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Sesquipedalian #29
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To: ling-local
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Subject: Sesquipedalian #29
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From: Kyle Wohlmut <kyle@Csli.Stanford.EDU>
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Date: Wed, 24 May 95 16:39:35 PDT
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Cc: gopher-quip
the SESQUIPEDALIAN (Early Edition) Volume V, No. 29
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St. Gabriel Feast Day May 24, 1995
(Patron saint of postal, telephone & telegraph workers)
A MODEST PROPOSAL
Many of the first-year grad students have come up to me and asked me
questions about the "thesis proposal". Such as, "What's a thesis
proposal?" and "How will I know when I've had one?"
Well, first of all, a thesis proposal is not that different from a
marriage proposal. You make sincere promises, you sweat profusely,
you hope the other party says yes. You get down on your knees and
beg. Doing a marriage proposal is in fact good practice for a thesis
proposal. All first-year grad students are encouraged to take the
marriage minicourse.
On to basics. Here is a sample thesis proposal:
I would like to propose solving X. The traditional way to solve X
is stupid, while my way is most excellent. The traditional way suffers
from all sorts of problems. My way suffers from none of these problems.
I have built a prototype that takes "input" and converts that input into
what I call "output". The output of my prototype is excellent,
although I could make it even more excellent. This is what I would
like to propose to do.
You should submit a draft like this to your advisor. You should then
organize a "committee". Your committee will behave roughly like any
other committee, for example, the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party. This committee has the power to make your life
utterly miserable. On the other hand, the committee can solve all of
your problems with the stroke of a pen.
During your proposal, some member of your committee will ask, "How
will science be different after your thesis?" There are two possible
answers to this question:
(true) "Science will be about the same."
(false) "Science will be far better off, like, incredibly."
Should you lie? In the words of Alan Perlis, "Why not?"
At the end of your proposal, you must then give a schedule for your
thesis work. A schedule for scientific research looks like this:
November: Have major conceptual breakthrough.
December: Apply breakthrough to solve problem.
January: Discover new problem.
February: Have another major conceptual breakthrough.
March: ...
You should know that failure to comply with your thesis schedule is
grounds for dismissal.
So when should you do your proposal? You will know when the time is
right. A candlelit dinner, a knowing glance, a bottle of wine. Just
follow your heart. Most students propose sometime during their third
year.
[LaughWEB]
^\^\^\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /^/^/^
-- LOOK WHO'S TA-ING: Vivienne Fong has been selected as one of the
School of Humanities and Sciences' Centennial TA Award recipients.
The award includes a cash prize and gala luncheon.
^/^/^/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \^\^\^
Note that the colloquium is in MARGARET JACKS HALL (Bldg 460) this week:
ON THE "LANDING SITE" OF "SCRAMBLING"
Hajime Hoji
Department of Linguistics
University of Southern California
Friday, May 26, 3:30 p.m.
Margaret Jacks Hall, room 146
Happy Hour will follow.
It is widely believed that the "scrambled site" in the case of
clause-internal "scrambling" in Japanese exhibits properties of a
so-called A-position (as well as those of a so-called A'-position), on
the empirical bases that have to do with the absence of Weak Crossover
(WCO) effects and the "binding" of _otagai_, the so-called reciprocal
anaphor in Japanese. I.e., the "scrambled" phrase, as the result of
"scrambling," can be an antecedent of (what appears to be)a bound
pronoun and of _otagai_.
In this paper, I will first argue that WCO effects do show up in
the relevant scrambled sentences, if we choose certain binder-bindee
pairs so as to force Arg-binding, disallowing the possibility of
Dem-binding, in the sense of Hoji ( 1995 ), in sharp contrast to the
_niyotte_ passives; cf. Kuroda (1979) . I will then turn to _otagai_
and demonstrate that it should not be treated as a local reciprocal
anaphor. The relevant empirical observations include (i) it need not
have its "antecedent" in its local domain, (ii) it need not have a
reciprocal interpretation of the sort typically associated with Englsh
_each other_, even when it occurs in an argument position, (iii) it
need not be c-commanded by its "antecedent." (independently pointed
out in Kuno and Kim ( 1994 ), (iv) it allows "split antecedence." I
propose that the internal structure of _otagai_ is very much like
_sorezore_ 'each, respective', i.e. roughly, [pro otagai] and [pro
sorezore]. The conclusion at this point is that the empirical bases
adduced in the literature for the A-positionhood of the "landing site"
of clause-internal "scrambling" are not as solid as one might think.
I will then discuss the nature of the contrasts reported in the
literature regarding the absence of WCO and the "binding" of _otagai_.
As to the absence of WCO effects, I will argue that the prototypical
instances of it involve Dem-binding in the sense of Hoji (1995).
Since a similar absence of WCO is observed in WH-interrogative
sentences in English as well,it should not constitute evidence for the
A-positionhood of the "landing site" of "scrambling." The apparent
(un)availability of the "binding" of _otagai_ will be argued to be due
to restrictions on backward "zero pronominalization." I will
demonstrate that backward "zero pronominalization" is possible,
depending upon lexical selections (and given certain pragmatic
contexts), e.g. [pro(i) otagai]'s lover(s) seduced [John and
Bill](i). In examples like this, what is at stake is coreference
between pro and [John and Bill]. Hence we expect WCO effects if the
matrix object is changed into a quantified NP or if we consider the
sloppy identity context with _otagai_. I will show that the
prediction is indeed borne out.
Finally, I will turn to the question of why some speakers detect
improvement of the Arg-binding possibility, to varying degrees, as the
result of "Scrambling." I suggest, in part based on Kuroda's (1992,
Ch. 1) theory of judgment forms and sentence forms, that what appears
to be scrambled sentences can be represented in the form of what we
might call syntactic predication and explore some of its consequences.
/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\
Future Talk:
June 2: Lynn Cherny
A list of colloquia and some abstracts is located at
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/~kessler/colloq/colloq.html
^\^\^\ CALL FOR PAPERS /^/^/^
-- SALT-VI (SEMANTICS and LINGUISTIC THEORY): Sixth Annual Meeting
(Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 26-28, 1996). SALT VI
welcomes submissions for 30-minute presentations (with 10 additional
minutes for discussion) on any topic in the semantic analysis of
natural language emphasizing the connection to linguistic theory.
Authors should submit 10 copies of abstracts, no more than 2 pages
(1000 words) long. Authors' names, addresses, affiliations, phone
numbers and e-mail addresses, and paper title should accompany the
abstracts on a 3x5 card. No Fax or E-mail submissions will be
accepted. Abstract deadline: December 1, 1995. Send abstracts to
SALT VI Committee
Department of Linguistics
Rutgers University
18 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
The program will be completed by early February, at which time
conference information will be made available. Inquiries welcome
at the address above, or e-mail to: salt6@zodiac.rutgers.edu
-- NLPRS'95 (December 4-6, 1995): Seoul, Korea. Brings together NLP
researchers in the Pacific-Rim area for scientific exchange and
presentation. The program will include tutorials, invited talks, and
demonstrations as well as tracks for paper and video presentations.
Submissions are solicited on original and previously unpublished
research in all aspects of NLP, including, but not limited to:
phonetics, generation, phonology, parsing, morphology,
machine(-aided)translation, lexicon, spoken language processing,
syntax... Papers of no longer than 6 pages in the double-column
conference format should be submitted by 20th June, 1995. We strongly
encourage papers to be electronically submitted. In this case, they
should be in LaTeX format, plain text or PostScript format for
non-alphabet, and should be emailed to
nlprs95@cair.kaist.ac.kr
Latex submissions must use the NLPRS submission style (nlprs.sty) retrievable
from the NLPRS ftp server or WWW Home Page. The following is an example of
getting the NLPRS submission style sheet by anonymous FTP:
$ftp cair-archive.kaist.ac.kr
Name:anonymous
Password:<Your Email Address>
ftp> cd NLPRS-95
ftp> get nlprs.sty
ftp> quit
If electronic submission is not possible, three hard copies of the paper
should be sent to
Mr. J.M. KIM
NLPRS'95 Secretariat
Foreign Tourist Dept II
Hanjin Travel Service Co.,Ltd.(Conference Agency)
132-4, 1-ka, Bongrae-dong, Chung-ku,
100-161, Seoul, Korea
Phone:+82-2-726-5540, Fax:+82-2-773-1623
DEADLINES: Paper Submission: June 20, 1995; Notification of
Acceptance: August 30, 1995; Camera Ready Copy Due: September 30,
1995.
-- LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION OF GREAT BRITAIN (Autumn Meeting 1995:
University of Essex): The 1995 Autumn Meeting will be held from Monday
18 September to Wednesday 20 September at the University of Essex,
where the Association will be the guests of the Department of Language
and Linguistics. The Local Organisers are David Britain
(dbritain@essex.ac.uk) and Stella Markantonatou (marks@essex.ac.uk).
Essex University has a rural campus, situated a couple of miles east
of Colchester, Britain's oldest recorded town. The campus is situated
in Wivenhoe Park, over 200 acres of scenic wooded parkland dotted with
small lakes. Despite its out-of-town location, Essex University is
easy to reach by car or train. Enquiries about the LAGB meeting
should be sent to the Meetings Secretary (address below). Full
details of the programme and a booking form will be included in the
Second Circular,to be sent out in June. Members and potential guests
are invited to offer papers for the Meeting; abstracts are also
accepted from non-members. Abstracts must arrive by 6 JUNE 1995 and
should be sent in the format outlined below to the following address:
Greville G. Corbett, Linguistic and International Studies, University
of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 5XH. Papers for the programme are
selected anonymously. Abstracts should be presented as follows:
submit SEVEN anonymous copies of the abstract, plus ONE with name and
affiliation, i.e. CAMERA-READY. The complete abstract containing your
title and your name must be no longer than ONE A4 page (8.27" x
11.69") with margins of at least 1" on all sides. You may use single
spacing (not more than six linesto the inch) and type must be no
smaller than 12 characters per inch. If the paper is accepted the
abstract will be photocopied and inserted directly into the collection
of abstracts sent out to participants. PLEASE WRITE YOUR NAME AND
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE ON THE BACK OF THE ABSTRACT WHICH HAS YOUR
NAME ON. The normal length for papers delivered at LAGB meetings is
25 minutes (plus 15 minutes discussion). Offers of squibs (10 minutes)
or longer papers (40 minutes) will also be considered: please explain
why your paper requires less or more time than usual. Internet home
page: The LAGB internet home page is now active at the following
address: http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LAGB.
Greville G. Corbett
Department of Linguistic and International Studies
University of Surrey
Guildford email: g.corbett@surrey.ac.uk
Surrey, GU2 5XH FAX: +44 1483 302605
Great Britain phone: +44 1483 300800 ext 2849
^/^/^/ BONUS TALK \^\^\^
RAFAL MOLENCKI
University of Silesia, Poland
Visiting Fulbright Scholar
will give a talk on Friday June 2nd
noon - 1 p.m. in 110-111A
'The history of counterfactuals in English'
In this talk I will discuss the history of English counterfactual
constructions, especially counterfactual conditionals. I will trace
their development from Old English until modern times. Particular
attention will be paid to the interaction of tense, mood and modality,
and to strong and weak past-as-unreal hypotheses as outlined in Dahl
1994. Some interesting usages of the pluperfect tense and the perfect
infinitive will be shown. I will also claim that the tendency for
parallel forms in protases and apodoses in different periods of
English, and also in other languages, points to what one might call a
discontinuous grammaticalization across clauses.
^\^\^\ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS /^/^/^
-- MEDIUS CORPORATION: Medius Corp. is a multimedia software firm
dedicated to improving access to foreign language media and
information resources. Medius is located in downtown Palo Alto, just
a few minutes from central campus. We are looking for a summer intern
to assist in formatting a varied set of electronic dictionaries (e.g.
bilingual, technical) into a specialized database format. We are
developing a general dictionary format that can be used across
reference works as well as with publisher-defined data specifications.
The project will require much creativity, flexible thinking, and
program finesse. The ideal intern would possess some subset of the
following characteristics: knowledge of C++ and object-oriented
frameworks; experience with database development; interest in NLP,
lexica building; linguistic background in Japanese or West European
languages. The internship is a full-time position for the summer.
Please fax or e-mail resumes to
fax: 415/473-0507
email: 73073.2642@compuserve.com
Medius Corporation
650 High Street
Palo Alto CA 94301
phone: 415/473-0506
^\^\^\ TRUE LINGUISTICS /^/^/^
-- DARWIN AWARDS: The Darwin Award goes to the person judged to have
rubbed him/herself out in the most original manner. Last year's
winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke (tm) machine, which
toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out
of it.
THIS YEAR: The Arizona (U.S.) Highway Patrol came upon a pile
of smoldering metal imbedded into the side of a cliff rising above the
road, at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an
airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable
at the scene.
The boys in the lab finally figured out what it was, and what
had happened. It seems that a guy had somehow got hold of a JATO
unit, (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is
used to give heavy military transport planes an extra `push' for
taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out
into the desert, and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he
attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and
fired off the JATO.
Best as they could determine, he was doing somewhere between 250
and 300 mph (350-420kph) when he came to that curve... The brakes were
completely burned away, apparently from trying to slow the car.
NOTE: Solid-fuel rockets don't have an 'off'... once started,
they burn at full thrust 'till the fuel is all gone.
I do believe we have a winner....
^/^/^/ 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.)
-- UCLA: The UCLA Department of Linguistics expects to have four or
five short-term jobs available teaching individual courses next year.
Most of the courses to be taught are undergraduate courses, including
courses in the following areas:
(1) Phonetics (1996 Winter quarter -- January-March)
(2) Syntax; (1996 Winter quarter -- January-March)
(3) Semantics. (1995 Fall quarter -- Late September - Mid-December)
Other courses might include a general introductory course or a
graduate- level course in any area of theoretical linguistics,
including (in addition to those listed above) Computational
Linguistics or Phonology. It is possible that we will hire a
different instructor for each course, but it is also possible that we
will hire one or two people to teach two or more courses each, either
during a single quarter or running over two quarters. Each course
runs for ten weeks (with two 2-hour lectures per week) followed by an
exam week. The pay for each course is between $6,500 and $10,000,
depending on available funding and level of appointment. Applicants
should send a Curriculum Vitae and evidence of teaching experience, as
well as the names, addresses, and phone numbers of three recommenders
to
Tim Stowell (Chair)
Department of Linguistics
UCLA
Los Angeles CA 90095-1543
Applications for fall quarter courses should be received by June 5
1995. Initial enquiries by email may be directed to Anna Meyer at
meyer@humnet.ucla.edu . UCLA is an equal opportunity, affirmative
action employer.
-- DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY: Lectureship in Computer-Based Linguistics.
The School of Applied Languages has a major commitment to both
teaching and research in the field of Language and Technology. It
shares responsibility, with the School of Computer Applications, for
the innovative BSc in Applied Computational Linguistics (which
produces its first graduates in 1995). It is research active in a
range of related disciplines including Translation Studies,
Terminology, Computational Linguistics and C.A.L.L. The successful
candidate will play a key role in the development of Computer-based
Linguistics in both research and teaching. We are particularly
interested in applications from colleagues with expertise in text and
corpus linguistics. Applicants should be well qualified academically,
and have a proven record of achievement in teaching in addition to
relevant research or professional experience. Previous participation
in EU funded research programmes would be an advantage. For further
information and application form, contact
The Personnel Office
Dublin City University
Dublin 9
Ireland
Tel. Ireland 1 7045149
Fax Ireland 1 7045500
Closing Date: June 9th 1995.
-- TULANE UNIVERSITY: The Department of Anthropology invites
applications for a faculty position in African Linguistics to start in
August 1996, pending administrative approval. Tenure track; Assistant
or Associate Professor, depending on qualifications. Language
specialization: language(s) of sub-Saharan Africa. Topical
specialization: open. Teaching responsibilities include undergraduate
and graduate linguistics courses, a seminar in one's specialty, and
curricular support of the African and Diaspora Studies program.
Previous teaching experience required. Submit letters of application,
CV, and names and addresses of three referees to
Chair, Linguistics Search Committee
Department of Anthropology
Tulane University
New Orleans LA 70118
email: gaspard@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
Consideration of applications will begin in May, 1995.
(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 /^/^/^
NIX WIE WEG: Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) said the following:
I A T H
C A L N F N S R L E
E I R O O E E A P S
V F O R M V Y Y O H
A E T H E E E R E O
O L E R R B D L U P
T D U I E R E A V E
Q E R C T I
Identify the quote above by following adjacent letters (up, down,
left, right, or diagonally). Quote starts on the 'C' in the bottom
row.
Solution to AT ODDS: Some controversy over this one, but if you put
one bean in one cup, seven beans in the next cup, and two beans in the
last cup AND THEN nestle the first cup in the last cup, you have an
odd number of beans in each cup (there is a variety of other solutions
along this line)...
\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/^\^/
^\^\^\ 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.
Presented in CinemaScope (r)
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