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Sesquipedalian #15
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VI, No. 15
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Terry Jones born February 1, 1995
LINGUISTS ALPHABET
The alphabet in alphabetical order:
Aitch, Are, Ay, Bee, Cue, Dee, Double yu, Ee, Ef, El, Em, En, Ess, Ex,
Eye, Gee, Jay, Kay, Oh, Pea, Sea, Tee, Vee, Wy, Yu, Zee.
[Sidney Harris]
-\-/-\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING \-/-\-
-- LEBEN RECEIVES NSF GRANT: Will Leben has received a grant from the
National Science Foundation to work with linguists at Universite de
Cote d'Ivoire on the Comparative Phonology of Ivoirian languages.
Data gathering is to begin immediately (Will leaves Saturday). With
colleagues from that university, he will devote February to training
10 Ivoirian linguistics graduate students in Abidjan in doing field
work in their native languages. For the 1996-97 year, Will will
conduct a research seminar in Abidjan in which the students' data are
to be analyzed and organized into a comprehensive report.
-- Eve Clark gave the linguistics colloquium at UCSD January 29, on
her current work on perspective in the lexicon.
-- Mark your calendars: Tom Wasow will be speaking March 23 at the 9th
annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Title:
'End-Weight from the Speaker's Perspective.'
-\-/-\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \-/-\-
Friday, Feb. 2, 3:30 pm.
Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
Abigail C. Cohn
Cornell University
Consonant phonation / vowel height interactions in Madurese
Madurese, an Austronesian language of Indonesia, shows a systematic
interaction of consonants and vowels, whereby the voicing or
aspiration of a preceding stop conditions the height of the following
vowel. In this talk, I investigate both the phonological and phonetic
properties of the consonants and vowels in Madurese in order to better
understand this unusual pattern of consonant phonation - vowel quality
interaction. Two possible phonological interpretations are presented,
based on the phonological evidence and acoustic evidence (vowel
quality, duration, and pitch) which suggests a "register" system,
similar to phenomena seen in the Mon Khmer languages.
----------
Reception follows.
-\-/-\ PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP \-/-\-
THE ROLE OF QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE CONSTRAINTS
IN PHONETIC IMPLEMENTATION
Abigail C. Cohn
Department of Linguistics
Cornell University
Thursday, February 1, 1996, 7:30 p.m.
Margaret Jacks Hall, Seminar Room (146)
Optimality Theory has led to a major rethinking of the nature of
phonological representations. Since phonetic implementation (that is,
the mapping between phonology and phonetics) depends on the nature of
the phonological structures available for implementation, it seems
appropriate at this juncture to consider the consequences of
Optimality Theory for phonetic implementation and the
phonology-phonetics interface more generally. I start by examining
the relationship between phonology and phonetics and then turn to a
specific case, nasalization in Sundanese, where I argue that both
qualitative and quantitative constraints play a role in the
realization of the observed patterns.
-\-/-\ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS \-/-\-
-- NORTHWESTERN: The Department of Linguistics at Northwestern
announces the availability, subject to administrative approval, of up
to two postdoctoral fellowships funded through a grant from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. Fellowships are for a period of two academic
years, beginning September 1, 1996. Candidates must hold a Ph.D in
linguistics or a related field by the starting date of the position.
We are seeking candidates with expertise in one or more of the
following areas: sentential semantics, computational linguistics,
language typology, quantitative sociolinguistics, first language
acquisition, and bilingualism. Preference will be given to candidates
whose research interests are interdisciplinary and mesh with those of
the current faculty. Salary is competitive and commensurate with
qualifications. The positions provide funds for computer facilities
and professional travel. Successful candidates will be expected to
participate fully in Northwestern's thriving interdisciplinary
research environment, as well as to teach two quarter-length courses
per year. Applications are due at Northwestern by March 1, 1996. The
application should include the candidate's CV (indicating an e-mail
address), a statement of research and teaching interests, reprints or
other written work, and the names of three references. Include
teaching evaluations if available. Candidates should arrange to have
the three letters of reference sent directly to the search committee
by the deadline. Send materials to:
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208-4090
Tel: 847-491-7020
Fax: 847-491-3770
For more information, consult the search committee by e-mail (Chair:
Janet Pierrehumbert, jbp@nwu.edu). The web page for the department is:
http://www.ling.nwu.edu/
EOE/AA
-- Undergraduate Research Opportunities (URO) invites undergraduates to
attend a grant information meeting on Tuesday, February 6, 1996,
12:15 p.m. in Law School 180 (a classroom on the first floor to the
right of the falcon sculpture.)
Learn more about:
-- URO Major Grants For Undergraduate Research
Maximum grant of $2500; Deadline April 5, 1996
-- Golden Grants For Humanities Scholarship And Creative Arts
Maximum grant of $2500; Deadline April 19, 1996
Feel free to bring your lunch -- drinks and dessert provided.
For further information, contact Laura Selznick at the URO Office,
122 Sweet Hall, call 723-3828, or send e.mail to
laura.s@forsythe.stanford.edu.
-- UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER: CHANCELLOR'S POSTDOCTORAL
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM FOR ACADEMIC DIVERSITY. To provide scholars who
are members of groups underrepresented as faculty members in US
universities with postodoctral research opportunities in all
disciplines represented at CU- Boulder. To provide mentoring and
guidance in preparation for an academic career. To increase the
diversity of Boulder faculty and the national academic community.
ELIGIBILITY: received Ph.D. within 2 years of start of appointment
(August 1, 1996); US citizen or permanent resident; member of an
underrepresented group in higher education (i.e., American Indian,
African American, Asian American, Hispanic, Native Alaskan, Native
Pacific Islander, woman in engineering, computer science, math,
physical science fields.) Deadline: February 28, 1996 For more
information:
Barbara Kraus
Assistant to the Dean
303/492-5773
email: barbara.kraus@colorado.edu
-- University of Newcastle upon Tyne: RESEARCH STUDENTSHIP.
Development of Joint Attention and Language in Cross-Cultural Context.
Project Supervisors: Dr Li Wei and Dr Thomas Klee, Department of
Speech. Telephone: (0191) 222 6760 or 7452 or 7388. Fax: (0191) 222
6518. Email: li.wei@ncl.ac.uk or thomas.klee@ncl.ac.uk
This project aims to investigate the development and structure of
joint attentional behaviours between primary caregivers and infants in
two culturally distinct populations living in Britain (English and
Chinese) over an 18-month period, and to investigate the relationship
between joint attentional behaviours and early language development of
young bilingual children. In addition to building up a new database
of information, the project will address the following research
questions:
* Do Chinese mothers direct infants' attention differently when
compared to their English counterparts?
* Is there a correlation of joint attention at each investigative
stage in each population to the final outcome of language acquisition
(especially early vocabulary acquisition, phonological development,
and code-switching)?
* Is there a difference between the two cultures in children's
early receptive and expressive vocabularies?
* What influence does bilingualism and bi-culturalism have on the
British Chinese families' child-rearing practices and their children's
language development?
As this field of enquiry is relatively new, an early emphasis of the
research will be on developing methodologies for gathering and
analysing data. A total of 20 mother-infant dyads (n=10 in each group)
will be studied longitudinally for a period of 18 months. Applicants
should have, or expect to obtain in 1995, a First Class or Upper
Second Class Honours degree in speech & language therapy, linguistics,
psychology or another appropriate subject. Research and work
experience in child language development in cross-cultural context and
knowledge of the bilingual communities in Britain would be an
advantage, but not a precondition. Applicants do not need to be
bilingual. The Studentship, which is tenable for three years, is
subject to the following conditions which cannot be altered except by
a formal letter from the Office of the Registrar:
1. The Studentship consists of a maintenance grant of 6,500, which is paid
quarterly in advance, and which at present is free of UK Income Tax and
National Insurance. The Studentship carries remission of fees at the
lower (i.e. Home or Excepted) rate. A student who is liable for fees at
the higher (Overseas) rate will need to find the difference between the
cost of fees at the higher rate and the lower rate. The level of the
maintenance grant will be reviewed annually. In the event of the
termination of the Studentship the student will be required to return any
grant received in advance in respect of the period after the termination
of the Studentship.
2. During the tenure of the Studentship a student may claim support costs
up to a maximum of 2,500 per annum. Such costs must be approved in
advance by the project supervisor. The student will be allowed up to 500
during the tenure of the Studentship to provide for the cost of attending
conferences associated with the research.
3. The Studentship is available for three years from 1 October 1996. During
that time the student is required to register as a full-time student in
the University and to be subject to the regulations and statutes of the
University in so far as they are appropriate.
4. Progress of the student is subject to an annual review and the Studentship
may be suspended or terminated if progress is deemed by the University to
be unsatisfactory. The review procedure is bilateral and the University
welcomes feedback from the student.
5. During the tenure of the Studentship a student may undertake teaching and
demonstrating duties in the University provided that the total demand made
on his or her time, including preparation time, does not exceed six hours
in any one week. A student may not, however, retain or accept other
employment or an appointment which involves substantial calls upon his or
her energies without the written consent of the Head of Department in which
he or she is registered.
Application forms for the Studentship and admission to the University
as a postgraduate student are available from Dr Wei or Dr Klee, who
will be pleased to provide further information concerning the project,
or from Mr R A King, Assistant Registrar, University of Newcastle
Research Services Unit, 1 Park Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 7RU
(Tel: 0191 222 7119; E-mail: Robin.King@ncl.ac.uk), who will be
pleased to answer queries concerning the conditions of the
Studentship.
Applications must be returned to The Admissions Officer, University of
Newcastle, 6 Kensington Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne. NE1 7RU by 29
February 1996.
-- MONBUSHO SCHOLARSHIP: One year scholarship for Japanese studies.
Deadline: Monday, April 22. The Japanese Ministry of Education is
offering one-year scholarships in Japan to currently enrolled
UNDERGRADUATE students in their junior or senior year. Applicants
must be US nationals, over 18 and under 30 years of age (born between
September 2 1966 and September 1 1978), and specializing in a field
related to the Japanese language or Japanese culture (as either a
major or minor). Applicants must also have good knowledge of the
Japanese language. A language exam and interview are required of all
applicants.
Contact: Hisako Takahashi 415/356-2461
-\-/-\ CALL FOR PAPERS \-/-\-
-- PREDICATIVE FORMS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE AND LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE BASES:
Paris (or Toulouse) 1-2 August 1996 (just before Coling'96, in
Copenhaguen). The workshop will be centered around the notion of
predicate, viewed in NLP as a named relation that exists among one or
more arguments. In NLP predicates are realized in sentences as verbs,
prepositions, nouns or adjectives, to cite the most frequent ones.
Research on the identification, the organization, and the semantic
represent- ation of predicates in AI and NLP is a very active research
field, strongly motivated by the emergence of new paradigms in
theoretical NLP and by the evolution of applications. From a braod
theoretical perspective, the notion of predicate is central to
research in areas such as the Generative Lexicon and prototype theory,
where a number of different areas are under investigation including
the semantic classification of verbs, the syntax-semantics-pragmatics
relations, and ontology-based semantic representations. From an
application-oriented perspective, the notion of predicate has been a
central focus for developers of automatic indexing systems for
extraction of structured representations, creation of interlingual
forms for machine translation, and structuring lexical knowledge
bases. The notion of predicate will be considered from several
perspectives:
- the realization of predicates in natural language utterances,
- the organization of predicates in lexical knowledge bases,
- generativity and predicates,
- automatic or semi-automatic acquisition of predicative forms, and
- semantic representation of organized classes of predicates.
The workshop will both address theoretical and applied aspects of the
notion of predicative form. It will in particular focus on the relations
between the underlying meaning and surface realizations (e.g. sentences)
in language. It will also address the way
theoreticians and practioners operate an adaptation or a reformulation of
linguistic descriptions to build adequate lexical conceptual representation
systems and world representation systems.
For example, the definition of an extended thematic role system can be
used to construct a quite coarse-grained world representation system
useful in automatic indexing.
The workshop will mainly focus on predicates realized as verbs or verb
forms, but predicative nouns, derived or not from verbs, and prepositions
will also be considered in conjunction with verb forms. Outside the scope
of the workshop are more delicate predicative forms realized as adjectives
or adverbs. Multi-linguism will be a central point of the workshop.
The workshop will focus on central research issues including:
* NL realizations of predicative forms (e.g. complex predicates).
* Argument structure, selectional restrictions and thematic roles.
* The Generative Lexicon: formal aspects, lexical description methods.
* Organization of predicates, in particular of verbs, into semantic
classes; methodologies for determining linguistically and
computationally relevant verb classes.
* Acquisition of semantic data: automatic and semi-automatic procedures
for the construction of lexical representations, language universals in
the lexicon, resources and aids for transforming online information into
appropriate representations.
* Multi-lingual dictionaries and cross-linguistic validation of lexical
semantic representations.
Applications areas for the workshop include:
* Verb semantic classes as a means to organize verb descriptions in
lexical knowledge bases and in thesauri.
* Machine translation: construction of interlingua forms, construction of
mappings for MT and effect of these mappings on lexical representations.
* Automatic indexing and knowledge extraction: application to the extraction
of structured representations.
* Development of evaluation methods for NLP applications.
Patrick saint-Dizier
IRIT-CNRS 118, route de Narbonne
31062 Toulouse cedex France
stdizier@irit.fr
Authors are encouraged to submit original papers including open
questions for discussions. Papers must not exceed 5 pages, exclusive
of references. Electronic submissions are prefered. Files should be
self-contained LaTex source or in ASSCII. Hard copy submissions should
consist of 4 copies of the paper. In both cases, name(s) and
addresse(s) of author(s) should be included together with e-mail
address and fax number. Deadline for submission: March 15th.
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
-- HOW THE SHRINKS STAND UP IN COURT: In its 1995 session, the New
Mexico legislature pondered and passed a bill that set limits on the
testimony of psychologists in court. Senate bill 459, written by
RICHARD ROMERO, included the following language, quoted in the
newsletter Dispatches:
"When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a
defendant's competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall
wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The
surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts.
"Additionally, a psychologist or psychiatrist shall be
required to don a white beard...and shall punctuate crucial elements
of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand." Before the expert's
testimony about competency, the bill specified, "the bailiff shall
contemporaneously dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes
to a Chinese gong."
Although the Senate passed the bill by a voice vote, and the
House voted 46 to 14 to make it official, New Mexico Governor GARY
JOHNSON vetoed it.
[San Francisco Chronicle]
-\-/-\ 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.)
-- UMIACS: The Department of Linguistics and UMIACS (University of
Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies) invite applications
for a position (open rank) in Computational Linguistics to begin in
the Fall semester of 1996. We seek candidates with established records
of research excellence who are interested in working on topics at the
interface of linguistic theory and computational modeling. The
candidate's work should complement research interests of current
faculty. Possible areas of interest include formal models of language
learning or models of the lexicon, syntactic or semantic components
that can be applied to computational problems such as automatic
acquisition of lexicons, parsing grammars, or semantic interpreters or
the implementation of these components for single language or cross
linguistic applications. Teaching experience is also desirable. Ph.D.
is required by August, 1996. For best consideration, applications
should arrive by February 1, 1996. Applicants should send a complete
dossier (letter of application, CV, samples of published work) and
arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to:
Professor Stephen Crain
Computational Linguistics Search Committee
University of Maryland at College Park
1401 Marie Mount Hall
College Park, MD 20742
The University of Maryland is a AA/EO Title IX employer. Women and
minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply.
-- UMIAC: The University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
(UMIACS) invites applications for post doctoral positions, beginning
summer/fall '96 in the following areas: Real-time Video Indexing,
Natural Language Processing, and Neural Modeling. Exceptionally strong
candidates from other areas will also be considered.
UMIACS, a state-supported research unit, has been the focal point for
interdisciplinary and applications-oriented research activities in
computing on the College Park campus. The Institute's 40 faculty
members conduct research in high performance computing, software
engineering, artificial intelligence, systems, combinatorial
algorithms, scientific computing, and computer vision.
Qualified applicants should send a 1 page statement of research
interest, curriculum vita and the names and addresses of 3 references
to:
Prof. Joseph Ja'Ja'
UMIACS
A.V. Williams Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
by April 1. UMIACS strongly encourages applications from minorities
and women. EOE/AA
-- SEED: Teach English in Eastern Europe this summer. The Foundation
For A Civil Society and Students for East European Development have
positions in Slovakia exclusively for Stanford graduate students with
teaching experience. Applications for the 1996 FCS-ESL Program area
availabel at the SEED office in the Stanford Women's Center.
Informational meeting 7 pm, Monday, February 5th in the Women's
Center. SEED representatives will be available 12-1 pm, Feb. 6, 7,
and 8 in White Plaza. Applications due February 26, 1996. For more
information call Anne (497-0530) or Hak (497-5927).
(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 EVEN LASTER PRIZE: The amazing thing about infinite random
numbers is that every possible combination of digits must eventually
occur within it (for example, 99999999999999 must sooner or later
appear in the sequence of digits, as would any other combination of
digits). What's the average difference between two random consecutive
digits in an infinite random number?
Solution to THE LAST PRIZE: Nobody managed to figure out that 2520 is
the smallest number that all the numbers from 1 to 10 divide evenly
into, so the pheasant gets a reprieve for one more week...
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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/), and at
Berkeley (in the directory /usr/pub.), or on the Linguistics
Department home page (http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/). 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,
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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.
Deadlines in Newsletter are Closer Than They Appear
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