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Sesquipedalian #5
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VII, No. 5
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Death of Houdini (1926) October 31, 1996
-\-/-\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \-/-\-
Friday, November 1, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
Akio Kamio
Dokkyo University
University of Colorado, Boulder (Visiting Faculty)
Evidentiality and some discourse characteristics in Japanese:
From the point of view of territory of information
In this talk, Professor Kamio will analyze the evidential properties
of Japanese, English, and Chinese. The analysis is given in terms of
the theory of territory of information, which he has developed in
his two papers (Journal of Pragmatics 1994, 1995) and book manuscript
in preparation. Based on that analysis, he will claim that Chinese
is least strict, English is next least strict, and Japanese is most
strict with regard to evidence that supports a given statement.
He will also claim that this tendency is reflected in the use of
nominal phrases. He will further claim that this characterization
applies only to the aspect which the theory of territory of information
captures and that in other aspects, different characterizations will
hold. For example, in the use of nominal referring expressions, English
is most strict and Japanese and Chinese are much less strict.
------------------
Reception follows.
For directions and a complete list of colloquia, see
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/colloq/colloq.html
-/-\-/ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS /-\-/-
-- UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER: Chancellor's Postdoctoral
Fellowship Program For Academic Diversity The Chancellor's
Postdoctoral Fellowship Program offers postdoctoral research
fellowships to members of groups underrepresented on faculties of
U.S. universities who show promise for tenure-track appointments on
the CU-Boulder campus. The fellowships provide scholars with
postdoctoral research opportunities in all disciplines represented at
CU-Boulder, plus mentoring and guidance in preparation for an academic
career. Fellows devote full time to the research activities of a
sponsoring faculty member or engage in independent research projects
within a department orEprogram. The fellowship program is intended to
increase the diversity of CU Boulder and the national academic
community. Fellows are selected on the basis of their proposed
research, their scholarly achievements and promise, and University
need. Applicants are required to discuss their proposed plan of study
or research with the academic unit of interest. Academic units must
nominate candidates for final selection. Diversity selection criteria
may include such factors as socioeconomic background, history of
overcoming disadvantage, first-generation university graduate
background, race and ethnicity. Stipend: Fellows receive $31,000 plus
benefits for the 1997-98 year. Each fellowship is initially awarded
for one year, and it is renewable for a second year based on academic
progress. Fellows receive reimbursement (up to $2,000) for moving
expenses to Boulder. Applicants must have received a doctorate within
two years of the start of the appointment on or after August 1,
1997. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the
United States who are members of underrepresented groups in higher
education, especially racial and ethnic minorities (American Indian,
African American, Asian American, Hispanic, Nadve Alaskan, or Native
Pacific Islander), or women in engineering, computer science,
mathematics, or physical science fields. Applicants must discuss their
proposed research with academic unit of interest and be nominated by
that unit for final selection. Applicants should submit three unbound
copies of the following: cover letter describing proposed research,
career plans, qualifications, and diversity information; curriculum
vitae; certified academic transcript, detailed statement of proposed
research (maximum: five pages); sample publications and dissertation
chapters. In addition, applicants should have three letters of
recommendation sent; one letter must be from the dissertation advisor.
Application mailing address: Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship
Program for Academic Diversity, Graduate School, Campus Box 26,
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0026 Deadline: All
application materials, including reference letters, must be postmarked
by December 9, 1996. Awards will be announced in March. Information:
Inquiries regarding the program may be directed to Barbara Kraus,
Assistant to the Dean (303) 492-5773; e-mail:
Barbara.Kraus@Colorado.EDU or Associate Dean Alexander Cruz
(303)492-7401; e-mail: Alexander.Cruz@Colorado.EDU. University of
Colorado has a strong institutional commitment to the principle of
diversity. On that spirit, the University is interested in receiving
applications from a broad spectrum of people, including women, members
of ethnic minorities, veterans, veterans of the Vietnam era, qualified
disabled veterans and other disabled individuals.
-- The Theoretical Comp. Sci. Lab. of the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (Lausanne) announces the availability of a doctoral
assistantship for work on robust text analysis. This position
guarantees a minimum of two years funding (approx. SFr.60,000 per
annum) starting in January 1997. The posibility of extension funding
exists. For further information, please contact Afzal Ballim using
one of the contact methods listed below.
Afzal Ballim | Internet: ballim@di.epfl.ch
Theoretical Comp. Sci. Lab. | X400: S=ballim;OU=di;O=epfl;
EPFL, Lausanne | PRMD=switch;ADMD=400net;C=ch
CH-1015 (Switzerland) | http://lithwww.epfl.ch/~ballim
Phone: (+41 21) 693 52 34 | fax: (+41 21) 693 52 78
-\-/-\ CALL FOR PAPERS \-/-\-
-- FASL-VI: The Sixth Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic
Linguistics, hosted by the University of Connecticut. 9-11 May 1997.
Deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday, 14 February 1997. I
Abstracts are invited for 30-minute presentations (plus 10 minutes
discussion) on topics dealing with formal aspects of Slavic syntax,
semantics, morphology, phonology, and psycholinguustics. Send 6 copies
of a ONE PAGE ANONYMOUS abstract to the address below. No fax or
e-mail submissions will be accepted. Please include ONE 3x5 card with:
1) title of paper; 2) your name; 3) address and affiliation; 4)
telephone and/or fax numbers; 5) e-mail address.
FASL VI Committee
Dept. of Linguistics U-145
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269 USA
lingadm@uconnvm.uconn.edu
phone: (860) 486-4229
fax: (860) 486-0197
Persons interested in attending FASL VI are invited to register their
e-mail and/or mailing addresses with us at the conference address
above. E-mail is the preferred means of communication for all business
except abstract submission, for which we require hard copy.
-- 28th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: Cornell University,
Ithaca NY, July 11-13, 1997. Abstracts are invited for 20-minute
talks in all areas of African Linguistics. If you are interested in
giving a talk, please send (1) an anonymous one-page abstract,
single-spaced, 12-point font; (2) a camera-ready short version of the
abstract that will fit into a 3"x6" space. Please write the title of
the paper and the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) lightly
in pencil on the back of this page; do not write them on the
front. (3) a 3x5 file card with name, affiliation, complete mailin
gaddress, telephone number, e-mail, and paper title. Mail all
materials to
ACAL-28
Department of Linguistics
227 Morrill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca NY 14853-4701
fax: 607 255 2044
Abstracts must be received by December 30. Please do not e-mail
abstracts.
-- 1997 SRCLD: 1997 Symposium on Research in Child Language
Disorders. May 30-31, 1997, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI.
Consult the web site for details about the program, submission
guidelines, sample submissions, and abstracts from the 1995 and 1996
meetings.
http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/srcld/
-- 'Extended finite state models of language' (Special issue of the
Journal of Natural Language Engineering). Andras Kornai, Guest
Editor. In spite of the wide availability of more powerful
(context-free, mildly context-sensitive, and even Turing-equivalent)
formalisms, the bulk of the applied work on language and sublanguage
modeling, especially for the purposes of recognition and topic search,
is still performed by various finite state methods. In fact, the use
of such methods in applied work as well as in research actually
increased in the past five years. This special issue, based on the
proceedings of the W1 workshop at ECAI'96, is open to submissions on
finite state methods to text analysis, speech/OCR language modeling,
and related CL and NLP tasks, as well as to papers analyzing and
possibly extending the domain of finite-state algorithms. In keeping
with the focus of JNLE, position papers and gedanken-experiments are
discouraged. Theoretical papers would be welcome to the extent they
benefit the practicing engineer. Papers are due December 31 1996.
Electronic submissions only. Authors will be notified by January 15
1997, with final copy due January 31 1997. The authors of papers
presented at the workshop have the choice of submitting the papers in
their current format (see http://www.cs.rice.edu/~andras/papers.html)
or revising them. All papers, including the ones invited to the
workshop, will go through the regular JNLE refereeing process. Send
submissions (plain latex2e, eps figures) to kornai@almaden.ibm.com.
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
The only other word with the same amount of letters is
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the
largest anagrams.
-\-/-\ 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.)
-- CORNELL UNIVERSITY: The Department of Modern Languages at Cornell
has a tenure-track position for August 1997 for an assistant professor
or beginning associate professor. The candidate will work with the
faculty of the DML in the governance of our language programs. We are
looking for someone in an area which concerns language use, including
sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, discourse analysis, languages in
contact, corpus linguistics, etc. The successful candidate will have
strong credentials in either Chinese, German or Russian. Fluency in
one of these languages is essential; language teaching experience is
desirable; and an interest in other language is a plus, but not
necessary. Strong credentials in research and publications are
essential. Send letter of application, CV and any supporting
documentation, and have three letters of recommendation sent to
Linda R. Waugh, Chair
Department of Modern Languages
Morrill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca NY 14853-4701
Inquiries may be addressed by e-mail to Irw1@cornell.edu
Review of applications will beging December 9 but we would like to
hear from interested candidates as soon as possible. We will be
conducting interviews at the MLA and LSA. AA/EO
-- McMASTER UNIVERSITY: The Department of Modern Languages invites
applications for a position in linguistics at the rank of Assistant
Professor, beginning on August 1, 1997, subject to final budgetary
approval. This is a tenure-track appointment. The minimum salary at
the Assistant Professor level is $39,981. The successful candidate
should hold a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related discipline with
demonstrated scholarship in the form of publications. S/he should
have interest in at least two of the following fields: syntax,
pragmatics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics and should be
able to teach at the undergraduate level any of the following
languages: German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish. Interest
in technology-based learning and willingness to participate in
interdisciplinary projects are highly desirable. Applications with a
curriculum vitae and letters from three referees should be sent to
Dr. Nina Kolesnikoff, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages,
McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,
L8S 4M2. Applications will be accepted until January 31, 1997.
In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, this
advertisement is directed in the first instance to Canadian citizens
and permanent residents of Canada. McMaster University is committed
to employment equity and encourages applications from all qualified
candidates, including aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities,
members of visible minorities and women.
-- GE: GE Corporate Research & Development Information Technology
Laboratory. The General Electric Research and Development Center has
openings in its Information Technology Laboratory for computer
scientists in the areas of computational linguistics, design and
implementation of natural language processing software, and
information retrieval. Experience in object-oriented design, C/C++
programming, lexicon development, and statistical analysis of text are
highly desirable. M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Computer Science is preferred.
Successful candidates are expected to work with customers in defining
requirements and in demonstrating and delivering software. GE is one
of the world's largest and most successful companies, having
leadership positions in business segments including electrical power
generation, plastics, medical systems, capital services, broadcasting,
aircraft engines, appliances, and lighting. GE is an affirmative
action, equal opportunity employer. If you are interested and
qualified, please send your resume to Dr. Tomek Strzalkowski, Natural
Language group, at the address below:
GE Corporate Research & Development
Bldg. K-1, Room 5C40A
P.O. Box 8
Schenectady, NY 12301
Fax: 518-387-6845
email: strzalkowski@crd.ge.com
-- Position as researcher in Norwegian speech synthesis, speech
recognition and/or natural language processing available at Telenor
R&D. Full details (in Norwegian) are given at
http://www.fou.telenor.no/xtf/fou_org/stilling.html
-- NORTHWESTERN: The Department of Linguistics at Northwestern
University announces a full-time tenure-track position in syntax at
the assistant professor level, pending final approval. The starting
date for the position is September 1, 1997. Candidates must hold a
Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field by the starting date of tne
position. We are seeking candidates with a primary specialization in
syntax, as well as additional expertise in one or more of the
following areas: language typology, formal semantics, quantitative
sociolinguistics, and bilingualism. Preference will be given to
candidates with publications beyond the dissertation and teaching
skills of demonstrably high quality. Salary is competitive and
commensurate with qualifications. To receive fullest consideration,
applications should reach Northwestern by December 16, 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, teaching evaluations (if available), and the names
of three references. Candidates should arrange to have the letters of
reference sent directly to the search committee. Send materials to
Syntax Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208-4090
Tel: 847 491-7020
Fax: 847 491-3770
E-mail inquiries should be directed to Beth Levin, the chair of the
search committee, at blevin@nwu.edu. The web page for the Department
is: http://www.ling.nwu.edu.
Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action
Employer, and applications from minority and women candidates are
especially welcome.
-- UCONN: The Department of Linguistics at the University of
Connecticut anticipates a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in
Semantics to begin in the fall semester of 1997 (salary
negotiable). Ph.D. is required by the time duties begin. We are
interested in candidates with specialization in formal semantics and
the syntax/semantics interface within Generative Grammar. Applicants
whose research interests interact well with those of the current
faculty are especially sought. Applicants should be prepared to teach
in the area of their specialization at the graduate level, as well as
more general linguistics courses at the undergraduate level, including
"Language and Mind" and "Principles of Linguistics." An applicant's
ability to teach in more than one area will weigh in our decision.
Applicants should send a complete dossier (letter of application,
curriculum vitae, samples of work in progress or published,
description of courses prepared to teach, and teaching evaluations if
available) and at least three letters of recommendation to
Howard Lasnik, Chair
Semantics Search Committee
University of Connecticut
Department of Linguistics, U-145
341 Mansfield Road, Room 230
Storrs, CT 06259-1145
email: lingadm@uconnvm.uconn.edu
phone: (860) 486-4229
fax: (860) 486-0197
Applications received by December 1, 1996 will be given preference in
the screening process. Applications will be accepted until the
position is filled. The University of Connecticut is an Equal
Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. We encourage applications
from under-represented groups, including minorities, women, and people
with disabilities.
-- USC: The Department of Linguistics at the University of Southern
California invites applications for a position, rank open, in
Phonology, to begin Fall 1998. Candidates with a secondary
specialization in phonetics are especially encouraged to apply.
Complete dossiers, including statement of interest, curriculum vitae,
sample publications, syllabi or course descriptions, teaching
evaluations if available, and three letters of reference should be
sent to
Chair, Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
MC 1693
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1963
For fullest consideration, applications should arrive before December
1, 1996. The University of Southern California is an Equal
Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer.
(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 \-/-\-
-- Follow the letters up, down, left, right, or diagonally, to reveal
a quote from mathematician Blaise Pascal (hint: the quote starts with
a letter adjacent to the *):
R E L E I H D M
E R T T F A R O
T R H * I W E T
A S O W D O I I
E T I R L U E M
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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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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. It is a violation of federal law to
use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labelling.
Happy Halloween
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