From menyuk at bu.edu Mon Jan 2 16:56:07 2006 From: menyuk at bu.edu (Paula Menyuk) Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 11:56:07 -0500 Subject: info-childes Digest - 01/01/06 In-Reply-To: <83201.83930@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: Will be away until January 15. Paula Menyuk From aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk Tue Jan 3 16:04:59 2006 From: aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk (aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 16:04:59 +0000 Subject: new ideas In-Reply-To: <43A97BFD.8070409@cs.uiuc.edu> Message-ID: Dear Margaret, If translational symmetry describes the echo, it may also also bear on syntactic merger and the surface expression of endocentricity in the auditory medium of spoken language - making Merge a plausible case of linguistic new from old. But do you mean that mathematical principles like translational symmetry are sufficient to explain all properties of what have been postulated as linguistic universals? or that translational symmetry represents just one case where they do? There seem to be obvious advantages in maximising the new from old. But if this is taken to the limit, there are no language-specificities. Both the general distribution and the detailed forms of children's speech and language disorders are then hard to explain other than as consequences of the parenting or quantity/quality of child-directed speech/language. This does not seem to me promising as a line of explanation - clinically or otherwise. Aubrey > Brian MacWhinney wrote: >> principles such as spatial symmetry, embedding, and recursion as >> precursors to similar functions in language. > The mathematical term "symmetry" covers a wide range of type of > self-similarity. > A better one to look for in a moving temporal medium would be > translational > symmetry, better known as repetition of a pattern in the same order > (rather > than reflected). *THAT* is quite salient in language and in related > domains > such as music and poetry. > > Margaret > (Margaret Fleck, U. Illinois) > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1615 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue Jan 3 20:00:23 2006 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 20:00:23 +0000 Subject: question Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From mkastamoula at yahoo.com Tue Jan 3 22:20:09 2006 From: mkastamoula at yahoo.com (Mary Kastamoula) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 14:20:09 -0800 Subject: Modern Greek word frequencies Message-ID: I am looking for word and morpheme frequencies in Modern Greek but I have not managed to find anything. There is some online work but it is about Ancient Greek. Has anyone come across an online dictionary or a Greek dictionary with frequency information? Thank you Mary Kastamoula MPhil/PhD student Institute of Education University of London --------------------------------- Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From G.Morgan at city.ac.uk Wed Jan 4 15:07:33 2006 From: G.Morgan at city.ac.uk (Morgan, Gary) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 15:07:33 -0000 Subject: Research posts London, UK Message-ID: Post-graduate/Post-doctoral Researchers (2 posts) City University London, UK www.city.ac.uk/hr/jobs Department of Language and Communication Science, Post-graduate/Post-doctoral Researcher (HM/10071) £22.5K - £25.5K pa inc Post-doctoral Researcher (RH/10082) £28.5K - £32K pa inc Fixed term for three years The Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) is a major new research centre funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK. The Centre comprises a series of thematically linked research projects including sign language linguistics, language processing and language development. In a new collaboration between the DCAL, City University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen we intend to examine the effects of modality and age of acquisition of language on segmentation mechanisms. We are seeking two researchers to work on an ESRC-funded research project investigating language processing in adult deaf signers. The study will use experimental methods to probe how sign language is segmented on-line at the level of phonological structure. In particular we are interested in testing psycholinguistic models (e.g. The Possible Word Constraint) with data from sign language users. With excellent communication skills, you will have the ability to work collaboratively within a team and will be able to work to tight deadlines, with many conflicting priorities. For the Post-graduate/Post-doctoral Researcher, you will be a graduate or postgraduate in linguistics, psychology or related area. With knowledge of sign/English linguistics, you will have the ability to carry out interviews in sign language. You will have signing skills to the equivalent of CACDP Level 2 BSL or above. For the Post-doctoral Researcher, you will have a Ph.D. in Psychology, Linguistics or related area, (or doctoral dissertation submitted for examination), with research experience in psychology, linguistics, or psycholinguistics. You will have experience in experimental design and analysis. Knowledge of a sign language will be an advantage. Benefits include a final-salary pension scheme. For more information and an application form, visit www.city.ac.uk/hr/jobs or write to the Recruitment Team, HR Department, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, quoting the relevant job reference number. Closing date: 31 January 2006. From ioana_goga04 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 4 16:02:37 2006 From: ioana_goga04 at yahoo.com (Goga Ioana) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 08:02:37 -0800 Subject: english translation of parent-child verbal interaction Message-ID: Hello everyone, We have several transcripts of the parent-child interactions during a seriation task. The transcripts are in Romanian, and after posting on this list, Patricia Ganea from Virgina University offered to help us to transcribe the main lines in english. However, we do not have an experience on how this type of translation should be done. Can anyone help us please ? The infants are between 1 and 3 years old, therefore, their lexical forms are 'slightly' different from the adult forms. The main goal is to use the english translation to train a computational model, which is supposed to acquire lexical items and basic syntax rules. Any suggestions are more then welcome. Thank you, Ioana Goga www.coneural.org --------------------------------- Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gary.marcus at nyu.edu Thu Jan 5 04:28:37 2006 From: gary.marcus at nyu.edu (Gary Marcus) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 23:28:37 -0500 Subject: Assembling language from spare parts Message-ID: Dear INFO-CHILDES readers, I thought I’d start the new year by surprising regular readers of this forum by agreeing, at least in part, with a theoretical position championed by Liz Bates. As noted in this forum over the last couple weeks, Liz advocated a sort of language-from-spare-parts view, and in the last couple years (for my own reasons) I’ve been arguing for something quite similar (Marcus, 2004a; Marcus 2004b, esp. Chapter 7; Marcus 2006; and in a just-published review of the genetic basis of language, Fisher & Marcus 2006). In words that I very much agree with, Bates argued that the cognitive machinery that makes us human can be viewed as a new machine constructed out of old parts (Bates, 1999, and related quotes mentioned recently on Info-Childes) At the same time, Liz’s perspective on this idea, which I think of as an extension of Darwin’s notion of descent with modification, is different from my own. For her, descent-with-modification was all about quantitative change, and the poster-child of evolutionary novelty was the giraffe: [C]onsider the metaphor of the giraffe’s neck. Giraffes have the same number of neckbones that you and I have, but these bones are elongated to solve the peculiar problems that giraffes are specialized for (i.e., eating leaves high up in the tree). As a result of this particular adaptation, other adaptations were necessary as well, including cardiovascular changes (to pump blood all the way up to the giraffe’s brain), shortening of the hindlegs relative to the forelegs (to ensure that the giraffe does not topple over), and so on… The giraffe’s neck is still a neck, built out of the same basic blueprint that is used over and over in vertebrates, but with some quantitative adjustments. It still does other kinds of “neck work”, just like the work that necks do in less specialized species, but it has some extra potential for reaching up high in the tree that other necks do not provide. If we insist that the neck is a leaf-reaching organ, then we have to include the rest of the giraffe in that category, including the cardiovascular changes, adjustments in leg length, and so on. In the same vein, our “language organ” can be viewed as the result of quantitative adjustments in neural mechanisms that exist in other mammals. (Bates, 1999) In my view, Liz overemphasized the quantitative at the expense of the qualitative. Take color vision, for example. Much (though not everything) is known about how it arose, evolutionary, and while the process of color vision surely should be seen as the product of descent with modification, the capacity to see in color equally surely differs qualitatively from anything preceded it. In essence, the critical step involved an evolutionary process known as duplication-and-divergence. Around 400 million years ago, gene for producing photoreceptor pigment was duplicated, and one copy of the gene was then free to diverge, yielding a second photoreceptor pigment with a slightly different spectral sensitivity. At that point, it became possible for ancestral retinas to distinguish not just the amount of light (monochromatic vision) impinging upon the eye but also the nature of that light (dichromatic vision). In understanding the nature and evolution of color vision, it's important to recognize how color vision is continuous with ancestral systems for monochromatic vision, but missing the point to think of the dramatic reorganization that ensued as nothing more than quantitative change. Liz’s conception of language through the quantitative change leads to a kind of language as cognition-writ- large perspective, whereas I think that process of evolutionary tinkering very much open the possibility of genuine novelty. Rather than trying to understand language as the product of (say) little more than an exceptionally large chimp brain, I suggest that we would be best off seeing language as the product of both qualitative and quantitative change. I further depart from Liz’s company when the question of what kinds of genetic change might have taken place. In the 1999 paper quoted from above, Bates went on to suggest that developmental neurobiologists have abandoned the idea that detailed aspects of synaptic connectivity are under direct genetic control, in favor of an activity-dependent account. There has to be something special about the human brain that makes language possible, but that “something” may involve highly distributed mechanisms that serve many other functions. Here again, Bates's view seems half right; the notion that language relies on highly distributed mechanisms seems even more plausible several years later, and many (though perhaps not all) of the relevant neural regions play roles in other cognitive functions. But distribution, and even the important role of activity-dependence, do not diminish the importance of genetic contributions; in the same half decade since Bates wrote those words, it is has become amply clear that genes do in fact drive initial synaptic connectivity in very detailed ways. As I emphasized in The Birth of the Mind, molecular control of initial brain-wiring is both precise and powerful, even while it is flexible. Although activity-dependence (which I think of as rewiring) is crucial, endogeneous mechanisms are no less crucial; indeed, many neural hallmarks can develop in the absence of any activity at all (e.g, Crowley & Katz, 1999; Verhage, 2000). A synthetic explanation of human cognition – and human uniqueness – must look for both qualititative and quantitative changes both in what is learned and what is contributed via biology. – Gary Marcus p.s. Brian MacWhinney alluded to a an excellent early statement of this view, in Kaplan & Werner (1963). For those interested, I tracked down the original wording: Even in the emergence of novel functions and forms, however, there is, as a rule, an intertwining of continuous and discontinuous changes: though novel features come about by qualitative change, which necessarily implies discontinuity, the manner in which such features emerge may be gradual in various respects, e.g., there may be a gradual increase in the frequency of occurrence of the new over the old, or there may be employment of older forms for new functions before the new functions secure the formation of novel, function- specific means, etc They in turn seem to have credited their idea to a reading of Mayr (1960), who of course traced his own work back to Darwin. References Bates, E. (1999). Plasticity, localization, and language development. In S. H. Broman & J. M. Fletcher (Eds.), The changing nervous system: Neurobiological consequences of early brain disorders. New York: Oxford University Press. Crowley, J. C., & Katz, L. C. (1999). Development of ocular dominance columns in the absence of retinal input. Nature Neuroscience, 2(12), 1125-1130. Fisher, S. E., & Marcus, G. F. (2006). The eloquent ape: genes, brains and the evolution of language. Nature Reviews Genetics, 7(1), 9-20. Kaplan, B. & Werner, H. (1963) Symbol Formation: An Organismic- Developmental Approach to Language and the Expression of Thought. Wiley. Marcus, G. F. (2004a). Before the word. Nature, 431(7010), 745. Marcus, G. F. (2004b). The Birth of the Mind: How A Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought. New York: Basic Books. Marcus, G. F. (2006). Cognitive Architecture and Descent with Modification. Cognition, in press. Mayr, E., 1960. “The emergence of evolutionary novelties”. In Tax, S. (Ed.), Evolution after Darwin, Vol. I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Verhage, M., et al. (2000). Synaptic assembly of the brain in the absence of neurotransmitter secretion. Science, 287(5454), 864-869. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk Thu Jan 5 14:46:39 2006 From: e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk (Emily K. Farran) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:46:39 +0000 Subject: Call for papers: The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, UK Message-ID: The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, 6th to 7th July, 2006, Reading, UK Call for papers, submission deadline 31st January 2006 For further information see: http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf/WSconferencedetails.html The major aim of the conference is to disseminate advances in our understanding of Williams syndrome (WS) across wide-ranging disciplines: from genetics to medical, behavioural and cognitive characteristics. A second aim is to discuss recent advances in research methodology, particularly in developmental psychology. The workshop will be attended by professionals who work with individuals with Williams syndrome: developmental and cognitive psychologists, geneticists and clinicians. Keynote speakers: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith Dr Michael Thomas The workshop will incude presentations from many eminent researchers including: Professor Peter Hammond Professor Pat Howlin Dr May Tassabehji Dr Mazal Cohen Dr Gaia Scerif Call for papers. Please submit abstracts to Emily Farran at e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words Please state whether paper or poster presentation Paper presentations will be twenty minutes long with ten minutes for questions. Submission deadline: 31st January 2006 Registration deadline: 28th February 2006 -- Dr. Emily Farran Department of Psychology University of Reading Earley Gate Reading RG6 6AL UK Tel: +44 (0)118 378 7531 Fax: +44 (0)118 378 6715 http://www.reading.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf From mkastamoula at yahoo.com Thu Jan 5 15:10:06 2006 From: mkastamoula at yahoo.com (Mary Kastamoula) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 07:10:06 -0800 Subject: Greek word frequencies Message-ID: I would like to thank those of you who replied to my enquiry about finding Modern Greek word frequency information. Just to summerise, I finally think at the moment there are two usefull online sources of information for Modern Greek frequency information: http://hnc.ilsp.gr (already mentioned) http://www.komvos.edu.gr (this one has online distionaries and a reverse dictionary that allows search by using the end of the word e.g. %morpheme. It also gives a total count of the words ending to that specific morpheme) Thanks Mary Kastamoula MPhil/PhD Student Institute of Education University of London --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu Thu Jan 5 16:40:40 2006 From: nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu (nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:40:40 -0500 Subject: Indefinite Nouns in Discourse Message-ID: Hello, A little while ago I posted an inquiry about indefinie animate nouns in discourse. My goal was to find out information in experimental work or corpora analysis about how grammatical roles are assigned to two animate nouns when one of them is indefinite. In the experiment that I conducted, in the absence of morphological cues and with ambiguous word order children and adults preferred an animate definite noun as a subject over an animate indefinite noun. Theres Gruter had similar findings with her L1 controls in an L2 study with Egnlish speakers learning German. (Grüter, T. (in press). Another take on the L2 initial state. Language Acquisition. ) Thanks to everyone who responded to my query. Here is a summary of the responses. Hickmann, M. & Hendriks, H. (1999). Cohesion and anaphora in children?s narratives: a comparison of English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 26, 419-451. Höhle, B., Weissenborn, J., Kiefer, D., Schulz, A, & Schmitz, M (2002) The origins of syntactic categorization for lexical elements: The role of determiners. In J. Costa & M.J. Freitas (eds.) Proceedings of the GALA 2001 Conference on Language Acquisition. Lisboa, Associação Portugesa de Linguística, 106-111. Kail, M. & Hickmann, M. (1992). French children's ability to introduce referents in narratives as a function of mutual knowledge. First Language, 12, 73-94. Kempe, V. & MacWhinney, B. (1999). Processing of morphological and semantic cues in Russian and German. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14, 129-171. Limber, J. (1976). Unraveling competence, performance, and pragmatics in the speech of young children. Journal of Child Language, 3, 309-318. YAMAMOTO, M. 1999. Animacy and Reference: Studies in Language Companion Series. Amsterdam / Philidelphia: John Benjamins. Best regards, Natalie -- Natalie Batmanian Post-doctoral Fellow Hunter College Psychology Department (212)773-5557/8 From grinstead.11 at osu.edu Thu Jan 5 17:13:00 2006 From: grinstead.11 at osu.edu (John Grinstead) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:13:00 -0500 Subject: Frog Stories Output Message-ID: Dear CHILDES Folk, For those who have experience with the Frog Story paradigm, is there any kind of ball park estimate you can give me for how many utterances with or without verbs typically developing 5 or 6 year-old Spanish or English-speaking children produce during a session? Thank you, John -- |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| John Grinstead Assistant Professor Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese 283 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 43210-1340 http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grinstead11/ Tel 614.292.8856 Fax 614.292.7726 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| From macw at mac.com Thu Jan 5 17:43:02 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:43:02 -0500 Subject: Assembling language from spare parts In-Reply-To: <9A0293F0-9C5B-4297-9469-29007568F2C2@nyu.edu> Message-ID: Dear Gary, Liz would certainly be supportive of your interest in both Werner and Mayr. (And, of course, Darwin.) Nothing was dearer to her heart than the issue of new machines out of old parts (unless it might have been links between language and gesture). I can't imagine that she (or Labov) would have any problem at all agreeing with you regarding the importance of both quantitative and qualitative change. The point of divergence would be when you rely on facts regarding duplication and divergence to defend the idea of "genuine novelty." Rather than counting on the magic of the genome, Liz and I would have emphasized the magic of selection. Still, it would be wrong to dismiss the impact of genetic mechanics. However, I would like to avoid commenting on the details of your analysis of duplication and divergence without taking time to read your recent work. So, let's leave the rest of that discussion to the future. For the present, however, I thought it would be interesting to draw the attention of readers of info-childes to a thoughtful obituary for Ernst Mayr that Tom Givon posted last May to the funknet bulletin board. The obituary is from Steven Peterson of Penn State Capital College, but I am including it with Tom Givon's preface. --Brian MacWhinney Dear funk-people, I thought it would be of interest to functionally-inclined linguists to take a look at the following "appreciation" of the life and work of a recently-departed eminent evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr. It is a very thoughtful piece, in spite of the few lapses into PC and the occasional Marxist slip. Mayr's grand Darwinian themes resonate well in linguistics: adaptive selection (functionalism), diversity and its crucial role in change (the Labovian theme of variation-and-diachrony), emergence (non-mechanistic change), the interplay between field-work and theory, and between qualitative (field) and quantitative (lab) methodology; and, above all perhaps, the dynamic-historical (diachronic) theoretical understanding of extant forms (synchronic typology). TG ******************************* Ernst Mayr, arguably the preeminent biologist of the twentieth century, died on February 3, succumbing after a short illness at the age of 100. Mayr was the last survivor of a generation of renowned natural scientists that included the likes of Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Theodocious Dobzhansky, J.B.S. Haldane, G.L. Stebbins and Hermann Muller, all of whom worked to establish Darwinian evolution as the cornerstone theory of biology. Mayr's contributions to the science of biology, during the course of his remarkable life, are manifold. He will be remembered primarily for his role in the elaboration of what has become known as the Synthetic Theory of Evolution—the syntheses of the Darwinian ideas of evolution through natural selection and the common descent of all living organisms from extinct forms, with the science of genetics—from the groundbreaking work of Gregor Mendel in the nineteenth century to the revealing of the DNA double helix by Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick in the early 1950s. In addition, Mayr is chiefly credited with formulating the "biological species concept," the notion that species are not simply defined by a static compilation of common physical characteristics, but are dynamic populations of interbreeding organisms interacting with other species in an environment while remaining reproductively isolated, that is, they are prevented either geographically or behaviorally from breeding with other closely related groups. The biological species concept both incorporated and enriched Darwin's revolutionary ideas regarding the introduction of species and their geographical distribution. Darwin had sought causal explanations(ability of a species to disperse, e.g.) for the appearance of closely related species in unexpected locations, striking a blow against the creationist notion that species are found where they were originally "created." The subsequent work of Mayr with birds, and that of G.G. Simpson with mammals, has greatly enhanced our understanding of the geographical distribution of species. Mayr was a tireless proponent of "population thinking," a profound idea that plumbs the depths of the contradictions inherent in concepts such as "species" and "population." He emphasized that while the characteristics of populations are shaped and altered by natural selection, each individual member of that population is unique. Early on, Mayr rejected "essentialism," an idealist conception that posited the existence of "typical" individuals within any given population, a viewpoint that, with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance at the turn of the last century, made a considerable comeback at the expense of Darwinism. Mayr pointed out that the racialist notions that were widely held during that period were thoroughly essentialist, in that they accepted as given the existence of "average" or typical racial types. Mayr, on the other hand, favored the viewpoint that focused on the fact that no two individuals making up a species (or a "race" for that matter) are alike. For Mayr, as for Darwin, it was the uniqueness of every member of a population that served as the fuel for natural selection, providing the impetus for the evolution of entirely new types of organisms. Once the genetic mechanism for the production of continuous diversity was understood, the profundity of Darwin's original ideas were reestablished and enriched in the form of the new synthesis. Ernst Mayr was born in Germany, in the town of Kempten, Bavaria in 1904. The offspring of a long line of doctors, Mayr chose instead to concentrate his considerable intellectual abilities in the field of zoology, with a special interest in ornithology. At that time, Germany was still a major center of evolutionary biology, a tradition that owed to the work during the latter half of the nineteenth century of such notables as Ernst Haeckel and August Weismann. Haeckel, who had made major contributions in zoology, as well as in originating some of the familiar terms in biology (ecology, e.g.), is chiefly remembered for advancing his famous "Biogenetic Law," which held that the developing embryo of an organism (ontogeny) was a recapitulation of the evolutionary history of that organism (phylogeny). Weismann was a pioneer in the science of genetics, who, among his major accomplishments, established the role of sex in promoting variation within a species, and determined that gametes (sex cells) have the haploid number (half the normal or diploid number) of chromosomes. Mayr's attraction to birds brought him in contact with Erwin Stresemann, who was the curator of birds at the University of Berlin Museum of Natural History. Stresemann became his PhD advisor, and Mayr attained this advanced degree at the age of 21. Due to his astonishing longevity, as well as his European origin, Mayr was in certain essential respects a living link between nineteenth and twentieth century biology, in that while he was certainly comfortable with the quantitative aspects of the biological sciences devoted to genetics and molecular biology, he held qualitative methodologies, the use of observation and comparison to gain new insights, in high regard. It is not surprising, then, that following his studies in Berlin, Mayr, like countless naturalists before him, embarked on an expedition of discovery to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, to collect specimens for Lord Rothschild's museum at Tring, Hertfordshire, in England, and for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1931, Mayr emigrated to New York, and took a job at the museum as a curator of birds, in particular of the 280,000 bird specimens of the Rothschild collection that were donated to the museum shortly after Mayr's arrival. In an interview that marked his 100th birthday, Mayr declared: "I was very anti-Nazi, so there was no way I could return [to Germany]" (2004). In 1953, Mayr left the museum to take a position as the Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology at Harvard. Mayr remained at Harvard for the rest of his life, and was active until his final illness. Mayr was the author or co-author of more than 20 books—among them Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942), Animal Species and Evolution (1963), One Long Argument: Population, Species and Evolution, What Evolution Is (2001), his seminal work, The Growth of Biological Thought (1982) and Toward a New Philosophy of Biology(1988). His final work, titled What Makes Biology Unique, was published shortly after his 100th birthday. He also founded the journal Evolution in 1947, and was a contributor to more than 600 scientific papers. Mayr's spouse of 55 years, Margarete (Gretel) Simon, died in 1990. If one were to characterize the trajectory of Mayr's development as a scientist, it would be that he was primarily a naturalist turned theoretician. He was not a popularizer in the manner of his Harvard ,colleague, the late Stephen Jay Gould, but his theoretical acumen (in this writer's opinion) ran deeper. In fact, Mayr was critical of the late paleontologist's punctuated equilibrium hypothesis as an explanation of the evolutionary process for its overemphasis on the role of saltation (leaps). Mayr didn't completely reject Gould's theory, but explained that it did not contradict Darwinian gradualism, because such sudden bursts of evolutionary development are populational phenomena, that is, they occur at the species level. Thus, a sudden evolutionary spurt is always subsumed within the overall processes of evolution, which are for the most part gradual. Mayr took pains to point out that these accelerated evolutionary events appear saltational only when compared with the vastness of the geological time scale. Various theories of saltation as descriptors of the "sudden" appearance of new types of organisms have come and gone over the centuries, having their roots in the catastrophism (multiple creations) of the renowned comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), who tried to explain the existence of extinct animals (dinosaurs, e.g.), and fit them into some kind of schema compatible with Biblical creation. Even later saltationist theories for the evolution of species or whole groups of organisms could be interpreted as implying a kind of special creation, opening the door to a religious interpretation of the complexities of the natural world. Mayr was certainly cognizant of this danger as his well-known discourse on the nature of chance and>>selection, what he termed the "adaptationist dilemma," attests. In his book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (1988), Mayr is critical of Gould and Richard Lewontin for their attack on the notion that the development of adaptations as a result of natural selection is anything but the result of stochastic (chance) processes, therefore rendering the term adaptation obsolete, and casting a pall over natural selection, the foundation concept of Darwinism. Gould went so far as to call the notion of a process of adaptation a "Panglossian paradigm" (after Voltaire's character in Candide), a futile search for perfection in the evolutionary process. Mayr's reply is a clinic on the dialectical approach to a complex and seemingly contradictory process. He wrote: "When asked whether or not the adaptationist program is a legitimate scientific approach, one must realize that the method of evolutionary biology is in some ways quite different from that of the physical sciences. Although evolutionary phenomena are subject to universal laws, as are most phenomena in the physical sciences, the explanation of a particular evolutionary phenomenon can be given only as a `historical narrative.' Consequently, when one attempts to explain the features of something that is the product of evolution, one must attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary history of this feature." He continued by explaining that when one rejects all manner of teleological explanations for the adaptation of species to their changing environments one is left with two unified, but seemingly contradictory propositions—chance and selection forces. "The identification of these two factors as the principal causes of evolutionary change by no means completed the task for the evolutionist. As is the case with most scientific problems, this initial solution represented only the first orientation. For completion it requires a second stage, a fine-grained analysis of these two factors: What are the respective roles of chance >>>and or natural selection, and how can this be analyzed?" (1988) Mayr's life-long interest in the fundamental questions that continue to animate the biological sciences, combined with his exceptional longevity as a working and thinking scientist, engendered in him a profound appreciation of its history. In particular, he stressed the importance of a study of the history of scientific concepts (natural selection, e.g.). He wrote: "Preoccupation with this sort of conceptual history of science is sometimes belittled as a hobby of retired scientists. Such an attitude ignores the manifold contributions which this branch of scholarship makes" (1982). He stated further: "One can take almost any advance, either in evolutionary biology or in systematics, and show that it did not depend as much on discoveries as on the introduction of new concepts.... Those are not far wrong who insist that the progress of science consists principally in the progress of scientific concepts" (1982). Mayr frequently commented on what he perceived to be the sharp dichotomy between experimental and theoretical science, and the growing inclination toward reductionism in biology. He would bristle against the accusation, often made by physicists and philosophers, that biology was not "hard" science. An interesting byproduct of this common misconception, one that Mayr noted in a recent interview, was that there continues to be no Nobel Prize awarded in biology. Mayr championed the notion that the governing concepts of the science of biology were not simply reducible to mathematical formulae and the timeless laws of physics. By this he did not mean that biological processes existed outside the realm of the laws of chemistry and physics, or that many aspects of the living world did not lend themselves to quantification, but that living processes could not be entirely explained or even understood from those standpoints. Mayr explained that in previous centuries natural scientists, under pressure to be able to draw conclusions from their working hypotheses that were reducible to mathematical formulae and the laws of physics, either succumbed to that pressure and presented purely mechanical explanations for living processes, or sought vitalist (those who claim that the property of being alive is sparked by an outside force) and even religious explanations for the processes being studied. In referring to the higher levels of complexity of living systems, Mayr stressed their duality, that is, each organism is at once an expression of its genotype, the historically developed genetic code for the synthesis of proteins, and its phenotype, the unique physical appearance of each individual of a species; the product of the complex interplay of physiological, embryological and ecological processes. He placed particular emphasis on two properties unique to living systems, teleonomy (goal-directed processes) and "emergentism," the tendency for the evolution of "emergent properties," a notion that reaches beyond the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Regarding the latter, he wrote in The Growth of Biological Thought: "Systems almost always have the peculiarity that the characteristics of the whole cannot (not even in theory) be deduced from the most complete knowledge of the components, taken separately or in other partial combinations. This appearance of new characteristics in wholes has been designated as emergence" (1982). As a prime example, he cited the work to uncover the importance of DNA for the science of genetics. "The discovery of the double helix of DNA and of its code was a breakthrough of the first order.... There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years! At the same time, this purely materialistic explanation elucidates many of the phenomena which the vitalists had claimed could not be explained chemically or physically. To be sure, it is still a physicalist explanation, but one infinitely more sophisticated than the gross mechanistic explanations of earlier centuries" (1982). An emergent property, then, is something unanticipated—the evolution of new behaviors, or new adaptations (lungs, language, abstract thought, e.g.), that has unforeseen implications that propel a species or a group of organisms in an entirely new direction. It should be noted that Mayr considered the concept of emergentism to be philosophically "entirely materialistic." Not surprisingly, Mayr was a lifelong atheist and a staunch opponent of the ongoing attack on evolution by the motley assemblage of religious zealots, creationists and "intelligent design" advocates. In 1991, he commented in an interview in the Harvard Gazette: "I'm an old-time fighter for Darwinism. I say, `Please tell me what's wrong with Darwinism. I can't see anything wrong with Darwinism." For Mayr, Darwin's contribution to mankind's knowledge of the natural world was revolutionary. During an interview on his 93rd birthday, Mayr commented that one of "Darwin's great contributions was that he replaced theological, or supernatural, science with secular science. Laplace had already done this some 50 years earlier when he explained the whole world to Napoleon. After his explanation, Napoleon replied, `Where is God in your theory?' And Laplace answered, `I don't need that hypothesis.' "Darwin's explanation that all things have a natural cause made the belief in a creatively superior mind quite unnecessary. He created asecular world, more so than anyone before him. Certainly many forces were verging in that same direction, but Darwin's work was the crashing arrival of this idea and from that point on the secular viewpoint of the world became virtually universal" (2005). In the introduction to his The Growth of Biological Thought, Mayr wrote: "A well-known Soviet theoretician of Marxism once referred to my writings as `pure dialectical materialism.' I am not a Marxist and I do not know the latest definition of dialectical materialism, but I do admit that I share some of Engel's anti-reductionist views, as stated in his Anti-Duhring, and that I am greatly attracted to Hegel's scheme of thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis." For the most part, Mayr can be classified as a consistent materialist. However, his outlook stops short of embracing historical materialism, falling victim to the widely promulgated viewpoint that history consists of a series of narratives, rather than the workings of historical laws. Mayr was one of the outstanding figures of twentieth century science— brilliant and passionate, with an encyclopedic knowledge of science, history and philosophy. His contributions to an understanding of the big questions in biology, not to mention those animating science in general, have been enormous. One can only anticipate that others, in the face of the continuing assault on the scientific world outlook, will take up the defense and further illumination of the fundamental theoretical conquests of biology with equal vigor and erudition. Steven A. Peterson Director, School of Public Affairs Penn State Capital College 777 West Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA 17057 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Li.Wei at newcastle.ac.uk Fri Jan 6 10:15:43 2006 From: Li.Wei at newcastle.ac.uk (Li Wei) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 10:15:43 -0000 Subject: Volterra & Taeschner Message-ID: Does anyone know the current contact address (preferably email) of either Virginia Volterra or T. Taeschner? Professor Li Wei, PhD Professor of Applied Linguistics Head, School of Education, Communication & Language Sciences Joseph Cowen House University of Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU Great Britain Phone: +44 (0)191 222 6760 Fax: +44 (0)191 222 6550 From macw at mac.com Mon Jan 9 01:58:34 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 20:58:34 -0500 Subject: book award Message-ID: Subject: Nominations invited for the Eleanor E. Maccoby Book Award Nominations are invited for the Eleanor E. Maccoby Book Award to be presented by Division 7 of APA in the year 2006. Books published in 2005 that have had or promise to have a profound impact on developmental psychology are eligible. Edited volumes are not eligible. Self-nominations are permissible. If you have a favorite book on your reading list you are encouraged to submit it. Please provide the title, author(s), and publisher, along with a brief description of the book and capsule summary of its importance for understanding the psychology of development. Please send nominations by February by February 15 to Jean Mandler at jmandler at ucsd.edu or at the Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From htagerf at bu.edu Mon Jan 9 19:00:47 2006 From: htagerf at bu.edu (htagerf at bu.edu) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 14:00:47 -0500 Subject: Exiciting Job Opportunity! Message-ID: Job Description Full time research associate with background in psycholinguistics and communication disorders/speech language pathology to conduct clinical assessments and oversee language data collection, coding and analyses for multiple research projects. Our interdisciplinary research programs are funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and private foundation and focus on a variety of populations, including children with autism, specific language impairment, Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. Major responsibilities include: · Collection of diagnostic and language assessment from project participants and parents; · Overseeing the preparation, coding, and analyses of natural language transcripts; · Development of coding schemes for natural language samples; · Coding standardized language and cognitive assessments; · Preparation of reports and feedback for families on language assessments · Organizing testing of project participants; · Maintaining subject, stimulus, and data files; · Data analysis for language-related projects; · Preparation of literature reviews, conference presentations and manuscripts. Background and skills needed for this position include: · Masters Degree in Communication Disorders, Psychology or related field, with coursework in psycholinguistics; · Certification in Speech-language pathology · Clinical language assessment skills in children with language disorders; · Research experience in transcription and transcript coding and analysis; · Strong organizational, interpersonal, and computer skills; · Knowledge of PC Windows and Microsoft Office environments · Interest and background coursework in cognitive psychology or neuroscience, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and language/communication disorders This position is available immediately. Full-time, competitive salary and full benefits package. Send resume, letter of interest, and the names of 3 references all marked LANGUAGE RESEARCH/CLINICAL POSITION to: Laura Stetser ( lstetser at bu.edu ). For information about the research lab; Director: Helen Tager-Flusberg, Ph.D. see www.bu.edu/autism . Please - no applications to me directly! ______________________________________________ Helen Tager-Flusberg, PhD Professor, Anatomy & Neurobiology Director, Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience ( www.bu.edu/autism ) Boston University School of Medicine 715 Albany Street L814 Boston MA 02118 Fax: 617-414-1301 Voice: 617-414-1312 Email: htagerf at bu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From t.marinis at reading.ac.uk Wed Jan 11 21:13:53 2006 From: t.marinis at reading.ac.uk (Theodoros Marinis) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:13:53 +0000 Subject: Job announcement: Senior Lecturer/Reader/Chair - University of Reading, UK Message-ID: The University of Reading School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences Senior Lecturer/Reader/Chair - Ref. S0601 The School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences wish to appoint to a full-time, permanent senior post, to take effect as soon as possible. The level of appointment will depend on experience. The focus of this post will be on maintaining a high personal research profile and encouraging and building existing research activity within the Clinical Language Science section of the School. An established ability to attract research funding is essential. The section offers two pre-registration degrees in Speech and Language Therapy funded by the NHS, thus research experience in fields of normal and non-normal speech and language, other areas of communication impairment or subjects that inform these areas would be especially welcome. A qualification in speech and language therapy is desirable but not essential. Clinical salary scales will be paid to an appropriate candidate. For an informal discussion please contact Dr. Judi Ellis, Head of School j.a.ellis at reading.ac.uk or Professor Susan Edwards, Head of Section s.i.edwards at reading.ac.uk Further particulars and application form are available from the Personnel Office, The University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 217, Reading, RG6 6AH, telephone 0118 378 6771 (voicemail) (please quote Reference number), and at the University web-site below. http://www.info.rdg.ac.uk/newjobs/details.asp?RefernceNumber=S0601 Closing date for applications 13 February 2006. v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ Theodoros Marinis Lecturer in Clinical Linguistics School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences University of Reading Reading RG6 6AL, UK Tel. +44-118-3787465 http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~sslytma/index.htm v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cschutze at ucla.edu Thu Jan 12 06:23:52 2006 From: cschutze at ucla.edu (Carson Sch=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=C3=BCtze?=) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:23:52 -0800 Subject: Use of "He don?t" etc. by Sarah's mother Message-ID: Hi everyone, Can anyone point me to literature that observes/discusses that in the transcripts of Sarah from the Brown et al. Harvard study, the mother (and also the father, but we hear less of him) uses "don't" with 3rd person singular subjects, in apparent free variation with "doesn't"? Thanks. -- Prof. Carson T. Schutze Department of Linguistics, UCLA Email: cschutze at ucla.edu Box 951543, Los Angeles CA 90095-1543 Office: Campbell Hall 2224B Deliveries/Courier: 3125 Campbell Hall Campus Mail Code: 154303 www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/cschutze/ Phone: (310)995-9887 Fax: (310)206-8595 From macw at mac.com Sun Jan 15 16:07:14 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 11:07:14 -0500 Subject: French MOR Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Work on the application of MOR to the French corpora in CHILDES has lagged a bit, despite the availability of a fairly complete lexicon provided by Christophe Parisse. In part, this is because the Parisse French MOR system was constructed to use full form entries, rather than the system of arules and crules used for other languages. It would be possible to either continue constructing French MOR in this full-form format or to shift to using the analytic framework. Before beginning on this work, I wanted to check to see if anyone in the CHILDES community had done any work extending the current French MOR grammar. I want to make sure we are not about to reinvent the wheel. Many thanks. --Brian MacWhinney, CMU From parisse at ext.jussieu.fr Mon Jan 16 11:36:18 2006 From: parisse at ext.jussieu.fr (Christophe Parisse) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:36:18 +0100 Subject: French MOR In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well I beg to differ ! First I used c-rules as there are many regulars words in French and it was easier to use c-rules than not to used them. For example, there are 25144 "words" in the v.cut file. Out of these "words", 11147 are the root of 1st group verbs (the most frequent regular verbs in French) and 240 are 2nd group verbs. All these roots allow to analyse something like 45 different forms, thanks to c-rules (something like 510615 different forms in full forms). Now, there are something like 13757 words in v.cut which ARE full forms but these corresponds to (only!) 305 irregular verbs which have something like 45 different forms each and they are much to irregular for c-rules to be of much use. For nouns and adjectives, I did the same, which is generating automatically the plurals with 's' and the feminine form of adjectives with "e". Second, but most important, MOR for French does the SAME thing as MOR for English. Just two examples: ENGLISH @Begin *CHI: plays %mor: v|play-3S^n|play-PL *CHI: playing %mor: part|play-PROG *CHI: oxen %mor: n|ox&PL *CHI: geese %mor: n|goose&PL *CHI: problems %mor: n|problem-PL @End FRENCH: @Begin *CHI: jouent %mor: v|jouer-SUBJV:PRES&_3PV^v|jouer&PRES&_3PV *CHI: remises %mor: v:pp|remettre&_FEM&_PL^n|remise&_FEM-_PL^v|remiser-SUBJV:PRES&_2SV^v|remiser &PRES&_2SV *CHI: allumees %mor: v:pp|allumer&_FEM&_PL *CHI: jouant %mor: v:prog|jouer *CHI: chevaux %mor: n|cheval&_MASC&_PL *CHI: elephants %mor: n|elephant&_MASC-_PL *CHI: fille %mor: n|fille&_FEM @End However, I confess that I made an error when generating the list of exceptions because I coded some words which are regular using the "&" sign instead of "-". This especially is true for feminines forms which are all coded with "&" whereas many are regular. But I can check this and change the signs if necessary, either in the full form file or by coding a new rule. Also, some verbs of the 3rd group could be considered as regular. Well these could be changed too, but there could be disagreement about the list of regular 3rd group verbs. Finally, one could choose a different notation for infinitives and participles. I coded them in the main category, instead of using -INF, -PROG, etc. This could be easilly changed if necessary. One final remark. There are around 32,000 roots in MOR for French, which correspond to close to 600,000 full forms. It seems to me this far from incomplete. Christophe Parisse > -----Message d'origine----- > De : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org > [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]De la part de Brian MacWhinney > Envoye : dimanche 15 janvier 2006 17:07 > A : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org > Objet : French MOR > > > Dear Colleagues, > Work on the application of MOR to the French corpora in CHILDES > has lagged a bit, despite the availability of a fairly complete > lexicon provided by Christophe Parisse. In part, this is because the > Parisse French MOR system was constructed to use full form entries, > rather than the system of arules and crules used for other > languages. It would be possible to either continue constructing > French MOR in this full-form format or to shift to using the analytic > framework. Before beginning on this work, I wanted to check to see > if anyone in the CHILDES community had done any work extending the > current French MOR grammar. I want to make sure we are not about to > reinvent the wheel. Many thanks. > > --Brian MacWhinney, CMU > > From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Mon Jan 16 15:44:30 2006 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:44:30 +0100 Subject: Third CFP and extended deadline: LCM2006 Paris Message-ID: THIRD CALL / EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR LANGUAGE CULTURE AND MIND CONFERENCE (LCM 2) INTEGRATING PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGIES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE PARIS 17-20 JULY 2006 The second ‘Language Culture and Mind’ Conference (LCM 2) will be held in Paris in July 2006, following the successful first LCM conference in Portsmouth in 2004. The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue, and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language. The second edition will be held at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST), 46 rue Barrault, 75013 Paris France. Further information concerning the organization, fees and accommodation (including affordable rooms at the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris, at walking distance from the Conference site) will be provided as soon as available at the site of the conference: http://www.lcm2006.net IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submissions:  January 30 (for further detail see underneath) Notification to authors by March 30, 2006 Early registration by April 15, 2006 PRESENTATION Human natural languages are biologically based, cognitively motivated, affectively rich, socially shared, grammatically organized symbolic systems. They provide the principal semiotic means for the complexity and diversity of human cultural life. As has long been recognized, no single discipline or methodology is sufficient to capture all the dimensions of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which lies at the heart of what it is to be human. In the recent past, perception and cognition have been the basis of general unifying models of language and language activity. However, a genuine integrative perspective should also involve such essential modalities of human action as: empathy, mimesis, intersubjectivity, normativity, agentivity and narrativity. Significant theoretical, methodological and empirical advancements in the relevant disciplines now provide a realistic basis for such a broadened perspective.   This conference will articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive and bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to impart their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language sciences.   Topics include but are not limited to the relation between language and: - biological and cultural co-evolution  - comparative study of communication systems, whether animal or artificial - cognitive and cultural schematization  - emergence in ontogeny and phylogeny  - multi-modal communication - normativity  - thought, emotion and consciousness - perception and categorization - empathy and intersubjectivity - imitation and mimesis - symbolic activity - discourse genres in language evolution and ontogeny - sign, text and literacy Plenary speakers Pierre Cadiot (Linguistics, University of Orléans, France) Merlin Donald (Cognitive Science Department, Case Western Reserve University, USA) Shaun Gallagher (Department of Philosophy & Cognitive Science Program, University of Central Florida, USA) Webb Keane (Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, USA) Sandra Laugier (Philosophy, University of Amiens, France) John A. Lucy (Department of Comparative Human Development & Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA) Further information about LCM 2 will be presented at http://www.lcm2006.net. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Caroline David (Université de Montpellier) Jean-Louis Dessalles (École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris) Jean Lassègue (CNRS, Paris) Victor Rosenthal (Inserm-EHESS, Paris) Chris Sinha (University of Portsmouth) Yves-Marie Visetti (CNRS, Paris) Joerg Zinken (University of Portsmouth) Jordan Zlatev (Lund University) SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Iraide Ibarretxe Antunano (University of Zaragoza) Jocelyn Benoist (Université de Paris 1) Enrique Bernárdez, (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) Raphael Berthele (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland) Per Aage Brandt, (Case Western Reserve University) Peer F. Bundgård (Aarhus Universitet) Seana Coulson, (Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD) Jules Davidoff (Goldsmith’s, University of London) Jean-Pierre Durafour (University of Tubingen) Michel de Fornel (EHESS, Paris) Vyvyan Evans, (University of Sussex, Grande-Bretagne) Dirk Geeraerts, (Department of Linguistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgique) Clarisse Herrenschmidt (CNRS-Laboratoire Anthropologie Sociale, Paris) Chris Knight (University of East London) Bernard Laks (Université de Paris 10-Nanterre) Maarten Lemmens, (Université Lille III) Lorenza Mondada (Université Lyon II) François Nemo (Université Orléans) Domenico Parisi (CNR, Roma) David Piotrowski (CREA, Paris) Stéphane Robert (CNRS, Paris) François Rastier (CNRS, Paris) Lucien Scubla (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) Göran Sonesson (Lund, Semiotics) John Stewart (Université de Technologie de Compiègne) Frederik Stjernfelt (University of Copenhagen) Wolfgang Wildgen (University of Bremen) SUBMISSIONS Submissions are solicited either for oral presentations or for poster sessions. They will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee. Oral presentations should last 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion). All submissions should follow the abstract guidelines below. Submissions should be in English. Abstracts should not exceed 1200 words (about two A4 pages), single-spaced, font size 12 pt or larger, with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. Any diagrams and references must fit on this two page submission. Head material (at the top of the first page): - Title of the paper, - Author name(s), - Author affiliation(s) in brief (1 line), - Email address of principal author - Type of submission (oral presentation, poster) PLEASE don’t forget to specify. Abstracts should be emailed to submission at lcm2006.net as an ATTACHMENT (i.e. not included in the message) preferably as a MS Word document, but in PDF or postscript format if it is necessary to include a diagram or figure. Abstracts should be submitted by January 30, 2006. Notification of acceptance by March 30, 2006. All abstracts will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee.     *************************************************** Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Center for Languages and Literature Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html *************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 7694 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacqueline.vankampen at let.uu.nl Mon Jan 16 16:47:31 2006 From: jacqueline.vankampen at let.uu.nl (kampen) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 17:47:31 +0100 Subject: Call for papers Workshop The Romance Turn II Message-ID: Call for Papers for the Workshop The Romance Turn Date: 07-Sep-2006 - 09-Sep-2006 Location: Utrecht, Netherlands Contact Person: Jacqueline van Kampen Meeting Email: Romanceturn at let.uu.nl Web Site: http://www.let.uu.nl/romanceturn/ Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition Language Family(ies): Romance Call Deadline: 01-Apr-2006 Meeting Description: The Romance Turn II (Workshop on the Acquisition of Romance Languages) September 7-9 2006 at the UiL OTS, Utrecht University http://www.let.uu.nl./romanceturn/ The Romance Turn II will take place at Utrecht University (Netherlands). Like the first edition of The Romance Turn, which took place in 2004 at the UNED in Madrid, the present workshop intends to gather people working on the acquisition of the Romance languages. Workshop topics Papers are invited in the area of the acquisition of Romance languages. All topics in the fields of (typical and impaired) first and second language acquisition from a generative perspective will be considered. Presentations will be 30-minutes long, plus 15 minutes for discussion, and will be in English. Invited speakers Larisa Avram (University of Bucharest) Anne Christophe (CNRS Paris) Ludovica Serratrice (University of Manchester) Abstract submission Authors are invited to send one copy of an abstract (maximally two pages) in English for review. Abstracts should be submitted via e-mail to Romanceturn at let.uu.nl, as an attachment in PDF. In the body of the e-mail message include the title, language, name, academic affiliation, current address, phone and fax number, e-mail, and audiovisual requests. Authors may submit up to two abstracts, one individual and one joint. Deadline for receipt of abstracts: April 1 2006. Notification of acceptance: May 1 2006. Address for sending abstracts: Romanceturn at let.uu.nl Organizing committee Sergio Baauw Jacqueline van Kampen Joke de Lange Manuela Pinto http://www.let.uu.nl/~Jacqueline.vanKampen/personal/ Postal address: UiL OTS Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht The Netherlands phone: +31 30-2536054 fax: +31 30-2536000 From macw at mac.com Mon Jan 16 18:54:20 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:54:20 -0500 Subject: French MOR In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Christophe and Info-CHILDES, OK, I see now more clearly how this is organized. Thanks for the clarifications. The distance between the French and Spanish/ Italian systems is far less than I saw at first. And the coverage for French is far greater than I was estimating. To test this, I ran the French MOR on the Champaud data and found only 363 "missing" forms. Usually, we have twice that number for a new corpus. Moreover, virtually none of these "missing" form are truly missing. Rather they involve a few spelling errors and issues with the proper treatment of abbreviations (qu'il, s'adapte, t'apporte, d'aller). Also, the proper representation of compounds is another tricky thing. In any case, the distance to be traveled to getting the French data fully analyzed by MOR and POST should not be anywhere near as far as I originally thought. Hopefully we will be able to review some of these details next week in Paris. Many thanks for the clarifications. --Brian MacWhinney On Jan 16, 2006, at 6:36 AM, Christophe Parisse wrote: > Well I beg to differ ! > > First I used c-rules as there are many regulars words in French and > it was > easier to use c-rules than not to used them. > > For example, there are 25144 "words" in the v.cut file. Out of these > "words", 11147 are the root of 1st group verbs (the most frequent > regular > verbs in French) and 240 are 2nd group verbs. All these roots allow to > analyse something like 45 different forms, thanks to c-rules > (something like > 510615 different forms in full forms). Now, there are something > like 13757 > words in v.cut which ARE full forms but these corresponds to > (only!) 305 > irregular verbs which have something like 45 different forms each > and they > are much to irregular for c-rules to be of much use. > > For nouns and adjectives, I did the same, which is generating > automatically > the plurals with 's' and the feminine form of adjectives with "e". > > Second, but most important, MOR for French does the SAME thing as > MOR for > English. Just two examples: > > ENGLISH > > @Begin > *CHI: plays > %mor: v|play-3S^n|play-PL > *CHI: playing > %mor: part|play-PROG > *CHI: oxen > %mor: n|ox&PL > *CHI: geese > %mor: n|goose&PL > *CHI: problems > %mor: n|problem-PL > @End > > FRENCH: > > @Begin > *CHI: jouent > %mor: v|jouer-SUBJV:PRES&_3PV^v|jouer&PRES&_3PV > *CHI: remises > %mor: > v:pp|remettre&_FEM&_PL^n|remise&_FEM-_PL^v|remiser- > SUBJV:PRES&_2SV^v|remiser > &PRES&_2SV > *CHI: allumees > %mor: v:pp|allumer&_FEM&_PL > *CHI: jouant > %mor: v:prog|jouer > *CHI: chevaux > %mor: n|cheval&_MASC&_PL > *CHI: elephants > %mor: n|elephant&_MASC-_PL > *CHI: fille > %mor: n|fille&_FEM > @End > > However, I confess that I made an error when generating the list of > exceptions because I coded some words which are regular using the > "&" sign > instead of "-". This especially is true for feminines forms which > are all > coded with "&" whereas many are regular. But I can check this and > change the > signs if necessary, either in the full form file or by coding a new > rule. > Also, some verbs of the 3rd group could be considered as regular. > Well these > could be changed too, but there could be disagreement about the > list of > regular 3rd group verbs. > Finally, one could choose a different notation for infinitives and > participles. I coded them in the main category, instead of > using -INF, -PROG, etc. This could be easilly changed if necessary. > > One final remark. There are around 32,000 roots in MOR for French, > which > correspond to close to 600,000 full forms. It seems to me this far > from > incomplete. > > Christophe Parisse > >> -----Message d'origine----- >> De : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org >> [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]De la part de Brian MacWhinney >> Envoye : dimanche 15 janvier 2006 17:07 >> A : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org >> Objet : French MOR >> >> >> Dear Colleagues, >> Work on the application of MOR to the French corpora in CHILDES >> has lagged a bit, despite the availability of a fairly complete >> lexicon provided by Christophe Parisse. In part, this is because the >> Parisse French MOR system was constructed to use full form entries, >> rather than the system of arules and crules used for other >> languages. It would be possible to either continue constructing >> French MOR in this full-form format or to shift to using the analytic >> framework. Before beginning on this work, I wanted to check to see >> if anyone in the CHILDES community had done any work extending the >> current French MOR grammar. I want to make sure we are not about to >> reinvent the wheel. Many thanks. >> >> --Brian MacWhinney, CMU >> >> > From dongping.zheng at uconn.edu Mon Jan 16 20:18:57 2006 From: dongping.zheng at uconn.edu (Dongping Zheng) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:18:57 -0500 Subject: Transferring Files from Word to CLAN Message-ID: Hi, I have a question about pasting conversation logs from Word to CLAN. The texts are unreadable until I save the file and open it again. However, the text is double spaced in the newly opened CLAN. Is there a better way to eliminate the double space rather than manually deleting each line? I tried to replace RETURN with nothing, it didn't seem to work. I really appreciate it if you have some tips for transferring files from word to CLAN . Dongping <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dongping Zheng, ABD Department of Educational Psychology University of Connecticut 249 Glenbrook Rd. Unit 2064 Storrs, CT 06269 dongping.zheng at uconn.edu http://www.education2.uconn.edu/epsy240/dzheng/index.htm Webmaster @ Universal Design for Instruction http://www.facultyware.uconn.edu/home.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brachan at post.tau.ac.il Mon Jan 16 21:56:43 2006 From: brachan at post.tau.ac.il (Bracha Nir-Sagiv) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:56:43 +0200 Subject: Transferring Files from Word to CLAN In-Reply-To: <4ll4c0$6cujs3@mxip22a.cluster1.charter.net> Message-ID: Dear Dongping, I also experienced the same problems when converting from Word to CLAN. What does the trick for me is first converting the file from *.doc to *.txt (under type, choose Encoded text if you're working with Windows 2000, then choose UNICODE), and then renaming the *.txt file to *.cha (I find that copying directly from the txt file usually also results in double spaces). However, if you would still like to copy directly from a Word or Txt file into CED, you can use the following command: CHSTRING +q *.cha -- this command removes blank lines and add tabs after colons (note that this will result in a *.str.cex file in your output directory). Hope this helps, Bracha Nir-Sagiv Dongping Zheng wrote: > Hi, > > I have a question about pasting conversation logs from Word to CLAN. > The texts are unreadable until I save the file and open it again. > However, the text is double spaced in the newly opened CLAN. Is there > a better way to eliminate the double space rather than manually > deleting each line? I tried to replace RETURN with nothing, it didn't > seem to work. > > > > I really appreciate it if you have some tips for transferring files > from word to CLAN . > > > > Dongping > > > > <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > Dongping Zheng, ABD > Department of Educational Psychology > University of Connecticut > > 249 Glenbrook Rd. Unit 2064 > > Storrs, CT 06269 > dongping.zheng at uconn.edu > http://www.education2.uconn.edu/epsy240/dzheng/index.htm > > > > Webmaster @ Universal Design for Instruction > http://www.facultyware.uconn.edu/home.htm > > > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From c.decat at leeds.ac.uk Tue Jan 17 15:20:42 2006 From: c.decat at leeds.ac.uk (Cecile De Cat) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:20:42 +0000 Subject: The Bantu-Romance Connection workshop Message-ID: Second call for papers *** Attendance to this workshop is limited to 30 participants (as required by the European Science Foundation). If you are keen to attend, please submit an abstract! *** Meeting Description: The Bantu-Romance Connection project aims to bring together specialists of Bantu and Romance languages to explore striking morpho-syntactic similarities between these two unrelated language families, in an effort to better understand the nature of linguistic structure, its diversity and constraints. Bantu and Romance languages display a number of morpho-syntactic similarities, including null subjects, object clitics, rich gender/class agreement systems, and extraposition of arguments resulting in a variety of surface word orders. Yet most scholars of Romance have little awareness of Bantu linguistic structures, and many Bantuists are not fully aware of the syntactic diversity of Romance languages. We would like to begin remeding this situation by proposing a 2-day workshop dedicated in equal parts to each language group. The format of the workshop will encourage debate as well as informal discussion between scholars. A number of questions arise regarding the surface similarities found in these two language groups: Are the syntactic structures underlying these surface similarities really the same? or are they actually different, and how can we tell? What is the diversity of structures permitted in each of these domains, and how are they represented across these two language groups? To address these questions, presentations and posters will be centred around three themes: - The structure of the Determiner Phrase - Clitics, agreement and object drop - Focus, topic and Information Structure Invited speakers: Anna Cardinaletti (Università di of Venezia, Italy) Vicki Carstens (University of Mississippi, USA) Joao Costa (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal) Mara Frascarelli (Università di Roma Tre, Italy) Giuliana Giusti (Università di Venezia, Italy) Nancy Kula (University of Leiden, The Netherlands) Marie Labelle (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada) Lutz Marten (SOAS, UK) Yukiko Morimoto (Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Germany) Nhlanhla Thwala (School for Oriental and African Studies, UK) Marianna Visser (Stellenbosch University, South Africa) Roberto Zamparelli (Università di Bergamo, Italy) Submissions are invited for 12 posters (4 per theme, including 2 per language family). Preference will be given to those that demonstrate an interest in exploring these issues cross-linguistically. Contributions addressing acquisition issues are welcome. Submission format: maximum 2 pages of A4, font size 12pt. Please email an anonymous version to c.decat at leeds.ac.uk, including your name, affiliation and contact details in the body of the message. Deadline for submission: 10 February 2006 Acceptance will be announced by 20 February 2006 From ellmcf at nus.edu.sg Wed Jan 18 10:10:00 2006 From: ellmcf at nus.edu.sg (Madalena Cruz-Ferreira) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:10:00 +0800 Subject: New book - child trilingualism Message-ID: Dear all, This is to let you know about my book on child trilingualism, just published by Multilingual Matters (Series Child Language and Child Development, 6). The title is _Three is a Crowd?_ and the book URL is at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/multi/display.asp?isb=1853598380 If you have a chance to read it, I'd be delighted to hear your comments! With warm wishes Madalena ====================================== Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Dept. English Language and Literature National University of Singapore ellmcf at nus.edu.sg http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/ellmcf/ ====================================== From ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Jan 18 15:14:48 2006 From: ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu (Kelley Sacco) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:14:48 -0500 Subject: Associate Professor in Language Acquisition Message-ID: Associate Professor in Language Acquisition Job description: The Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, offers a 5 year research position (associate professor) at Center for Child Language (Center for Børnesprog) for appointment as soon as possible. The research position is advertised in affiliation with the WHISPER-project (the Widex Hearing Impaired Speech Research-Project) with the title "The interaction between segmentation strategies and mental representations of language sounds and language production in normal and hearing impaired populations" financed by Widex A/S and University of Southern Denmark. The general objective of the project is to investigate the early processing of speech-sounds in normally hearing and hearing impaired children, paying special attention to whether a reduced access to the auditory signal ­ with the use of different types of amplification ­ implies a diverging development of mental mechanisms and processes in relation to the processing of sounds, representation of sounds and speech production as compared to the development in hearing children. The research position will include experimental investigation of the early phases of the acquisition of speech in normally hearing and hearing impaired children, but with focus on the latter group. The experimental work will be carried out at the new experimental lab-facilities at the University of Southern Denmark (Odense BabyLab). The project-group comprises eight researchers of varying research-seniority from University of Southern Denmark, as well as an external research consultant. The collected professional research background of the group spans linguistics, phonetics, speech pathology, psychology and statistics. The cross-disciplinarity of the group is an important and emphasized characteristic of the project. The project collaborates with the Oxford BabyLab, The Department of Experimental Psychology at University of Oxford, England. The project is based on extensive teamwork, and the position will include participation in planning, coordination and supervision of the various related projects. The WHISPER-project is nested in the Center for Child Language and as such is part of the Center¹s overall research programme. The Center has a thriving research milieu, in which the selected applicant will take part. The Center is active in both basic and applied research in children¹s language acquisition. Relevant educational prerequisites could be phonetics, psycho-linguistics, psychology (preferably developmental or cognitive), or speech pathology. Experience with and/or interest in working experimentally is required. Experience with hearing impairment and language acquisition across different modalities/languages is an advantage. The job does not necessarily require basic Danish language skills prior to employment. If the successful applicant has not documented teaching experience corresponding to assistant professor level, the applicant will be engaged on trial for the first 18 months. Applicants can obtain further information concerning the project as well as the position by contacting project-leader, Dorthe Bleses: email: bleses at language.sdu.dk, tel: +45 6550 3346. From gleason at bu.edu Wed Jan 18 19:10:32 2006 From: gleason at bu.edu (Jean Berko Gleason) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:10:32 -0500 Subject: Positions at Boston University Message-ID: *Psychology Faculty Positions* * * Positions in *Human Development *are available pending approval for appointment in Fall 2006 in the Department of Psychology at Boston University. The department seeks a tenured Associate or Full Professor with an established international reputation, a strong publication record and a vigorous, externally supported program of research who will lead a reorganization of our Human Development program. We are also seeking a tenure track Assistant Professor in the same area. Strong candidates for these positions will show evidence of ability to sustain an original and independent program of research that is externally supported. Responsibilities will include undergraduate and graduate teaching and supervising doctoral students in research. Applicants who can contribute to the diversity of the program are especially encouraged to apply. Applicants should submit vita, reprints/preprints, a statement of research and teaching interests, and three letters of recommendation to: Chair, Search Committee, Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215. * Review of applications will begin immediately* and will continue until the position is filled. Boston University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employee From mdeirish at gmail.com Thu Jan 19 19:48:20 2006 From: mdeirish at gmail.com (Michelle DeIrish) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:48:20 -0500 Subject: Emergence criteria for L1 Message-ID: Hello, I'm examing the order of emergence for articles in French and I was wondering if anyone could point me lit related to establishing emergence criteria for L1. Any and all references would by appreciated. -- Michelle DeIrish, PhD Candidate Department of French University of Toronto michelle.deirish at utoronto.ca From ghimenton at yahoo.com Fri Jan 20 11:11:52 2006 From: ghimenton at yahoo.com (Ghimenton Anna) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 03:11:52 -0800 Subject: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS_ Multidisciplinary Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies for Research Students Message-ID: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS CONFERENCE NAME: 'Multidisciplinary Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies for Research Students' DATES: 4-7 July 2006 PLACE: Université Stendhal, Grenoble, France WEBSITE: http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission deadline: 31 January 2006 Acceptance notification: May 2006 Program: May 2006 Conference dates: From Tuesday 4 July (afternoon) to Friday, 7 July 2006 TOPIC AREAS As a multidisciplinary conference, proposals exploring the following themes are welcome : - Descriptive linguistics - Psycholinguistics and language acquisition and development - Sociolinguistics and Multilingualism - Language teaching - Information technology and multimedia assisted language teaching/learning - All scientific domains dealing with the study of language/ linguistics and/or language teaching/ learning: sociology, psychology, education sciences, ethology, cognitive (neuro)sciences, human-machine communication, etc. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE - Jacqueline BILLIEZ (Université Stendhal Grenoble 3) - Jean BINON (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgique) - Jean-Paul BRONCKART (Université de Genève) - Hugues DE CHANAY (Université Lumière Lyon 2) - Thierry CHANIER (Université de Franche-Comté) - Jean-Louis CHISS (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3) - Françoise GADET Université Paris 10 Nanterre) - Harriet JISA (Université Lumière Lyon 2) - Liam MURRAY (University of Limerick) - Alain POLGUERE (Université de Montréal, Canada) - François RASTIER (Université Denis Diderot Paris 7) CONFERENCE LANGUAGES Papers will be presented in French or English. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Submission is open to research students only. Proposals may be written in French or English (two pages). The closing date for submission is 31 January 2006. For further details, please visit our site : http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ PUBLICATION OF THE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS All articles submitted will be reviewed by an evaluation committee which will select those for publication by the Presses Universitaires de Grenoble (PUG) in 2007. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DEUXIEME APPEL À COMMUNICATIONS INTITULE DU COLLOQUE: Colloque international des étudiants-chercheurs en didactique des langues et en linguistique TYPE DE COLLOQUE: Colloque pluridisciplinaire autour de l'étude du langage DATES: 4-7 juillet 2006 LIEU: Université Stendhal, Grenoble, France ADRESSE DU SITE: http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ CALENDRIER - Date limite de soumission : 31 janvier 2006 - Notification des acceptations : mai 2006 - Programme préliminaire : mai 2006 - Dates du colloque : du mardi 4 (après-midi) au vendredi 7 juillet 2006 THÉMATIQUES À vocation pluridisciplinaire, ce colloque permettra d'aborder les thèmes suivants : - La description linguistique - La psycholinguistique et le développement langagier - La sociolinguistique et le plurilinguisme - La didactique des langues - Les outils informatiques pour la linguistique et la didactique des langues - Tout domaine scientifique dont l'objet d'étude est lié à la langue et/ou à son enseignement/apprentissage : sociologie, psychologie, sciences de l'éducation, éthologie, ethnologie, (neuro)sciences cognitives, communication homme-machine, etc. COMITÉ SCIENTIFIQUE - Jacqueline BILLIEZ (Université Stendhal Grenoble 3) - Jean BINON (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgique) - Jean-Paul BRONCKART (Université de Genève) - Hugues DE CHANAY (Université Lumière Lyon 2) - Thierry CHANIER (Université de Franche-Comté) - Jean-Louis CHISS (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3) - Françoise GADET Université Paris 10 Nanterre) - Harriet JISA (Université Lumière Lyon 2) - Liam MURRAY (University of Limerick) - Alain POLGUERE (Université de Montréal, Canada) - François RASTIER (Université Denis Diderot Paris 7) LANGUES Les communications se feront en français ou en anglais. MODALITÉS DE SOUMISSION Ce colloque s'adresse uniquement aux étudiants-chercheurs. Rédigées en français ou en anglais, les propositions de communication (deux pages) doivent être saisies en ligne avant le 31 janvier 2006. Se reporter aux consignes indiquées sur le site : http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ PUBLICATION DES ACTES Les articles seront soumis à un comité d'évaluation en vue d'une publication aux Presses Universitaires de Grenoble (PUG) en 2007. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos – Showcase holiday pictures in hardcover Photo Books. You design it and we’ll bind it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From erikocanada at hotmail.com Sun Jan 22 13:29:46 2006 From: erikocanada at hotmail.com (Eriko Kurosaki) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 06:29:46 -0700 Subject: vocabulary data base Message-ID: Hello, everyone. One of my study group members is interested in 10 years old (or grade 5) English speaking children's vocabulary. If you know any data base, please let me know. Thank you, Eriko Kurosaki From ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu Mon Jan 23 17:49:50 2006 From: ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu (Kelley Sacco) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:49:50 -0500 Subject: FW: Lab Manager Wanted: Please forward to good candidates In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ------ Forwarded Message > From: Deborah Kelemen > Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:51:08 -0500 > To: sacco at cmu.edu > Subject: Lab Manager Wanted: Please forward to good candidates > > Lab Manager. Candidates sought for a full-time lab manager in the Child > Cognition Lab of the Psychology Department at Boston University under the > direction of Dr. Deb Kelemen. The lab manager will conduct research related > tasks on projects exploring cognitive development in preschool children, > elementary school children, and adults. Responsibilities include (i) > recruiting and scheduling children and their parents for our lab based > studies, (ii) establishing relationships with elementary school teachers and > principals for school-based intervention studies, (iii) conducting studies in > lab and school settings, (iv) assisting in the organization and conduct of > teacher workshops, (v) assisting in the design of experimental stimuli, data > entry, and data analysis, (vi) overseeing the smooth running of the lab and > its equipment. > > This position carries significant responsibility and is appropriate for an > energetic, organized, personable, positive individual who is extremely > motivated and excited about conducting research. Applicants should have > knowledge of experimental design and previous psychology research experience. > B.A. / B.S. required (Master's level preferred). Further details and > application via http://www.bu.edu/hr/employment/jobs/pa.shtml (Position > 2802/A176). Position open until filled. > -- > Deborah Kelemen, Ph.D. > Boston University > Department of Psychology > 64 Cummington Street > Boston MA 02215 > > Email: dkelemen at bu.edu > Office Phone: (617) 353-2758 > Child Cognition Lab Phone: (617) 358-1738 > Fax: (617) 353-6933 > URL: http://www.bu.edu/childcognition > ------ End of Forwarded Message From dongping.zheng at uconn.edu Mon Jan 23 19:24:02 2006 From: dongping.zheng at uconn.edu (Dongping Zheng) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:24:02 -0500 Subject: Transferring Files from Word to CLAN In-Reply-To: <43CC169B.9020407@post.tau.ac.il> Message-ID: Hi, I just wanted to summarize the double space problems when pasting logs from word to CLAN: 1. it is a Word problem, Brian suggested to do a query replace for hard returns in Word. 2. From Bracha Nir-Sagiv: "What does the trick for me is first converting the file from *.doc to *.txt (under type, choose Encoded text if you're working with Windows 2000, then choose UNICODE), and then renaming the *.txt file to *.cha (I find that copying directly from the txt file usually also results in double spaces). However, if you would still like to copy directly from a Word or Txt file into CED, you can use the following command: CHSTRING +q *.cha -- this command removes blank lines and add tabs after colons (note that this will result in a *.str.cex file in your output directory)." 3. Use the ren command in the command line: type ren *.str.cex *.cha and that should do the trick to run commends (Bracha Nir-Sagiv). Or re-save the *.str.cex to *.cha (Sigal). Using the CHSTRING +q *.cha commend and re-save to *.cha did the trick for me. Thank you again for all your help! Dongping <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dongping Zheng, ABD Department of Educational Psychology University of Connecticut 249 Glenbrook Rd. Unit 2064 Storrs, CT 06269 dongping.zheng at uconn.edu http://www.education2.uconn.edu/epsy240/dzheng/index.htm Webmaster @ Universal Design for Instruction http://www.facultyware.uconn.edu/home.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielle.matthews at manchester.ac.uk Tue Jan 24 16:57:36 2006 From: danielle.matthews at manchester.ac.uk (Danielle Matthews) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:57:36 +0000 Subject: PhD studentships in Manchester, UK Message-ID: PhD. studentships for the study of language development Applications are invited for up to two funded Ph.D. studentships. The students will be attached to the Max Planck Child Study Centre and registered for a Ph.D. in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester. The Child Study Centre is run by Professor Elena Lieven and is funded by the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, directed by Professor Michael Tomasello, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. Supervision of PhD students is done by Professors Lieven and Tomasello with other staff in the School of Psychological Sciences co-supervising. Research in the Centre focuses on the development of language (especially grammar) and consists in the collection and analysis of naturalistic and experimental data for children learning English and other languages. You must have or expect to attain next summer, a good honours degree in Psychology, Linguistics or an associated discipline. Funding will consist of approximately 1250 Euros per month plus support for travel and equipment. The Home/EC rate for fees will be paid by the MPI. Please apply by sending a detailed CV and covering letter to: Mrs Mickie Glover Max Planck Child Study Centre School of Psychological Sciences University of Manchester M13 9PL U.K. (email: mickie.glover at manchester.ac.uk, tel: 0161 445 2351) Completed applications must reach us by Monday February 20th 2006 at the latest. Enquiries can be made by email to Professors Lieven or Tomasello at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany. (lieven at eva.mpg.de or tomasello at eva.mpg.de). Relevant websites are: www.eva.mpg.de www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/research/groups/languageandcommunication/maxplanck/ Further details for Max Planck PhD studentships Background The Manchester Max Planck Child Study Centre is funded by the Max Planck Society, a German research foundation, with support from the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester. The Centre is directed by Professor Elena Lieven and forms part of the Department of Comparative and Developmental Psychology, directed by Professor Michael Tomasello, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The research of the staff and students who work at the Manchester Child Study Centre is concerned with children's early language acquisition. This is studied through the analysis of both naturalistic and experimental data. Our focus is on children learning English and German although we have ongoing studies of Polish, French, Russian and Finnish. Naturalistic Studies Ongoing involves tracking the sources of children's developing constructions, including the transitives, questions and complex sentences. This is done through analyzing children's own prior speech and that of their caregivers. As well as using the Manchester corpus, available on the CHILDES database, we are also developing denser corpora. These corpora contain recordings of children taped for between 5 - 10 hours per week. This far better sampling rate allows for in depth analyses, which have never previously been possible. Experimental Studies Experimental studies focus on a number of aspects of language acquisition, such as the development of general syntactic categories (such as noun and verb) and constructions (such as transitives and questions). We also look at how children learn to use pragmatically appropriate language (for example, using appropriate referring expressions). A number of different methodologies are used including priming, act out tasks, preferential looking and training studies. Experiments often employ novel or low frequency words to determine children's ability to extend their knowledge of language to words with which they are less familiar. The studentship(s) 1 or 2 studentships are available to start the academic year of 2006/7. There is a six month probationary period and renewal takes place after review, each year, for three years. In the first instance, please apply by sending a detailed CV and covering letter to: Mrs Mickie Glover Max Planck Child Study Centre School of Psychological Sciences University of Manchester M13 9PL U.K. (email: mickie.glover at manchester.ac.uk, tel: 0161 445 2351) ------------------------------------------ Dr Danielle Matthews Max Planck Child Study Centre Co-ordinator School of Psychological Sciences The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL U.K. Tel: 44 (0)161 275 2594 Email: danielle.mattthews at manchester.ac.uk Web: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/staff/84838 From e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk Fri Jan 27 10:12:34 2006 From: e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk (Emily K. Farran) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:12:34 +0000 Subject: Final call for papers: The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, UK In-Reply-To: <438C4E0F.9080900@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Call for papers, submission deadline TUESDAY 31ST JANUARY 2006 The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, 6th to 7th July, 2006, Reading, UK For further information see: http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf/WSconferencedetails.html The major aim of the conference is to disseminate advances in our understanding of Williams syndrome (WS) across wide-ranging disciplines: from genetics to medical, behavioural and cognitive characteristics. A second aim is to discuss recent advances in research methodology, particularly in developmental psychology. The workshop will be attended by professionals who work with individuals with Williams syndrome: developmental and cognitive psychologists, geneticists and clinicians. Keynote speakers: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith Dr Michael Thomas The workshop will incude presentations from many eminent researchers including: Professor Peter Hammond Professor Pat Howlin Professor Yonata Levy Dr May Tassabehji Dr Mazal Cohen Dr Gaia Scerif Call for papers. Please submit abstracts to Emily Farran at e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words Please state whether paper or poster presentation Paper presentations will be twenty minutes long with ten minutes for questions. Submission deadline: 31st January 2006 Registration deadline: 28th February 2006 -- Dr. Emily Farran Department of Psychology University of Reading Earley Gate Reading RG6 6AL UK Tel: +44 (0)118 378 7531 Fax: +44 (0)118 378 6715 http://www.reading.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Fri Jan 27 12:00:13 2006 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 07:00:13 -0500 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: <0IRM0079JEANJ4@mail-9.oit.umass.edu> Message-ID: Hi, I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this server.". Thanks. Shelley Velleman UMass - Amherst From cbowen at ihug.com.au Fri Jan 27 12:29:31 2006 From: cbowen at ihug.com.au (Caroline Bowen) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:29:31 +1100 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: AAAAADAWbtIKoCFPg/pHkNR140UESy0A Message-ID: Dear Shelley, SEE: http://www.clsp.jhu.edu/ws2004/groups/ws04ldmk/references.php AND: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/real/stp/index.html Best wishes, Caroline Caroline Bowen PhD Speech Language Pathologist 9 Hillcrest Road Wentworth Falls NSW 2782 Australia e: cbowen at ihug.com.au i: http://www.slpsite.com t: 61 2 4757 1136 -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Shelley Velleman Sent: Friday, 27 January 2006 11:00 PM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: dialect samples on-line Hi, I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this server.". Thanks. Shelley Velleman UMass - Amherst From erbaugh at transit212.com Fri Jan 27 20:16:58 2006 From: erbaugh at transit212.com (Mary Erbaugh) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:16:58 -0800 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: <0A76F165-ADBC-4129-932E-25E2482D778F@comdis.umass.edu> Message-ID: Shelley, Try samples from: http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/index.html http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialLnx.html http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_maps/namerica.php Other links are possible from Karen Chung's homepage, under 'accents' http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/linguistics%20links.htm Also, try the links from the American Dialect Society www.americandialect.org Bill Labov has just published a beautiful Atlas of American English, with CD. It is expensive, but see if your library will buy it from Mouton http://web.uni-marburg.de/linguistik//dgweb/atlas/ Also, have a look at the MLA's wonderful, interactive color maps of languages in America. You can type in zip codes and get user-friendly but detailed language breakdowns based on census data of the 30 most commonly spoken languages in the US. www.mla.org Mary Erbaugh Center for Asian and Pacific Studies University of Oregon www.pearstories.org (provides speech and text narratives from the 7 major Chinese dialects) At 07:00 AM 1/27/2006 -0500, Shelley Velleman wrote: >Hi, > >I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US >dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in >an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to >access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this >server.". > >Thanks. > >Shelley Velleman >UMass - Amherst > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From santelmannl at pdx.edu Fri Jan 27 20:33:31 2006 From: santelmannl at pdx.edu (Lynn Santelmann) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:33:31 -0800 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: <4odjt0$9plb7u@mail-ihug.icp-qv1-irony1.iinet.net.au> Message-ID: Dear Shelley My favorite site for this is the Speech Accent Archive from George Mason University. They have speakers reading from various dialect and language backgrounds reading the same passage (for many of the speakers they have the passage transcribed into IPA). There's a map you can click on to get speakers from various regions. (So "browse" and then click on atlas and you can get a map of North America and see what dialects they have. It's great for teaching. http://accent.gmu.edu/ Best, Lynn >-----Original Message----- >From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] >On Behalf Of Shelley Velleman >Sent: Friday, 27 January 2006 11:00 PM >To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org >Subject: dialect samples on-line > >Hi, > >I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US >dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in >an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to >access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this >server.". > >Thanks. > >Shelley Velleman >UMass - Amherst ************************************************************************** Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Applied Linguistics Portland State University P.O. Box 751 Portland, OR 97201-0751 phone: 503-725-4140 fax: 503-725-4139 e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu (that's last name, first initial) web: www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls ************************************************************************* From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Sat Jan 28 22:53:57 2006 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 17:53:57 -0500 Subject: dialect samples Message-ID: Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions for on-line audio dialect samples. Based on your replies, here's what I found: http://accent.gmu.edu/: Samples of speakers of many dialects and first languages, all reading the same English text, 69 words long. http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html DARE excerpts: Arthur the Young Rat and spontaneous speech http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/DARE/# -- small # of longer spontaneous speech samples from DARE http://www.ic.arizona.edu/%7Elsp/index.html Some varieties have samples; not all http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/Linguistic/Sounds/Sounds4.html New Zealand, Australia, "England", "American"; all reading the same passage, 3-4 sentences long. http://www.fonetiks.org/ "American", various UK, other languages http://www.uga.edu/lsava/Topics/Language%20Variation/Language% 20Variation.html: videos of Ocracoke, Lumbee; discussion of Spanglish and verb tenses Shelley Velleman UMass - Amherst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Mon Jan 30 00:11:21 2006 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:11:21 -0500 Subject: Dubrovnik In-Reply-To: <0IRM0079JEANJ4@mail-9.oit.umass.edu> Message-ID: Does anybody have any advice on getting to Dubrovnik without taking out a second or third mortgage? Thanks. Shelley Velleman From hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp Mon Jan 30 06:00:28 2006 From: hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp (Hitomi Murata) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 15:00:28 +0900 Subject: The 7th Annual Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP 2006) Message-ID: Dear Colleague, The Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at Keio University will be sponsoring the seventh Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP2006) on March 17 and 18, 2006. The invited speakers are Prof. David Pesetsky (MIT) and Prof. Edson Miyamoto (University of Tsukuba). Below you fill find the conference program. For details, visit our web site: http://www.otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp/tcp/ --------------------------------------------------------- (TCP 2006 Program) Day 1 (March 17, 2006) 13:00-13:10 Opening Yukio Otsu (Keio University) 13:10-13:40 (Short Presentation) "Topics in Child Japanese" Noriko Hattori, Seiki Ayano, David Stringer, Koji Sugisaki (Mie University) and Dylan Herrick (Pomona College) Chair: Tetsuya Sano (Meiji Gakuin University) 13:40-14:10 (Short Presentation) "The Development of the Verb Category and Verb Argument Structures in Mandarin-Speaking Children beforeTwo Years of Age" Ling Xiao, Xin Cai (Hunan University) and Thomas Hun-tak Lee (Hunan University /Chinese University of Hong Kong) Chair: Tetsuya Sano (Meiji Gakuin University) 14:10:14:40 (Short Presentation) "Sloppy Readings of a 'Referential Pronoun' in Japanese" Misato Hiraga and Jon Nissenbaum (McGill University) Chair: Takeru Suzuki (Tokyo Gakugei University) 15:00-15:30 (Short Presentation) "You Can't Unscramble an Egg" Takaomi Kato (Harvard University) Chair: Takeru Suzuki (Tokyo Gakugei University) 15:30-16:15 (Long Presentation) "Emergence of Bipolar Items in Romance" Masakazu Kuno (Harvard University) Chair: Takeru Suzuki (Tokyo Gakugei University) 16:30-17:30 (Invited Lecture) "Making a Noun Phrase" David Pesetsky (MIT) Chair: Akira Watanabe (University of Tokyo) Reception Day 2 (March 18, 2006) 10:00-10:45 (Long Presentation) "Any News on the Explicit/Implicit Front?" Nausicaa Pouscoulous (Institut Jean Nicod/Institut des Sciences Cognitives) Chair: Makiko Hirakawa (Tokyo International University) 10:45-11:30 (Long Presentation) "The Role of L1 Transfer in the L2 Acquisition of English Double Object Constructions" Eunjeong Oh and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (University of Southern California) Chair: Makiko Hirakawa (Tokyo International University) 13:00-13:45 (Long Presentation) "Local Implicatures?" Bart Geurts (University of Nijmegen) and NausicaaPouscoulous (Institut Jean Nicod/ Institut des Sciences Cognitives) Chair: Yukio Otsu (Keio University) 13:45-14:15 (Short Presentation) "Coming and Going, Toing and Froing: VP/PP Parallels in First Language Acquisition" David Stringer (Mie University) Chair: Miwa Isobe (Meiji Gakuin University) 14:15-14:45 (Short Presentation) "Modularized Implicit Rules and Abstract Linguistic Categories: The Japanese Goyo Test" Teodor Ajder (Yokohama National University) Chair: Yuki Hirose (University of Tokyo) 15:05-15:35 (Short Presentation) "Preferred Word Order of a Japanese Sentence Correlates with its Constructional Meaning: Evidence from a Psycholinguistic Experiment" Keiko Nakamoto (Kyoto University), Kow Kuroda and Jae-Ho Lee (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) Chair: Yuki Hirose (University of Tokyo) 15:35:16:20 (Long Presentation) "The Effect of Information Accessibility on Syntactic Processing in Japanese Sentence Production" Mikihiro Tanaka, Holly P. Branigan and Martin J. Pickering (University of Edinburgh) Chair: Yuki Hirose (University of Tokyo) 16:35-17:35 (Invited Lecture) "Factors in the Incremental Processing of NPs in Japanese" Edson Miyamoto (University of Tsukuba) Chair: Yukio Otsu (Keio University) Alternates: 1. "Comparative Conditionals in Japanese" Toshiko Oda (Tokyo Keizai University /University of Connecticut) 2. "Prosodic Morphology of Cantonese Attenuative Reduplication" Ho Leung Chan (University of Pittsburgh) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu Mon Jan 30 16:50:08 2006 From: nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu (Natalie Batmanian) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:50:08 -0500 Subject: Please disregard message "fillers" Message-ID: Hello all, I apologize profusely for unintentionally posting a message titles 'fillers'. Please disregard. Best, Natalie -- Natalie Batmanian Post-doctoral Fellow Hunter College Psychology Department (212)773-5557/8 From mskcusb at mscc.huji.ac.il Mon Jan 30 20:40:21 2006 From: mskcusb at mscc.huji.ac.il (Shoshana Blum-Kulka) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:40:21 +0200 Subject: Audio Equipment Message-ID: Greetings to all, Could any of you help with recommendations for the ultimate not-too-expensive digital audio equipment suitable for recording individual kids in (quite noisy)preschools? Thanks, Shshana Blum-Kulka From macw at mac.com Mon Jan 30 21:27:53 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:27:53 -0500 Subject: Audio Equipment In-Reply-To: <001a01c625dd$6410a390$c0274084@w7q9t8> Message-ID: Dear Shoshana, I recommend the Edirol R-1 (about $400) or for less money, but less quality, the Sony ICD-BM1 (about $200). Please see http://talkbank.org/da (there is a link to this from the CHILDES page too). --Brian On Jan 30, 2006, at 3:40 PM, Shoshana Blum-Kulka wrote: > > Greetings to all, > > Could any of you help with recommendations for the ultimate not-too- > expensive digital audio equipment suitable for recording individual > kids in (quite noisy)preschools? > > Thanks, > Shshana Blum-Kulka > From dcavar at indiana.edu Tue Jan 31 00:47:10 2006 From: dcavar at indiana.edu (=?UTF-8?Q?Damir_=C4=86avar?=) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:47:10 -0500 Subject: Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics (JSSECL) Message-ID: Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics Short Title: JSSECL Date: 11-Sep-2006 - 22-Sep-2006 Location: Zadar, Croatia Contact: lss2006 at unizd.hr (Malgorzata E. Cavar and Damir Cavar) Contact Email: lss2006 at unizd.hr Meeting URL: http://eng.unizd.hr/~lss2006/ Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Phonetics; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax; Text/Corpus Linguistics Meeting Description: The University of Zadar, the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, The Croatian Language Technologies Society (HDJT), in cooperation with the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) and the University of Potsdam, are pleased to announce the first Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics held in Zadar, Croatia, focusing on the topics in empirical and computational linguistics. The University of Zadar, the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, The Croatian Language Technologies Society (HDJT), in cooperation with the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) and the University of Potsdam, are pleased to sponsor the first Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics held in Zadar, Croatia, focusing on topics in empirical and computational linguistics. The courses will be at absolute beginners level, as well as at the advanced and PhD level. Tentative list of courses: Introduction to Field Methods Dunja Brozovic Roncevic, IHJJ Bidirectional Phonology and Phonetics and its Acquisition Paul Boersma, University of Amsterdam Perception in Phonology Malgorzata E. Cavar, University of Zadar Introduction to Scheme/Python in Computational Linguistics Damir Cavar, University of Zadar, Indiana University Human-Computer Interaction for Multimodal Speech/Gesture Systems with Emphasis on Embodied Conversational Characters Andrea Corradini, University of Potsdam Phonology-Morphology Interface Tracy Alan Hall, Indiana University Sound Change Silke Hamann, ZAS, Berlin, Germany Computational Models of Language Evolution Gerhard Jäger, University of Bielefeld Introduction to Computational Semantics Ralf Klabunde, University of Bochum Formal Models in Computational Linguistics Marcus Kracht, UCLA Finite State Technologies Thomas Hanneforth, University of Potsdam Computational Models of Language Acquisition William G. Sakas, CUNY The Structure of Fixed Linguistic Formula, Statistical and Corpus Analysis Danica Skara, University of Zadar Introduction to Corpus Linguistics Marko Tadic, University of Zagreb Text-oriented applications of Computational Linguistics Andreas Witt, University of Bielefeld All courses are offered as one or two week courses with 1.5 hours daily. For each two-week course the students will receive 4 ECTS points, for each one-week course the students will receive 2 ECTS points, after finishing the requirements as specified for each course. Recognition of ECTS points depends on each individual university. Please contact the administration of your university for requirements and prerequisites, and let the summer school administration know about your particular requirements and prerequisites. The summer school is accompanied by a student conference. Registered students will have an opportunity to present a reviewed paper at the conference, that might be published after a positive review in the Jadertina Linguistic Papers online or printed. Organizing Committee: Dunja Brozovic Roncevic (IHJJ) Miriam Butt (University of Konstanz) Damir Cavar (University of Zadar; Indiana University) Malgorzata Cavar (University of Zadar) Alexander Geyken (BBAW, Germany) Thomas Hanneforth (University of Potsdam) Ivo-Pavao Jazbec (IHJJ) Ralf Klabunde (University of Bochum) Marcus Kracht (UCLA, USA) Jonas Kuhn (University of Texas) William G. Sakas (CUNY) Danica Skara (University of Zadar) Tomislav Stojanov (IHJJ) Marko Tadic (University of Zagreb) Registration and accommodation Detailed instructions on registration and further information can be found on the summer school web page soon. Early registration fee (till 1st of April 2006): 150 EURO for the complete summer school. Registration fee on site: 170 EURO for the complete summer school Sponsoring Institutions: University of Zadar Croatian Language Technologies Society (HDJT) IHJJ, Zagreb Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) ELSNET From merete.anderssen at hum.uit.no Tue Jan 31 10:02:41 2006 From: merete.anderssen at hum.uit.no (Merete Anderssen) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 11:02:41 +0100 Subject: SCL workshop on language acquisition Message-ID: We are pleased to announce that the 22nd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, which takes place in Aalborg, Denmark, June 19-22 2006, will feature a workshop on language acquisition. The theme of the conference is "Brain, Mind and Language", and the workshop invites abstracts on first, second and bilingual acquisition on the same topic. The workshop will consist of 30 minute sessions with 20 minute presentations and 10 minutes for discussion. Deadline for abstracts: March 15, 2006. Notification of acceptance: April 5, 2006. Address for sending abstracts: merete.anderssen at hum.uit.no When sending your abstract please make sure you include your name / affiliation / full mailing address / email address Abstracts should not exceed one A4 page. For more information on the SCL see http://www.cfl.hum.aau.dk/SCL22.html Merete Anderssen and Marit Westergaard -- ****************************************************************************** Merete Anderssen Tel. +47 77 64 47 61/42 40 Department of English Faculty of Humanities University of Tromsø 9037 Tromsø Norway -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menyuk at bu.edu Mon Jan 2 16:56:07 2006 From: menyuk at bu.edu (Paula Menyuk) Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 11:56:07 -0500 Subject: info-childes Digest - 01/01/06 In-Reply-To: <83201.83930@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: Will be away until January 15. Paula Menyuk From aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk Tue Jan 3 16:04:59 2006 From: aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk (aubrey at pigeonpostbox.co.uk) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 16:04:59 +0000 Subject: new ideas In-Reply-To: <43A97BFD.8070409@cs.uiuc.edu> Message-ID: Dear Margaret, If translational symmetry describes the echo, it may also also bear on syntactic merger and the surface expression of endocentricity in the auditory medium of spoken language - making Merge a plausible case of linguistic new from old. But do you mean that mathematical principles like translational symmetry are sufficient to explain all properties of what have been postulated as linguistic universals? or that translational symmetry represents just one case where they do? There seem to be obvious advantages in maximising the new from old. But if this is taken to the limit, there are no language-specificities. Both the general distribution and the detailed forms of children's speech and language disorders are then hard to explain other than as consequences of the parenting or quantity/quality of child-directed speech/language. This does not seem to me promising as a line of explanation - clinically or otherwise. Aubrey > Brian MacWhinney wrote: >> principles such as spatial symmetry, embedding, and recursion as >> precursors to similar functions in language. > The mathematical term "symmetry" covers a wide range of type of > self-similarity. > A better one to look for in a moving temporal medium would be > translational > symmetry, better known as repetition of a pattern in the same order > (rather > than reflected). *THAT* is quite salient in language and in related > domains > such as music and poetry. > > Margaret > (Margaret Fleck, U. Illinois) > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1615 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue Jan 3 20:00:23 2006 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 20:00:23 +0000 Subject: question Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From mkastamoula at yahoo.com Tue Jan 3 22:20:09 2006 From: mkastamoula at yahoo.com (Mary Kastamoula) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 14:20:09 -0800 Subject: Modern Greek word frequencies Message-ID: I am looking for word and morpheme frequencies in Modern Greek but I have not managed to find anything. There is some online work but it is about Ancient Greek. Has anyone come across an online dictionary or a Greek dictionary with frequency information? Thank you Mary Kastamoula MPhil/PhD student Institute of Education University of London --------------------------------- Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From G.Morgan at city.ac.uk Wed Jan 4 15:07:33 2006 From: G.Morgan at city.ac.uk (Morgan, Gary) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 15:07:33 -0000 Subject: Research posts London, UK Message-ID: Post-graduate/Post-doctoral Researchers (2 posts) City University London, UK www.city.ac.uk/hr/jobs Department of Language and Communication Science, Post-graduate/Post-doctoral Researcher (HM/10071) ?22.5K - ?25.5K pa inc Post-doctoral Researcher (RH/10082) ?28.5K - ?32K pa inc Fixed term for three years The Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) is a major new research centre funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK. The Centre comprises a series of thematically linked research projects including sign language linguistics, language processing and language development. In a new collaboration between the DCAL, City University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen we intend to examine the effects of modality and age of acquisition of language on segmentation mechanisms. We are seeking two researchers to work on an ESRC-funded research project investigating language processing in adult deaf signers. The study will use experimental methods to probe how sign language is segmented on-line at the level of phonological structure. In particular we are interested in testing psycholinguistic models (e.g. The Possible Word Constraint) with data from sign language users. With excellent communication skills, you will have the ability to work collaboratively within a team and will be able to work to tight deadlines, with many conflicting priorities. For the Post-graduate/Post-doctoral Researcher, you will be a graduate or postgraduate in linguistics, psychology or related area. With knowledge of sign/English linguistics, you will have the ability to carry out interviews in sign language. You will have signing skills to the equivalent of CACDP Level 2 BSL or above. For the Post-doctoral Researcher, you will have a Ph.D. in Psychology, Linguistics or related area, (or doctoral dissertation submitted for examination), with research experience in psychology, linguistics, or psycholinguistics. You will have experience in experimental design and analysis. Knowledge of a sign language will be an advantage. Benefits include a final-salary pension scheme. For more information and an application form, visit www.city.ac.uk/hr/jobs or write to the Recruitment Team, HR Department, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, quoting the relevant job reference number. Closing date: 31 January 2006. From ioana_goga04 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 4 16:02:37 2006 From: ioana_goga04 at yahoo.com (Goga Ioana) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 08:02:37 -0800 Subject: english translation of parent-child verbal interaction Message-ID: Hello everyone, We have several transcripts of the parent-child interactions during a seriation task. The transcripts are in Romanian, and after posting on this list, Patricia Ganea from Virgina University offered to help us to transcribe the main lines in english. However, we do not have an experience on how this type of translation should be done. Can anyone help us please ? The infants are between 1 and 3 years old, therefore, their lexical forms are 'slightly' different from the adult forms. The main goal is to use the english translation to train a computational model, which is supposed to acquire lexical items and basic syntax rules. Any suggestions are more then welcome. Thank you, Ioana Goga www.coneural.org --------------------------------- Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gary.marcus at nyu.edu Thu Jan 5 04:28:37 2006 From: gary.marcus at nyu.edu (Gary Marcus) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 23:28:37 -0500 Subject: Assembling language from spare parts Message-ID: Dear INFO-CHILDES readers, I thought I?d start the new year by surprising regular readers of this forum by agreeing, at least in part, with a theoretical position championed by Liz Bates. As noted in this forum over the last couple weeks, Liz advocated a sort of language-from-spare-parts view, and in the last couple years (for my own reasons) I?ve been arguing for something quite similar (Marcus, 2004a; Marcus 2004b, esp. Chapter 7; Marcus 2006; and in a just-published review of the genetic basis of language, Fisher & Marcus 2006). In words that I very much agree with, Bates argued that the cognitive machinery that makes us human can be viewed as a new machine constructed out of old parts (Bates, 1999, and related quotes mentioned recently on Info-Childes) At the same time, Liz?s perspective on this idea, which I think of as an extension of Darwin?s notion of descent with modification, is different from my own. For her, descent-with-modification was all about quantitative change, and the poster-child of evolutionary novelty was the giraffe: [C]onsider the metaphor of the giraffe?s neck. Giraffes have the same number of neckbones that you and I have, but these bones are elongated to solve the peculiar problems that giraffes are specialized for (i.e., eating leaves high up in the tree). As a result of this particular adaptation, other adaptations were necessary as well, including cardiovascular changes (to pump blood all the way up to the giraffe?s brain), shortening of the hindlegs relative to the forelegs (to ensure that the giraffe does not topple over), and so on? The giraffe?s neck is still a neck, built out of the same basic blueprint that is used over and over in vertebrates, but with some quantitative adjustments. It still does other kinds of ?neck work?, just like the work that necks do in less specialized species, but it has some extra potential for reaching up high in the tree that other necks do not provide. If we insist that the neck is a leaf-reaching organ, then we have to include the rest of the giraffe in that category, including the cardiovascular changes, adjustments in leg length, and so on. In the same vein, our ?language organ? can be viewed as the result of quantitative adjustments in neural mechanisms that exist in other mammals. (Bates, 1999) In my view, Liz overemphasized the quantitative at the expense of the qualitative. Take color vision, for example. Much (though not everything) is known about how it arose, evolutionary, and while the process of color vision surely should be seen as the product of descent with modification, the capacity to see in color equally surely differs qualitatively from anything preceded it. In essence, the critical step involved an evolutionary process known as duplication-and-divergence. Around 400 million years ago, gene for producing photoreceptor pigment was duplicated, and one copy of the gene was then free to diverge, yielding a second photoreceptor pigment with a slightly different spectral sensitivity. At that point, it became possible for ancestral retinas to distinguish not just the amount of light (monochromatic vision) impinging upon the eye but also the nature of that light (dichromatic vision). In understanding the nature and evolution of color vision, it's important to recognize how color vision is continuous with ancestral systems for monochromatic vision, but missing the point to think of the dramatic reorganization that ensued as nothing more than quantitative change. Liz?s conception of language through the quantitative change leads to a kind of language as cognition-writ- large perspective, whereas I think that process of evolutionary tinkering very much open the possibility of genuine novelty. Rather than trying to understand language as the product of (say) little more than an exceptionally large chimp brain, I suggest that we would be best off seeing language as the product of both qualitative and quantitative change. I further depart from Liz?s company when the question of what kinds of genetic change might have taken place. In the 1999 paper quoted from above, Bates went on to suggest that developmental neurobiologists have abandoned the idea that detailed aspects of synaptic connectivity are under direct genetic control, in favor of an activity-dependent account. There has to be something special about the human brain that makes language possible, but that ?something? may involve highly distributed mechanisms that serve many other functions. Here again, Bates's view seems half right; the notion that language relies on highly distributed mechanisms seems even more plausible several years later, and many (though perhaps not all) of the relevant neural regions play roles in other cognitive functions. But distribution, and even the important role of activity-dependence, do not diminish the importance of genetic contributions; in the same half decade since Bates wrote those words, it is has become amply clear that genes do in fact drive initial synaptic connectivity in very detailed ways. As I emphasized in The Birth of the Mind, molecular control of initial brain-wiring is both precise and powerful, even while it is flexible. Although activity-dependence (which I think of as rewiring) is crucial, endogeneous mechanisms are no less crucial; indeed, many neural hallmarks can develop in the absence of any activity at all (e.g, Crowley & Katz, 1999; Verhage, 2000). A synthetic explanation of human cognition ? and human uniqueness ? must look for both qualititative and quantitative changes both in what is learned and what is contributed via biology. ? Gary Marcus p.s. Brian MacWhinney alluded to a an excellent early statement of this view, in Kaplan & Werner (1963). For those interested, I tracked down the original wording: Even in the emergence of novel functions and forms, however, there is, as a rule, an intertwining of continuous and discontinuous changes: though novel features come about by qualitative change, which necessarily implies discontinuity, the manner in which such features emerge may be gradual in various respects, e.g., there may be a gradual increase in the frequency of occurrence of the new over the old, or there may be employment of older forms for new functions before the new functions secure the formation of novel, function- specific means, etc They in turn seem to have credited their idea to a reading of Mayr (1960), who of course traced his own work back to Darwin. References Bates, E. (1999). Plasticity, localization, and language development. In S. H. Broman & J. M. Fletcher (Eds.), The changing nervous system: Neurobiological consequences of early brain disorders. New York: Oxford University Press. Crowley, J. C., & Katz, L. C. (1999). Development of ocular dominance columns in the absence of retinal input. Nature Neuroscience, 2(12), 1125-1130. Fisher, S. E., & Marcus, G. F. (2006). The eloquent ape: genes, brains and the evolution of language. Nature Reviews Genetics, 7(1), 9-20. Kaplan, B. & Werner, H. (1963) Symbol Formation: An Organismic- Developmental Approach to Language and the Expression of Thought. Wiley. Marcus, G. F. (2004a). Before the word. Nature, 431(7010), 745. Marcus, G. F. (2004b). The Birth of the Mind: How A Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought. New York: Basic Books. Marcus, G. F. (2006). Cognitive Architecture and Descent with Modification. Cognition, in press. Mayr, E., 1960. ?The emergence of evolutionary novelties?. In Tax, S. (Ed.), Evolution after Darwin, Vol. I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Verhage, M., et al. (2000). Synaptic assembly of the brain in the absence of neurotransmitter secretion. Science, 287(5454), 864-869. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk Thu Jan 5 14:46:39 2006 From: e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk (Emily K. Farran) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:46:39 +0000 Subject: Call for papers: The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, UK Message-ID: The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, 6th to 7th July, 2006, Reading, UK Call for papers, submission deadline 31st January 2006 For further information see: http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf/WSconferencedetails.html The major aim of the conference is to disseminate advances in our understanding of Williams syndrome (WS) across wide-ranging disciplines: from genetics to medical, behavioural and cognitive characteristics. A second aim is to discuss recent advances in research methodology, particularly in developmental psychology. The workshop will be attended by professionals who work with individuals with Williams syndrome: developmental and cognitive psychologists, geneticists and clinicians. Keynote speakers: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith Dr Michael Thomas The workshop will incude presentations from many eminent researchers including: Professor Peter Hammond Professor Pat Howlin Dr May Tassabehji Dr Mazal Cohen Dr Gaia Scerif Call for papers. Please submit abstracts to Emily Farran at e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words Please state whether paper or poster presentation Paper presentations will be twenty minutes long with ten minutes for questions. Submission deadline: 31st January 2006 Registration deadline: 28th February 2006 -- Dr. Emily Farran Department of Psychology University of Reading Earley Gate Reading RG6 6AL UK Tel: +44 (0)118 378 7531 Fax: +44 (0)118 378 6715 http://www.reading.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf From mkastamoula at yahoo.com Thu Jan 5 15:10:06 2006 From: mkastamoula at yahoo.com (Mary Kastamoula) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 07:10:06 -0800 Subject: Greek word frequencies Message-ID: I would like to thank those of you who replied to my enquiry about finding Modern Greek word frequency information. Just to summerise, I finally think at the moment there are two usefull online sources of information for Modern Greek frequency information: http://hnc.ilsp.gr (already mentioned) http://www.komvos.edu.gr (this one has online distionaries and a reverse dictionary that allows search by using the end of the word e.g. %morpheme. It also gives a total count of the words ending to that specific morpheme) Thanks Mary Kastamoula MPhil/PhD Student Institute of Education University of London --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu Thu Jan 5 16:40:40 2006 From: nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu (nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:40:40 -0500 Subject: Indefinite Nouns in Discourse Message-ID: Hello, A little while ago I posted an inquiry about indefinie animate nouns in discourse. My goal was to find out information in experimental work or corpora analysis about how grammatical roles are assigned to two animate nouns when one of them is indefinite. In the experiment that I conducted, in the absence of morphological cues and with ambiguous word order children and adults preferred an animate definite noun as a subject over an animate indefinite noun. Theres Gruter had similar findings with her L1 controls in an L2 study with Egnlish speakers learning German. (Gr?ter, T. (in press). Another take on the L2 initial state. Language Acquisition. ) Thanks to everyone who responded to my query. Here is a summary of the responses. Hickmann, M. & Hendriks, H. (1999). Cohesion and anaphora in children?s narratives: a comparison of English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 26, 419-451. H?hle, B., Weissenborn, J., Kiefer, D., Schulz, A, & Schmitz, M (2002) The origins of syntactic categorization for lexical elements: The role of determiners. In J. Costa & M.J. Freitas (eds.) Proceedings of the GALA 2001 Conference on Language Acquisition. Lisboa, Associa??o Portugesa de Lingu?stica, 106-111. Kail, M. & Hickmann, M. (1992). French children's ability to introduce referents in narratives as a function of mutual knowledge. First Language, 12, 73-94. Kempe, V. & MacWhinney, B. (1999). Processing of morphological and semantic cues in Russian and German. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14, 129-171. Limber, J. (1976). Unraveling competence, performance, and pragmatics in the speech of young children. Journal of Child Language, 3, 309-318. YAMAMOTO, M. 1999. Animacy and Reference: Studies in Language Companion Series. Amsterdam / Philidelphia: John Benjamins. Best regards, Natalie -- Natalie Batmanian Post-doctoral Fellow Hunter College Psychology Department (212)773-5557/8 From grinstead.11 at osu.edu Thu Jan 5 17:13:00 2006 From: grinstead.11 at osu.edu (John Grinstead) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:13:00 -0500 Subject: Frog Stories Output Message-ID: Dear CHILDES Folk, For those who have experience with the Frog Story paradigm, is there any kind of ball park estimate you can give me for how many utterances with or without verbs typically developing 5 or 6 year-old Spanish or English-speaking children produce during a session? Thank you, John -- |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| John Grinstead Assistant Professor Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese 283 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 43210-1340 http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grinstead11/ Tel 614.292.8856 Fax 614.292.7726 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| From macw at mac.com Thu Jan 5 17:43:02 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:43:02 -0500 Subject: Assembling language from spare parts In-Reply-To: <9A0293F0-9C5B-4297-9469-29007568F2C2@nyu.edu> Message-ID: Dear Gary, Liz would certainly be supportive of your interest in both Werner and Mayr. (And, of course, Darwin.) Nothing was dearer to her heart than the issue of new machines out of old parts (unless it might have been links between language and gesture). I can't imagine that she (or Labov) would have any problem at all agreeing with you regarding the importance of both quantitative and qualitative change. The point of divergence would be when you rely on facts regarding duplication and divergence to defend the idea of "genuine novelty." Rather than counting on the magic of the genome, Liz and I would have emphasized the magic of selection. Still, it would be wrong to dismiss the impact of genetic mechanics. However, I would like to avoid commenting on the details of your analysis of duplication and divergence without taking time to read your recent work. So, let's leave the rest of that discussion to the future. For the present, however, I thought it would be interesting to draw the attention of readers of info-childes to a thoughtful obituary for Ernst Mayr that Tom Givon posted last May to the funknet bulletin board. The obituary is from Steven Peterson of Penn State Capital College, but I am including it with Tom Givon's preface. --Brian MacWhinney Dear funk-people, I thought it would be of interest to functionally-inclined linguists to take a look at the following "appreciation" of the life and work of a recently-departed eminent evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr. It is a very thoughtful piece, in spite of the few lapses into PC and the occasional Marxist slip. Mayr's grand Darwinian themes resonate well in linguistics: adaptive selection (functionalism), diversity and its crucial role in change (the Labovian theme of variation-and-diachrony), emergence (non-mechanistic change), the interplay between field-work and theory, and between qualitative (field) and quantitative (lab) methodology; and, above all perhaps, the dynamic-historical (diachronic) theoretical understanding of extant forms (synchronic typology). TG ******************************* Ernst Mayr, arguably the preeminent biologist of the twentieth century, died on February 3, succumbing after a short illness at the age of 100. Mayr was the last survivor of a generation of renowned natural scientists that included the likes of Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Theodocious Dobzhansky, J.B.S. Haldane, G.L. Stebbins and Hermann Muller, all of whom worked to establish Darwinian evolution as the cornerstone theory of biology. Mayr's contributions to the science of biology, during the course of his remarkable life, are manifold. He will be remembered primarily for his role in the elaboration of what has become known as the Synthetic Theory of Evolution?the syntheses of the Darwinian ideas of evolution through natural selection and the common descent of all living organisms from extinct forms, with the science of genetics?from the groundbreaking work of Gregor Mendel in the nineteenth century to the revealing of the DNA double helix by Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick in the early 1950s. In addition, Mayr is chiefly credited with formulating the "biological species concept," the notion that species are not simply defined by a static compilation of common physical characteristics, but are dynamic populations of interbreeding organisms interacting with other species in an environment while remaining reproductively isolated, that is, they are prevented either geographically or behaviorally from breeding with other closely related groups. The biological species concept both incorporated and enriched Darwin's revolutionary ideas regarding the introduction of species and their geographical distribution. Darwin had sought causal explanations(ability of a species to disperse, e.g.) for the appearance of closely related species in unexpected locations, striking a blow against the creationist notion that species are found where they were originally "created." The subsequent work of Mayr with birds, and that of G.G. Simpson with mammals, has greatly enhanced our understanding of the geographical distribution of species. Mayr was a tireless proponent of "population thinking," a profound idea that plumbs the depths of the contradictions inherent in concepts such as "species" and "population." He emphasized that while the characteristics of populations are shaped and altered by natural selection, each individual member of that population is unique. Early on, Mayr rejected "essentialism," an idealist conception that posited the existence of "typical" individuals within any given population, a viewpoint that, with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance at the turn of the last century, made a considerable comeback at the expense of Darwinism. Mayr pointed out that the racialist notions that were widely held during that period were thoroughly essentialist, in that they accepted as given the existence of "average" or typical racial types. Mayr, on the other hand, favored the viewpoint that focused on the fact that no two individuals making up a species (or a "race" for that matter) are alike. For Mayr, as for Darwin, it was the uniqueness of every member of a population that served as the fuel for natural selection, providing the impetus for the evolution of entirely new types of organisms. Once the genetic mechanism for the production of continuous diversity was understood, the profundity of Darwin's original ideas were reestablished and enriched in the form of the new synthesis. Ernst Mayr was born in Germany, in the town of Kempten, Bavaria in 1904. The offspring of a long line of doctors, Mayr chose instead to concentrate his considerable intellectual abilities in the field of zoology, with a special interest in ornithology. At that time, Germany was still a major center of evolutionary biology, a tradition that owed to the work during the latter half of the nineteenth century of such notables as Ernst Haeckel and August Weismann. Haeckel, who had made major contributions in zoology, as well as in originating some of the familiar terms in biology (ecology, e.g.), is chiefly remembered for advancing his famous "Biogenetic Law," which held that the developing embryo of an organism (ontogeny) was a recapitulation of the evolutionary history of that organism (phylogeny). Weismann was a pioneer in the science of genetics, who, among his major accomplishments, established the role of sex in promoting variation within a species, and determined that gametes (sex cells) have the haploid number (half the normal or diploid number) of chromosomes. Mayr's attraction to birds brought him in contact with Erwin Stresemann, who was the curator of birds at the University of Berlin Museum of Natural History. Stresemann became his PhD advisor, and Mayr attained this advanced degree at the age of 21. Due to his astonishing longevity, as well as his European origin, Mayr was in certain essential respects a living link between nineteenth and twentieth century biology, in that while he was certainly comfortable with the quantitative aspects of the biological sciences devoted to genetics and molecular biology, he held qualitative methodologies, the use of observation and comparison to gain new insights, in high regard. It is not surprising, then, that following his studies in Berlin, Mayr, like countless naturalists before him, embarked on an expedition of discovery to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, to collect specimens for Lord Rothschild's museum at Tring, Hertfordshire, in England, and for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1931, Mayr emigrated to New York, and took a job at the museum as a curator of birds, in particular of the 280,000 bird specimens of the Rothschild collection that were donated to the museum shortly after Mayr's arrival. In an interview that marked his 100th birthday, Mayr declared: "I was very anti-Nazi, so there was no way I could return [to Germany]" (2004). In 1953, Mayr left the museum to take a position as the Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology at Harvard. Mayr remained at Harvard for the rest of his life, and was active until his final illness. Mayr was the author or co-author of more than 20 books?among them Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942), Animal Species and Evolution (1963), One Long Argument: Population, Species and Evolution, What Evolution Is (2001), his seminal work, The Growth of Biological Thought (1982) and Toward a New Philosophy of Biology(1988). His final work, titled What Makes Biology Unique, was published shortly after his 100th birthday. He also founded the journal Evolution in 1947, and was a contributor to more than 600 scientific papers. Mayr's spouse of 55 years, Margarete (Gretel) Simon, died in 1990. If one were to characterize the trajectory of Mayr's development as a scientist, it would be that he was primarily a naturalist turned theoretician. He was not a popularizer in the manner of his Harvard ,colleague, the late Stephen Jay Gould, but his theoretical acumen (in this writer's opinion) ran deeper. In fact, Mayr was critical of the late paleontologist's punctuated equilibrium hypothesis as an explanation of the evolutionary process for its overemphasis on the role of saltation (leaps). Mayr didn't completely reject Gould's theory, but explained that it did not contradict Darwinian gradualism, because such sudden bursts of evolutionary development are populational phenomena, that is, they occur at the species level. Thus, a sudden evolutionary spurt is always subsumed within the overall processes of evolution, which are for the most part gradual. Mayr took pains to point out that these accelerated evolutionary events appear saltational only when compared with the vastness of the geological time scale. Various theories of saltation as descriptors of the "sudden" appearance of new types of organisms have come and gone over the centuries, having their roots in the catastrophism (multiple creations) of the renowned comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), who tried to explain the existence of extinct animals (dinosaurs, e.g.), and fit them into some kind of schema compatible with Biblical creation. Even later saltationist theories for the evolution of species or whole groups of organisms could be interpreted as implying a kind of special creation, opening the door to a religious interpretation of the complexities of the natural world. Mayr was certainly cognizant of this danger as his well-known discourse on the nature of chance and>>selection, what he termed the "adaptationist dilemma," attests. In his book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (1988), Mayr is critical of Gould and Richard Lewontin for their attack on the notion that the development of adaptations as a result of natural selection is anything but the result of stochastic (chance) processes, therefore rendering the term adaptation obsolete, and casting a pall over natural selection, the foundation concept of Darwinism. Gould went so far as to call the notion of a process of adaptation a "Panglossian paradigm" (after Voltaire's character in Candide), a futile search for perfection in the evolutionary process. Mayr's reply is a clinic on the dialectical approach to a complex and seemingly contradictory process. He wrote: "When asked whether or not the adaptationist program is a legitimate scientific approach, one must realize that the method of evolutionary biology is in some ways quite different from that of the physical sciences. Although evolutionary phenomena are subject to universal laws, as are most phenomena in the physical sciences, the explanation of a particular evolutionary phenomenon can be given only as a `historical narrative.' Consequently, when one attempts to explain the features of something that is the product of evolution, one must attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary history of this feature." He continued by explaining that when one rejects all manner of teleological explanations for the adaptation of species to their changing environments one is left with two unified, but seemingly contradictory propositions?chance and selection forces. "The identification of these two factors as the principal causes of evolutionary change by no means completed the task for the evolutionist. As is the case with most scientific problems, this initial solution represented only the first orientation. For completion it requires a second stage, a fine-grained analysis of these two factors: What are the respective roles of chance >>>and or natural selection, and how can this be analyzed?" (1988) Mayr's life-long interest in the fundamental questions that continue to animate the biological sciences, combined with his exceptional longevity as a working and thinking scientist, engendered in him a profound appreciation of its history. In particular, he stressed the importance of a study of the history of scientific concepts (natural selection, e.g.). He wrote: "Preoccupation with this sort of conceptual history of science is sometimes belittled as a hobby of retired scientists. Such an attitude ignores the manifold contributions which this branch of scholarship makes" (1982). He stated further: "One can take almost any advance, either in evolutionary biology or in systematics, and show that it did not depend as much on discoveries as on the introduction of new concepts.... Those are not far wrong who insist that the progress of science consists principally in the progress of scientific concepts" (1982). Mayr frequently commented on what he perceived to be the sharp dichotomy between experimental and theoretical science, and the growing inclination toward reductionism in biology. He would bristle against the accusation, often made by physicists and philosophers, that biology was not "hard" science. An interesting byproduct of this common misconception, one that Mayr noted in a recent interview, was that there continues to be no Nobel Prize awarded in biology. Mayr championed the notion that the governing concepts of the science of biology were not simply reducible to mathematical formulae and the timeless laws of physics. By this he did not mean that biological processes existed outside the realm of the laws of chemistry and physics, or that many aspects of the living world did not lend themselves to quantification, but that living processes could not be entirely explained or even understood from those standpoints. Mayr explained that in previous centuries natural scientists, under pressure to be able to draw conclusions from their working hypotheses that were reducible to mathematical formulae and the laws of physics, either succumbed to that pressure and presented purely mechanical explanations for living processes, or sought vitalist (those who claim that the property of being alive is sparked by an outside force) and even religious explanations for the processes being studied. In referring to the higher levels of complexity of living systems, Mayr stressed their duality, that is, each organism is at once an expression of its genotype, the historically developed genetic code for the synthesis of proteins, and its phenotype, the unique physical appearance of each individual of a species; the product of the complex interplay of physiological, embryological and ecological processes. He placed particular emphasis on two properties unique to living systems, teleonomy (goal-directed processes) and "emergentism," the tendency for the evolution of "emergent properties," a notion that reaches beyond the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Regarding the latter, he wrote in The Growth of Biological Thought: "Systems almost always have the peculiarity that the characteristics of the whole cannot (not even in theory) be deduced from the most complete knowledge of the components, taken separately or in other partial combinations. This appearance of new characteristics in wholes has been designated as emergence" (1982). As a prime example, he cited the work to uncover the importance of DNA for the science of genetics. "The discovery of the double helix of DNA and of its code was a breakthrough of the first order.... There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years! At the same time, this purely materialistic explanation elucidates many of the phenomena which the vitalists had claimed could not be explained chemically or physically. To be sure, it is still a physicalist explanation, but one infinitely more sophisticated than the gross mechanistic explanations of earlier centuries" (1982). An emergent property, then, is something unanticipated?the evolution of new behaviors, or new adaptations (lungs, language, abstract thought, e.g.), that has unforeseen implications that propel a species or a group of organisms in an entirely new direction. It should be noted that Mayr considered the concept of emergentism to be philosophically "entirely materialistic." Not surprisingly, Mayr was a lifelong atheist and a staunch opponent of the ongoing attack on evolution by the motley assemblage of religious zealots, creationists and "intelligent design" advocates. In 1991, he commented in an interview in the Harvard Gazette: "I'm an old-time fighter for Darwinism. I say, `Please tell me what's wrong with Darwinism. I can't see anything wrong with Darwinism." For Mayr, Darwin's contribution to mankind's knowledge of the natural world was revolutionary. During an interview on his 93rd birthday, Mayr commented that one of "Darwin's great contributions was that he replaced theological, or supernatural, science with secular science. Laplace had already done this some 50 years earlier when he explained the whole world to Napoleon. After his explanation, Napoleon replied, `Where is God in your theory?' And Laplace answered, `I don't need that hypothesis.' "Darwin's explanation that all things have a natural cause made the belief in a creatively superior mind quite unnecessary. He created asecular world, more so than anyone before him. Certainly many forces were verging in that same direction, but Darwin's work was the crashing arrival of this idea and from that point on the secular viewpoint of the world became virtually universal" (2005). In the introduction to his The Growth of Biological Thought, Mayr wrote: "A well-known Soviet theoretician of Marxism once referred to my writings as `pure dialectical materialism.' I am not a Marxist and I do not know the latest definition of dialectical materialism, but I do admit that I share some of Engel's anti-reductionist views, as stated in his Anti-Duhring, and that I am greatly attracted to Hegel's scheme of thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis." For the most part, Mayr can be classified as a consistent materialist. However, his outlook stops short of embracing historical materialism, falling victim to the widely promulgated viewpoint that history consists of a series of narratives, rather than the workings of historical laws. Mayr was one of the outstanding figures of twentieth century science? brilliant and passionate, with an encyclopedic knowledge of science, history and philosophy. His contributions to an understanding of the big questions in biology, not to mention those animating science in general, have been enormous. One can only anticipate that others, in the face of the continuing assault on the scientific world outlook, will take up the defense and further illumination of the fundamental theoretical conquests of biology with equal vigor and erudition. Steven A. Peterson Director, School of Public Affairs Penn State Capital College 777 West Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA 17057 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Li.Wei at newcastle.ac.uk Fri Jan 6 10:15:43 2006 From: Li.Wei at newcastle.ac.uk (Li Wei) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 10:15:43 -0000 Subject: Volterra & Taeschner Message-ID: Does anyone know the current contact address (preferably email) of either Virginia Volterra or T. Taeschner? Professor Li Wei, PhD Professor of Applied Linguistics Head, School of Education, Communication & Language Sciences Joseph Cowen House University of Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU Great Britain Phone: +44 (0)191 222 6760 Fax: +44 (0)191 222 6550 From macw at mac.com Mon Jan 9 01:58:34 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 20:58:34 -0500 Subject: book award Message-ID: Subject: Nominations invited for the Eleanor E. Maccoby Book Award Nominations are invited for the Eleanor E. Maccoby Book Award to be presented by Division 7 of APA in the year 2006. Books published in 2005 that have had or promise to have a profound impact on developmental psychology are eligible. Edited volumes are not eligible. Self-nominations are permissible. If you have a favorite book on your reading list you are encouraged to submit it. Please provide the title, author(s), and publisher, along with a brief description of the book and capsule summary of its importance for understanding the psychology of development. Please send nominations by February by February 15 to Jean Mandler at jmandler at ucsd.edu or at the Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From htagerf at bu.edu Mon Jan 9 19:00:47 2006 From: htagerf at bu.edu (htagerf at bu.edu) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 14:00:47 -0500 Subject: Exiciting Job Opportunity! Message-ID: Job Description Full time research associate with background in psycholinguistics and communication disorders/speech language pathology to conduct clinical assessments and oversee language data collection, coding and analyses for multiple research projects. Our interdisciplinary research programs are funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and private foundation and focus on a variety of populations, including children with autism, specific language impairment, Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. Major responsibilities include: ? Collection of diagnostic and language assessment from project participants and parents; ? Overseeing the preparation, coding, and analyses of natural language transcripts; ? Development of coding schemes for natural language samples; ? Coding standardized language and cognitive assessments; ? Preparation of reports and feedback for families on language assessments ? Organizing testing of project participants; ? Maintaining subject, stimulus, and data files; ? Data analysis for language-related projects; ? Preparation of literature reviews, conference presentations and manuscripts. Background and skills needed for this position include: ? Masters Degree in Communication Disorders, Psychology or related field, with coursework in psycholinguistics; ? Certification in Speech-language pathology ? Clinical language assessment skills in children with language disorders; ? Research experience in transcription and transcript coding and analysis; ? Strong organizational, interpersonal, and computer skills; ? Knowledge of PC Windows and Microsoft Office environments ? Interest and background coursework in cognitive psychology or neuroscience, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and language/communication disorders This position is available immediately. Full-time, competitive salary and full benefits package. Send resume, letter of interest, and the names of 3 references all marked LANGUAGE RESEARCH/CLINICAL POSITION to: Laura Stetser ( lstetser at bu.edu ). For information about the research lab; Director: Helen Tager-Flusberg, Ph.D. see www.bu.edu/autism . Please - no applications to me directly! ______________________________________________ Helen Tager-Flusberg, PhD Professor, Anatomy & Neurobiology Director, Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience ( www.bu.edu/autism ) Boston University School of Medicine 715 Albany Street L814 Boston MA 02118 Fax: 617-414-1301 Voice: 617-414-1312 Email: htagerf at bu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From t.marinis at reading.ac.uk Wed Jan 11 21:13:53 2006 From: t.marinis at reading.ac.uk (Theodoros Marinis) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:13:53 +0000 Subject: Job announcement: Senior Lecturer/Reader/Chair - University of Reading, UK Message-ID: The University of Reading School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences Senior Lecturer/Reader/Chair - Ref. S0601 The School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences wish to appoint to a full-time, permanent senior post, to take effect as soon as possible. The level of appointment will depend on experience. The focus of this post will be on maintaining a high personal research profile and encouraging and building existing research activity within the Clinical Language Science section of the School. An established ability to attract research funding is essential. The section offers two pre-registration degrees in Speech and Language Therapy funded by the NHS, thus research experience in fields of normal and non-normal speech and language, other areas of communication impairment or subjects that inform these areas would be especially welcome. A qualification in speech and language therapy is desirable but not essential. Clinical salary scales will be paid to an appropriate candidate. For an informal discussion please contact Dr. Judi Ellis, Head of School j.a.ellis at reading.ac.uk or Professor Susan Edwards, Head of Section s.i.edwards at reading.ac.uk Further particulars and application form are available from the Personnel Office, The University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 217, Reading, RG6 6AH, telephone 0118 378 6771 (voicemail) (please quote Reference number), and at the University web-site below. http://www.info.rdg.ac.uk/newjobs/details.asp?RefernceNumber=S0601 Closing date for applications 13 February 2006. v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ Theodoros Marinis Lecturer in Clinical Linguistics School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences University of Reading Reading RG6 6AL, UK Tel. +44-118-3787465 http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~sslytma/index.htm v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cschutze at ucla.edu Thu Jan 12 06:23:52 2006 From: cschutze at ucla.edu (Carson Sch=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=C3=BCtze?=) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:23:52 -0800 Subject: Use of "He don?t" etc. by Sarah's mother Message-ID: Hi everyone, Can anyone point me to literature that observes/discusses that in the transcripts of Sarah from the Brown et al. Harvard study, the mother (and also the father, but we hear less of him) uses "don't" with 3rd person singular subjects, in apparent free variation with "doesn't"? Thanks. -- Prof. Carson T. Schutze Department of Linguistics, UCLA Email: cschutze at ucla.edu Box 951543, Los Angeles CA 90095-1543 Office: Campbell Hall 2224B Deliveries/Courier: 3125 Campbell Hall Campus Mail Code: 154303 www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/cschutze/ Phone: (310)995-9887 Fax: (310)206-8595 From macw at mac.com Sun Jan 15 16:07:14 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 11:07:14 -0500 Subject: French MOR Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Work on the application of MOR to the French corpora in CHILDES has lagged a bit, despite the availability of a fairly complete lexicon provided by Christophe Parisse. In part, this is because the Parisse French MOR system was constructed to use full form entries, rather than the system of arules and crules used for other languages. It would be possible to either continue constructing French MOR in this full-form format or to shift to using the analytic framework. Before beginning on this work, I wanted to check to see if anyone in the CHILDES community had done any work extending the current French MOR grammar. I want to make sure we are not about to reinvent the wheel. Many thanks. --Brian MacWhinney, CMU From parisse at ext.jussieu.fr Mon Jan 16 11:36:18 2006 From: parisse at ext.jussieu.fr (Christophe Parisse) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:36:18 +0100 Subject: French MOR In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well I beg to differ ! First I used c-rules as there are many regulars words in French and it was easier to use c-rules than not to used them. For example, there are 25144 "words" in the v.cut file. Out of these "words", 11147 are the root of 1st group verbs (the most frequent regular verbs in French) and 240 are 2nd group verbs. All these roots allow to analyse something like 45 different forms, thanks to c-rules (something like 510615 different forms in full forms). Now, there are something like 13757 words in v.cut which ARE full forms but these corresponds to (only!) 305 irregular verbs which have something like 45 different forms each and they are much to irregular for c-rules to be of much use. For nouns and adjectives, I did the same, which is generating automatically the plurals with 's' and the feminine form of adjectives with "e". Second, but most important, MOR for French does the SAME thing as MOR for English. Just two examples: ENGLISH @Begin *CHI: plays %mor: v|play-3S^n|play-PL *CHI: playing %mor: part|play-PROG *CHI: oxen %mor: n|ox&PL *CHI: geese %mor: n|goose&PL *CHI: problems %mor: n|problem-PL @End FRENCH: @Begin *CHI: jouent %mor: v|jouer-SUBJV:PRES&_3PV^v|jouer&PRES&_3PV *CHI: remises %mor: v:pp|remettre&_FEM&_PL^n|remise&_FEM-_PL^v|remiser-SUBJV:PRES&_2SV^v|remiser &PRES&_2SV *CHI: allumees %mor: v:pp|allumer&_FEM&_PL *CHI: jouant %mor: v:prog|jouer *CHI: chevaux %mor: n|cheval&_MASC&_PL *CHI: elephants %mor: n|elephant&_MASC-_PL *CHI: fille %mor: n|fille&_FEM @End However, I confess that I made an error when generating the list of exceptions because I coded some words which are regular using the "&" sign instead of "-". This especially is true for feminines forms which are all coded with "&" whereas many are regular. But I can check this and change the signs if necessary, either in the full form file or by coding a new rule. Also, some verbs of the 3rd group could be considered as regular. Well these could be changed too, but there could be disagreement about the list of regular 3rd group verbs. Finally, one could choose a different notation for infinitives and participles. I coded them in the main category, instead of using -INF, -PROG, etc. This could be easilly changed if necessary. One final remark. There are around 32,000 roots in MOR for French, which correspond to close to 600,000 full forms. It seems to me this far from incomplete. Christophe Parisse > -----Message d'origine----- > De : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org > [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]De la part de Brian MacWhinney > Envoye : dimanche 15 janvier 2006 17:07 > A : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org > Objet : French MOR > > > Dear Colleagues, > Work on the application of MOR to the French corpora in CHILDES > has lagged a bit, despite the availability of a fairly complete > lexicon provided by Christophe Parisse. In part, this is because the > Parisse French MOR system was constructed to use full form entries, > rather than the system of arules and crules used for other > languages. It would be possible to either continue constructing > French MOR in this full-form format or to shift to using the analytic > framework. Before beginning on this work, I wanted to check to see > if anyone in the CHILDES community had done any work extending the > current French MOR grammar. I want to make sure we are not about to > reinvent the wheel. Many thanks. > > --Brian MacWhinney, CMU > > From jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se Mon Jan 16 15:44:30 2006 From: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se (Jordan Zlatev) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:44:30 +0100 Subject: Third CFP and extended deadline: LCM2006 Paris Message-ID: THIRD CALL / EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR LANGUAGE CULTURE AND MIND CONFERENCE (LCM 2) INTEGRATING PERSPECTIVES AND METHODOLOGIES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE PARIS 17-20 JULY 2006 The second ?Language Culture and Mind? Conference (LCM 2) will be held in Paris in July 2006, following the successful first LCM conference in Portsmouth in 2004. The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue, and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language. The second edition will be held at the ?cole Nationale Sup?rieure des T?l?communications (ENST), 46 rue Barrault, 75013 Paris France. Further information concerning the organization, fees and accommodation (including affordable rooms at the Cit? Universitaire Internationale de Paris, at walking distance from the Conference site) will be provided as soon as available at the site of the conference: http://www.lcm2006.net IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submissions:? January 30 (for further detail see underneath) Notification to authors by March 30, 2006 Early registration by April 15, 2006 PRESENTATION Human natural languages are biologically based, cognitively motivated, affectively rich, socially shared, grammatically organized symbolic systems. They provide the principal semiotic means for the complexity and diversity of human cultural life. As has long been recognized, no single discipline or methodology is sufficient to capture all the dimensions of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which lies at the heart of what it is to be human. In the recent past, perception and cognition have been the basis of general unifying models of language and language activity. However, a genuine integrative perspective should also involve such essential modalities of human action as: empathy, mimesis, intersubjectivity, normativity, agentivity and narrativity. Significant theoretical, methodological and empirical advancements in the relevant disciplines now provide a realistic basis for such a broadened perspective. ? This conference will articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive and bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics, discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to impart their insights and findings, and learn from other disciplines. Preference will be given to submissions which emphasize interdisciplinarity, the interaction between culture, mind and language, and/or multi-methodological approaches in language sciences. ? Topics include but are not limited to the relation between language and: - biological and cultural co-evolution? - comparative study of communication systems, whether animal or artificial - cognitive and cultural schematization? - emergence in ontogeny and phylogeny? - multi-modal communication - normativity? - thought, emotion and consciousness - perception and categorization - empathy and intersubjectivity - imitation and mimesis - symbolic activity - discourse genres in language evolution and ontogeny - sign, text and literacy Plenary speakers Pierre Cadiot (Linguistics, University of Orl?ans, France) Merlin Donald (Cognitive Science Department, Case Western Reserve University, USA) Shaun Gallagher (Department of Philosophy & Cognitive Science Program, University of Central Florida, USA) Webb Keane (Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, USA) Sandra Laugier (Philosophy, University of Amiens, France) John A. Lucy (Department of Comparative Human Development & Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA) Further information about LCM 2 will be presented at http://www.lcm2006.net. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Caroline David (Universit? de Montpellier) Jean-Louis Dessalles (?cole Nationale Sup?rieure des T?l?communications, Paris) Jean Lass?gue (CNRS, Paris) Victor Rosenthal (Inserm-EHESS, Paris) Chris Sinha (University of Portsmouth) Yves-Marie Visetti (CNRS, Paris) Joerg Zinken (University of Portsmouth) Jordan Zlatev (Lund University) SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Iraide Ibarretxe Antunano (University of Zaragoza) Jocelyn Benoist (Universit? de Paris 1) Enrique Bern?rdez, (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) Raphael Berthele (Universit? de Fribourg, Switzerland) Per Aage Brandt, (Case Western Reserve University) Peer F. Bundg?rd (Aarhus?Universitet) Seana Coulson, (Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD) Jules Davidoff (Goldsmith?s, University of London) Jean-Pierre Durafour (University of Tubingen) Michel de Fornel (EHESS, Paris) Vyvyan Evans, (University of Sussex, Grande-Bretagne) Dirk Geeraerts, (Department of Linguistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgique) Clarisse Herrenschmidt (CNRS-Laboratoire Anthropologie Sociale, Paris) Chris Knight (University of East London) Bernard Laks (Universit? de Paris 10-Nanterre) Maarten Lemmens, (Universit? Lille III) Lorenza Mondada (Universit? Lyon II) Fran?ois Nemo (Universit? Orl?ans) Domenico Parisi (CNR, Roma) David Piotrowski (CREA, Paris) St?phane Robert (CNRS, Paris) Fran?ois Rastier (CNRS, Paris) Lucien Scubla (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) G?ran Sonesson (Lund, Semiotics) John Stewart (Universit? de Technologie de Compi?gne) Frederik Stjernfelt (University of Copenhagen) Wolfgang Wildgen (University of Bremen) SUBMISSIONS Submissions are solicited either for oral presentations or for poster sessions. They will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee. Oral presentations should last 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion). All submissions should follow the abstract guidelines below. Submissions should be in English. Abstracts should not exceed 1200 words (about two A4 pages), single-spaced, font size 12 pt or larger, with 2.5 cm margins on all sides. Any diagrams and references must fit on this two page submission. Head material (at the top of the first page): - Title of the paper, - Author name(s), - Author affiliation(s) in brief (1 line), - Email address of principal author - Type of submission (oral presentation, poster) PLEASE don?t forget to specify. Abstracts should be emailed to submission at lcm2006.net as an ATTACHMENT (i.e. not included in the message) preferably as a MS Word document, but in PDF or postscript format if it is necessary to include a diagram or figure. Abstracts should be submitted by January 30, 2006. Notification of acceptance by March 30, 2006. All abstracts will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Committee. ? ? *************************************************** Jordan Zlatev, Associate Professor Department of Linguistics Center for Languages and Literature Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden email: jordan.zlatev at ling.lu.se http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/JordanZlatev.html *************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 7694 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacqueline.vankampen at let.uu.nl Mon Jan 16 16:47:31 2006 From: jacqueline.vankampen at let.uu.nl (kampen) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 17:47:31 +0100 Subject: Call for papers Workshop The Romance Turn II Message-ID: Call for Papers for the Workshop The Romance Turn Date: 07-Sep-2006 - 09-Sep-2006 Location: Utrecht, Netherlands Contact Person: Jacqueline van Kampen Meeting Email: Romanceturn at let.uu.nl Web Site: http://www.let.uu.nl/romanceturn/ Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition Language Family(ies): Romance Call Deadline: 01-Apr-2006 Meeting Description: The Romance Turn II (Workshop on the Acquisition of Romance Languages) September 7-9 2006 at the UiL OTS, Utrecht University http://www.let.uu.nl./romanceturn/ The Romance Turn II will take place at Utrecht University (Netherlands). Like the first edition of The Romance Turn, which took place in 2004 at the UNED in Madrid, the present workshop intends to gather people working on the acquisition of the Romance languages. Workshop topics Papers are invited in the area of the acquisition of Romance languages. All topics in the fields of (typical and impaired) first and second language acquisition from a generative perspective will be considered. Presentations will be 30-minutes long, plus 15 minutes for discussion, and will be in English. Invited speakers Larisa Avram (University of Bucharest) Anne Christophe (CNRS Paris) Ludovica Serratrice (University of Manchester) Abstract submission Authors are invited to send one copy of an abstract (maximally two pages) in English for review. Abstracts should be submitted via e-mail to Romanceturn at let.uu.nl, as an attachment in PDF. In the body of the e-mail message include the title, language, name, academic affiliation, current address, phone and fax number, e-mail, and audiovisual requests. Authors may submit up to two abstracts, one individual and one joint. Deadline for receipt of abstracts: April 1 2006. Notification of acceptance: May 1 2006. Address for sending abstracts: Romanceturn at let.uu.nl Organizing committee Sergio Baauw Jacqueline van Kampen Joke de Lange Manuela Pinto http://www.let.uu.nl/~Jacqueline.vanKampen/personal/ Postal address: UiL OTS Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht The Netherlands phone: +31 30-2536054 fax: +31 30-2536000 From macw at mac.com Mon Jan 16 18:54:20 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:54:20 -0500 Subject: French MOR In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Christophe and Info-CHILDES, OK, I see now more clearly how this is organized. Thanks for the clarifications. The distance between the French and Spanish/ Italian systems is far less than I saw at first. And the coverage for French is far greater than I was estimating. To test this, I ran the French MOR on the Champaud data and found only 363 "missing" forms. Usually, we have twice that number for a new corpus. Moreover, virtually none of these "missing" form are truly missing. Rather they involve a few spelling errors and issues with the proper treatment of abbreviations (qu'il, s'adapte, t'apporte, d'aller). Also, the proper representation of compounds is another tricky thing. In any case, the distance to be traveled to getting the French data fully analyzed by MOR and POST should not be anywhere near as far as I originally thought. Hopefully we will be able to review some of these details next week in Paris. Many thanks for the clarifications. --Brian MacWhinney On Jan 16, 2006, at 6:36 AM, Christophe Parisse wrote: > Well I beg to differ ! > > First I used c-rules as there are many regulars words in French and > it was > easier to use c-rules than not to used them. > > For example, there are 25144 "words" in the v.cut file. Out of these > "words", 11147 are the root of 1st group verbs (the most frequent > regular > verbs in French) and 240 are 2nd group verbs. All these roots allow to > analyse something like 45 different forms, thanks to c-rules > (something like > 510615 different forms in full forms). Now, there are something > like 13757 > words in v.cut which ARE full forms but these corresponds to > (only!) 305 > irregular verbs which have something like 45 different forms each > and they > are much to irregular for c-rules to be of much use. > > For nouns and adjectives, I did the same, which is generating > automatically > the plurals with 's' and the feminine form of adjectives with "e". > > Second, but most important, MOR for French does the SAME thing as > MOR for > English. Just two examples: > > ENGLISH > > @Begin > *CHI: plays > %mor: v|play-3S^n|play-PL > *CHI: playing > %mor: part|play-PROG > *CHI: oxen > %mor: n|ox&PL > *CHI: geese > %mor: n|goose&PL > *CHI: problems > %mor: n|problem-PL > @End > > FRENCH: > > @Begin > *CHI: jouent > %mor: v|jouer-SUBJV:PRES&_3PV^v|jouer&PRES&_3PV > *CHI: remises > %mor: > v:pp|remettre&_FEM&_PL^n|remise&_FEM-_PL^v|remiser- > SUBJV:PRES&_2SV^v|remiser > &PRES&_2SV > *CHI: allumees > %mor: v:pp|allumer&_FEM&_PL > *CHI: jouant > %mor: v:prog|jouer > *CHI: chevaux > %mor: n|cheval&_MASC&_PL > *CHI: elephants > %mor: n|elephant&_MASC-_PL > *CHI: fille > %mor: n|fille&_FEM > @End > > However, I confess that I made an error when generating the list of > exceptions because I coded some words which are regular using the > "&" sign > instead of "-". This especially is true for feminines forms which > are all > coded with "&" whereas many are regular. But I can check this and > change the > signs if necessary, either in the full form file or by coding a new > rule. > Also, some verbs of the 3rd group could be considered as regular. > Well these > could be changed too, but there could be disagreement about the > list of > regular 3rd group verbs. > Finally, one could choose a different notation for infinitives and > participles. I coded them in the main category, instead of > using -INF, -PROG, etc. This could be easilly changed if necessary. > > One final remark. There are around 32,000 roots in MOR for French, > which > correspond to close to 600,000 full forms. It seems to me this far > from > incomplete. > > Christophe Parisse > >> -----Message d'origine----- >> De : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org >> [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]De la part de Brian MacWhinney >> Envoye : dimanche 15 janvier 2006 17:07 >> A : info-childes at mail.talkbank.org >> Objet : French MOR >> >> >> Dear Colleagues, >> Work on the application of MOR to the French corpora in CHILDES >> has lagged a bit, despite the availability of a fairly complete >> lexicon provided by Christophe Parisse. In part, this is because the >> Parisse French MOR system was constructed to use full form entries, >> rather than the system of arules and crules used for other >> languages. It would be possible to either continue constructing >> French MOR in this full-form format or to shift to using the analytic >> framework. Before beginning on this work, I wanted to check to see >> if anyone in the CHILDES community had done any work extending the >> current French MOR grammar. I want to make sure we are not about to >> reinvent the wheel. Many thanks. >> >> --Brian MacWhinney, CMU >> >> > From dongping.zheng at uconn.edu Mon Jan 16 20:18:57 2006 From: dongping.zheng at uconn.edu (Dongping Zheng) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:18:57 -0500 Subject: Transferring Files from Word to CLAN Message-ID: Hi, I have a question about pasting conversation logs from Word to CLAN. The texts are unreadable until I save the file and open it again. However, the text is double spaced in the newly opened CLAN. Is there a better way to eliminate the double space rather than manually deleting each line? I tried to replace RETURN with nothing, it didn't seem to work. I really appreciate it if you have some tips for transferring files from word to CLAN . Dongping <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dongping Zheng, ABD Department of Educational Psychology University of Connecticut 249 Glenbrook Rd. Unit 2064 Storrs, CT 06269 dongping.zheng at uconn.edu http://www.education2.uconn.edu/epsy240/dzheng/index.htm Webmaster @ Universal Design for Instruction http://www.facultyware.uconn.edu/home.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brachan at post.tau.ac.il Mon Jan 16 21:56:43 2006 From: brachan at post.tau.ac.il (Bracha Nir-Sagiv) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:56:43 +0200 Subject: Transferring Files from Word to CLAN In-Reply-To: <4ll4c0$6cujs3@mxip22a.cluster1.charter.net> Message-ID: Dear Dongping, I also experienced the same problems when converting from Word to CLAN. What does the trick for me is first converting the file from *.doc to *.txt (under type, choose Encoded text if you're working with Windows 2000, then choose UNICODE), and then renaming the *.txt file to *.cha (I find that copying directly from the txt file usually also results in double spaces). However, if you would still like to copy directly from a Word or Txt file into CED, you can use the following command: CHSTRING +q *.cha -- this command removes blank lines and add tabs after colons (note that this will result in a *.str.cex file in your output directory). Hope this helps, Bracha Nir-Sagiv Dongping Zheng wrote: > Hi, > > I have a question about pasting conversation logs from Word to CLAN. > The texts are unreadable until I save the file and open it again. > However, the text is double spaced in the newly opened CLAN. Is there > a better way to eliminate the double space rather than manually > deleting each line? I tried to replace RETURN with nothing, it didn't > seem to work. > > > > I really appreciate it if you have some tips for transferring files > from word to CLAN . > > > > Dongping > > > > <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > Dongping Zheng, ABD > Department of Educational Psychology > University of Connecticut > > 249 Glenbrook Rd. Unit 2064 > > Storrs, CT 06269 > dongping.zheng at uconn.edu > http://www.education2.uconn.edu/epsy240/dzheng/index.htm > > > > Webmaster @ Universal Design for Instruction > http://www.facultyware.uconn.edu/home.htm > > > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From c.decat at leeds.ac.uk Tue Jan 17 15:20:42 2006 From: c.decat at leeds.ac.uk (Cecile De Cat) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:20:42 +0000 Subject: The Bantu-Romance Connection workshop Message-ID: Second call for papers *** Attendance to this workshop is limited to 30 participants (as required by the European Science Foundation). If you are keen to attend, please submit an abstract! *** Meeting Description: The Bantu-Romance Connection project aims to bring together specialists of Bantu and Romance languages to explore striking morpho-syntactic similarities between these two unrelated language families, in an effort to better understand the nature of linguistic structure, its diversity and constraints. Bantu and Romance languages display a number of morpho-syntactic similarities, including null subjects, object clitics, rich gender/class agreement systems, and extraposition of arguments resulting in a variety of surface word orders. Yet most scholars of Romance have little awareness of Bantu linguistic structures, and many Bantuists are not fully aware of the syntactic diversity of Romance languages. We would like to begin remeding this situation by proposing a 2-day workshop dedicated in equal parts to each language group. The format of the workshop will encourage debate as well as informal discussion between scholars. A number of questions arise regarding the surface similarities found in these two language groups: Are the syntactic structures underlying these surface similarities really the same? or are they actually different, and how can we tell? What is the diversity of structures permitted in each of these domains, and how are they represented across these two language groups? To address these questions, presentations and posters will be centred around three themes: - The structure of the Determiner Phrase - Clitics, agreement and object drop - Focus, topic and Information Structure Invited speakers: Anna Cardinaletti (Universit? di of Venezia, Italy) Vicki Carstens (University of Mississippi, USA) Joao Costa (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal) Mara Frascarelli (Universit? di Roma Tre, Italy) Giuliana Giusti (Universit? di Venezia, Italy) Nancy Kula (University of Leiden, The Netherlands) Marie Labelle (Universit? du Qu?bec ? Montr?al, Canada) Lutz Marten (SOAS, UK) Yukiko Morimoto (Zentrum f?r allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Germany) Nhlanhla Thwala (School for Oriental and African Studies, UK) Marianna Visser (Stellenbosch University, South Africa) Roberto Zamparelli (Universit? di Bergamo, Italy) Submissions are invited for 12 posters (4 per theme, including 2 per language family). Preference will be given to those that demonstrate an interest in exploring these issues cross-linguistically. Contributions addressing acquisition issues are welcome. Submission format: maximum 2 pages of A4, font size 12pt. Please email an anonymous version to c.decat at leeds.ac.uk, including your name, affiliation and contact details in the body of the message. Deadline for submission: 10 February 2006 Acceptance will be announced by 20 February 2006 From ellmcf at nus.edu.sg Wed Jan 18 10:10:00 2006 From: ellmcf at nus.edu.sg (Madalena Cruz-Ferreira) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:10:00 +0800 Subject: New book - child trilingualism Message-ID: Dear all, This is to let you know about my book on child trilingualism, just published by Multilingual Matters (Series Child Language and Child Development, 6). The title is _Three is a Crowd?_ and the book URL is at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/multi/display.asp?isb=1853598380 If you have a chance to read it, I'd be delighted to hear your comments! With warm wishes Madalena ====================================== Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Dept. English Language and Literature National University of Singapore ellmcf at nus.edu.sg http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/ellmcf/ ====================================== From ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu Wed Jan 18 15:14:48 2006 From: ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu (Kelley Sacco) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:14:48 -0500 Subject: Associate Professor in Language Acquisition Message-ID: Associate Professor in Language Acquisition Job description: The Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, offers a 5 year research position (associate professor) at Center for Child Language (Center for B?rnesprog) for appointment as soon as possible. The research position is advertised in affiliation with the WHISPER-project (the Widex Hearing Impaired Speech Research-Project) with the title "The interaction between segmentation strategies and mental representations of language sounds and language production in normal and hearing impaired populations" financed by Widex A/S and University of Southern Denmark. The general objective of the project is to investigate the early processing of speech-sounds in normally hearing and hearing impaired children, paying special attention to whether a reduced access to the auditory signal ? with the use of different types of amplification ? implies a diverging development of mental mechanisms and processes in relation to the processing of sounds, representation of sounds and speech production as compared to the development in hearing children. The research position will include experimental investigation of the early phases of the acquisition of speech in normally hearing and hearing impaired children, but with focus on the latter group. The experimental work will be carried out at the new experimental lab-facilities at the University of Southern Denmark (Odense BabyLab). The project-group comprises eight researchers of varying research-seniority from University of Southern Denmark, as well as an external research consultant. The collected professional research background of the group spans linguistics, phonetics, speech pathology, psychology and statistics. The cross-disciplinarity of the group is an important and emphasized characteristic of the project. The project collaborates with the Oxford BabyLab, The Department of Experimental Psychology at University of Oxford, England. The project is based on extensive teamwork, and the position will include participation in planning, coordination and supervision of the various related projects. The WHISPER-project is nested in the Center for Child Language and as such is part of the Center?s overall research programme. The Center has a thriving research milieu, in which the selected applicant will take part. The Center is active in both basic and applied research in children?s language acquisition. Relevant educational prerequisites could be phonetics, psycho-linguistics, psychology (preferably developmental or cognitive), or speech pathology. Experience with and/or interest in working experimentally is required. Experience with hearing impairment and language acquisition across different modalities/languages is an advantage. The job does not necessarily require basic Danish language skills prior to employment. If the successful applicant has not documented teaching experience corresponding to assistant professor level, the applicant will be engaged on trial for the first 18 months. Applicants can obtain further information concerning the project as well as the position by contacting project-leader, Dorthe Bleses: email: bleses at language.sdu.dk, tel: +45 6550 3346. From gleason at bu.edu Wed Jan 18 19:10:32 2006 From: gleason at bu.edu (Jean Berko Gleason) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:10:32 -0500 Subject: Positions at Boston University Message-ID: *Psychology Faculty Positions* * * Positions in *Human Development *are available pending approval for appointment in Fall 2006 in the Department of Psychology at Boston University. The department seeks a tenured Associate or Full Professor with an established international reputation, a strong publication record and a vigorous, externally supported program of research who will lead a reorganization of our Human Development program. We are also seeking a tenure track Assistant Professor in the same area. Strong candidates for these positions will show evidence of ability to sustain an original and independent program of research that is externally supported. Responsibilities will include undergraduate and graduate teaching and supervising doctoral students in research. Applicants who can contribute to the diversity of the program are especially encouraged to apply. Applicants should submit vita, reprints/preprints, a statement of research and teaching interests, and three letters of recommendation to: Chair, Search Committee, Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215. * Review of applications will begin immediately* and will continue until the position is filled. Boston University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employee From mdeirish at gmail.com Thu Jan 19 19:48:20 2006 From: mdeirish at gmail.com (Michelle DeIrish) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:48:20 -0500 Subject: Emergence criteria for L1 Message-ID: Hello, I'm examing the order of emergence for articles in French and I was wondering if anyone could point me lit related to establishing emergence criteria for L1. Any and all references would by appreciated. -- Michelle DeIrish, PhD Candidate Department of French University of Toronto michelle.deirish at utoronto.ca From ghimenton at yahoo.com Fri Jan 20 11:11:52 2006 From: ghimenton at yahoo.com (Ghimenton Anna) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 03:11:52 -0800 Subject: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS_ Multidisciplinary Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies for Research Students Message-ID: SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS CONFERENCE NAME: 'Multidisciplinary Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies for Research Students' DATES: 4-7 July 2006 PLACE: Universit? Stendhal, Grenoble, France WEBSITE: http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission deadline: 31 January 2006 Acceptance notification: May 2006 Program: May 2006 Conference dates: From Tuesday 4 July (afternoon) to Friday, 7 July 2006 TOPIC AREAS As a multidisciplinary conference, proposals exploring the following themes are welcome : - Descriptive linguistics - Psycholinguistics and language acquisition and development - Sociolinguistics and Multilingualism - Language teaching - Information technology and multimedia assisted language teaching/learning - All scientific domains dealing with the study of language/ linguistics and/or language teaching/ learning: sociology, psychology, education sciences, ethology, cognitive (neuro)sciences, human-machine communication, etc. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE - Jacqueline BILLIEZ (Universit? Stendhal Grenoble 3) - Jean BINON (Universit? Catholique de Louvain, Belgique) - Jean-Paul BRONCKART (Universit? de Gen?ve) - Hugues DE CHANAY (Universit? Lumi?re Lyon 2) - Thierry CHANIER (Universit? de Franche-Comt?) - Jean-Louis CHISS (Universit? Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3) - Fran?oise GADET Universit? Paris 10 Nanterre) - Harriet JISA (Universit? Lumi?re Lyon 2) - Liam MURRAY (University of Limerick) - Alain POLGUERE (Universit? de Montr?al, Canada) - Fran?ois RASTIER (Universit? Denis Diderot Paris 7) CONFERENCE LANGUAGES Papers will be presented in French or English. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Submission is open to research students only. Proposals may be written in French or English (two pages). The closing date for submission is 31 January 2006. For further details, please visit our site : http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ PUBLICATION OF THE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS All articles submitted will be reviewed by an evaluation committee which will select those for publication by the Presses Universitaires de Grenoble (PUG) in 2007. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DEUXIEME APPEL ? COMMUNICATIONS INTITULE DU COLLOQUE: Colloque international des ?tudiants-chercheurs en didactique des langues et en linguistique TYPE DE COLLOQUE: Colloque pluridisciplinaire autour de l'?tude du langage DATES: 4-7 juillet 2006 LIEU: Universit? Stendhal, Grenoble, France ADRESSE DU SITE: http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ CALENDRIER - Date limite de soumission : 31 janvier 2006 - Notification des acceptations : mai 2006 - Programme pr?liminaire : mai 2006 - Dates du colloque : du mardi 4 (apr?s-midi) au vendredi 7 juillet 2006 TH?MATIQUES ? vocation pluridisciplinaire, ce colloque permettra d'aborder les th?mes suivants : - La description linguistique - La psycholinguistique et le d?veloppement langagier - La sociolinguistique et le plurilinguisme - La didactique des langues - Les outils informatiques pour la linguistique et la didactique des langues - Tout domaine scientifique dont l'objet d'?tude est li? ? la langue et/ou ? son enseignement/apprentissage : sociologie, psychologie, sciences de l'?ducation, ?thologie, ethnologie, (neuro)sciences cognitives, communication homme-machine, etc. COMIT? SCIENTIFIQUE - Jacqueline BILLIEZ (Universit? Stendhal Grenoble 3) - Jean BINON (Universit? Catholique de Louvain, Belgique) - Jean-Paul BRONCKART (Universit? de Gen?ve) - Hugues DE CHANAY (Universit? Lumi?re Lyon 2) - Thierry CHANIER (Universit? de Franche-Comt?) - Jean-Louis CHISS (Universit? Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3) - Fran?oise GADET Universit? Paris 10 Nanterre) - Harriet JISA (Universit? Lumi?re Lyon 2) - Liam MURRAY (University of Limerick) - Alain POLGUERE (Universit? de Montr?al, Canada) - Fran?ois RASTIER (Universit? Denis Diderot Paris 7) LANGUES Les communications se feront en fran?ais ou en anglais. MODALIT?S DE SOUMISSION Ce colloque s'adresse uniquement aux ?tudiants-chercheurs. R?dig?es en fran?ais ou en anglais, les propositions de communication (deux pages) doivent ?tre saisies en ligne avant le 31 janvier 2006. Se reporter aux consignes indiqu?es sur le site : http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/lidilem/colloque-ec/ PUBLICATION DES ACTES Les articles seront soumis ? un comit? d'?valuation en vue d'une publication aux Presses Universitaires de Grenoble (PUG) en 2007. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos ? Showcase holiday pictures in hardcover Photo Books. You design it and we?ll bind it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From erikocanada at hotmail.com Sun Jan 22 13:29:46 2006 From: erikocanada at hotmail.com (Eriko Kurosaki) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 06:29:46 -0700 Subject: vocabulary data base Message-ID: Hello, everyone. One of my study group members is interested in 10 years old (or grade 5) English speaking children's vocabulary. If you know any data base, please let me know. Thank you, Eriko Kurosaki From ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu Mon Jan 23 17:49:50 2006 From: ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu (Kelley Sacco) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:49:50 -0500 Subject: FW: Lab Manager Wanted: Please forward to good candidates In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ------ Forwarded Message > From: Deborah Kelemen > Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:51:08 -0500 > To: sacco at cmu.edu > Subject: Lab Manager Wanted: Please forward to good candidates > > Lab Manager. Candidates sought for a full-time lab manager in the Child > Cognition Lab of the Psychology Department at Boston University under the > direction of Dr. Deb Kelemen. The lab manager will conduct research related > tasks on projects exploring cognitive development in preschool children, > elementary school children, and adults. Responsibilities include (i) > recruiting and scheduling children and their parents for our lab based > studies, (ii) establishing relationships with elementary school teachers and > principals for school-based intervention studies, (iii) conducting studies in > lab and school settings, (iv) assisting in the organization and conduct of > teacher workshops, (v) assisting in the design of experimental stimuli, data > entry, and data analysis, (vi) overseeing the smooth running of the lab and > its equipment. > > This position carries significant responsibility and is appropriate for an > energetic, organized, personable, positive individual who is extremely > motivated and excited about conducting research. Applicants should have > knowledge of experimental design and previous psychology research experience. > B.A. / B.S. required (Master's level preferred). Further details and > application via http://www.bu.edu/hr/employment/jobs/pa.shtml (Position > 2802/A176). Position open until filled. > -- > Deborah Kelemen, Ph.D. > Boston University > Department of Psychology > 64 Cummington Street > Boston MA 02215 > > Email: dkelemen at bu.edu > Office Phone: (617) 353-2758 > Child Cognition Lab Phone: (617) 358-1738 > Fax: (617) 353-6933 > URL: http://www.bu.edu/childcognition > ------ End of Forwarded Message From dongping.zheng at uconn.edu Mon Jan 23 19:24:02 2006 From: dongping.zheng at uconn.edu (Dongping Zheng) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:24:02 -0500 Subject: Transferring Files from Word to CLAN In-Reply-To: <43CC169B.9020407@post.tau.ac.il> Message-ID: Hi, I just wanted to summarize the double space problems when pasting logs from word to CLAN: 1. it is a Word problem, Brian suggested to do a query replace for hard returns in Word. 2. From Bracha Nir-Sagiv: "What does the trick for me is first converting the file from *.doc to *.txt (under type, choose Encoded text if you're working with Windows 2000, then choose UNICODE), and then renaming the *.txt file to *.cha (I find that copying directly from the txt file usually also results in double spaces). However, if you would still like to copy directly from a Word or Txt file into CED, you can use the following command: CHSTRING +q *.cha -- this command removes blank lines and add tabs after colons (note that this will result in a *.str.cex file in your output directory)." 3. Use the ren command in the command line: type ren *.str.cex *.cha and that should do the trick to run commends (Bracha Nir-Sagiv). Or re-save the *.str.cex to *.cha (Sigal). Using the CHSTRING +q *.cha commend and re-save to *.cha did the trick for me. Thank you again for all your help! Dongping <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dongping Zheng, ABD Department of Educational Psychology University of Connecticut 249 Glenbrook Rd. Unit 2064 Storrs, CT 06269 dongping.zheng at uconn.edu http://www.education2.uconn.edu/epsy240/dzheng/index.htm Webmaster @ Universal Design for Instruction http://www.facultyware.uconn.edu/home.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielle.matthews at manchester.ac.uk Tue Jan 24 16:57:36 2006 From: danielle.matthews at manchester.ac.uk (Danielle Matthews) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:57:36 +0000 Subject: PhD studentships in Manchester, UK Message-ID: PhD. studentships for the study of language development Applications are invited for up to two funded Ph.D. studentships. The students will be attached to the Max Planck Child Study Centre and registered for a Ph.D. in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester. The Child Study Centre is run by Professor Elena Lieven and is funded by the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, directed by Professor Michael Tomasello, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. Supervision of PhD students is done by Professors Lieven and Tomasello with other staff in the School of Psychological Sciences co-supervising. Research in the Centre focuses on the development of language (especially grammar) and consists in the collection and analysis of naturalistic and experimental data for children learning English and other languages. You must have or expect to attain next summer, a good honours degree in Psychology, Linguistics or an associated discipline. Funding will consist of approximately 1250 Euros per month plus support for travel and equipment. The Home/EC rate for fees will be paid by the MPI. Please apply by sending a detailed CV and covering letter to: Mrs Mickie Glover Max Planck Child Study Centre School of Psychological Sciences University of Manchester M13 9PL U.K. (email: mickie.glover at manchester.ac.uk, tel: 0161 445 2351) Completed applications must reach us by Monday February 20th 2006 at the latest. Enquiries can be made by email to Professors Lieven or Tomasello at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany. (lieven at eva.mpg.de or tomasello at eva.mpg.de). Relevant websites are: www.eva.mpg.de www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/research/groups/languageandcommunication/maxplanck/ Further details for Max Planck PhD studentships Background The Manchester Max Planck Child Study Centre is funded by the Max Planck Society, a German research foundation, with support from the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester. The Centre is directed by Professor Elena Lieven and forms part of the Department of Comparative and Developmental Psychology, directed by Professor Michael Tomasello, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The research of the staff and students who work at the Manchester Child Study Centre is concerned with children's early language acquisition. This is studied through the analysis of both naturalistic and experimental data. Our focus is on children learning English and German although we have ongoing studies of Polish, French, Russian and Finnish. Naturalistic Studies Ongoing involves tracking the sources of children's developing constructions, including the transitives, questions and complex sentences. This is done through analyzing children's own prior speech and that of their caregivers. As well as using the Manchester corpus, available on the CHILDES database, we are also developing denser corpora. These corpora contain recordings of children taped for between 5 - 10 hours per week. This far better sampling rate allows for in depth analyses, which have never previously been possible. Experimental Studies Experimental studies focus on a number of aspects of language acquisition, such as the development of general syntactic categories (such as noun and verb) and constructions (such as transitives and questions). We also look at how children learn to use pragmatically appropriate language (for example, using appropriate referring expressions). A number of different methodologies are used including priming, act out tasks, preferential looking and training studies. Experiments often employ novel or low frequency words to determine children's ability to extend their knowledge of language to words with which they are less familiar. The studentship(s) 1 or 2 studentships are available to start the academic year of 2006/7. There is a six month probationary period and renewal takes place after review, each year, for three years. In the first instance, please apply by sending a detailed CV and covering letter to: Mrs Mickie Glover Max Planck Child Study Centre School of Psychological Sciences University of Manchester M13 9PL U.K. (email: mickie.glover at manchester.ac.uk, tel: 0161 445 2351) ------------------------------------------ Dr Danielle Matthews Max Planck Child Study Centre Co-ordinator School of Psychological Sciences The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL U.K. Tel: 44 (0)161 275 2594 Email: danielle.mattthews at manchester.ac.uk Web: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/staff/84838 From e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk Fri Jan 27 10:12:34 2006 From: e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk (Emily K. Farran) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:12:34 +0000 Subject: Final call for papers: The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, UK In-Reply-To: <438C4E0F.9080900@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Call for papers, submission deadline TUESDAY 31ST JANUARY 2006 The 3rd Williams Syndrome Workshop, 6th to 7th July, 2006, Reading, UK For further information see: http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf/WSconferencedetails.html The major aim of the conference is to disseminate advances in our understanding of Williams syndrome (WS) across wide-ranging disciplines: from genetics to medical, behavioural and cognitive characteristics. A second aim is to discuss recent advances in research methodology, particularly in developmental psychology. The workshop will be attended by professionals who work with individuals with Williams syndrome: developmental and cognitive psychologists, geneticists and clinicians. Keynote speakers: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith Dr Michael Thomas The workshop will incude presentations from many eminent researchers including: Professor Peter Hammond Professor Pat Howlin Professor Yonata Levy Dr May Tassabehji Dr Mazal Cohen Dr Gaia Scerif Call for papers. Please submit abstracts to Emily Farran at e.k.farran at reading.ac.uk. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words Please state whether paper or poster presentation Paper presentations will be twenty minutes long with ten minutes for questions. Submission deadline: 31st January 2006 Registration deadline: 28th February 2006 -- Dr. Emily Farran Department of Psychology University of Reading Earley Gate Reading RG6 6AL UK Tel: +44 (0)118 378 7531 Fax: +44 (0)118 378 6715 http://www.reading.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Fri Jan 27 12:00:13 2006 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 07:00:13 -0500 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: <0IRM0079JEANJ4@mail-9.oit.umass.edu> Message-ID: Hi, I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this server.". Thanks. Shelley Velleman UMass - Amherst From cbowen at ihug.com.au Fri Jan 27 12:29:31 2006 From: cbowen at ihug.com.au (Caroline Bowen) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:29:31 +1100 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: AAAAADAWbtIKoCFPg/pHkNR140UESy0A Message-ID: Dear Shelley, SEE: http://www.clsp.jhu.edu/ws2004/groups/ws04ldmk/references.php AND: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/real/stp/index.html Best wishes, Caroline Caroline Bowen PhD Speech Language Pathologist 9 Hillcrest Road Wentworth Falls NSW 2782 Australia e: cbowen at ihug.com.au i: http://www.slpsite.com t: 61 2 4757 1136 -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Shelley Velleman Sent: Friday, 27 January 2006 11:00 PM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: dialect samples on-line Hi, I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this server.". Thanks. Shelley Velleman UMass - Amherst From erbaugh at transit212.com Fri Jan 27 20:16:58 2006 From: erbaugh at transit212.com (Mary Erbaugh) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:16:58 -0800 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: <0A76F165-ADBC-4129-932E-25E2482D778F@comdis.umass.edu> Message-ID: Shelley, Try samples from: http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/index.html http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialLnx.html http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_maps/namerica.php Other links are possible from Karen Chung's homepage, under 'accents' http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/linguistics%20links.htm Also, try the links from the American Dialect Society www.americandialect.org Bill Labov has just published a beautiful Atlas of American English, with CD. It is expensive, but see if your library will buy it from Mouton http://web.uni-marburg.de/linguistik//dgweb/atlas/ Also, have a look at the MLA's wonderful, interactive color maps of languages in America. You can type in zip codes and get user-friendly but detailed language breakdowns based on census data of the 30 most commonly spoken languages in the US. www.mla.org Mary Erbaugh Center for Asian and Pacific Studies University of Oregon www.pearstories.org (provides speech and text narratives from the 7 major Chinese dialects) At 07:00 AM 1/27/2006 -0500, Shelley Velleman wrote: >Hi, > >I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US >dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in >an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to >access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this >server.". > >Thanks. > >Shelley Velleman >UMass - Amherst > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From santelmannl at pdx.edu Fri Jan 27 20:33:31 2006 From: santelmannl at pdx.edu (Lynn Santelmann) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:33:31 -0800 Subject: dialect samples on-line In-Reply-To: <4odjt0$9plb7u@mail-ihug.icp-qv1-irony1.iinet.net.au> Message-ID: Dear Shelley My favorite site for this is the Speech Accent Archive from George Mason University. They have speakers reading from various dialect and language backgrounds reading the same passage (for many of the speakers they have the passage transcribed into IPA). There's a map you can click on to get speakers from various regions. (So "browse" and then click on atlas and you can get a map of North America and see what dialects they have. It's great for teaching. http://accent.gmu.edu/ Best, Lynn >-----Original Message----- >From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] >On Behalf Of Shelley Velleman >Sent: Friday, 27 January 2006 11:00 PM >To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org >Subject: dialect samples on-line > >Hi, > >I'm wondering if there are any *free* on-line audio samples of US >dialects. The website "icsi.berkeley.edu/real.stp" was mentioned in >an American Dialect Assn. talk I attended recently, but when I try to >access it I get "The requested URL /real.stp was not found on this >server.". > >Thanks. > >Shelley Velleman >UMass - Amherst ************************************************************************** Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Applied Linguistics Portland State University P.O. Box 751 Portland, OR 97201-0751 phone: 503-725-4140 fax: 503-725-4139 e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu (that's last name, first initial) web: www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls ************************************************************************* From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Sat Jan 28 22:53:57 2006 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 17:53:57 -0500 Subject: dialect samples Message-ID: Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions for on-line audio dialect samples. Based on your replies, here's what I found: http://accent.gmu.edu/: Samples of speakers of many dialects and first languages, all reading the same English text, 69 words long. http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html DARE excerpts: Arthur the Young Rat and spontaneous speech http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/DARE/# -- small # of longer spontaneous speech samples from DARE http://www.ic.arizona.edu/%7Elsp/index.html Some varieties have samples; not all http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/Linguistic/Sounds/Sounds4.html New Zealand, Australia, "England", "American"; all reading the same passage, 3-4 sentences long. http://www.fonetiks.org/ "American", various UK, other languages http://www.uga.edu/lsava/Topics/Language%20Variation/Language% 20Variation.html: videos of Ocracoke, Lumbee; discussion of Spanglish and verb tenses Shelley Velleman UMass - Amherst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Mon Jan 30 00:11:21 2006 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:11:21 -0500 Subject: Dubrovnik In-Reply-To: <0IRM0079JEANJ4@mail-9.oit.umass.edu> Message-ID: Does anybody have any advice on getting to Dubrovnik without taking out a second or third mortgage? Thanks. Shelley Velleman From hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp Mon Jan 30 06:00:28 2006 From: hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp (Hitomi Murata) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 15:00:28 +0900 Subject: The 7th Annual Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP 2006) Message-ID: Dear Colleague, The Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at Keio University will be sponsoring the seventh Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP2006) on March 17 and 18, 2006. The invited speakers are Prof. David Pesetsky (MIT) and Prof. Edson Miyamoto (University of Tsukuba). Below you fill find the conference program. For details, visit our web site: http://www.otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp/tcp/ --------------------------------------------------------- (TCP 2006 Program) Day 1 (March 17, 2006) 13:00-13:10 Opening Yukio Otsu (Keio University) 13:10-13:40 (Short Presentation) "Topics in Child Japanese" Noriko Hattori, Seiki Ayano, David Stringer, Koji Sugisaki (Mie University) and Dylan Herrick (Pomona College) Chair: Tetsuya Sano (Meiji Gakuin University) 13:40-14:10 (Short Presentation) "The Development of the Verb Category and Verb Argument Structures in Mandarin-Speaking Children beforeTwo Years of Age" Ling Xiao, Xin Cai (Hunan University) and Thomas Hun-tak Lee (Hunan University /Chinese University of Hong Kong) Chair: Tetsuya Sano (Meiji Gakuin University) 14:10:14:40 (Short Presentation) "Sloppy Readings of a 'Referential Pronoun' in Japanese" Misato Hiraga and Jon Nissenbaum (McGill University) Chair: Takeru Suzuki (Tokyo Gakugei University) 15:00-15:30 (Short Presentation) "You Can't Unscramble an Egg" Takaomi Kato (Harvard University) Chair: Takeru Suzuki (Tokyo Gakugei University) 15:30-16:15 (Long Presentation) "Emergence of Bipolar Items in Romance" Masakazu Kuno (Harvard University) Chair: Takeru Suzuki (Tokyo Gakugei University) 16:30-17:30 (Invited Lecture) "Making a Noun Phrase" David Pesetsky (MIT) Chair: Akira Watanabe (University of Tokyo) Reception Day 2 (March 18, 2006) 10:00-10:45 (Long Presentation) "Any News on the Explicit/Implicit Front?" Nausicaa Pouscoulous (Institut Jean Nicod/Institut des Sciences Cognitives) Chair: Makiko Hirakawa (Tokyo International University) 10:45-11:30 (Long Presentation) "The Role of L1 Transfer in the L2 Acquisition of English Double Object Constructions" Eunjeong Oh and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (University of Southern California) Chair: Makiko Hirakawa (Tokyo International University) 13:00-13:45 (Long Presentation) "Local Implicatures?" Bart Geurts (University of Nijmegen) and NausicaaPouscoulous (Institut Jean Nicod/ Institut des Sciences Cognitives) Chair: Yukio Otsu (Keio University) 13:45-14:15 (Short Presentation) "Coming and Going, Toing and Froing: VP/PP Parallels in First Language Acquisition" David Stringer (Mie University) Chair: Miwa Isobe (Meiji Gakuin University) 14:15-14:45 (Short Presentation) "Modularized Implicit Rules and Abstract Linguistic Categories: The Japanese Goyo Test" Teodor Ajder (Yokohama National University) Chair: Yuki Hirose (University of Tokyo) 15:05-15:35 (Short Presentation) "Preferred Word Order of a Japanese Sentence Correlates with its Constructional Meaning: Evidence from a Psycholinguistic Experiment" Keiko Nakamoto (Kyoto University), Kow Kuroda and Jae-Ho Lee (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) Chair: Yuki Hirose (University of Tokyo) 15:35:16:20 (Long Presentation) "The Effect of Information Accessibility on Syntactic Processing in Japanese Sentence Production" Mikihiro Tanaka, Holly P. Branigan and Martin J. Pickering (University of Edinburgh) Chair: Yuki Hirose (University of Tokyo) 16:35-17:35 (Invited Lecture) "Factors in the Incremental Processing of NPs in Japanese" Edson Miyamoto (University of Tsukuba) Chair: Yukio Otsu (Keio University) Alternates: 1. "Comparative Conditionals in Japanese" Toshiko Oda (Tokyo Keizai University /University of Connecticut) 2. "Prosodic Morphology of Cantonese Attenuative Reduplication" Ho Leung Chan (University of Pittsburgh) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu Mon Jan 30 16:50:08 2006 From: nbatman at hunter.cuny.edu (Natalie Batmanian) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:50:08 -0500 Subject: Please disregard message "fillers" Message-ID: Hello all, I apologize profusely for unintentionally posting a message titles 'fillers'. Please disregard. Best, Natalie -- Natalie Batmanian Post-doctoral Fellow Hunter College Psychology Department (212)773-5557/8 From mskcusb at mscc.huji.ac.il Mon Jan 30 20:40:21 2006 From: mskcusb at mscc.huji.ac.il (Shoshana Blum-Kulka) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:40:21 +0200 Subject: Audio Equipment Message-ID: Greetings to all, Could any of you help with recommendations for the ultimate not-too-expensive digital audio equipment suitable for recording individual kids in (quite noisy)preschools? Thanks, Shshana Blum-Kulka From macw at mac.com Mon Jan 30 21:27:53 2006 From: macw at mac.com (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:27:53 -0500 Subject: Audio Equipment In-Reply-To: <001a01c625dd$6410a390$c0274084@w7q9t8> Message-ID: Dear Shoshana, I recommend the Edirol R-1 (about $400) or for less money, but less quality, the Sony ICD-BM1 (about $200). Please see http://talkbank.org/da (there is a link to this from the CHILDES page too). --Brian On Jan 30, 2006, at 3:40 PM, Shoshana Blum-Kulka wrote: > > Greetings to all, > > Could any of you help with recommendations for the ultimate not-too- > expensive digital audio equipment suitable for recording individual > kids in (quite noisy)preschools? > > Thanks, > Shshana Blum-Kulka > From dcavar at indiana.edu Tue Jan 31 00:47:10 2006 From: dcavar at indiana.edu (=?UTF-8?Q?Damir_=C4=86avar?=) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:47:10 -0500 Subject: Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics (JSSECL) Message-ID: Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics Short Title: JSSECL Date: 11-Sep-2006 - 22-Sep-2006 Location: Zadar, Croatia Contact: lss2006 at unizd.hr (Malgorzata E. Cavar and Damir Cavar) Contact Email: lss2006 at unizd.hr Meeting URL: http://eng.unizd.hr/~lss2006/ Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Phonetics; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax; Text/Corpus Linguistics Meeting Description: The University of Zadar, the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, The Croatian Language Technologies Society (HDJT), in cooperation with the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) and the University of Potsdam, are pleased to announce the first Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics held in Zadar, Croatia, focusing on the topics in empirical and computational linguistics. The University of Zadar, the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, The Croatian Language Technologies Society (HDJT), in cooperation with the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) and the University of Potsdam, are pleased to sponsor the first Jadertina Summer School in Empirical and Computational Linguistics held in Zadar, Croatia, focusing on topics in empirical and computational linguistics. The courses will be at absolute beginners level, as well as at the advanced and PhD level. Tentative list of courses: Introduction to Field Methods Dunja Brozovic Roncevic, IHJJ Bidirectional Phonology and Phonetics and its Acquisition Paul Boersma, University of Amsterdam Perception in Phonology Malgorzata E. Cavar, University of Zadar Introduction to Scheme/Python in Computational Linguistics Damir Cavar, University of Zadar, Indiana University Human-Computer Interaction for Multimodal Speech/Gesture Systems with Emphasis on Embodied Conversational Characters Andrea Corradini, University of Potsdam Phonology-Morphology Interface Tracy Alan Hall, Indiana University Sound Change Silke Hamann, ZAS, Berlin, Germany Computational Models of Language Evolution Gerhard J?ger, University of Bielefeld Introduction to Computational Semantics Ralf Klabunde, University of Bochum Formal Models in Computational Linguistics Marcus Kracht, UCLA Finite State Technologies Thomas Hanneforth, University of Potsdam Computational Models of Language Acquisition William G. Sakas, CUNY The Structure of Fixed Linguistic Formula, Statistical and Corpus Analysis Danica Skara, University of Zadar Introduction to Corpus Linguistics Marko Tadic, University of Zagreb Text-oriented applications of Computational Linguistics Andreas Witt, University of Bielefeld All courses are offered as one or two week courses with 1.5 hours daily. For each two-week course the students will receive 4 ECTS points, for each one-week course the students will receive 2 ECTS points, after finishing the requirements as specified for each course. Recognition of ECTS points depends on each individual university. Please contact the administration of your university for requirements and prerequisites, and let the summer school administration know about your particular requirements and prerequisites. The summer school is accompanied by a student conference. Registered students will have an opportunity to present a reviewed paper at the conference, that might be published after a positive review in the Jadertina Linguistic Papers online or printed. Organizing Committee: Dunja Brozovic Roncevic (IHJJ) Miriam Butt (University of Konstanz) Damir Cavar (University of Zadar; Indiana University) Malgorzata Cavar (University of Zadar) Alexander Geyken (BBAW, Germany) Thomas Hanneforth (University of Potsdam) Ivo-Pavao Jazbec (IHJJ) Ralf Klabunde (University of Bochum) Marcus Kracht (UCLA, USA) Jonas Kuhn (University of Texas) William G. Sakas (CUNY) Danica Skara (University of Zadar) Tomislav Stojanov (IHJJ) Marko Tadic (University of Zagreb) Registration and accommodation Detailed instructions on registration and further information can be found on the summer school web page soon. Early registration fee (till 1st of April 2006): 150 EURO for the complete summer school. Registration fee on site: 170 EURO for the complete summer school Sponsoring Institutions: University of Zadar Croatian Language Technologies Society (HDJT) IHJJ, Zagreb Deutsche Gesellschaft f?r Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) ELSNET From merete.anderssen at hum.uit.no Tue Jan 31 10:02:41 2006 From: merete.anderssen at hum.uit.no (Merete Anderssen) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 11:02:41 +0100 Subject: SCL workshop on language acquisition Message-ID: We are pleased to announce that the 22nd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, which takes place in Aalborg, Denmark, June 19-22 2006, will feature a workshop on language acquisition. The theme of the conference is "Brain, Mind and Language", and the workshop invites abstracts on first, second and bilingual acquisition on the same topic. The workshop will consist of 30 minute sessions with 20 minute presentations and 10 minutes for discussion. Deadline for abstracts: March 15, 2006. Notification of acceptance: April 5, 2006. Address for sending abstracts: merete.anderssen at hum.uit.no When sending your abstract please make sure you include your name / affiliation / full mailing address / email address Abstracts should not exceed one A4 page. For more information on the SCL see http://www.cfl.hum.aau.dk/SCL22.html Merete Anderssen and Marit Westergaard -- ****************************************************************************** Merete Anderssen Tel. +47 77 64 47 61/42 40 Department of English Faculty of Humanities University of Troms? 9037 Troms? Norway -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: