From bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de Thu Nov 1 08:37:21 2007 From: bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de (bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 08:37:21 GMT Subject: Syntactic Bootstrapping - Summary Message-ID: Dear all, Some weeks ago I posted a query concerning a central issue in the Syntactic Bootstrapping approach. Specifically, I was interested to know whether or not SynBoot proponents claim that syntactic-semantic correlations underlying SynBoot are innate. First of all, many thanks for the replies of the following people: Misha Becker Ruth Berman Gedeon Déak Doug Harris Evan Kidd Lorraine McCune Letitia Naigles, which sent me her paper Naigles & Swenson (2006) Matthew Saxton and a scholar preferring to remain anonym, who sent me passages from his book which he’s writing The following summary is based on issues raised by the anonym scholar’s message, including not only SynBoot proponents’ views. In the summary below, responses by the other researchers listed above are integrated. This summary includes only issues directly related to SynBoot. The discussion also raised other relevant topics, such as innateness and the issue on relationships between lexical/lexical-semantic and grammatical aspects in lg dev., above all in the context of "emergence of grammar from the lexicon" (Bates & Goodman, 1999), but these topics will be summarized in separate messages. 1. Introduction - „[ ] the original proponents of the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis claim that [syntactic-semantic] links are not innately specified but are acquired ‘during the course of learning’ (Gleitman, 1990: 41)“. - But „different people make different assumptions (and those assumptions aren't always easy to tie down, or test experimentally!)” - Evan: „this one is hard to pin down, probably because there are many different levels at which one could specify innate knowledge.” 2. Innate knowledge - The underlying knowledge on syntactic frames „could be largely innate (e.g., Pinker, 1989)” - Evan: “ my understanding is that Cindy Fisher and her colleagues argue for an innate endowment that is based on structure-event role mapping, such that children expect there to be, for instance, an agent and patient in transitive sentence,and map these semantic roles onto the NPs in the sentence. This, of course,could be traced to general-cognitive biases.“ - Evan: „Similarly, Lidz Gleitman, and Gleitman (2004) argued for innate knowledge of the theta principle, to which Goldberg (2004) wrote a response.“ - Naigles & Swenson (2006: 221): „Gleitman (1990; see also Fisher & Gleitman, 2002; Fisher et al., 1991; Pinker, 1989) has proposed that correspondences related to the theta criterion (Chomsky, 1981) are innately given“ – ***in contradiction with the quotation concerning Gleitman (1990) above***, but it is perhaps the case that Naigles & Swenson and the anonym researcher mean here different sets of syntactic-semantic correlations: concerned with correspondences between semantic and syntactic roles (Naigles & Swenson) or between syntactic-semantic correspondences in verbs, such as transitivity-causality (the anonym researcher). - Naigles & Swenson (2006): In Lidz et al.’s (2003) view, "syntax/semantics correspondences such as transitive/affected-object are universal and innate“ (p. 228) 3. Role of Input and Domain-General Cognitive Abilities 3aThe underlying knowledge on syntactic frames could be “constructed by forming abstractions across instantiations of this pattern in the input (e.g., Tomasello, 2003).“ - this view is also found in Evan’s message: „if there is no innate knowledge then there is a lower bound on syntactic bootstrapping, such that it only becomes useful once children have learned some construction-specific frames” 3b. Also, children might be guided by the number of arguments in the input sentences (Fisher, 1996; 2002) 3c. Also, children might be guided by „morphological cues“ in the input in form of function words, „such as 'and', 'with'“ or copulas ('are') to derive “an intransitive interpretation” and, consequently, non-causative interpretation, „as shown most clearly in the study of Kidd et al (2001)“ (***I’d be most grateful for the full reference or even the full text of this study by Kidd et al.***) 4. Naigles & Swenson’s (2006) conclusions: - „some such [syntactic] frames might carry general, possibly innate, meanings that would be stable across languages. Further specificity for a given verb could be gleaned from the accompanying scenes and/or the multiple frames in which the verb was used.“ (p. 225) - „children’s abilities to learn some words without the syntactic information, to compare the statistical and/or pragmatic patterns of use of different types of words, and so to induce some syntax/semantics correspondences by matching these words with specific morphosyntactic patterns.“ (p. 226). - „The evidence concerning the development of syntactic bootstrapping suggests that the use of syntax to learn novel words is fragile between 18 and 24 months of age and fully operational at 24 months“, which suggests that „some syntax/semantics correspondences, if couched generally, could be universal and so available before 18 months whereas other correspondences, obviously language-specific, must be learned and so are not readily available to 1-year-olds.“ (pp. 227-8) - similar view by Misha Becker:“ The way I understand syntactic bootstrapping is that there is innate knowledge of likelihoods/tendencies in the mapping between sentence frames and meanings. [ ] “ So it doesn't solve the entire problem of lexical learning, it just provides some constraints in the form of tendencies. My understanding is that these are innate, and then language particular constraints or options (e.g. null arguments) come in by way of learning.“ 5. Abstract syntactic categories in child language or not? - Evan recommends the lecture of Fisher’s (2002) reply to Tomasello (2000). Tomasello challenges the very SynBoot idea (syntactic structures facilitate learning of words) in that he (as I think, correctly) assumes that children’s representations underlying their early constructions are lexically based and not abstract syntactic categories, such as ‚verb’ or ‚transitivity’. Fisher agree partially with that: Children’s abstract syntactic categories develop gradually, „However, incomplete syntactic knowledge need not mean that abstract knowledge of sentence structure can play no useful role in early language use and acquisition.“ (p. 272) - Evan also recommends the lecture of Chang et al. (2006), a connectionist study showing „how abstract knowledge and concrete experience are balanced in the development and use of syntax.“ (from abstract) 5. Syntactic and Distributional/Correlational Bootstrapping - As Ruth Berman pointed out, SynBoot „claims have been made mainly for verb argument structure, not necessarily for other features of the grammar -- which is also an interesting question.“ - Indeed, the more ‚classical’ SynBoot strang is, as I understand it, concerned with the learning of verb meanings (or rather: components of their meanings, such as causality), i.e., with the ‘induction problem’ of inferring word meanings. This is in contrast with Distributional and Semantic Bootstrapping, which are traditionally concerned with what Pinker called the ‚bootstrapping problem’ of categorization of words and syntactic units. - Interestingly enough, however, a number of recent studies by SynBoot proponents (e.g., Booth & Waxman, 2003; Fisher et al., 2006; Bernal, 2006; Name, 2007) or cited by them as providing support for SynBoot (e.g., Blenn et al., 2002; Höhle et al., 2006; Ketrez, 2003) constitute something of a renaissance of the Distributional Bootrapping idea (Maratsos & Chalkley, 1980; more recent accounts: Mintz, 2005; Freudenthal et al., 2007): Their results suggests that distributional syntactic cues (e.g., word order, determiner-noun cooccurrences, morphological markers) facilitate the task of segmentation/categorization of lexical and syntactic units. Finally, for the summary to be complete, the following comment by Doug Harris, which, however, has nothing to do with bootstrapping operations of (language) learning: - „Speaking of _bootstrapping_, I heard an interesting variation of that (source) word the other day, I believe it was on NPR, while I was _so_ otherwise engaged I couldn't make a written note to myself on it: A man was talking about, I believe, how his town would struggle together after some disaster or other and "pull its bootstrings up" and work toward recovery, or whatever. I'm sorry I can't be more precise on the source.“ Again, many thanks and best regards Susanna References Bates, E., & Goodman, J. C. (1999). On the emergence of grammar from the lexicon. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), The Emergence of language (pp. 29–79). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bernal, S. (2006). De l'arbre (syntaxique) au fruit (du sens): Interactions des acquisitions lexicale et syntaxique chez l'enfant de moins de 2 ans. Doctoral dissertation. Paris: Université Paris VI. Blenn, L., Seidl, A., & Höhle, B. (2002). Recognition of phrases in early language acquisition: The role of morphological markers. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. H.-J. Do (Eds.), BUCLD 26. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, November 2-4, 2001, in Boston, MA, Vol. 1 (pp. 138–149). Somerville Mass.: Cascadilla Press. Booth, A. E., & Waxman, S. R. (2003). Mapping words to the world in infancy: Infants' expectations for count nouns and adjectives. Journal of Cognition and Development, 4, 357–381. Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113(2), 234–272. Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Fisher, C. (1996). Structural limits on verb mapping: The role of analogy in children's interpretations of sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 31(1), 41–81. Fisher, C. (2002). The role of abstract syntactic knowledge in language acquisition: A reply to Tomasello (2000). Cognition, 82, 259–278. Fisher, C., & Gleitman, L. R. (2002). Language acquisition. In R. Gallistel, & H. Pashler (Eds.), Stevens' handbook of experimental psychology / ed.-in-chief Hal Pashler: Vol. Vol. 3. Learning, motivation, and emotion. 3. ed (pp. 445–496). New York, NY: Wiley. Fisher, C., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (1991). On the semantic content of subcategorization frames. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 331–392. Fisher, C., Klingler, S. L., & Song, H.-j. (2006). What does syntax say about space? 2-year-olds use sentence structure to learn new prepositions. Cognition, 101(1), B19-B29. Freudenthal, D., Pine, J. M., & Gobet, F. R. (2007). Simulating the noun-verb asymmetry in the productivity of children's speech. In R. L. Lewis, A. Polk, & J. E. Laird (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cognitive Modelling (pp. 109–114). Hove UK: Psychology Press. Gleitman, L. R. (1990). The structural sources of verb meaning. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3–55. Goldberg, A. E. (2004). But do we need Universal Grammar? Comment on Lidz et al. (2003). Cognition, 94, 77–84. Höhle, B., Schmitz, M., Müller, A., & Weissenborn, J. (2006). The lexicon/syntax interface in developing grammar: The role of function words in the acquisition of content words. ISIS 2006. XVth Biennal International Society on Infant Studies Conference, Kyoto, Japan, Jun 19-23, 2006. Ketrez, N. (2003). Is it possible to bootstrap any lexical category information from word order in a flexible-word-order language? BOOT-LA: Bootstrapping in Language Acquisition: Psychological, Linguistic, and Computational Aspects, Bloomington, Apr 21-23, 2003. Kidd et al (2001) ??? Lidz, J. L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (2003). Understanding how input matters: Verb learning and the footprint of universal grammar. Cognition, 87(3), 151–178. Lidz, J. L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (2004). Kidz in the 'hood: Syntactic bootstrapping and the mental lexicon. In D. Geoffrey Hall, & S. R. Waxman (Eds.), From many strands. Weaving a lexicon (pp. 603–636). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maratsos, M., & Chalkley, M. (1980). The internal language of children's syntax: The ontogenesis and representation of syntactic categories. In K. E. Nelson (Ed.), Children's language. Vol. 2. New York NY: Gardner. Mintz, T. (2005). Categorizing words from distributional information in the input. Paper presented at the symposium "The Interaction of Input and Learning Mechanisms in Language Acquisition: Four Case Studies", Xth International Congress for the Study of Child Language (X IASCL Congress), Berlin, July 25-29, 2005. Naigles, L., & Swensen, L. D. (2006). Syntactic supports for word learning. In E. Hoff, & M. Shatz (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. London: Blackwell Publishing. Name, M. Cristina. (2007). Bootstrapping sintático: O papel da ordem estrutural na aquisição de nomes e adjetivos [Syntactic bootstrapping: The role of structural order in the acquisition of nouns and adjectives]. Letras de Hoje, 42(1), 53–63. Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and Cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tomasello, M. (2000). Do children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74, 209–253. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. ***************************************************************** Susanna Bartsch https://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/mitarb/homepage/bartsch/ bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals Research Schuetzenstr. 18 10117 Berlin Germany Tel. +49 (0)30 20192562 Fax +49 (0)30 20192402 ***************************************************************** --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From roeper at linguist.umass.edu Fri Nov 2 13:37:00 2007 From: roeper at linguist.umass.edu (Roeper, Tom) Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 13:37:00 -0000 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future Message-ID: Info childes performance/competence and cooperation Dear Performance/Competence discussion- I'd like to shift the discussion-if it continues-- from that of errors, which are incontrovertible signs of performance, to questions of interfaces which is in many ways a new thrust in linguistic theory partly aimed at incorporating in a single mechanism many phenomena previously associated with performance. I think it offers an exciting future and many avenues for cooperation---let me illustrate. I have been silent because I was in Cyprus attending a fascinating meeting sponsored by the European Union, organized by Uli Sauerland from ZAS, aimed to developing instruments to assess children's language in a wide variety of European languages. In the group of 40 were many people associated with Dan Slobin and Michael Tomasello. Issues linked to "performance" are a constant factor in designing experiments---hardly something ignored in practical terms, because speech pathologists were also a central part of the group. How to build those factors into a language interface that is connected to the subtleties of grammar is a real theoretical challenge, but being sensitive to them in day to day experimental design is just a given. Let me offer more about thiis conference. After some discussion we got to work designing experiments. Using insights gained from the DELV test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I (and many others) devised for English, we looked at exhausitivity in "who bought what" (where many children answer with one person or a single pair-not all required) and quantifier spreading in "every dog as a bone", where some children think it means "every bone". Now these sentences will be explored in up to 17 different languages and dialects. Experimental ideas from many other quarters were incorporated as well. These questions are askable precisely because they are linked to linguistic universals that transcend language differences. They come straight from linguistic theory---yet everyone who hears about them gets interested whether they are followers of generative linguistics or not. Experimentation in Polish, Bulgarian, and Romani has already begun, with interesting results. Recent work in linguistic theory has focused on Interfaces, which includes pragmatics and semantics, and the leader of the EU group, Uli Sauerland, is a specialist in precisely these domains. and a major focus has been how implicatures work. The challenge I raised before remains---and it is a tough one- without obvious answers: how do we build a mechanism---commensurate with the speed of language---that can build other compuatational abilities into language while realizing their creative and generative power. How do we represent creativity in memory to match the creativity of recursion? How do we generate unique implicatures in unique situations? Any model which avoids the creative algorithms misses the essence of the mechanism---and I believe ultimately leads to an image of children that does not honor their dignity. This is the argument I make in my book The Prism of Grammar. An analogy might help. While syntax perhaps captures the skeleton of language---one might holler "how about all the muscles that enable movement?". Good question, but it requires exactly a concept of the interface: where exactly do muscles connect to bones so that they can move them efficiently and how does the physics of movement get represented. A theory of muscles that ignores exactly how they are connected with bones won't tell us much. Take an example (from Christ Potts) on implicatures and Point of View. If I say "honestly you can climb a mountain" it is my honesty that is implicated, if I invert the auxiliary "Honestly, can you climb a mountain" it is yours. And we get different readings for: "honestly who can report" and "Who can report honestly". The implications are tightly linked to the syntax. There is a natural experiment for someone. to do: when do children control that switch. (Anna Verbuk has done interesting relevant work.) I think the discussion can be much more productive if we discuss real examples and project precise theories of how they can work. That is the challenge we can explor together, much more beneficially than by a debate that too heavily linked to imprecise abstractions. Tom Roeper See you at BU if you are coming-- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From gigliana.melzi at nyu.edu Fri Nov 2 18:58:54 2007 From: gigliana.melzi at nyu.edu (Gigliana Melzi) Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 11:58:54 -0700 Subject: Cognitive Psychologist Faculty Position Opening @ NYU Message-ID: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY THE STEINHARDT SCHOOL OF CULTURE, EDUCATION, AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGIST ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, TENURE-TRACK The Department Applied Psychology at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development seeks a Cognitive Psychologist with an active research agenda in public schools for a position as a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor (http:// steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_positions/). QUALIFICATIONS: Doctorate in a discipline of psychology, preference will be given to degrees in cognitive, school, developmental, or educational psychology; an active research agenda that includes work in schools, and a record of (or potential for) external funding. RESPONSIBILITIES: Teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, advising and mentoring students, overseeing a research team, and supervising doctoral dissertations. Please send a CV, a letter of interest, and no more than 5 reprints to: Gigliana Melzi, Chair, Cognitive Psychology Search Committee at gigliana.melzi at nyu.edu. Five letters of support should be provided under separate cover. Applications will be accepted until January 15, 2007. NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and actively works to enhance its diversity. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From jedwards2 at wisc.edu Fri Nov 2 22:27:48 2007 From: jedwards2 at wisc.edu (JAN R EDWARDS) Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 17:27:48 -0500 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future In-Reply-To: <1194010620.069384.88260@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: Dear Tom, If it's possible, I'd like to find out more about the meeting on assessing children's learning in different European languages. I have an NIH-funded grant on cross-linguistic phonological acquisition (so far, we are looking at American English, Greek, French, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean -- see http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~edwards/) and we have done some preliminary work on developing some measures for Greek. I wasn't aware of a more organized effort in this regard. Could you put me in touch with the organizers of this? Thanks so much. Yours, Jan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roeper, Tom" Date: Friday, November 2, 2007 8:37 am Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future To: Info-CHILDES > Info childes performance/competence and cooperation > > Dear Performance/Competence discussion- > > I'd like to shift the discussion-if it continues-- from that of > errors, which are incontrovertible signs of performance, to questions > of interfaces which is in many ways a new thrust in linguistic theory > partly aimed at incorporating in a single mechanism many phenomena > previously associated with performance. I think it offers an exciting > future and many avenues for cooperation---let me illustrate. > I have been silent because I was in Cyprus attending a > fascinating meeting sponsored by the European Union, organized by Uli > Sauerland from ZAS, aimed to developing > instruments to assess children's language in a wide variety of > European > languages. In the group of 40 were many people associated with Dan > Slobin and Michael Tomasello. Issues linked to "performance" are > a constant factor in designing experiments---hardly something ignored > in practical terms, because speech pathologists were also a central > part of the group. How to build those factors into > a language interface that is connected to the subtleties of grammar is > a > real theoretical challenge, but being sensitive to them in day to day > experimental design is just a given. > Let me offer more about thiis conference. After some > discussion we got to work designing experiments. Using insights > gained from the DELV test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I > (and many others) devised for English, we looked at exhausitivity in > "who bought what" (where many children answer with > one person or a single pair-not all required) and quantifier spreading > in "every dog as a bone", where some children think it means "every > bone". Now these sentences will be explored in up to 17 different > languages and dialects. Experimental ideas from many other quarters > were incorporated as well. > These questions are askable precisely because they are linked > to linguistic universals that transcend language differences. They > come straight from linguistic theory---yet everyone who hears about > them gets interested whether they are followers of generative > linguistics or not. Experimentation in Polish, Bulgarian, and Romani > has already begun, with interesting results. > Recent work in linguistic theory has focused on Interfaces, > which includes pragmatics and semantics, and the leader of the > EU group, Uli Sauerland, is a specialist in precisely these domains. > and a major focus has been how implicatures work. > The challenge I raised before remains---and it is a tough one- > without obvious answers: how do we build a mechanism---commensurate > with the speed of language---that can build other > compuatational abilities into language while realizing their > creative and generative power. How do we represent creativity > in memory to match the creativity of recursion? How do we > generate unique implicatures in unique situations? Any model > which avoids the creative algorithms misses the essence of the > mechanism---and I believe ultimately leads to an image of children > that does not honor their dignity. This is the argument I make > in my book The Prism of Grammar. > An analogy might help. While syntax perhaps captures the > skeleton of language---one might holler "how about all the muscles > that enable movement?". Good question, but it requires exactly a > concept of the interface: where exactly do muscles connect to bones so > that they can move them efficiently and how does the physics of > movement > get represented. A theory of muscles that ignores exactly how > they are connected with bones won't tell us much. > Take an example (from Christ Potts) on implicatures and > Point of View. If I say "honestly you can climb a mountain" > it is my honesty that is implicated, if I invert the auxiliary > "Honestly, can you climb a mountain" it is yours. And we > get different readings for: "honestly who can report" and > "Who can report honestly". The implications are tightly > linked to the syntax. There is a natural experiment for someone. > to do: when do children control that switch. (Anna Verbuk has > done interesting relevant work.) > I think the discussion can be much more productive if we > discuss real examples and project precise theories of how they > can work. That is the challenge we can explor together, much > more beneficially than by a debate that too heavily linked to > imprecise abstractions. > > Tom Roeper > > See you at BU if you are coming-- > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From macw at cmu.edu Sat Nov 3 14:32:50 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 10:32:50 -0400 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Jan, Unless I misread Tom's message, it seems that the meeting in Cyprus focused more on issues such as quantifier spreading than on child phonology. However, there is indeed an NIH-funded project on cross-linguistic phonological acquisition directed by Yvan Rose and myself. During the first year of this project, the focus has been on the construction of an initial database. In this regard Sophie Kern, Katherine Demuth, Yvan Rose, Heather Goad, Paula Fikkert, Claartje Levelt, Barbara Davis, and are in the process of contributing important databases from a variety of languages that are slowly now being made public at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/phon/ and (still in preparation) http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/data/PhonBank/ (along the big Providence and Lyon corpora that are in Eng-USA and Romance/French respectively). A brief scan of the fascinating material that you have at your Paidologos home page suggests that these projects differ somewhat in emphasis and involve two largely non-overlapping groups of researchers. Paidologos emphasizes the construction of tests, whereas PhonBank emphasizes the construction of a database of naturalistic productions. Still the ultimate aims of the projects are related and when we come to the level of computational analysis, the links and overlap seem even stronger. So, it would seem to make good sense to try to maximize the ability of researchers to access both resources in a parallel and integrated fashion. For example, it would be interesting to be able to compare sequences derived from formal assessment with sequences revealed through naturalistic productions. Perhaps this integration may be possible as we move forward. Yvan is scheduling the official release of the PHON software for a month off. The release has been a bit delayed because we want to focus on making sure eveything is right. Also, you may be interested in joining the phon at googlegroups.com mailing list which is designed for further discussion of these issues. Discussion of Paidologos issues would also be quite appropriate on that list. --Brian MacWhinney, CMU On Nov 2, 2007, at 6:27 PM, JAN R EDWARDS wrote: > > Dear Tom, > > If it's possible, I'd like to find out more about the meeting > on assessing children's learning in different European languages. > I have an NIH-funded grant on cross-linguistic phonological > acquisition (so far, we are looking at American English, Greek, > French, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean -- > see http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~edwards/) and we have done > some preliminary work on developing some measures for Greek. > I wasn't aware of a more organized effort in this regard. Could you > put me in touch with the organizers of this? Thanks so much. > > Yours, > Jan --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From macw at cmu.edu Mon Nov 5 17:51:12 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 12:51:12 -0500 Subject: Washoe Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Last week CNN published an obituary regarding the death of Washoe, the chimpanzee who was "the first non-human to acquire human language" (or at least some components thereof. The story is available at http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/31/signing.chimp.dies.ap/index.html Thanks to Kelley Sacco for drawing attention to this. --Brian MacWhinney --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From yrose at mun.ca Sun Nov 4 17:08:04 2007 From: yrose at mun.ca (Yvan Rose) Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 12:08:04 -0500 Subject: Summary: Bilingualism and bilingual education in Aboriginal communities Message-ID: Dear colleagues, A few weeks ago I requested help from Info-CHILDES members about bilingualism and bilingual education in aboriginal communities. Below is a summary of the information I received. Before it, I would like to thank the following people for their useful reactions to my request: -Aleka Blackwell -Roma Chumak-Horbatsch -Alvino Fantini -Margaret Fleck -Susan Foster-Cohen -Fred Genesee -Marie Labelle -Brian MacWhinney -Lori Morris -Carol Slater Relevant publications: Napoli, Donna Jo (2003) Language Matters: A Guide to Everyday Questions about Language. Oxford: OUP. McLaughlin, B. (1984). Second-language acquisition in childhood. Second Edition. Vol. 1: Preschool children. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. McLaughlin, B. (1985). Second-language acquisition in childhood. Vol. 2: School-age children. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Alice Eriks-Brophy & Martha Crago (2003) Variation in instructional discourse features:…Evidence from Inuit and non-Inuit teachers of Nunavik. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 34(4):396-419. Websites: New-Zealand Maori education program website: http:// www.minedu.govt.nz//index.cfm? layout=index&indexid=1063&indexparentid=2107 Kahnawake Survival School, an organization that has focused on Mohawk language preservation related projects for a few decades now. An recent example of such projects can be found at: http:// www.kssmultimediaproject.com/kss_history.html Downloadable document: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/manyroots/manyroots.pdf Other: Lori Morris and her team at the Université du Québec à Montréal produced a report (written in French) on current issues affecting the acquisition of French and English by Aboriginal students from Kindergarten to Grade 6. While I did not attach the report to this message, I could certainly forward it to interested members after obtaining permission from Lori. Among other factors, it appears that the following are central to virtually all situations: --Language attitudes -Role of the language instructors in promoting bilingualism (instead of the use of one language only) -Role of the caregivers in fostering a positive, motivating learning environment --Involvement from both educators and caregivers -The young learner is facing a difficult situation -This fact needs to be acknowledged by everyone -Everyone need to make an active contribution to the learning process …educators/schooling just can’t do everything… --(Mis-)communication between educators and students -Pragmatic differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conversations -At times, absence of communication outside of the classroom setting --Cultural discontinuity between home and school -Skills valued at home versus at school -The bicultural context inherent to bilingual has to transcend the school system -Children need to be aware of, and value, their bilingual/ bicultural identity --Child’s perception of the bilingual curriculum -Children need to know why learning more than one language is important -Connection with their native culture -Connection with the ‘outer’ world --Educators need to know about the Aboriginal language and culture -This is true for every academic subject addressed in class, not only for language classes While a lot of this makes good common sense, your help was central in rounding up the main points in a relatively systematic way. Thank you very much to everyone involved! Kindest regards, Yvan Rose --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From macw at cmu.edu Tue Nov 6 00:31:24 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 19:31:24 -0500 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future In-Reply-To: <1194010620.069384.88260@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: Tom, It would be a shame to let such a constructive message pass by without further commentary. From my point of view, you raise three interesting questions here. The first two relate to the specific examples you cite. 1. Regarding the "who bought what" sentences, I believe that you received a reply earlier from Bruno Estigarribia regarding the attempts to deal with multiple wh-questions in the light of violations of the superiority condition. I see a URL on the web for a poster with Inbal Arnon on this at www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/semfest/Estigarribia.pdf I think the Stanford group would like to explore ways in which processing, context, and input statistics shape these preferences, but certainly all accounts are still on the table here. What impresses me in this area is the paucity of data on children's productions. So, we can move ahead with experiments, but, given the vagaries of experimental methods with young children, I would personally like to see information on this from all fronts. 2. Next is the issue of children's first vs. second person perspective shift, as in (a) and (b) a. Honestly, who can report on this? b. Who can report on this honestly? Carol Tenny and Peggy Speas have been exploring this and related markers of perspective shift for several years. I began my interest in this stuff with an article on perspective in Language back in 1974. Carol, Sandiway Fong, and I mapped out some more of this shifter stuff with questions. As in the contrast between (c) with speaker perspective and (d) with listener perspective. c. The bicyclist appears to have escaped injury. d. Did the bicyclist appear to have escaped injury? I totally agree that finding out when children learn this is crucial. But, my intuition here is that, with forms like "appear" and "apparently", the contrast is available as soon as they learn the form. The whole thing seems like common sense. I realize that is not an adequate statement, and clearly we need real data. 3. I was a bit more unsettled about a third issue. This is the use of terms like "dignity" and "respect" as criteria for evaluating the value of scientific accounts. I have not read your book and maybe this would be clearer then. I think people are truly remarkable beings, full of creativity and wonder. But I would certainly not like to see a time when scientific accounts were either included or excluded from discussion on the basis of whether or not some group of scientists judged them as insufficiently "respectful of human dignity". I hope you understand the basis of my concern. --Brian MacWhinney On Nov 2, 2007, at 9:37 AM, Roeper, Tom wrote: > > Info childes performance/competence and cooperation > > Dear Performance/Competence discussion- > > I'd like to shift the discussion-if it continues-- from that of > errors, which are incontrovertible signs of performance, to questions > of interfaces which is in many ways a new thrust in linguistic theory > partly aimed at incorporating in a single mechanism many phenomena > previously associated with performance. I think it offers an exciting > future and many avenues for cooperation---let me illustrate. > I have been silent because I was in Cyprus attending a > fascinating meeting sponsored by the European Union, organized by Uli > Sauerland from ZAS, aimed to developing > instruments to assess children's language in a wide variety of > European > languages. In the group of 40 were many people associated with Dan > Slobin and Michael Tomasello. Issues linked to "performance" are > a constant factor in designing experiments---hardly something ignored > in practical terms, because speech pathologists were also a central > part of the group. How to build those factors into > a language interface that is connected to the subtleties of grammar is > a > real theoretical challenge, but being sensitive to them in day to day > experimental design is just a given. > Let me offer more about thiis conference. After some > discussion we got to work designing experiments. Using insights > gained from the DELV test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I > (and many others) devised for English, we looked at exhausitivity in > "who bought what" (where many children answer with > one person or a single pair-not all required) and quantifier spreading > in "every dog as a bone", where some children think it means "every > bone". Now these sentences will be explored in up to 17 different > languages and dialects. Experimental ideas from many other quarters > were incorporated as well. > These questions are askable precisely because they are linked > to linguistic universals that transcend language differences. They > come straight from linguistic theory---yet everyone who hears about > them gets interested whether they are followers of generative > linguistics or not. Experimentation in Polish, Bulgarian, and Romani > has already begun, with interesting results. > Recent work in linguistic theory has focused on Interfaces, > which includes pragmatics and semantics, and the leader of the > EU group, Uli Sauerland, is a specialist in precisely these domains. > and a major focus has been how implicatures work. > The challenge I raised before remains---and it is a tough one- > without obvious answers: how do we build a mechanism---commensurate > with the speed of language---that can build other > compuatational abilities into language while realizing their > creative and generative power. How do we represent creativity > in memory to match the creativity of recursion? How do we > generate unique implicatures in unique situations? Any model > which avoids the creative algorithms misses the essence of the > mechanism---and I believe ultimately leads to an image of children > that does not honor their dignity. This is the argument I make > in my book The Prism of Grammar. > An analogy might help. While syntax perhaps captures the > skeleton of language---one might holler "how about all the muscles > that enable movement?". Good question, but it requires exactly a > concept of the interface: where exactly do muscles connect to bones so > that they can move them efficiently and how does the physics of > movement > get represented. A theory of muscles that ignores exactly how > they are connected with bones won't tell us much. > Take an example (from Christ Potts) on implicatures and > Point of View. If I say "honestly you can climb a mountain" > it is my honesty that is implicated, if I invert the auxiliary > "Honestly, can you climb a mountain" it is yours. And we > get different readings for: "honestly who can report" and > "Who can report honestly". The implications are tightly > linked to the syntax. There is a natural experiment for someone. > to do: when do children control that switch. (Anna Verbuk has > done interesting relevant work.) > I think the discussion can be much more productive if we > discuss real examples and project precise theories of how they > can work. That is the challenge we can explor together, much > more beneficially than by a debate that too heavily linked to > imprecise abstractions. > > Tom Roeper > > See you at BU if you are coming-- > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From ecdemir at gmail.com Wed Nov 7 17:30:03 2007 From: ecdemir at gmail.com (Ozlem Ece Demir) Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 09:30:03 -0800 Subject: Advice on Designing a Developmental Pragmatics Course Message-ID: Dear all, My name is Ozlem Ece Demir, and I am currently a 4th year Psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. I am planning to design a course on Developmental Pragmatics next year, and I am currently trying to decide which topics and readings to cover in the course. I would really appreciate if you could give me any input you have regarding how to design a course on this subject and/or provide me with example course syllabi on this subject. Thanks in advance! Best regards. Ozlem Ece Demir --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From kjersti.roland at isp.uio.no Thu Nov 8 14:17:07 2007 From: kjersti.roland at isp.uio.no (Kjersti) Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 06:17:07 -0800 Subject: The latest in recording technology (is this the first message?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Katie! I have just purchased a "WS-210S Digital Voice Recorder" from Olympus. Although I don't know much about technical equipment, I think this will be a good tool for me. From my experience the sound quality is good, and the recorder can be connected directly to the computer. It might be worth looking into. Kjersti On 23 Okt, 16:32, Katie Alcock wrote: > I've usually used minidisk recorders up till now both for recording children > in the field and for creating language stimuli. We've had some success > recently with MP3 recorders (solid-state) for field recordings but I'm > wondering if anyone has any ideas about: > > How good quality these are for creating sound files to link to > transcriptions > How good the recorders are in the long term - do they die easily? > and also > Are they any good for creating clean, high quality sound files to use as > laboratory stimuli? > > If they are good, do people have specific recommendations of recorders? We > have a few in our department that people have used for recording > testing/interview sessions but to create some new stimuli I think I'm going > to need to get either a new minidisk recorder or something slightly more > modern. > > Thanks > > Katie Alccok > > Katie Alcock, DPhil, CPsychol > Lecturer > Department of Psychology > University of Lancaster > Fylde College > Lancaster LA1 4YF > Tel 01524 593833 > Fax 01524 593744 > Webhttp://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From m.perkins at sheffield.ac.uk Tue Nov 13 13:42:17 2007 From: m.perkins at sheffield.ac.uk (Mick Perkins) Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:42:17 -0000 Subject: Use of CHILDES by blind people Message-ID: Dear Colleagues One of my students - who happens to be blind - is starting a research project which involves access to linked CLAN and audio files. She can access both reasonably successfully using a dedicated text to speech software system called JAWS, but has not yet made use of CLAN programs for data analysis. If you are an experienced blind user of CHILDES, or know of someone who is, I would be grateful for any advice you may have on how best to proceed. I'd also be interested to know whether there is a community of blind researchers with an interest in child language/ linguistics /speech language pathology who I could put my student in touch with. Many thanks Mick Perkins, PhD Professor of Clinical Linguistics Department of Human Communication Sciences University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN UK Tel: (+44) (0)114 2222408 Fax: (+44) (0)114 2730547 http://www.shef.ac.uk/hcs/staff/perkins --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From margaretmfleck at yahoo.com Wed Nov 14 15:16:59 2007 From: margaretmfleck at yahoo.com (Margaret Fleck) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:16:59 -0800 Subject: phonological reductions in motherese In-Reply-To: <009c01c825fb$01f17700$9c8fa78f@hcs865> Message-ID: I'm testing an algorithm that learns word boundaries from transcribed conversations. A significant issue with learning from adult speech involves variation in word form due to phonological reductions (e.g. vowel deletions, spread of nasalization). Can anyone point me at concrete data about whether child-directed, or infant-directed, speech contains fewer phonological reductions than adult-directed speech? I'm particularly interested in speech directed at toddlers, because the critical issues (from my point of view) probably involve not the initial extraction of a few important words but rather the transition where they learn to understand the fine details of normal speech. Many thanks, Margaret Fleck (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From michael at georgetown.edu Wed Nov 14 23:36:53 2007 From: michael at georgetown.edu (Michael Ullman) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:36:53 -0500 Subject: March 28, 2008: The Neurocognition of Language and Memory: Retention, Attrition, and Aging Message-ID: SAVE THE DATE: March 28th, 2008 The Center for the Brain Basis of Cognition at Georgetown University Presents The Neurocognition of Language and Memory: Retention, Attrition, and Aging A CBBC Workshop Goal: The workshop aims to bring together researchers, students and funders who are interested in various cognitive and neural aspects of retention, attrition, and aging in language and memory, but who generally do not interact much – in particular people from the Cognitive Neuroscience community who study memory or language, and researchers from the fields of Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Location: New Research Building Auditorium, Georgetown University, Washington DC Date: Friday, March 28th, 2008, 9am to 6pm Note: This is timed to allow workshop participants to also attend the American Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, which starts the following day, and which also takes place in Washington DC. Speakers: Russ Poldrack (UCLA) Monika Schmid (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands) Darlene Howard and James Howard (Georgetown University and Catholic University, Washington DC) Christophe Pallier (CNRS, Paris) Avi Karni (University of Haifa, Israel) Kara Morgan-Short, Cristina Sanz and Michael Ullman (University of Illinois, Chicago, and Georgetown University) Organizers: Cristina Sanz and Michael Ullman For further information on the workshop, or to register please go to http://cbbc.georgetown.edu/workshops/2008RA.html For more information on the CBBC and previous workshops, please go to http://cbbc.georgetown.edu. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macw at cmu.edu Thu Nov 15 16:02:24 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:02:24 -0500 Subject: phonological reductions in motherese In-Reply-To: <187756.22527.qm@web60312.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I am assuming that the best relevant data would come from the Brent- Siskind corpus. Michael Brent has switched areas from child language, but I think he would still be happy to talk with you. --Brian On Nov 14, 2007, at 10:16 AM, Margaret Fleck wrote: > > > I'm testing an algorithm that learns word boundaries from > transcribed conversations. A significant issue with learning > from adult speech involves variation in word form due to > phonological reductions (e.g. vowel deletions, spread of > nasalization). Can anyone point me at concrete data about > whether child-directed, or infant-directed, speech contains > fewer phonological reductions than adult-directed speech? > > I'm particularly interested in speech directed at toddlers, because > the critical issues (from my point of view) probably involve not > the initial extraction of a few important words but rather the > transition where they learn to understand the fine details of > normal speech. > > Many thanks, > > Margaret Fleck (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From cschutze at ucla.edu Thu Nov 15 21:58:29 2007 From: cschutze at ucla.edu (Carson Schutze) Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:58:29 -0800 Subject: Job: Psycholing/Neuroling, Comp Modeling: Junior Level Faulty, UCLA Message-ID: The UCLA Department of Linguistics seeks to hire one tenure-track faculty at the junior level, starting Fall 2008. The position will be in either of the two specializations listed below: (1) the area of psycholinguistics or neurolinguistics, with an emphasis in morphology, syntax, or semantics. The successful candidate will be expected to have substantial experience in experimental work bearing on one of these areas of theoretical linguistics. (2) the area of computational modeling, by which is meant formal implementations of grammars, models of language learning, or processing models, with a research focus in any area of linguistics, including semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, and phonetics. Subject to budgetary restrictions, the appointment is to begin July 1, 2008, with teaching to begin in the Fall 2008. Candidates should demonstrate a strong commitment to graduate and undergraduate education. A Ph.D. is required. Compensation is commensurate with academic qualification and experience. Applications should reach us by January 20, 2008; only applications received by this date will be ensured of full consideration. We expect to interview candidates at the LSA annual meeting in January. Applications should include a CV, a statement of research interests, samples of recent work, and three letters of reference. Please send application materials to: Experimental/Modeling Search Committee Department of Linguistics, UCLA Los Angeles, CA 90095 UCLA is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Women and Minorities are encouraged to apply. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From sunyim at gmail.com Mon Nov 19 08:26:19 2007 From: sunyim at gmail.com (sun) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:26:19 -0800 Subject: Graduate Doctoral Position at Northwestern University Message-ID: University: Northwestern University, IL, USA Department: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Job Rank: Graduate (Doctoral) Fellowships Specialty Areas: Auditory Physiology/Neuroscience, Bilingualism, Cognitive Neuroscience, Complex Systems, Language and Learning Science, Psychoacoustics, Psycholinguistics, Speech Perception, Speech and Swallowing Physiology, Neurolinguistics, Translational Research. The Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University invites applicants for fully funded (tuition + stipend) doctoral fellowships in interdisciplinary research in communication sciences. As a founding department of the discipline of communication sciences, our program consists of basic and translational/clinical scientists performing cutting-edge research. Some of the research questions being addressed by the faculty include: 1. Neural bases of reading and language development and disabilities 2. Neurobiology of language recovery in aphasia and other neural disorders 3. Biological bases and neural plasticity of speech and music 4. Mechanics and molecular genetics of the normal and impaired cochlear 5. Early conceptual and linguistic development, bilingualism, and specific language impairment 6. Swallowing and vocal physiology and head and neck cancer 7. Computational modeling of language learning and language evolution 8. Speech (second language) and auditory perceptual learning and rehabilitative audiology The Department and University is equipped with state-of-the-art research and clinical facilities, including MRI scanners, sound-attenuated chambers for adult and infant testing, multidisciplinary clinics in human communication and learning disorders, and equipment for electrophysiology and in-vitro physiology recording, eye-tracking, tissue engineering, optical imaging, super-computing, and genome sequencing and proteomics. For more information on graduate study, research, and the application process, visit us online: http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/csd/ If you have questions please contact the graduate coordinator, Cindy Coy at ccoy at northwestern.edu --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From mboehning at googlemail.com Mon Nov 26 14:25:21 2007 From: mboehning at googlemail.com (marita boehning) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:25:21 +0100 Subject: REMINDER: MSc scholarships/applications (European Master's in Clinical Linguistics) Message-ID: ERASMUS MUNDUS European Masters Programme in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL): Call for applications for 2008/09 course and Erasmus Mundus scholarships * * *Information about the European Master's Programme in Clinical Linguistics:* The Erasmus Mundus EMCL ('European Master's in Clinical Linguistics') course is a 15 month full-time interdisciplinary and transnational university programme at Master's level. It provides integrated training in theoretical and experimental neurosciences and psycholinguistics with clinical issues. The aim of the Master's Course is to train highly qualified advanced students who are excellently prepared for research work and PhD programmes in the above fields. The transnational consortium comprises four universities: Groningen (NL), Joensuu (FI), Milano-Bicocca (IT) and Potsdam (DE). The programme consists of three terms: the core courses offered in the first term aim at providing the students with general knowledge about the fields mentioned above. During the second and third term, the students attend specialised courses. For the second term, students may choose to move from their first host university to another one, while all students meet at the University of Potsdam during the third term. To finish the programme successfully, the student writes a Master's thesis and attends a summer school or conference. All courses are taught in English. *The Erasmus Mundus scholarship for non-EU students: ** * The EMCL programme is part of the Erasmus Mundus initiative of the European Union, providing an Erasmus Mundus scholarship covering tuition fees (EUR 7,500.), living and travelling costs for non-EU students admitted to the programme (amounting to a total of EUR 29,000.-/scholarship). The EMCL-programme thus has a strong extra-European profile. Information for applicants from EU countries: Students from EU-countries may not apply for the Erasmus Mundus scholarship, but pay a reduced tuition fee of EUR 2,700. *Application Information: ** * Requirement for application is at least three years of higher education (BA, BSc or equivalent) with an emphasis on speech and language pathology, linguistics, biomedical sciences, psychology or special education. We invite high profile students worldwide to submit their applications for participation in the 2008/09 course (which starts in September 2008) until January 15, 2008 (application deadline). *Further Information and Contact: ** * For more detailed information on Erasmus Mundus, the EMCL programme's aims, curriculum, admission criteria, scholarships, organisation, contact information etc., please visit the EMCL website at www.emcl-mundus.com For further information, non-European applicants may contact Dr. Frank Burchert (burchert at ling.uni-potsdam.de ). European students send their requests about the programme to Dr. Roel Jonkers (r.jonkers at let.rug.nl ). --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk Mon Nov 26 17:33:00 2007 From: a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk (Alison Crutchley) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:33:00 -0000 Subject: Maternity cover work at Huddersfield University, UK Message-ID: Please could you forward this to anyone you think may be interested? Part-time temporary maternity cover at University of Huddersfield We are looking for someone who is based within travelling distance of Huddersfield, UK, to provide part-time cover for maternity leave starting in April 2008. The work will include: A. In April-June 2008: * marking assignments for the third year undergraduate module Bilingualism; * ditto for second year module Child Language Acquisition; * marking a small number of undergraduate dissertations on topics in bilingualism, child language and sociolinguistics; * marking assignments for the MA module Language Development and Diversity (looks at language development in the school years in monolingual and multilingual children); B. in ca. July - September 2008: * being the 'contact person' while students are studying the distance learning version of the MA module Language Development and Diversity, and marking their assignments; * possible supervision and marking of one or more MA dissertations on bilingualism. Please contact Merrick Burrow for further information or with informal enquiries: Dr Merrick Burrow Head of English School of Music, Humanities and Media University of Huddersfield Queensgate HUDDERSFIELD HD1 3DH West Yorkshire UK Tel: +44 (0)1484 472685 Fax +44 (0)1484 472655 Email: m.burrow at hud.ac.uk This transmission is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you receive it in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and remove it from your system. If the content of this e-mail does not relate to the business of the University of Huddersfield, then we do not endorse it and will accept no liability. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From cegn at pdx.edu Wed Nov 28 03:23:27 2007 From: cegn at pdx.edu (Christina) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 19:23:27 -0800 Subject: Child Language Position in Speech & Hearing Sciences at Portland State University Message-ID: The Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Portland State University invites applications for two full-time, tenure-track faculty positions at the Assistant or Associate Professor levels. These are nine-month positions, beginning September 15, 2008. Each position requires an earned doctorate in Speech-Language Pathology and CCC-SLP. Candidates for position #1 should have expertise in child language development and disorders. Applicants for position #2 should have expertise in fluency, voice, craniofacial disorders or speech science, although other areas of expertise will be considered. Responsibilities for both positions include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in areas of expertise, academic advising, participation in graduate theses and projects, as well as departmental and university service. Applicants must demonstrate a clear line of research with potential for external funding. Salary is commensurate with level of experience and qualifications. Please send a letter of interest, current vitae and three letters of reference to: Thomas Dolan, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. Phone: 503-725-3264; Fax: 503-725-9171; Email: dolant at pdx.edu. Review of applications will begin on December 3, 2007 and continue until finalists are identified. Portland State University is an Affirmative Action, Equal opportunity institution and, in keeping with the president's diversity initiative, welcomes applications from diverse candidates and candidates who support diversity. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Tue Nov 27 12:33:14 2007 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Gathercole) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:33:14 +0000 Subject: Reminder & EXTENDED DEADLINE Biling Conference Message-ID: In response to several inquiries, the deadline for the submission of abstracts for our International Conference on Models of Interaction in Bilinguals has been extended for one month to January 2nd, 2008. Please find below the call for papers with the new date. Thanks. Best regards, Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole Co-Director, ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Call for Papers INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MODELS OF INTERACTION IN BILINGUALS ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom October 24 - 26, 2008 The ESRC Centre for Bilingualism in Theory and Practice invites submissions for talks and posters on the topic of "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", broadly defined to include, e.g., interaction between the bilingual's two languages, interaction between language and cognition, interaction between bilinguals' writing systems/literacy, and any other relevant topic. INVITED SPEAKERS Ellen Bialystok, York University and Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto Ton Dijkstra, Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, The Netherlands David Green, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Dept. of Psychology, University College London, UK Judith Kroll, Pennsylvania State University, USA Ping Li, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA Núria Sebastián Gallés, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Oral Presentations will be half hour talks. N.B.: All invited and accepted speakers must submit a short version of their talk prior to the conference, for circulation to other presenters and for availability through our website to other participants. Posters should be 80 x 120 cm (A0) or less. The word limit for abstracts for oral presentations and posters is 200 words, excluding references, title, and author information. [Note: A selection of papers from the conference will be submitted to a peer-review process for possible inclusion in a special issue of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism on "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", with Virginia Gathercole as Guest Editor. We will invite all oral presenters to submit more complete copies of their papers for consideration, and all poster presenters will be invited to similarly submit papers for possible inclusion. A separate call will also go out for possible submissions from outside the conference. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Please note that paper submission will not guarantee acceptance, however.] Extended deadline for submission of abstracts: January 2nd, 2008 Abstracts will be submitted and processed electronically, at www.bilingualism.bangor.ac.uk For further information, please see our website or contact the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, r.a.ieuan at bangor.ac.uk, or Prof. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, at bilconf at bangor.ac.uk. Forthcoming Conferences to be sponsored by the Centre: 2009/2010 - Neurobilingualism [contact: Guillaume Thierry] 2010/2011 - Bilingual/Multi-lingual Education [contact: Colin Baker] 2011/2012 - Social Aspects of Bilingualism [contact: Eddie Williams] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonathan.bobaljik at uconn.edu Fri Nov 30 20:07:17 2007 From: jonathan.bobaljik at uconn.edu (bobaljik) Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:07:17 -0800 Subject: Overheard L2 exposure - references sought Message-ID: Dear Listmembers, I am looking for studies regarding the effects of overheard / incidental L2 exposure on early L1 (age < 3 yrs). More specifically, I'm aware of some work by T. Au and colleagues suggesting benefits for later L2 acquisition/learning (Psych. Sci; Cognition), but what I'm looking for is studies that will be relevant in an upcoming discussion, where at least one group does not have bilingualism (at any level) as a goal for their children. At issue in the discussion will be whether allowing care-givers to speak e.g., Spanish amongst themselves (in the presence of the children, but not to the children) in an English-speaking day care environment will have any detrimental effects on the L1 (English) development of the children. Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, -Jonathan Bobaljik U Conn. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Tue Nov 27 12:33:14 2007 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Gathercole) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:33:14 +0000 Subject: Reminder & EXTENDED DEADLINE Biling Conference Message-ID: In response to several inquiries, the deadline for the submission of abstracts for our International Conference on Models of Interaction in Bilinguals has been extended for one month to January 2nd, 2008. Please find below the call for papers with the new date. Thanks. Best regards, Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole Co-Director, ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Call for Papers INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MODELS OF INTERACTION IN BILINGUALS ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom October 24 - 26, 2008 The ESRC Centre for Bilingualism in Theory and Practice invites submissions for talks and posters on the topic of "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", broadly defined to include, e.g., interaction between the bilingual's two languages, interaction between language and cognition, interaction between bilinguals' writing systems/literacy, and any other relevant topic. INVITED SPEAKERS Ellen Bialystok, York University and Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto Ton Dijkstra, Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, The Netherlands David Green, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Dept. of Psychology, University College London, UK Judith Kroll, Pennsylvania State University, USA Ping Li, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA Núria Sebastián Gallés, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Oral Presentations will be half hour talks. N.B.: All invited and accepted speakers must submit a short version of their talk prior to the conference, for circulation to other presenters and for availability through our website to other participants. Posters should be 80 x 120 cm (A0) or less. The word limit for abstracts for oral presentations and posters is 200 words, excluding references, title, and author information. [Note: A selection of papers from the conference will be submitted to a peer-review process for possible inclusion in a special issue of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism on "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", with Virginia Gathercole as Guest Editor. We will invite all oral presenters to submit more complete copies of their papers for consideration, and all poster presenters will be invited to similarly submit papers for possible inclusion. A separate call will also go out for possible submissions from outside the conference. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Please note that paper submission will not guarantee acceptance, however.] Extended deadline for submission of abstracts: January 2nd, 2008 Abstracts will be submitted and processed electronically, at www.bilingualism.bangor.ac.uk For further information, please see our website or contact the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, r.a.ieuan at bangor.ac.uk, or Prof. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, at bilconf at bangor.ac.uk. Forthcoming Conferences to be sponsored by the Centre: 2009/2010 - Neurobilingualism [contact: Guillaume Thierry] 2010/2011 - Bilingual/Multi-lingual Education [contact: Colin Baker] 2011/2012 - Social Aspects of Bilingualism [contact: Eddie Williams] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de Thu Nov 1 08:37:21 2007 From: bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de (bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 08:37:21 GMT Subject: Syntactic Bootstrapping - Summary Message-ID: Dear all, Some weeks ago I posted a query concerning a central issue in the Syntactic Bootstrapping approach. Specifically, I was interested to know whether or not SynBoot proponents claim that syntactic-semantic correlations underlying SynBoot are innate. First of all, many thanks for the replies of the following people: Misha Becker Ruth Berman Gedeon D?ak Doug Harris Evan Kidd Lorraine McCune Letitia Naigles, which sent me her paper Naigles & Swenson (2006) Matthew Saxton and a scholar preferring to remain anonym, who sent me passages from his book which he?s writing The following summary is based on issues raised by the anonym scholar?s message, including not only SynBoot proponents? views. In the summary below, responses by the other researchers listed above are integrated. This summary includes only issues directly related to SynBoot. The discussion also raised other relevant topics, such as innateness and the issue on relationships between lexical/lexical-semantic and grammatical aspects in lg dev., above all in the context of "emergence of grammar from the lexicon" (Bates & Goodman, 1999), but these topics will be summarized in separate messages. 1. Introduction - ?[ ] the original proponents of the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis claim that [syntactic-semantic] links are not innately specified but are acquired ?during the course of learning? (Gleitman, 1990: 41)?. - But ?different people make different assumptions (and those assumptions aren't always easy to tie down, or test experimentally!)? - Evan: ?this one is hard to pin down, probably because there are many different levels at which one could specify innate knowledge.? 2. Innate knowledge - The underlying knowledge on syntactic frames ?could be largely innate (e.g., Pinker, 1989)? - Evan: ? my understanding is that Cindy Fisher and her colleagues argue for an innate endowment that is based on structure-event role mapping, such that children expect there to be, for instance, an agent and patient in transitive sentence,and map these semantic roles onto the NPs in the sentence. This, of course,could be traced to general-cognitive biases.? - Evan: ?Similarly, Lidz Gleitman, and Gleitman (2004) argued for innate knowledge of the theta principle, to which Goldberg (2004) wrote a response.? - Naigles & Swenson (2006: 221): ?Gleitman (1990; see also Fisher & Gleitman, 2002; Fisher et al., 1991; Pinker, 1989) has proposed that correspondences related to the theta criterion (Chomsky, 1981) are innately given? ? ***in contradiction with the quotation concerning Gleitman (1990) above***, but it is perhaps the case that Naigles & Swenson and the anonym researcher mean here different sets of syntactic-semantic correlations: concerned with correspondences between semantic and syntactic roles (Naigles & Swenson) or between syntactic-semantic correspondences in verbs, such as transitivity-causality (the anonym researcher). - Naigles & Swenson (2006): In Lidz et al.?s (2003) view, "syntax/semantics correspondences such as transitive/affected-object are universal and innate? (p. 228) 3. Role of Input and Domain-General Cognitive Abilities 3aThe underlying knowledge on syntactic frames could be ?constructed by forming abstractions across instantiations of this pattern in the input (e.g., Tomasello, 2003).? - this view is also found in Evan?s message: ?if there is no innate knowledge then there is a lower bound on syntactic bootstrapping, such that it only becomes useful once children have learned some construction-specific frames? 3b. Also, children might be guided by the number of arguments in the input sentences (Fisher, 1996; 2002) 3c. Also, children might be guided by ?morphological cues? in the input in form of function words, ?such as 'and', 'with'? or copulas ('are') to derive ?an intransitive interpretation? and, consequently, non-causative interpretation, ?as shown most clearly in the study of Kidd et al (2001)? (***I?d be most grateful for the full reference or even the full text of this study by Kidd et al.***) 4. Naigles & Swenson?s (2006) conclusions: - ?some such [syntactic] frames might carry general, possibly innate, meanings that would be stable across languages. Further specificity for a given verb could be gleaned from the accompanying scenes and/or the multiple frames in which the verb was used.? (p. 225) - ?children?s abilities to learn some words without the syntactic information, to compare the statistical and/or pragmatic patterns of use of different types of words, and so to induce some syntax/semantics correspondences by matching these words with specific morphosyntactic patterns.? (p. 226). - ?The evidence concerning the development of syntactic bootstrapping suggests that the use of syntax to learn novel words is fragile between 18 and 24 months of age and fully operational at 24 months?, which suggests that ?some syntax/semantics correspondences, if couched generally, could be universal and so available before 18 months whereas other correspondences, obviously language-specific, must be learned and so are not readily available to 1-year-olds.? (pp. 227-8) - similar view by Misha Becker:? The way I understand syntactic bootstrapping is that there is innate knowledge of likelihoods/tendencies in the mapping between sentence frames and meanings. [ ] ? So it doesn't solve the entire problem of lexical learning, it just provides some constraints in the form of tendencies. My understanding is that these are innate, and then language particular constraints or options (e.g. null arguments) come in by way of learning.? 5. Abstract syntactic categories in child language or not? - Evan recommends the lecture of Fisher?s (2002) reply to Tomasello (2000). Tomasello challenges the very SynBoot idea (syntactic structures facilitate learning of words) in that he (as I think, correctly) assumes that children?s representations underlying their early constructions are lexically based and not abstract syntactic categories, such as ?verb? or ?transitivity?. Fisher agree partially with that: Children?s abstract syntactic categories develop gradually, ?However, incomplete syntactic knowledge need not mean that abstract knowledge of sentence structure can play no useful role in early language use and acquisition.? (p. 272) - Evan also recommends the lecture of Chang et al. (2006), a connectionist study showing ?how abstract knowledge and concrete experience are balanced in the development and use of syntax.? (from abstract) 5. Syntactic and Distributional/Correlational Bootstrapping - As Ruth Berman pointed out, SynBoot ?claims have been made mainly for verb argument structure, not necessarily for other features of the grammar -- which is also an interesting question.? - Indeed, the more ?classical? SynBoot strang is, as I understand it, concerned with the learning of verb meanings (or rather: components of their meanings, such as causality), i.e., with the ?induction problem? of inferring word meanings. This is in contrast with Distributional and Semantic Bootstrapping, which are traditionally concerned with what Pinker called the ?bootstrapping problem? of categorization of words and syntactic units. - Interestingly enough, however, a number of recent studies by SynBoot proponents (e.g., Booth & Waxman, 2003; Fisher et al., 2006; Bernal, 2006; Name, 2007) or cited by them as providing support for SynBoot (e.g., Blenn et al., 2002; H?hle et al., 2006; Ketrez, 2003) constitute something of a renaissance of the Distributional Bootrapping idea (Maratsos & Chalkley, 1980; more recent accounts: Mintz, 2005; Freudenthal et al., 2007): Their results suggests that distributional syntactic cues (e.g., word order, determiner-noun cooccurrences, morphological markers) facilitate the task of segmentation/categorization of lexical and syntactic units. Finally, for the summary to be complete, the following comment by Doug Harris, which, however, has nothing to do with bootstrapping operations of (language) learning: - ?Speaking of _bootstrapping_, I heard an interesting variation of that (source) word the other day, I believe it was on NPR, while I was _so_ otherwise engaged I couldn't make a written note to myself on it: A man was talking about, I believe, how his town would struggle together after some disaster or other and "pull its bootstrings up" and work toward recovery, or whatever. I'm sorry I can't be more precise on the source.? Again, many thanks and best regards Susanna References Bates, E., & Goodman, J. C. (1999). On the emergence of grammar from the lexicon. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), The Emergence of language (pp. 29?79). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bernal, S. (2006). De l'arbre (syntaxique) au fruit (du sens): Interactions des acquisitions lexicale et syntaxique chez l'enfant de moins de 2 ans. Doctoral dissertation. Paris: Universit? Paris VI. Blenn, L., Seidl, A., & H?hle, B. (2002). Recognition of phrases in early language acquisition: The role of morphological markers. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. H.-J. Do (Eds.), BUCLD 26. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, November 2-4, 2001, in Boston, MA, Vol. 1 (pp. 138?149). Somerville Mass.: Cascadilla Press. Booth, A. E., & Waxman, S. R. (2003). Mapping words to the world in infancy: Infants' expectations for count nouns and adjectives. Journal of Cognition and Development, 4, 357?381. Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113(2), 234?272. Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Fisher, C. (1996). Structural limits on verb mapping: The role of analogy in children's interpretations of sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 31(1), 41?81. Fisher, C. (2002). The role of abstract syntactic knowledge in language acquisition: A reply to Tomasello (2000). Cognition, 82, 259?278. Fisher, C., & Gleitman, L. R. (2002). Language acquisition. In R. Gallistel, & H. Pashler (Eds.), Stevens' handbook of experimental psychology / ed.-in-chief Hal Pashler: Vol. Vol. 3. Learning, motivation, and emotion. 3. ed (pp. 445?496). New York, NY: Wiley. Fisher, C., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (1991). On the semantic content of subcategorization frames. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 331?392. Fisher, C., Klingler, S. L., & Song, H.-j. (2006). What does syntax say about space? 2-year-olds use sentence structure to learn new prepositions. Cognition, 101(1), B19-B29. Freudenthal, D., Pine, J. M., & Gobet, F. R. (2007). Simulating the noun-verb asymmetry in the productivity of children's speech. In R. L. Lewis, A. Polk, & J. E. Laird (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cognitive Modelling (pp. 109?114). Hove UK: Psychology Press. Gleitman, L. R. (1990). The structural sources of verb meaning. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3?55. Goldberg, A. E. (2004). But do we need Universal Grammar? Comment on Lidz et al. (2003). Cognition, 94, 77?84. H?hle, B., Schmitz, M., M?ller, A., & Weissenborn, J. (2006). The lexicon/syntax interface in developing grammar: The role of function words in the acquisition of content words. ISIS 2006. XVth Biennal International Society on Infant Studies Conference, Kyoto, Japan, Jun 19-23, 2006. Ketrez, N. (2003). Is it possible to bootstrap any lexical category information from word order in a flexible-word-order language? BOOT-LA: Bootstrapping in Language Acquisition: Psychological, Linguistic, and Computational Aspects, Bloomington, Apr 21-23, 2003. Kidd et al (2001) ??? Lidz, J. L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (2003). Understanding how input matters: Verb learning and the footprint of universal grammar. Cognition, 87(3), 151?178. Lidz, J. L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (2004). Kidz in the 'hood: Syntactic bootstrapping and the mental lexicon. In D. Geoffrey Hall, & S. R. Waxman (Eds.), From many strands. Weaving a lexicon (pp. 603?636). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maratsos, M., & Chalkley, M. (1980). The internal language of children's syntax: The ontogenesis and representation of syntactic categories. In K. E. Nelson (Ed.), Children's language. Vol. 2. New York NY: Gardner. Mintz, T. (2005). Categorizing words from distributional information in the input. Paper presented at the symposium "The Interaction of Input and Learning Mechanisms in Language Acquisition: Four Case Studies", Xth International Congress for the Study of Child Language (X IASCL Congress), Berlin, July 25-29, 2005. Naigles, L., & Swensen, L. D. (2006). Syntactic supports for word learning. In E. Hoff, & M. Shatz (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. London: Blackwell Publishing. Name, M. Cristina. (2007). Bootstrapping sint?tico: O papel da ordem estrutural na aquisi??o de nomes e adjetivos [Syntactic bootstrapping: The role of structural order in the acquisition of nouns and adjectives]. Letras de Hoje, 42(1), 53?63. Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and Cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tomasello, M. (2000). Do children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74, 209?253. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. ***************************************************************** Susanna Bartsch https://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/mitarb/homepage/bartsch/ bartsch at zas.gwz-berlin.de Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals Research Schuetzenstr. 18 10117 Berlin Germany Tel. +49 (0)30 20192562 Fax +49 (0)30 20192402 ***************************************************************** --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From roeper at linguist.umass.edu Fri Nov 2 13:37:00 2007 From: roeper at linguist.umass.edu (Roeper, Tom) Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 13:37:00 -0000 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future Message-ID: Info childes performance/competence and cooperation Dear Performance/Competence discussion- I'd like to shift the discussion-if it continues-- from that of errors, which are incontrovertible signs of performance, to questions of interfaces which is in many ways a new thrust in linguistic theory partly aimed at incorporating in a single mechanism many phenomena previously associated with performance. I think it offers an exciting future and many avenues for cooperation---let me illustrate. I have been silent because I was in Cyprus attending a fascinating meeting sponsored by the European Union, organized by Uli Sauerland from ZAS, aimed to developing instruments to assess children's language in a wide variety of European languages. In the group of 40 were many people associated with Dan Slobin and Michael Tomasello. Issues linked to "performance" are a constant factor in designing experiments---hardly something ignored in practical terms, because speech pathologists were also a central part of the group. How to build those factors into a language interface that is connected to the subtleties of grammar is a real theoretical challenge, but being sensitive to them in day to day experimental design is just a given. Let me offer more about thiis conference. After some discussion we got to work designing experiments. Using insights gained from the DELV test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I (and many others) devised for English, we looked at exhausitivity in "who bought what" (where many children answer with one person or a single pair-not all required) and quantifier spreading in "every dog as a bone", where some children think it means "every bone". Now these sentences will be explored in up to 17 different languages and dialects. Experimental ideas from many other quarters were incorporated as well. These questions are askable precisely because they are linked to linguistic universals that transcend language differences. They come straight from linguistic theory---yet everyone who hears about them gets interested whether they are followers of generative linguistics or not. Experimentation in Polish, Bulgarian, and Romani has already begun, with interesting results. Recent work in linguistic theory has focused on Interfaces, which includes pragmatics and semantics, and the leader of the EU group, Uli Sauerland, is a specialist in precisely these domains. and a major focus has been how implicatures work. The challenge I raised before remains---and it is a tough one- without obvious answers: how do we build a mechanism---commensurate with the speed of language---that can build other compuatational abilities into language while realizing their creative and generative power. How do we represent creativity in memory to match the creativity of recursion? How do we generate unique implicatures in unique situations? Any model which avoids the creative algorithms misses the essence of the mechanism---and I believe ultimately leads to an image of children that does not honor their dignity. This is the argument I make in my book The Prism of Grammar. An analogy might help. While syntax perhaps captures the skeleton of language---one might holler "how about all the muscles that enable movement?". Good question, but it requires exactly a concept of the interface: where exactly do muscles connect to bones so that they can move them efficiently and how does the physics of movement get represented. A theory of muscles that ignores exactly how they are connected with bones won't tell us much. Take an example (from Christ Potts) on implicatures and Point of View. If I say "honestly you can climb a mountain" it is my honesty that is implicated, if I invert the auxiliary "Honestly, can you climb a mountain" it is yours. And we get different readings for: "honestly who can report" and "Who can report honestly". The implications are tightly linked to the syntax. There is a natural experiment for someone. to do: when do children control that switch. (Anna Verbuk has done interesting relevant work.) I think the discussion can be much more productive if we discuss real examples and project precise theories of how they can work. That is the challenge we can explor together, much more beneficially than by a debate that too heavily linked to imprecise abstractions. Tom Roeper See you at BU if you are coming-- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From gigliana.melzi at nyu.edu Fri Nov 2 18:58:54 2007 From: gigliana.melzi at nyu.edu (Gigliana Melzi) Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 11:58:54 -0700 Subject: Cognitive Psychologist Faculty Position Opening @ NYU Message-ID: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY THE STEINHARDT SCHOOL OF CULTURE, EDUCATION, AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGIST ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, TENURE-TRACK The Department Applied Psychology at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development seeks a Cognitive Psychologist with an active research agenda in public schools for a position as a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor (http:// steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_positions/). QUALIFICATIONS: Doctorate in a discipline of psychology, preference will be given to degrees in cognitive, school, developmental, or educational psychology; an active research agenda that includes work in schools, and a record of (or potential for) external funding. RESPONSIBILITIES: Teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, advising and mentoring students, overseeing a research team, and supervising doctoral dissertations. Please send a CV, a letter of interest, and no more than 5 reprints to: Gigliana Melzi, Chair, Cognitive Psychology Search Committee at gigliana.melzi at nyu.edu. Five letters of support should be provided under separate cover. Applications will be accepted until January 15, 2007. NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and actively works to enhance its diversity. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From jedwards2 at wisc.edu Fri Nov 2 22:27:48 2007 From: jedwards2 at wisc.edu (JAN R EDWARDS) Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 17:27:48 -0500 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future In-Reply-To: <1194010620.069384.88260@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: Dear Tom, If it's possible, I'd like to find out more about the meeting on assessing children's learning in different European languages. I have an NIH-funded grant on cross-linguistic phonological acquisition (so far, we are looking at American English, Greek, French, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean -- see http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~edwards/) and we have done some preliminary work on developing some measures for Greek. I wasn't aware of a more organized effort in this regard. Could you put me in touch with the organizers of this? Thanks so much. Yours, Jan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roeper, Tom" Date: Friday, November 2, 2007 8:37 am Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future To: Info-CHILDES > Info childes performance/competence and cooperation > > Dear Performance/Competence discussion- > > I'd like to shift the discussion-if it continues-- from that of > errors, which are incontrovertible signs of performance, to questions > of interfaces which is in many ways a new thrust in linguistic theory > partly aimed at incorporating in a single mechanism many phenomena > previously associated with performance. I think it offers an exciting > future and many avenues for cooperation---let me illustrate. > I have been silent because I was in Cyprus attending a > fascinating meeting sponsored by the European Union, organized by Uli > Sauerland from ZAS, aimed to developing > instruments to assess children's language in a wide variety of > European > languages. In the group of 40 were many people associated with Dan > Slobin and Michael Tomasello. Issues linked to "performance" are > a constant factor in designing experiments---hardly something ignored > in practical terms, because speech pathologists were also a central > part of the group. How to build those factors into > a language interface that is connected to the subtleties of grammar is > a > real theoretical challenge, but being sensitive to them in day to day > experimental design is just a given. > Let me offer more about thiis conference. After some > discussion we got to work designing experiments. Using insights > gained from the DELV test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I > (and many others) devised for English, we looked at exhausitivity in > "who bought what" (where many children answer with > one person or a single pair-not all required) and quantifier spreading > in "every dog as a bone", where some children think it means "every > bone". Now these sentences will be explored in up to 17 different > languages and dialects. Experimental ideas from many other quarters > were incorporated as well. > These questions are askable precisely because they are linked > to linguistic universals that transcend language differences. They > come straight from linguistic theory---yet everyone who hears about > them gets interested whether they are followers of generative > linguistics or not. Experimentation in Polish, Bulgarian, and Romani > has already begun, with interesting results. > Recent work in linguistic theory has focused on Interfaces, > which includes pragmatics and semantics, and the leader of the > EU group, Uli Sauerland, is a specialist in precisely these domains. > and a major focus has been how implicatures work. > The challenge I raised before remains---and it is a tough one- > without obvious answers: how do we build a mechanism---commensurate > with the speed of language---that can build other > compuatational abilities into language while realizing their > creative and generative power. How do we represent creativity > in memory to match the creativity of recursion? How do we > generate unique implicatures in unique situations? Any model > which avoids the creative algorithms misses the essence of the > mechanism---and I believe ultimately leads to an image of children > that does not honor their dignity. This is the argument I make > in my book The Prism of Grammar. > An analogy might help. While syntax perhaps captures the > skeleton of language---one might holler "how about all the muscles > that enable movement?". Good question, but it requires exactly a > concept of the interface: where exactly do muscles connect to bones so > that they can move them efficiently and how does the physics of > movement > get represented. A theory of muscles that ignores exactly how > they are connected with bones won't tell us much. > Take an example (from Christ Potts) on implicatures and > Point of View. If I say "honestly you can climb a mountain" > it is my honesty that is implicated, if I invert the auxiliary > "Honestly, can you climb a mountain" it is yours. And we > get different readings for: "honestly who can report" and > "Who can report honestly". The implications are tightly > linked to the syntax. There is a natural experiment for someone. > to do: when do children control that switch. (Anna Verbuk has > done interesting relevant work.) > I think the discussion can be much more productive if we > discuss real examples and project precise theories of how they > can work. That is the challenge we can explor together, much > more beneficially than by a debate that too heavily linked to > imprecise abstractions. > > Tom Roeper > > See you at BU if you are coming-- > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From macw at cmu.edu Sat Nov 3 14:32:50 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 10:32:50 -0400 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Jan, Unless I misread Tom's message, it seems that the meeting in Cyprus focused more on issues such as quantifier spreading than on child phonology. However, there is indeed an NIH-funded project on cross-linguistic phonological acquisition directed by Yvan Rose and myself. During the first year of this project, the focus has been on the construction of an initial database. In this regard Sophie Kern, Katherine Demuth, Yvan Rose, Heather Goad, Paula Fikkert, Claartje Levelt, Barbara Davis, and are in the process of contributing important databases from a variety of languages that are slowly now being made public at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/phon/ and (still in preparation) http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/data/PhonBank/ (along the big Providence and Lyon corpora that are in Eng-USA and Romance/French respectively). A brief scan of the fascinating material that you have at your Paidologos home page suggests that these projects differ somewhat in emphasis and involve two largely non-overlapping groups of researchers. Paidologos emphasizes the construction of tests, whereas PhonBank emphasizes the construction of a database of naturalistic productions. Still the ultimate aims of the projects are related and when we come to the level of computational analysis, the links and overlap seem even stronger. So, it would seem to make good sense to try to maximize the ability of researchers to access both resources in a parallel and integrated fashion. For example, it would be interesting to be able to compare sequences derived from formal assessment with sequences revealed through naturalistic productions. Perhaps this integration may be possible as we move forward. Yvan is scheduling the official release of the PHON software for a month off. The release has been a bit delayed because we want to focus on making sure eveything is right. Also, you may be interested in joining the phon at googlegroups.com mailing list which is designed for further discussion of these issues. Discussion of Paidologos issues would also be quite appropriate on that list. --Brian MacWhinney, CMU On Nov 2, 2007, at 6:27 PM, JAN R EDWARDS wrote: > > Dear Tom, > > If it's possible, I'd like to find out more about the meeting > on assessing children's learning in different European languages. > I have an NIH-funded grant on cross-linguistic phonological > acquisition (so far, we are looking at American English, Greek, > French, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean -- > see http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~edwards/) and we have done > some preliminary work on developing some measures for Greek. > I wasn't aware of a more organized effort in this regard. Could you > put me in touch with the organizers of this? Thanks so much. > > Yours, > Jan --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From macw at cmu.edu Mon Nov 5 17:51:12 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 12:51:12 -0500 Subject: Washoe Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Last week CNN published an obituary regarding the death of Washoe, the chimpanzee who was "the first non-human to acquire human language" (or at least some components thereof. The story is available at http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/31/signing.chimp.dies.ap/index.html Thanks to Kelley Sacco for drawing attention to this. --Brian MacWhinney --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From yrose at mun.ca Sun Nov 4 17:08:04 2007 From: yrose at mun.ca (Yvan Rose) Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 12:08:04 -0500 Subject: Summary: Bilingualism and bilingual education in Aboriginal communities Message-ID: Dear colleagues, A few weeks ago I requested help from Info-CHILDES members about bilingualism and bilingual education in aboriginal communities. Below is a summary of the information I received. Before it, I would like to thank the following people for their useful reactions to my request: -Aleka Blackwell -Roma Chumak-Horbatsch -Alvino Fantini -Margaret Fleck -Susan Foster-Cohen -Fred Genesee -Marie Labelle -Brian MacWhinney -Lori Morris -Carol Slater Relevant publications: Napoli, Donna Jo (2003) Language Matters: A Guide to Everyday Questions about Language. Oxford: OUP. McLaughlin, B. (1984). Second-language acquisition in childhood. Second Edition. Vol. 1: Preschool children. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. McLaughlin, B. (1985). Second-language acquisition in childhood. Vol. 2: School-age children. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Alice Eriks-Brophy & Martha Crago (2003) Variation in instructional discourse features:?Evidence from Inuit and non-Inuit teachers of Nunavik. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 34(4):396-419. Websites: New-Zealand Maori education program website: http:// www.minedu.govt.nz//index.cfm? layout=index&indexid=1063&indexparentid=2107 Kahnawake Survival School, an organization that has focused on Mohawk language preservation related projects for a few decades now. An recent example of such projects can be found at: http:// www.kssmultimediaproject.com/kss_history.html Downloadable document: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/manyroots/manyroots.pdf Other: Lori Morris and her team at the Universit? du Qu?bec ? Montr?al produced a report (written in French) on current issues affecting the acquisition of French and English by Aboriginal students from Kindergarten to Grade 6. While I did not attach the report to this message, I could certainly forward it to interested members after obtaining permission from Lori. Among other factors, it appears that the following are central to virtually all situations: --Language attitudes -Role of the language instructors in promoting bilingualism (instead of the use of one language only) -Role of the caregivers in fostering a positive, motivating learning environment --Involvement from both educators and caregivers -The young learner is facing a difficult situation -This fact needs to be acknowledged by everyone -Everyone need to make an active contribution to the learning process ?educators/schooling just can?t do everything? --(Mis-)communication between educators and students -Pragmatic differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conversations -At times, absence of communication outside of the classroom setting --Cultural discontinuity between home and school -Skills valued at home versus at school -The bicultural context inherent to bilingual has to transcend the school system -Children need to be aware of, and value, their bilingual/ bicultural identity --Child?s perception of the bilingual curriculum -Children need to know why learning more than one language is important -Connection with their native culture -Connection with the ?outer? world --Educators need to know about the Aboriginal language and culture -This is true for every academic subject addressed in class, not only for language classes While a lot of this makes good common sense, your help was central in rounding up the main points in a relatively systematic way. Thank you very much to everyone involved! Kindest regards, Yvan Rose --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From macw at cmu.edu Tue Nov 6 00:31:24 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 19:31:24 -0500 Subject: performance/competence, cooperation, and the future In-Reply-To: <1194010620.069384.88260@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: Tom, It would be a shame to let such a constructive message pass by without further commentary. From my point of view, you raise three interesting questions here. The first two relate to the specific examples you cite. 1. Regarding the "who bought what" sentences, I believe that you received a reply earlier from Bruno Estigarribia regarding the attempts to deal with multiple wh-questions in the light of violations of the superiority condition. I see a URL on the web for a poster with Inbal Arnon on this at www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/semfest/Estigarribia.pdf I think the Stanford group would like to explore ways in which processing, context, and input statistics shape these preferences, but certainly all accounts are still on the table here. What impresses me in this area is the paucity of data on children's productions. So, we can move ahead with experiments, but, given the vagaries of experimental methods with young children, I would personally like to see information on this from all fronts. 2. Next is the issue of children's first vs. second person perspective shift, as in (a) and (b) a. Honestly, who can report on this? b. Who can report on this honestly? Carol Tenny and Peggy Speas have been exploring this and related markers of perspective shift for several years. I began my interest in this stuff with an article on perspective in Language back in 1974. Carol, Sandiway Fong, and I mapped out some more of this shifter stuff with questions. As in the contrast between (c) with speaker perspective and (d) with listener perspective. c. The bicyclist appears to have escaped injury. d. Did the bicyclist appear to have escaped injury? I totally agree that finding out when children learn this is crucial. But, my intuition here is that, with forms like "appear" and "apparently", the contrast is available as soon as they learn the form. The whole thing seems like common sense. I realize that is not an adequate statement, and clearly we need real data. 3. I was a bit more unsettled about a third issue. This is the use of terms like "dignity" and "respect" as criteria for evaluating the value of scientific accounts. I have not read your book and maybe this would be clearer then. I think people are truly remarkable beings, full of creativity and wonder. But I would certainly not like to see a time when scientific accounts were either included or excluded from discussion on the basis of whether or not some group of scientists judged them as insufficiently "respectful of human dignity". I hope you understand the basis of my concern. --Brian MacWhinney On Nov 2, 2007, at 9:37 AM, Roeper, Tom wrote: > > Info childes performance/competence and cooperation > > Dear Performance/Competence discussion- > > I'd like to shift the discussion-if it continues-- from that of > errors, which are incontrovertible signs of performance, to questions > of interfaces which is in many ways a new thrust in linguistic theory > partly aimed at incorporating in a single mechanism many phenomena > previously associated with performance. I think it offers an exciting > future and many avenues for cooperation---let me illustrate. > I have been silent because I was in Cyprus attending a > fascinating meeting sponsored by the European Union, organized by Uli > Sauerland from ZAS, aimed to developing > instruments to assess children's language in a wide variety of > European > languages. In the group of 40 were many people associated with Dan > Slobin and Michael Tomasello. Issues linked to "performance" are > a constant factor in designing experiments---hardly something ignored > in practical terms, because speech pathologists were also a central > part of the group. How to build those factors into > a language interface that is connected to the subtleties of grammar is > a > real theoretical challenge, but being sensitive to them in day to day > experimental design is just a given. > Let me offer more about thiis conference. After some > discussion we got to work designing experiments. Using insights > gained from the DELV test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I > (and many others) devised for English, we looked at exhausitivity in > "who bought what" (where many children answer with > one person or a single pair-not all required) and quantifier spreading > in "every dog as a bone", where some children think it means "every > bone". Now these sentences will be explored in up to 17 different > languages and dialects. Experimental ideas from many other quarters > were incorporated as well. > These questions are askable precisely because they are linked > to linguistic universals that transcend language differences. They > come straight from linguistic theory---yet everyone who hears about > them gets interested whether they are followers of generative > linguistics or not. Experimentation in Polish, Bulgarian, and Romani > has already begun, with interesting results. > Recent work in linguistic theory has focused on Interfaces, > which includes pragmatics and semantics, and the leader of the > EU group, Uli Sauerland, is a specialist in precisely these domains. > and a major focus has been how implicatures work. > The challenge I raised before remains---and it is a tough one- > without obvious answers: how do we build a mechanism---commensurate > with the speed of language---that can build other > compuatational abilities into language while realizing their > creative and generative power. How do we represent creativity > in memory to match the creativity of recursion? How do we > generate unique implicatures in unique situations? Any model > which avoids the creative algorithms misses the essence of the > mechanism---and I believe ultimately leads to an image of children > that does not honor their dignity. This is the argument I make > in my book The Prism of Grammar. > An analogy might help. While syntax perhaps captures the > skeleton of language---one might holler "how about all the muscles > that enable movement?". Good question, but it requires exactly a > concept of the interface: where exactly do muscles connect to bones so > that they can move them efficiently and how does the physics of > movement > get represented. A theory of muscles that ignores exactly how > they are connected with bones won't tell us much. > Take an example (from Christ Potts) on implicatures and > Point of View. If I say "honestly you can climb a mountain" > it is my honesty that is implicated, if I invert the auxiliary > "Honestly, can you climb a mountain" it is yours. And we > get different readings for: "honestly who can report" and > "Who can report honestly". The implications are tightly > linked to the syntax. There is a natural experiment for someone. > to do: when do children control that switch. (Anna Verbuk has > done interesting relevant work.) > I think the discussion can be much more productive if we > discuss real examples and project precise theories of how they > can work. That is the challenge we can explor together, much > more beneficially than by a debate that too heavily linked to > imprecise abstractions. > > Tom Roeper > > See you at BU if you are coming-- > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From ecdemir at gmail.com Wed Nov 7 17:30:03 2007 From: ecdemir at gmail.com (Ozlem Ece Demir) Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 09:30:03 -0800 Subject: Advice on Designing a Developmental Pragmatics Course Message-ID: Dear all, My name is Ozlem Ece Demir, and I am currently a 4th year Psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. I am planning to design a course on Developmental Pragmatics next year, and I am currently trying to decide which topics and readings to cover in the course. I would really appreciate if you could give me any input you have regarding how to design a course on this subject and/or provide me with example course syllabi on this subject. Thanks in advance! Best regards. Ozlem Ece Demir --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From kjersti.roland at isp.uio.no Thu Nov 8 14:17:07 2007 From: kjersti.roland at isp.uio.no (Kjersti) Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 06:17:07 -0800 Subject: The latest in recording technology (is this the first message?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Katie! I have just purchased a "WS-210S Digital Voice Recorder" from Olympus. Although I don't know much about technical equipment, I think this will be a good tool for me. From my experience the sound quality is good, and the recorder can be connected directly to the computer. It might be worth looking into. Kjersti On 23 Okt, 16:32, Katie Alcock wrote: > I've usually used minidisk recorders up till now both for recording children > in the field and for creating language stimuli. We've had some success > recently with MP3 recorders (solid-state) for field recordings but I'm > wondering if anyone has any ideas about: > > How good quality these are for creating sound files to link to > transcriptions > How good the recorders are in the long term - do they die easily? > and also > Are they any good for creating clean, high quality sound files to use as > laboratory stimuli? > > If they are good, do people have specific recommendations of recorders? We > have a few in our department that people have used for recording > testing/interview sessions but to create some new stimuli I think I'm going > to need to get either a new minidisk recorder or something slightly more > modern. > > Thanks > > Katie Alccok > > Katie Alcock, DPhil, CPsychol > Lecturer > Department of Psychology > University of Lancaster > Fylde College > Lancaster LA1 4YF > Tel 01524 593833 > Fax 01524 593744 > Webhttp://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From m.perkins at sheffield.ac.uk Tue Nov 13 13:42:17 2007 From: m.perkins at sheffield.ac.uk (Mick Perkins) Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:42:17 -0000 Subject: Use of CHILDES by blind people Message-ID: Dear Colleagues One of my students - who happens to be blind - is starting a research project which involves access to linked CLAN and audio files. She can access both reasonably successfully using a dedicated text to speech software system called JAWS, but has not yet made use of CLAN programs for data analysis. If you are an experienced blind user of CHILDES, or know of someone who is, I would be grateful for any advice you may have on how best to proceed. I'd also be interested to know whether there is a community of blind researchers with an interest in child language/ linguistics /speech language pathology who I could put my student in touch with. Many thanks Mick Perkins, PhD Professor of Clinical Linguistics Department of Human Communication Sciences University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN UK Tel: (+44) (0)114 2222408 Fax: (+44) (0)114 2730547 http://www.shef.ac.uk/hcs/staff/perkins --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From margaretmfleck at yahoo.com Wed Nov 14 15:16:59 2007 From: margaretmfleck at yahoo.com (Margaret Fleck) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:16:59 -0800 Subject: phonological reductions in motherese In-Reply-To: <009c01c825fb$01f17700$9c8fa78f@hcs865> Message-ID: I'm testing an algorithm that learns word boundaries from transcribed conversations. A significant issue with learning from adult speech involves variation in word form due to phonological reductions (e.g. vowel deletions, spread of nasalization). Can anyone point me at concrete data about whether child-directed, or infant-directed, speech contains fewer phonological reductions than adult-directed speech? I'm particularly interested in speech directed at toddlers, because the critical issues (from my point of view) probably involve not the initial extraction of a few important words but rather the transition where they learn to understand the fine details of normal speech. Many thanks, Margaret Fleck (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From michael at georgetown.edu Wed Nov 14 23:36:53 2007 From: michael at georgetown.edu (Michael Ullman) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:36:53 -0500 Subject: March 28, 2008: The Neurocognition of Language and Memory: Retention, Attrition, and Aging Message-ID: SAVE THE DATE: March 28th, 2008 The Center for the Brain Basis of Cognition at Georgetown University Presents The Neurocognition of Language and Memory: Retention, Attrition, and Aging A CBBC Workshop Goal: The workshop aims to bring together researchers, students and funders who are interested in various cognitive and neural aspects of retention, attrition, and aging in language and memory, but who generally do not interact much ? in particular people from the Cognitive Neuroscience community who study memory or language, and researchers from the fields of Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Location: New Research Building Auditorium, Georgetown University, Washington DC Date: Friday, March 28th, 2008, 9am to 6pm Note: This is timed to allow workshop participants to also attend the American Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, which starts the following day, and which also takes place in Washington DC. Speakers: Russ Poldrack (UCLA) Monika Schmid (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands) Darlene Howard and James Howard (Georgetown University and Catholic University, Washington DC) Christophe Pallier (CNRS, Paris) Avi Karni (University of Haifa, Israel) Kara Morgan-Short, Cristina Sanz and Michael Ullman (University of Illinois, Chicago, and Georgetown University) Organizers: Cristina Sanz and Michael Ullman For further information on the workshop, or to register please go to http://cbbc.georgetown.edu/workshops/2008RA.html For more information on the CBBC and previous workshops, please go to http://cbbc.georgetown.edu. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macw at cmu.edu Thu Nov 15 16:02:24 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:02:24 -0500 Subject: phonological reductions in motherese In-Reply-To: <187756.22527.qm@web60312.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I am assuming that the best relevant data would come from the Brent- Siskind corpus. Michael Brent has switched areas from child language, but I think he would still be happy to talk with you. --Brian On Nov 14, 2007, at 10:16 AM, Margaret Fleck wrote: > > > I'm testing an algorithm that learns word boundaries from > transcribed conversations. A significant issue with learning > from adult speech involves variation in word form due to > phonological reductions (e.g. vowel deletions, spread of > nasalization). Can anyone point me at concrete data about > whether child-directed, or infant-directed, speech contains > fewer phonological reductions than adult-directed speech? > > I'm particularly interested in speech directed at toddlers, because > the critical issues (from my point of view) probably involve not > the initial extraction of a few important words but rather the > transition where they learn to understand the fine details of > normal speech. > > Many thanks, > > Margaret Fleck (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From cschutze at ucla.edu Thu Nov 15 21:58:29 2007 From: cschutze at ucla.edu (Carson Schutze) Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:58:29 -0800 Subject: Job: Psycholing/Neuroling, Comp Modeling: Junior Level Faulty, UCLA Message-ID: The UCLA Department of Linguistics seeks to hire one tenure-track faculty at the junior level, starting Fall 2008. The position will be in either of the two specializations listed below: (1) the area of psycholinguistics or neurolinguistics, with an emphasis in morphology, syntax, or semantics. The successful candidate will be expected to have substantial experience in experimental work bearing on one of these areas of theoretical linguistics. (2) the area of computational modeling, by which is meant formal implementations of grammars, models of language learning, or processing models, with a research focus in any area of linguistics, including semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, and phonetics. Subject to budgetary restrictions, the appointment is to begin July 1, 2008, with teaching to begin in the Fall 2008. Candidates should demonstrate a strong commitment to graduate and undergraduate education. A Ph.D. is required. Compensation is commensurate with academic qualification and experience. Applications should reach us by January 20, 2008; only applications received by this date will be ensured of full consideration. We expect to interview candidates at the LSA annual meeting in January. Applications should include a CV, a statement of research interests, samples of recent work, and three letters of reference. Please send application materials to: Experimental/Modeling Search Committee Department of Linguistics, UCLA Los Angeles, CA 90095 UCLA is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Women and Minorities are encouraged to apply. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From sunyim at gmail.com Mon Nov 19 08:26:19 2007 From: sunyim at gmail.com (sun) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:26:19 -0800 Subject: Graduate Doctoral Position at Northwestern University Message-ID: University: Northwestern University, IL, USA Department: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Job Rank: Graduate (Doctoral) Fellowships Specialty Areas: Auditory Physiology/Neuroscience, Bilingualism, Cognitive Neuroscience, Complex Systems, Language and Learning Science, Psychoacoustics, Psycholinguistics, Speech Perception, Speech and Swallowing Physiology, Neurolinguistics, Translational Research. The Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University invites applicants for fully funded (tuition + stipend) doctoral fellowships in interdisciplinary research in communication sciences. As a founding department of the discipline of communication sciences, our program consists of basic and translational/clinical scientists performing cutting-edge research. Some of the research questions being addressed by the faculty include: 1. Neural bases of reading and language development and disabilities 2. Neurobiology of language recovery in aphasia and other neural disorders 3. Biological bases and neural plasticity of speech and music 4. Mechanics and molecular genetics of the normal and impaired cochlear 5. Early conceptual and linguistic development, bilingualism, and specific language impairment 6. Swallowing and vocal physiology and head and neck cancer 7. Computational modeling of language learning and language evolution 8. Speech (second language) and auditory perceptual learning and rehabilitative audiology The Department and University is equipped with state-of-the-art research and clinical facilities, including MRI scanners, sound-attenuated chambers for adult and infant testing, multidisciplinary clinics in human communication and learning disorders, and equipment for electrophysiology and in-vitro physiology recording, eye-tracking, tissue engineering, optical imaging, super-computing, and genome sequencing and proteomics. For more information on graduate study, research, and the application process, visit us online: http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/csd/ If you have questions please contact the graduate coordinator, Cindy Coy at ccoy at northwestern.edu --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From mboehning at googlemail.com Mon Nov 26 14:25:21 2007 From: mboehning at googlemail.com (marita boehning) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:25:21 +0100 Subject: REMINDER: MSc scholarships/applications (European Master's in Clinical Linguistics) Message-ID: ERASMUS MUNDUS European Masters Programme in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL): Call for applications for 2008/09 course and Erasmus Mundus scholarships * * *Information about the European Master's Programme in Clinical Linguistics:* The Erasmus Mundus EMCL ('European Master's in Clinical Linguistics') course is a 15 month full-time interdisciplinary and transnational university programme at Master's level. It provides integrated training in theoretical and experimental neurosciences and psycholinguistics with clinical issues. The aim of the Master's Course is to train highly qualified advanced students who are excellently prepared for research work and PhD programmes in the above fields. The transnational consortium comprises four universities: Groningen (NL), Joensuu (FI), Milano-Bicocca (IT) and Potsdam (DE). The programme consists of three terms: the core courses offered in the first term aim at providing the students with general knowledge about the fields mentioned above. During the second and third term, the students attend specialised courses. For the second term, students may choose to move from their first host university to another one, while all students meet at the University of Potsdam during the third term. To finish the programme successfully, the student writes a Master's thesis and attends a summer school or conference. All courses are taught in English. *The Erasmus Mundus scholarship for non-EU students: ** * The EMCL programme is part of the Erasmus Mundus initiative of the European Union, providing an Erasmus Mundus scholarship covering tuition fees (EUR 7,500.), living and travelling costs for non-EU students admitted to the programme (amounting to a total of EUR 29,000.-/scholarship). The EMCL-programme thus has a strong extra-European profile. Information for applicants from EU countries: Students from EU-countries may not apply for the Erasmus Mundus scholarship, but pay a reduced tuition fee of EUR 2,700. *Application Information: ** * Requirement for application is at least three years of higher education (BA, BSc or equivalent) with an emphasis on speech and language pathology, linguistics, biomedical sciences, psychology or special education. We invite high profile students worldwide to submit their applications for participation in the 2008/09 course (which starts in September 2008) until January 15, 2008 (application deadline). *Further Information and Contact: ** * For more detailed information on Erasmus Mundus, the EMCL programme's aims, curriculum, admission criteria, scholarships, organisation, contact information etc., please visit the EMCL website at www.emcl-mundus.com For further information, non-European applicants may contact Dr. Frank Burchert (burchert at ling.uni-potsdam.de ). European students send their requests about the programme to Dr. Roel Jonkers (r.jonkers at let.rug.nl ). --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk Mon Nov 26 17:33:00 2007 From: a.crutchley at hud.ac.uk (Alison Crutchley) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:33:00 -0000 Subject: Maternity cover work at Huddersfield University, UK Message-ID: Please could you forward this to anyone you think may be interested? Part-time temporary maternity cover at University of Huddersfield We are looking for someone who is based within travelling distance of Huddersfield, UK, to provide part-time cover for maternity leave starting in April 2008. The work will include: A. In April-June 2008: * marking assignments for the third year undergraduate module Bilingualism; * ditto for second year module Child Language Acquisition; * marking a small number of undergraduate dissertations on topics in bilingualism, child language and sociolinguistics; * marking assignments for the MA module Language Development and Diversity (looks at language development in the school years in monolingual and multilingual children); B. in ca. July - September 2008: * being the 'contact person' while students are studying the distance learning version of the MA module Language Development and Diversity, and marking their assignments; * possible supervision and marking of one or more MA dissertations on bilingualism. Please contact Merrick Burrow for further information or with informal enquiries: Dr Merrick Burrow Head of English School of Music, Humanities and Media University of Huddersfield Queensgate HUDDERSFIELD HD1 3DH West Yorkshire UK Tel: +44 (0)1484 472685 Fax +44 (0)1484 472655 Email: m.burrow at hud.ac.uk This transmission is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you receive it in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and remove it from your system. If the content of this e-mail does not relate to the business of the University of Huddersfield, then we do not endorse it and will accept no liability. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From cegn at pdx.edu Wed Nov 28 03:23:27 2007 From: cegn at pdx.edu (Christina) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 19:23:27 -0800 Subject: Child Language Position in Speech & Hearing Sciences at Portland State University Message-ID: The Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Portland State University invites applications for two full-time, tenure-track faculty positions at the Assistant or Associate Professor levels. These are nine-month positions, beginning September 15, 2008. Each position requires an earned doctorate in Speech-Language Pathology and CCC-SLP. Candidates for position #1 should have expertise in child language development and disorders. Applicants for position #2 should have expertise in fluency, voice, craniofacial disorders or speech science, although other areas of expertise will be considered. Responsibilities for both positions include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in areas of expertise, academic advising, participation in graduate theses and projects, as well as departmental and university service. Applicants must demonstrate a clear line of research with potential for external funding. Salary is commensurate with level of experience and qualifications. Please send a letter of interest, current vitae and three letters of reference to: Thomas Dolan, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. Phone: 503-725-3264; Fax: 503-725-9171; Email: dolant at pdx.edu. Review of applications will begin on December 3, 2007 and continue until finalists are identified. Portland State University is an Affirmative Action, Equal opportunity institution and, in keeping with the president's diversity initiative, welcomes applications from diverse candidates and candidates who support diversity. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Tue Nov 27 12:33:14 2007 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Gathercole) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:33:14 +0000 Subject: Reminder & EXTENDED DEADLINE Biling Conference Message-ID: In response to several inquiries, the deadline for the submission of abstracts for our International Conference on Models of Interaction in Bilinguals has been extended for one month to January 2nd, 2008. Please find below the call for papers with the new date. Thanks. Best regards, Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole Co-Director, ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Call for Papers INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MODELS OF INTERACTION IN BILINGUALS ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom October 24 - 26, 2008 The ESRC Centre for Bilingualism in Theory and Practice invites submissions for talks and posters on the topic of "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", broadly defined to include, e.g., interaction between the bilingual's two languages, interaction between language and cognition, interaction between bilinguals' writing systems/literacy, and any other relevant topic. INVITED SPEAKERS Ellen Bialystok, York University and Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto Ton Dijkstra, Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, The Netherlands David Green, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Dept. of Psychology, University College London, UK Judith Kroll, Pennsylvania State University, USA Ping Li, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA N?ria Sebasti?n Gall?s, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Oral Presentations will be half hour talks. N.B.: All invited and accepted speakers must submit a short version of their talk prior to the conference, for circulation to other presenters and for availability through our website to other participants. Posters should be 80 x 120 cm (A0) or less. The word limit for abstracts for oral presentations and posters is 200 words, excluding references, title, and author information. [Note: A selection of papers from the conference will be submitted to a peer-review process for possible inclusion in a special issue of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism on "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", with Virginia Gathercole as Guest Editor. We will invite all oral presenters to submit more complete copies of their papers for consideration, and all poster presenters will be invited to similarly submit papers for possible inclusion. A separate call will also go out for possible submissions from outside the conference. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Please note that paper submission will not guarantee acceptance, however.] Extended deadline for submission of abstracts: January 2nd, 2008 Abstracts will be submitted and processed electronically, at www.bilingualism.bangor.ac.uk For further information, please see our website or contact the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, r.a.ieuan at bangor.ac.uk, or Prof. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, at bilconf at bangor.ac.uk. Forthcoming Conferences to be sponsored by the Centre: 2009/2010 - Neurobilingualism [contact: Guillaume Thierry] 2010/2011 - Bilingual/Multi-lingual Education [contact: Colin Baker] 2011/2012 - Social Aspects of Bilingualism [contact: Eddie Williams] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonathan.bobaljik at uconn.edu Fri Nov 30 20:07:17 2007 From: jonathan.bobaljik at uconn.edu (bobaljik) Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:07:17 -0800 Subject: Overheard L2 exposure - references sought Message-ID: Dear Listmembers, I am looking for studies regarding the effects of overheard / incidental L2 exposure on early L1 (age < 3 yrs). More specifically, I'm aware of some work by T. Au and colleagues suggesting benefits for later L2 acquisition/learning (Psych. Sci; Cognition), but what I'm looking for is studies that will be relevant in an upcoming discussion, where at least one group does not have bilingualism (at any level) as a goal for their children. At issue in the discussion will be whether allowing care-givers to speak e.g., Spanish amongst themselves (in the presence of the children, but not to the children) in an English-speaking day care environment will have any detrimental effects on the L1 (English) development of the children. Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, -Jonathan Bobaljik U Conn. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Tue Nov 27 12:33:14 2007 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Gathercole) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:33:14 +0000 Subject: Reminder & EXTENDED DEADLINE Biling Conference Message-ID: In response to several inquiries, the deadline for the submission of abstracts for our International Conference on Models of Interaction in Bilinguals has been extended for one month to January 2nd, 2008. Please find below the call for papers with the new date. Thanks. Best regards, Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole Co-Director, ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Call for Papers INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MODELS OF INTERACTION IN BILINGUALS ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom October 24 - 26, 2008 The ESRC Centre for Bilingualism in Theory and Practice invites submissions for talks and posters on the topic of "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", broadly defined to include, e.g., interaction between the bilingual's two languages, interaction between language and cognition, interaction between bilinguals' writing systems/literacy, and any other relevant topic. INVITED SPEAKERS Ellen Bialystok, York University and Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto Ton Dijkstra, Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, The Netherlands David Green, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Dept. of Psychology, University College London, UK Judith Kroll, Pennsylvania State University, USA Ping Li, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA N?ria Sebasti?n Gall?s, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Oral Presentations will be half hour talks. N.B.: All invited and accepted speakers must submit a short version of their talk prior to the conference, for circulation to other presenters and for availability through our website to other participants. Posters should be 80 x 120 cm (A0) or less. The word limit for abstracts for oral presentations and posters is 200 words, excluding references, title, and author information. [Note: A selection of papers from the conference will be submitted to a peer-review process for possible inclusion in a special issue of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism on "Models of Interaction in Bilinguals", with Virginia Gathercole as Guest Editor. We will invite all oral presenters to submit more complete copies of their papers for consideration, and all poster presenters will be invited to similarly submit papers for possible inclusion. A separate call will also go out for possible submissions from outside the conference. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Please note that paper submission will not guarantee acceptance, however.] Extended deadline for submission of abstracts: January 2nd, 2008 Abstracts will be submitted and processed electronically, at www.bilingualism.bangor.ac.uk For further information, please see our website or contact the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, r.a.ieuan at bangor.ac.uk, or Prof. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, at bilconf at bangor.ac.uk. Forthcoming Conferences to be sponsored by the Centre: 2009/2010 - Neurobilingualism [contact: Guillaume Thierry] 2010/2011 - Bilingual/Multi-lingual Education [contact: Colin Baker] 2011/2012 - Social Aspects of Bilingualism [contact: Eddie Williams] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group. To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: