From paul at benjamins.com Sat Dec 2 17:46:45 2000 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 12:46:45 EST Subject: New Book: Historical Linguistics: Dworkin/Wanner Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces this new work in Historical Linguistics: New Approaches to Old Problems. Issues in Romance historical linguistics. Steven D. DWORKIN (University of Michigan) and Dieter WANNER (The Ohio State University) (eds.) Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 210 US & Canada: 1 58811 021 4 / USD 79.00 (Hardcover) Rest of world: 90 272 3717 4 / NLG 158.00 (Hardcover) This volume contains revised versions of thirteen of the papers presented at the parasession, "New Solutions to Old Problems: Issues in Romance Historical Linguistics", held as part of the 29th Linguistic Symposium on the Romance Languages (1999). These studies examine specific problems in Romance historical linguistics within the framework of new analytical approaches, many of which represent extensions into the diachronic realm of methodologies and theories originally formulated to explain aspects of synchronic phonology and syntax. Insights afforded by Principles and Parameters, the Minimalist Program, Optimality Theory, grammaticalization theory, and sociohistorical linguistics are used to elucidate such long-standing issues in traditional historical grammar as diphthongization in Hispano-Romance, syncope of intertonic vowels in Hispano- and Gallo-Romane, Romance lenition, the role of analogy in morphological change, word order, infinitival constructions, and the collocation of clitic object pronouns in Old French and Old Spanish. Contributions by: Steven N. Dworkin; Dieter Wanner; Jurgen Klausenburger; Thomas D. Cravens; Dale Hartkemeyer; Glenn A. Martínez; Donald N. Tuten; Mark Davies; Monique Dufresne, Fernande Dupuis & Mireille Tremblay; Andrés Enrique-Arias; Paul Hirschbühler & Marie Labelle; Ken Johnson; Enrique Mallén; France Martineau & Virginia Motapanyane. John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6762325 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Mon Dec 11 16:22:47 2000 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 11:22:47 EST Subject: Q: S-curves Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm posting this query for a colleague who is not on the list. He is interested in the reality, or otherwise, of the S-curves which, according to some sources, linguistic changes typically follow when propagating through a population. He would welcome any references to published or on-line work dealing with this. So far, he has the following references: Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968); Chen (1972); Bailey (1973); Lass (1997); Shen (1997). Any others would be most welcome. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad) Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad) From c.s.cowie at sheffield.ac.uk Thu Dec 14 14:00:45 2000 From: c.s.cowie at sheffield.ac.uk (Claire Cowie) Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:00:45 EST Subject: PhD research studentship at the University of Sheffield Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The following PhD research studentship has been advertised at the University of Sheffield, UK: The emergence of new genres at the end of the twentieth century: innovation and text type in the British National Corpus The project will examine change in genre and the emergence of new genres or text types towards the end of the twentieth century, by analysing stylistic features of texts that can be found in the British National Corpus (BNC). The BNC is a 100 million word collection of tagged electronic texts (1975 - 1994), which includes written and spoken English, from a variety of formal and informal contexts. The discipline of English historical linguistics has become increasingly concerned with text type, due to the way that searchable electronic corpora enable us to quantify the use of features across many texts. Historical corpora have been used to demonstrate how the use of a stylistic feature in a text type can change over time, or how a whole text type can change. These developments have been traced for historical corpora which either cover earlier stages in the language only or cover long stretches of time, not observing the twentieth century in any kind of detail. Research on developments in the English language using the BNC is still relatively new. The aims of the project might be variously interpreted as: - identifying the use and frequency of certain stylistic features in text types of the BNC - providing a description of those text types in terms of an oral/literate dimension - comparing findings for text types in the BNC to descriptions of text types based on historical corpora - providing an account of stylistic change over the 20 year period of the BNC Arrangements for supervision The successful candidate will be a member of the Department of English Language and Linguistics which forms part of the School of English. The project will be jointly supervised by Dr Claire Cowie and Dr Claire Warwick from the department of Information Studies. Dr Cowie works on word-formation and lexical innovation in historical corpora, with particular reference to register differences. Dr Warwick works on humanities computing, with a particular interest in the application of computers to the study of English literature and language. She was previously part of the BNC project team. More information about the departments may be found at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/D-H/ell and http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is. Requirements Applications are sought from candidates with a linguistics background at undergraduate or master's level. Knowledge of subjects such as stylistics, corpora, register studies, discourse analysis, text analysis, retrieval and markup is desirable, but in-depth knowledge of all areas is not compulsory, and any necessary training will be provided. The precise areas studied and approach taken to the investigation is negotiable depending on the successful candidate's particular interests and capabilities. The studentship is restricted to applicants from the EU. The deadline for submitting applications is the 31st of January 2001. Application forms and further details can be obtained from: Fozia Yasmin, Graduate Research Office Graduate Research Office 156 Broomspring Lane Sheffield S10 2FE Tel: +44 (0) 114 222 1404 Fax: +44 (0) 114 222 1420 Email : grad.school at sheffield.ac.uk To discuss the project informally, please contact Claire Cowie (0114 2220217- c.s.cowie at sheffield.ac.uk) or Claire Warwick (0114 222 2632 - c.warwick at sheffield.ac.uk). From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Dec 15 15:21:23 2000 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 10:21:23 EST Subject: Sum: S-curves Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A few days ago, I posted a query on S-curves for a colleague who is not on the list. I've received a number of very helpful replies, which I've passed on to him. Here is a list of the further publications provided by the respondents. Aitchison, Jean. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay?, 3rd ed. CUP. Esp. pp. 91-96, 107-110. Altmann, G. et al. 1983. 'A law of change in language'. In B. Brainerd (ed.), Historical Linguistics. Bochum: Brockmeyer. pp. 104-115. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Longman. Esp. pp. 183-190. Denison, David. 1999. 'Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow: the dance of language change'. In Ana Bringas Lopez et al. (eds), Woonderous AEnglissce. SELIM studies in medieval English language. Universidade de Vigo (Servicio de Publicacions), Vigo. pp. 51-64. Frisch, Stefan. 1997. 'The change in negation in Middle English: a NEGP licensing account'. Lingua 101: 21-64. Kroch, Anthony. 1989. 'Function and grammar in the history of English: periphrastic _do_'. In R. W. Fasold and D. Schiffrin (eds), Language Change and Variation. John Benjamins. pp. 133-172. --- 1989. 'Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change'. Language Variation and Change 1: 199-244. Kroch, Anthony, Susan Pintzuk and John Myhill. 1982. 'Understanding _do_'. CLS 18, K. Tuite et al. (eds). pp. 282-294. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. I: Internal Factors. Blackwell. p. 65 ff. Niyogi, P. and R. Berwick. 1997. 'A dynamical systems model of language change'. Linguistics and Philosophy. Stein, Dieter. 1990. The Semantics of Syntactic Change: Aspects of the Evolution of DO in English. Mouton de Gruyter. Esp. ch. 9. Several of these contain references to further work. My thanks to Jean Aitchison, Cynthia Allen, David Denison, David Lightfoot, Benjamin Slade, and Dieter Stein. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad) Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad) From Malcolm.Ross at anu.edu.au Mon Dec 18 11:56:30 2000 From: Malcolm.Ross at anu.edu.au (Malcolm Ross) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 06:56:30 EST Subject: New publication on Polynesian historical linguistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- PACIFIC LINGUISTICS is happy to announce the publication of the work described below. Prices are in Australian dollars (one Australian dollar is currently equivalent to about US$ 0,55.). Orders may be placed by mail, e-mail or telephone with: The Publications Administrator Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel: +61 (0)2 6249 2742 Fax: +61 (0)2 6249 4896 mailto://jmanley at coombs.anu.edu.au Credit card orders are accepted. For our catalogue and other materials, see: http://pacling.anu.edu.au (under construction) _______________________________________________________________ Topics in Polynesian Language and Culture History Jeff Marck PL 504 The present volume first reexamines Polynesian language subgrouping from the point of view of shared sporadic sound changes. The main conclusion of those chapters is to support Bill Wilson's idea that East Polynesian languages might be most closely related to the languages of Tuvalu northwest of Samoa, along with the "Ellicean" Outliers. Later chapters cover cosmogony and kin terms for the various Polynesian subgroups, traditional interests of culture historians that were not much investigated prior to the work of this thesis. The volume ends with a discussion of how language and ethnicity transformed over time in early Western Polynesia, both becoming more focused on particular island groups at about the time population pressures were first being felt in the larger island groups (Samoa and Tonga). 2000 ISBN 0 85883 468 5 281 + xxi pp. AUS $59.95 ($54.50 international) Weight 600g _______________________________________________________________ From rwmurray at ucalgary.ca Fri Dec 22 21:13:51 2000 From: rwmurray at ucalgary.ca (Robert W. Murray) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:13:51 EST Subject: Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC-7): Last Call for Papers Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Seventh Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC-7) will take place at the Banff Conference Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada, April 21-23, 2001. Abstract deadline: 5 January 2001. Contacts: GLAC-7 Homepage: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~glac7/glac7.html email: glac7 at ucalgary.ca Organizers: Robert Murray & Amanda Pounder, University of Calgary From paul at benjamins.com Sat Dec 2 17:46:45 2000 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 12:46:45 EST Subject: New Book: Historical Linguistics: Dworkin/Wanner Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces this new work in Historical Linguistics: New Approaches to Old Problems. Issues in Romance historical linguistics. Steven D. DWORKIN (University of Michigan) and Dieter WANNER (The Ohio State University) (eds.) Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 210 US & Canada: 1 58811 021 4 / USD 79.00 (Hardcover) Rest of world: 90 272 3717 4 / NLG 158.00 (Hardcover) This volume contains revised versions of thirteen of the papers presented at the parasession, "New Solutions to Old Problems: Issues in Romance Historical Linguistics", held as part of the 29th Linguistic Symposium on the Romance Languages (1999). These studies examine specific problems in Romance historical linguistics within the framework of new analytical approaches, many of which represent extensions into the diachronic realm of methodologies and theories originally formulated to explain aspects of synchronic phonology and syntax. Insights afforded by Principles and Parameters, the Minimalist Program, Optimality Theory, grammaticalization theory, and sociohistorical linguistics are used to elucidate such long-standing issues in traditional historical grammar as diphthongization in Hispano-Romance, syncope of intertonic vowels in Hispano- and Gallo-Romane, Romance lenition, the role of analogy in morphological change, word order, infinitival constructions, and the collocation of clitic object pronouns in Old French and Old Spanish. Contributions by: Steven N. Dworkin; Dieter Wanner; Jurgen Klausenburger; Thomas D. Cravens; Dale Hartkemeyer; Glenn A. Mart?nez; Donald N. Tuten; Mark Davies; Monique Dufresne, Fernande Dupuis & Mireille Tremblay; Andr?s Enrique-Arias; Paul Hirschb?hler & Marie Labelle; Ken Johnson; Enrique Mall?n; France Martineau & Virginia Motapanyane. John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6762325 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Mon Dec 11 16:22:47 2000 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 11:22:47 EST Subject: Q: S-curves Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm posting this query for a colleague who is not on the list. He is interested in the reality, or otherwise, of the S-curves which, according to some sources, linguistic changes typically follow when propagating through a population. He would welcome any references to published or on-line work dealing with this. So far, he has the following references: Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968); Chen (1972); Bailey (1973); Lass (1997); Shen (1997). Any others would be most welcome. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad) Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad) From c.s.cowie at sheffield.ac.uk Thu Dec 14 14:00:45 2000 From: c.s.cowie at sheffield.ac.uk (Claire Cowie) Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:00:45 EST Subject: PhD research studentship at the University of Sheffield Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The following PhD research studentship has been advertised at the University of Sheffield, UK: The emergence of new genres at the end of the twentieth century: innovation and text type in the British National Corpus The project will examine change in genre and the emergence of new genres or text types towards the end of the twentieth century, by analysing stylistic features of texts that can be found in the British National Corpus (BNC). The BNC is a 100 million word collection of tagged electronic texts (1975 - 1994), which includes written and spoken English, from a variety of formal and informal contexts. The discipline of English historical linguistics has become increasingly concerned with text type, due to the way that searchable electronic corpora enable us to quantify the use of features across many texts. Historical corpora have been used to demonstrate how the use of a stylistic feature in a text type can change over time, or how a whole text type can change. These developments have been traced for historical corpora which either cover earlier stages in the language only or cover long stretches of time, not observing the twentieth century in any kind of detail. Research on developments in the English language using the BNC is still relatively new. The aims of the project might be variously interpreted as: - identifying the use and frequency of certain stylistic features in text types of the BNC - providing a description of those text types in terms of an oral/literate dimension - comparing findings for text types in the BNC to descriptions of text types based on historical corpora - providing an account of stylistic change over the 20 year period of the BNC Arrangements for supervision The successful candidate will be a member of the Department of English Language and Linguistics which forms part of the School of English. The project will be jointly supervised by Dr Claire Cowie and Dr Claire Warwick from the department of Information Studies. Dr Cowie works on word-formation and lexical innovation in historical corpora, with particular reference to register differences. Dr Warwick works on humanities computing, with a particular interest in the application of computers to the study of English literature and language. She was previously part of the BNC project team. More information about the departments may be found at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/D-H/ell and http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is. Requirements Applications are sought from candidates with a linguistics background at undergraduate or master's level. Knowledge of subjects such as stylistics, corpora, register studies, discourse analysis, text analysis, retrieval and markup is desirable, but in-depth knowledge of all areas is not compulsory, and any necessary training will be provided. The precise areas studied and approach taken to the investigation is negotiable depending on the successful candidate's particular interests and capabilities. The studentship is restricted to applicants from the EU. The deadline for submitting applications is the 31st of January 2001. Application forms and further details can be obtained from: Fozia Yasmin, Graduate Research Office Graduate Research Office 156 Broomspring Lane Sheffield S10 2FE Tel: +44 (0) 114 222 1404 Fax: +44 (0) 114 222 1420 Email : grad.school at sheffield.ac.uk To discuss the project informally, please contact Claire Cowie (0114 2220217- c.s.cowie at sheffield.ac.uk) or Claire Warwick (0114 222 2632 - c.warwick at sheffield.ac.uk). From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Dec 15 15:21:23 2000 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 10:21:23 EST Subject: Sum: S-curves Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A few days ago, I posted a query on S-curves for a colleague who is not on the list. I've received a number of very helpful replies, which I've passed on to him. Here is a list of the further publications provided by the respondents. Aitchison, Jean. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay?, 3rd ed. CUP. Esp. pp. 91-96, 107-110. Altmann, G. et al. 1983. 'A law of change in language'. In B. Brainerd (ed.), Historical Linguistics. Bochum: Brockmeyer. pp. 104-115. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Longman. Esp. pp. 183-190. Denison, David. 1999. 'Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow: the dance of language change'. In Ana Bringas Lopez et al. (eds), Woonderous AEnglissce. SELIM studies in medieval English language. Universidade de Vigo (Servicio de Publicacions), Vigo. pp. 51-64. Frisch, Stefan. 1997. 'The change in negation in Middle English: a NEGP licensing account'. Lingua 101: 21-64. Kroch, Anthony. 1989. 'Function and grammar in the history of English: periphrastic _do_'. In R. W. Fasold and D. Schiffrin (eds), Language Change and Variation. John Benjamins. pp. 133-172. --- 1989. 'Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change'. Language Variation and Change 1: 199-244. Kroch, Anthony, Susan Pintzuk and John Myhill. 1982. 'Understanding _do_'. CLS 18, K. Tuite et al. (eds). pp. 282-294. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. I: Internal Factors. Blackwell. p. 65 ff. Niyogi, P. and R. Berwick. 1997. 'A dynamical systems model of language change'. Linguistics and Philosophy. Stein, Dieter. 1990. The Semantics of Syntactic Change: Aspects of the Evolution of DO in English. Mouton de Gruyter. Esp. ch. 9. Several of these contain references to further work. My thanks to Jean Aitchison, Cynthia Allen, David Denison, David Lightfoot, Benjamin Slade, and Dieter Stein. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad) Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad) From Malcolm.Ross at anu.edu.au Mon Dec 18 11:56:30 2000 From: Malcolm.Ross at anu.edu.au (Malcolm Ross) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 06:56:30 EST Subject: New publication on Polynesian historical linguistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- PACIFIC LINGUISTICS is happy to announce the publication of the work described below. Prices are in Australian dollars (one Australian dollar is currently equivalent to about US$ 0,55.). Orders may be placed by mail, e-mail or telephone with: The Publications Administrator Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel: +61 (0)2 6249 2742 Fax: +61 (0)2 6249 4896 mailto://jmanley at coombs.anu.edu.au Credit card orders are accepted. For our catalogue and other materials, see: http://pacling.anu.edu.au (under construction) _______________________________________________________________ Topics in Polynesian Language and Culture History Jeff Marck PL 504 The present volume first reexamines Polynesian language subgrouping from the point of view of shared sporadic sound changes. The main conclusion of those chapters is to support Bill Wilson's idea that East Polynesian languages might be most closely related to the languages of Tuvalu northwest of Samoa, along with the "Ellicean" Outliers. Later chapters cover cosmogony and kin terms for the various Polynesian subgroups, traditional interests of culture historians that were not much investigated prior to the work of this thesis. The volume ends with a discussion of how language and ethnicity transformed over time in early Western Polynesia, both becoming more focused on particular island groups at about the time population pressures were first being felt in the larger island groups (Samoa and Tonga). 2000 ISBN 0 85883 468 5 281 + xxi pp. AUS $59.95 ($54.50 international) Weight 600g _______________________________________________________________ From rwmurray at ucalgary.ca Fri Dec 22 21:13:51 2000 From: rwmurray at ucalgary.ca (Robert W. Murray) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:13:51 EST Subject: Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC-7): Last Call for Papers Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Seventh Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC-7) will take place at the Banff Conference Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada, April 21-23, 2001. Abstract deadline: 5 January 2001. Contacts: GLAC-7 Homepage: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~glac7/glac7.html email: glac7 at ucalgary.ca Organizers: Robert Murray & Amanda Pounder, University of Calgary