[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Sesquipedalian #19
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VI, No. 19
\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/
National Surf & Turf Day February 29, 1996
-\-/-\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING \-/-\-
-- THIS WEEKEND at WCCFL: Arnold Zwicky is presenting 'Conflicts
between Conditions: When are They Resolvable?' Cleo Condoravdi
presents 'Presuppositional Polarity Items in Counterfactuals,' and
Vivienne Fong presents 'A Temporal Interpretation for Locative Case.'
-- We are pleased to announce that Renee Blake received two job
offers, and has accepted an attractive offer as Assistant Professor at
New York University starting this Fall. Her position is 75% in
Linguistics and 25% in Africana Studies, and her responsibilities will
include developing NYU's fledging program in urban sociolinguistics.
Towards this end she has also been given a generous grant for
computational and recording equipment for variation analysis by
herself and her students. Please join us in offering Renee warmest
congratulations!
-\-/-\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \-/-\-
Friday, March 1, 3:30 pm.
Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
John Haviland
Reed College
'Gesture Spaces and Mental Maps'
Starting with three exemplary utterances which include apparent
"pointing gestures," I consider the relationship between spatial
information encoded in spoken language and that apparently conveyed by
conversational gesture. A previous study of a Guugu Yimithirr (Paman)
narrative showed how semiotically complex representations of local
geography were incorporated into both verbal formulations and gestural
performance in recounting events--in this case, a shipwreck in the
waters off northern Queensland. Here I explore some indexical
properties of referential devices, both spoken and gestured: how they
link their referents to context, physical and conceptual, and how in
the examples presented this link crucially depends on an insistent
orientation by cardinal directions. I extend the empirical reach to
Tzotzil (Mayan), spoken in highland Chiapas, Mexico, which unlike
Guugu Yimithirr has little explicit linguistic (or at least spoken)
support for such directional acuity. Here, too, the indexical spaces
or projected contexts of utterances, including gestures, seem to show
the same range of semiotic properties as those evident in the
Australian case. Finally I consider some apparent conceptual
operations--"transpositions" and "laminations"--which interlocutors
must necessarily apply to their representations of space if the
utterances--and especially the gestures--they produce are to be
successfully interpreted.
--------------
Reception follows.
For directions and a complete list of colloquia, see
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/~kessler/colloq/
-\-/-\ SYNTAX WORKSHOP \-/-\-
There will be a special Syntax Workshop held on Tuesday, March 5th, at
6 pm in 460-146.
A Constraint-Based Analysis of the Scope Marking Construction
Andreas Kathol
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and UC Berkeley
In many dialects of German, questioning a phrase in an embedded clause
does not involve dislocation of that element to a higher clause (as in
English). Rather, we typically find an initial expletive wh-expression
(_was_) that indicates the wide scope of the lower phrase, cf. (1):
(1) Was glaubst du [mit wem Lisa sprach]?
what believe you with who Lisa spoke
`Who do you think Lisa talked to?'
In the absence of additional levels of syntactic representation, such
as Logical Form, the apparent syntax-semantics mismatch in (1) can
instead be thought of as a solution of sets of simultaneous
constraints on syntactic and semantic well-formedness. Building on
recent work by Pollard and Yoo, such a constraint-based analysis will
be developed based on the distinction between syntactic vs. semantic
interrogatives. The lack of constructions corresponding to (1) in
languages like English hints at a parametric difference in the
conditions on how scoping possibilities of wh-quantifiers are linked
to syntactic structure.
-\-/-\ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS \-/-\-
-- SUN MICROSYSTEMS: Summer Internships at Sun Microsystems
Laboratories (Chelmsford, MA). Sun Microsystems Laboratories
(Chelmsford, Massachusetts, 25 minutes from Boston) is seeking
students to fill one or both of the following summer internships
within the Conceptual Indexing project, a research project that
focuses on the use of natural language processing and knowledge
representation techniques to improve information access.
1. Design and Implementation. This intern will participate in the
design and implementation of a prototype for on-line information access,
search and retrieval. The position requires proficiency in C and C++
(non-classroom experience), good design practices and principles, and
the ability to learn quickly and interact well within a project group.
The candidate will be expected to participate in ongoing design
discussions and take responsibility for the completion of well-defined
modules within the proposed system. A strong interest in one of the
following areas is required: natural language processing, knowledge
representation, information retrieval and the World Wide Web. A
candidate should be able to demonstrate strong creativity as well as a
good intuition for software design. Position is open to graduate level
students as well as exceptional undergraduates.
2. Evaluation. This intern will work on the evaluation of Conceptual
Indexing technology for information access. The intern in this
position should be capable of quickly getting familiar with Conceptual
Indexing technology (non-classroom experience in C or C++; LISP also
useful), conducting comparative information retrieval experiments
(experience with IR systems such as SMART and Fulcrum would be a plus),
and clearly presenting results (solid technical writing skills). Also
desirable are familiarity with natural language processing and
knowledge representation, up-to-date knowledge of the information
retrieval literature, and experience studying usability. In addition
to evaluation of the prototype, research questions include the proper
selection of test materials, the applicability of traditional
information retrieval measures and consideration of possible
alternatives, and the identification of domains and applications in
which the technology's distinguishing features will have the greatest
benefit to users. Position is open to graduate level students as well
as exceptional undergraduates.
Information about the Conceptual Indexing project can be found at:
http://www.sun.com/960201/cover/video.html
http://www.sunlabs.com/research/knowledge
Interested? As soon as possible, contact:
Cookie Callahan
Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc.
Two Elizabeth Drive
Chelmsford MA 01824-4195 USA
Email: cookie.callahan@east.sun.com
-- UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD: Research studentships and bursaries are
available in the Department of Speech Science to work in various areas
that may include: the development of neurolinguistic capacity,
including developmental disorders of language and cognition and the
neural and cognitive processing of language; the development of
language and cognition in socially and linguistically deprived
infants; the use of automatic speech recognition technology with
dysarthric speech; developmental and acquired language disorders;
computational analysis of disordered language; phonetics and
phonology. The Department of Speech Science is a rapidly expanding
research department with a cognitive neuroscience approach to the
development, applications, and impairments of human language in all
modalities. Primary research supervisors include the new Head of
Department, Professor John Locke (recently of Harvard Medical School),
Professor Jill Boucher, Dr Patricia Cowell, Dr Peter Cudd, Dr Mick
Perkins, Dr Rosemary Varley, and Dr Sandra Whiteside. The Department
enjoys close working relationships with investigators in the Cognitive
Neuroscience Research Centre and the Institute of Language, Speech,
and Hearing, and has excellent clinical research opportunities in the
Department's own Communications Clinic and Neurolinguistics
Laboratories. Closing date for CV applications: May 15
1996. Interviews to be held week beginning 10 June 1996.
Please send your CVs and enquiries to
Mrs Pat Millington, 18 Claremont Crescent, Sheffield, S10 2TA.
Tel: 0114 2824819
Fax: 0114 2730547
International: +44 114 2824819
Email: p.millington@sheffield.ac.uk
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
"Will the person who took a slice of cake from the commisioner's
office return it immediately," reads a sign seen this week in a police
canteen in Christchurch, New Zealand. "It is needed as evidence in a
poisoning case."
[The GUARDIAN, 19 Jul 1995]
-\-/-\ 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.)
-- UNIVERSITE DE FRIBOURG: Research Position in Natural Language
Processing, Institut d'Informatique, Universite de Fribourg, Suisse
(Switzerland). The Institute is seeking a researcher to work in an
european community research project in applied computational
linguistics. The researcher will participate in the construction of
the French prototype of a language processing system. The duration of
the position is a year. The position is available from 1st March 1996.
Applicants should have a master degree in Computational Linguistics
or a bachelor degree in Computer Science or Linguistics, with
experience in Natural Language Processing. Experience with statistical
NLP will be an advantage. Programming experience in C and Prolog
under unix environment is required. In-depth knowledge of the French
language and competence in communicating in English are essential.
Inquiries or applications (including CV) should be sent to
Barbara.Vauthey@unifr.ch or Alpha.Luk@unifr.ch
-- UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: The Department of Linguistics at the
University of Rochester has an opening for a teaching post-doc with a
primary specialization in phonological theory; candidates will be
strongly preferred who have a secondary interest in some aspect of
language learning or processing (computational or psychological)
and/or an interest in the phonology of signed languages. The position
requires teaching one course each semester, one of them a research
seminar in the person's primary specialization, and the other at the
undergraduate level. The stipend is $20,000 for the 1996-7 academic
year. Must have PhD in hand by Sept. 1,1996. Send vita, statement of
research interests, and names and addresses of at least 3 referees to:
Post-doctoral Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
514 Lattimore Hall
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
Deadline is April 15.
UR is an AA/EO employer
-- SFSU: Tenure Track Position at San Francisco State University
(SFSU). Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education - San Francisco
State University & UC Berkeley--Atypical Developmental
Psycholinguistics emphasis: Assistant/Associate Professor, based on
qualifications. Doctorate in Special Education, Education of the
Deaf, Linguistics, Psychology or related discipline. Knowledge of
language acquisition in atypical populations (e.g., Deaf,
language/learning disabled, specific language impaired). Strong
evidence of scholarly productivity or potential. Minimum of two years
professional experience. University teaching, research, grant
writing, and experience working with special needs children in
language and/or literacy development desirable. Knowledge of
multicultural and multilingual aspects of deafness and related areas
of education preferred. Duties include teaching doctoral level
courses in linguistics of ASL, sign language acquisition, teaching
master's degree courses in related areas of special education, and
supervision of doctoral dissertations, research and teaching practica.
Application reviews begin March 15, 1996; position open until filled.
Send letter of application, vita, and three letters of recommendation
to: Chair, Search Committee, Joint Doctoral Program, Department of
Special Education, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway
Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132. SFSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal
Opportunity Employer.
-- YALE: The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures seeks
applications for the position of Assistant Professor of Japanese. The
appointment, beginning July 1, 1996, would be as assistant professor
for a 3-year term, with the possibility of renewal. Applicants must
have Ph.D. in hand by the time of appointment. Native or near-native
fluency in Japanese, a Ph.D. in Japanese language and/or literature,
training in language pedagogy and experience in language teaching are
required. Knowledge of Chinese or Korean is desirable. Duties will
include the teaching of upper-level courses in Japanese a.g in the
appointee's area of specialization, and coordination of all leveS of
language instruction in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. The deadline
for receipt of a letter of application, cumoulum vitae, and three
letters of recommendation is June 10. 1996 (applications will be
reviewed as they are received), and these should be sent to:
Edward Kamens, Chair
Japanese Search Committee
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
P.O. Box 208236
New Haven, CT 06520-8236
Yale is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.
-- UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA: Chair for Indo-European Linguistics. The
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities of the University of
Vienna, Austria, announces an opening for a Full Professorship in
Indo-European Linguistics (successor to Professor Schindler).
Applicants should either have published widely in Indo-European
studies or be especially qualified through their work in a particular
area of Indo-European comparative linguistics. An outstanding command
of linguistic methodology will be expected, as will philological
expertise. A specialisation in East IndoEuropean studies is desirable,
preferably in the field of Indo-Iranian. Further requirements:
'Habilitation' or equivalent qualification and teaching experience.
Application by curriculum vitae, including a list of publications and
courses taught to date, should be sent to
Dekanat der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultaet
der Universitat Wien
Dr. Karl Lueger-Ring
1, A-1010 Wien,
Austria
up to April 30, 1996. The University of Vienna is operating an equal
opportunities policy and would particularly like to encourage
applications from women.
(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.)
/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\
-\-/-\ 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,
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.
This line intentionally left blank
\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/