16.1079, Calls: Corpus Ling/UK; Anthropological Ling/South Africa

Wed Apr 6 22:14:37 UTC 2005

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1079. Wed Apr 06 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1079, Calls: Corpus Ling/UK; Anthropological Ling/South Africa

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1)
Date: 04-Apr-2005
From: Alan Wallington < A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk >
Subject: 3rd Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language

2)
Date: 04-Apr-2005
From: Nicholas Ostler < nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk >
Subject: Foundation for Endangered Languages: Ninth Conference

-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 18:04:20
From: Alan Wallington < A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk >
Subject: 3rd Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language

Fund Drive 2005 is now on! Visit http://linguistlist.org/donate.html to donate now!

Full Title: 3rd Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language

Date: 14-Jul-2005 - 14-Jul-2005
Location: Birmingham, United Kingdom
Contact Person: Alan Wallington
Meeting Email: A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk
Web Site: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~amw/CorpusLinguistics05.html

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; Text/Corpus
Linguistics

Call Deadline: 25-May-2005

Meeting Description:

Third Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language
July 14th 2005 Birmingham UK

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~amw/CorpusLinguistics05.html

part of Corpus Linguistics 2005
(conference webpage: http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/conference/)

The third workshop will continue with one of the strengths of the series, namely
its interdisciplinary nature, asking only that attendees share an interest
either in the use of corpora to elucidate aspects of figurative language, such
as metaphor, metonymy, irony, or hyperbole, or in the study of corpus techniques
and tools that may be needed for this. However, we believe that the field has
now matured sufficiently to allow us to propose a theme, namely: 'the nature and
use of the source domain'. Papers and discussion addressing this topic will be
particularly welcome. Nonetheless, we will continue to accept good papers
examining any aspect of figurative language from a corpus-based perspective.

THEME

A leading hypothesis in metaphor theory is that our knowledge of familiar source
domains is used systematically to help understand or delineate difficult,
complex or abstract target domains. Importantly for this approach, source
domains are usually thought of as consisting of vast networks of knowledge such
as we would have of buildings, families, journeys wars, etc. Under this
approach, many different aspects of the source are viewed as being in a
systematic correspondence with aspects of the target and inferences that can be
made about the source are understood as transferring to inferences about the
target. And there has been much research using corpora amongst other tools to
uncover the systematically related sets of correspondences that would associate
these vast, ontologically rich, source domains to the more abstract target domains.

However despite research detailing many examples of such systematic
correspondences, there remain problems with the hypothesis. For example, Grady
has noted numerous instances where individual correspondences, reported as
belonging to one set of source domain to target domain correspondences have a
much wider currency and can also be found amongst the correspondences proposed
for completely different source and target domain pairings. Conversely, he has
also noted the existence of common and prominent features of the source domain
that appear to have no target domain correspondents. For example, whilst the
language of buildings is often used to describe the target domain of theories,
such important parts of a building as the windows or the internal wiring have no
common equivalents in the target domain of theories. These observations suggest
that giving primacy to the type of rich domain suggested earlier might be a
mistake. But must all the apparently systematically related correspondences that
were previously taken to define the type of ontologically rich domain that can
be used to structure an abstract target be reanalysed either as primary
metaphors, the result of the interaction of primary metaphors or as novel
coinings? What role is there now for the traditional view of the source domain?
It is very difficult to rely solely on intuitions on this issue.

A further problem with source domains is that often the type of situations being
described are not ones that would normally hold of the source domain if one were
not speaking metaphorically, and can at times be extremely odd or counter to
much of our general knowledge about the source. This would cast doubt on the
view that familiar reasoning patterns imported from source are used to help
structure the target. For example, Musolff (2004) presents numerous examples
drawn from British and German newspapers in which various nations within the
European Union are described as ''fathers of the Euro''. But how can a child
have multiple fathers and why are no mothers assumed? This is not a case of
using the structure of the familiar to describe the less familiar or abstract.
One might entertain the hypothesis that if a recognisable odd situation holds
within the source domain, then the oddness would transfer in an invariant manner
to the target. Yet this is certainly not the case here.

Other examples in which important and familiar aspects of the source are ignored
when the source is used metaphorically are easy to find. Compare the following
two conventional metaphors: 'This reflects the views of the majority'; 'This is
a mirror image of the views of the majority'. The existence of the latter shows
that we are familiar with the 'reversing' property of reflections, but the two
metaphors have opposite meanings. Thus much of our familiar knowledge of
reflections is ignored when the former is used. Indeed, it is often not just
that source domain knowledge is ignored but that at times it is directly flouted
in the service of metaphor. Aristotle argues that there is conventional analogy
(in modern terms) between 'the shield of Ares' and the 'cup of Dionysus', and
this allows the metaphor 'the cup of Ares' to be used to refer to the shield.
However, he also notes that one may deny the source term one of its proper
attributes and describe the shield as 'the wineless cup'. But what is a wineless
cup? It seems that the breaking of source domain expectations is a signal that a
metaphor is being used.

Andreas Musolff. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse Analogical Reasoning in
Debates about Europe. Palgrave Macmillan.

SUBMISSIONS

Anybody wishing to present at the workshop should submit a two-page extended
abstract. References and tables need not be included in the two pages. If
accepted, authors will be invited to submit a full paper (maximum eight pages)
prior to the workshop which will be included in the workshop proceedings and
published as a University of Birmingham Technical Report with an ISBN number. As
reviewing will be blind, the paper should not include the authors' names and
affiliations. Furthermore, self-references that reveal the author's identity,
e.g., ''We previously showed (Smith, 1991)...'', should be avoided. Send the
pdf, postscript, rtf, or MS Word form of your submission to: Alan Wallington
(A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk ), who will also answer any queries regarding the
submission.

WORKSHOP DEADLINES

Abstract submission deadline:  Wednesday 25th May 2005
Notification of acceptance or rejection:  Monday 6th June 2005
Deadline for receipt of full papers for
inclusion in workshop proceedings:  Thursday 30th June
2005 Date of Workshop:  Thursday 14th July

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

John Barnden
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
J.A.Barnden at cs.bham.ac.uk

Sheila Glasbey
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
S.R.Glasbey at cs.bham.ac.uk

Mark Lee
Schoolof Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
M.G.Lee at cs.bham.ac.uk

Alan Wallington
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
A.M.Wallington at cs.bham.ac.uk

Li J (Jane) Zhang
School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT U.K.
L.Zhang at cs.bham.ac.uk

-------------------------Message 2 ----------------------------------
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 18:04:25
From: Nicholas Ostler < nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk >
Subject: Foundation for Endangered Languages: Ninth Conference

Full Title: Foundation for Endangered Languages: Ninth Conference
Short Title: FEL IX

Date: 18-Nov-2005 - 20-Nov-2005
Location: Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa
Contact Person: Nigel Crawhall
Meeting Email: crawhall at mweb.co.za
Web Site: http://www.ogmios.org

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; General Linguistics; Ling &
Literature; Sociolinguistics

Call Deadline: 24-Apr-2005

Meeting Description:

FEL IX - Creating Outsiders: Endangered Languages, Migration and Marginalization

The Foundation for Endangered Languages: Ninth Conference
Stellenbosch, South Africa, 18-20 November 2005

Today's world-maps, political and linguistic, were laid out through human
population movements, some ancient but some of them very recent. In this year's
conference we want to address the effects of these movements on language
communities: how they dissolve communities, and change their status; how
communities may re-form in foreign places, and the relations between incomers
and the established populations, whichever has the upper hand; the impact of
empires, deportation, mass immigration, population loss from emigration.
Remembered migration histories may be relevant to the modern self-image of
communities. Internal migration by dominant-language speakers into the
territories of minorities may lead to the marginalization of others /in situ/;
and minorities often decamp to the dominant centres under various pressures.

The UN has declared a second International Decade of the World's Indigenous
Peoples. The languages we talk about will be very varied, and likely to include
the languages of communities all over the world. Some of them are spoken by
indigenous communities, which have become a minority on their own original
territory due to the immigration of a dominant majority group. This kind of
marginalization is very common, and notable examples include the San languages
in South Africa, the Ainu language in Japan and many pre-Hispanic languages in
California. It plays a major role in the current civil disorder in Nepal. In
some cases, endangered languages may have gone into their own world-wide
diapora: such is the case of Plautdietsch, language of the Mennonites, who
emigrated to many places (Siberia, Canada, Mexico, Paraguay), where often their
language became marginalised.

Marginalization can, however, result from a variety of causes: a state policy of
forced assimilation, military domination, religious conversion, the wish for
social betterment, attendance at boarding schools, etc. We shall look at how
both the State and communities can address the causes of marginalization, and of
course its effects on the survival and development of languages. Besides the
international dimension, this year's location in South Africa will give members
an opportunity to get acquainted with many of the local linguistic issues, among
them the position of Khoe and San, the past and future of Afrikaans, but also
the Makhuwa-speaking ex-slaves from Durban, the Phuthi speakers from Eastern
Cape, and no doubt many others.

Issues that may arise include:

- Why are migration histories so treasured as sources of language identity?

- Do language-communities always (or ever) have better prospects of survival in
their home territories than when transplanted?

- Can language-communities on their home ground and in diaspora give each other
effective support?

- Can small language-communities create new identities in remote territories?

- Can new communities resulting from migration or deportation establish a new
quasi-indigenous identity based on a shared language?

- What is the value of cultural resources for maintenance of status and active
language use within endangered language communities?

- Do technical media have a significant role in combatting or reinforcing
marginalization?

- Is it possible to reconcile the recognition of official languages with respect
for a much larger number of indigenous languages?

- Can minority and even endangered languages play an active role in a state's
policy of multilingualism?

Local Site

The University of Stellenbosch is in South Africa's Western Cape, close to Cape
Town. It has had a Department of African Languages for more than half a century
(http://academic.sun.ac.za/african_languages); it has a Department of General
Linguistics (.../linguist/index_english.htm) and a Language Centre
(.../taalsentrum/index_engframeset.htm).

Abstract Submission

Abstracts should not exceed 500 words. They may be submitted in two ways: by
electronic submission, and alternatively on paper. Most simply, they should be
written in English. Other languages may also be accepted by prior arrangement
with the Conference Chair Nigel Crawhall (crawhall at mweb.co.za) or FEL Chairman
Nicholas Ostler  (nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk)

1) Electronic submission: Electronic submission (by 24 April 2005) should be as
an attachment in Word, or simply as an email message to crawhall at mweb.co.za,
with a copy to FEL at chibcha.demon.co.uk. Please fill in the subject domain as
follows: FEL_Abstract

The e-mail should also contain, in the following format:

NAME : Names of the author(s)
TITLE: Title of the paper
EMAIL: Email address of the first author, if any
ADDRESS: Postal address of the first author
TEL: Telephone number of the first author, if any
FAX: Fax number of the first author, if any
The name of the first author will be used in all correspondence.

2) Paper abstracts: Three copies should be sent (to arrive by 1 May 2005) to:

FEL IX Conference Admin
Foundation for Endangered Languages
172 Bailbrook Lane
Bath BA1 7AA
United Kingdom

This should have a clear short title, but should not bear anything to identify
the author(s).

On a separate sheet, enclosed in an envelope, please include the following
information:

NAME : Names of the author(s)
TITLE: Title of the paper
EMAIL: Email address of the first author, if any
ADDRESS: Postal address of the first author
TEL: Telephone number of the first author, if any
FAX: Fax number of the first author, if any
The name of the first author will be used in all correspondence.

(If possible, please also send an e-mail to Funmi Adeniyi
(FEL at chibcha.demon.co.uk) informing her of the paper submission. This is in case
the hard copy does not reach its destination in time. This e-mail should contain
the information specified in the above section.)

Oral presentations will last twenty minutes each, with a further ten minutes for
discussion. Plenary lectures will last forty-five minutes each. Authors will be
expected to submit a written paper with the full version of the lecture for
publication in the proceedings well in advance of the conference.

Important Dates

- Abstract arrival deadlines - 24 April 2005 (e-mail); 1 May 2005 (by post)
- Committee's decision 15 May 2005
- In case of acceptance, the full paper should be sent by 31 Aug 2005. (Further
details on the format of text will be specified to the authors)
- Conference 18-20 November 2005

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