ALT News No. 42

Sun Dec 30 15:01:37 UTC 2007

ALT News No. 42

December 2007

1. ALT VII, Paris (September 2007)

2. The 2007 Elections

3. Linguistic typology, the journal

4. OUP

5. New webmaster

1. ALT VII, Paris(September 2007)

1.1. Thanks

The received opinion is that the Parisian ALT VII Conference was an unprecedented success. It presented high quality research in an atmosphere of the utile and the dulce, in the presence of both young and established scholars, and in an unequalled amount of workshops, both inside the program and before and after. It furthermore launched a typological database. We were able to offfer some scholarships (with the help of the French Ministry of Research ) , we had two prize winners and two special plenaries. No wonder also that the conference was attended by close to 300 linguists. ALT owes this success to all participating linguists, but also to the Program and Organizing Committees. The former consisted of David Gil (chair), Nick Evans, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, Ekkehard König, Brian Migliazza. Edith Moravcsik, and Martine Vanhove. The latter consisted of Stéphane Robert (chair), Isabelle Bril, Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, Martine Vanhove, Natacha Vellut, Mary Noel-Giraud, and Florent Nardol.

1.2. The Panini Grammar Award

The 2007 Grammar Award, for the best grammar written as a doctoral dissertation in 2003 to 2006, went to Patience Epps, for a Grammar of Hup, defended at the University of Virginia in August 2005, with Eve Danziger as advisor. The jury regards this work as an extraordinary achievement, impressive in its clarity of presentation, its rich empirical basis, its convincing argumentation, and its breadth. 

This is the first extensive description of the language of the Hupde, a semi-nomadic people of the Maku (or Nadahup) family settled along the Columbian/Brazilian border in Amazonia. The work consists of 18 chapters followed by appendices containing an index of morphemes, lexical comparisons with forms from genetically related and geographically neighboring languages, and six translated and analyzed texts. Fieldwork was begun in 2001, and the grammar was completed in 2005.

A number of features of the grammar were particularly appreciated by members of the jury. Among those noted were a transparent orthography, a full chapter on the culture of the speakers, and discussion of the Hup alienability paradox whereby human body parts are marked as alienables but animal body parts as inalienables. The jury found this work linguistically sophisticated:  structures are not described in isolation, but rather in theoretical, typological, diachronic, and areal perspective. The language presents a number of complex theoretical issues, which are dealt with expertly. Jury members pointed to the clear and logical resolution of the intricate problem of consonantal allophones; the classification of ‘bound nouns’, human nouns, body parts nouns, newly introduced cultural items, and eventual classifiers; the analysis of the compound verb (and the evolution of component stems from suffixes to serialization); and the treatment of the complex aspectual system. A number of grammatical entities seem to appear at multiple levels of structure, as inner suffixes, boundary suffixes, clitics, and particles, and in different kinds of phrases: nominal, verbal, and clauses. The discussion of evidentiality is rich and engages with current theoretical approaches to the phenomenon. Possessive constructions and attributive adjectives are presented against a backdrop of pertinent structures in Oceanic languages. Cases of unusual grammaticalization paths and antigrammaticalization are pointed out. An interesting explanation of the development of the applicative imperative to optative mood is proposed, and the initial stages of an incipient noun classification system are traced. A welcome extra was the inclusion of color spectograms.

Jury members commented on the ‘exhaustive treatment of the sense, distribution, and function of every grammatical entity, treatment supported by extensive documentation’ and ‘the subtlety of interpretation of native texts and native words reflecting the immersion of the author in the daily life and culture of the Hupde’. The jury was impressed with the quality of the linguistic analyses: the author ‘offers alternative solutions where possible, and her argumentation is convincing. It is amazingly detailed: no stone is left unturned. Her knowledge of linguistics and relevant concepts is detailed. She takes into account most of the important developments in linguistics.’ Admiration was expressed for the quality of the fieldwork: the author ‘lived with the Hup, which was very hard, given their low status in the area and physical and logistical difficulties involved in doing fieldwork with them. The collection of texts of varied genres at the end of the grammar is of high quality. She makes the language 'live' through the examples she gives throughout the grammar.’ Her knowledge of genetically related languages and other languages in the area was praised.

One jurist summed up the sentiments expressed all panel members, with the comment ‘This is an outstanding grammar, one of the best I ever read.’

Thanks are due to the Jury, consisting of Marianne Mithun (chair), and Sasha Aikhenvald, Bernard Comrie, Grev Corbett, Östen Dahl, Lucia Golluscio, Nikolaus Himmelmann, Jon Landaburu, Michael Noonan, Tom Payne, Ger Reesink, Keren Rice, Anna Siewierska, and Dietmar Zaefferer.

1.3. The Joseph Greenberg Award

The 2007 Joseph Greenberg Award for the best typological dissertation defended in 2005 and 2006, goes to Alexandr Arkhipov, Moscow State University, for his thesis "Tipologia  komitativnykh konstruktsii" ("Typology of comitative constructions"). The advisor was Aleksandr E. Kibrik. Arkhipov is currently `mladšij nau?nyj sotrudnik' (Research Fellow) in the department of theoretical and applied linguistics in the Moscow State University.

Arkhipov's thesis was judged by the jury to represent a significant typological investigation of comitative constructions in a representative sample of languages, including data from his own fieldwork. A particularly significant aspect of this work is a novel approach to the definition of `comitative', since Arkhipov argues that comitative should not be defined as a particular type of semantic role, but as a type of construction available to express plurality of a given participant. Consequently, considerable attention is given to a discussion of the relationship between comitative and plurality, i.e. the competition between comitative and others expressions of participant and situation plurality. The formal typology of comitative constructions also reflects this definition in that it assumes that the two NPs involved in the comitative construction may operate at NP level, at the level of the predicative construction, or at clause level. A further significant aspect of the thesis is the discussion of the polysemy of comitative constructions, which may be employed to express e.g. co-predication (secondary predication), restrictive modification, and various types of semantic roles such as instrument, agent, experiencer, possessor, locative, temporal, or conditional.

This again demonstrates Arkhipov's ability to see a particular construction as part of the complete structural make-up of individual languages. As one member of the jury said, "Once translated into English, this thesis should constitute a major reference for forthcoming studies of comitative and related field".

The following three theses were also shortlisted for the award and were also judged excellent by members of the review committee. (The order is alphabetical and does not imply a ranking):
Valentin Gousev, Moscow State University, "Tipologia spetsializirovannykh glagolnykh form imperativa" ("Typology of dedicated verbal forms of the imperative")
Olesya Khanina, Moscow State University, "Iazykovoe oformlenie situatsii zhelania (opyt tipologicheskogo issledovania)"  (Linguistic encoding of 'wanting': a typological approach')
René Schiering, University of Konstanz, "Cliticization and the Evolution of Morphology: a Cross-linguistic Study on Phonology in Grammaticalization" 

This round saw a particularly high number of submissions (10 in total) and submissions were generally of a very high quality, which is very good news for typology, but which also made the review process a rather lengthy and, admittedly, difficult exercise. 

Thanks are due to the Jury: Eva Schultze-Berndt (chair), and Juliette Blevins, Joan Bybee, Denis Creissels, Martin Haspelmath, Bernhard Hurch, Leonid Kulikov, Tania Kuteva, Bill McGregor, Andrej Malchukov, Elena Maslova, Maria Polinsky, Elena Skribnik, and Sergei Tatevosov 

1.4. Business Meeting on Sept 27

a. Membership 

The secretary presented the current figures on membership. According to the files kept by our publisher Mouton, the middle of 2007 saw ALT with 392 regular members and 65 student members, thus yielding a total of 457 members. Below these figures are compared with those of 2006 and 2005.

       Regular    Student  Total

2007   392        65       457

2006   364        64       428

2005   362        62       424

What we see from these figures is fluctuation and overall gradual increase. Each year we do lose members, for a variety of reasons (address changes, credit card problems, human error at any one link in the communicative chain from member via ALT to at least two offices within or associated with Mouton). Each year, after some e-mails between members, ALT and Mouton, we also regain members. 

As in previous years, most ALT members hail from Europe and from North America.

ALT officially allows for group members, linguists that share a journal but otherwise have full membership privileges. This scheme was previously operational in Moscow and Tbilisi. The scheme proved to be very impractical and financially difficult to maintain, and there are no more group members at the moment.

b. Finances

The treasurer presented the current figures on finances.

           Action                    +/-       Balance (€)

2005

Sept 29                                       + 8.193,44

Dec 25     Bank interest           +237,06    + 8.430,96

2006

Feb 18     Legal help               -95,00    + 8.335,96

Feb 20     Bank interest            +19,68    + 8 .355,64

Apr 4      Memberships fees      +3,206,00    +11.561,64

Apr 21     Banking costs            -20,00    +11.541,64

July 8     Support SW2 Lancaster -1.000,00    +10.541,64

Aug 8      Banking costs            -20,00    +10.521,64

Aug 24     Legal costs             -134,07    +10.387,57

Dec 25     Bank interest           +264,00    +10.651,57

2007

Mar 20     Membership fees       +4.088,00    +14.739,57

Mar 27     Legal help               -95,00    +14.644,57

Apr 30     Banking costs            -50,00    +14.594,57

The organization of the Paris Meeting might amount to 7.000 Euro, on the ALT budget, but the organizing committee has found additional funds and will be able to reimburse ALT for an estimated 4 . 000 Euro.

Annually recurring items are the bank interests (credit), a percentage of the membership fees (credit), a fee to a Flemish legal aid organization, and the costs of keeping a checking account and a savings account.

c. Future ALT meetings

ALT VIII will be held at the University of California, Berkeley, July 24-27, 2009, during the LSA Linguistics Institute ( <http://www.lsadc.org/info/inst-future.cfm> http://www.lsadc.org/info/inst-future.cfm), and close in time to the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC 11) ( <http://www.cognitivelinguistics.org/events.shtml> http://www.cognitivelinguistics.org/events.shtml). The local organizers are Larry Hyman and Johanna Nichols.

Anticipating on a call for proposals for hosting the ALT Conference in 2011, we received expresssions of interest from or for Oxford, Moscow and Australia. 

d. This meeting

Members expressed a preference for having all of the workshops before or after the conference, not inside.

e. The 2007 Elections

The Nominating Committee, consisting of Edith Moravcsik (chair), Maria Polinsky, Kees Hengeveld, and Jae-Jung Song, proposed a slate for the offices to be renewed. All the nominees had accepted. The business meeting took note of the slates and the election was to start immediately after the Conference.

2. The 2007 Elections

114 members cast their vote and the slates were overwhelmingly accepted. This means that the following people have now received their mandate.

President: Anna Siewierska

Secretary-Treasurer: Jean-Christophe Verstraete

Members of the Executive Committee: Nick Evans, Greville Corbett, Martin Haspelmath, and John Hawkins

Editor in chief: Frans Plank

Members of the editorial board: Guglielmo Cinque, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, and Joan Bybee

Thanks are due to the outgoing officers:

President: Nick Evans

Secretary-Treasure: Johan van der Auwera

Members of the Executive Committee: Zygmund Frayzyngier, Marianne Mithun, and Doris Payne

Members of the editoral board: Dan Slobin, Peter Bakker, and Hilary Chapel

A very special word of thanks is also due to our webmaster Peter Kahrel, who served ALT for 12 years.  

3. Linguistic typology, the journal

Prospective contributors to LT please notice that from volume 12, 2008, LT is adopting the recommendations for a unified style sheet for linguistics relating to bibliographic referencing.  LT's Instructions for Contributors have been modified accordingly, and a few further points of detail have been changed, too.  The current version of the Instructions is attached, and will also be available on LT's page with Mouton de Gruyter, itself in need of a little updating (http://www.degruyter.de/journals/lintyp/).

In future there will also be an electronic platform, provided by Mouton de Gruyter, for supporting material too extensive to include in the print version of LT (databases, sample information, etc.).

As usual we include a listing of recent publications and another (sorely incomplete) instalment of The Grammar Watch for the benefit of prospective book reviewers.

A happy -- and instructive and entertaining, as well as productive -- new year to our readers and contributors!

>From Frans Plank, on behalf of the Editorial Board of LT.

4. OUP

All ALT members  will be able to receive 30% discount on all OUP's linguistics titles for three months only. This offer is available exclusively online until 21st February 2008.   After 21st February 2008 the discount will revert to 20%.

See  <http://www.oup.co.uk/sale/websocalt7/> http://www.oup.co.uk/sale/websocalt7/  for details.

5. New webmaster

ALT has found Ljuba Veselinova ready to take over the ALT web space. ALT is most grateful.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Nick Evans[President]

Linguistics

University of Melbourne                tel +61 3 8344 8988

Parkville Victoria                     fax +61 3 8344 8990

Australia

E-mail:                 n.evans at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au

Frans Plank [Editor-in-chief, Linguistic Typology]

Sprachwissenschaft

Universität Konstanz

D-78457 Konstanz                   tel + 49 7531 88 26 56

Germany                            fax + 49 7531 88 27 41

E-mail:                       frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de

Johan van der Auwera [Secretary-Treasurer]

Linguistiek

Universiteit Antwerpen

B-2000 Antwerpen                     tel + 32 3 220 45 88

Belgium                              fax + 32 3 220 45 46

E-mail:                       johan.vanderauwera at ua.ac.be

On the WEB:  http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/organisations/alt/

Webmaster : Peter Kahrel         p.kahrel at lancaster.ac.uk

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