From pszioga at coyote.csusm.edu Tue Dec 8 07:22:05 1998 From: pszioga at coyote.csusm.edu (Patricia Schneider-Zioga) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 23:22:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: Epilepsy and language delay Message-ID: I wonder if anyone could help me with some information. My 31 mo. old nephew has recently been diagnosed with epilepsy. His productive language is very low (he failed all the productive language tests they gave him) but his receptive language is very good. The neurologists said that the seizures are all "trying to come from the left temporal lobe." My first question is can anyone help us with literature or other information? (My nephew and his mom live in St. Paul Minnesota.) I also have a question about why his productive langauge should be so affected but not his receptive language. I'd guess that seizures in the left temporal lobe mean Wernicke's area- not Broca's area. In terms of productive language, until my nephew was put on medication (dilantin initially) he could barely make syllable-like sounds. Although occasionally he would say whole words and then never repeat them- he could never spontanteously repeat except for the sound /a/ while singing. He never babbled. (It was impossible to break down my sister's denial that he had a problem with his language acquisition until he had fall-down seizures). Within hours of being on dilantin, he was babbling and making syllable like sounds. (Before that, his vocalizations sounded like grunting.) He still often cannot spontaneously imitate what other people say, but sometimes he can. Within 3 weeks he has started to say the word "yellow" and "I want that (=dat)" "that (=dat)" and all sorts of vocalizations with the sound /o/ in them. As well as /no/ for "no" and "yeah" for "yes" and da-da for goodbye. The language intervention team wants to teach him sign (I'm not sure if they mean ASL or exact signed English or something similar) as well as work on his english. Do you have any thoughts on this course of intervention? Any help you could give us would be deeply appreciated. Sincerely, Patricia Schneider-Zioga From jr111 at cus.cam.ac.uk Tue Dec 8 12:20:31 1998 From: jr111 at cus.cam.ac.uk (James Russell) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:20:31 +0000 Subject: Minimalism Message-ID: I vaguely remember hearing about a paper on Chomksy's Minimalist theory arguing that the theory is so 'minimalist' that it could be taken as covering non-linguistic as well as linguistic competence. Does anybody know of such as paper? Or is it yet another folk myth. Thanks. James Russell Experimental Psychology Cambridge, UK From steve at psyche.mit.edu Tue Dec 8 16:44:23 1998 From: steve at psyche.mit.edu (Steve Pinker) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 11:44:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: Any response to a dual-mechanism approach? Message-ID: Liz Bates's examples lead me to think that I wasn't sufficiently clear in the previous posting about the relationship between the lexicon and grammar. There are *two* distinctions here: (a) memorized versus composed (versus connectionist-like analogy), and (b) level of representation: root versus complex word versus phrase. The 30-year-old idea that Bates refers to is that these used to be collapsed into a single distinction: words are stored, phrases are composed. Indeed, that must be rejected, because there are structures of all kinds that must be stored. For example, the lexicon might contain entries such as these (lots of notations possible): die: VP angry: VP devour: VP duck: N / \ / \ /\ | V NP V PP V NP duck | /\ | /\ | kick the bucket mad at NP devour This embraces the continuum of structures from roots to phrases (or constructions) that Bates referred to. BUT: That is independent of the second sense of the grammar-lexicon distinction, namely lookup versus computation (composition, unification, etc.); that is, the difference between the two psychological processes below (again, simplified): (1) die: VP / \ V NP --> "kick the bucket" | /\ kick the bucket (2) kick: VP duck: N / \ + | --> "kick the duck" V NP duck | kick This distinction is largely indpendent of the first one. Theoretical linguists don't talk about the composition process, because they treat it as a black box, to be studied by the computational linguists and psycholinguists. But the theory of language as a whole still needs it. --Steve Pinker From ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl Tue Dec 8 20:03:18 1998 From: ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl (Magdalena Smoczynska) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:03:18 GMT+1 Subject: NATSASHA & ANTON - GOOD NEWS!!! Message-ID: Dear Colleagues! I am happy to give you some very good news about Anton Gagarin. Yesterday, after the most recent bone marrow test was performed the doctors have declared that the child is in remission. They will continue the chemotherapy for quite a long time to make sure that all the bad cells are killed, but they are rather optimistic. For the time being they do not think that a bone marrow transplantation would be necessary, but of course this can change. Another good news is that the insurance company by which Natasha is insured agreed to take over the costs of Anton's treatment. This means that WE STOP THE ACTION OF COLLECTING MONEY. We hope we would not have to start it again. Whatever money is left from what has been collected so far will be kept to be used for Anton in case some extra need arises or to cover his further treatment next year, after his German insurance expires. I want to tell you that the donations you made, whether large or small, were of crucial importance and have contributed to secure the financing of Anton's treatment at this extremely difficult transitional stage. I think that we really helped this little lad to have a better chance to live. We also supported our colleague who was having a very difficult time. God bless you all! I would like to especially thank those of you who acted as local organizers of help actions and who spent their time to help Anton. To give you just a few names: Wolfgang Dressler, Sabine Klamfper, Sylvia Moesmueller from Vienna, Austria; Giuseppe Capelli from Pisa, Italy; Ann Lindvall from Lund, Sweden; Camilla Wide from Helsinki, Finland; Kirsten Meyer Bjerkan from Oslo, Norway; Barbara Zurer Pearson from Amherst (U. Massachusetts) US; Wayles E. Browne from Ithaca (Cornell U.), US... There are other people whose help was really crucial at different stages of the entire help action: without Wolfgang Dressler, Wolfgang Klein and Dagmar Bittner all this could not be organized. I am afraid I still forgot somebody... Some of these people are Natasha's personal friends and colleagues. But some of them NEVER MET HER (like Barbara Pearson!) They are to be admired and thanked for their generosity and solidarity. Many other people not only made donations but looked for information, contacted organizations and so on... Thank you all! Barbara Pearson will circulate her report about money collection in America. Those of you who forwarded my appeal for help to other lists and groups of people or made your own appeals, please make other people know these good news and call off the action of money collection. I hope to finally get Natasha's and Anton's photos on my home page http://www.filg.uj.edu.pl/~ulsmoczy/ They are not yet there, but they will be there. I promise. HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU! IT IS COMING. Magdalena Smoczynska Appended is the list of people who have contacted me about Anton, money donations etc. since the last circular was posted From: Ekaterina Protassova From: Evalda Jakaitiene From: Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk From: Giuseppe Cappelli From: Ann Lindvall From: Stefanie Geldbach From: Ralf From: Stella Ceytlin From: Barbara Mueller From: Ursula Doleschal From: Ann Lindvall From: LHFarmer at aol.com From: Dagmar Bittner From: Pawel Wojcik From: Elzbieta Tabakowska From: Ineta Savickiene From: Wim van Dommelen From: Vladimir Garistov From: Shanley Allen From: Chris Sinha From: Marianne Kilani-Schoch From: Alexander Brock From: Barbara Zurer Pearson From: Dorit Ravid From: Edy Veneziano From: Onederra Olaizola L. From: Michal Legierski From: Esther Dromi From: Hans Goetzsche From: Antonio Raschi From: E. Wayles Browne From: Vladimir Garistov From: Joachim Grabowski From: Sigrid Adam doc. dr hab. Magdalena Smoczynska Katedra Jezykoznawstwa Ogolnego i Indoeuropejskiego UJ Dept. of General and Indoeuropean Linguistics Jagiellonian University Al. Mickiewicza 9/11 31-120 Krakow, Poland tel. +(48) (12) 6336377 ext. 302 fax. +(48) (12) 4226793 home +(48) (12) 6341037 From ping at cogsci.richmond.edu Tue Dec 8 19:59:38 1998 From: ping at cogsci.richmond.edu (Ping Li) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:59:38 -0500 Subject: Any response to a dual-mechanism approach? Message-ID: Steve Pinker's message seems to suggest that "the second sense of the grammar-lexicon distinction" corresponds to two distinct psychological processes: lookup vs. computation/composition. Thus, "kick the bucket" has to be looked up, while "kick the duck" has to be composed. But even here things are not clearcut. Take derivational morphology as an example. Linguists would consider "untie", "undress, "unfasten" etc as to-be-looked-up items (i.e., distinct from "tie", "dress", "fasten" etc), in contrast to "tied" "dressed", and "fastened" as inflected forms of the corresponding roots. It is doubtful, however, that English speakers always "look up" the un-words in their mental dictionary, given that "un-" is a productive device that can be used to compose novel items on the spot: "he invited me but then UNINVITED me for some silly reasons". Look-up vs. composition might simply lie on a continuum of things: untie -- ... (e.g., untighten?)... -- uninvite. Sincerely Ping Li *********************************************************************** Ping Li, PhD. Email: ping at cogsci.richmond.edu Department of Psychology http://www.richmond.edu/~pli/ University of Richmond Phone: (804) 289-8125 (office) Richmond, VA 23173 (804) 287-6039 (lab) *********************************************************************** >Liz Bates's examples lead me to think that I wasn't sufficiently clear >in the previous posting about the relationship between the lexicon and >grammar. There are *two* distinctions here: (a) memorized versus >composed (versus connectionist-like analogy), and (b) level of >representation: root versus complex word versus phrase. The >30-year-old idea that Bates refers to is that these used to be >collapsed into a single distinction: words are stored, phrases are >composed. Indeed, that must be rejected, because there are structures of all >kinds that must be stored. For example, the lexicon might contain >entries such as these (lots of notations possible): > >die: VP angry: VP devour: VP duck: N > / \ / \ /\ | > V NP V PP V NP duck > | /\ | /\ | > kick the bucket mad at NP devour > >This embraces the continuum of structures from roots to phrases (or >constructions) that Bates referred to. BUT: That is independent of >the second sense of the grammar-lexicon distinction, namely lookup >versus computation (composition, unification, etc.); that is, the >difference between the two psychological processes below (again, >simplified): > >(1) > >die: VP > / \ > V NP --> "kick the bucket" > | /\ > kick the bucket > >(2) > >kick: VP duck: N > / \ + | --> "kick the duck" > V NP duck > | > kick > >This distinction is largely indpendent of the first one. Theoretical >linguists don't talk about the composition process, because they treat >it as a black box, to be studied by the computational linguists and >psycholinguists. But the theory of language as a whole still needs it. > >--Steve Pinker From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue Dec 8 21:18:28 1998 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:18:28 +0000 Subject: cross-linguistic studies of polysemy? Message-ID: I am sorry to ask what may sound like a foolish question; but with some of the threads that have come up, I thought perhaps someone would know the answer: Is there any readily-available, up-to-date information on the relative extent of polysemy in different languages? In particular, is polysemy more extensive in English than in some other languages, as has been suggested to me? Ann Dowker From snehab at utdallas.edu Tue Dec 8 23:30:50 1998 From: snehab at utdallas.edu (Sneha V Bharadwaj) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:30:50 -0600 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language approach"? Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance to all your replies -Sneha Bharadwaj. From kokuda at ue.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp Wed Dec 9 00:38:00 1998 From: kokuda at ue.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp (Kunio Okuda) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 09:38:00 +0900 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Sneha, Our answer to your question is 'sooner the better'. We started one-parent one-language approach when our daughter was eight months old and she is now 12;7. She is truely bilingual and biliteral in both Japanese and English. She has just passed an English proficiency test at the pre-first level. Only about 8 percent of examinees can pass the test at that level, and most of them are English teachers and college students. Our daughter is in the sixth grade of an elementary school in Japan. She reads a lot and writes a lot in the two languages. Kunio and Hisako Okuda At 5:30 PM 98.12.8, Sneha V Bharadwaj wrote: > I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me > following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW > BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language > approach"? > Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance > to all your replies > -Sneha Bharadwaj. ....................................................................................................... Kunio Okuda, Ph.D. Dept. of Teaching Japanese as a Second Language School of Education, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima City, JAPAN 739-8523 Phone: 0824-24-6863 /Fax: 0824-22-7134 (Office) Phone/Fax: 082-878-1553 (Home) From Susanne.Dopke at arts.monash.edu.au Wed Dec 9 00:49:14 1998 From: Susanne.Dopke at arts.monash.edu.au (Susanne.Dopke at arts.monash.edu.au) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:49:14 +1100 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Sneha, Being a parent who is bringing up her children bilingually and a researcher in this area with lots of contact with bilingual families I strongly recommend to start at birth. In many ways, our social relationships are defined through the language we are using with others. This is also true when talking to our children, both for ourselves and for our children. Thus while birth marks the starting point of our relationship with our natural children, other first-contact points are just as suitable, for example a newly developing step-parent relationship or the first contact with grand children, the new nanny, etc. It is very difficult for an adult to change the language later on and nearly impossible to get children to do so (although I do know of a few successful cases, and I am encouraging parents with a range of strategies if they want to give it a go). For the later starts, the same pricipal rule applies, the least obsticles. The biggest problem with children not acquiring the parent's language in spite of all good intentions is parents' inconsistent language choice. For more detailed deliberations of this topic you might want to have a look at a recent paper of mine: Susanne Dopke (1998) "Can the principle of 'one parent-one language' be disregarded as unrealistically elitist? Applied Linguistic Review of Australia 21(1): 41-59 Susanne Dopke ===================== Susanne Dopke Linguistics Monash University Clayton Vic 3168 Australia Ph +61-3-99052298 Fax +61-3-99052294 home e-mail: sdrw at ozemail.com.au From tbushey at d.umn.edu Wed Dec 9 01:45:50 1998 From: tbushey at d.umn.edu (Tahirih Bushey) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:45:50 -0600 Subject: Epilepsy and language delay Message-ID: Hi Pat, I am a speech/language pathologist at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. I am sorry to hear about your nephew and know that it is a very emotionally trying process to go through with a child that you love. I have worked for many years with preschool children in the area of language disorders . A very high percentage of the children that I have worked with through the years have had seizures disorders. Recent conferences that I have attended in which neurologists have presented, lead me to believe that many more of the children I have treated have had seizures than were identified, as many have seizures only in deep sleep. All children who have significant langauge disorders are at higher risk for having or developing seizure disorders. It is lucky that your nephew was diagnosed so early, since many are not. It is a very reasonable intervention to introduce sign language to your nephew. It does not matter what form of sign languge because he will not be signing for life, but sign language is easier to teach and learn and helps children cope with the arduous process of learning verbal skills which takes a long time for some children. When my husband and I adopted a two year old East Indian child, we taught her some basic signs right away to help her and us with the language transition. Any form of communication that your nephew can effectively use will reduce his frustration with communication and help him develop an understanding of the reciprical process of communication. Augmenting his skills with any form of communication will also facilitate verbal skills, not inhibit the development of verbal skills, which is what many parents worry will happen. All forms of expressive communication, including the use of pictures, talking picture frames (like from radio shack), informal gestures and even exagerated facial expression can be used to help this little guy express himself. Good Luck. Tahirih Bushey ______________________________________________________________ IMPORTANT: Make sure you go to 'Preferences' in the File menu and change 'Type Your Name Here' to your real name. Until you do, all email you send will look like it comes from someone named 'Type Your Name Here'. To replace this default signature with your own personal information: - pull down the File menu - choose 'Preferences' - click the 'Outgoing' tab at the top - click the 'Signature' button and edit this text From labraham at unm.edu Wed Dec 9 02:34:42 1998 From: labraham at unm.edu (Lee Abraham) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:34:42 -0700 Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS The High Desert Linguistics Society 2nd Student Conference in Linguistics (HDLS-2) March 26-27, 1999 University of New Mexico Albuquerque KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Sandra Thompson We invite papers from all areas of linguistics, but special consideration will be given to the following specific areas of inquiry: Form and Function Language Change and Grammaticization Discourse Analysis Native American Linguistics Sign Language Linguistics Computational Linguistics Sociolinguistics & Language Planning ABSTRACTS for 20-minutes papers may be a maximum of one page. At the top of the abstract (if by e-mail) or on a separate page (if on paper), please include: title of paper author name(s) and affiliation(s) topic area (from the list above or whatever seems appropriate) e-mail address paper mailing address SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Abstracts must be received by Jan. 22, 1999. WHERE TO SUBMIT: Abstracts for 20-minute papers should be e-mailed in ascii, Word, or Word Perfect form to: . Please use "Abstract" as your subject header. If you are submitting more than one abstract, please e-mail each separately. If you prefer to use regular mail, send two copies of your abstract to: HDLS-2 Abstracts University of New Mexico Humanities 526 Albuquerque, NM 87131 INQUIRIES: For more information, visit the conference web site forthcoming in December at . e-mail inquiries: hdls at unm.edu The proceedings of the conference will be published. From vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be Wed Dec 9 09:42:37 1998 From: vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be (Annick.DeHouwer) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:42:37 +0100 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Sneha, In response to your query I can give you the following response, based on my research experience with young bilingual children, my parental experience as the mother of a bilingual child, and my familiarity with bilingual families. Definitive answers, though, are not really possible, I think, and ultimately people must decide for themselves - but it's our duty/responsibility as 'experts' to offer information that might help people to decide, I think. First - the question "At what age do we expose two languages to the new born?" assumes that there is a CHOICE possible. For parents who both fluently speak two or more languages and are used to using all of these languages on a pseudo-daily basis, there might indeed be a choice, in the sense that they could opt for NOT using a particular language with their child. If they feel that this is the most 'natural' for them, and will cover their child's communicative needs for many years to come, both inside and outside the family, then indeed they could restrict the number of languages that their child hears from them. On the other hand, if it is more natural for them to use more than one language in the home, then I see no reason not to continue doing so after the birth of a baby. Although there are to my knowledge no studies that investigate the effects of bilingual exposure from birth versus second language exposure starting at a later age (say age 2 or 3) on school success, there are quite a number of reports on the many difficulties that children may go through when at age 3 or 4 they have to learn a second language at school because it is not the home language. It is a distinct advantage if the child knows the school language before entering school. Thus, children raised bilingually from birth where one of their languages is the future school language have a better deal than children who are raised in a language (or two languages) that is (are) not the school language. This does not mean, of course, that some monolingual children may pick up a second language at school very fast and do quite well, nor that there are no children bilingual from birth who have problems at school! But given the chance I would once again (as happened for my daughter) raise my own children with two languages right from the start - from birth. Then there is the question of the age at which the one-parent/one-language approach should be 'seriously considered'. My response to this is twofold: first, there is no evidence to date that the one person/one language approach is a fail-safe 'method' for raising children bilingually. Other approaches where both parents address their child in two languages (depending on perceptible situational and contextual factors) seem to work fine as well. Many parents feel the one person, one language approach to be quite unnatural, whereas others wouldn't be able to use other approaches. As long as children have frequent, regular and continued exposure in two languages they will learn both (given otherwise 'normal' development of course). Secondly, it is NOT wise to change approaches midstream with children under age 6. Here I feel quite strongly that if parents make particular choices they should stick to them. A bilingual situation makes quite clear just how strongly language is tied up with emotion and identity, whether self-perceived or ascribed, and for a young 3 year-old to have her mother stop using a particular language and start using another could be quite a traumatic experience and symbolize an emotional rejection, even if it's not intended by the mother that way. Bilingual families can get more information through the Bilingual Family Newsletter published by Multilingual Matters in Clevedon, Avon, Great Britain. There are also several books available. I refer to these in a brief article written for a general audience that just appeared in AILA NEWS, the newsletter of the Association for Applied Linguistics. I'd be happy to send email copies of this article to anyone interested. --Annick De Houwer On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, Sneha V Bharadwaj wrote: > > I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me > following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW > BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language > approach"? > Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance > to all your replies > -Sneha Bharadwaj. > > > From lsc at th.com.br Wed Dec 9 09:58:44 1998 From: lsc at th.com.br (Leonor Scliar-Cabral) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 07:58:44 -0200 Subject: [Fwd: folder ingles] Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Please, disseminate to all recipients. Thanks, Prof. Dr. Leonor Scliar-Cabral President of the Brazilian Linguistic Society (ABRALIN) -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Associa��o Brasileira de Ling��stica" Subject: folder ingles Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 17:12:11 -0200 Size: 23726 URL: From garym at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk Wed Dec 9 11:30:26 1998 From: garym at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk (G.Morgan) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:30:26 +0000 Subject: call: Child Language Seminar 1999 Message-ID: CHILD LANGUAGE SEMINAR 1999 FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS 2-4 September 1999 The 1999 Child Language Seminar will be hosted by the Department of Language and Communication Science, City University, London, UK. Proposals are invited for papers of 30 minutes duration and for posters on issues related to language acquisition in children. * KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Dan Slobin and Judy Kegl * CONFERENCE LOCATION The Conference sessions will be held at the main campus with accommodation nearby at Rosebery Hall. City University is located near Islington, within walking distance of central London. * PUBLICATION OF PROCEEDINGS Selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings, to appear before 31 December 2000. * HOW TO SUBMIT ABSTRACTS Abstracts should be up to 250 words in length (excluding references) and may be submitted preferably by e-mail or e-mail attachment, alternatively by mail or Fax. Submissions should be received by 1 May 1999. At the top of the abstract please include Name(s) of Author(s), Institutional Affiliation, Full Address, E-Mail Address, Telephone and Fax Numbers, Paper or Poster, Equipment Requirements. Please leave several lines between this information and the title and body of the abstract so that the header information can be removed for anonymous review. Send your abstract to: CLS 99 Dept. of Language and Communication Science, City University, Northampton Sq., London, EC1V 0HB e-mail: cls99 at city.ac.uk Fax: (+44) (0)171 477 8577 Minicom / TTY: +44(0) 171 477 8314 * FOR QUESTIONS OR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CONFERENCE Please check our conference website: http://www.city.ac.uk/ccs/cls99.htm or contact: Gary Morgan: 44 (0) 171 419 3162 Shula Chiat: 44 (0) 171 477 8297 From chris at psy.au.dk Wed Dec 9 12:45:59 1998 From: chris at psy.au.dk (Chris Sinha) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:45:59 MEST Subject: cross-linguistic studies of polysemy? Message-ID: Some form classes are more susceptible to polysemy than others (prepositions more so than nouns, for example), so that typological differences could affect the overall frequency of polysemous items. But polysemy is a tricky issue anyway and it can be more useful to look at the distribution of meaning across form classes, both systemically and syntagmatically. With respect to the domain of space, Sinha and Kuteva advance the following hypotheses on the basis of the distributed semantics analysis: H: Languages which largely restrict the overt expression of spatial relational meaning to a single form class of locative particles willbe characterizable in terms both of relatively high (but also relatively discrete) polysemy of items in this class, and of complex and non-compositional covert distribution of expression of spatial relational meaning across co-present open class items. Such languages will in general disfavour optionality in the expression of spatial relational meaning through the locative particle system, but will favour it in contexts where open class items explicitly (overtly) express spatial relational meaning. These languages will also disfavour the overt repetition of the same spatial relational meaning at different points in the syntagmatic string. H2: Languages which overtly distribute spatial relational meaning across co-selections from two or more closed classes may exhibit high degress of polysemy (in the limit case, extreme meaning indeterminacy) in one or more of such classes, but will compesate by high specificity of meaning in other closed classes; and such languages will favour both the contextually-determined optionality of some spatial relational meaning-bearing items, and the overt repetition within a single syntagmatic string of the same spatial relational information. C. Sinha and T. Kuteva (1995) Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 18, 167-199. (Note: a language of the type characterized in H1 is English; a language of the type characterized in H2 is Japanese. English having a "covertly" distributed spatial semantics, and high but discrete "overt" lexical polysemy in prepositions, and Japanese having an overtly distributed spatial semantics, "bleaching"-type polysemy on postpositions, strong specification of path and disposition in verbs, and locative nouns which are less polysemous than English prepositions.) Chris Sinha From chris at psy.au.dk Wed Dec 9 12:56:08 1998 From: chris at psy.au.dk (Chris Sinha) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:56:08 MEST Subject: Crosslinguistic studies of polysemy Message-ID: In response to Ann Dowker: Some form classes are more susceptible to polysemy than others (prepositions more so than nouns, for example), so that typological differences could affect the overall frequency of polysemous items. But polysemy is a tricky issue anyway and it can be more useful to look at the distribution of meaning across form classes, both systemically and syntagmatically. With respect to the domain of space, Sinha and Kuteva advance the following hypotheses on the basis of the distributed semantics analysis: H: Languages which largely restrict the overt expression of spatial relational meaning to a single form class of locative particles willbe characterizable in terms both of relatively high (but also relatively discrete) polysemy of items in this class, and of complex and non-compositional covert distribution of expression of spatial relational meaning across co-present open class items. Such languages will in general disfavour optionality in the expression of spatial relational meaning through the locative particle system, but will favour it in contexts where open class items explicitly (overtly) express spatial relational meaning. These languages will also disfavour the overt repetition of the same spatial relational meaning at different points in the syntagmatic string. H2: Languages which overtly distribute spatial relational meaning across co-selections from two or more closed classes may exhibit high degress of polysemy (in the limit case, extreme meaning indeterminacy) in one or more of such classes, but will compesate by high specificity of meaning in other closed classes; and such languages will favour both the contextually-determined optionality of some spatial relational meaning-bearing items, and the overt repetition within a single syntagmatic string of the same spatial relational information. C. Sinha and T. Kuteva (1995) Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 18, 167-199. (Note: a language of the type characterized in H1 is English; a language of the type characterized in H2 is Japanese. English having a "covertly" distributed spatial semantics, and high but discrete "overt" lexical polysemy in prepositions, and Japanese having an overtly distributed spatial semantics, "bleaching"-type polysemy on postpositions, strong specification of path and disposition in verbs, and locative nouns which are less polysemous than English prepositions.) Chris Sinha From dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl Wed Dec 9 14:02:45 1998 From: dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl (Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 15:02:45 +0100 Subject: Clusters in early L1 acquisition Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Since child language is one of the model exercise areas of language universals, I would like to investigate the ways in which universal phonotactic constraints describing consonant clusters are reflected in early first language acquisition. I'd need data from a number of typologically different languages on consonant clusters which infants may happen to use in the earliest, pre-babbling (so- called "prelinguistic") period of acquisition as well as the ones used in early words. Could I ask you for help in finding/getting access to the kind of data I mentioned or any available data already processed from this point of view? I'd also be very grateful for tips on publications concerning early clusters. Greetings and regards, Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk ______________________________________________________________________ Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk School of English Adam Mickiewicz University al. Niepodleglosci 4 61-874 Poznan, Poland email: dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl tel: +48 61 8528820 http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa fax: +48 61 8523103 home tel.: +48 61 8679619 From nakajima at chass.utoronto.ca Wed Dec 9 15:32:49 1998 From: nakajima at chass.utoronto.ca (kazuko nakajima) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:32:49 -0500 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Dr. De Houwer I read your email with keen interest. It will be very much appreciated if you could send me the article you mentioned in the mail. My fax number (in case you need it) is 416-927-7825. Thank you very much. Kazuko Nakajima Associate Professor University of Toronto From macw at cmu.edu Wed Dec 9 23:31:17 1998 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 18:31:17 -0500 Subject: bedtime monologues Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to the CHILDES database of a remarkable corpus of bedtime monologues collected by Katherine Nelson and colleagues and analysed in Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. The file nelson.zip is now on the server. Here is the basic information on this corpus: This data set was collected over a 15 month period (November 1981 to February 1983) when the child Emily was 21 to 36 months old, by the child's parents, who recorded their conversations and the child's spontaneous speech while alone after they left her room at night or at naptime, under the direction of Katherine Nelson. Recording was done by casette recorder placed under her crib. T perecordings were made more frequently in the first few months Tapes were reviewed and commented upon by the child's mother, and were initially transcribed by both the mother and the researcher. Later tapes were reviewed by different researchers studying them over a two-year period. The final transcription made available to CHILDES has revised some of the original versions for consistency and accuracy. The data have been reported in a number of previous publications, and the study is documented more fully in Nelson (1989). There may be minor discrepancies in the version delivered to CHILDES compared to published excerpts. Such discrepancies are to be expected given the difficulties of interpreting speech of a child talking to herself at this age. The tapes contain many references to individuals in addition to parents and child, including baby-sitter (Tanta), grandmother (Mormor), baby brother (Stephen), and friend Carl. The names of other friends and relations have been changed for confidentiality, and are not necessarily consistent with the names used in previous publications (which were also substitutes). Last names have been consistently deleted, although in some cases this interrupts the rhythmic quality of the talk. Questions regarding this data set should be directed to Katherine Nelson, Developmental Psychology, City University of New York Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd St., New York, NY 10036 (email: knelson at email.gc.cuny.edu). Permission to use the data for research must be obtained before publication is contemplated. Publications using this data set should cite: Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. From bpearson at comdis.umass.edu Thu Dec 10 01:10:08 1998 From: bpearson at comdis.umass.edu (Barbara Zurer Pearson) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 20:10:08 -0500 Subject: ANTON and NATASHA, Thanks Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3785 bytes Desc: not available URL: From charles.watkins at wanadoo.fr Wed Dec 9 20:46:22 1998 From: charles.watkins at wanadoo.fr (Charles Watkins) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:46:22 +0100 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Both languages from the start: I am sure the key to acquisition is affect. That means the child has to relate affectively from birth through the medium of both languages I speak as a parent of two bilingual boys (French and English) and as doctoral student in linguistics researching into the theory of deixis using a bilingual corpus. I have therefore no specialist psycholinguistic knowledge, just good old intuition and obervation. Charles Watkins -----Message d'origine----- De : Sneha V Bharadwaj À : info-childes at childes.psy.cmu.edu Date : mercredi 9 décembre 1998 00:37 Objet : bilingual children > >I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me >following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW >BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language >approach"? > Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance >to all your replies >-Sneha Bharadwaj. > > > From vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be Thu Dec 10 08:06:40 1998 From: vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be (Annick.DeHouwer) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:06:40 +0100 Subject: Clusters in early L1 acquisition Message-ID: An overview of the research on early Dutch first language acquisition can be found in: 'Early speech development in children acquiring Dutch: Mastering general basic elements', by Florien Koopmans-van Beinum and Jeannette van der Stelt, in The Acquisition of Dutch, Steven Gillis and Annick De Houwer, eds, John Benjamins, 1998. --Annick De Houwer On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk wrote: > > Dear Colleagues, > > Since child language is one of the model exercise areas of > language universals, I would like to investigate the ways in which > universal phonotactic constraints describing consonant clusters are > reflected in early first language acquisition. I'd need data from a > number of typologically different languages on consonant clusters > which infants may happen to use in the earliest, pre-babbling (so- > called "prelinguistic") period of acquisition as well as the ones used > in early words. > Could I ask you for help in finding/getting access to the kind of data > I mentioned or any available data already processed from this point > of view? I'd also be very grateful for tips on publications concerning > early clusters. > > Greetings and regards, > Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk > School of English > Adam Mickiewicz University > al. Niepodleglosci 4 > 61-874 Poznan, Poland email: dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl > tel: +48 61 8528820 http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa > fax: +48 61 8523103 home tel.: +48 61 8679619 > > > > From sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk Fri Dec 11 07:55:41 1998 From: sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk (Stephanie Stokes) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:55:41 +0800 Subject: Special Issue of IJLCD - Chinese Message-ID: International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders Special Issue A special issue of the journal will be devoted to research on Chinese language and communication disorders. Research reports on any aspect of communication disorders pertaining to Chinese and any of its dialects will be considered. Guest editors for the edition will be Dr Stephanie F. Stokes and Dr. Edwin Yiu. Contributors should send their manuscripts to Dr S. F. Stokes, University of Hong Kong, Prince Philip Dental Hospital, 5/F, 34 Hospital Road, Hong Kong. The deadline for initial submission is June 15 1999. It is expected that reviewers' comments will be returned in 2 months after initial submission. Then the deadline for re-submission after reviewers' comments will be Oct 15 1999. Please address questions to Dr Stokes or Dr Edwin Yiu at sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk and edwinyiu at hkusua.hku.hk respectively. regards, Stephanie Dr. Stephanie F. Stokes Associate Professor Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences University of Hong Kong 5/F, 34 Hospital Road HONG KONG SAR, China email: sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk fax: (852) 2559-0060 phone: 2859-0582 From ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl Fri Dec 11 13:45:34 1998 From: ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl (Magdalena Smoczynska) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:45:34 GMT+1 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear Annick, can you give me a reference of a relatively simple book about bilingualism (something like parent's Ratgeber)? Is there something like this in French? Thank you in advance Magdalena doc. dr hab. Magdalena Smoczynska Katedra Jezykoznawstwa Ogolnego i Indoeuropejskiego UJ Dept. of General and Indoeuropean Linguistics Jagiellonian University Al. Mickiewicza 9/11 31-120 Krakow, Poland tel. +(48) (12) 6336377 ext. 302 fax. +(48) (12) 4226793 home +(48) (12) 6341037 From asanord at ling.gu.se Sat Dec 12 09:58:29 1998 From: asanord at ling.gu.se (Asa Nordqvist) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:58:29 +0100 Subject: play hearing imp/normal hearing Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am supervising two students who will write a paper and compare the communication during play between two hearing impaired preschool children, with the communication between two normal hearing children in the same kind of play activity. Do anyone know of any earlier similar kind of study and/or know of relevant literature? Best wishes, Asa Nordqvist Goteborg University YOU KNOW YOU'RE SURFING THE NET TOO MUCH WHEN... AAsa Nordqvist Dept of Linguistics phone: +46-31-7734627 Goeteborg University fax: +46-31-7734853 Box 200 e-mail: asanord at ling.gu.se SE-405 30 Goeteborg http://www.ling.gu.se/~asanord/ Sweden YOU'RE CONVINCED THAT ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER SAID, "ALTA VISTA, BABY." From gsecco at bigfoot.com Sat Dec 12 20:40:42 1998 From: gsecco at bigfoot.com (Giovanni Secco) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 18:40:42 -0200 Subject: Linguistic Society of Brazil Message-ID: Please, disseminate among colleagues. Thank you, Prof. Leonor Scliar-Cabral Program also found in http://www.cce.ufsc.br/~abralin/folder_ingles.html LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF BRAZIL 14th Linguistic Institute 2nd National Congress 30 years of ABRALIN The organizers of the 14th Linguistic Institute and the 2nd National Congress, under the auspices of the Linguistic Society of Brazil (ABRALIN) and sponsored by the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) take pleasure in inviting the members of AB RALIN and other colleagues and graduate students working in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and related fields to participate in these two events. CONGRESS: February 25-27, 1999 INSTITUTE: February 22 - March 5, 1999 Secretary: ABRALIN - UFSC/CCE/LLV Campus Trindade 88040-900 Florianopolis, SC Brazil FAX: 55 48 331 9988 Phone:331 9293 e-mail abralin at cce.ufsc.br Home-page: www.cce.ufsc.br/~abralin SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM Course 1 Dynamic approach of the phonic structure (1 credit) Prof. Eleonora ALBANO, Ph.D. UNICAMP March 1-5 Session: 1 (Port.) Pre-requisite: First week of Prof. Almeida Barbosa course (Febr.22 -26) Course 2 Pronouns, anaphors and epithets: A reassessment of the binding Theory (1 credit) Prof. Joseph AOUN, Ph. D. University of Southern California March 1-5 Session: 3 (Eng.) Course 3 Acoustic phonetics (2 credit) Prof. Dr. Plinio Almeida BARBOSA UNICAMP Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 1 (Port.) Course 4 African languages and linguistics today (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Emilio BONVINI CNRS/France Feb. 22- 26 Session: 2 (Port.) Course 5 Reference and discourse analysis (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Bernard BOSREDON Sorbonne Nouvelle n Paris III Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 1 (Fr.) Course 6 Comparative sociolinguistics (2 credits) Prof. Gregory R. GUY, Ph. D. York University / Canada Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 3 (Port.) Course 7 Language restructuring: partial versus full creolization (2 credits) Prof. Dr. John HOLM University of Coimbra Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 2 (Eng.) Course 8 Language acquisition: Principle and parameters model (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Mary KATO UNICAMP Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 2 (Port.) Course 9 The recognition of spoken words (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Regine KOLINSKY FNRS/Belgium March 01 - 05 Session: 1 (Eng.) Course 10 Cue-based acquisition and language change (1 credit) Prof. David LIGHTFOOT, Ph. D. University of Maryland March 1 - 5 Session: 2 (Eng.) Course 11 "Animacy" in the reshaping of Romance categories (1 credit) Prof. Maria MANOLIU, Ph.D. University of California, Davis March 1 - 5 Session: 3 (Eng.) Course 12 Phonology: New prospective (1 credit) Prof. Maria Helena MIRA MATEUS, Ph. D. University of Lisbon March 1 - 5 Session: 2 (Port.) Course 13 Cognitive psycholinguistics approach to reading and writing (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Jose MORAIS Free University of Brussels Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 1 (Port.) Course 14 Language and ethics (2 credits) Prof. Dr. Kanavillil RAJAGOPALAN UNICAMP Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 1 (Port.) Course 15 Indian languages (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Aryon D. RODRIGUES University of Brasilia Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 3 (Port.) Course 16 A discourse-based approach to the analysis of languages in contact (2 credits) Prof. Gillian SANKOFF, PH. D. University of Pennsylvania Febr. 22 - 26 Session: 3 (Eng./Port.) Course 17 Multilingual spoken & written information management (1 credit) Eng. Dr. Christel SORIN France Telecom CNET Febr. 22 - 26 Session: 3 (Fr. and/or Eng.) Course 18 >>From surface to the variational linguistic space (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Harald THUN University of Kiel/ Germany March 1 - 5 Session: 1 (Eng.) For registration, each credit corresponds to one module. Before Dec. 20,98 Category (each R$ corresponds to approximately US$1) 1 module 2 modules 3 modules Members and students R$ 80,00 R$ 140,00 R$ 180,00 Other professionals R$ 100,00 R$ 180,00 R$ 240,00 Category Deadline for registration: Feb. 21,99 1 module 2 modules 3 modules Members and students R$ 100,00 R$ 180,00 R$ 240,00 Other professionals R$ 120,00 R$ 220,00 R$ 300,00 Refunds: Before January 15, 99: 50%. After Jan.15, no refund will be possible. Enrollment limit for each course: 40. TIME TABLE Week Feb. 22 - 26 March 1 - 5 Period 8:30 - 11:30 Course 3 Course 1 Course 5 Course 3 Course 13 Course 9 Course 14 Course 14 Course 18 14:30 - 17:30 Course 4 Course 7 Course 7 Course 10 Course 8 Course 12 Course 16 18:00 - 21:00 Course 6 Course 2 Course 15 Course 6 Course 17 Course 11 Registration Form Linguistic Institute - ABRALIN UFSC/DLLV Campus Universitario 88 040 900 Florianopolis - SC/Brasil e-mail: abralin at cce.ufsc.br fax: 55 48 331 99 88 - phone: 55 48 331 92 93/ 331 95 81 home page: www.cce.ufsc.br/~abralin (Please, fill out in block print). Name:___________________________________________________ Address:_______________________________________________ Zip Code: ___________City:______________ Country: _________ Phone/FAX: __________________ e-mail: _____________________ Institution: ______________________________________________ Position: _________________________________ Category: (......) Member/student (......) Others Registered: (......) 1 module (......) 2 modules (......) 3 modules (......) 4 modules (......) 5 modules (......) 6 modules Indicate the number(s) of intended course(s) (......) (......) (......) (......) (......) (......) Please, we ask foreigners to consult with the secretary about the best means of paying their fees. * Students must send a proof of their university enrollment. From AReifman at hs.ttu.edu Sat Dec 12 21:02:01 1998 From: AReifman at hs.ttu.edu (Alan Reifman) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:02:01 -0600 Subject: texas tech early childhood search Message-ID: The Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University is conducting a search for a new faculty member in early childhood development. One of the main areas of specialization we are looking for is language development. The text of our ad is shown below. It has also appeared in the November APA Monitor and the December APS Observer. POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT -- TEXAS TECH ONE POSITION: Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure Track), Early Childhood Development DATE AVAILABLE: Fall, 1999 RESPONSIBILITIES: Teach graduate and undergraduate courses in Child Development. Engage in scholarly activities, research and mentorship. Participate in committee work in the department, college and university. QUALIFICATIONS: The position requires a doctoral degree in Human Development, Developmental Psychology, Early Childhood Development, or Early Childhood Education. Candidates should have a primary interest in studying children beyond infancy. Expertise in multiculturalism, language development, and/or special needs is desirable. Exceptional candidates in other areas of early childhood development will be considered. Ability to interact positively with students, faculty, and staff. Commitment to involvement with appropriate professional organizations. Qualify for Graduate Faculty status at the University. RANK AND SALARY: Assistant/Associate Professor. Salary dependent upon qualifications and experience. DESCRIPTION: TTU has an enrollment of roughly 25,000 students of whom approximately 4,000 are graduate students. The University is located in Lubbock, a city of 200,000 in northwest Texas (South Plains region) with a sunny, low-humidity climate. Dallas (to the east) and the Rocky Mountains (to the west) are located within several hours’ drive of campus. The Department offers graduate degrees in Human Development and Family Studies (M.S. and Ph. D.) and Marriage and Family Therapy (M.S. and Ph. D.), and is housed in the College of Human Sciences (enrollment of approximately 2,000 students, includes 500 Early Childhood undergraduate majors). The Department maintains the Child Development Research Center, Institute for Multidisciplinary Research on Adolescent and Adult Risk-Taking Behavior, Family Therapy Clinic, and the Center for the Study of Addiction. The University is connected to a large medical center, which has been open to our researchers. These facilities provide excellent research opportunities for faculty. Texas Tech University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer with a strong commitment to supporting equality of opportunity and respect for differences. Further information about our department and college can be obtained on the world wide web at http://www.hs.ttu.edu. TO APPLY: Send vita, (p)reprints of research articles, and a statement of purpose, and have three letters of recommendation sent, to: Alan Reifman, Search Committee Chair Department of Human Development and Family Studies College of Human Sciences Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX 79409-1162 DEADLINE: Applications should be received by January 8, 1999. From guasti at imiucca.csi.unimi.it Sun Dec 13 22:15:25 1998 From: guasti at imiucca.csi.unimi.it (Guasti Teresa) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 23:15:25 +0100 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Hi, Does anyone have references about the acquisition of the phonological system of a second language? thanks Teresa Guasti PLEASE ACKOWLEDGE RECEPTION OF THIS MESSAGE ------------------------------------------------------------- Ph.D. Dr. Maria Teresa Guasti University Of Siena Facolta' di Lettere e Filosofia Scienze della Comunicazione via del Giglio 14 53100 Siena Italy fax: +39 577 298461 phone: +39 577 298478 ---------------------------------------------- From VVVHC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Sun Dec 13 21:11:16 1998 From: VVVHC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Virginia Valian) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 16:11:16 EST Subject: first and second language acquisition position Message-ID: Position in First and Second Language Acquisition New York City A full-time (possibly part-time) position in first and second language acquisition is available beginning January 1999 (with the possibility of a later start date). The project investigates syntactic development in children and adults, with special attention to competence/performance issues and learnability. Part of the project is funded by NIMH and is directed by Prof. Virginia Valian; part of the project is funded by CUNY and is directed by Prof. Elaine Klein, Prof. Gita Martohardjono, and Prof. Valian. The person hired will a) supervise students, interns, and assistants on the project; b) develop materials for use in production and comprehension tasks with children and adults; c) perform experiments; d) record, transcribe, and analyze learners' spontaneous speech; e) analyze data; f) recruit participants. The project involves constant contact with a) young children, their parents, and other caregivers and b) non-native learners of English. The person to be hired must thus work well with adults and children of all ages, understand and accommodate their concerns and needs, and be highly organized, reliable, punctual, sensitive, and patient. We are anticipating hiring someone with a PhD in psychology, cognitive science, or linguistics, but candidates with a BA or MA in one of those fields will also be considered. We expect a candidate to have a solid background, preferably including: cognitive, developmental, and experimental psychology; linguistics; cognitive science; language acquisition; statistics; basic computer skills; previous laboratory research experience, preferably including speech transcription; native fluency in English. To apply, send a vita or summary of your qualifications by email or mail. Include a cover letter addressing the points raised above. Also include relevant examples of papers that have been published or presented at conferences. Ask at least two people who know your academic work well to send a letter of recommendation. Email addresses: psyhc at cunyvm.cuny.edu [NB: not psych] gitam at interport.net eklein at cuny.campuscw.net Address: Dr. Virginia Valian, Department of Psychology, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021. Voice: 212/ 772-5557 Fax: 212/ 650-3247 From josie.bernicot at campus.univ-poitiers.fr Sun Dec 13 18:05:05 1998 From: josie.bernicot at campus.univ-poitiers.fr (bernicot) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 19:05:05 +0100 Subject: New book on Developmental Pragmatics Message-ID: >New book on Developmental Pragmatics for French-speaking and/or >French-reading people. > >Bernicot J., Marcos, H., Day, C., Guidetti, M., Laval, V., Rabain-Jamin, J. >et Babelot, G. (Eds.). De l'usage des gestes et des mots chez l'enfant. >Paris: Colin. > >May be ordered at: > >http://www.alapage.com >in Quicksearch/books enter: Bernicot >Price: 114FF ($20) > >Comment l'enfant s'approprie-t-il le langage? Comment apprehende-t-il les >differentes situations de communication? Les experiences communicatives du >debut de la vie sont-elles importantes? >L'ouvrage répond à ces questions en montrant que ce qui est crucial pour un >enfant apprennant sa langue maternelle c'est la maitrise de la variation de >ce que l'on dit en fonction de la situation de communication: on ne decrit >pas comme on demande ou comme on promet, on ne parle pas à son pere comme on >parle à sa mere, on doit nuancer ses paroles avec certains interlocuteurs, >etc. La maitrise de cette variation commence a etre acquise avant l'age de >deux ans par l'utilisation des gestes communicatifs. L'ouvrage analyse en >detail differentes experiences communicatives des enfants (premier >ne/dernier ne; enfant wolof du Senegal/enfant occidental). Il apparait >clairement que ces experiences differentes correspondent à des >apprentissages differents de la langue maternelle. En bref, le langage ne >vient pas à l'enfant, il le conquiert par l'usage qu'il en fait. > >CONTENTS > >Introduction >De l'usage et de la structure des systemes communicatifs >chez l'enfant >Josie Bernicot > >Chapitre 1 >Les usages des gestes conventionnels chez l'enfant >Michele Guidetti > >Chapitre 2 >Gestes et langage avec le pere et la mere chez le jeune enfant : >différences et similitudes >Haydee Marcos et Celine Ryckebusch > >Chapitre 3 >La comprehension des demandes par de jeunes enfants : >role de la pertinence du contexte et de la forme linguistique. >Geraldine Babelot > >Chapitre 4 >Un modele de compréhension de la promesse >Virginie Laval > >Chapitre 5 >La comprehension de la modalisation >par les enfants de 6 à 12 ans >Claudine Day > >Chapitre 6 >La structure et l'usage des enonces : >comparaison d'enfants uniques et d'enfants seconds nes >Josie Bernicot et Mireille Roux > >Chapitre 7 >Usage du langage et contexte culturel : >le langage de la mere adresse à l'enfant >Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin > >BON DE COMMANDE >Je desire commander : exemplaires de DE L'USAGE DES GESTES ET DES MOTS >CHEZ UENFANT par J. Bernicot et al., au prix de 114 F au lieu de 120 F *. 01 1 /901924 * * >Frais d'envoi : pour 1 vol. 20 F (etranger : 30 F), pour chaque volume >supplementaire 1 0 F. Envoi par avion : nous consulter. Franco de port pour >toute commande superieure à 1 000 F. > >Vos coordonnees: >NOM: >Prénom: >Adresse: >Code Postal: >Ville: >Pays: > >Mode de reglement: >*par cheque bancaire a l'ordre de Nathan-Armand Colin >*par carte de credit: o CB o Visa o Master Card/Eurocard >n°: ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! > >expire a la fin: ! ! ! ! ! > >date et signature: > >à nous retourner avec votre reglement à >INFO SERVICE ARMAND COLIN - 75704 PARIS CEDEX 13 >FRANCE From g.laws at surrey.ac.uk Mon Dec 14 11:04:33 1998 From: g.laws at surrey.ac.uk (Glynis Laws) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 06:04:33 -0500 Subject: Greek nonword repetition Message-ID: Does anyone know whether a set of nonwords has been devised based on Greek? Many thanks. Glynis Laws Dr. Glynis Laws, Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH Telephone: 01483 300800 ext. 2900 Fax: 01483 259553 From antelmi at iulm.it Wed Dec 16 17:21:50 1998 From: antelmi at iulm.it (Donella Antelmi) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:21:50 +0100 Subject: DETERMINERS IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN Message-ID: I am working on my thesis about determiners in bilingual children (English/Italian). Could you please point out to my attention any work/publication on this topic to the following e-mail address: apirondi at scb.it Thank you in advance for your kind co-operation! Angela Pirondini From carole at play.psych.mun.ca Thu Dec 17 14:28:39 1998 From: carole at play.psych.mun.ca (Carole Peterson) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:58:39 -0330 Subject: Colleagues in China Message-ID: I may be in China in May, 1999 as part of an international delegation, and I would very much like to meet colleagues in the child language research area (especially if their work is related to narratives). I will be visiting the University of Beijing as well as Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an. Can anybody give me relevant information or names? Carole Peterson From Frontier at nycnet.com Thu Dec 17 14:27:36 1998 From: Frontier at nycnet.com (Frontier) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:27:36 -0500 Subject: bilingual language acquisition Message-ID: Sabine; Here's a reference - Hoffman, C. (1985). Language acquisition in two trilingual children. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 6, 479-496. There are many other references around. Will send them once I locate them. Jose Centeno Sabine.Prechter at anglistik.uni-giessen.de writes: >Dear fellow researchers, > >a student of mine is working on a paper on the structure of caretaker >input >in multilingual settings. >As far as I remember, one of the reactions to the bilingualism discussion >came from a Japanese family raising their children in English and >Japanese. >I would be really grateful if they could contact me and let us know a bit >more about their experience and maybe also literature they used since this >student is also a non-native speaker of English, but raises her daughter >in >a multilingual environment. > >Thanks in advance, > >Sabine Prechter > >________________________________ >Para ser grande, se inteiro: nada teu exagera ou exclui. >Se todo em cada coisa. Poe quanto es no minimo que fazes. >Assim em cada lago a lua toda brilha, porque alta vive. >14.02.1933 Ricardo Reis > >Sabine Prechter >Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Jucker >Justus-Liebig-University Giessen >FB 10 Anglistik >Otto-Behaghel Str. 10 B/4 >D-35394 Giessen, Germany >Fax +49 641 99-30159; Fone+49 641 99-30065 > > > > > > From Sabine.Prechter at anglistik.uni-giessen.de Thu Dec 17 15:17:11 1998 From: Sabine.Prechter at anglistik.uni-giessen.de (Sabine Prechter) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:17:11 +0000 Subject: bilingual language acquisition Message-ID: Dear fellow researchers, a student of mine is working on a paper on the structure of caretaker input in multilingual settings. As far as I remember, one of the reactions to the bilingualism discussion came from a Japanese family raising their children in English and Japanese. I would be really grateful if they could contact me and let us know a bit more about their experience and maybe also literature they used since this student is also a non-native speaker of English, but raises her daughter in a multilingual environment. Thanks in advance, Sabine Prechter ________________________________ Para ser grande, se inteiro: nada teu exagera ou exclui. Se todo em cada coisa. Poe quanto es no minimo que fazes. Assim em cada lago a lua toda brilha, porque alta vive. 14.02.1933 Ricardo Reis Sabine Prechter Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Jucker Justus-Liebig-University Giessen FB 10 Anglistik Otto-Behaghel Str. 10 B/4 D-35394 Giessen, Germany Fax +49 641 99-30159; Fone+49 641 99-30065 From macw at cmu.edu Fri Dec 18 15:51:56 1998 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:51:56 -0500 Subject: thanks from Natasha Gagarina Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, With this letter I would like to express my very deep gratitude to all of the people who responded to the urgent call from Dr. Magdalena Smoczynska to help my son Toni. I could hardly express everything that I felt when I saw how many people participated in helping us in our trouble. Words are not enough to describe the feelings. It was very important for us, because the doctors asked me almost each day about whether I had enough money for treatment, about what I would do in order to collect the money to continue the treatment, and about the insurance, etc. I hope that the remission that Toni has now will last during the next five years (If there is no relapse during five years, the patient is considered to be healthy again). He has to get two more strong blocks of chemo during the next months and then long-term chemotherapy during approx. two years. I really do not know if we could overcome these enormous difficulties without the help of all of you. And I cannot imagine how what a huge THANK YOU I would like to say to someone so dear to us, MAGDALENA SMOCZYNSKA. I cannot even measure my gratitude to her. I wish everybody Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 1999! With the best regards, Natasha Gagarina gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de From lmenn at psych.colorado.edu Mon Dec 21 19:29:53 1998 From: lmenn at psych.colorado.edu (Lise Menn) Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 12:29:53 -0700 Subject: 1-year job at U. of Colorado Message-ID: The Linguistics Department of the University of Colorado has a one-year non-renewable position for an Instructor, for the AY 1999-2000. Ph.D. must be completed by start of classes on 16 August 1999. Salary $20,000. Teaching load, five courses, including MA-level Intro to Formal Syntax, and two large undergraduate sociolinguistics courses. The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment. Interviews will be held at the LSA meeting in Los Angeles. E-mail Lise.Menn at colorado.edu for more information. Lise Menn Professor and Chair Linguistics Department - Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder CO 80309-0295 303-492-8042; fax 303-492-4416 BEWARE PROCRUSTES BEARING OCCAM'S RAZOR From ervin-tr at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Sat Dec 26 06:28:37 1998 From: ervin-tr at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1998 23:28:37 -0700 Subject: development of humor Message-ID: The 1999 International Humor Conference sponsored by the International Society for Humor Studies The 1999 International Humor Conference is the eighteenth in a series of scholarly meetings on humor and laughter and the eleventh such meeting sponsored by the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS). The 1999 Conference is scheduled to take place from June 29 to July 3, 1999 at Holy Names College in the Oakland Hills overlooking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. For this conference, scholars, professionals, and students are invited to submit proposals for papers, posters, and symposia focusing on humor research in the arts and humanities as well as in the health, cognitive, and social sciences. We are also accepting proposals for workshops and for the following prescheduled symposia: Cognitive Science and Humor Research (Chair: Victor Raskin, Purdue University) The Connections between Humor and Health (Chair: Sven Svebak, University of Trondheim) The Sense of Humor: Further Explorations of a Personality Characteristic (Chair: Willibald Ruch, University of Duesseldorf) Wisecracking and Storytelling: Gender Differences in the Conversational Humor of of Children and Adults (Chair: Susan Ervin-Tripp, UC Berkeley) A sixteen-page brochure containing a full overview of the conference along with registration materials and information on how to submit proposals for papers, symposia, and workshops can be obtained by writing Martin D. Lampert, Chair 1999 International Humor Conference Holy Names College 3500 Mountain Blvd. Oakland, CA 94619-1699 or calling in the United States, (510) 436-1699. Brochures and additional conference information can also be requested through the Internet from humor99 at hnc.edu or downloaded from the conference webpage at http://www.hnc.edu/events/humor99. The deadline for all proposals is March 1, 1999. From macw at cmu.edu Mon Dec 28 00:02:02 1998 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 19:02:02 -0500 Subject: data for FTP now in both Mac and Windows format Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, In order to make the downloading of CHILDES files through FTP easier, we have now created both Macintosh and Windows copies of the database. The data are essentially the same, but you will find that, if you download the form that matches your machine, the CLAN editor will no longer complain about the files being in the wrong format and non-Roman characters should appear in the right form if you have the correct font loaded. The files are still compacted using the ZIP format, since that can be read by both WinZip on Windows and StuffIt on the Mac. --Brian MacWhinney From lmenn at psych.colorado.edu Thu Dec 31 18:03:07 1998 From: lmenn at psych.colorado.edu (Lise Menn) Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 11:03:07 -0700 Subject: distress about salary offered by Linguistics/U of Colorado Message-ID: Several colleagues from other schools have expressed anger at the low salary we advertised for a 1-year instructor position. We are not happy about it either, and I wish we could do better. All we have are 5 courses as replacements which pay $4K each. This was an attempt to give one person a chance to do all 5, instead of them having to chase around to 3 or 4 different area schools teaching a course or 2 at each of them, which is the typical life for someone in transition to a tenure-track position, here or elsewhere. The administration has been asked several times to give us a little more money for this position, but they have a good response: they are now implementing an instructor policy that guarantees $4K/course to all of them (some were getting as little as $2,700), and guarantees the right to have multi-year contracts and a base salary of $30K/year/fulltime equiv (6 courses) to every non-tenure-track instructor who has been teaching for 3 or more years at 50% time or more, plus annual merit increases. I am told that this gives us one of the best policies in the U.S. But this means that there is no money left to improve the situation for 1-year temporary hires in the near term. Before you send us more angry letters, please check what your own department's options would be if you had 30% of your faculty on leave for next year. If you could really offer a better option, let me know and I'll let my dean know. Lise Menn From pszioga at coyote.csusm.edu Tue Dec 8 07:22:05 1998 From: pszioga at coyote.csusm.edu (Patricia Schneider-Zioga) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 23:22:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: Epilepsy and language delay Message-ID: I wonder if anyone could help me with some information. My 31 mo. old nephew has recently been diagnosed with epilepsy. His productive language is very low (he failed all the productive language tests they gave him) but his receptive language is very good. The neurologists said that the seizures are all "trying to come from the left temporal lobe." My first question is can anyone help us with literature or other information? (My nephew and his mom live in St. Paul Minnesota.) I also have a question about why his productive langauge should be so affected but not his receptive language. I'd guess that seizures in the left temporal lobe mean Wernicke's area- not Broca's area. In terms of productive language, until my nephew was put on medication (dilantin initially) he could barely make syllable-like sounds. Although occasionally he would say whole words and then never repeat them- he could never spontanteously repeat except for the sound /a/ while singing. He never babbled. (It was impossible to break down my sister's denial that he had a problem with his language acquisition until he had fall-down seizures). Within hours of being on dilantin, he was babbling and making syllable like sounds. (Before that, his vocalizations sounded like grunting.) He still often cannot spontaneously imitate what other people say, but sometimes he can. Within 3 weeks he has started to say the word "yellow" and "I want that (=dat)" "that (=dat)" and all sorts of vocalizations with the sound /o/ in them. As well as /no/ for "no" and "yeah" for "yes" and da-da for goodbye. The language intervention team wants to teach him sign (I'm not sure if they mean ASL or exact signed English or something similar) as well as work on his english. Do you have any thoughts on this course of intervention? Any help you could give us would be deeply appreciated. Sincerely, Patricia Schneider-Zioga From jr111 at cus.cam.ac.uk Tue Dec 8 12:20:31 1998 From: jr111 at cus.cam.ac.uk (James Russell) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:20:31 +0000 Subject: Minimalism Message-ID: I vaguely remember hearing about a paper on Chomksy's Minimalist theory arguing that the theory is so 'minimalist' that it could be taken as covering non-linguistic as well as linguistic competence. Does anybody know of such as paper? Or is it yet another folk myth. Thanks. James Russell Experimental Psychology Cambridge, UK From steve at psyche.mit.edu Tue Dec 8 16:44:23 1998 From: steve at psyche.mit.edu (Steve Pinker) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 11:44:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: Any response to a dual-mechanism approach? Message-ID: Liz Bates's examples lead me to think that I wasn't sufficiently clear in the previous posting about the relationship between the lexicon and grammar. There are *two* distinctions here: (a) memorized versus composed (versus connectionist-like analogy), and (b) level of representation: root versus complex word versus phrase. The 30-year-old idea that Bates refers to is that these used to be collapsed into a single distinction: words are stored, phrases are composed. Indeed, that must be rejected, because there are structures of all kinds that must be stored. For example, the lexicon might contain entries such as these (lots of notations possible): die: VP angry: VP devour: VP duck: N / \ / \ /\ | V NP V PP V NP duck | /\ | /\ | kick the bucket mad at NP devour This embraces the continuum of structures from roots to phrases (or constructions) that Bates referred to. BUT: That is independent of the second sense of the grammar-lexicon distinction, namely lookup versus computation (composition, unification, etc.); that is, the difference between the two psychological processes below (again, simplified): (1) die: VP / \ V NP --> "kick the bucket" | /\ kick the bucket (2) kick: VP duck: N / \ + | --> "kick the duck" V NP duck | kick This distinction is largely indpendent of the first one. Theoretical linguists don't talk about the composition process, because they treat it as a black box, to be studied by the computational linguists and psycholinguists. But the theory of language as a whole still needs it. --Steve Pinker From ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl Tue Dec 8 20:03:18 1998 From: ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl (Magdalena Smoczynska) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:03:18 GMT+1 Subject: NATSASHA & ANTON - GOOD NEWS!!! Message-ID: Dear Colleagues! I am happy to give you some very good news about Anton Gagarin. Yesterday, after the most recent bone marrow test was performed the doctors have declared that the child is in remission. They will continue the chemotherapy for quite a long time to make sure that all the bad cells are killed, but they are rather optimistic. For the time being they do not think that a bone marrow transplantation would be necessary, but of course this can change. Another good news is that the insurance company by which Natasha is insured agreed to take over the costs of Anton's treatment. This means that WE STOP THE ACTION OF COLLECTING MONEY. We hope we would not have to start it again. Whatever money is left from what has been collected so far will be kept to be used for Anton in case some extra need arises or to cover his further treatment next year, after his German insurance expires. I want to tell you that the donations you made, whether large or small, were of crucial importance and have contributed to secure the financing of Anton's treatment at this extremely difficult transitional stage. I think that we really helped this little lad to have a better chance to live. We also supported our colleague who was having a very difficult time. God bless you all! I would like to especially thank those of you who acted as local organizers of help actions and who spent their time to help Anton. To give you just a few names: Wolfgang Dressler, Sabine Klamfper, Sylvia Moesmueller from Vienna, Austria; Giuseppe Capelli from Pisa, Italy; Ann Lindvall from Lund, Sweden; Camilla Wide from Helsinki, Finland; Kirsten Meyer Bjerkan from Oslo, Norway; Barbara Zurer Pearson from Amherst (U. Massachusetts) US; Wayles E. Browne from Ithaca (Cornell U.), US... There are other people whose help was really crucial at different stages of the entire help action: without Wolfgang Dressler, Wolfgang Klein and Dagmar Bittner all this could not be organized. I am afraid I still forgot somebody... Some of these people are Natasha's personal friends and colleagues. But some of them NEVER MET HER (like Barbara Pearson!) They are to be admired and thanked for their generosity and solidarity. Many other people not only made donations but looked for information, contacted organizations and so on... Thank you all! Barbara Pearson will circulate her report about money collection in America. Those of you who forwarded my appeal for help to other lists and groups of people or made your own appeals, please make other people know these good news and call off the action of money collection. I hope to finally get Natasha's and Anton's photos on my home page http://www.filg.uj.edu.pl/~ulsmoczy/ They are not yet there, but they will be there. I promise. HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU! IT IS COMING. Magdalena Smoczynska Appended is the list of people who have contacted me about Anton, money donations etc. since the last circular was posted From: Ekaterina Protassova From: Evalda Jakaitiene From: Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk From: Giuseppe Cappelli From: Ann Lindvall From: Stefanie Geldbach From: Ralf From: Stella Ceytlin From: Barbara Mueller From: Ursula Doleschal From: Ann Lindvall From: LHFarmer at aol.com From: Dagmar Bittner From: Pawel Wojcik From: Elzbieta Tabakowska From: Ineta Savickiene From: Wim van Dommelen From: Vladimir Garistov From: Shanley Allen From: Chris Sinha From: Marianne Kilani-Schoch From: Alexander Brock From: Barbara Zurer Pearson From: Dorit Ravid From: Edy Veneziano From: Onederra Olaizola L. From: Michal Legierski From: Esther Dromi From: Hans Goetzsche From: Antonio Raschi From: E. Wayles Browne From: Vladimir Garistov From: Joachim Grabowski From: Sigrid Adam doc. dr hab. Magdalena Smoczynska Katedra Jezykoznawstwa Ogolnego i Indoeuropejskiego UJ Dept. of General and Indoeuropean Linguistics Jagiellonian University Al. Mickiewicza 9/11 31-120 Krakow, Poland tel. +(48) (12) 6336377 ext. 302 fax. +(48) (12) 4226793 home +(48) (12) 6341037 From ping at cogsci.richmond.edu Tue Dec 8 19:59:38 1998 From: ping at cogsci.richmond.edu (Ping Li) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:59:38 -0500 Subject: Any response to a dual-mechanism approach? Message-ID: Steve Pinker's message seems to suggest that "the second sense of the grammar-lexicon distinction" corresponds to two distinct psychological processes: lookup vs. computation/composition. Thus, "kick the bucket" has to be looked up, while "kick the duck" has to be composed. But even here things are not clearcut. Take derivational morphology as an example. Linguists would consider "untie", "undress, "unfasten" etc as to-be-looked-up items (i.e., distinct from "tie", "dress", "fasten" etc), in contrast to "tied" "dressed", and "fastened" as inflected forms of the corresponding roots. It is doubtful, however, that English speakers always "look up" the un-words in their mental dictionary, given that "un-" is a productive device that can be used to compose novel items on the spot: "he invited me but then UNINVITED me for some silly reasons". Look-up vs. composition might simply lie on a continuum of things: untie -- ... (e.g., untighten?)... -- uninvite. Sincerely Ping Li *********************************************************************** Ping Li, PhD. Email: ping at cogsci.richmond.edu Department of Psychology http://www.richmond.edu/~pli/ University of Richmond Phone: (804) 289-8125 (office) Richmond, VA 23173 (804) 287-6039 (lab) *********************************************************************** >Liz Bates's examples lead me to think that I wasn't sufficiently clear >in the previous posting about the relationship between the lexicon and >grammar. There are *two* distinctions here: (a) memorized versus >composed (versus connectionist-like analogy), and (b) level of >representation: root versus complex word versus phrase. The >30-year-old idea that Bates refers to is that these used to be >collapsed into a single distinction: words are stored, phrases are >composed. Indeed, that must be rejected, because there are structures of all >kinds that must be stored. For example, the lexicon might contain >entries such as these (lots of notations possible): > >die: VP angry: VP devour: VP duck: N > / \ / \ /\ | > V NP V PP V NP duck > | /\ | /\ | > kick the bucket mad at NP devour > >This embraces the continuum of structures from roots to phrases (or >constructions) that Bates referred to. BUT: That is independent of >the second sense of the grammar-lexicon distinction, namely lookup >versus computation (composition, unification, etc.); that is, the >difference between the two psychological processes below (again, >simplified): > >(1) > >die: VP > / \ > V NP --> "kick the bucket" > | /\ > kick the bucket > >(2) > >kick: VP duck: N > / \ + | --> "kick the duck" > V NP duck > | > kick > >This distinction is largely indpendent of the first one. Theoretical >linguists don't talk about the composition process, because they treat >it as a black box, to be studied by the computational linguists and >psycholinguists. But the theory of language as a whole still needs it. > >--Steve Pinker From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue Dec 8 21:18:28 1998 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:18:28 +0000 Subject: cross-linguistic studies of polysemy? Message-ID: I am sorry to ask what may sound like a foolish question; but with some of the threads that have come up, I thought perhaps someone would know the answer: Is there any readily-available, up-to-date information on the relative extent of polysemy in different languages? In particular, is polysemy more extensive in English than in some other languages, as has been suggested to me? Ann Dowker From snehab at utdallas.edu Tue Dec 8 23:30:50 1998 From: snehab at utdallas.edu (Sneha V Bharadwaj) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:30:50 -0600 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language approach"? Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance to all your replies -Sneha Bharadwaj. From kokuda at ue.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp Wed Dec 9 00:38:00 1998 From: kokuda at ue.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp (Kunio Okuda) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 09:38:00 +0900 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Sneha, Our answer to your question is 'sooner the better'. We started one-parent one-language approach when our daughter was eight months old and she is now 12;7. She is truely bilingual and biliteral in both Japanese and English. She has just passed an English proficiency test at the pre-first level. Only about 8 percent of examinees can pass the test at that level, and most of them are English teachers and college students. Our daughter is in the sixth grade of an elementary school in Japan. She reads a lot and writes a lot in the two languages. Kunio and Hisako Okuda At 5:30 PM 98.12.8, Sneha V Bharadwaj wrote: > I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me > following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW > BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language > approach"? > Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance > to all your replies > -Sneha Bharadwaj. ....................................................................................................... Kunio Okuda, Ph.D. Dept. of Teaching Japanese as a Second Language School of Education, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima City, JAPAN 739-8523 Phone: 0824-24-6863 /Fax: 0824-22-7134 (Office) Phone/Fax: 082-878-1553 (Home) From Susanne.Dopke at arts.monash.edu.au Wed Dec 9 00:49:14 1998 From: Susanne.Dopke at arts.monash.edu.au (Susanne.Dopke at arts.monash.edu.au) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:49:14 +1100 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Sneha, Being a parent who is bringing up her children bilingually and a researcher in this area with lots of contact with bilingual families I strongly recommend to start at birth. In many ways, our social relationships are defined through the language we are using with others. This is also true when talking to our children, both for ourselves and for our children. Thus while birth marks the starting point of our relationship with our natural children, other first-contact points are just as suitable, for example a newly developing step-parent relationship or the first contact with grand children, the new nanny, etc. It is very difficult for an adult to change the language later on and nearly impossible to get children to do so (although I do know of a few successful cases, and I am encouraging parents with a range of strategies if they want to give it a go). For the later starts, the same pricipal rule applies, the least obsticles. The biggest problem with children not acquiring the parent's language in spite of all good intentions is parents' inconsistent language choice. For more detailed deliberations of this topic you might want to have a look at a recent paper of mine: Susanne Dopke (1998) "Can the principle of 'one parent-one language' be disregarded as unrealistically elitist? Applied Linguistic Review of Australia 21(1): 41-59 Susanne Dopke ===================== Susanne Dopke Linguistics Monash University Clayton Vic 3168 Australia Ph +61-3-99052298 Fax +61-3-99052294 home e-mail: sdrw at ozemail.com.au From tbushey at d.umn.edu Wed Dec 9 01:45:50 1998 From: tbushey at d.umn.edu (Tahirih Bushey) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:45:50 -0600 Subject: Epilepsy and language delay Message-ID: Hi Pat, I am a speech/language pathologist at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. I am sorry to hear about your nephew and know that it is a very emotionally trying process to go through with a child that you love. I have worked for many years with preschool children in the area of language disorders . A very high percentage of the children that I have worked with through the years have had seizures disorders. Recent conferences that I have attended in which neurologists have presented, lead me to believe that many more of the children I have treated have had seizures than were identified, as many have seizures only in deep sleep. All children who have significant langauge disorders are at higher risk for having or developing seizure disorders. It is lucky that your nephew was diagnosed so early, since many are not. It is a very reasonable intervention to introduce sign language to your nephew. It does not matter what form of sign languge because he will not be signing for life, but sign language is easier to teach and learn and helps children cope with the arduous process of learning verbal skills which takes a long time for some children. When my husband and I adopted a two year old East Indian child, we taught her some basic signs right away to help her and us with the language transition. Any form of communication that your nephew can effectively use will reduce his frustration with communication and help him develop an understanding of the reciprical process of communication. Augmenting his skills with any form of communication will also facilitate verbal skills, not inhibit the development of verbal skills, which is what many parents worry will happen. All forms of expressive communication, including the use of pictures, talking picture frames (like from radio shack), informal gestures and even exagerated facial expression can be used to help this little guy express himself. Good Luck. Tahirih Bushey ______________________________________________________________ IMPORTANT: Make sure you go to 'Preferences' in the File menu and change 'Type Your Name Here' to your real name. Until you do, all email you send will look like it comes from someone named 'Type Your Name Here'. To replace this default signature with your own personal information: - pull down the File menu - choose 'Preferences' - click the 'Outgoing' tab at the top - click the 'Signature' button and edit this text From labraham at unm.edu Wed Dec 9 02:34:42 1998 From: labraham at unm.edu (Lee Abraham) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:34:42 -0700 Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS The High Desert Linguistics Society 2nd Student Conference in Linguistics (HDLS-2) March 26-27, 1999 University of New Mexico Albuquerque KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Sandra Thompson We invite papers from all areas of linguistics, but special consideration will be given to the following specific areas of inquiry: Form and Function Language Change and Grammaticization Discourse Analysis Native American Linguistics Sign Language Linguistics Computational Linguistics Sociolinguistics & Language Planning ABSTRACTS for 20-minutes papers may be a maximum of one page. At the top of the abstract (if by e-mail) or on a separate page (if on paper), please include: title of paper author name(s) and affiliation(s) topic area (from the list above or whatever seems appropriate) e-mail address paper mailing address SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Abstracts must be received by Jan. 22, 1999. WHERE TO SUBMIT: Abstracts for 20-minute papers should be e-mailed in ascii, Word, or Word Perfect form to: . Please use "Abstract" as your subject header. If you are submitting more than one abstract, please e-mail each separately. If you prefer to use regular mail, send two copies of your abstract to: HDLS-2 Abstracts University of New Mexico Humanities 526 Albuquerque, NM 87131 INQUIRIES: For more information, visit the conference web site forthcoming in December at . e-mail inquiries: hdls at unm.edu The proceedings of the conference will be published. From vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be Wed Dec 9 09:42:37 1998 From: vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be (Annick.DeHouwer) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:42:37 +0100 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Sneha, In response to your query I can give you the following response, based on my research experience with young bilingual children, my parental experience as the mother of a bilingual child, and my familiarity with bilingual families. Definitive answers, though, are not really possible, I think, and ultimately people must decide for themselves - but it's our duty/responsibility as 'experts' to offer information that might help people to decide, I think. First - the question "At what age do we expose two languages to the new born?" assumes that there is a CHOICE possible. For parents who both fluently speak two or more languages and are used to using all of these languages on a pseudo-daily basis, there might indeed be a choice, in the sense that they could opt for NOT using a particular language with their child. If they feel that this is the most 'natural' for them, and will cover their child's communicative needs for many years to come, both inside and outside the family, then indeed they could restrict the number of languages that their child hears from them. On the other hand, if it is more natural for them to use more than one language in the home, then I see no reason not to continue doing so after the birth of a baby. Although there are to my knowledge no studies that investigate the effects of bilingual exposure from birth versus second language exposure starting at a later age (say age 2 or 3) on school success, there are quite a number of reports on the many difficulties that children may go through when at age 3 or 4 they have to learn a second language at school because it is not the home language. It is a distinct advantage if the child knows the school language before entering school. Thus, children raised bilingually from birth where one of their languages is the future school language have a better deal than children who are raised in a language (or two languages) that is (are) not the school language. This does not mean, of course, that some monolingual children may pick up a second language at school very fast and do quite well, nor that there are no children bilingual from birth who have problems at school! But given the chance I would once again (as happened for my daughter) raise my own children with two languages right from the start - from birth. Then there is the question of the age at which the one-parent/one-language approach should be 'seriously considered'. My response to this is twofold: first, there is no evidence to date that the one person/one language approach is a fail-safe 'method' for raising children bilingually. Other approaches where both parents address their child in two languages (depending on perceptible situational and contextual factors) seem to work fine as well. Many parents feel the one person, one language approach to be quite unnatural, whereas others wouldn't be able to use other approaches. As long as children have frequent, regular and continued exposure in two languages they will learn both (given otherwise 'normal' development of course). Secondly, it is NOT wise to change approaches midstream with children under age 6. Here I feel quite strongly that if parents make particular choices they should stick to them. A bilingual situation makes quite clear just how strongly language is tied up with emotion and identity, whether self-perceived or ascribed, and for a young 3 year-old to have her mother stop using a particular language and start using another could be quite a traumatic experience and symbolize an emotional rejection, even if it's not intended by the mother that way. Bilingual families can get more information through the Bilingual Family Newsletter published by Multilingual Matters in Clevedon, Avon, Great Britain. There are also several books available. I refer to these in a brief article written for a general audience that just appeared in AILA NEWS, the newsletter of the Association for Applied Linguistics. I'd be happy to send email copies of this article to anyone interested. --Annick De Houwer On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, Sneha V Bharadwaj wrote: > > I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me > following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW > BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language > approach"? > Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance > to all your replies > -Sneha Bharadwaj. > > > From lsc at th.com.br Wed Dec 9 09:58:44 1998 From: lsc at th.com.br (Leonor Scliar-Cabral) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 07:58:44 -0200 Subject: [Fwd: folder ingles] Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Please, disseminate to all recipients. Thanks, Prof. Dr. Leonor Scliar-Cabral President of the Brazilian Linguistic Society (ABRALIN) -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Associa??o Brasileira de Ling??stica" Subject: folder ingles Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 17:12:11 -0200 Size: 23726 URL: From garym at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk Wed Dec 9 11:30:26 1998 From: garym at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk (G.Morgan) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:30:26 +0000 Subject: call: Child Language Seminar 1999 Message-ID: CHILD LANGUAGE SEMINAR 1999 FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS 2-4 September 1999 The 1999 Child Language Seminar will be hosted by the Department of Language and Communication Science, City University, London, UK. Proposals are invited for papers of 30 minutes duration and for posters on issues related to language acquisition in children. * KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Dan Slobin and Judy Kegl * CONFERENCE LOCATION The Conference sessions will be held at the main campus with accommodation nearby at Rosebery Hall. City University is located near Islington, within walking distance of central London. * PUBLICATION OF PROCEEDINGS Selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings, to appear before 31 December 2000. * HOW TO SUBMIT ABSTRACTS Abstracts should be up to 250 words in length (excluding references) and may be submitted preferably by e-mail or e-mail attachment, alternatively by mail or Fax. Submissions should be received by 1 May 1999. At the top of the abstract please include Name(s) of Author(s), Institutional Affiliation, Full Address, E-Mail Address, Telephone and Fax Numbers, Paper or Poster, Equipment Requirements. Please leave several lines between this information and the title and body of the abstract so that the header information can be removed for anonymous review. Send your abstract to: CLS 99 Dept. of Language and Communication Science, City University, Northampton Sq., London, EC1V 0HB e-mail: cls99 at city.ac.uk Fax: (+44) (0)171 477 8577 Minicom / TTY: +44(0) 171 477 8314 * FOR QUESTIONS OR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CONFERENCE Please check our conference website: http://www.city.ac.uk/ccs/cls99.htm or contact: Gary Morgan: 44 (0) 171 419 3162 Shula Chiat: 44 (0) 171 477 8297 From chris at psy.au.dk Wed Dec 9 12:45:59 1998 From: chris at psy.au.dk (Chris Sinha) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:45:59 MEST Subject: cross-linguistic studies of polysemy? Message-ID: Some form classes are more susceptible to polysemy than others (prepositions more so than nouns, for example), so that typological differences could affect the overall frequency of polysemous items. But polysemy is a tricky issue anyway and it can be more useful to look at the distribution of meaning across form classes, both systemically and syntagmatically. With respect to the domain of space, Sinha and Kuteva advance the following hypotheses on the basis of the distributed semantics analysis: H: Languages which largely restrict the overt expression of spatial relational meaning to a single form class of locative particles willbe characterizable in terms both of relatively high (but also relatively discrete) polysemy of items in this class, and of complex and non-compositional covert distribution of expression of spatial relational meaning across co-present open class items. Such languages will in general disfavour optionality in the expression of spatial relational meaning through the locative particle system, but will favour it in contexts where open class items explicitly (overtly) express spatial relational meaning. These languages will also disfavour the overt repetition of the same spatial relational meaning at different points in the syntagmatic string. H2: Languages which overtly distribute spatial relational meaning across co-selections from two or more closed classes may exhibit high degress of polysemy (in the limit case, extreme meaning indeterminacy) in one or more of such classes, but will compesate by high specificity of meaning in other closed classes; and such languages will favour both the contextually-determined optionality of some spatial relational meaning-bearing items, and the overt repetition within a single syntagmatic string of the same spatial relational information. C. Sinha and T. Kuteva (1995) Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 18, 167-199. (Note: a language of the type characterized in H1 is English; a language of the type characterized in H2 is Japanese. English having a "covertly" distributed spatial semantics, and high but discrete "overt" lexical polysemy in prepositions, and Japanese having an overtly distributed spatial semantics, "bleaching"-type polysemy on postpositions, strong specification of path and disposition in verbs, and locative nouns which are less polysemous than English prepositions.) Chris Sinha From chris at psy.au.dk Wed Dec 9 12:56:08 1998 From: chris at psy.au.dk (Chris Sinha) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:56:08 MEST Subject: Crosslinguistic studies of polysemy Message-ID: In response to Ann Dowker: Some form classes are more susceptible to polysemy than others (prepositions more so than nouns, for example), so that typological differences could affect the overall frequency of polysemous items. But polysemy is a tricky issue anyway and it can be more useful to look at the distribution of meaning across form classes, both systemically and syntagmatically. With respect to the domain of space, Sinha and Kuteva advance the following hypotheses on the basis of the distributed semantics analysis: H: Languages which largely restrict the overt expression of spatial relational meaning to a single form class of locative particles willbe characterizable in terms both of relatively high (but also relatively discrete) polysemy of items in this class, and of complex and non-compositional covert distribution of expression of spatial relational meaning across co-present open class items. Such languages will in general disfavour optionality in the expression of spatial relational meaning through the locative particle system, but will favour it in contexts where open class items explicitly (overtly) express spatial relational meaning. These languages will also disfavour the overt repetition of the same spatial relational meaning at different points in the syntagmatic string. H2: Languages which overtly distribute spatial relational meaning across co-selections from two or more closed classes may exhibit high degress of polysemy (in the limit case, extreme meaning indeterminacy) in one or more of such classes, but will compesate by high specificity of meaning in other closed classes; and such languages will favour both the contextually-determined optionality of some spatial relational meaning-bearing items, and the overt repetition within a single syntagmatic string of the same spatial relational information. C. Sinha and T. Kuteva (1995) Distributed spatial semantics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 18, 167-199. (Note: a language of the type characterized in H1 is English; a language of the type characterized in H2 is Japanese. English having a "covertly" distributed spatial semantics, and high but discrete "overt" lexical polysemy in prepositions, and Japanese having an overtly distributed spatial semantics, "bleaching"-type polysemy on postpositions, strong specification of path and disposition in verbs, and locative nouns which are less polysemous than English prepositions.) Chris Sinha From dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl Wed Dec 9 14:02:45 1998 From: dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl (Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 15:02:45 +0100 Subject: Clusters in early L1 acquisition Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Since child language is one of the model exercise areas of language universals, I would like to investigate the ways in which universal phonotactic constraints describing consonant clusters are reflected in early first language acquisition. I'd need data from a number of typologically different languages on consonant clusters which infants may happen to use in the earliest, pre-babbling (so- called "prelinguistic") period of acquisition as well as the ones used in early words. Could I ask you for help in finding/getting access to the kind of data I mentioned or any available data already processed from this point of view? I'd also be very grateful for tips on publications concerning early clusters. Greetings and regards, Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk ______________________________________________________________________ Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk School of English Adam Mickiewicz University al. Niepodleglosci 4 61-874 Poznan, Poland email: dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl tel: +48 61 8528820 http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa fax: +48 61 8523103 home tel.: +48 61 8679619 From nakajima at chass.utoronto.ca Wed Dec 9 15:32:49 1998 From: nakajima at chass.utoronto.ca (kazuko nakajima) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:32:49 -0500 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Dear Dr. De Houwer I read your email with keen interest. It will be very much appreciated if you could send me the article you mentioned in the mail. My fax number (in case you need it) is 416-927-7825. Thank you very much. Kazuko Nakajima Associate Professor University of Toronto From macw at cmu.edu Wed Dec 9 23:31:17 1998 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 18:31:17 -0500 Subject: bedtime monologues Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to the CHILDES database of a remarkable corpus of bedtime monologues collected by Katherine Nelson and colleagues and analysed in Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. The file nelson.zip is now on the server. Here is the basic information on this corpus: This data set was collected over a 15 month period (November 1981 to February 1983) when the child Emily was 21 to 36 months old, by the child's parents, who recorded their conversations and the child's spontaneous speech while alone after they left her room at night or at naptime, under the direction of Katherine Nelson. Recording was done by casette recorder placed under her crib. T perecordings were made more frequently in the first few months Tapes were reviewed and commented upon by the child's mother, and were initially transcribed by both the mother and the researcher. Later tapes were reviewed by different researchers studying them over a two-year period. The final transcription made available to CHILDES has revised some of the original versions for consistency and accuracy. The data have been reported in a number of previous publications, and the study is documented more fully in Nelson (1989). There may be minor discrepancies in the version delivered to CHILDES compared to published excerpts. Such discrepancies are to be expected given the difficulties of interpreting speech of a child talking to herself at this age. The tapes contain many references to individuals in addition to parents and child, including baby-sitter (Tanta), grandmother (Mormor), baby brother (Stephen), and friend Carl. The names of other friends and relations have been changed for confidentiality, and are not necessarily consistent with the names used in previous publications (which were also substitutes). Last names have been consistently deleted, although in some cases this interrupts the rhythmic quality of the talk. Questions regarding this data set should be directed to Katherine Nelson, Developmental Psychology, City University of New York Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd St., New York, NY 10036 (email: knelson at email.gc.cuny.edu). Permission to use the data for research must be obtained before publication is contemplated. Publications using this data set should cite: Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. From bpearson at comdis.umass.edu Thu Dec 10 01:10:08 1998 From: bpearson at comdis.umass.edu (Barbara Zurer Pearson) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 20:10:08 -0500 Subject: ANTON and NATASHA, Thanks Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3785 bytes Desc: not available URL: From charles.watkins at wanadoo.fr Wed Dec 9 20:46:22 1998 From: charles.watkins at wanadoo.fr (Charles Watkins) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:46:22 +0100 Subject: bilingual children Message-ID: Both languages from the start: I am sure the key to acquisition is affect. That means the child has to relate affectively from birth through the medium of both languages I speak as a parent of two bilingual boys (French and English) and as doctoral student in linguistics researching into the theory of deixis using a bilingual corpus. I have therefore no specialist psycholinguistic knowledge, just good old intuition and obervation. Charles Watkins -----Message d'origine----- De : Sneha V Bharadwaj ? : info-childes at childes.psy.cmu.edu Date : mercredi 9 d?cembre 1998 00:37 Objet : bilingual children > >I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me >following questions : "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW >BORN?" and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language >approach"? > Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance >to all your replies >-Sneha Bharadwaj. > > > From vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be Thu Dec 10 08:06:40 1998 From: vhouwer at uia.ua.ac.be (Annick.DeHouwer) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:06:40 +0100 Subject: Clusters in early L1 acquisition Message-ID: An overview of the research on early Dutch first language acquisition can be found in: 'Early speech development in children acquiring Dutch: Mastering general basic elements', by Florien Koopmans-van Beinum and Jeannette van der Stelt, in The Acquisition of Dutch, Steven Gillis and Annick De Houwer, eds, John Benjamins, 1998. --Annick De Houwer On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk wrote: > > Dear Colleagues, > > Since child language is one of the model exercise areas of > language universals, I would like to investigate the ways in which > universal phonotactic constraints describing consonant clusters are > reflected in early first language acquisition. I'd need data from a > number of typologically different languages on consonant clusters > which infants may happen to use in the earliest, pre-babbling (so- > called "prelinguistic") period of acquisition as well as the ones used > in early words. > Could I ask you for help in finding/getting access to the kind of data > I mentioned or any available data already processed from this point > of view? I'd also be very grateful for tips on publications concerning > early clusters. > > Greetings and regards, > Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk > School of English > Adam Mickiewicz University > al. Niepodleglosci 4 > 61-874 Poznan, Poland email: dkasia at ifa.amu.edu.pl > tel: +48 61 8528820 http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa > fax: +48 61 8523103 home tel.: +48 61 8679619 > > > > From sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk Fri Dec 11 07:55:41 1998 From: sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk (Stephanie Stokes) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:55:41 +0800 Subject: Special Issue of IJLCD - Chinese Message-ID: International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders Special Issue A special issue of the journal will be devoted to research on Chinese language and communication disorders. Research reports on any aspect of communication disorders pertaining to Chinese and any of its dialects will be considered. Guest editors for the edition will be Dr Stephanie F. Stokes and Dr. Edwin Yiu. Contributors should send their manuscripts to Dr S. F. Stokes, University of Hong Kong, Prince Philip Dental Hospital, 5/F, 34 Hospital Road, Hong Kong. The deadline for initial submission is June 15 1999. It is expected that reviewers' comments will be returned in 2 months after initial submission. Then the deadline for re-submission after reviewers' comments will be Oct 15 1999. Please address questions to Dr Stokes or Dr Edwin Yiu at sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk and edwinyiu at hkusua.hku.hk respectively. regards, Stephanie Dr. Stephanie F. Stokes Associate Professor Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences University of Hong Kong 5/F, 34 Hospital Road HONG KONG SAR, China email: sstokes at hkusua.hku.hk fax: (852) 2559-0060 phone: 2859-0582 From ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl Fri Dec 11 13:45:34 1998 From: ULSMOCZY at Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl (Magdalena Smoczynska) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:45:34 GMT+1 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear Annick, can you give me a reference of a relatively simple book about bilingualism (something like parent's Ratgeber)? Is there something like this in French? Thank you in advance Magdalena doc. dr hab. Magdalena Smoczynska Katedra Jezykoznawstwa Ogolnego i Indoeuropejskiego UJ Dept. of General and Indoeuropean Linguistics Jagiellonian University Al. Mickiewicza 9/11 31-120 Krakow, Poland tel. +(48) (12) 6336377 ext. 302 fax. +(48) (12) 4226793 home +(48) (12) 6341037 From asanord at ling.gu.se Sat Dec 12 09:58:29 1998 From: asanord at ling.gu.se (Asa Nordqvist) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:58:29 +0100 Subject: play hearing imp/normal hearing Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am supervising two students who will write a paper and compare the communication during play between two hearing impaired preschool children, with the communication between two normal hearing children in the same kind of play activity. Do anyone know of any earlier similar kind of study and/or know of relevant literature? Best wishes, Asa Nordqvist Goteborg University YOU KNOW YOU'RE SURFING THE NET TOO MUCH WHEN... AAsa Nordqvist Dept of Linguistics phone: +46-31-7734627 Goeteborg University fax: +46-31-7734853 Box 200 e-mail: asanord at ling.gu.se SE-405 30 Goeteborg http://www.ling.gu.se/~asanord/ Sweden YOU'RE CONVINCED THAT ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER SAID, "ALTA VISTA, BABY." From gsecco at bigfoot.com Sat Dec 12 20:40:42 1998 From: gsecco at bigfoot.com (Giovanni Secco) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 18:40:42 -0200 Subject: Linguistic Society of Brazil Message-ID: Please, disseminate among colleagues. Thank you, Prof. Leonor Scliar-Cabral Program also found in http://www.cce.ufsc.br/~abralin/folder_ingles.html LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF BRAZIL 14th Linguistic Institute 2nd National Congress 30 years of ABRALIN The organizers of the 14th Linguistic Institute and the 2nd National Congress, under the auspices of the Linguistic Society of Brazil (ABRALIN) and sponsored by the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) take pleasure in inviting the members of AB RALIN and other colleagues and graduate students working in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and related fields to participate in these two events. CONGRESS: February 25-27, 1999 INSTITUTE: February 22 - March 5, 1999 Secretary: ABRALIN - UFSC/CCE/LLV Campus Trindade 88040-900 Florianopolis, SC Brazil FAX: 55 48 331 9988 Phone:331 9293 e-mail abralin at cce.ufsc.br Home-page: www.cce.ufsc.br/~abralin SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM Course 1 Dynamic approach of the phonic structure (1 credit) Prof. Eleonora ALBANO, Ph.D. UNICAMP March 1-5 Session: 1 (Port.) Pre-requisite: First week of Prof. Almeida Barbosa course (Febr.22 -26) Course 2 Pronouns, anaphors and epithets: A reassessment of the binding Theory (1 credit) Prof. Joseph AOUN, Ph. D. University of Southern California March 1-5 Session: 3 (Eng.) Course 3 Acoustic phonetics (2 credit) Prof. Dr. Plinio Almeida BARBOSA UNICAMP Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 1 (Port.) Course 4 African languages and linguistics today (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Emilio BONVINI CNRS/France Feb. 22- 26 Session: 2 (Port.) Course 5 Reference and discourse analysis (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Bernard BOSREDON Sorbonne Nouvelle n Paris III Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 1 (Fr.) Course 6 Comparative sociolinguistics (2 credits) Prof. Gregory R. GUY, Ph. D. York University / Canada Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 3 (Port.) Course 7 Language restructuring: partial versus full creolization (2 credits) Prof. Dr. John HOLM University of Coimbra Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 2 (Eng.) Course 8 Language acquisition: Principle and parameters model (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Mary KATO UNICAMP Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 2 (Port.) Course 9 The recognition of spoken words (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Regine KOLINSKY FNRS/Belgium March 01 - 05 Session: 1 (Eng.) Course 10 Cue-based acquisition and language change (1 credit) Prof. David LIGHTFOOT, Ph. D. University of Maryland March 1 - 5 Session: 2 (Eng.) Course 11 "Animacy" in the reshaping of Romance categories (1 credit) Prof. Maria MANOLIU, Ph.D. University of California, Davis March 1 - 5 Session: 3 (Eng.) Course 12 Phonology: New prospective (1 credit) Prof. Maria Helena MIRA MATEUS, Ph. D. University of Lisbon March 1 - 5 Session: 2 (Port.) Course 13 Cognitive psycholinguistics approach to reading and writing (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Jose MORAIS Free University of Brussels Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 1 (Port.) Course 14 Language and ethics (2 credits) Prof. Dr. Kanavillil RAJAGOPALAN UNICAMP Feb. 22 - March 5 Session: 1 (Port.) Course 15 Indian languages (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Aryon D. RODRIGUES University of Brasilia Feb. 22 - 26 Session: 3 (Port.) Course 16 A discourse-based approach to the analysis of languages in contact (2 credits) Prof. Gillian SANKOFF, PH. D. University of Pennsylvania Febr. 22 - 26 Session: 3 (Eng./Port.) Course 17 Multilingual spoken & written information management (1 credit) Eng. Dr. Christel SORIN France Telecom CNET Febr. 22 - 26 Session: 3 (Fr. and/or Eng.) Course 18 >>From surface to the variational linguistic space (1 credit) Prof. Dr. Harald THUN University of Kiel/ Germany March 1 - 5 Session: 1 (Eng.) For registration, each credit corresponds to one module. Before Dec. 20,98 Category (each R$ corresponds to approximately US$1) 1 module 2 modules 3 modules Members and students R$ 80,00 R$ 140,00 R$ 180,00 Other professionals R$ 100,00 R$ 180,00 R$ 240,00 Category Deadline for registration: Feb. 21,99 1 module 2 modules 3 modules Members and students R$ 100,00 R$ 180,00 R$ 240,00 Other professionals R$ 120,00 R$ 220,00 R$ 300,00 Refunds: Before January 15, 99: 50%. After Jan.15, no refund will be possible. Enrollment limit for each course: 40. TIME TABLE Week Feb. 22 - 26 March 1 - 5 Period 8:30 - 11:30 Course 3 Course 1 Course 5 Course 3 Course 13 Course 9 Course 14 Course 14 Course 18 14:30 - 17:30 Course 4 Course 7 Course 7 Course 10 Course 8 Course 12 Course 16 18:00 - 21:00 Course 6 Course 2 Course 15 Course 6 Course 17 Course 11 Registration Form Linguistic Institute - ABRALIN UFSC/DLLV Campus Universitario 88 040 900 Florianopolis - SC/Brasil e-mail: abralin at cce.ufsc.br fax: 55 48 331 99 88 - phone: 55 48 331 92 93/ 331 95 81 home page: www.cce.ufsc.br/~abralin (Please, fill out in block print). Name:___________________________________________________ Address:_______________________________________________ Zip Code: ___________City:______________ Country: _________ Phone/FAX: __________________ e-mail: _____________________ Institution: ______________________________________________ Position: _________________________________ Category: (......) Member/student (......) Others Registered: (......) 1 module (......) 2 modules (......) 3 modules (......) 4 modules (......) 5 modules (......) 6 modules Indicate the number(s) of intended course(s) (......) (......) (......) (......) (......) (......) Please, we ask foreigners to consult with the secretary about the best means of paying their fees. * Students must send a proof of their university enrollment. From AReifman at hs.ttu.edu Sat Dec 12 21:02:01 1998 From: AReifman at hs.ttu.edu (Alan Reifman) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:02:01 -0600 Subject: texas tech early childhood search Message-ID: The Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University is conducting a search for a new faculty member in early childhood development. One of the main areas of specialization we are looking for is language development. The text of our ad is shown below. It has also appeared in the November APA Monitor and the December APS Observer. POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT -- TEXAS TECH ONE POSITION: Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure Track), Early Childhood Development DATE AVAILABLE: Fall, 1999 RESPONSIBILITIES: Teach graduate and undergraduate courses in Child Development. Engage in scholarly activities, research and mentorship. Participate in committee work in the department, college and university. QUALIFICATIONS: The position requires a doctoral degree in Human Development, Developmental Psychology, Early Childhood Development, or Early Childhood Education. Candidates should have a primary interest in studying children beyond infancy. Expertise in multiculturalism, language development, and/or special needs is desirable. Exceptional candidates in other areas of early childhood development will be considered. Ability to interact positively with students, faculty, and staff. Commitment to involvement with appropriate professional organizations. Qualify for Graduate Faculty status at the University. RANK AND SALARY: Assistant/Associate Professor. Salary dependent upon qualifications and experience. DESCRIPTION: TTU has an enrollment of roughly 25,000 students of whom approximately 4,000 are graduate students. The University is located in Lubbock, a city of 200,000 in northwest Texas (South Plains region) with a sunny, low-humidity climate. Dallas (to the east) and the Rocky Mountains (to the west) are located within several hours? drive of campus. The Department offers graduate degrees in Human Development and Family Studies (M.S. and Ph. D.) and Marriage and Family Therapy (M.S. and Ph. D.), and is housed in the College of Human Sciences (enrollment of approximately 2,000 students, includes 500 Early Childhood undergraduate majors). The Department maintains the Child Development Research Center, Institute for Multidisciplinary Research on Adolescent and Adult Risk-Taking Behavior, Family Therapy Clinic, and the Center for the Study of Addiction. The University is connected to a large medical center, which has been open to our researchers. These facilities provide excellent research opportunities for faculty. Texas Tech University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer with a strong commitment to supporting equality of opportunity and respect for differences. Further information about our department and college can be obtained on the world wide web at http://www.hs.ttu.edu. TO APPLY: Send vita, (p)reprints of research articles, and a statement of purpose, and have three letters of recommendation sent, to: Alan Reifman, Search Committee Chair Department of Human Development and Family Studies College of Human Sciences Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX 79409-1162 DEADLINE: Applications should be received by January 8, 1999. From guasti at imiucca.csi.unimi.it Sun Dec 13 22:15:25 1998 From: guasti at imiucca.csi.unimi.it (Guasti Teresa) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 23:15:25 +0100 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Hi, Does anyone have references about the acquisition of the phonological system of a second language? thanks Teresa Guasti PLEASE ACKOWLEDGE RECEPTION OF THIS MESSAGE ------------------------------------------------------------- Ph.D. Dr. Maria Teresa Guasti University Of Siena Facolta' di Lettere e Filosofia Scienze della Comunicazione via del Giglio 14 53100 Siena Italy fax: +39 577 298461 phone: +39 577 298478 ---------------------------------------------- From VVVHC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Sun Dec 13 21:11:16 1998 From: VVVHC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Virginia Valian) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 16:11:16 EST Subject: first and second language acquisition position Message-ID: Position in First and Second Language Acquisition New York City A full-time (possibly part-time) position in first and second language acquisition is available beginning January 1999 (with the possibility of a later start date). The project investigates syntactic development in children and adults, with special attention to competence/performance issues and learnability. Part of the project is funded by NIMH and is directed by Prof. Virginia Valian; part of the project is funded by CUNY and is directed by Prof. Elaine Klein, Prof. Gita Martohardjono, and Prof. Valian. The person hired will a) supervise students, interns, and assistants on the project; b) develop materials for use in production and comprehension tasks with children and adults; c) perform experiments; d) record, transcribe, and analyze learners' spontaneous speech; e) analyze data; f) recruit participants. The project involves constant contact with a) young children, their parents, and other caregivers and b) non-native learners of English. The person to be hired must thus work well with adults and children of all ages, understand and accommodate their concerns and needs, and be highly organized, reliable, punctual, sensitive, and patient. We are anticipating hiring someone with a PhD in psychology, cognitive science, or linguistics, but candidates with a BA or MA in one of those fields will also be considered. We expect a candidate to have a solid background, preferably including: cognitive, developmental, and experimental psychology; linguistics; cognitive science; language acquisition; statistics; basic computer skills; previous laboratory research experience, preferably including speech transcription; native fluency in English. To apply, send a vita or summary of your qualifications by email or mail. Include a cover letter addressing the points raised above. Also include relevant examples of papers that have been published or presented at conferences. Ask at least two people who know your academic work well to send a letter of recommendation. Email addresses: psyhc at cunyvm.cuny.edu [NB: not psych] gitam at interport.net eklein at cuny.campuscw.net Address: Dr. Virginia Valian, Department of Psychology, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021. Voice: 212/ 772-5557 Fax: 212/ 650-3247 From josie.bernicot at campus.univ-poitiers.fr Sun Dec 13 18:05:05 1998 From: josie.bernicot at campus.univ-poitiers.fr (bernicot) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 19:05:05 +0100 Subject: New book on Developmental Pragmatics Message-ID: >New book on Developmental Pragmatics for French-speaking and/or >French-reading people. > >Bernicot J., Marcos, H., Day, C., Guidetti, M., Laval, V., Rabain-Jamin, J. >et Babelot, G. (Eds.). De l'usage des gestes et des mots chez l'enfant. >Paris: Colin. > >May be ordered at: > >http://www.alapage.com >in Quicksearch/books enter: Bernicot >Price: 114FF ($20) > >Comment l'enfant s'approprie-t-il le langage? Comment apprehende-t-il les >differentes situations de communication? Les experiences communicatives du >debut de la vie sont-elles importantes? >L'ouvrage r?pond ? ces questions en montrant que ce qui est crucial pour un >enfant apprennant sa langue maternelle c'est la maitrise de la variation de >ce que l'on dit en fonction de la situation de communication: on ne decrit >pas comme on demande ou comme on promet, on ne parle pas ? son pere comme on >parle ? sa mere, on doit nuancer ses paroles avec certains interlocuteurs, >etc. La maitrise de cette variation commence a etre acquise avant l'age de >deux ans par l'utilisation des gestes communicatifs. L'ouvrage analyse en >detail differentes experiences communicatives des enfants (premier >ne/dernier ne; enfant wolof du Senegal/enfant occidental). Il apparait >clairement que ces experiences differentes correspondent ? des >apprentissages differents de la langue maternelle. En bref, le langage ne >vient pas ? l'enfant, il le conquiert par l'usage qu'il en fait. > >CONTENTS > >Introduction >De l'usage et de la structure des systemes communicatifs >chez l'enfant >Josie Bernicot > >Chapitre 1 >Les usages des gestes conventionnels chez l'enfant >Michele Guidetti > >Chapitre 2 >Gestes et langage avec le pere et la mere chez le jeune enfant : >diff?rences et similitudes >Haydee Marcos et Celine Ryckebusch > >Chapitre 3 >La comprehension des demandes par de jeunes enfants : >role de la pertinence du contexte et de la forme linguistique. >Geraldine Babelot > >Chapitre 4 >Un modele de compr?hension de la promesse >Virginie Laval > >Chapitre 5 >La comprehension de la modalisation >par les enfants de 6 ? 12 ans >Claudine Day > >Chapitre 6 >La structure et l'usage des enonces : >comparaison d'enfants uniques et d'enfants seconds nes >Josie Bernicot et Mireille Roux > >Chapitre 7 >Usage du langage et contexte culturel : >le langage de la mere adresse ? l'enfant >Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin > >BON DE COMMANDE >Je desire commander : exemplaires de DE L'USAGE DES GESTES ET DES MOTS >CHEZ UENFANT par J. Bernicot et al., au prix de 114 F au lieu de 120 F *. 01 1 /901924 * * >Frais d'envoi : pour 1 vol. 20 F (etranger : 30 F), pour chaque volume >supplementaire 1 0 F. Envoi par avion : nous consulter. Franco de port pour >toute commande superieure ? 1 000 F. > >Vos coordonnees: >NOM: >Pr?nom: >Adresse: >Code Postal: >Ville: >Pays: > >Mode de reglement: >*par cheque bancaire a l'ordre de Nathan-Armand Colin >*par carte de credit: o CB o Visa o Master Card/Eurocard >n?: ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! > >expire a la fin: ! ! ! ! ! > >date et signature: > >? nous retourner avec votre reglement ? >INFO SERVICE ARMAND COLIN - 75704 PARIS CEDEX 13 >FRANCE From g.laws at surrey.ac.uk Mon Dec 14 11:04:33 1998 From: g.laws at surrey.ac.uk (Glynis Laws) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 06:04:33 -0500 Subject: Greek nonword repetition Message-ID: Does anyone know whether a set of nonwords has been devised based on Greek? Many thanks. Glynis Laws Dr. Glynis Laws, Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH Telephone: 01483 300800 ext. 2900 Fax: 01483 259553 From antelmi at iulm.it Wed Dec 16 17:21:50 1998 From: antelmi at iulm.it (Donella Antelmi) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:21:50 +0100 Subject: DETERMINERS IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN Message-ID: I am working on my thesis about determiners in bilingual children (English/Italian). Could you please point out to my attention any work/publication on this topic to the following e-mail address: apirondi at scb.it Thank you in advance for your kind co-operation! Angela Pirondini From carole at play.psych.mun.ca Thu Dec 17 14:28:39 1998 From: carole at play.psych.mun.ca (Carole Peterson) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:58:39 -0330 Subject: Colleagues in China Message-ID: I may be in China in May, 1999 as part of an international delegation, and I would very much like to meet colleagues in the child language research area (especially if their work is related to narratives). I will be visiting the University of Beijing as well as Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an. Can anybody give me relevant information or names? Carole Peterson From Frontier at nycnet.com Thu Dec 17 14:27:36 1998 From: Frontier at nycnet.com (Frontier) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:27:36 -0500 Subject: bilingual language acquisition Message-ID: Sabine; Here's a reference - Hoffman, C. (1985). Language acquisition in two trilingual children. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 6, 479-496. There are many other references around. Will send them once I locate them. Jose Centeno Sabine.Prechter at anglistik.uni-giessen.de writes: >Dear fellow researchers, > >a student of mine is working on a paper on the structure of caretaker >input >in multilingual settings. >As far as I remember, one of the reactions to the bilingualism discussion >came from a Japanese family raising their children in English and >Japanese. >I would be really grateful if they could contact me and let us know a bit >more about their experience and maybe also literature they used since this >student is also a non-native speaker of English, but raises her daughter >in >a multilingual environment. > >Thanks in advance, > >Sabine Prechter > >________________________________ >Para ser grande, se inteiro: nada teu exagera ou exclui. >Se todo em cada coisa. Poe quanto es no minimo que fazes. >Assim em cada lago a lua toda brilha, porque alta vive. >14.02.1933 Ricardo Reis > >Sabine Prechter >Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Jucker >Justus-Liebig-University Giessen >FB 10 Anglistik >Otto-Behaghel Str. 10 B/4 >D-35394 Giessen, Germany >Fax +49 641 99-30159; Fone+49 641 99-30065 > > > > > > From Sabine.Prechter at anglistik.uni-giessen.de Thu Dec 17 15:17:11 1998 From: Sabine.Prechter at anglistik.uni-giessen.de (Sabine Prechter) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:17:11 +0000 Subject: bilingual language acquisition Message-ID: Dear fellow researchers, a student of mine is working on a paper on the structure of caretaker input in multilingual settings. As far as I remember, one of the reactions to the bilingualism discussion came from a Japanese family raising their children in English and Japanese. I would be really grateful if they could contact me and let us know a bit more about their experience and maybe also literature they used since this student is also a non-native speaker of English, but raises her daughter in a multilingual environment. Thanks in advance, Sabine Prechter ________________________________ Para ser grande, se inteiro: nada teu exagera ou exclui. Se todo em cada coisa. Poe quanto es no minimo que fazes. Assim em cada lago a lua toda brilha, porque alta vive. 14.02.1933 Ricardo Reis Sabine Prechter Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Jucker Justus-Liebig-University Giessen FB 10 Anglistik Otto-Behaghel Str. 10 B/4 D-35394 Giessen, Germany Fax +49 641 99-30159; Fone+49 641 99-30065 From macw at cmu.edu Fri Dec 18 15:51:56 1998 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:51:56 -0500 Subject: thanks from Natasha Gagarina Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, With this letter I would like to express my very deep gratitude to all of the people who responded to the urgent call from Dr. Magdalena Smoczynska to help my son Toni. I could hardly express everything that I felt when I saw how many people participated in helping us in our trouble. Words are not enough to describe the feelings. It was very important for us, because the doctors asked me almost each day about whether I had enough money for treatment, about what I would do in order to collect the money to continue the treatment, and about the insurance, etc. I hope that the remission that Toni has now will last during the next five years (If there is no relapse during five years, the patient is considered to be healthy again). He has to get two more strong blocks of chemo during the next months and then long-term chemotherapy during approx. two years. I really do not know if we could overcome these enormous difficulties without the help of all of you. And I cannot imagine how what a huge THANK YOU I would like to say to someone so dear to us, MAGDALENA SMOCZYNSKA. I cannot even measure my gratitude to her. I wish everybody Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 1999! With the best regards, Natasha Gagarina gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de From lmenn at psych.colorado.edu Mon Dec 21 19:29:53 1998 From: lmenn at psych.colorado.edu (Lise Menn) Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 12:29:53 -0700 Subject: 1-year job at U. of Colorado Message-ID: The Linguistics Department of the University of Colorado has a one-year non-renewable position for an Instructor, for the AY 1999-2000. Ph.D. must be completed by start of classes on 16 August 1999. Salary $20,000. Teaching load, five courses, including MA-level Intro to Formal Syntax, and two large undergraduate sociolinguistics courses. The University of Colorado at Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment. Interviews will be held at the LSA meeting in Los Angeles. E-mail Lise.Menn at colorado.edu for more information. Lise Menn Professor and Chair Linguistics Department - Box 295 University of Colorado Boulder CO 80309-0295 303-492-8042; fax 303-492-4416 BEWARE PROCRUSTES BEARING OCCAM'S RAZOR From ervin-tr at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Sat Dec 26 06:28:37 1998 From: ervin-tr at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1998 23:28:37 -0700 Subject: development of humor Message-ID: The 1999 International Humor Conference sponsored by the International Society for Humor Studies The 1999 International Humor Conference is the eighteenth in a series of scholarly meetings on humor and laughter and the eleventh such meeting sponsored by the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS). The 1999 Conference is scheduled to take place from June 29 to July 3, 1999 at Holy Names College in the Oakland Hills overlooking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. For this conference, scholars, professionals, and students are invited to submit proposals for papers, posters, and symposia focusing on humor research in the arts and humanities as well as in the health, cognitive, and social sciences. We are also accepting proposals for workshops and for the following prescheduled symposia: Cognitive Science and Humor Research (Chair: Victor Raskin, Purdue University) The Connections between Humor and Health (Chair: Sven Svebak, University of Trondheim) The Sense of Humor: Further Explorations of a Personality Characteristic (Chair: Willibald Ruch, University of Duesseldorf) Wisecracking and Storytelling: Gender Differences in the Conversational Humor of of Children and Adults (Chair: Susan Ervin-Tripp, UC Berkeley) A sixteen-page brochure containing a full overview of the conference along with registration materials and information on how to submit proposals for papers, symposia, and workshops can be obtained by writing Martin D. Lampert, Chair 1999 International Humor Conference Holy Names College 3500 Mountain Blvd. Oakland, CA 94619-1699 or calling in the United States, (510) 436-1699. Brochures and additional conference information can also be requested through the Internet from humor99 at hnc.edu or downloaded from the conference webpage at http://www.hnc.edu/events/humor99. The deadline for all proposals is March 1, 1999. From macw at cmu.edu Mon Dec 28 00:02:02 1998 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 19:02:02 -0500 Subject: data for FTP now in both Mac and Windows format Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, In order to make the downloading of CHILDES files through FTP easier, we have now created both Macintosh and Windows copies of the database. The data are essentially the same, but you will find that, if you download the form that matches your machine, the CLAN editor will no longer complain about the files being in the wrong format and non-Roman characters should appear in the right form if you have the correct font loaded. The files are still compacted using the ZIP format, since that can be read by both WinZip on Windows and StuffIt on the Mac. --Brian MacWhinney From lmenn at psych.colorado.edu Thu Dec 31 18:03:07 1998 From: lmenn at psych.colorado.edu (Lise Menn) Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 11:03:07 -0700 Subject: distress about salary offered by Linguistics/U of Colorado Message-ID: Several colleagues from other schools have expressed anger at the low salary we advertised for a 1-year instructor position. We are not happy about it either, and I wish we could do better. All we have are 5 courses as replacements which pay $4K each. This was an attempt to give one person a chance to do all 5, instead of them having to chase around to 3 or 4 different area schools teaching a course or 2 at each of them, which is the typical life for someone in transition to a tenure-track position, here or elsewhere. The administration has been asked several times to give us a little more money for this position, but they have a good response: they are now implementing an instructor policy that guarantees $4K/course to all of them (some were getting as little as $2,700), and guarantees the right to have multi-year contracts and a base salary of $30K/year/fulltime equiv (6 courses) to every non-tenure-track instructor who has been teaching for 3 or more years at 50% time or more, plus annual merit increases. I am told that this gives us one of the best policies in the U.S. But this means that there is no money left to improve the situation for 1-year temporary hires in the near term. Before you send us more angry letters, please check what your own department's options would be if you had 30% of your faculty on leave for next year. If you could really offer a better option, let me know and I'll let my dean know. Lise Menn