted, apparently in vain, to > convince y'all that word-order-cum-morphology "Greenberg correlations" > are the direct product of diachronic pathways of grammaticalization. > And that apparent exception to those correlations are due to two major > factors: (a) the existence of alternative grammaticalization patterns > for the same construction or morpheme; and (b) word-order change that > leaves recalcitrant old morphology "harmonized" with the old > word-order, thus "incompatible" with the current word-order. The > overall conclusion is that synchronic typology is the direct and > straight-forward product of diachrony, and that typological universals > are mediated by diachrony (as well as, to a lesser extent, by > acquisition and evolution). > Of course, it may well be that I have misinterpreted the thrust of > the Nature paper altogether, but if it means anything coherent to > me, then it simply re-states well-know diachronic observations. > > > -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Sat Jul 9 19:47:16 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 13:47:16 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) Message-ID: Hi, I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I submitted to LT (see link below). This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being explored. I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo (2011, https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. Florian Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper contains all references mentioned above: Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals Fedzechkina et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals Tily et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Sat Jul 9 20:57:19 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 14:57:19 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Apologies for the copy and paste error at the end of my email (thanks, Anne for pointing that out). The last three references should have read: Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals Fedzechkina et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/564568/Fedzechkina_M._Jaeger_T.F._and_Newport_E._2011_._Functional_Biases_in_Language_Learning_Evidence_from_Word_Order_and_Case-Marking_Interaction._The_33rd_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Cognitive_Science_Society_CogSci11_._Boston_MA._July_2011 Tily et al (2011): http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/564659/Tily_H.J._Frank_M.C._and_Jaeger_T.F._2011_._The_learnability_of_constructed_languages_reflects_typological_patterns._The_33rd_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Cognitive_Science_Society_CogSci11_._Boston_MA._July_2011 From tgivon at uoregon.edu Mon Jul 11 11:46:40 2011 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:46:40 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) functional theories is that they are usually observations about the final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG ================== On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > Hi, > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I > submitted to LT (see link below). > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > explored. > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > (2011, > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > Florian > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > contains all references mentioned above: > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > Tily et al (2011): > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals From eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Jul 11 12:53:35 2011 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:53:35 +0300 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <4E1AE2A0.7040503@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Terms like 'harmony' (? la Lehmann) or 'operator-operand [generalization]' (? la Vennemann) seem ad hoc and therefore easy to ignore, until one realizes (assuming that one is savvy enough to do so) that they are just more or less arbitrary designations for ANALOGY; and this may well turn out to be true of 'regularization' as well. In the tradition of von Humboldt, Whitney, and Paul, analogy is the single most important force in language. I have tried to prove this in my 2005 book 'Analogy as structure and process' (where Lehmann and Vennemann are duly mentioned among many, many others). Incidentally, this book was characterized as "the summa of current analogy research" by one (clearly very competent) reviewer. Now, important as it is, analogy does not of course explain everything, and maybe this is the case with Greenberg correlations. But one should never rule it out a priori. This is one lesson that can be safely drawn from the history of our discipline. Esa Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen ----- Original Message ----- From: Tom Givon Date: Monday, July 11, 2011 2:46 pm Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward > to > reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of > us's) > functional theories is that they are usually observations about the > final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) > that > create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look > at > how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In > > other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and > exact > loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging > structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation > are > both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity > era" > of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging > > structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological > processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who > would > like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the > real > challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior > are a > big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > ================== > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the > direct > > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional > > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in > detail). > > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial > > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' > (reduce the > > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, > > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian > universals in the > > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, > b; Tily > > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly > > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication > (not > > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is > summarized in > > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily > and I > > submitted to LT (see link below). > > > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition > > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). > > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > > explored. > > > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic > accounts > > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information > > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as > quite > > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for > example, > > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in > Genzel and > > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and > Levy and > > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; > for a > > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but > Maurits > > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > > (2011, > > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > > > Florian > > > > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > > contains all references mentioned above: > > > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Tily et al (2011): > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Mon Jul 11 19:26:29 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:26:29 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Tom, I recently started drafting a position paper for Language and Cognitive Processes that outlines what I perceive to be the major challenges to what I might loosely call functionalist linguistics (the paper is not on functional linguistics, but rather on language production and to what extent it is driven by considerations about communicative efficiency). I should send it to you for feedback once it's ready (like, 2018 ;). But here's the gist of the introduction to that paper. I think the first big challenge is to define 'utility' in principled terms. That's where, I think, recent work building on information theory and Bayesian models has made much progress (although there is still tons to do). This work picks upon ideas that have been around for some time and tries to make provide a formal backbone to them. This line of work aims derive what speakers and comprehenders should do *under the assumption that language use is set up to facilitate *efficient and robust communication from basic assumptions about communication through a noisy channel (for example, Genzel and Charniak's 2002 Constant Entropy Rate hypothesis, which is derived from Shannon's noisy channel theorem; van Son and Pols work on the amount of information a segment carries and its phonetic realization; Aylett and Turk's 2004 Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis and their test against phonetic reduction; Levy and Jaeger's 2007 proof that a uniform distribution of Shannon information across the linguistic signal minimizes processing costs under certain assumption, etc.; that work is summarized briefly in Jaeger and Tily, 2011-WIRE and in much more detail in Jaeger, 2010-Cognitive Psychology, both refs were given in my previous email). As you said, notions of utility (which I am using as a placeholder term for all kinds of ideas as to what's good for language usage) also need to be supported empirically, e.g. by psycho-linguistic studies (the Jaeger and Tily 2011 paper aims to provide a 7 page summary of work on sentence processing over the last four decades that, we think, linguists working on language usage would benefit from knowing about). The second big challenge is to identify how functional (and perhaps also non-functional) biases affect the transmission of language from generation to generation. There's two basic logical possibilities that are mutually compatible. Biases can operate during language acquisition and they can operate during language production (cf. Bates and MacWhinney 1982), possibly involving long lasting changes due to implicit learning over previous productions. The artificial language learning and iterated artificial language learning studies I mentioned in my previous email provide a great (though definitely not perfect!) way to study the first possibility and I very much hope that researchers with training in linguistics and, in particular, typology will have a strong presence in this line of work. Crucially, I don't just mean iterated language learning simulations, but learning experiments with actual people (or better, actual infants). Today, we received the reviews on our summary on this line of work from LT, so we should soon have the final version with additional references up at the address I mentioned in my previous email. There's also a rather active line of work on language adaptation in adults that can be seen as addressing the second possible transmission route. Most adaptation work has been conduction on perception (there's, of course, a long tradition of this work on phonetic perception going back at least until the late 60s; more recently, we have also started to show that similar effects are observed during syntactic processing). However, somewhat unsurprisingly to anyone who ever tried to learn another language ;), this work has found that changes in perception do not necessarily affect production. To the best of my knowledge, there's relatively few studies that investigate in a controlled way how production changes through exposure. Most of them seems to be focused on phonetic production (actually, I'd be curious to hear references, if people don't mind sending them to me). Of course, there's tons of evidence for syntactic priming - but almost all of that has focused on rapid effects, where "long lived" means that the effects of priming can survive for a few minutes (e.g. Bock and Griffin, 2000; Chang et al., 2006; Reitter et al., 2011 - searches for these names with the keyword "syntactic priming" will give you the relevant references). I think it's only recently that folks started to look at longer-lasting changes in morpho-syntactic productions as a function of exposure. For example, Kaschak and Glenberg (2004) showed how repeated exposure to novel structures (needs washed) actually increases the probability that speakers later use the structure themselves. These studies do, however, not yet show that there* *are *functional* biases at work during such adaptive changes to one's productions. But maybe readers of this list know of other work (e.g. in sociolinguistics) that addresses this question? This is something I am very much interested in and we have several studies running in the lab that try to get at this question. apologies for the long email. Florian From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Mon Jul 11 21:03:07 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:03:07 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Joan, I think I understood that point. But it seems to me that any diachronic change must be created through one of the two possibilities of transmission I outlined in my reply (biases on acquisition or direct or indirect biases on production). Actually, a third possibility is that noisy production creates sufficient variability from which comprehenders/learners than might generalize in one or the other direction. But in any case, we need to explain the *cognitive *mechanisms that explain deviation from the input. I understand that once a certain bias is assumed to operate, we can derive the direction of change over diachronic times (the subject of many simulation studies on language change and the subject of work on grammaticalization, unidirectionality, etc.). Perhaps I misunderstand your point, but I do believe that the study of diachronic processes in isolation would not provide sufficiently constraining evidence to understand what plausible functional biases could be. Of course, I agree that a lot is known about these processes and that "no findings about functional utility, noisy channels, etc. are applicable to explaining language structure unless they correspond to known paths and mechanisms of change", but the existing data is still compatible with a large number of hypotheses that vary greatly in their cognitive plausibility and their compatibility with existing data on what's easy and hard to process, to produce, and to acquire. In short, both diachronic pathways of change and what is known about cognitive mechanisms of language acquisition, production, and comprehension constraint functional theories. Of course, there is work that acknowledges this, but part of the motivation for the article with Hal Tily (the WIRE article) was that we felt that there was much room for further collaborations and knowledge transfer between research on psycholinguistis mechanisms and research on diachronic processes. Maybe we're talking about the same thing, using different terminology? Sorry, if I am misunderstanding you. Florian On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Joan Bybee wrote: > Dear Florian, > > In case you didn't get Tom's point about diachrony: no findings about > functional utility, noisy channels, etc. are applicable to explaining > language structure unless they correspond to known paths and mechanisms of > change. And we do know a lot about how languages change so it is easy enough > to seek functional explanations that correspond to known changes. These, by > the way, rarely involve 'language transmission' if by that you mean language > acquisition. The best way to start is to study change in progress and then > try to find what cognitive/processing mechanisms have to be involved. That > is the way American functionalism has been operating since the 1970's. > > Joan Bybee > > > On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:26 PM, T. Florian Jaeger < > tiflo at csli.stanford.edu> wrote: > >> Dear Tom, >> >> I recently started drafting a position paper for Language and Cognitive >> Processes that outlines what I perceive to be the major challenges to what >> I >> might loosely call functionalist linguistics (the paper is not on >> functional >> linguistics, but rather on language production and to what extent it is >> driven by considerations about communicative efficiency). I should send it >> to you for feedback once it's ready (like, 2018 ;). But here's the gist of >> the introduction to that paper. >> >> I think the first big challenge is to define 'utility' in principled >> terms. >> That's where, I think, recent work building on information theory and >> Bayesian models has made much progress (although there is still tons to >> do). >> This work picks upon ideas that have been around for some time and tries >> to >> make provide a formal backbone to them. This line of work aims derive what >> speakers and comprehenders should do *under the assumption that language >> use >> is set up to facilitate *efficient and robust communication from basic >> assumptions about communication through a noisy channel (for example, >> Genzel >> and Charniak's 2002 Constant Entropy Rate hypothesis, which is derived >> from >> Shannon's noisy channel theorem; van Son and Pols work on the amount of >> information a segment carries and its phonetic realization; Aylett and >> Turk's 2004 Smooth Signal Redundancy hypothesis and their test against >> phonetic reduction; Levy and Jaeger's 2007 proof that a uniform >> distribution >> of Shannon information across the linguistic signal minimizes processing >> costs under certain assumption, etc.; that work is summarized briefly in >> Jaeger and Tily, 2011-WIRE and in much more detail in Jaeger, >> 2010-Cognitive >> Psychology, both refs were given in my previous email). >> >> As you said, notions of utility (which I am using as a placeholder term >> for >> all kinds of ideas as to what's good for language usage) also need to be >> supported empirically, e.g. by psycho-linguistic studies (the Jaeger and >> Tily 2011 paper aims to provide a 7 page summary of work on sentence >> processing over the last four decades that, we think, linguists working on >> language usage would benefit from knowing about). >> >> The second big challenge is to identify how functional (and perhaps also >> non-functional) biases affect the transmission of language from generation >> to generation. There's two basic logical possibilities that are mutually >> compatible. Biases can operate during language acquisition and they can >> operate during language production (cf. Bates and MacWhinney 1982), >> possibly >> involving long lasting changes due to implicit learning over previous >> productions. The artificial language learning and iterated artificial >> language learning studies I mentioned in my previous email provide a great >> (though definitely not perfect!) way to study the first possibility and I >> very much hope that researchers with training in linguistics and, in >> particular, typology will have a strong presence in this line of work. >> Crucially, I don't just mean iterated language learning simulations, but >> learning experiments with actual people (or better, actual infants). >> Today, >> we received the reviews on our summary on this line of work from LT, so we >> should soon have the final version with additional references up at the >> address I mentioned in my previous email. >> >> There's also a rather active line of work on language adaptation in adults >> that can be seen as addressing the second possible transmission route. >> Most >> adaptation work has been conduction on perception (there's, of course, a >> long tradition of this work on phonetic perception going back at least >> until >> the late 60s; more recently, we have also started to show that similar >> effects are observed during syntactic processing). However, somewhat >> unsurprisingly to anyone who ever tried to learn another language ;), this >> work has found that changes in perception do not necessarily affect >> production. To the best of my knowledge, there's relatively few studies >> that >> investigate in a controlled way how production changes through exposure. >> Most of them seems to be focused on phonetic production (actually, I'd be >> curious to hear references, if people don't mind sending them to me). Of >> course, there's tons of evidence for syntactic priming - but almost all of >> that has focused on rapid effects, where "long lived" means that the >> effects >> of priming can survive for a few minutes (e.g. Bock and Griffin, 2000; >> Chang >> et al., 2006; Reitter et al., 2011 - searches for these names with the >> keyword "syntactic priming" will give you the relevant references). I >> think >> it's only recently that folks started to look at longer-lasting changes in >> morpho-syntactic productions as a function of exposure. For example, >> Kaschak >> and Glenberg (2004) showed how repeated exposure to novel structures >> (needs >> washed) actually increases the probability that speakers later use the >> structure themselves. These studies do, however, not yet show that there* >> *are >> *functional* biases at work during such adaptive changes to one's >> productions. But maybe readers of this list know of other work (e.g. in >> sociolinguistics) that addresses this question? This is something I am >> very >> much interested in and we have several studies running in the lab that try >> to get at this question. >> >> apologies for the long email. >> >> Florian >> > > From macw at cmu.edu Mon Jul 11 21:03:57 2011 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:03:57 -0400 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <4E1AE2A0.7040503@uoregon.edu> Message-ID: Tom, Esa, and Florian, I'm having some trouble matching up the email commentary on Dunn et al. with the specific findings of that article. They show, for example a really tight linkage of genitive-noun order with adjective-noun order for Indo-European and no such linkage at all for Uto-Aztecan. There are perhaps 10 other lineage specific findings, each of them rather interesting. To explain this, they invoke "lineage-specific processes" which is, of course, just a restatement of the findings. Then they attribute this to "cultural evolution". I have no idea what they might be talking about here. The movement from hunter-gatherer to feudal societies? I totally agree with Florian that psycholinguistic forces may be at play, with Tom that diachronic pathways may be at play, and with Esa that analogy may be at play. But can anyone get a bit more specific? To take a relatively easy one, what is it in Indo-European that links the adjective-noun order to the genitive-noun order. I would guess it is the presence in Indo-European of modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking, right? And I assume that this just doesn't hold in Uto-Aztecan, right? Can any of your folks work out some of this for the less typologically-well-versed of us? They refer specifically to eight lineage-specific dependencies. Can each of these be given similar accounts and when and where do we also need to invoke accounts based on learning, processing, and analogy. -- Brian MacWhinney On Jul 11, 2011, at 7:46 AM, Tom Givon wrote: > > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) functional theories is that they are usually observations about the final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > ================== > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct >> product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional >> and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT >> discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). >> There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more >> directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial >> grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the >> conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. >> Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, >> 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the >> lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology >> (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily >> et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly >> addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not >> quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking >> systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in >> a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I >> submitted to LT (see link below). >> >> This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition >> and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). >> Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being >> explored. >> >> I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's >> processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts >> that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) >> alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information >> transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite >> similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, >> Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, >> http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). >> These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and >> Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and >> Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to >> considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy >> channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. >> relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, >> phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a >> overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, >> http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits >> et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo >> (2011, >> https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) >> for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. >> >> Florian >> >> >> Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper >> contains all references mentioned above: >> >> Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): >> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >> >> Fedzechkina et al (2011): >> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >> >> Tily et al (2011): >> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Tue Jul 12 05:51:16 2011 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:51:16 +0200 Subject: Dunn et al.'s lineage-specific linkages In-Reply-To: <984F184D-0159-466C-9EB3-0ED439F02DD0@cmu.edu> Message-ID: Yes, Brian, you're right: This is the one thing in the paper that seems to be somewhat unexpected. And you're right that one conceivable explanation of such "lineage-specific linkages" is that they are really typological linkages after all (and thus not really not lineage-specific): If a language has noun-like adjectives, it might be expected to treat its adjectives like genitives also for word order. But in reality, a better explanation seems to be language contact: Languages that belong to the same lineage are also usually spoken in geographic vicinity and are thus likely to be in contact with their relatives. In fact it seems that most of the word order changes that can be seen in the Austronesian, Indo-European and Uto-Aztecan data are in fact due to contact influence. Martin Am 7/11/11 11:03 PM, schrieb Brian MacWhinney: > Tom, Esa, and Florian, > > I'm having some trouble matching up the email commentary on Dunn et al. with the specific findings of that article. They show, for example a really tight linkage of genitive-noun order with adjective-noun order for Indo-European and no such linkage at all for Uto-Aztecan. There are perhaps 10 other lineage specific findings, each of them rather interesting. To explain this, they invoke "lineage-specific processes" which is, of course, just a restatement of the findings. Then they attribute this to "cultural evolution". I have no idea what they might be talking about here. The movement from hunter-gatherer to feudal societies? > I totally agree with Florian that psycholinguistic forces may be at play, with Tom that diachronic pathways may be at play, and with Esa that analogy may be at play. But can anyone get a bit more specific? To take a relatively easy one, what is it in Indo-European that links the adjective-noun order to the genitive-noun order. I would guess it is the presence in Indo-European of modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking, right? And I assume that this just doesn't hold in Uto-Aztecan, right? Can any of your folks work out some of this for the less typologically-well-versed of us? They refer specifically to eight lineage-specific dependencies. Can each of these be given similar accounts and when and where do we also need to invoke accounts based on learning, processing, and analogy. > > -- Brian MacWhinney From d.f.lesley-neuman at umail.leidenuniv.nl Tue Jul 12 12:10:55 2011 From: d.f.lesley-neuman at umail.leidenuniv.nl (Diane Lesley-Neuman) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:10:55 +0200 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) (Tom Givon) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In support of Tom's comment, this problem spills into the neglect of phonology in grammaticalization processes. I am actually responding to reviewer's comments for a paper of mine which has been accepted to throw out all of the phonetic detail that point to mechanisms of attrition of phonological material and impact changes in the morphology. -- Diane F. Lesley-Neuman c/o Phonetics Laboratory Leiden University Cleveringaplaats 1 Room 111 2311 RA Leiden The Netherlands Quoting funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu: > Send FUNKNET mailing list submissions to > funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/funknet > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > funknet-owner at mailman.rice.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of FUNKNET digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) (Tom Givon) > 2. Re: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) (Esa Itkonen) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:46:40 -0600 > From: Tom Givon > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: <4E1AE2A0.7040503 at uoregon.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to > reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) > functional theories is that they are usually observations about the > final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that > create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at > how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In > other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact > loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging > structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are > both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" > of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging > structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological > processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would > like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real > challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a > big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > ================== > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct > > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both > functional > > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). > > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of > artificial > > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the > > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, > > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in > the > > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily > > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly > > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not > > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in > > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I > > submitted to LT (see link below). > > > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition > > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). > > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > > explored. > > > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic > accounts > > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information > > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite > > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for > example, > > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > > > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and > > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and > > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a > > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits > > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > > (2011, > > > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > > > Florian > > > > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > > contains all references mentioned above: > > > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > Tily et al (2011): > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:53:35 +0300 > From: Esa Itkonen > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) > To: Tom Givon > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > > Terms like 'harmony' (? la Lehmann) or 'operator-operand [generalization]' (? > la Vennemann) > seem ad hoc and therefore easy to ignore, until one realizes (assuming that > one is savvy enough > to do so) that they are just more or less arbitrary designations for ANALOGY; > and this may well > turn out to be true of 'regularization' as well. In the tradition of von > Humboldt, Whitney, and Paul, > analogy is the single most important force in language. I have tried to prove > this in my 2005 book > 'Analogy as structure and process' (where Lehmann and Vennemann are duly > mentioned > among many, many others). Incidentally, this book was characterized as "the > summa of current > analogy research" by one (clearly very competent) reviewer. Now, important > as it is, analogy does > not of course explain everything, and maybe this is the case with Greenberg > correlations. But one should > never rule it out a priori. This is one lesson that can be safely drawn from > the history of our discipline. > > Esa > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Tom Givon > Date: Monday, July 11, 2011 2:46 pm > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > > > > > I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward > > to > > reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of > > us's) > > functional theories is that they are usually observations about the > > final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) > > that > > create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look > > at > > how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In > > > > other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and > > exact > > loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging > > structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation > > are > > both ad-hoc & post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity > > era" > > of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging > > > > structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological > > processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who > > would > > like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the > > real > > challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior > > are a > > big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG > > > > ================== > > > > On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the > > direct > > > product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both > functional > > > and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT > > > discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in > > detail). > > > There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more > > > directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of > artificial > > > grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' > > (reduce the > > > conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. > > > Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and > Wonnacut, > > > 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian > > universals in the > > > lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology > > > (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, > > b; Tily > > > et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also > directly > > > addressed whether considerations about processing or communication > > (not > > > quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking > > > systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is > > summarized in > > > a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily > > and I > > > submitted to LT (see link below). > > > > > > This line of research is beginning to explore the link between > acquisition > > > and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language > learning). > > > Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being > > > explored. > > > > > > I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's > > > processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic > > accounts > > > that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) > > > alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust > information > > > transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as > > quite > > > similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for > > example, > > > Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, > > > > http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). > > > These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in > > Genzel and > > > Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and > > Levy and > > > Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to > > > considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy > > > channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. > > > relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, > > > phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; > > for a > > > overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, > > > http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but > > Maurits > > > et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo > > > (2011, > > > > https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) > > > for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. > > > > > > Florian > > > > > > > > > Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper > > > contains all references mentioned above: > > > > > > Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): > > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > > > Fedzechkina et al (2011): > > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > > > Tily et al (2011): > > > > http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals > > > > > > > End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 94, Issue 5 > ************************************** > > From tgivon at uoregon.edu Tue Jul 12 12:41:33 2011 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:41:33 -0600 Subject: recent paper (Dunn et al. in Nature) In-Reply-To: <984F184D-0159-466C-9EB3-0ED439F02DD0@cmu.edu> Message-ID: Brian-- My guess would be that in IE the adjectival paradigm was derived from the genitive paradigm, so the original connection was from OV to genitive via VP nominalization, and only then extention from GEN to ADJ by analogy. I cannot speak to all UA languages, but for the one I know well (Ute) the connection of OV to Gnitive via VP nominalization is the same as in IE; but the adjectival paradigm developed through two independent channels, one with the verb 'have' ("(he) who has whiteness"; with 'whiteness' originally probably a concrete noun that has the typical color), and the other directly as a REL-clause without the verb 'have' ("(he) who is big"). And--while Genitives are pre-nominal (like pre-verbal objects), adjectives are post-nominal, like REL clauses. So the position of both GEN and ADJ in the NP is fully predicted from their diachronic source. TG ===================== On 7/11/2011 3:03 PM, Brian MacWhinney wrote: > Tom, Esa, and Florian, > > I'm having some trouble matching up the email commentary on Dunn et al. with the specific findings of that article. They show, for example a really tight linkage of genitive-noun order with adjective-noun order for Indo-European and no such linkage at all for Uto-Aztecan. There are perhaps 10 other lineage specific findings, each of them rather interesting. To explain this, they invoke "lineage-specific processes" which is, of course, just a restatement of the findings. Then they attribute this to "cultural evolution". I have no idea what they might be talking about here. The movement from hunter-gatherer to feudal societies? > I totally agree with Florian that psycholinguistic forces may be at play, with Tom that diachronic pathways may be at play, and with Esa that analogy may be at play. But can anyone get a bit more specific? To take a relatively easy one, what is it in Indo-European that links the adjective-noun order to the genitive-noun order. I would guess it is the presence in Indo-European of modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking, right? And I assume that this just doesn't hold in Uto-Aztecan, right? Can any of your folks work out some of this for the less typologically-well-versed of us? They refer specifically to eight lineage-specific dependencies. Can each of these be given similar accounts and when and where do we also need to invoke accounts based on learning, processing, and analogy. > > -- Brian MacWhinney > > On Jul 11, 2011, at 7:46 AM, Tom Givon wrote: > >> >> I think Florian makes some very good points, and I am looking forward to reading the actual studies he cited. My concern with our (all of us's) functional theories is that they are usually observations about the final (synchronic) product of the protracted diachronic process(es) that create grammatical structures. From my perspective, we need to look at how functional-adaptive factors operate during the process itself. In other words, we need to find a way of studying the mechanisms (and exact loci) where universal principles exert their influence on emerging structures. As we operate now, a lot of our functional observation are both ad-hoc& post-hoc. This of course reminds me of the "iconicity era" of the 1980s, when we were busy observing that the resultant emerging structures were "iconic", but paid no attention to the biological processes via which such iconicity arose. So for those of you who would like to consider themselves "cognitive", this is, to my mind, the real challenge. And obviously, experimental studies of on-line behavior are a big chunk of trying to understand the mechanisms of emergence. TG >> >> ================== >> >> On 7/9/2011 1:47 PM, T. Florian Jaeger wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> I share Martin's view that the hypothesis that 'universals' are the direct >>> product of diachronic pathways is absolutely compatible with both functional >>> and non-functional explanations (by the Croft et al, submitted to LT >>> discusses the Dunn et al paper and what they do and do not show in detail). >>> There is now a growing body of work that investigates this claim more >>> directly by looking at biases operating during the acquisition of artificial >>> grammars. This work has revealed strong biases to 'regularize' (reduce the >>> conditional entropy of morphological or word order alternations, e.g. >>> Hudsan-Kam and Newport, 2005, 2009; Kirby et al. 2008; Smith and Wonnacut, >>> 2010; Gutman, 2011). This work has replicated Greenbergian universals in the >>> lab, although most universals remain untested in this terminology >>> (e.g. Christiansen, 2000; Culbertson and Smolensky, forthcoming a, b; Tily >>> et al., 2011). In addition and more recently, this work has also directly >>> addressed whether considerations about processing or communication (not >>> quite the same) affect the acquisition of word order and case-marking >>> systems (Fedzechkina et al., 2011, forthcoming). This work is summarized in >>> a very short commentary on Dunn et al.'s article that Harry Tily and I >>> submitted to LT (see link below). >>> >>> This line of research is beginning to explore the link between acquisition >>> and diachronic pathways (e.g. via iterated artificial language learning). >>> Both functional and non-functional explanations for changes are being >>> explored. >>> >>> I also wanted to add that, in addition to Dryer's and Hawkins's >>> processing-based accounts, there are now also information theoretic accounts >>> that make predictions about the development of word order (and other) >>> alternations based on considerations about efficient and robust information >>> transfer (cf. Shannon, 1948). These formal accounts can be seen as quite >>> similar to some hypotheses mentioned in your [Tom's] work). See for example, >>> Maurits et al (2010-NIPS, >>> http://www.psychology.adelaide.edu.au/personalpages/staff/amyperfors/papers/mauritsetal10nips-wordorderuid.pdf). >>> These accounts test the predictions of a framework laid out in Genzel and >>> Charniak (2002), Aylett and Turk (2004), Jaeger (2006, 2010) and Levy and >>> Jaeger (2007). In this work, choices in production are linked to >>> considerations about efficient and robust communication through a noisy >>> channel. Most of this work has focused on reduction phenomena (incl. >>> relativizer and complementizers omission, contraction of auxiliaries, >>> phonetic reduction, argument omission, prononominalization, etc.; for a >>> overview and references, see Jaeger, 2010, >>> http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028510000083), but Maurits >>> et al provide the first extension to word order choices (see also Gallo >>> (2011, >>> https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action?itemId=13759&itemFileId=31899) >>> for the same principle at work beyond intra-clausal planning. >>> >>> Florian >>> >>> >>> Links to papers that I have links to are given below. The first paper >>> contains all references mentioned above: >>> >>> Tily and Jaeger (submitted commentary on Dunn et al): >>> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >>> >>> Fedzechkina et al (2011): >>> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >>> >>> Tily et al (2011): >>> http://rochester.academia.edu/tiflo/Papers/674181/Tily_H._and_Jaeger_T.F._submitted._Complementing_quantitative_typology_with_behavioral_approaches_Evidence_for_typological_universals >> > From tiflo at csli.stanford.edu Tue Jul 12 21:45:49 2011 From: tiflo at csli.stanford.edu (T. Florian Jaeger) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:45:49 -0600 Subject: Reply to Tom, Brian, and Martin about Dunn et al Message-ID: Hi Brian, the Dunn et al article is problematic both in terms of the theoretical interpretation (as you pointed out) and in terms of the relation between what they *claim* to test and what they actually test. That latter problem is addressed in detail in Bill's contribution to the LT commentaries (Croft, Bhattacharya, Kleinschmidt, Smith, and Jaeger, to appear). I think you will find that this commentary is helpful in understanding what Dunn et al do and do not show. One thing that follows from that critique of Dunn et al is that we should be cautious to accept the claimed lack of cross-family correlations for many of the features. So, just because Dunn et al find two word order features (e.g. adj-noun, gen-noun) correlate in one language family but not the other, it does not mean that there is actually enough evidence to reject the hypothesis that the correlation is equally strong across language families (Dunn et al do not test this hypothesis even though it is arguably an important test before one rejects the hypothesis that the correlations are identical across language families). Another things (in line with Martin's comment) that we point out in the Croft et al commentary is that Dunn et al did not control for language contact as an explanation for change. This will likely make the observed correlations between different word order features weaker than they would be if language contact was taken into consideration in the model (as language contact adds a source of 'noise' that is unaccounted for by the Dunn et al model). Bill, please correct me if I am misrepresenting the commentary =). I think the point that Tom, Brian and Martin made that language-specific properties addition to those accounted for in the model (e.g. modifier-head number-gender agreement along with fusional case-marking) might affect the likely diachronic development of languages is a great one. If Dunn et al (or, for that matter, anybody) has enormous amounts of data, this shouldn't matter as such differences between languages would get 'averaged out', but given available data, such between-language difference, if unaccounted for, are likely to be a problem for their analysis (again leading to an under-estimation of the stability of whatever biases and processes cause gradient universals). Florian From hallowel at ohio.edu Tue Jul 12 23:28:06 2011 From: hallowel at ohio.edu (Hallowell, Brooke) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:28:06 -0400 Subject: Invitation to the CAPCSD 2012 Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders Message-ID: Dear Colleague: The Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CAPCSD) invites you to the Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD), to be held in Newport Beach, California on Thursday, April 19, 2012. The summit will be a vital component of the CAPCSD annual conference (Wednesday, April 18 through Saturday, Apri1 21, 2012). Please join us! Participants will engage in information exchange on ways to foster international collaboration and experiential opportunities for education and research in CSD as well as foster global networking among CSD academic programs and related professional organizations. A flyer is appended below. Examples of topic areas to be discussed include: * Help for newly developing programs * Funding for international collaborations in teaching, education, and research * Global initiative updates from related professional associations * Resources for accreditation and certification projects * Student and faculty international exchange possibilities in CSD * International grant programs * Study abroad programs with relevance to CSD * Student competency assessments * Strategies for success in integrating international students into CSD academic programs * Admission considerations for international students * Challenges, pitfalls, and successes in international research collaborations * Fostering student and faculty learning about global efforts in CSD There will be just one registration fee for the conference, which will include the Global Summit. Non-member academic program representatives from non-US institutions will be offered a $100 registration discount. The Summit will include panel presentations, small networking groups on topics of common interest, poster and table displays, and opportunities for programs to share content about their current global initiatives. We will be coordinating presentations on topics that will be useful to international program development (see below). We will also enjoy rich networking opportunities and a international welcome banquet and celebration. Registration materials will be available on the CAPCSD web site by December 2011. If you are interested in contributing to the program as a presenter or panelist, please email the CAPCSD Global Outreach Committee at CAPCSDGlobalOurtreach at gmail.com by September 1, 2011 so that we may work to officially invite you as a Summit presenter. Please share this invitation and flyer with colleagues who may be interested. We look forward to seeing you in April 2012! Sincerely, The CAPCSD Global Outreach Committee * Prof. Brooke Hallowell, Ohio University, Chair * Prof. Michael Robb, University of Canterbury * Prof. Loraine Obler, City University of New York * Prof. Linda Louko, University of Iowa * Prof. Nan Bernstein Ratner, University of Maryland Topic themes for the CAPCSD Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders Developing new programs in CSD Help for newly developing programs * Making use of visiting professors and guest lecturers to meet teaching demands as new programs struggle with limited teaching manpower during their development * Incorporating external examiners from more established programs * Sharing of curricula across programs * Meeting new Ph.D. program faculty requirements through creative collaborations * Working with governing bodies and university administration to launch new programs * Developing a clinic with few resources Mutual Recognition Agreements * Sharing information about the Mutual Recognition Agreement between ASHA, CASLPA, RCSLT, IALST and NZSTA, SPA. Funding for international work * Funding for individuals, groups and institutions (through Fulbright, WHO, AID and other organizations) IALP, ASHA, AAA and other related professional association global initiative updates Information sharing about: * Student and faculty international exchange possibilities in CSD * International grant programs * Study abroad programs with relevance to CSD * Student competency assessments (key tools used in non-US programs) * Strategies for success in integrating international students into CSD academic programs * Admission considerations for international students (e.g., 3-year degree undergraduate degrees, addressing intelligibility and writing proficiency) * Challenges, pitfalls, and successes in international research collaborations Resources about accreditation and certification * Facilitating academic program accreditation processes in countries where these are not established * Facilitating clinical certification processes in countries where these are desired Fostering student and faculty learning about global efforts in CSD * Linking with web sites and fostering contributions of content to those sites * Means of promoting global perspectives in CSD curricula * Promoting global public education in CSD COUNCIL OF ACADEMIC PROGRAMS INCOMMUNICATION SCIENCES AND DISORDERS P.O. Box 26532 Minneapolis, MN 55426 (952) 920-0966 Fax: (952) 920-6098 E-Mail: cap at incnet.com Website: www.capcsd.org Please join us Thursday, April 19, 2012 for the Global Summit on Higher Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders In Newport Beach, California, USA Marriott Beach Hotel and Spa The summit will be held on the first full day of the 2012 CAPCSD annual conference.* The goal of the summit is to foster collaboration and information exchange to enhance international education and research in communication sciences and disorders (CSD). Examples of topic areas to be discussed include: * Help for newly developing programs * Funding for international collaborations in teaching, education, and research * Global initiative updates from related professional associations * Resources for accreditation and certification projects * Student and faculty international exchange possibilities in CSD * Study abroad programs with relevance to CSD * Student competency assessments * Strategies for success in integrating international students into CSD academic programs * Admission considerations for international students * Challenges, pitfalls, and successes in international research collaborations * We'll also enjoy rich networking opportunities and an international welcome banquet and celebration. Founded in 1979, the Council represents over 260 academic programs that educate undergraduate and graduate students in CSD. CAPCSD's mission is to: promote quality, accessibility and innovation in communication sciences and disorders in higher education; advance the highest standards in pedagogy, clinical education and research; and facilitate the recruitment, education and retention of faculty and students to meet the public need. Over 2,000 academic, clinical and administrative staff members affiliated with member institutions use their CAPCSD membership to keep ahead of the challenges that face programs, faculty, staff, and students. The Council's vibrant annual conferences enable academic program representatives to share ideas, learn new strategies, network with colleagues who have similar concerns, share solutions, and foster collaboration. We welcome members throughout the world. Your academic program is not required to be a member for you to participate. Non-member academic program representatives from non-US institutions will be offered a registration discount at the 2012 CAPCSD annual conference. For more information, see the Council web site (www.capcsd.org). For inquiries regarding letters of invitation and opportunities to serve as a panelist or presenter, please contact the CAPCSD Global Outreach Committee at capcsdglobalsummit at gmail.com. Updated July 12, 2011 *Dates for the 2012 CAPCSD Annual Conference are Wednesday, April 18 through Saturday, April 21. From alifarghaly at yahoo.com Fri Jul 15 07:26:49 2011 From: alifarghaly at yahoo.com (Ali Farghaly) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:26:49 -0700 Subject: Second Call for Papers Message-ID: **Apologies for cross postings. Please redistribute to other interested parties** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ?????????????????????????? SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS The Seventh Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference (AIRS 2011) ????????????????????????? December 18th -20th, 2011 ???????????????????????? Dubai (United Arab Emirates) ???????????????????????? www.uowdubai.ac.ae/airs2011 ??????????????????????? *NEW SUBMISSION DUE*:? July 27th, 2011 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference (AIRS) aims to bring together researchers and developers to exchange new ideas and latest achievements in the field of information retrieval (IR). The scope of the conference covers applications, systems, technologies and theory aspects of information retrieval in text, audio, image, video, and multimedia data. The AIRS 2011 welcomes submissions of original papers in the broad field of information retrieval. Technical issues covered include, but are not limited to the following: 1. IR Models and Theories 2. User Study, IR Evaluation, and Interactive IR 3. Web IR, Scalability, and Adversarial IR 4. Multimedia IR 5. NLP for IR (eg. Cross-/Multi- Language IR, Question Answering, Summarization, Information Extraction) 6. Machine Learning and Data Mining for IR (eg. Learning to Rank, Classification, Clustering) 7. IR Applications (eg. Digital Libraries, Vertical Search, Mobile IR) 8. Arabic-Script based IR 9. Cross Language IR IMPORTANT DATES * Submission Due: July 27th, 2011 * Notification of acceptance: Sept 1st, 2011 * Camera-ready due: Sept 17th , 2011 * Registration: November 1st, 2011 * AIRS2011: December 18th-20th SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS The AIRS 2011 proceedings will be published as an LNCS volume, so please follow the default author instructions available at http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0 . In addition, please anonymize your paper to facilitate blind reviewing, and make sure your paper is no longer than 12 pages in the LNCS format. Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will be rejected unconditionally. Duplicate submissions (the same paper being submitted to AIRS 2011 and to another conference at the same time) are strictly forbidden; if detected, these submissions will be unconditionally rejected. Program Committee Chair Khaled Shaalan, British University in Dubai khaled.shaalan at buid.ac.ae Conference Co-Chairs Mohamed Val Salem, University of Wollongong in Dubai MohamedSalem at UOWDubai.ac.ae Farhad Oroumchian, University of Wollongong in Dubai FarhadOroumchian at UOWDubai.ac.ae Publicity Chair Asma Damankesh, University of Wollongong in Dubai AsmaDamankesh at UOWDubai.ac.ae Abolfazl AleAhmad, University of Tehran a.aleahmad at ece.ut.ac.ir Publication Chair Kathy Shen, University of Wollongong in Dubai Dr. Azadeh Shakery, University of Tehran AREA CHAIRS Arabic Script text Processing and Retrieval Ali Farghaly, Oracle, USA IR Models and Theories Minjie Zhang, University of Wollongong, Australia Multimedia IR Joemon M Jose, University of Glasgow, UK User Study, IR Evaluation, and Interactive IR Tetsuya Sakai, Microsoft Research Asia Web IR, scalability and adversarial IR Min Zhang, Tsinghua University, China IR Applications Kazunari Sugiyama, National University of Singapore, Singapore Machine learning for IR Tie-Yan Liu, Microsoft Research Asia Natural Language Processing for Information retrieval Chia-Hui Chang, National Central University, Taiwan From ritva.laury at helsinki.fi Wed Jul 20 08:08:23 2011 From: ritva.laury at helsinki.fi (Ritva Laury) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:08:23 +0300 Subject: New book on clause combining Message-ID: I am happy to announce a new book on clause combining, titled Subordination in Conversation. Details can be found at http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=SLSI%202 and below. This volume inaugurates the new series Studies in Language and Social Interaction, edited by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Sandra Thompson. It is the continuation of the series Studies in Discourse and Grammar, also published by Benjamins and edited by Paul Hopper and Sandy Thompson. Ritva Laury New book information JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY www.benjamins.com [SLSI 24] Linguistics Subordination in Conversation A cross-linguistic perspective Edited by Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki University of Helsinki / Keio University The articles in this volume examine the notion of clausal subordination based on English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Japanese conversational data. Some of the articles approach ?subordination? in terms of social action, taking into account what participants are doing with their talk, considering topics such as the use of clauses as projector phrases and as devices for organizing the participant structure of the conversation. Other articles focus on the emergence of clause combinations diachronically and synchronically, taking on topics such as the grammaticalization of clauses and conjunctions into discourse markers, and the continuum nature of syntactic subordination. In all of the articles, linguistic forms are considered to be emergent from recurrent practices engaged in by participants in conversation. The contributions critically examine central syntactic notions in interclausal relations and their relevance to the description of clause combining in conversational language, to the structure of conversation, and to the interactional functions of language. [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 24] 2011. viii, 244 pp. Hb 978 90 272 2634 1 EUR 95.00 E-book 978 90 272 8696 3 EUR 95.00 Table of contents List of contributors Introduction Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki N be that-constructions in everyday German conversation: A reanalysis of ?die Sache ist/das Ding ist? (?the thing is?)-clauses as projector phrases Susanne G?nthner Interrogative ?complements? and question design in Estonian Leelo Keevallik Syntactic and actional characteristics of Finnish ett?-clauses Aino Koivisto, Ritva Laury and Eeva-Leena Sepp?nen Clause-combining and the sequencing of actions: Projector constructions in French talk-in-interaction Simona Pekarek Doehler A note on the emergence of quotative constructions in Japanese conversation Ryoko Suzuki Clines of subordination ? constructions with the German ?complement-taking predicate? glauben Wolfgang Imo Are kara ?because?-clauses causal subordinate clauses in present-day Japanese? Yuko Higashiizumi Teyuuka and I mean as pragmatic parentheticals in Japanese and English Ritva Laury and Shigeko Okamoto Name index Subject index From ritva.laury at helsinki.fi Thu Jul 21 10:22:30 2011 From: ritva.laury at helsinki.fi (Ritva Laury) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:22:30 +0300 Subject: Link to Subordination in Conversation Message-ID: Dear Funknetters, It appears that there is a problem with the link to the new clause combining volume I posted yesterday. Here is the link, again - this time it should work: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=SLSI%2024 Sorry for the confusion. Ritva From dan at daneverett.org Sun Jul 24 15:39:07 2011 From: dan at daneverett.org (Daniel Everett) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:39:07 -0400 Subject: Quantifiers Message-ID: Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the next village over/etc)." Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one "domain-restricted." Is any language known that has only the latter? To put this in a different way, would there be any principle barring the existence of only the restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the absence of the unrestricted? Dan ********************** Daniel L. Everett http://daneverettbooks.com From amnfn at well.com Sun Jul 24 16:03:18 2011 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:03:18 -0700 Subject: Quantifiers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dan, If you've never conceived of any men you have never seen, then by definition you end up with the resttricted set. --Aya On Sun, 24 Jul 2011, Daniel Everett wrote: > Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the next village over/etc)." > > Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one "domain-restricted." > > Is any language known that has only the latter? To put this in a different way, would there be any principle barring the existence of only the restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the absence of the unrestricted? > > Dan > > > ********************** > Daniel L. Everett > > http://daneverettbooks.com > > From dan at daneverett.org Sun Jul 24 16:21:21 2011 From: dan at daneverett.org (Dan Everett) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:21:21 -0400 Subject: Quantifiers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: So we could call that one the Marilyn Monroe quantifier. But I do get your point. Dan Sent from my iPhone On Jul 24, 2011, at 12:03 PM, "A. Katz" wrote: > Dan, > > If you've never conceived of any men you have never seen, then by definition you end up with the resttricted set. > > --Aya > > > > On Sun, 24 Jul 2011, Daniel Everett wrote: > >> Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the next village over/etc)." >> >> Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one "domain-restricted." >> >> Is any language known that has only the latter? To put this in a different way, would there be any principle barring the existence of only the restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the absence of the unrestricted? >> >> Dan >> >> >> ********************** >> Daniel L. Everett >> >> http://daneverettbooks.com >> >> > From dan at daneverett.org Sun Jul 24 21:25:25 2011 From: dan at daneverett.org (Daniel Everett) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:25:25 -0400 Subject: Fwd: Quantifiers Message-ID: Dick and all, Because David posted this to a public forum, I will forward it on to Funknet - because I asked the same question to both Funknet and LingTyp. Note that I am completely aware that quantifiers may take the kinds of restricted readings that I mentioned in the original query. What I was inquiring about was exactly what David responded with - lexical distinctions. All the best, Dan > From: David Gil > Date: July 24, 2011 12:10:12 PM EDT > To: "Everett, Daniel" > Cc: "LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" > Subject: Re: Quantifiers > > Not quite what you're asking for, Dan, but Turkish has two universal > quantifiers, "b?t?n" and "hepsi", whose usage corresponds roughly to > what you're calling "unrestricted" and "domain-restricted" respectively. > > In fact, if you add the feature of distributivity into the mix, you get > a similar (though perhaps not identical) semantic contrast in English, > between "every" and "each". > > One might predict the absence of languages with "domain-restricted" but > no "unrestricted" universal quantifiers on the basis of general > principles of markedness: if "domain-restricted" quantifiers involve > the presence of an additional feature, then one would expect them to > occur only in the presence of their unmarked counterparts lacking said > feature. > > I wrote about this some time back, in > > Gil, David (1991) "Universal Quantifiers: A Typological Study", EUROTYP > Working Papers, Series 7, Number 12, The European Science Foundation, > EUROTYP Programme, Berlin. > > >> Imagine two quantifiers. One can be used to mean "all" in the sense of >> "all men (that anyone could ever imagine)." The other can only be used >> in the sense of "all (those we recognize in our culture/those in the >> next village over/those in the immediate context of discourse/etc)." >> >> Call the first one "unrestricted." Call the second one >> "domain-restricted." >> >> Is any language known that has only the latter? For semanticists, >> would there be any principle barring the existence of only the >> restricted type (whose domain is a subset of the former's) in the >> absence of the unrestricted? >> >> Dan >> >> >> ********************** >> Daniel L. Everett >> >> http://daneverettbooks.com > > > -- > David Gil > > Department of Linguistics > Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology > Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany > > Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550119 > Email: gil at eva.mpg.de > Webpage: http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/ > > From edith at uwm.edu Fri Jul 29 20:29:38 2011 From: edith at uwm.edu (Edith A Moravcsik) Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:29:38 -0500 Subject: Conference on endangered languages In-Reply-To: <1379493913.185642.1311971211120.JavaMail.root@mail12.pantherlink.uwm.edu> Message-ID: The program of our conference titled ?Language death, endangerment, documentation, and revitalization? is now available at the following website: http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/conferences/linguistics2011 Dedicated to the memory of Michael Noonan, the event will be held October 20-22 ?11, Thursday through Saturday, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The program consists of 45 abstract-based papers from various parts of the world and of talks by nine key-note speakers: Daryl Baldwin, Daniel L. Everett, Carol Genetti, Lenore Grenoble, K. David Harrison, Iren Hartmann, Marianne Mithun, Fernando Ramallo, and Sarah Thomason. In addition to the detailed program, the website also provides information about housing and registration. The deadline for pre-registration is September 1 Thursday. Questions? Please e-mail us at: 26thlinguistics-symposium at uwm.edu -- Edith A. Moravcsik Professor Emerita of Linguistics Department of Linguistics University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 USA