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Sesquipedalian #16
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VI, No. 16
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Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded (1567) February 8, 1995
IF DR. SEUSS WROTE FOR STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
Picard: Sigma Indri, that's the star,
So, Data, please, how far? How far?
Data: Our ship can get there very fast
But still the trip will last and last
We'll have two days til we arrive
But can the Indrans there survive?
Picard: LaForge, please give us factor nine.
LaForge: But, sir, the engines are offline!
Picard: Offline! But why? I want to go!
Please make it so, please make it so!
Riker: But sir, if Geordi says we can't,
We can't, we mustn't, and we shan't,
The danger here is far too great!
Picard: But surely we must not be late!
Troi: I'm sensing anger and great ire.
Computer: Alert! Alert! The ship's on fire!
Picard: The ship's on fire? How could this be?
Who lit the fire?
Riker: Not me.
Worf: Not me.
Picard: Computer, how long til we die?
Computer: Eight minutes left to say goodbye.
Data: May I suggest a course to take?
We could, I think, quite safely make
Extinguishers from tractor beams
And stop the fire, or so it seems...
Geordi: Hurray! Hurray! You've saved the day!
Again I say, Hurray! Hurray!
Picard: Mr. Data, thank you much.
You've saved our lives, our ship, and such.
Troi: We still must save the Indran planet --
Data: Which (by the way) is made of granite...
Picard: Enough, you android. Please desist.
We understand -- we get your gist.
But can we get our ship to go?
Please, make it so, PLEASE make it so.
Geordi: There's sabotage among the wires
And that's what started all the fires.
Riker: We have a saboteur? Oh, no!
We need to go! We need to go!
Troi: We must seek out the traitor spy
And lock him up and ask him why?
Worf: Ask him why? How sentimental.
I say give him problems dental.
Troi: Are any Romulan ships around?
Have scanners said that they've been found?
Or is it Borg or some new threat
We haven't even heard of yet?
I sense no malice in this crew.
Now what are we supposed to do?
Crusher: Captain, please, the Indrans need us.
They cry out, "Help us, clothe us, feed us!"
I can't just sit and let them die!
A doctor MUST attempt -- MUST try!
Picard: Doctor, please, we'll get there soon.
Crusher: They may be dead by Tuesday noon.
*COMMERCIAL BREAK, COMMERCIAL BREAK
HOW LONG, HOW LONG WILL THESE ADS TAKE?*
Worf: The saboteur is in the brig.
He's very strong and very big.
I had my phaser set on stun --
A zzzip! A zzzap! Another one!
He would not budge, he would not fall,
He would not stun, no, not at all!
He changed into a stranger form
All soft and purple, round and warm.
Picard: Did you see this, Mr. Worf?
Did you see this creature morph?
Worf: I did and then I beat him fairly.
Hit him on the jaw -- quite squarely.
Riker: My commendations, Klingon friend!
Our troubles now are at an end!
Crusher: Now let's get our ship to fly
And orbit yonder Indran sky!
Picard: LaForge, please tell me we can go...?
Geordi: Yes, sir, we can.
Picard: Then make it so!
THE END
[Selected by Jim Griffith]
-\-/-\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING \-/-\-
-- Norma Mendoza-Denton has forsaken her other short lists to accept a
tenure-track position at Ohio State starting next fall. Her
appointment will be in the Spanish department, with an adjunct
appointment in the Linguistics department. To support her mandate to
build up Sociolinguistics at the university, OSU has also provided
Norma with start-up funds for a Sociolinguistics lab.
-\-/-\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \-/-\-
Friday, Feb 9, 3:30 pm.
Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
John McWhorter
University of California, Berkeley
Re-examining the Birth and Significance of the Plantation Creole
Creole studies is a contentious field, but there is a common consensus that
plantation creoles resulted from second-language acquisition amidst
uniquely deprived input, the idea being that the disproportion of learners
to speakers on the typical colonial plantation acted as a "filter" upon
European languages. In this talk I will suggest that the presumed causal
link between plantation demographics and the appearance of plantation
creoles is mistaken. A wealth of evidence converges upon placing the
emergence of these creoles as trade/work pidgins in West African trade
settlements, established by Europeans and staffed by Africans during the
slave trade. Furthermore, upon examination the conception of plantations as
language filters is less sociolinguistically tenable than traditionally
thought. The thesis is motivated in part by an anomaly hitherto neglected
in creole studies, the fact that creoles repeatedly failed to emerge in
plantation colonies run by Spain. I will present a revised account of the
birth of these languages which explains this anomaly and others, the goal
being a genesis theory which can both tackle the range of data unearthed
since the late 1960s while also retaining refutability.
--------------
Reception follows.
For directions and a complete list of colloquia, see
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/~kessler/colloq/
-\-/-\ PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP \-/-\-
MORPHOLOGY AS CONSTRAINTS ON FEATURE REALIZATION
Sharon Rose
McGill University / UC Berkeley
Thursday, February 8, 1996, 7:30 p.m.
Margaret Jacks Hall, Seminar Room (146)
I will explore the realization of a morphological category (2nd
singular feminine subject) across the South Ethiopian Semitic language
family, showing how this category is expressed primarily by the
feature [front] appearing on an array of different targets in the verb
stem. I will discuss the best means to account for its disparate
realization: as an underlying 'floating' feature or as a series of
constraints in Optimality Theory. I will then argue that dialect
variation with respect to the realization of the feature can be
expressed not only by constraint ranking differences within Optimality
Theory, but also by variable interpretation of a constraint.
Reduplication data interacting with the feature [front] will also be
discussed, demonstrating that base-reduplicant identity may be
violated due to restrictions on targets. Finally, I will look at
cases where the feature [front] is not realized in the output; while
this allows for better faithfulness to the input, it only occurs if
the morphological category can be expressed elsewhere.
-\-/-\ DISCOURSE GROUP \-/-\-
Andreas H. Jucker of Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany, will
be giving two talks on Wednesday February 14th.
-- At 7:30 in the evening, in 460-146, a colloquium:
'Common ground in conversations'
The term "mutual knowledge" is often used to refer to assumptions
which are entertained by both speaker and addressee. However, speakers
can have no certainty about each other's knowledge and therefore they
cannot have "mutual knowledge". I use the term "common ground" to
refer to these shared assumptions and I want to explore some of the
ways in which interlocutors cooperate to expand their common ground.
Conversationalists use both implicit and explicit linguistic
means to convey and confirm assumptions about the common ground, as
they invite the partner to identify and exploit the common ground
needed to interpret utterances. Such interpretations simultaneously
depend on and enhance the common ground, and they enable the partners
to create and maintain a model partner's knowledge to be used in
further communication.
-- At 12 noon the same day in 460-252 an informal talk on:
'The discourse marker well in the history of English
From Chaucer to Shakespeare'
The discourse marker "well" has four distinct uses in Modern English;
as a qualifier it may preface a reply which is only a partial answer
to a question; as a face-threat mitigator it may preface a
disagreement; as a hesitation marker it may bridge interactional
silence; and as a frame it may be used to introduce a new topic or to
preface direct reported speech. In the history of English, "well" is
first attested as a discourse marker in Middle English. All early
examples, however, are surprisingly similar and do not show the
functional diversity "well" has in Modern English. It always functions
as a frame. The most frequent subtype, which occurs exclusively in
fictional writing, is the type illustrated by "'Well,' seyd e sir
Launcelot, 'take this lady and the hede.'" In Early Modern English,
and particularly in the plays by Shakespeare, the uses of "well"
diversify considerably but they do not yet include all four Modern
English uses.
-\-/-\ CALL FOR PAPERS \-/-\-
-- AFLA-III: The 3rd annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal
Linguistics Association, UCLA (April 26-28, 1996). Abstracts are
invited for 30 minute talks (20 minutes presentation, 10 minutes
question/answer) on any aspect of the phonology, phonetics, syntax,
semantics, or morphology of any Austronesian language. Applicants are
limited to one singly-authored and one jointly-authored abstract.
Abstracts should be one page long, with an additional page for data or
references. Submissions may be made by regular mail, email, or fax.
The official languages of AFLA-III are English and French. For
submissions by regular mail, send to the address below five anonymous
copies of your abstract, plus an index card bearing your name,
affiliation, your mailing address, email address, and the subdivision
of your abstract (phonology, syntax, etc.). If you use an additional
data page, all five copies of your abstract should be collated and
stapled as appropriate. For submissions by email or fax, send one
copy of your abstract, plus your name, affiliation, your mailing
address, email address, and the subdiscipline of your abstract. Email
address and fax number are given below. Any identifying information
(such as name or email address) will be removed from your abstract
before it is printed out to ensure anonymous review. Deadline for
receipt of abstracts: March 18, 1996. Send to
UCLA Linguistics Department
Attn: AFLA-III
405 Hilgard Ave
Los Angeles CA 90095-1543
email: uclaling@humnet.ucla.edu
fax: 310/206-5743
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/afla3.htm
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
-- Jukka Ammondt, professor of German Romanticism at the University of
Jyvaskyla, Finland, closed out a two-week American singing tour in
October with a performance at the Embassy of Finland in Washington,
D.C., doing Elvis Presley songs in Latin. According to a Washington
Post report, Ammondt sang Latin versions of, among others, "It's Now
Or Never" ("Nunc hic aut numquam") and "Love Me Tender" ("Tenere me,
suaviter").
[AP]
-\-/-\ 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.)
-- ANU: Research Associate/Senior Research Associate in African
Linguistics. This is a 12-month position for a scholar in Sub-Saharan
African linguistics to work with Professor R.M.W. Dixon and Professor
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald on their research project 'The categories of
human languages,' funded by the Australian Research Council.
Applicants should have a Ph.D. in Linguistics or be about to obtain
one. The project aims to study the main grammatical categories found
in human languages and provide a characterisation of the parameters of
variation concerning their realisation, function, and meaning. It
will also enquire why certain languages have certain categories,
organised in the way they are, looking both at interrelations between
category types and for interrelations between grammatical categories
and extralinguistic factors such as ecological environment,
socio-political organisation, economic basis, and lifestyle. The
successful applicant will work as a member of a team, investigating
grammatical categories across the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa,
from the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Koisan families. The post is
for 12 months only, from a date to be agreed in mid-1996 until the
same date in mid-1997. Further particulars can be obtained by email
from Professor Aikhenvald (aikaling@fac.anu.edu.au) or by fax from
Professor Dixon (61-6-279-8214). Closing date: 31 January 1996.
Applications addressing the selection criteria should be submitted in
duplicate to
Secretary, Australian National University
Canberra, ACT
0200 Australia
Quoting reference number FA 10.11.1 and including CV, list of
publications, plus names, addresses, and faxes of three academic
referees. Applicants may, if they wish, also send copies of published
or unpublished papers.
(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 \-/-\-
-- JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: What one single conclusion can be deduced
from all the statements given?
1. The only animals in this house are cats.
2. Every animal is suitable for a pet, that loves to gaze at the moon.
3. When I detest an animal, I avoid it.
4. No animals are carnivorous, unless they prowl at night.
5. No cat fails to kill mice.
6. No animals ever take to me, except that are in this house.
7. Kangaroos are not suitable for pets.
8. None but carnivora kill mice.
9. I detest animals that do not take to me.
10. Animals that prowl at night, always love to gaze at the moon.
Solution to THE EVEN LASTER PRIZE: 3.33
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-\-/-\ CONSERVE DISK SPACE \-/-\-
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or product endorsement purposes.
Inflate to 33 p.s.i.
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