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Sesquipedalian #10

the SESQUIPEDALIAN 				      Volume VI, No. 10
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Noam Chomsky born (1928!)			       December 7, 1995


Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

      Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled 
"211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid
skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed 
examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your 
theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of 
Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it 
appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of 
the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to 
be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great 
deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be 
quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior 
work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your 
findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical 
attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its 
modern origin:
    1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains 
are typically fossilized bone.
    2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 
cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest 
identified proto-hominids.
   3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more 
consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the 
"ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the 
wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one 
of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your 
history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh 
rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, 
let us say that:
         A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll  
             that a dog has chewed on.
         B. Clams don't have teeth.
     It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your 
request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due
to the heavy load our lab must bear in it's normal operation, and 
partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of 
recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie 
dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely 
to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your 
request that we approach the National Science Foundation's 
Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen 
the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking 
personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of 
your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the 
species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound 
like it might be Latin.
    However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this 
fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a 
hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of 
the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. 
You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in 
his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously 
submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily 
on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have 
discovered in your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to 
our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and 
several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are 
particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories 
surrounding the "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in 
a structural matrix" that makes the excellent juvenile 
Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the 
deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive 
crescent wrench.
                             Yours in Science, 
                             Harvey Rowe
                             Curator, Antiquities 

	  	       -/-\-/ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /-\-/-

-- Tracy King, just back from the Formal Description of Slavic
Languages conference in Leipzig, Germany (where Chris Pinon was also
sighted presenting) is off again, to the Workshop on Focus at
UMASS-Amherst, tomorrow.  Title: 'Focus in Bulgarian and Russian
Yes-No Questions.' (With Catherine Rudin, and Roumyana Izvorski)

 	            -\-/-\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \-/-\-

No colloquium this week, but if you show up in the regular place at
the regular time you will find yourself at the Department of
Linguistics Holiday Party (4-6 pm this Friday).  Please come!  Signup
for potluck is in the department front office.

	               -\-/-\ CALL FOR PAPERS \-/-\-

-- INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND
INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS (NLP+IA 96).  JUNE/juin 4 - 6, 1996, Moncton,
New-Brunswick, CANADA.  The NLP Study Group (GRETAL) at l'Universite
de Moncton is organizing an international conference on NLP with
industrial applications as its focus.  The conference will address a
number of issues: What are NLP's recent developments from a
theoretical and a practical angle, what kinds of challenges it faces,
how could it help to improve productivity, how could it help to
improve quality of products and services? What quality control
criteria should it be adopting?  Papers are invited on all aspects of
natural language processing, including, but not limited to, 
* natural language understanding and generation of textual, spoken and
  hand-written language, 
* natural language interfaces to databases, expert systems, or industrial 
  applications
* machine translation, computer aided translation, translation 
  aids, 
* syntax, semantics, pragmatics, lexicon, morphology, 
* computer assisted language learning, 
* dictionaries, corpora, & other language resources
* multimodality
* multilinguality
* NLP industrial applications
* papers of every kind that can help bridge the gap between the theory and 
  practice of NLP.  
Authors are invited to submit preliminary versions of their papers not
exceeding 1000 words (exclusive of references) either in English or in
French, the two official languages of the conference.  Proceedings
would be published in the language of the submitted texts.
Simultaneous translation of the presentations would be available at
the conference. 1) The first page should be an identification page
containing the title, the first author's name, affiliation, address, a
five (5) line summary and a five (5) keyword list specifying the
subject area. 2) Papers, 1000 words in length, should be submitted
preferably by e-mail in Postscript or in 4 hard copies (A4 page size,
12 pt, times roman, 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins all around) to:
	NLP+IA 96 / TAL+AI 96
	Dr. Chadia Moghrabi, professeure
	GRETAL
	Departement d'informatique
	Universite' de Moncton
	Moncton, N. B.
	CANADA 
	E1A 3E9
	Phone: (506) 858-4521
	Fax:   (506) 858-4541
	E-mail: nlp-ia@umoncton.ca
For both kinds of submissions, a plain text version of the
identification page should be sent separately by electronic mail,
using the single word: SUBMISSION/soumission in the subject line.
	TITLE/Titre:
	FIRST AUTHOR/ Premier auteur:
	ADDRESS/Adresse:
	KEYWORDS/Mots clefs:
	ABSTRACT/Resume: 
Extended abstracts are to be submitted by the 31st of january 1996.
Notification of receipt will be mailed to the first author soon after
receipt.  Authors will be notified of acceptance by 15 March 1996.
Camera-ready copies of final full papers must be received by the 1st
of May 1996 along with registration fees.  Authors are also requested
to indicate their intention to participate in the conference as soon
as possible to the same e-mail address with the single word INTENTION
in the subject line.

		      -/-\-/ TRUE LINGUISTICS /-\-/-

-- PROGRAMMERIC NUMERALS:

    unix
    dos
    trace
    quit
    sync
    set
    awk
    nohup
    dec

[Peter Langston]

		     -\-/-\ 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.)

-- THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY: The Ohio State University Department of
Linguistics announces a new position, pending final approval, for a
tenured Professor or Associate Professor, beginning with the Autumn
quarter of 1996. We are searching for a computational linguist whose
specialization is in computational phonetics/phonology/morphology or
discourse modelling, but all truly outstanding applicants who
complement existing strengths in the department will be considered.
The primary duties of this position are: maintaining an active
research program in computational linguistics and playing a central
role in the further development of computational linguistics with
regard to curriculum and research facilities; teaching undergraduate-
and graduate-level courses, advising students, and directing graduate
student research; and performing service duties as required by the
department, the College of Humanities, and the University. The salary
will be negotiable, but commensurate with rank and credentials.  The
successful candidate will have demonstrated excellence in research and
teaching and will have a strong commitment to building bridges among
related areas of investigation within the department and throughout
the University.  The deadline for receipt of applications is Monday,
February 5, 1996.  Applicants should send a curriculum vitae and a
statement of research interests to
	Brian D. Joseph, Computational Linguistics Search
	Department of Linguistics
	The Ohio State University
	222 Oxley Hall
	1712 Neil Avenue
	Columbus, OH 43210-1298
Inquiries may be addressed to Brian Joseph by letter at the above
address, or via electronic mail at bjoseph@ling.ohio-state.edu, or by
phone at 614-292-4981, or by FAX at 614-2924273.
The Ohio State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action
employer. Qualified women, minorities, Vietnam-era Veterans, disabled
veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

-- GRADUATE POSITION AVAILABLE: 18 hrs/week.  GMD-KONTEXT, the Natural
Language Research and Development Unit of The German National Centre
for Information Technology, Darmstadt, Germany, invites applications
for a graduate position in the KONTEXT text analysis project.  In this
project (http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/KONTEXT/kontext.html) a text
analysis system is being developed which generates a formal
representation ot text content and text structure. The representation
is definede by the KONTEXT text model and can be regarded as a text
representation or as an extended knowledge representation.  It serves
for an improved electronic processing of textually communicated
information.  The Ph.D. candidate's task will be to work on an
improvement of the anaphora and reference resolution component.
Applicants should have
-- a degree in computer science and/or computational linguistics
-- expertise in at least one of the following areas:
        * semantic theories (in areas such as quantification,
             modal semantics, temporal semantics, lexical semantics)
        * formal logic
        * text analysis or text generation or machine translation
        * text analysis
-- programming experience in LISP or Prolog or C++ or C.
-- expertise in UNIX
Fluent command of written and spoken German is required.
A flat rate for doctorate positions will be paid.
Applications should be sent to
	GMD - Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH
	ADD.P
	Dolivostrasse 15
	64293 Darmstadt
	Germany
(please refer to position 16/95) before the 31th of December 1995
For information please contact
Dr. Karin Haenelt
phone:          ++49/6151/869-828
fax:                         -899
e-mail: haenelt@darmstadt.gmd.de

-- National Tsing Hua University, Institute of Linguistics has a tenure-
   track position at the assistant professor level for a linguist
   specializing in phonology. Ph. D. required. Applicants should include
   c.v., three letters of recommendation, statement of research
   interests and samples of works prior to 1 February 1996 to:
   Search Commitee
   Institute of  Linguistics
   National Tsing Hua University
   101, Sec. 2, Kuang-fu Road,
   Hsin-chu 300,
   Taiwan, ROC

(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 36-STAR PUZZLE: Take away six stars so that all the rows that
are left contain an even number, whether reckoned vertically,
horizontally, or corner-to-corner:

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                    -\-/-\ CONSERVE DISK SPACE \-/-\-

So you may delete your copy after you've read it (or better yet,
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Neither Stanford University nor the Linguistics Department, nor any of
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Refrigerate after opening

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