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Sesquipedalian #28

the SESQUIPEDALIAN 				       Volume V, No. 28
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Black Watch Day						   May 18, 1995


		        INNOVATIVE JOB STRATEGIES

	Vice Presidents and personnel directors of the one hundred
largest corporations were asked to describe their most unusual
experience interviewing prospective employees.

	-- A job applicant challenged the interviewer to an arm
	   wrestle.
	-- Interviewee wore a Walkman, explaining that she could listen
	  to the interviewer and the music at the same time.
	-- Candidate fell and broke arm during interview.
	-- Candidate announced she hadn't had lunch and proceeded to
	   eat a hamburger and french fies in the interviewers office.
	-- Candidate explained that her long-term goal was to replace
	   the interviewer.
	-- Candidate said he never finished high school because he was
	   kidnapped and kept in a closet in Mexico.
	-- Balding candidate excused himself and returned to the
	   office a few minutes later wearing a hairpiece.
	-- Applicant said if he was hired he would demonstrate his
	   loyalty by having the corporate logo tattooed on his forearm.
	-- Applicant interrupted interview to phone her therapist for
	   advice on how to answer specific interview questions.
	-- Candidate brought large dog to interview.
	-- Applicant refused to sit down and insisted on being
	   interviewed standing up.
	-- Candidate dozed off during interview.

The employers were also asked to list the "most unusual" questions
that have been asked by job candidates.

"What is it that you people do at this company?"
"What is the company motto?"
"Why aren't you in a more interesting business?"
"What are the zodiac signs of all the board members?"
"Why do you want references?"
"Do I have to dress for the next interview?"
"I know this is off the subject, but will you marry me?"
"Will the company move my rock collection from California to Maryland?"
"Will the company pay to relocate my horse?"
"Does your health insurance cover pets?"
"Would it be a problem if I'm angry most of the time?"
"Does your company have a policy regarding concealed weapons?"
"Do you think the company would be willing to lower my pay?"
"Why am I here?"

Also included are a number of unusual statement made by candidates
during the interview process.

   "At times I have the strong urge to do something harmful or
shocking."
   "I feel uneasy indoors."
   "Sometimes I feel like smashing things."
   "Women should not be allowed to drink in cocktail bars."
   "I think that Lincoln was greater than Washington."
   "I get excited very easily."
   "Once a week, I usually feel hot all over."
   "I am fascinated by fire."
   "I have no difficulty in starting or holding my bowel movement."
   "I like tall women."
   "Whenever a man is with a woman he is usually thinking about sex."
   "People are always watching me."
   "If I get too much change in a store, I always give it back."
   "Almost everyone is guilty of bad sexual conduct."
   "I must admit that I am a pretty fair talker."
   "I never get hungry."
   "I know who is responsible for most of my troubles."
   "If the pay was right, I'd travel with the carnival."
   "I would have been more successful if nobody would have snitched on me."
   "My legs are really hairy."
   "I think I'm going to throw-up."

[LaughWEB]

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

-- This Saturday at UC Irvine, Peter Sells will be delivering
'"Subject" Raising in the Phillipine Languages' at the Workshop on
Theoretical East Asian Linguistics.

-- Speakers at the Seventh European Summer School in Logic, Language
and Information (Barcelona, August 14-25) include Joan Bresnan, Annie
Zaenen, Mary Dalrymple, and Ron Kaplan.

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

                    NEGATION IN KOREAN AND ENGLISH:
             A LEXICALIST, CONSTRAINT-BASED PERSPECTIVE
                        Dissertation Proposal

                             Jong-Bok Kim
                         Stanford Linguistics
                     Time: Friday, May 19th, 3:30pm
                        Venue: CSLI, Cordura 100
                         Happy hour will follow.

In a typological study of sentence negation, Dahl (1979) has
identified three major ways of expressing negation in natural
languages: as a morphological category on verbs, an auxiliary verb,
and an adverb-like particle.  Many current syntactic treatments of
these three types of negation have been couched in terms of
transformational operations and a proliferation of functional
projections including NegP, AgrOP, AgrSP, and TP (Pollock 1989,
Ouhalla 1990, Laka 1990, Zanuttini 1991, Chomsky 1991, among others).
This derivational view claims that the interaction of NegP with
syntactic movement and other hierarchically fixed functional
projections can account for their identical semantic scope as well as
all the surface possibilities exhibited by these three types of
negation.  However, research on the negation of several languages
including Korean, English, and French shows that the evidence for the
existence of the uniform syntactic category, Neg, and its maximal
projection, NegP, is neither empirically nor theoretically
well-grounded.  The research proposed in this talk will challenge this
nonlexicalist, derivational view, and develop an alternative theory of
negation within the strictly lexicalist and nonderivational framework
of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG).
The talk begins with Korean which has both morphological negation and
a negative auxiliary. After reviewing the existing arguments for the
existence of NegP in Korean, I will show how an alternative approach,
maintaining the lexical integrity principle (Bresnan and Mchombo in
press), makes it unnecessary to introduce the functional projection
NegP. I will then turn to English which employs the third type,
adverbial negation.  I will present some basic properties of English
negation, and then sketch a nonderivational analysis where the English
negator _not_ is treated either as an adverbial modifier or as the
complement of a `type-shifted' finite verb. Also I will briefly show
how this lexicalist view can be incorporated into French, and can
capture the parametric variation between French and English negation.
-----
A schedule for Linguistics Colloquia can be found on the World-Wide
Web at URL http://bhasha.stanford.edu/~kessler/colloq/colloq.html

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

-- SIXTH ANNUAL INT'L SYMPOSIUM ON ALGORITHMS AND COMPUTATION
(ISAAC95): December 4-6, 1995, Cairns, Australia.  Topics: Papers
presenting original research in the areas of design and analysis of
algorithms, computational complexity, and theory of computation are
sought.  Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest include:
automata, languages and computability, algorithms
(combinatorial/graph/geometric/randomized), vlsi and parallel
algorithms, networks and distributed algorithms, theory of learning
and robotics, number theory and cryptography, graph drawing,
computational logic.  Submissions.  15 copies (in English) of an
extended abstract of at most 10 double-spaced pages by 12 May 1995 to
        Professor John Staples
        Department of Computer Science
        University of Queensland
        Queensland 4072, Australia
Further Information from Dr. Bob Cohen, Department of Computer
Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia.  Ph:
+61 049 21 5291.  Fax: +61 049 21 6929.  E-Mail:
isaac95@cs.newcastle.edu.au

-- INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW GUINEA LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS:
The Indonesian Province of Irain Jaya and Papua New Guinea are
linguistically diverse and thus unique.  Not less than 1000 languages
or about 1/5 of the world's languages are spoken by the indigenous
people in these two regions.  The complex linguistic scenario has
attracted a good number of linguists to study these 'exotic' languages
to further their linguistic knowledge or to advance whatever theories
they subscribe to.  Resulting from these are complex issues that
relate not only to our understanding of how the grammars of these
languages are organized but also to see social use of these languages
in society.  The conference brings together linguistics, language
educators and other interested members of the public to discuss and
share with each other the knowledge linguists have made avialable in
field research on the Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinean languages and
to discuss language related issues that directly or indirectly affect
social, cultural and educational development of the speakers of these
different languages.  Future trends on the development, description
and the use of indigenous languages will also be discussed and
recommendation will be made to direct the Indonesian province of Irian
Jaya and Papua New Guinea on how best they can access the linguistic
resource to assist relevant areas of socio-educational development.
All abstracts and CVs of presenters must be received by 15 June 1995.
Complete papers plus disk in one of these word processing formats
(Wordstar, WP, Word for DOS or Word for Windows) should reach the
committee by 30 July 1995.  Conference chairman:
	Drs Nico Jakarimilena M.Sc.
	Universitas Cenderawasih
	P.O. Box 422 Abepura Jayapura
	Irian Jaya, Indonesia
	phone: (0967) 81221

-- 1995 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LINGUISTICS (July 3-7, 1995)
Paiknam Music Hall, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.  MARKING THE
20TH ANNIVERSARY of The Linguistic Society of Korea.  The Linguistic
Society of Korea is organizing an international conference on
linguistics celebrating the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the
Linguistic Society of Korea (LSK). It will consist of lectures given
by invited speakers and presentation of submitted papers. Leading
scholars from Europe and the United States of America will discuss
current issues in their fields of specialization.  People who are
interested in presenting papers at the conference are invited to
submit a one-page abstract of the paper no later than June 15, 1995.
Abstract submissions should include a 3" by 5" card with the title of
the paper, full name(s) of the author(s), and the address of the
(primary) author, including e-mail address if available. Each paper
will be allotted 30 minutes for presentation and discussion. After the
conference, selected papers will appear in Korean Journal of
Linguistics (KtL) 20-3, this fall.  FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, please
contact
	Prof. Young-Seok KIM 
	Department of English 
	Sogang University 
	Seoul 121-742, Korea 
	email: yskim@css.sogang.ac.kr 
	phone: (02)705-8291, (02)7065526

-- Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (Dartmouth College):
November 3-5, 1995.  Deadline for submitting abstracts: May 26, 1995.
Abstracts of 20 minute papers in all areas of formal linguistics and
psycholinguistics from any theoretical perspective are solicited.
Abstracts may be submitted in one of two forms: (1) Submit 1 copy of a
500 word abstract via e-mail to lindsay.whaley@dartmouth.edu
References and examples may be included beyond the 500 word limit.
Provide the following information: title of the paper, name of the
authorfs), address/affiliation, and phone number. (2) Submit 10 copies
of an anonymous 500 word abstract (one page, one inch margins,
unreduced type) along with a 3X5 card (an additional page may contain
examples and references). The card should contain the following
information: title of the paper, name of the author,
address/affiliation, phone number, e-mail address (if applicable).
Copies of abstracts should be sent to
	ESCOL '95
	Program in Linguistics & Cognitive Science
	6086 Reed Hall
	Dartmouth College
	Hanover, NH 03755
Information on registration and housing will be available in August.
For information, contact: lindsay.whaley@dartmouth.edu or
lenore.grenoble@dartmouth.edu, phone: 603-646-2055 or fax:
603-646-3353 

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

-- UNIVERSITY OF NIJMEGEN: Postgraduate studentships at the Computing
Science Institute of the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.  The
Computing Science Institute of the University of Nijmegen has
vacancies for postgraduate students who have just obtained their M.Sc
degree or will do so within a few months, on the following 3 projects:
(1) Unification of program transformations, automated deduction,
functional specifications and computer algebra. (2) Distributed
operating systems in pure functional languages.  (3) Parallel
evaluation of functional programs.  The projects are for 4 years and
should result in a Ph.D thesis.  The positions are open for persons
having a EC-passport.  Applications for the positions, including a
curriculum vitae, marks and two names of referees for recommendations
should be sent before May 25 to
        Catholic University Nijmegen,
        Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
        Personele Zaken
        Toernooiveld 1
        6525 ED Nijmegen
        The Netherlands
Please name the project in which you are interested and also the
reference number 55-95.  For information, contact Dr W.J.M. Dekkers,
email: wil@cs.kun.nl

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

-- NRA LOGIC: People who keep guns at home nearly triple their chances
of being murdered, usually by friends or relatives, but fail to
protect themselves from intruders, a new study finds.  However, Paul
Blackman, research coordinator at the National Rifle Association,
criticized the study.  'These people were highly susceptible to
homicide,' he said.  'We know that because they were killed.'

[Associated Press-- October 7, 1993]

		     ^/^/^/ 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.)

-- MESSAGE FROM TODD YAMPOL (CORONA CORPORATION): Greetings!  My name
is Todd Yampol.  I was in the Symbolic Systems Program from 1987-1989,
though I ultimately got my degree in Linguistics ('90).  Since that
time, I did a ling M.A. at Ohio State University and two years of
English teaching at a university in Japan.  Recently, I moved back to
this part of the world, and have landed a really cool job at Corona,
Inc.  Corona is a speech recognition starup that spun off from the
speech lab at SRI International.
        Here's the point: My company is currently searching for
talented software developers.  The details are in the job ad below.
It is my feeling that SSP grads would be particularly well suited for
our company because of their wide-ranging skills and interests.  Our
hiring needs are immediate.  There are entry level positions for new
grads starting as early as this summer.
        Also, in my opinion, there are several upcoming projects that
could be tackled by talented summer interns.  My career really began
with an SSP/CSLI internship at Xerox PARC in 1988.  This blossomed
into a 5 year working relationship, superb job contacts, and many
lifelong friendships.  If it hadn't been for that internship, I
probably wouldn't be where I am now.  In any case, I feel a great deal
of debt to the SSP internship program, and I would personally be very
glad to meet any students that are looking for a challenge this
summer.  Qualified students should call or send me e-mail right away
because I will be out of town for most of June.  For internships, I am
your only contact and advocate here at Corona.  In other words, I will
argue for the creation of summer intern positions for qualified
individuals.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Corona Corporation, a Menlo Park software startup, is looking for
Software Engineers.  Corona, a spinoff of SRI International, is in the
process of bringing SRI's leading-edge Speech Recognition technology
to market, and needs software engineers to build speech recognition
applications, support our user group, and eventually take part in core
software development.  Opportunities for growth within the company are
enormous.  Knowledge of pattern matching techniques is helpful, but
the most important qualifications Corona seeks are excellent software
skills (C and UNIX), and excellent communication skills.
Please send a cover letter and resume to
        Corona Corporation
        333 Ravenswood Ave.
        Menlo Park, CA  94025
        yampol@coronacorp.com (before 6/3/95 or after 7/1/95)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

-- NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: At New York University, we are developing
programs to encode Noam Chomsky's generative grammar (the Minimalist
Theory) into Prolog.  Our project is called:
        Universal Grammar in Prolog
        http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/ling.html
This address leads to a graphically oriented hypertext introduction to
Universal Grammar and Prolog.  Almost all programs run on the freeware
Prolog-2 (IBM) and Open-Prolog (Macintosh). Every program runs on
Quintus and C-Prolog.  All software for the IBM PC and Macintosh
(Prolog interpreters and programs) are free and can be downloaded via
ftp or from our www site.  We have placed about 1/4 of our material on
our (new) WWW site.  The address of the NYU Linguistics Dept is:
        New York University, Department of Linguistics
        http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics
        We would appreciate any comments (about theory, technical
problems, content, .jpg files, etc.) before we place the remaining
figures and hypertext on the node.
Ray Dougherty
Linguistics Department
New York University
Natural Language Computing Project

-- NOVELL INC: One Position available for a Software engineer at
Novell Inc.  Candidate will work in Speech Technology Group at Novell.
Developer will work on integrating various speech technologies in
Novell products.  Work will include working with recognition and
synthesis technology on the desktop and over the phone.  BS Computer
Science or related filed.  Two years programming experience required.
Excellent C programming skills required.  Some C++ programming
experience required.  Specific technical skill: Background in
telephony helpful.  Background in speech technology helpful.
Knowledge of TSAPI and/or TAPI helpful.  Contact Bruce Armstrong by
email: barmstrong@novell.com

-- STANFORD UNIVERSITY: The Department of Mathematics seeks a
full-time systems administrator (B14).  Admin. Assoc. provides 50%
time systems administration and 50% time administrative support for
Dept. of Mathematics. The systems administrator will independently
provide PC maintenance for all PC's and Macs and printers for Dept.;
perform basic troubleshooting (software & hardware); install &
uninstall new software programs and update older versions; teach
incoming grad students & visitors software programs; serve as TeX info
resource person. The individual will also independently provide
network management for the Math Dept.; set up e-mail accounts for
visitors, new students, staff & faculty; teach new visitors our e-mail
systems, maintain e-mail rosters, serve as a network gatekeeper;
modify login files, perform other network customization. The
individual will provide full range administrative support to a group
of faculty members in Mathematics Dept. (including visitors). This
position requires an individual who is experienced in using DOS and
IBM PC-type computers and TeX, a mathematical word processing program
to type manuscripts for publication, grant proposals, course work, and
seminar announcements (if not experienced, a willingness to learn).
Answer routine correspondence, maintain files, keep bibliographies of
group updated. Will handle electronic correspondence using UNIX; help
faculty, staff, visitors, & students print TeX papers received via
e-mail or ftp. Willingness to work as a team, providing support for
other staff members as necessary.  Computer literacy required.
Knowledge of computers (software & hardware) helpful or willingness to
learn.  Must be experienced in using DOS and IBM-PC type computers,
knowledge of UNIX helpful.  Three or more years of secretarial
experience. Must exercise independent judgment, confidentiality, good
interpersonal skills, excellent organizational abilities.  Must be
fast and accurate at typing. Excellent grammar, spelling and
proofreading.  Interested candidates should submit a resume and
application to
	Barbara Fairlie
	Department of Mathematics - Bldg. 380
	Stanford University
	Stanford, CA 94305-2125
	(415) 723-2214

(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 /^/^/^

-- AT ODDS: You have three paper cups and ten coffee beans.  How can
you place the beans in the cups so that there is an odd number of
beans in each cup?

Solution to PLAYOFF PRINCIPLE: Each match eliminates exactly one
player, so there must be 36 games, leaving exactly one champion.
 

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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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