[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Sesquipedalian #11

the SESQUIPEDALIAN 				       Volume V,  No. 11
/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\
National Whipped Cream Day			       January 12, 1995


			  PLAYING ON OR AROUND
		   Geoffrey K. Pullum, UC Santa Cruz

	Across the United States of America, wheeled dumpsters and
other potentially dangerous objects like automatically opening gates
are labelled with what many people seem to find an ungrammatical
legend: 
	(1) DO NOT PLAY ON OR AROUND
	I have seen syntacticians across the country, from
Philadelphia in the East to Santa Cruz in the West, observe signs
saying this, and I have watched them blanch, frown, or giggle.
Personally, I cringe at the wording every time; for me, it is not just
clunky but strikingly ungrammatical.
	What is it about this label that makes it so remarkably
jarring, when it is supposed to be plain ordinary English, instantly
understandable by children, even the sort of un-scholarly children who
would play on or around dumpsters rather than read a book or watch
Sesame Street?  I think the reasons can be made clear.  The first
thing to note is that the register of signs and stickers affixed to
physical objects has its own rules.  One such rule permits an object
NP to be absent (or null, or ellipsed, or 'deleted' as you wish) if it
refers to the thing the sign or sticker is affixed to.  The rule has
been studied by Sadock (1974).  The sense of (1) is supposed to be 'Do
not play on or around this thing' in the same way that 'Shake before
using' is supposed to mean 'Shake this before using it.'
	But the rule has restrictions on its applicability, and one of
these is the first source of the grammatical unpleasantness: as Sadock
notes (p. 600), the rule does not permit objects of prepositions to be
absent.  Sadock cites the following contrast:
	(2) a. *Mix three cans of water with.
	    b.  Mix with three cans of water.
He also notes an exception to this: absence is licensed for 'objects
of idiomatic prepositions, i.e. those which may not be pied-piped.'
This relates the ungrammaticality of (2a) to the grammaticality of
examples like (3):
	(3) With the contents of this can, you should mix three
	    cans of water.
	It also links the ungrammaticality of the 'pied piping'
example in (4c) to the grammaticality of the label transcribed in
(4d). (For those not familiar with it, Haj Ross' poetic technical term
'pied piping' envisions (4c) as a version of (4b) where the
preposition has danced along with its NP object to the front of the
sentence like a child following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.) 
	(4) a. You should dispose of this sort of can very 
		carefully.
	    b. This sort of can, you should dispose of very
		carefully.
	    c. *Of this sort of can, you should dispose very
		carefully.
	    d. DISPOSE OF CAREFULLY
	Now the first step toward explaining the unpleasantness of (1)
can be taken; 'play on this dumpster' is not an idiomatic VP, and nor
is 'play around this dumpster;' they are syntactically regular and
semantically compositional.  Sadock's pied piping test confirms this:
	(5) a. *On this sort of dumpster, you should not play 
		at all.
	    b. *Around this sort of gate, no child should ever play.
Thus the rule as Sadock gives it does not allow the NP positions in
'play on [NP]' and 'play around [NP]' to be missing.  The authors of
this ubiquitous sign have not grasped the rule that Sadock discussed
(or, perhaps we should say, they use a different variety of written
English from the one that I and many other users of the language seem
to have acquired, and their signs are thus in a language that some of
us do not speak, albeit a very closely related one).  They have
apparently decided that labels such as DISPOSE OF CAREFULLY give them
a license for leaving out prepositional objects without ANY verb and
ANY preposition.
	But there is more.  The phrase 'play around' (like its
synonym, 'fool around') does have an idiomatic sense, an intransitive
one with a meaning that ranges from 'be flippant or nonserious' to
'engage in sexual activity.'  The relevance of the intransitive
idiomatic reading of 'play around' is that on a second pass, the
interpretation with deleted NPs having failed because of the
constraint on Sadock's rule, one tends to spot the near juxtaposition
of 'play' and 'around' and attempt to parse the label so that part of
the interpretation is 'do not play around;' but this only makes things
worse, and causes the extra grimace or smirk from the syntactician.
First, it is generally not permissable to coordinate the particles of
two idiomatic verb-particle sequences anyway; for example, existence
of the idioms 'come across' (consent to sexual intercourse) and 'come
around' (become convinced) does not seem to license a sentence like
(6) with those idiomatic readings.
	(6) ??I hope eventually you will come across or around.
	And second, there is something slightly odd about having the
object absent in one conjunct of a coordinate label but not on the
other.  Sadock cites (7a) as grammatical by contrast with (7b), but I
find (7a) somewhat awkward:
	(7) a. ?Hold can six inches from underarm and push ___ down
		to spray.
	    b. *Keep ___ and other medications out of reach of 
		children.
I perceive a difference in acceptability between the starred and
unstarred (imaginary) labels in (8): 
	(8) a. Drink ___ and enjoy ___.
	    b. ?Drink ___ and relax.
	    c. Caution: do not hit ___ or kick ___.
	    d. ?Caution: do not fall or kick ___.
	In the case of (1), the search for a parse with 'play around'
as a unit forces a search for a parallel intransitive use of 'play
on,' and there isn't one.  So one reverts to considering 'play on' as
requiring an object.  
	One is thus likely to be led through three stages in the
struggle to process (1): First one considers a parse something like
(9a), where ___ represents an absent NP object; this violates
Sadock's restriction.  Second, one tries something like (9b), with
intransitive idioms, but there is no intransitive idiom 'play on,' and
even if there were, the constraint illuminated in (6) would still be
violated.  And finally, one may consider the even more deviant
structure (9c), which violates three different constraints at once:
Sadock's restriction, the conjunction constraint illustrated in (6),
and the parallelism restriction illustrated in (8b) and (8d).
	(9) a. do not play [[on ___] or [around ___]].
	    b. do not play [[on] or [around]].
	    c. do not play [[on ___] or [around]].
	Thus there is a syntactic triple-whammy for the conscientious
reader who tries to process (1): the choice of interpretations is a
choice between bad and worse and even worse, and the reward for making
a second pass at it is to have one's initial qualms about a viloation
of the Sadock restriction give way to worse revultion at the
alternatives.
	One wonders, incidentally, whether the millions of copies of
(1) all over America have ever served any purpose other than to make
passing linguists wince, and whether they ever kept any children from
playing on or around anything.

REFERENCE:
Sadock, Gerald M, 1974. 'Read at your own risk: syntactic and semantic
horrors you can find in your medicine chest.' Papers from the Tenth
Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society.

(Originally appeared in California Linguistic Volume XXIV, no. 1.)

		     ^\^\^\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /^/^/^

-- Jerry Hobbs will be speaking at 'Discourse: Linguistic,
Computational, and Philosophical Perspectives' conference at the
Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh,
March 25th.  His talk will be on the structure of discourse (book
early).

		   ^\^\^\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /^/^/^

                     Stanford Linguistics Colloquium
                         Friday, Jan 13, 1995
                                3:30
                             Cordura 100

                            Dan Flickinger
     Inheritance and Complementation: 'Easy'-adjectives and their ilk

The rich collection of syntactic and semantic phenomena exhibited by a
familiar group of adjectives including 'tough' and 'easy' present a
challenge to those who seek to provide explicit formal
characterizations of linguistic properties.  Using the descriptive
tools of inheritance and lexical rules, I provide a detailed analysis
of the syntactic and semantic properties of these adjectives,
accounting for optional and obligatory complements, control,
long-distance dependancies, optional modification, and possible
specifiers.  Simple examples are given in (a-d):
         a. Bill is easy to talk to.
         b. It is easy to talk to Bill.
         c. Bill is easy for Mary to talk to.
         d. It is easy for Mary to talk to Bill.
With this analysis as a foundation, it is a straightforward task to
account for related but distinct sets of adjectives exemplified by
"pretty" and "possible", each of which share some but not all of the
properties of "easy"-adjectives.  The analysis also predicts the
existence of a similar distribution of word classes in other sectors
of the lexicon, and I show how the account directly accommodates nouns
like "pleasure" and "delight", as well as the nominal counterparts for
"pretty" and "possible" adjectives.  A similar distribution also
emerges among a small set of adverbs, reinforcing the value of using
inheritance to capture the relevant generalizations about
complementation properties within the lexicon.

 	         ^/^/^/ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS \^\^\^

-- UNDERGRAD RESEARCH ASSISTANTS needed for several research projects
about LEARNING MATH & SCIENCE THROUGH CONVERSATION.  Projects:
1) Negotiating Mathematical Explanations: In this study, pairs of
friends co-wrote a conceptual explanation for a geometry problem. We
are looking at when and how pairs disagree with each other given that
they do not want to offend their friend but want to make the
explanation good.want write a high quality explanation and not offend
their friend by disagreeing. This position involves coding of data
with a solid complement of theoretical discussion.
2) Explaining How Things Work: We are looking at how people use
speech, gestures, diagrams & models in concert to explain how
mechanical systems (in this case a common door lock) work.  We are
getting into both semantic issues of how nonverbal communicative
systems convey meaning and cognitive issues of how listeners construct
mental models of how the lock works from the explanation. This
position involves data coding throughout with some transcription
fixing in the beginning of the term & lots of theoretical discussion
later in the term.
3) Assessing Conceptual Understanding Of Disease: In this project we
will be coming up with assessments of 6th grader's understanding of
disease in preparation for a study of how their conceptions change
after an innovative conversation-based biology unit. This position
will involve a lot of library research of the relevant literature
about children's biological concepts & developmental assessment
techniques.
Hours & Credits: 6 or 9 hours a week for 2 or 3 units of course credit
(Psychology 104). Wish I could pay, but I don't have the grant money
in this stage of my career!  Qualifications: No experience necessary.
What's most important is an interest in the topic and willingness to
learn to do research. I'm assuming you'll be reliable and keep me
informed of your confusions as well as your insights. And I'll do my
part by helping you out along the way.  If you happen to have relevant
experience that's a definite plus, but don't let this stop you from
applying if you're interested and ready to learn!  For Further Info:
Contact Randi Engle, PhD student in Symbolic Systems in Education, by
emailing randi@csli or calling 723-8461. For the best shot at these
positions, please contact me by this Friday January 13th or ASAP.

	   	    ^/^/^/ TRUE LINGUISTICS \^\^\^

NEW FACES: Chris Culy joins us from the University of Iowa, as a
visiting scholar.  Some of you will remember Chris from when he
received his Ph.D. in Linguistics here at Stanford (but we won't say
when).  Chris is working on three projects, two syntactic and one
morphophonological, that he hopes to make progress on while at
Stanford: (1) Types of pronominal systems, (2) clitic doubling,
constituent and obviation, and (3) Cooccurence restrictions on vowels
in Dogon. 

NEWS AND OLDS: We have also been joined by our Winter quarter regulars,
Arnold Zwicky (recent Exemplary Faculty Award Winner at Ohio State),
Joshua Fishman, and Henriette de Swart.  Henriette will be teaching
this quarter, then returning to the Netherlands (don't blink!), and
then coming back to Stanford in the fall to start her full-time
appointment as Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Department.

		    ^\^\^\ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS /^/^/^

(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)

-- APPLE COMPUTER seeks part-time Romance languages consultants.
	Native speaking French linguistic consultant needed for part-time
language consulting with Apple Computer's Speech and Language Technology
group in Cupertino (could work at home also). Required skills: native
competence in French (preferably European/Parisian); some linguistic
background or linguistic insight into phonological and prosodic structure of
French; knowledge of French orthographic, numeric, and text formatting
conventions. Contract for specific milestones of linguistic rule development.
	Native speaking Italian linguistic consultant needed for
part-time language consulting with Apple Computer's Speech and
Language Technology group in Cupertino (could work at home also).
Required skills: native competence in Italian; some linguistic
background or linguistic insight into phonological and prosodic
structure of Italian; knowledge of Italian orthographic, numeric, and
text formatting conventions. Contract for specific milestones of
linguistic rule development.
	Scott Meredith
	Apple Computer, Speech and Language Technology
	408-974-1677 (w)
	415-731-4952 (h)

-- CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE (UC San Diego): Applications are
invited for postdoctoral fellowships in Language, Communication and
Brain at the Center for Research in Language at the University of
California, San Diego.  The fellowships are supported by the National
Institutes of Health (NIDCD), and provide an annual stipend ranging
>From $19,608 to $32,300 depending upon years of postdoctoral
experience.  In addition, some funding is provided for medical
insurance and travel.  The program provides interdisciplinary training
in (1) psycholinguistics, including language processing in adults and
language development in children; (2) communication disorders,
including childhood language disorders and adult aphasia; (3)
electrophysiological studies of language, and (4) neural network
models of language learning and processing.  Candidates are expected
to work in at least one of these four areas, and preference will be
given to candidates with background and interests involving more than
one area.  Grant conditions require that candidates be citizens or
permanent residents of the U.S.  In addition, trainees will incur a
payback obligation during their first year of postdoctoral NRSA
support and are required to complete a Payback Agreement.  Deadline
for submission of applications is May 15, 1995.  Applicants should
send a statement of interest, three letters of recommendation, a
curriculum vitae and copies of relevant publications to
	Jan Corte
	Center for Research in Language 0526
	University of California, San Diego
	9500 Gilman Drive
	La Jolla, California 92093-0526   
	(619) 534-2536
Women and minority candidates are specifically invited to apply.

-- UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: The Institute for Research in Cognitive
Science (IRCS) at the University of Pennsylvania provides
opportunities for several postdoctoral positions in Cognitive Science.
The deadline for applications is February 1, 1995.  To apply, please
send a cover letter indicating your proposed research, including a
statement about how you would benefit from working in our
interdisciplinary environment, your resume, and have two or three
referees send letters of reference directly to
             Postdoctoral Fellow Selection Committee
             Institute for Research in Cognitive Science
             University of Pennsylvania
             400C 3401 Walnut Street
             Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228
The University of Pennsylvania is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity
Employer.

-- BROWN UNIVERSITY: The Brown University Department of Cognitive and
Linguistic Sciences invites applications for a temporary faculty
position for the academic year September, 1995 to June, 1996. The
position would be suited to either a senior sabbatical visitor, who,
in exchange for half- time salary support, would teach two courses at
Brown or to a more junior applicant who would receive full salary
support and teach three courses. All applicants must have received the
Ph.D. degree or its equivalent by the time of their application.  The
candidate should have strong teaching and research interests in a core
area of linguistic theory, and expertise in some area of computational
linguistics, language acquisition or other area that complements the
department's strengths. A research interest in non-Indo-European
languages, especially African languages, would be a plus.  Send vitae,
recent publications, three references (for senior applicants, the
names of three references) and a cover letter describing teaching and
research interests and qualifications to:
        Linguistics Search Committee
        Department of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences
        Box 1978
        Brown University
        Providence, R.I. 02912
The initial deadline for applications is March 1, 1995, but
applications will be accepted after that time until the temporary
position is filled. Brown is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action
Employer. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)

		        ^/^/^/ INSTA-PRIZE \^\^\^

LANGUAGE CHALLENGE: (Tip o' the pen to CLN) Identify this language for
this week's insta-prize:
			
		Tsyunabad lerner ou gaboyd ljer.
		Yerginkner vorbes yerazner hokou.
		Yerginkner, vorbes mangagan acher.
		Menag ei yes.  Ints hed eir tou.

Answer to ME AND YOU AND... (etc.): Trick question there, folks, the
dog covers 2 km, of course, but by the end of the 15 minutes he is
turning 'infinitely fast' and so, while he must be facing one way or
the other, there is no method available to modern science to determine
which!


\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/

                    ^\^\^\ CONSERVE DISK SPACE /^/^/^

So you may delete your copy after you've read it (or better yet,
before you've read it), the Sesquipedalian Weekly Herald is stored
online at Stanford (in directory /user/linguistics/Sesquip/93-94), and
at Berkeley (in the directory /usr/pub.)  The most current issue of
the Herald can be found by typing 'help quip'.

Neither Stanford University nor the Linguistics Department, nor any of
their employees, makes any warranty, whatsoever, implied, or assumes
any legal liability or responsibility regarding any information,
disclosed, in this publication, or represents that its use would not
infringe privately owned rights.  No specific reference constitutes or
implies endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by Stanford
University or the Linguistics Department, or their employees.  The
views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those
of Stanford University or the Linguistics Department, or their
employees, and shall not be used for advertising or product
endorsement purposes.

Children under 17 not admitted without parent

/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\