The LINGUIST List 'Just $5' Request

Sat Apr 5 21:45:55 UTC 2003

Dear Lingliters,

Has it been a week already since I sent you my last update about this
year's fund drive? Time surely flies when you're trying to raise
$50,000!

The good news is that we so far have raised an amazing $33,650.52,
which means we only have $16,349.48 to go until we reach our
target. You might not think that a figure in excess of $16,000 should
be associated with the word only, but it does seem a lot smaller than
when a few weeks ago we were saying we still needed $30,000...

The $33,650.52 that we have raised already is due to the generosity of
710 donors. If you are one of these, we thank you so much! But this
figure is a small percentage of our 17,000+ subscribers worldwide
(only 4.18%). Just imagine, if every one of our subscribers gave just
$5 each, that would total $85,000 - $35,000 more than we need this
year to survive!

If you haven't yet done so, please make a donation. Just $5 would make
a world of difference to us here! Perhaps you heard about your job
through LINGUIST - isn't that worth $5? Maybe your small yet very
worthy graduate conference increased its visibility within the
linguistic community because it was announced on LINGUIST - surely
that is worth a small contribution? Maybe you found that vital
reference you had been chasing for so long through a LINGUIST search -
that has to be worth something?

Below are some highlights of the letters that we sent out this week to
the list. We hope you can take a moment to see the many good reasons
for making a donation. For instructions on how to donate, see the end
of this message or visit: http://linguistlist.org/donation.html

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Richard John Harvey
Fund Drive Organizer and Graduate Assistant on LINGUIST

*********************************************************************

~From FUNd Drive FUN Friday
http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-1001.html

It's Springtime - Love is in the air...

Dearest Linguists,

As spring sets in, love is in the air...

Last week we announced the start of another new feature: The LINGUIST
List Dating Service (http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-913.html).
We published a questionnaire that would help our specially designed
computer program to come up with the best possible matches. The
response from the linguistic community was overwhelming; linguists
around the world were clearly thrilled about the chance to find their
ideal partner in the discipline without having to invest too much
precious time and effort that could be otherwise fruitfully spent on
musings about Left Dislocation or the No Coda Constraint. Some of the
participants agreed to share their romantic experiences with us;
please read these heart-warming stories...

**********************************************************************
"Bridge Verb", 29, F, from University of Sopchoppy, FL
                        and
"Pied Piper", 34, M, from Babylon College, IL

Bridge Verb: "My first impression was not that good. I mean, he had
this propositional attitude about him, and his morphological
boundaries were not too clearly defined. But then, I realised that my
selectional restrictions are sometimes too strict, so I thought I
would give him a chance. And after our date my opinion changed 180
degrees!  I've been through a lot of relationships that didn't work
out because there was too much context-dependency, deixis, and
anaphora to issues from the past, but Pied Piper turned out to be the
most context-free man I've ever met. I would definitely say that we've
some mutual feature attraction going on here, maybe even with the
prospect of sharing some data!"

Pied Piper: "Bridge Verb's small clauses disconcerted me a little bit
at first, but I really liked her floating quantifiers. When it comes
to women, I have a problem with delayed auditory feedback, but she was
very understanding about it, and used labeled bracketing with multiply
embedded clauses. I really think she's cool, and I would like to make
our meetings cyclic, or at least recursive."

***********************************************************************

"Lambda-Operator", 72, F, from Bumford University, UK
                        and
"Antiformant", 23, M, from All Saints' School of Modern Languages in
Dripping Springs, TX

Lambda-Operator: "I didn't know what to expect from this date. My
grandchildren warned me that it's a wild world out there, but I knew I
finally had to do some move across-the-board. And I don't regret it!
Antiformant, despite his habit of multiple wh-fronting and dislike of
affix ordering, is a very nice young man, and he even offered to help
me move all my bibliography without any procrastination!"

Antiformant: "Lambda-Operator made a great impression on me right from
the start. She's got a really wide scope, and great illocutionary
force. The only thing is, she tended to overuse negative polarity
items and intensional adjectives, but I think it had something to do
with my sloppy identity. But I think I can say that we do have a
strong crossover of interests in our universe of discourse. The
complementary distribution of our constraints is also really exciting!
I'm looking forward to extending our checking relation."

**********************************************************************

Yes, you to can find love on The LINGUIST List Dating Service - our
server is waiting to match you with over 17,000 potential mates. So
don't be shy! All you have to do is fill out the questionaire from
last week's issue (http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-913.html) and
send it, together with your donation to:

The LINGUIST List Dating Service Springtime Special
Dr Amore,
612 Pray Harrold
Ypsilanti
Michigan 48197
USA

You wont regret it!

***********************************************************************

To 'subscribe' to The LINGUSIT List Dating Service visit:

http://linguistlist.org/donation.html

*************************************************************************

~From Wednesday
http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-964.html

Dissertation Abstracts on LINGUIST - Get Your Work Out There...

Dear Linguists,

Would you like to know a good way to keep up with the research that's
going on in the linguistics community? Simply come to this part of the
publications mini-site of The LINGUIST List at:

http://linguistlist.org/dissertations.html

The LINGUIST List Dissertation Abstracts facility will allow you to
find information about dissertations in subjects that are of interest
to you.  The LINGUIST List has over 600 abstracts stored in the
database, categorized according to their linguistic sub-field and
subject language (or language family).  From the above address, you
can browse the dissertation abstracts by author, or search for them by
linguistic sub-field or subject language. At the last count we had the
following totals in each category:

Anthropological Ling    3
Applied Ling            49
Computational Ling      44
Discourse Analysis      62
Historical Ling         36
Morphology              31
Phonetics               37
Phonology               76
Pragmatics              43
Psycholinguistics       50
Semantics               81
Sociolinguistics        71
Syntax                  137
Text/Corpus Ling        21
Translation             5
Typology                12
Writing Systems         2

You can also submit your PhD dissertation abstract at the above
URL. It will be automatically entered into our database and announced
in an individual issue of LINGUIST - that's right, our 17,000+
subcribers will see your abstract!  You can also update your
dissertation abstract, add/update an academic paper, or your personal
information for the Directory of Linguists from your own Personal
Page.  For directions on how to log in, please see:

http://saussure.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/people/personal/persdirlogin.cfm

If you've used the LINGUIST List Dissertation Abstracts facility,
we're sure you have found it to be a useful research tool; but have
you ever wondered how we manage to develop these services and bring
them, free of charge, to you?  Well, we rely on your donations.  Yes,
we (a staff of 21 graduate students and programmers) need your
donations. Your contributions not only help LINGUIST provide services
like the Dissertation Abstracts archive, but they also help these
outstanding students achieve their academic goals.  So why not go to
http://linguistlist.org/donation.html to send us your pledge?
LINGUIST exists only because of your support!

Thank you,

Anita Huang

********************************************************************

Please help us develop key services and free tools that aid the
linguistic community.

To donate now using our secure web form, visit:

http://linguistlist.org/donate.html

For instructions on how to donate, or how to make a pledge now and pay
later, see the last massage in this issue or visit:

http://linguistlist.org/donation.html

Thank you for your support.

*************************************************************************

~From Tuesday
http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-948.html

The Open Language Archives Community - The LINGUIST List Gateway

Dear Linguists,

How would you like to find all the Mandarin Chinese lexicons, or how
would you like to make your Mandarin Chinese lexicon accessible to
other researchers/linguists?

The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) does that for you! OLAC is
dedicated to collecting information about language resources,
assembling an online database, similar to a large library catalog and
making it available from a single search. LINGUIST List is a service
provider for this catalog by housing it on the site, which not only
allows linguists to search OLAC through LINGUIST List, but also to
become data providers for the project.

Search OLAC: Many of you must be familiar with the difficulty of
finding information relevant to your research.  Searching the internet
has made this problem a notch easier, no doubt, but you must be
willing to spend lots of precious time looking up each individual
archive or website. Since the same thing can be described in many ways
(dictionary and lexicon, possessive and genitive), you may never find
what you are looking for! In light of the above problems, OLAC catalog
has stored information on language resources, such as field notes,
lexicons, audio/video recordings, papers, etc. The information is
stored as metadata in XML format so that the OLAC search engine easily
understands it.  Go ahead, and look up your favorite resource using
the OLAC search engine at:

http://saussure.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/olac/olac-search-advanced.html

Become an OLAC archive: Whether your collection of language data is
large or small, OLAC would like you to add to the catalog by becoming
a "Data Provider". This involves creating a repository of information
describing your data. Please note that you are not being asked to
submit the data itself, so you still have full control over
it. Remember, your data itself does not have to be available on the
internet (a collection of field notes, for example).  There are three
different ways to provide data.

1. The OLAC Repository editor (ORE): If you are an individual with
small projects, this method would be the simplest. ORE is a series a
simple online forms. You can enter your information using these forms;
this information is automatically converted into a format that the
OLAC search engine can read.  So, if you want your valuable
information to be accessible to the entire linguistic community,
please go to:

http://saussure.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/olac/ore/index.html

and become an OLAC data provider.

2. The Virtual Data Provider (Vida): If you know XML, Vida is a
quicker way of providing data. Create an XML document, and put it on a
publicly-accessible website, Vida can take it and submit it to the
OLAC search engine. Vida is suitable for larger projects that have no
pre-existing catalog database. For more on Vida, please visit:

http://www.language-archives.org/docs/implement.html#Vida

3. Conventional Approach for large archives: If you have a catalog and
programming skills, this is the best method. Here, you implement a
software interface to your database, which creates the XML metadata
and sends it to the OLAC search engine. For more on the Conventional
approach, please visit:

http://www.language-archives.org/docs/implement.html#conventional

Gayathri Sriram
Programmer

********************************************************************

Please help us develop key services and free tools that aid the
linguistic community.

To donate now using our secure web form, visit:

http://linguistlist.org/donate.html

For instructions on how to donate, or how to make a pledge now and pay
later, see the last massage in this issue or visit:

http://linguistlist.org/donation.html

Thank you for your support.

***********************************************************************

HOW TO DONATE TO LINGUIST

This year we hope to raise $50,000 to support the students who work on
LINGUIST List and keep the list running. Thank you from all the crew
for your support.

The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Eastern Michigan University
and as such can receive donations through the EMU Foundation, which is
a registered 501(c) Non Profit organization.  Our Federal Tax number
is 38-6005986.  These donations can be offset against your federal and
sometimes your state tax return (U.S. tax payers only).  For more
information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact your financial advisor.

Many companies also offer a gift matching scheme, such that they will
match any gift you make to a non-profit organization.  Normally this
entails your contacting your human resources department and sending us
a form that the EMU Foundation fills in and returns to your employer.
This is generally a simple administrative procedure that doubles the
value of your gift to LINGUIST, without costing you an extra
penny. Please take a moment to check if your company operates such a
scheme.

HOW TO DONATE

You can make a contribution by selecting one of three convenient
payment methods: secure credit card form, check, or wire transfer.
You can also PLEDGE your support to LINGUIST and pay later, i.e.  send
in a check. Also, if you do not want to use a credit card, but wish to
pay in a currency other than US Dollars, you can donate via our
European bank account held in Switzerland.  See below for details:

SECURE CREDIT CARD FORM:
http://linguistlist.org/donate.html

CHECK:
Please make checks payable to 'The LINGUIST List Editorial Support
Fund'.  The address is:

The LINGUIST Editorial Support Fund
Department of English Language and Literature
612 Pray Harrold
Eastern Michigan University
Ypsilanti
MI, 48197
U.S.A.

WIRE TRANSFER:
For details on how to transfer funds by wire, please contact LINGUIST
at the address donate at linguistlist.org. Both an American and a
European bank account are available.

PLEDGE NOW, PAY LATER:
If you would like to make a pledge of support, please go to:

http://linguistlist.org/donate.html

ALREADY PLEDGED:
If you have already pledged to LINGUIST and would now like to pay by
credit card, please go to:

http://linguistlist.org/creditcard-general.html

and select 'PAY PREVIOUS PLEDGE' as the Type of Payment from the
dropdown list provided.