ALT News 13

Thu Oct 3 20:25:39 UTC 1996

ALT News 13
September 1996

Contents:   1. ALT II
            2. ALT Regional Workshops
            3. Other meetings
            4. Linguistic Typology
            5. Other journals
            6. MdG offer(s)
            7. ALT on the Web

1. ALT II

Announcement and Call for Papers

The second meeting of the Association for Linguistic Typology
(ALT II) will be held at the University of Oregon, Eugene, from
September 11 to September 14, 1997. (The dates are the same as
those that had been informally discussed earlier. The venue,
which is different from that of some earlier discussions, is in
order to take advantage of the External Possessor Conference to
be held in Eugene immediately preceding ALT II; see item 3.2
below.) The local organizer for ALT II will be Prof. Scott
DeLancey, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon,
Eugene, OR  97403-1290, USA, delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu.

Members wishing to present a paper at ALT II are asked to send
SIX copies of a one-page abstract to the chair of the program
committee, Prof. Masayoshi Shibatani (address below), to reach
him no later than March 1, 1997. A second page (six copies) may
be attached to the abstract listing data. The program committee
will, by May 1, 1997, convey its decision on acceptance of papers
to those submitting abstracts.

Each abstract should include the author's name (or authors'
names) and mailing address (please, just one mailing address for
multiple authors), including telephone, fax, and e-mail address
as available. Each abstract should specify the amount of time
requested for the presentation, including discussion, which may
be 30, 45, or 60 minutes. Members may also submit abstracts for
symposia, including the names of participants and the amount of
time requested (which may, of course, exceed 60 minutes).

Address for mailing abstracts:
Prof. Masayoshi Shibatani
Faculty of Letters, Kobe University
1-1, Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku
Kobe 657, Japan

Further details of the meeting will appear in subsequent issues
of ALT News. We look forward to seeing you all in Eugene next
September.

2. ALT REGIONAL WORKSHOPS

2.1. MODALITY, Antwerp, 8-9 november 1996

The program of the ALT Regional Workshop on Modality, to take
place at the University of Antwerp, Belgium is as follows:

Friday 8 November 1996

13.55   Welcome

Chair: Frans Plank (Konstanz)

14.00   Giuliano Bernini (Pavia)
        Prohibitive negation: some typological considerations
14.50   Ton van der Wouden (Groningen)
        Polarized modal auxiliaries

Chair: Louis Goossens (Antwerp)

16.10   Johan van der Auwera (Antwerp) -
       On the typology of negative modals
17.00   Tania Kouteva (Koeln)
        to be announced
17.40   Lluisa Gracia (Girona) & Miren Azkarate
        (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
        Modality in word formation

Saturday 9 November

Chair: Bernd Kortmann (Freiburg i.Br.)

9.00    Sonia Cristofaro (Pavia)
        Grammaticalization and the expression of modality:
        a functional-typological approach
9.50    Anna Giacalone Ramat (Pavia)
        Grammaticalization of modality in language acquisition

Chair: Kees Hengeveld (Amsterdam)

11.20   Martine Cuvalay (Amsterdam)
        Modality in Arabic
12.10   Celia Kerslake (Oxford)
        Modality in Turkish

Chair: Jan Nuyts (Antwerp)

14.30   Francesca Fici Giusti (Firenze)
        The modality of the future tense in Slavic languages

15.20   Alan R. King (Gipuzkoa)
        Non-epistemic modality beyond the Germanic paradigm

17.00   Johan van der Auwera (Antwerp)
        The ALT implications register, partim modality

Anybody who would like to attend the workshop should contact
Johan van der Auwera, Linguistiek (GER), Universiteit Antwerpen
(UIA), B-2610 Antwerpen, Belgium, e-mail: auwera at uia.ua.ac.be,
fax: +32-3-8202762.

2.2. MALAY/INDONESIAN LINGUISTICS, Penang, Malaysia, 14 January
1997

ALT, in conjunction with the Universiti Sains Malaysia, will hold
a one-day symposium on Malay/Indonesian linguistics, on the 14th
of January 1997, in Penang, Malaysia.

Papers should be concerned with the Malay/Indonesian language in
any of its varieties, including Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa
Indonesia, Baba Malay, Bazaar Malay, and regional varieties of
Malay and Indonesian. Hopefully, papers will represent a wide
variety of fields within linguistics, as well as a diversity of
approaches and theoretical persuasions.

Persons wishing to present a paper at the symposium should submit
a short (one- or two-paragraph) abstract, before 1 December, to
David Gil, at either of the following addresses:

email:                   snailmail:
dgil at strauss.udel.edu    American Express
                         #01-04 Winsland House,
                         3 Killiney Road, 239519
                         Singapore

Speakers who have so far confirmed their participation include:
Geoffrey Benjamin, Peter Cole, David Gil, Gabriella Hermon,
Mashudi Kader.

3. OTHER EVENTS

3.1. SEMINAR ON LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY, Granada, 10-15 March 1997

Papers are invited for any topic in typology. One page abstracts
(for 30 minute presentations) may be submitted so as to arrive
no later than January 20, 1997. Papers may be sumitted in any
language (!), though English and Spanish are preferred. Speakers
will include Bernard Comrie, Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera, and
Vladimir Nedjalkov. Proceedings will be published.

Mail:        Juan de Dios Luque Duran / Francisco J. Manjon Pozas
            Universidad de Granada
            Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Edificio A
            Campus Cartuja, s/n
            E-18071 Granada
            Spain
Phone/Fax:  +34-58-243591
E-mail:     jluque at goliat.ugr.es
            fmanjon at platon.ugr.es

3.2. EXTERNAL POSSESSOR CONFERENCE, Eugene, Oregon, 7-10
September 1997

An interdisciplinary and international conference on External
Possession will immediately precede ALT II, and should be of
interest to ALT people.  This conference seeks to explore
typological limits on, and theoretical approaches to,
ExternalPossession; and the type of Noun  Incorporation that
shows semantic and syntactic connections to External Possession.
Included will be consideration of semantic, grammatical relation,
and functional constraints on External Possession constructions.
(See fuller discussion below.)

CONFERENCE FORMAT AND PARTICIPANTS
The conference will include papers from invited speakers, several
papers selected via abstract submission (see below), and focused
discussion on specific research questions.

Invited speakers and discussants include:  Judith Aissen, Mark
Baker, Immanuel Barshi, Melissa Bowerman, Hilary Chappell, Bill
Croft, Mark Durie, Zygmunt Frajzynger, Donna Gerdts, Martin
Haspelmath, Suzanne Kemmer, Jack Martin, William McGregor,
Marianne Mithun, Pamela Munro, Doris Payne, Tom Payne, Noel Rude,
Maura Velasquez-Castillo, and Roberto Zavala.

Abstracts should be one to two pages in length, and should
address in sufficient depth how the paper contributes to one or
more of the conference foci (see below).

The abstract deadline is March 15, 1997. Please send 3 hard
copies or an e-mail copy of the abstract to:

  Doris Payne
  Department of Linguistics
  University of Oregon
  Eugene, OR  97403
  dlpayne at oregon.uoregon.edu

For further information, contact one of the conference
organizers:

  Doris Payne (541-346-3894, dlpayne at oregon.uoregon.edu)
  Immanuel Barshi (303-492-7059, barshi at psych.colorado.edu)

BACKGROUND
External Possession has often been referred to as "Possessor
Raising,"  "Possessor Ascension," or "Dative of Interest,"
depending on one's theoretical bias and the language family
involved.  We use the term "External Possession" to refer to any
construction in which a possessive relationship is necessarily
entailed between two participants, where the possessor is
expressed externally to the constituent which contains the
possessed item. The possessor may or may not be simultaneously
expressed by a pronoun, clitic, or affix internal to the NP which
contains the possessed item, but this NP- internal coding cannot
be the only expression of the possessor. Additionally, a lexical
predicate, such as have, own, or 'be located at' cannot be the
only expression of the possessor-possessed relationship for the
construction to qualify as an EP construction.

Typologically, EP constructions vary in terms of what types of
nouns can be the possessed item (e.g., body parts, inalienably
possessed nouns, any noun).  They also vary in terms of what
kinds of verbs can participate in the construction (e.g.,
transitive contact verbs, intransitive verbs of emotion,
unaccusative, any verb), as well as in terms of what grammatical
relation the External Possessor and the possessed item can
assume.

Proposed motivations for using EP constructions include marking
affectedness of the possessor, possibly for indicating
"contrast," and for reference disambiguation.  Work on EP
constructions has also raised questions concerning the grammar
and cognitive processing of semantic roles and argument
structure.  Questions have also been raised concerning the
relationship of EP constructions to event structure and voice
phenomena.  Several researchers have found challenges in EP
constructions to notions such as the Projection Principle and the
Theta Criterion.  Furthermore, experimental research on EP has
challenged the adequacy of serial models of sentence processing
and has offered support for parallel processing and minimal
commitment models.  EP constructions thus promise to have
important implications for understanding relationships between
lexicon, semantics, and syntax, as well as for interdisciplinary
research questions in cognitive psychology and anthropology.  We
would like to explore these issues and their implications across
languages and theoretical frameworks, as well as across
disciplines.

There appears to be a close relationship between External
Possession and at least some Noun Incorporation phenomena.  For
example, if EP is possible in a language at all, the external
possessor can be construed as possessing body part objects of
transitive verbs.  Similarly, if NI is possible at all, it will
include the incorporation of body part objects of transitive
verbs, potentially leaving the understood possessor of the
incorporated body part outside the verb.

EP phenomena have been reported on in scattered ways in the
literature and appear to be widely found in languages around the
world.  However, so far there has been no focused discussion of
its typological parameters, or its theoretical treatment.  This
conference aims to bring together researchers of differing
theoretical persuasions and wide typological experience so that
we can effectively explore multiple dimensions of the phenomenon.

CONFERENCE FOCI
The conference will specifically seek to explore the following:

The semantics and pragmatics of EP and associated NI
constructions:

- With what semantic roles can an external possessor be construe
interpreted), (e.g., just Theme? Any semantic role?)

- With what range of noun types can EP/NI constructions be formed
e.g., just body parts, inalienably possessed items, anything?)

- Affectedness, "contrast", referent disambiguation, or other
features of possessor or other participants associated with
choice of EP/NI construction

- EP/NI and argument structure or event structure changes

The morphosyntax of EP constructions:

- With what grammatical relations can an external possessor be
construed? (e.g., just direct objects?  Absolutives?  Any core
grammatical relation?)

- In what grammatical relation or case form is an EP expressed
in (e.g., direct object, subject, dative?) Are there observed
preferences cross-linguistically on the encoding of external
possessors?  If so, what is the motivation for the observed
preferences?  What would account for alternative minority
patterns?

- EP/NI and voice phenomena

- EP/NI and associations with applicative and causative
constructions

Cognitive demands in the processing (both discourse and sentence
levels) of EP and NI constructions and the implications to models
of language comprehension

Diachronic rise of EP/NI constructions

4. LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY

The first issue of the first volume of LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY will
be out in (maybe early) January 1997;  LT 1/2 and 1/3 will follow
in May and October, and so on, year in, year out.  Make sure to
be a paid-up ALT member for 1997 by the end of 1996, and so on,
and you'll automatically receive the ALT journal.  Further
particulars on the necessary financial transactions will be found
in the next News.  Also, remind your libraries of this unique
opportunity of getting value for as little as DM 169 of their
subscription money (payable to Mouton de Gruyter, at Postfach 30
34 21, D-10728 Berlin, Germany).

This is what the 140 or so pages of LT 1/1 will contain, if
titles are anything to go by:

**************************************
---The Editors
Linguistic Typology:  Introducing a new journal

ARTICLES
---Simon Kirby
Competing motivations and emergence: Explaining implicational
hierarchies
---Scott DeLancey
Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information

THE IMPLICATIONS REGISTER
---Frans Plank and Wolfgang Schellinger
The uneven distribution of genders over numbers:  Greenberg Nos.
37 and 45

REVIEWS
---Edith Moravcsik
Approaches to language typology, edited by Masayoshi Shibatani
and Theodora Bynon
---Bernard Comrie
Zur Typologie der Jenissej-Sprachen, by Heinrich Werner
---Michael Noonan
A grammar of Supyire, by Robert Carlson

--Instructions for Contributors
**************************************

Continue (i) to submit material suitable for a typological
journal, and to bear with referees for to err is human;  (ii) to
offer to review suitable publications (and note that LT does not
review working papers or other prepublications), and to actually
review them in the not-too-distant future;  (iii) to mind the
Instructions for Contributors, at least when preparing the final
version of your accepted contribution;  and (iv) to remind your
publishers to send us review copies of suitable books, possibly
including your own.  And the editors always (well, within
reasonable limits) welcome suitably constructive suggestions for
LT's future.  Here, once more and valid until further notice
(anticipated for February 1997), is the editorial address, and
obviously the final period or fullstop is not part of it but is
meant to round off this sentence: F. Plank, Sprachwissenschaft,
Universitaet Konstanz, Postfach 5560, D-78434 Konstanz, Germany;
E-mail: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de.

Issue 1/2 of LT is planned to include an invitation to debate
WORD-CLASS matters.  Anyone interested in such matters, and
especially in submitting their typological thoughts on them for
possible inclusion in a subsequent issue of LT, may obtain an
outline of debateable issues by Jan Anward, Edith Moravcsik, and
Leon Stassen from Edith A. Moravcsik, Linguistics, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413, USA; E-mail:
edith at csd.uwm.edu; Tel: (414) 229-6794 /office/, (414) 332-0141
/home/; Fax: (414) 229-6258.

The samplers among us are advised to get in touch with Johan van
der Auwera asap (Linguistiek, Universiteit Antwerpen (UIA),
B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium; E-mail: auwera at uia.ua.ac.be; Tel:
+32-3-8202776; Fax: +32-3-8202762), for SAMPLING is a topic to
be addressed in one of the next issues of LT and we would like
to get a representative sample of opinions on this methodological
matter.

If you're not so eager to sample, why don't you instead profile
your favourite language or portrait a family you're familiar
with?  As you'll remember, LT is gladly offering some of its
pages to Language Profiles or Family Portraits done from a
typological viewpoint.  And feel free to do so in your own style,
for in spite of all kinds of attempts at typological
characterization there are no obvious guidelines for this genre.

The Implications Register is another category for which LT
solicits contributions.  If you'd dearly love to test an
implication against your database but don't know any, write to
frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de or elena.filimonova at uni-konstanz.de
and they'll send you their collection of published implications
or any subset of it that you're especially keen on (implications
involving cases, or numbers, or adjectives, or cases and numbers,
or cases and numbers and adjectives, or Suffixaufnahme, or
Aktionsarten, etc.).

5. OTHER JOURNALS

TURKIC LANGUAGES

The Publishing House Harrassowitz (Wiesbaden) announces a new
scientific journal to be published from 1997 on Turkic Languages
edited by Lars Johanson in co-operation with Arpad Berta, Hendrik
Boeschoten, Bernt Brendemoen, Eva A. Csato, Emine Gursoy-Naskali,
Irina Muravyova, Dmitri M. Nasilov, Sumru A. Ozsoy, with the
editorial assistance of Vanessa Locke. The journal Turkic
Languages aims at presenting work of current interest on a
variety of subjects and thus welcomes contributions on all
aspects of Turkic language studies. Turkic Languages will contain
articles, review articles, reviews, discussions, reports, and
surveys of publications. Turkic Languages will be published in
one volume of two issues per year with approximately 300 pages.
It will be devoted to descriptive, comparative, synchronic,
diachronic, theoretical and methodological problems of linguistic
Turcology including questions of genetic, typological and areal
relations, linguistic variation and language acquisition. The
journal will use a referee system in selecting articles for
publication. The preferred language of publication will be
English. Contributions to the first volume should be submitted
as soon as possible. A style sheet is available and will be sent
on request. Manuscripts for publication, books for review, and
correspondence concerning editorial matters should be sent to:
Prof. Dr. Lars Johanson, Turkic Languages Institute of Oriental
Studies, University of Mainz, D-55099 Mainz, Germany. Fax:
+49-6131-368662. E-mail: johanson at mzdmza.zdv.uni-mainz.de
Subscription orders can be placed with booksellers and agencies.
Subscription price per volume (2 issues): approx. DM 178, -.
Single issues are available at approx. DM 89,-. For further
information, please contact: Harrassowitz Verlag, Postfach 2929,
D-65019 Wiesbaden, Germany; Fax: 49-611-530570.

6. MDG OFFER(S)

>>From 1997, ALT members (our ALT, that is) will be able to read
up on a select but growing list of vital addenda to their as yet
sadly unbalanced samples at greatly reduced expense, by courtesy
of the publishers of LT (as we sometimes abbreviate our
forthcoming journal, LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY).  See for yourselves
just how much you can save on your personal copies of titles in
the Mouton Grammar Library (MGL) by being in good standing with
ALT (or SSILA [deabbreviated upon request] or both--and you will
understand that a further reduction in the latter case, although
arguably dictated by the logic of the matter, would be
economically unviable).  It is really only for purely technical
reasons that full and reduced prices are given in different
currencies below, and there will of course be daily adjustments
in light of the current exchange rates, after fixing on Wall
Street.  Place your MGL orders with ALT's Secretary-Treasurer
(Johan van der Auwera, Linguistiek (GER), Universiteit Antwerpen
(UIA), B-2610 Antwerpen, Belgium, e-mail: auwera at uia.ua.ac.be,
fax: +32-3-8202762), rather than directly with MdG (short for
Mouton de Gruyter, obviously enough).

MGL 1  L Campbell, The Pipil Language of El Salvador.
       957p, 1985. DM 138, ALT-reduced US$ 35
MGL 2  I J Press, A Grammar of Modern Breton.
       406p, 1986. DM 116, ALT-reduced US$ 20
MGL 3  G Senft, Kilivila: The Language of the Trobriand
       Islanders. 598p, 1986. DM 175, ALT-reduced US$ 25
MGL 4  G van Driem, A Grammar of Limbu.
       565p, 1987. DM 175, ALT-reduced US$ 25
MGL 5  K D Rice, A Grammar of Slave.
       1370p, 1989. DM 335, ALT-reduced US$ 40
MGL 6  L MacDonald, A Grammar of Tauya.
       385p, 1990. DM 198, ALT-reduced US$ 20
MGL 7  M Noonan, A Grammar of Lango.
       352p, 1992. DM 228, ALT-reduced US$ 35
MGL 8  B C Donaldson, A Grammar of Afrikaans.
       497p, 1993. DM 248, ALT-reduced US$ 40
MGL 9  M Haspelmath, A Gramar of Lezgian.
       567p, 1993. DM 318, ALT-reduced US$ 40
MGL 10 G van Driem, A Grammar of Dumi.
       452p, 1993. DM 298, ALT-reduced US$ 40
MGL 11 F C Merlan, A Grammar of Wardaman.
       617p, 1994. DM 328, ALT-reduced US$ 42
MGL 12 S Kouwenberg, A Grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole.
       693p, 1994. DM 318, ALT-reduced US$ 45
MGL 13 A Liddicoat, A Grammar of the Norman French of the
       Channel Islands. 452p, 1994. DM 288, ALT-reduced US$ 38
MGL 14 R Carlson, A Grammar of Supyire.
       766p, 1994. DM 348, ALT-reduced US$ 48
MGL 15 N D Evans, A Grammar of Kayardild.
       837p, 1995. DM 378, ALT-reduced US$ 50
MGL 16 G T Childs, A Grammar of Kisi.
       370p, 1995. DM 218, ALT-reduced US$ 40

7. ALT ON THE WEB

Peter Kahrel reports:

July may be a slack month for a lot of things, but not for the
ALT Web pages!

Overview of ALT Web page accesses (Jan 1996-July 1996)

(January and February are distorted, because of the frequent
testing)

January  57
February 57
March   488
April   543
May     605
June    731
July   1041

Total  3,522

This is what people looked at:

Home page                    720
Directory                    298
Language list                229
LT page                      127
Alt news                      82
Joining                       74
Conferences                   59
Links to other organizations  42
Alt news no. 12               36
Alt news no. 11               36
Style sheet                   18
Alt news no. 10               10

Total accesses per country

744  de Germany
604  us (357 com, 227 edu, 11 org 6 gov, 3 mil)
336  nl Netherlands
241  net Network (??)
149  uk United Kingdom
68   ca Canada
57   es Spain
56   it Italy
45   se Sweden
43   jp Japan
38   mt Malta
25   be Belgium
22   fr France
23   no Norway
22   fi Finland
19   au Australia
18   at Austria
14   dk Denmark
13   ru Russian Federation
10   sg Singapore
9    cz Czech Republic
9    ch Switzerland
4    hk Hong Kong
4    bg Bulgaria
3    si Slovenia
3    my Malaysia
2    kr Korea (South)
2    su USSR (former)
2    il Israel
2    ee Estonia
2    ro Romania
2    pt Portugal
1    hr Croatia (Hrvatska)

Bernard Comrie
Linguistics, GFS-301
University of Southern California
Los Angeles,
CA 90089-1693
USA
comrie at bcf.usc.edu
fax: +1-213-740-9306

Frans Plank
Sprachwissenschaft
Universitaet Konstanz
Postfach 5560
D-78434 Konstanz
Germany
frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de
fax: +49-7531-882741

Johan van der Auwera
Linguistiek (GER)
Universiteit Antwerpen (UIA)
B-2610 Antwerpen
Belgium
auwera at uia.ua.ac.be
fax: +32-3-8202762