ALT NEWS 95-1
Johan.VanDerAuwera
auwera at reks.uia.ac.be
Thu Jan 19 09:45:43 UTC 1995
ALT News I/95
What has ALT done since it was founded in March 1994?
-- you will have asked yourself on many a sombre winter's (Antipodean
readers read: summer's) evening, as yet another year of our fading
millennium was inevitably drawing to a somewhat inconclusive close. Lest a
deep gloom settles on anyone over yet another question to remain forever
unanswered, let this edition of ALT News put on record what merits being
recorded.
As behoves an association, ALT has acquired (provisional) members.
(See below on the subject of how provisionals become members in full
standing.) This was done at the rate of approximately 0.70909090909 (and so
on, ad infinitum) per day, yielding a sum total of precisely 195 whole men
and women on the stroke of midnight of 31 December 1994. In case you wonder
where on earth the 0.70909090909 daily newcomers, including yourself, have
all come from, here is the answer:
GREATER EUROPE (including Transcaucasus and Circummediterranean)
Finland 2
Norway 2
Sweden 6
Denmark 3
Ireland 1
UK 11
Netherlands 12
Belgium 3
France 4
Germany 33
Switzerland 5
Austria 4
Italy 12
Spain 5
Slovenia 1
Croatia 2
Czechia 1
Hungary 2
Russia 15
Georgia 1
Azerbaijan 1
Israel 1
Morocco 1
----------------------
subtotal 128
AMERICAS
US 41
Canada 3
Jamaica 1
-----------------------
subtotal 45
DOWN UNDER
Australia 12
New Zealand 2
------------------------
subtotal 14
SOUTH EAST ASIA
Japan 5
Taiwan 1
Hong Kong 1
Singapore 1
-------------------------
subtotal 8
----------------------------------
grand total 195
Although the (provisional) ALT density is evidently higher in some
lands than in others (further statistics available on request), it is no
gross exaggeration to conclude from this breakdown that ALT's presence is
global, and will before long be ubiquitous.
If you are curious how the entire globe came to know about ALT, the
news was or is being spread, by word of mouth as well as in writing (in the
form of some version or other of our flyer/flier), by
(a) many of you,
(b) us,
(c) the Linguist List,
(d) the EUROTYP Newsletter (No. 10, June 1994, pages 14-15),
(e) the LSA Bulletin (No. 144, 1994, June, pages 10-11),
(f) California Linguistic Notes (Spring 1994, p. 66),
(g) Nordic Linguistic Bulletin (? Details please, those in the know),
(h) Studies in Language (?),
(i) Diachronica (11, 1994, page 230),
(j) Languages of the World (8, 1994, pages 47-48),
(k) Voprosy jazykoznanija (6, 1994, last page),
(l) Bulletin of the International Pragmatics Association (?).
Thank you very much, (a)-(l). And don't flag in your personal publicity
campaigns, (a)!
Unlike certain crustaceans, notably the hermit crab, man is a
social biped who, from time to time, likes to hold meetings. This is
precisely what fledgling ALT did, on 28 November - 1 December last year.
Although attendance was not compulsory, some 60 of the growing numbers of
provisionals flocked to the lakeside resort of Konstanz am Bodensee
(Germany) for that special occasion. This is, inter alia, what they did to
instruct and entertain themselves, hosted by the local university.
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Universitaet Konstanz, Fachgruppe Sprachwissenschaft
Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT)
Venue: Internationales Begegnungszentrum (IBZ II) der Universitaet Konstanz
ITALIAN FROM A TYPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Monday, 28 November 1994
chair: Paolo Ramat (Pavia)
10:00-13:00 Pier Marco Bertinetto (Pisa):
Italian syllabification in a typological perspective
chair: Christoph Schwarze (Konstanz)
15:00-16:00 Paolo Ramat (Pavia):
Negation in Italian and other languages
16:00-17:00 Martin Haase (Osnabruck):
Grammaticalization and functionalization in the dialects of Central
Italy
17:00-18:00 Alberto Nocentini (Firenze):
Topical constraints in the verbal agreement of spoken Italian
Tuesday, 29 November 1994
chair: Edith A. Moravcsik (Milwaukee)
09:00-12:00 Pier Marco Bertinetto (Pisa):
A typology of the progressive - Italian and other European
languages
12:00-12:45 Christoph Schwarze (Konstanz):
On auxiliaries
12:45-13:45 Michela Cennamo (Napoli):
Passive and impersonal constructions in Italian dialects
THE ALT PRE-INAUGURAL MEETING
Tuesday, 29 November 1994
chair: Frans Plank (Konstanz)
18:00-18:45 Johan van der Auwera (Antwerpen):
On Flemish, from a typological perspective
18:45-19:30 John Ole Askedal (Oslo):
On Norwegian, especially its so-called ergativity
19:30-20:15 Dubravko Kucanda (Osijek):
On Croatian, as opposed to Serbian
20:15-21:00 David Gil (Singapore):
On Riau, the easy or the simple way
Wednesday, 30 November 1994
chair: Greville G. Corbett (Surrey)
09:00-09:45 Hansjakob Seiler (Lenzburg):
Determination in a dimensional perspective
09:45-10:30 Edith A. Moravcsik (Milwaukee):
European determination, or Parts and wholes
10:30-11:15 Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (Stockholm):
A woman of sin, a man of duty, and a hell of a mess
chair: Pier Marco Bertinetto (Pisa)
11:30-12:15 Frans Plank & Wolfgang Schellinger (Konstanz):
Greenberg 45 and 37
12:15-13:00 Jan Anward (Stockholm):
Towards a typology of part-of-speech systems
13:00-13:45 Martin Haspelmath (Berlin):
The typology of equative and similative constructions and Standard
Average European
chair: Frans Plank and Johan van der Auwera
15:30-18:00 ALT Matters
chair: Gilbert Lazard (Paris)
18:15-19:15 Michela Cennamo (Napoli):
Transitivity and VS order in Italian reflexives
19:15-20:00 Ann Lindvall (Lund):
Transitive verbs and their objects as prototypes
Thursday, 1 December 1994
chair: Hansjakob Seiler (Lenzburg)
09:00-13:00 The Association Symposium
Edith A. Moravcsik (Milwaukee):
Associative plurals
Grev Corbett (Surrey) & Marianne Mithun (Santa Barbara):
Associative forms in a typology of number systems - Evidence from
Yup'ik
David Gil (Singapore):
Association and number
Frans Plank & Wolfgang Schellinger (Konstanz):
Supplementary remarks on elliptic and sylleptic duals
Further discussion
Summary by Edith Moravcsik
chair: Johan van der Auwera (Antwerpen)
14:30-15:15 Andrej Malcukov (Sankt Peterburg):
Relativization in Ewen
15:15-15:45 Rolf Thieroff (Bonn):
Preterites and imperfects in the languages of Europe
15:45-16:15 Vera Podlesskaja (Moskva):
On the semantic typology of conditionals
chair: Aleksandr E. Kibrik (Moskva)
16:30-17:15 Ulrich Lueders (Unterschleissheim bei Muenchen):
Principles of actant marking in the verbal complex, with special
reference to Basque
17:15-18:00 Erika Kaltenbacher (Heidelberg):
Prosodic coherence in Modern Standard German
***************************************************************************
The publication of proceedings of this or future meetings has been
banned by the ALT Charter. There is a division of labour between ALT
meetings, which is where we meet to talk and listen to each other, and the
ALT journal, which is where you may get published.
Since amidst all the entertainment and instruction social bipeds
also like to do business at their meetings, even very early ones, a
business meeting was duly convened at ALT Meeting Zero. It lasted some
three hours on Wednesday afternoon, and proved so exciting that a
continuation was called for around Thursday noon. Naturally it was a bit
provisional, though we hesitate to refer to it as the Annual General
Meeting Null. Among the items on the agenda were these, here reconstructed
with the help of the minutes (expertly kept by The President of The
Linguistics Association of Great Britain, no less) and supplemented by
information that has become available since. You are advised to read on
even if your interest is more in ALT's future than in its past.
Organization
The question was raised by Frans Plank whether it might not be
useful to have a provisional executive committee to take responsibility for
all kinds of ALT business until officers and committees have been properly
elected. The assembly thought not, and asked Plank and van der Auwera to
carry on as acting executive committee until the 1995 meeting.
Communication
For future dissemination of the bi- or tri-monthly ALT News on the
e-mail network the ALT List has been set up, courtesy of Anthony
Aristar (Texas A&M). Those on e-mail are asked to send items they would
like to be included in the ALT News--such as information about ongoing
typological activities, coming events, or requests for information--to the
ALT List: alt at tamvm1.tamu.edu. Note that the '1' is a 'one' and not an 'ell'.
Snail mail members will continue to receive the ALT News
from the Konstanz and Antwerpen offices, and their contributions should be
sent to Plank's or van der Auwera's snail mail addresses.
1995 and Future Annual Meetings
As to the date of future ALT meetings, the majority of the assembly
(and of those of you who have commented on this issue in writing) favoured
an autumn over spring or winter dates. There was a consensus that the
length of our meetings normally ought to be three full days (preferably
including a Saturday, in order to keep air fares low), with the possibility
of an additional preceding or following day or couple of days for language
workshops offered by the host institution.
Accordingly, we aim to hold the inaugural meeting between late
August and early October 1995--which is not as far away as you may be
inclined to hope. Members are asked to inform the acting executive
committee asap of any conflicting commitments during this period (such as
ICHL Manchester 13-18 Aug, Phonetic Sciences Stockholm 13-19 Aug,
SLE Leiden 31 Aug-2 Sep, LAGB Essex 18-20 Sep, Linguistica
romanza Palermo 18-23 Sep, Greek Linguistics Trento 29-30 Sep).
As to the venue of the inaugural meeting, several alternatives were
suggested, including Jersey (Johan van der Auwera), Lancaster (Anna
Siewierska), Gasteiz-Vitoria in the Basque Country of Spain (Lourdes M.
Onederra), and Amsterdam (Casper de Groot). After some discussion of
general criteria for choosing ALT venues--including the cost of getting and
staying there, the availability of local funding for the running of the
conference (preferably without ALT members being charged a conference fee),
the enthusiasm of the hosting institution for matters typological, the
possibility of organizing teach-ins or workshops on local languages or of
holding (partly) joint meetings with learned societies devoted to
particular languages or language families--the assembly's provisional
leanings were towards Amsterdam or Gasteiz-Vitoria. The potential hosts
were asked to provide the acting executive committee with further details
asap, so that by late February we will know for sure where we are going to
congregate at the autumnal date soon to be appointed.
In view of the continental distribution of the ALT membership, the
1996 meeting is likely to take place in North America. Offers to host ALT n
(1<n<10) are welcome, especially if they meet the criteria just mentioned.
But back to ALT n (n=1). We suggest that one day of the 1995
meeting be set apart for the tasks of properly constituting ourselves and
of planning ALT's future. What is going to happen on the two other days
will primarily be the responsibility of the Abstracts Reading Committee,
the very first committee to have been set up by ALT. The Abstract Readers
nominated by the Konstanz assembly are Edith Moravcsik (Milwaukee, chair),
Pier Marco Bertinetto (Pisa), Grev Corbett (Surrey), Nick Evans
(Melbourne), Aleksandr Kibrik (Moskva), Gilbert Lazard (Paris), and the
local organizer or her/his representative. Thus, if you have done, or are
in the process of doing, research that you seriously think is worth
reporting on to the ALT 1 audience, send an abstract, no longer than one
page (no need to add dozens of references to your own work since it won't
be judged anonymously), to Edith Moravcsik before 31 May 1995--e-mail
address: edith at csd.uwm.edu; snail-mail address (7 copies please): Dept. of
Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413,
USA; fax: +414-229-6258.
Indicate on your abstract how much precious time you would like to
be allotted for your presentation (including discussion): 30, 45, 60
minutes, or more (in case some of you team up to organize a symposium, such
as that devoted to Association at ALT 0, or a language teach-in).
Further ALT Activities
One of the things ALT ought to aim at is to hold occasional, and
not necessarily annual, summer or maybe also winter schools. 1995 was
generally considered too early for such an enterprise, but we ought to
begin to explore suitable venues, dates, and possibilities of funding,
since a summer/winter school takes time to prepare.
Another thing we might envisage in order to make ALT a regional as
well as a global force is to encourage certain smaller-scale activities,
such as regional workshops. Thus, what we could easily organize at
relatively short notice with our present resources are events such as the
following:
-- a workshop on sampling and data base methodology, with particular
reference to the Implications Register in the ALT journal
(Konstanz/Germany, summer 1995, local organizers: Frans Plank and Jan
Rijkhoff);
-- an introduction to Kartvelian (Jena/Germany, autumn or winter 1995,
local organizer: Heinz Faehnrich);
-- a workshop on the typological profiles of selected regional languages or
dialects of Europe (Antwerpen/Belgium, late 1995, local organizer: Johan
van der Auwera).
R.S.V.P. if you see a demand for such additional ALT activities or joint
ventures, or if you have further suggestions of a similar kind.
Journal
The journal has been the subject of lively discussion since ALT's
foundation. There are essentially four points of view represented in the
ALT membership: (a) not to have an own journal (contrary to the ALT
Charter's commitment to have one); (b) to take over an existing journal as
the ALT membership journal, appropriately restructured; (c) to set up a new
journal; (d) to live happily with either (c) or (d). Although no formal
vote has been taken among the entire provisional ALT membership, it seems
fair to say, also in light of a straw poll at the Konstanz assembly, that
the no-journal party is a very small minority. On the current evidence,
opinions appear to be divided more or less evenly, depending on how you
poll them, between the take-over, the clean-slate, and the don't-care
alternatives, with little prospect of a sufficient number of take-overers
or clean-slaters changing their opinions to render an eventual vote
near-unanimous, one way or the other.
Since ALT's foundation Plank and van der Auwera have explored the
take-over and the clean-slate alternatives, as envisaged by the ALT
Charter, and both would in principle have proved viable options, though not
equally unproblematic and promising ones. On the take-over front, the prey
that suggested itself (or rather was suggested most emphatically) was the
journal "Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung" (STUF), and
negotiations have been conducted with its publishers (Akademie-Verlag,
Berlin) and editors. In pursuit of the clean-slate alternative, several
publishers have been approached or have approached ALT, including Mouton de
Gruyter and Oxford University Press, to name only those where negotiations
have progressed furthest.
After lengthy deliberations it seemed that, all things considered,
the interests of ALT would be best served by going for the Mouton de
Gruyter option and starting off the journal with a clean slate. The
fundamental interests of ALT are that its journal, to be entitled
"Linguistic Typology" (LT) and to be structured as outlined in the ALT
Charter, be distinctive, good, affordable, and available--and Mouton de
Gruyter, an economically sound international publisher with a remarkable
record in linguistics in general and typology in particular, are offering
ALT the best possible conditions for achieving these four aims, apart from
having responded most enthusiastically to our plans of setting up a new
journal.
We expect to conclude negotiations with Mouton de Gruyter later
this month, and further particulars will then be in the ALT News. As to the
price, LT will cost salaried ALT members about DM 70, and unsalaried or
student members somewhat less, resulting in a membership fee of about DM
100, or somewhat less for the not-so-rich (and buying them reductions on
various typology-related products of Mouton de Gruyter's.
In order to get LT going, a provisional editorial board is
currently being constituted whose immediate task is to produce a model
issue No. 0 of LT, to be available by mid-1995, and to prepare the first
real issues, planned to appear in 1996.
The ALT membership is herewith asked to submit papers of the kind
envisaged in the ALT Charter (target articles, articles, language profiles
or family portraits, implications register, topical bibliographies,
historical reminiscences, reviews or book notices) for possible inclusion
in LT. As yet, you need not worry unduly about matters of style; there will
be a style sheet in LT 0, and you will eventually have to redo your
contribution accordingly, if accepted. Right now, simply send the
provisional managing editor (Frans Plank, Sprachwissenschaft, Universitaet
Konstanz, Postfach 5560, D-78434 Konstanz, Germany) three hard copies of
the paper, accompanied by the same paper on disk (preferably Mac-readable
and written in Word), and it will undergo proper reviewing.
Membership
Provisional members are encouraged to become real members by
returning the form below, filled in, to Johan van der Auwera and by making
a transfer of the 1995 membership dues to the benefit of same. Effect this
transfer in either of three ways:
(a) send a Eurocheque for an amount of 600 Belgian Francs
(salaried) or 400 Belgian Francs (student or unsalaried);
(b) send a cheque drawn on an American bank for an amount of 21 US
$ (salaried) or 14 US $ (student or unsalaried);
(c) make a bank transfer to Johan van der Auwera, account
001-2276637-26 at the ASLK, Brussels, Belgium for the equivalent of 900
(salaried) or 700 Belgian Francs (student or unsalaried). These amounts
include 300 Francs' worth of bank charges--which is why you will probably
want to avoid this alternative if you can. ('ASLK' is the name of the bank
to profit from this mode of transfer; don't worry about the fact that it is
an abbreviation: the number uniquely identifies the bank as well the
account, and there is no need to identify a branch office.)
Aspiring members with currency problems should contact us; ALT
will eventually have to find one way or another of solving this kind of
problem.
The personal information that we ask for (again) includes your
special interests (typological ones that is, such as tones, clicks, final
devoicing, gender, incorporation, word order, ergativity, switch reference,
auxiliaries, cardinal numerals, ordinal numerals, distributive numerals)
and your language expertise (native tongue, other language(s) you know
well). This is to go into the ALT Directory, whose first edition will be
compiled prior to ALT 1.
In future, membership rights--including the receipt of LT 0, of the
ALT Directory, and perhaps even of the ALT News, the offering of papers for
LT and for ALT meetings, the voting in ALT elections and the holding of ALT
offices--will be the exclusive privilege of paid-up members.
For Your Diary
The next International Congress of Linguists will be held in Paris
in late July 1997.
(Though ALT News will not feature an events calendar, we would like
to alert our membership to goings-on of particular relevance to them. Do
send such information to the ALT List.)
This, in a nutshell, was what ALT has been doing since it has come
into being, and what it is up to in the near future.
The tasks that everybody is asked to flag in their short-term memory are
-- to become a real ALT member,
-- to proselytize for ALT,
-- to send items for future ALT News,
-- to submit abstracts for ALT 1,
-- to submit papers for LT,
-- to help shape ALT.
And now for something completely different. How to pronounce the
acronym ALT (or OLT, as they call it in Russia and Bavaria)? As a
monosyllabic word or as a sequence of three syllabified letters? Both
pronunciations have been heard in ALT circles, and this may be well turn
out to be another case where variatio delectat, as long as it does not lead
to a split in the association. Perhaps advice on this question is to be had
from our colleagues in Advanced Laser Technologies, who abbreviate
themselves as we do.
Finally, ALT, however pronounced, could do with a logo. Any suggestions?
Seasons Greetings!
FP
JvdA
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MEMBERSHIP FORM
I would like to join the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT), with my
membership beginning in 1995.
I pay my membership dues with Eurocheque / US cheque / bank transfer.
Date: Signature:
Surname, first name(s):
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Return this form (with cheque) to:
Johan van der Auwera, Linguistiek (GER), Universiteit Antwerpen (UIA),
B-2610 Antwerpen (Wilrijk), Belgium
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