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Sesquipedalian #12

the SESQUIPEDALIAN 				       Volume V, No. 12
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National Champagne Day				       January 19, 1995


		    SHIPS IN THE NIGHT (GRAMMATICALITY)

	I had only just arrived at the club when I bumped into Roger.
After we had exchanged a few pleasantries, he lowered his voice and
asked, 'What do you think of Martha and I as a potential twosome?'

	'That,' I replied, 'would be a mistake.  "Martha and me" is
more like it.'

	'You're interested in Martha?'

	'All I'm interested in is clear communication.'

	'Fair enough,' he agreed.  'May the best man win.'  Then he
sighed.  'Here I thought we had a clear path to becoming a very unique
couple.' 

	'You couldn't be a "very unique couple," Roger.'

	'Oh?  And why is that?'

	'Martha couldn't be "a little bit pregnant," could she?'

	'Say what?  You think that Martha and me...'

	'"Martha and I."'

	'Oh.'  Roger blushed and set down his drink.  "Gee, I didn't
know.'

	'Of course you didn't,' I assured him.  'Most people don't.'

	'I feel very badly about this.'

	'You shouldn't say that: It's "I feel bad..."'

	'Please, don't,' Roger said.  'If anyone's at fault here, it's me!'

(Lawrence Bush)

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

-- At the Georgetown Linguistics Society conference (Developments in
Discourse Analysis), February 17-19, Jennifer Arnold presents 'The
interaction between discourse focus and verbal form in Mapudungun,'
and Charlotte Linde will deliver 'Other people's stories: Third person
narrative in individual and group identity.'

-- Congratulations to Scott Schwenter, whose article '"Hot news" and
the grammaticalization of perfects' has just appeared in Linguistics
32 (1994).

-- Anatoliy Polikarpov (Visiting Fullbright Professor at the Slavic
Dept, Stanford/Moscow State University, Dept. of Theoretical and
Computational Linguistics) will be lecturing on 'Micro- and
Macroprocesses in Human Language Evolution,' Wednesday, January 25, in
Wilbur B2, at 5.15 pm.

-- Jurgen Habermas (some say a great sociologist, others, a great
philosoher) from the J-W Goethe Universitat in Frankfurt will be in
residency at the Humanities Center next week.  His schedule is as
follows:
Jan 24, 4:30pm: public lecture on the subject of human rights and
sovereignty
Jan 25, 3-5pm: open seminar on Charles Taylor's MULTICULTURALISM AND
THE POLITICS OF RECOGNITION
Jan 26, 7:30pm: open seminar on THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE OF
MODERNITY
The first talk is in Cubberley Auditorium, and the last 2 are in the
ANNEX, which is across the street from Bolivar House on the corner.
Habermas recently wrote a book on multiculturalism, which has been
described as 'readable.'

-- LOOK WHO'S TALKING TO THE PRESS: Will Leben was interviewed in
yesterday's San Jose Mercury News (Peninsula Extra Section) regarding
the Hausa CD-ROM project he has in development.  For those of you who
missed it, the article is posted in the department office.

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

Friday, Jan 20, 1995, 3:30 pm, Cordura 100.  Reception follows.

		       Bill Ladusaw, UC Santa Cruz
		     Negation and `Mode of Judgement'

	In this paper I advocate the adoption of what could be termed
a `semantically exocentric' interpretation of natural language
(descriptive) negation.  This entails adopting what Horn terms a
`symmetrist' position with respect to negation and affirmation as
modes of predication (or `judgement').  I justify the adoption by the
well-known typological generalization that the morphology of clausal
negation does not routinely iterate and by its utility in accounting
for why there is no `semantic pressure' against negative concord
interpretations of clauses with multiple occurrences of negative
morphology.
	The postulation of a class of modes of judgement, which map
the basis for a proposition into a propositional meaning, focusses our
attention on the question of what the possible bases for propositions
are.  In the spirit of a `structured meaning' approach, I propose that
the distinction between unary bases consisting of Davidsonian event
descriptions and binary bases consisting of an individual and a
(possibly derived) property corresponds to the traditional distinction
between thetic and categorical `judgements'.  This views the etiology
of the contrast (and related `Milsark' effects) as a matter of
semantics rather than as only an `information packaging' issue.

		    ^/^/^/ CALL FOR PAPERS \^\^\^

-- FLSM-VI: LAST CALL!  The Sixth Annual Meeting of the Formal
Linguistics Society of Mid-America will be hosted by the Indiana
University Linguistics Club at Indiana University in Bloomington,
Indiana on May 19-21, 1995. Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks
in all areas of formal linguistics (syntax, phonology, morphology,
semantics, psycholinguistics, etc). Selected papers presented will be
published in the FLSM VI proceedings, published by the IULC. Please
submit 10 copies of a one-page anonymous abstract suitable for
reproduction (an additional page with examples and references may be
included). Use fonts no smaller than 12 pts. Authors should identify
themselves on a separate 3" x 5" index card. The card should contain
the following information: title of paper, name of author,
address/affiliation, electronic mail address, phone number.
       FLSM 6 Committee
       Indiana University Linguistics Club
       Department of Linguistics
       322 Memorial Hall
       Indiana University
       Bloomington, IN 47405
Address inquiries electronically to flsm1995@indiana.edu or Elizabeth
Purnell (elpurnel@silver.ucs.indiana.edu). ABSTRACTS MUST BE RECEIVED
BY JANUARY 31, 1995. 

-- EACL: From TEXTS TO TAGS: ISSUES IN MULTILINGUAL LANGUAGE ANALYSIS
(EACL SIGDAT WORKSHOP, Dublin, Ireland - March 27, 1995.) Workshop
organized by the ACL special interest group SIGDAT to be held in
conjunction with the meeting of the European Chapter of the
Association of Computational Linguistics. The meeting will be
co-chaired by Susan Armstrong, ISSCO and Evelyne Tzoukermann, AT&T
Bell Laboratories.  Submission deadline: Jan 23.  With the growing
amount of multilingual corpus data becoming available, there is a
pressing need to explore issues in representation and analysis of
these texts.  Although extensive and leading work has been
accomplished for languages such as English, for the most part many
theoretical and concrete issues need to be resolved in the
representation and tagging of other languages.  The focus of this
workshop is on multilingual text analysis, from the level of text
itself, e.g. tokenization, sentence separation, etc, to
morphosyntactic analysis, specifically tagging.  We intend to focus on
tagging since it appears to be the case that, from a computational
point of view, part of speech tagging is often an important
prerequisite to further structural analysis.  Additionally, many NLP
systems can make use of tagged corpora for various applications.
However, tasks such as tokenization and tagging continue to raise
serious challenges in multilingual text analysis, due to differing
types of morphological characteristics across languages.  Topics of
Interest include (but are not limited to): tokenization and
segmentation, interfaces between morphological analysis and
part-of-speech tagging, size and choice of tagset, defining and
refining new tag sets, mapping between tag sets, universal vs.
language specific tags, multilingual approaches to tagging.  We invite
submissions on topics that in general reflect an awareness of
differences and similarities in working on multilingual text.  We also
welcome substantive descriptions of newly started and ongoing
projects.  Authors should submit extended abstracts (2000-3000 words),
either electronically or in hard-copy. Electronic submissions must
either be plain ascii text or a postcript file following the EACL-95
stylesheet.  Hard copy backup should include two (2) copies of the
paper.  Abstracts should be sent to either of the addresses:
Evelyne Tzoukermann                  Susan Armstrong-Warwick 
AT&T Bell Laboratories               ISSCO University of Geneva
Room 2D-448, P.O. Box 636            54 route des Acacias
600 Mountain Avenue                  
Murray Hill, NJ, 07944-0636          CH-1227 Geneve
USA                                  Switzerland
tel.   +1-908-582-2924               +41-22-705-7113
fax    +1-908-582-7308               +41-22-300-1086 
email  evelyne@research.att.com      susan@divsun.unige.ch

		    ^/^/^/ PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP \^\^\^

Reminder: there's a Phonology Workshop at Stanford TONIGHT, and next
Thursday too! 7:30 pm, MJH Conference Room.

                 Statistical Phonotactics of English
                           CVC monosyllables
                             Brett Kessler
                         Stanford University

Phonologists have often called attention to absolute co-occurrence
restrictions between the various parts of the syllable.  In English,
for example, only lax vowels can occur before agma: `sing', *`seeng'.
Most such restrictions cited between vowel and consonant affect VC
pairs rather than CV pairs, which is explained by the theory that the
VC group into a rime structure --- the most unmarked hence most
frequent restrictions are the most local ones (Booij 1983).
	But attention has focussed almost exclusively on restrictions
that are inviolable in the core grammar.  In this talk I show that the
syllable also has phonotactic *tendencies*, where sequences of
segments or features, while perfectly legal, occur far less often than
one would expect by chance.  I shall present in excruciating detail
statistics about the internal phonotactics of CVC monosyllables in
English, and show that tendencies too are much more prevalent for VC
pairs than for CV pairs.  In a traditional generative framework, such
patterns would be considered historical accidents; in a connectionist
framework, they are a primary fact about language.  Workshop
participants will be encouraged to share their opinions about the
status of such data in their favourite theoretical framework.

======
Upcoming talks at Stanford:
26 Jan: Haruo Kubozono (Osaka U of Foreign Studies/UC Santa Cruz)
        "Foot and Syllable: Constraint Interaction in Japanese
        Accentuation"
9 Feb : Ove Lorentz (UC Santa Cruz)

		 ^\^\^\ DISCOURSE MARKER WORKSHOPS /^/^/^

	Several people have expressed interest in starting a workshop
on discourse markers. The prime objective would be to discuss current
research informally; we are particularly interested in getting to know
what is being done in languages other than English.
	There will be an initial meeting on Tuesday January 24th
starting at 7 p.m.  in 460-146 (Margaret Jacks Hall Conference Room).
Since pizza and soft drinks will be provided at this first meeting, I
would much appreciate hearing from you if you intend to come so that
we can be sure to have enough pizza.
	I propose that at this initial meeting we each spend 5 mins.
outlining our current research on discourse markers, and then spend
some time defining the term, so that we can communicate productively
with each other on the topic.

Elizabeth Traugott

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

-- SPATIAL COGNITION: NSF Graduate Research Training Program, in
Cognitive Science (University of California, Berkeley.  U.S. Citizens
and Permanent Residents ONLY.  The Institute of Cognitive Studies at
the University of California, Berkeley, announces a graduate research
training program in Cognitive Science for students who wish to focus
their studies on an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding
Spatial Cognition: how organisms perceive, describe, learn, and reason
about spatial aspects of their environment.  Between 1994 and 1999,
the program will offer support for graduate training in spatial
cognition, including both coursework and research. The coursework
covers background knowledge on spatial cognition drawn from
computational, linguistic, and psychological perspectives. The
research training provides practical knowledge in a variety of
techniques from computer science, linguistics and psychology.
Trainees will receive a stipend of $14,000 per year plus tuition and
fees.  They will be supported for two years, typically their second
and third years (but occasionally their third and fourth years),
provided they make satisfactory progress within the program.  During
the initial year (1994-95) a small number of more advanced students
will be supported for a single year.  Formal application to the NSF
Graduate Training Program in Cognitive Science occurs during the first
or second year of study at UC Berkeley. Interested students must
submit a formal application to the Director (Stephen Palmer) by March
15.  Because Berkeley does not currently have a graduate degree
program in Cognitive Science, students will be accepted into the
Cognitive Science training program from related departments, such as
Computer Science, Education, Linguistics, and Psychology. Each
applicant must obtain three letters of recommendation, submit a
two-year plan showing how they plan to complete the required
coursework, and write a brief research proposal of no more than two
double-spaced pages. Application packets are available from 
	Linda Daetwyler
	Institute of Cognitive Studies
	Building T-4
	University of California
	Berkeley, CA 94720
All applicants will be notified of their status by May 1. Incoming
students who are interested in the training program should apply for
admission to the appropriate department.  Then, during their first or
second year of graduate study they may apply for a Traineeship, as
described above.

-- THE LONGFELLOW INSTITUTE announces a seminar on languages of what
is now the United States (LOWINUS) with new fellowships for the
academic year 95/96. (A) A full-time one-year residential postdoctoral
fellowship ($36,000 for a full year, including benefits) with the
possibility of teaching as course; (B) Dissertation writing grants
($12,500 each); (C) Research support for graduate students and
scholars; (D) Short-term travel grants for visiting scholars from
abroad.  The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has funded this seminar,
directed by Professors Marc Shell, Werner Sollors, and Doris Sommer,
in order to stimulate scholarly work on texts that were written or
published in what is now the United States in any language OTHER THAN
ENGLISH.  Taking an explicitly historical point of departure, the
seminar will investigate the fiction of US monolingualism and explore
the theoretical issues of language and nationhood in an
interdisciplinary context.  Scholars and students working in this area
are invited to submit an application (cv with an indication of
language expertise and relevant past experience, one-to-three page
project description, and two letters of recommendation) in triplicate:
	The Longfellow Institute
	LOWINUS
	Harvard University
	Department of English and American Literature and Language
	Warren House
	11 Prescott Street
	Cambridge MA 02138
	fax: 617/496-8737
Candidates are encouraged to include offprints, publications,
manuscripts, and bibliographies.  Applicants should write their name
and the word LOWINUS followed by the letter corresponding to the
category for which they are applying (A, B, C, or D) on the top of
each page of the application.  The deadline for category A is January
17, 1995.  All other applications (B, C, or D) must be submitted by
March 1, 1995.

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

LETTERS: 'Dear Sesquipedalian,
	While the Information Superhighway is certainly a lousy name,
it could be a great acronym, standing for:

Interactive Network For Organizing, Retrieving, Manipulating,
Altering, and Transferring Information On National Systems, Unleashing
Practically Every Rebellious Human Intelligence, Gratifying Hackers,
Wiseacres, And Yahoos.'
			-- Alert Reader Kevin Kwaku
	
Thanks, Kevin.

ERRATUM: In last week's 'Quip, the reference in G. Pullum was cited as
'Gerald Sadock.'  Most astute readers are of course aware that it is
-Jerrold Sadock.-  This mistake was the fault of the Sesquipeditors
and we apologize for the mis-attribution.

		    ^\^\^\ 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.)

-- IRCS: 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.

-- LYNDON STATE COLLEGE: Coordinator of College Composition Program to
direct the freshman composition and expository writing programs and to
establish and coordinate a computer-equipped Writing Lab.  Specialist
in the teaching of writing; knowledge of and experience in such
programs as Writing Process, CAI, and traditional writing/composition
teaching strategies.  Familiarity with 'Writing Across the Curriculum'
programs a plus.  Duties: teaching composition courses; coordinating a
writing lab/tutorial center.  Earned doctorate required in Composition
and Rhetoric.  Send letter, cv, and dossier to 
	Faculty Search Committee
	English, c/o Rex Meyers, Dean of Academic Affairs
	Lyndon State College
	Lyndonville VT 05851
EOE/AA

(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 \^\^\^

THE LAST WORD: Starting from the first letter, follow the letters (up,
down, across, or diagonally) to reveal the quote encrypted below.
Identify the quote to win this week's insta-prize.

			  D E A Y T H L D O H
		 	  D I R H A L I G I T
			  Y E D W O T T N T S
			  M O C T R S H E L A

Answer to LANGUAGE CHALLENGE: Apparently all the local Armenians were
away from their terminals last week, since no one correctly identified
the language in question...


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                    ^\^\^\ 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.

All answers verified by Encyclopaedia Brittanica

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