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Sesquipedalian #24

the SESQUIPEDALIAN 				       Volume V, No. 24
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George Takei's birthday				         April 20, 1995


     Musical Dictionary for People who Hate Music (Classical Edition)

Accidentals: wrong notes.

Augmented Fifth: a 36 oz. bottle.

Breve: the way a sustained note sounds when you run out of air.

Coloratura Soprano: A singer who has great trouble finding the proper
	note, and has a wild time hunting for it.

Choral Conductor: A musician who is adept at following many people at
	the same time.

Deceptive Cadence: When everybody hopes you're going to stop, but you
	don't.

Detache: An indication that the trombones are to play with the slides
	removed.

Espressivo: Close eyes and sing with a wide vibrato.

Glissando: a technique adopted by tenors for difficult runs.

Hemiola: A hereditary blood disease caused by chromatics.

Isorhythmic Motet: When some members of the consort get different copy
	than the others.

Musica Ficta: When you lose your place and have to make up the notes.

Rubato: German measles.

Piano Subito: Indicates an opportunity for some obscure singer to take
	a solo.

Prima Donna: Soprano who generally dies in the last act of an opera of
	consumption, or more frequently, overconsumption.

Risoluto: Indicates to the chorus that they are to stubbornly maintain
	the tempo no matter what the conductor tries to do.

Vibrato: The villain in Handel's opera 'Arpeggio at Tessitura.'

(Submitted by accordionist Sy Kushner (who is also a musician))

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

-- Africa Week '95 continues with John Mugane, Adams Bodomo, and two
other African students presenting a panel on language, education, and
the role of returning African graduates.  Adams and John are speaking
on 'The Influence of Language on National Development.'  This is part
three of their panel and takes place at 12 noon, April 26, at the
Bechtel International Center.

-- LOOK WHO'S RUNNING: Yukiko Morimoto travelled to Boston this
weekend, to participate in the Boston Marathon!  Reliable sources
indicate that she finished without stopping, or even slowing to walk,
once. 

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

Linguistics Department Colloquium
Friday, April 21, 1995
3:30 PM, Margaret Jacks Hall, room 146 (NB!)
Reception follows

                           Joseph H. Greenberg
            Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Anthropology
                  Is Indo-European alone in the world?

   Some of the grammatical evidence for the validity of a widespread
Eurasiatic family which contains Indo-European as a member and extends
eastward as far as Eskimo-Aleut is presented.  The relation between
the approaches and results of the Russian Nostratic school and that
presented here is explained.
   A number of Eurasiatic grammatical features are then discussed.
These include a  kw-  interrogative,  -n(a)  indefinitizer, first and
second person singular pronouns including the  eg'(h)om/me  suppletion
in the first person singular, locatives and instrumentals in  -m  and
-bh, the final syllabic  -m  of the Indo-European numeral for `seven' and
`ten', and the existence in Korean of old Eurasiatic first and second
person pronouns beneath the heavy overlay of forms indicating
politeness levels.

A schedule for Linguistics Colloquiums can be found on the World-Wide
Web at URL http://bhasha.stanford.edu/~kessler/colloq/colloq.html

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

Reminder: There is a Stanford Phono Workshop TONIGHT:
	Date: Thursday April 20th, 7:30pm
	Place: Seminar Room, Linguistics Dept, Margaret Jacks Hall

		THE PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP AT STANFORD
	  Rule Ordering, and Constraint Interaction in OT
			Young-Mee Yu Cho
		      Stanford University 

Rule ordering was one of the most powerful tools for phonological
analysis prior to the introduction of OT. In particular, numerous
cases have been reported of dialects or historical stages of a
language that contain the same underlying representations and the same
rules, but differ simply by virtue of the ordering of the rules.  I
argue that when equipped with two further assumptions involving
markedness and association of structure, OT has not only the same kind
of descriptive coverage in dealing with dialectal variation as
derivational theories but it also handles cases where the latter make
incorrect predictions. Two cases of where the constraint interaction
of OT diverges from the rule ordering of operational theories (Korean
and Klamath) will be discussed in depth.

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

-- NELS 26: Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, October 27, 28, 29 and 30, 1995.  Abstracts are invited
for twenty-minute papers on any aspect of theoretical linguistics.
Special workshops will be held on Monday, October 30, on Indo-European
Linguistics and Sentence Processing.  ABSTRACT DEADLINE: JULY 7, 1995.
Abstracts should be anonymous and typed single-spaced in 12-point font
on no more than one 8 1/2" x 11" page with one-inch margins.
References, but no examples, may be included on a second page.  For
the sake of the reviewers, guidelines will be strictly enforced.  At
most one individual, one joint, and one workshop-related abstract per
person will be considered.  Please write "workshop" in the top
left-hand corner of your abstract if you would like to have it
considered for one of the Monday workshops.  Submissions should
include (a) ten anonymous copies of an abstract, or five if submitted
for the workshop only; (b) one copy stating the name of the author(s)
and affiliation(s), for inclusion in the NELS booklet if accepted; (c)
a typed 3" x 5" card bearing the title of the paper and the authors'
names, affiliations, phone numbers, and snailmail and e-mail
addresses.  Please indicate whether you would like e-mail
acknowledgement of receipt.  Abstracts sent after the deadline will
not be considered.  We will accept no fax or e-mail submissions.
Accepted presenters will be notified in early September.  Please send
abstracts to 
            Dianne Jonas and Martha McGinnis, coordinators
                               NELS 26
               Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
                20D-219 MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
For more information, please write to nels26@mit.edu or to the above address.

-- ICIL: International Conference on Interfaces in Linguistics
(Oporto, Portugal, 13-17 November 1995).  Recent advances in
Theoretical Linguistics impose an accurate discussion on interfaces
between levels of knowledge in the Grammar and levels of linguistic
knowledge and other components of the mind-brain.  The Associacao
Portuguesa de Linguistica (APL) is organizing an international
conference mainly concerned with the following interfaces:
morphology/syntax, morphology/phonology, phonology/syntax,
syntax/semantics.  The conference is featuring the participation of
renowned specialists who will make a brief survey of the problems in
the field and present their recent research, including Bernardette
Abaurre, Mark Baker, Hagit Borer, Gennaro Chierchia, Rochelle Lieber,
Marina Nespor, and Tim Stowell.  During the conference we also plan to
include 16 talks of 30 minutes each, on topics related to the above
mentioned interfaces.  Abstracts, written in English, must be typed in
12 pt and should not exceed one page with 2.5cm margin on all four
sides.  If sent by fax, then another copy must be sent by mail.  They
should be sent anonymously in twofold, accompanied by an original with
the author's name, address and affiliation, to
	Associacao Portuguesa de Linguistics
	Gabriela Ardisson Matos
	Departmento de Linguistica Geral e Romanica
	Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
	Cidade Universitaria
	1699 Lisboa codex
	Portugal
	fax: 351 1 796 00 63
Deadline for submission of abstracts: June 15, 1995.

	 	     ^/^/^/ DISCOURSE GROUP \^\^\^

A SPECIAL TALK FRIDAY APRIL 21st, 12:15 in 110-111A
The talk will be followed by discussion (we have the room till 2).
Sandwiches and soft drinks will be provided

Contrastive Discourse Markers in English
Bruce Fraser
Boston University

	Discourse markers are expressions such as now, well, so,
however, and then, which are independent of sentence propositional
content and which signal a relationship between the current basic
message and the previous discourse.  There are three major types of
discourse markers: topic change markers such as incidentally and by
the way; discourse activity markers such as to clarify and to begin;
and message relationship markers such as analogously, however, in
addition, and therefore. It is one group in this third category,
contrastive discourse markers, that I will focus on.
	Contrastive discourse markers signal a dissonance between the
basic message, to which they are appended, usually in initial
position, and the forgoing discourse. For English they include all the
same, but, contrariwise, conversely, despite (this/that), even so,
however, in spite of (this/that), in comparison (with this/that), in
contrast (to this/ that), instead (of doing this/that), nevertheless,
nonetheless, (this/that point) notwithstanding, on the other hand, on
the contrary, rather (than do this/that), regardless (of this/that),
still, that said, though, and yet.
	The present paper discusses the analysis of contrastive
discourse markers into five distinct sub-groups in terms of the
constraints imposed by the markers on the semantic and pragmatic
environments, their privileges of occurrence within a sentence, and
their co-occurrence with other discourse markers.
*******
Copies of two papers by Bruce Fraser on discourse markers are
available in a pink folder in the Greenberg Room

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

-- SUMMER OPPORTUNITIES IN LANUGUAGE RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT: Summer
hires, undergraduates.  CS background or linguistics background
preferred.  Familiarity with emacs preferred.  Native speakers
(readers) of German, Spanish, Chinese, and possibly Italian.
Responsibilities will include a large variety of tasks in annotating
text for information of interest for training natural language
understanding programs.  Please contact
        Terri Simon-Barron
        Human Resources
        BBN Systems and Technologies
        10 Moulton St.
        Cambridge, MA  02138
        email:tsimon@bbn.com
        (617)873-2502

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

-- Readers of this list might be interested in a bibliographic search
facility which is available from the University of Essex. It provides
easy access (via the World Wide Web, or email) to over 11,000
bibliographic entries in linguistics, including the "CSLI
Bibliography" and "Sussex: NLP in the 80's" bibliography, as well as a
large (over 6,000 items) database created by members of the CL/MT
group at Essex over the last few years.  Entries can be retrieved in
several different formats, including "refer" style, BibTeX, LaTeX,
HTML, as well as plain text.  For web access, the URL is:

	http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/search/

For information about mail access, send a mail to 
	clmtbib@llsun4.essex.ac.uk
with the Subject line containing the word "help".
One of the features of the Web Page is a list of other sources of
bibliographic information (e.g. the University of Saarbrueken's LIDO
facility). It would be nice to include more such information, so
please let us know about other sources, together with any comments.

		     ^/^/^/ 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.)

-- COMPUTATIONAL GRAMMARIANS and LEXICOGRAPHERS (Japanese, German, and
Spanish): The NLP Group in Microsoft Research is looking for
computational grammarians and computational lexicographers for
Japanese, German, and Spanish.  The positions will be located on the
Microsoft central campus in Redmond, Washington, USA.  This is a great
opportunity to work with a dedicated group of researchers who are
creating a system for unrestricted text understanding and generation.
The grammarians' primary responsibilities include developing and
testing a computational grammar for the language, in accordance with
the overall architecture of the Microsoft Natural Language
Understanding system.  The initial emphasis will be on creating a
grammar for syntactic analysis, followed by work on logical form, and
moving eventually into areas of pragmatics, discourse, and generation.
The lexicographers' primary responsibilities include developing and
maintaining the morphological rules and data for the language, in
accordance with the overall system architecture used by the Microsoft
Research NLP group; checking, updating, and maintaining the
information in an online lexicon and knowledge base for that language;
and testing the analysis and generation systems for that language in
various ways.  The grammarians' qualifications should include
experience in linguistic research and software development;
familiarity with natural language processing; a flexible approach to
linguistic theory; and an advanced degree in linguistics, computer
science, or a closely related discipline.  Native proficiency in the
language of choice is assumed; practical experience with NLP
implementation issues is highly desirable.  The lexicographers'
qualifications should include experience in linguistic research and
online dictionary development, some programming experience, keen
interest in lexical issues, and at least a BA/BS degree in linguistics
or a closely related discipline.  Native proficiency in the language
of choice is assumed.  A practical orientation is highly desirable.
An advanced degree in linguistics and/or significant programming
experience would be a plus.  Please send resumes, cover letters, and
any additional materials by June 15, 1995 to
	Joan Smiley
	Human Resources
	Microsoft Corporation
	One Microsoft Way
	Redmond, WA  98052
	email:  joans@microsoft.com

(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 \^\^\^

IT'S HARD TO BE FAMOUS, PART II: Follow the letters, up, down, across
and diagonally, to reveal the scrambled quote of one of America's
great thinkers, on humour (hint: the quote starts on a letter that
only appears once):

			       T E V Y N E
			       B O A U O H
			       E C H N Y W
			       E L O N T S
			       A B U T I H
			       N E F D R A

Solution to PARTING SHOT: The final two letters of first, second,
third, fourth...


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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.  Any
similarity to actual linguists, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.  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.

'If anyone finds this offensive, I am prepared not only to retract my
words, but also to deny under oath that I ever said them.' -- Tom Lehrer

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