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Sesquipedalian, Volume III, Number 8
The SESQUIPEDALIAN WEEKLY HERALD Volume III, Number 8
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November 19, 1992
This week, we are very proud to finally present the first installment
of the most long-awaited feature story in the Sesquipedalian's brief
history.
FINNISH: A WORLD LANGUAGE?
Part One of Three
Original text: Richard Lewis. Swedish translation: Gunnel Stenberg.
Translated back from Swedish by Tomas Riad. Post-editing: Kyle
Wohlmut. Additional Finnish consulting: Arto Anttila.
Is it now the time for Finnish to take its place as the international
language? It is obviously difficult to answer this question with
certainty. At the moment there seem to be several factors which would
hinder such a development. First of all, Finnish is currently spoken
by a mere .05% of the world's population; secondly one cannot learn
the language in ten easy lessons; thirdly, a large number of Finns
still do not understand it.
Although the advancement of Finnish has been a bit slow, there
are Finns who point out the following advantages Finnish would have as
a world language:
1) It is an essentially logical language. The rules are absolute and
reliable in all situations, except exceptions.
2) It is a good sounding language; in other words, it is pleasing to
the ear. This has to do with its wealth of vowels, which rules out
ugly consonant clusters. It was recently suggested that some vowels
should be exported to Czechoslovakia, where a shortage of vowels is
imminent, and that some Czech consonants should be imported to
Finland. However, negotiations collapsed at an early stage. The
Finns would not deal with a language that calls ice-cream 'zrmzlina,'
while the Czechs in turn distrusted a language that calls it
'jaeaeteloeae.'
3) It is a concise language. One Finnish word can mean several
different things in English. Why lose time and energy saying 'the
committee that takes care of negotiations concerning the truce' when
you can use a simple little word like 'aseleponeuvottelutoimikunta?'
4) Learning Finnish builds confidence. If you can learn Finnish, then
you can learn anything.
5) Finnish has longer and better swear words than any other language.
In light of these facts we can see that the introduction of
Finnish as a world language would be a blessing to all mankind. The
problem we now face is how to convince the remaining 99.95% of the
global population to learn Finnish. We hope the world can receive the
benefit of our own experience with the language. After a few months
of intensive (and sometimes downright desperate) research we have
developed a method of fording this linguistic barrier which has so far
proved to be one of the world's most formidable ones.
(Continued next week with, 'Nouns and their Cases')
-/-/-/ CHRISTMAS IN THE AIR /-/-/-
Mark your calendars now! The Linguistics Department Christmas Party
is set for December 10 in the Cordura Hall lounge, 5-?? pm. Anyone
who survived last year's party will tell you that this is one
Christmas bash not to be missed. The Department will provide snacks
and EANABS (what's an EANAB?); feel free to contribute kind
consumables potluck-style (a sign-up sheet will be posted in the
Greenberg Room). O, and it hasn't been confirmed yet, but rumour has
it that special musical guests will also be appearing...
(This note should also serve as a reminder that you should be well
through your Christmas shopping by now... sorry...)
-/-/-/ HISTORICAL WORKSHOP /-/-/-
Elizabeth Traugott presents this week's historical workshop
TONIGHT (Thursday, 11/19) at 7.30 in Ventura 17.
It Promises/Threatens to Rain: The Epistemic Development
of Esrtwhile Illocutionary Verbs?
After brief overviews of some recent approaches to illocutionary
(commissive) and epistemic meanings of 'promise' and 'threaten' and of
the history of the development of the epistemic meanings, this paper
will suggest that in their epistemic uses, the two verbs show
incipient grammaticalization to modals, and to discuss implications
for the theory and methodology of grammaticalization. (See last week's
Quip for full abstract)
-/-/-/ PROFESSIONAL WORKSHOP /-/-/-
There will be a Linguistics Department Preprofessional Workshop on the
subject of publishing, Tuesday December 1, 12-1 pm in 90-91A.
Questions to be addressed include:
-- Why publish as a graduate student?
-- Where to publish?
-- What do editors look for?
-- How to respond to requests for revision?
-- Nuts and bolts: formatting of bibliography (and why it matters),
the copy-editing and proofreading stages.
Panelists will be Alex Alsina, Peter Sells, and Elizabeth Traugott.
-/-/-/ CALL FOR PAPERS /-/-/-
SALSA: The Symposium About Language and Society-Austin is pleased to
announce its first annual meeting to be held April 16-18, 1993 at the
University of Texas at Austin. Abstracts are invited on topics
concerning the relationship between language, culture and society.
Papers delivered at the conference will be published in a special
edition of the Texas Linguistic Forum. Speakers will be allowed 20
minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. Please submit
six copies of an anonymous proposal wich may not exceed one page
(unreduced) to the address below. The abstract should include a
specific statement of the topic or issue, a brief description of the
relevant data and the conclusions. Abstacts should be accompanied by
a 3x5 card with the following information: 1) The title of the paper,
2) Author's name(s), 3) Author's affiliation, 4) Address and phone
number at which the author wishes to be notified. Abstacts must be
received by January 19, 1993. Late abstracts will not be accepted,
and we cannot accept papers which are to be published elsewhere.
Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent in early
February. Registration fees will be $15 for students and $25 for
non-students. Papers must be received by May 3, 1993 to be included
in the published proceedings.
SALSA
Department of Linguistics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1196
phone: 512/471-1701
email: robinq@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
(Note: We cannot accept abstracts sent via e-mail.)
PACLING '93: The First Pacific Association for Computational
Linguistics Conference (formerly JAJSNLP, the Japan-Australia Joint
Symposia on Natural Language Processing), April 21-24 1993, in
Vancouver BC. Submission Deadline: November 30, 1992. Notification
of acceptance: January 29, 1993. Original papers are invited on any
topic in computational linguistics and strongly related areas
including (but not limited to): text, speech, pragmatics, discourse,
language and communication channels, language and input/output
devices, language and context, approaches and architectures,
applications. Authors should prepare full papers, in English, of not
more than 5000 words including references, approximately 20
double-spaced pages. The title page must include: author's name,
postal address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, a brief
100-200 word summary, and some keywords for classifying the
submission. Please send four (4) copies of each submission to
Paul McFetridge and Fred Popowich
PACLING '93 Program Co-chairs
Centre for Systems Science
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC CANADA V5A 1S6
phone: 604/291-3632 or 291-4193
fax: 604/291-4424
email: mcfet@cs.sfu.ca
email: popowich@cs.sfu.ca
-/-/-/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /-/-/-
Don't be fooled! This week's colloquium does not take place in the
usual venue. Instead, it will be in Jordan Hall 050 (basement). The
speaker is Katalin E. Kiss (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), currently
visiting at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences:
On the Comparative and Absolute Readings of Superlatives
The fact that superlatives can be ambiguous between an absolute
reading (1a), and a comparative reading (1b), was noticed in Szabolcsi
(1986).
1) Who climbed the highest mountain?
a. 'Who climbed the mountain that is higher than any other
mountain?'
b. 'Who climbed a mountain that is higher than the
mountains climbed by the other persons?'
The talk will discuss the questions of how the two interpretations can
be constructed, and how the different syntactic conditions under which
they arise can be accounted for.
The comparative reading can only be obtained in the presence
of another operator of a certain kind (e.g. an interrogative operator,
but not a universal or an existential quantifier). The comparative
reading can also arise in constructions requiring a non-specific NP;
the absolute superlative, on the other hand, cannot appear in
non-specific contexts. Szabolcsi accounts for these facts by claiming
that the two types of superlatives are syntactically, even
catagorically, distinct, and their distribution is determined by
syntactic conditions, such as the ECP.
This talk will argue that the phenomenon in question is
primarily semantic: the comparative superlative is a superlative in
the scope of an operator performing the proper partitioning of a set
into two subsets (such as a focus, an interrogative operator, a
relative WH-phrase with a definite head, or another superlative).
The conditions of the comparative reading will be shown to
hold in the case of superlative adjectives with no restrictor, and
superlative adverbs, as well, such as:
2) a. JOHN is the tallest.
b. JOHN sings the most beautifully.
Such superlatives order properties, and the necessity of a clause-mate
operator follows from the necessity of linking the cale of properties
established by the superlative to a set of entities. A biunique
linking between a partially ordered scale and a set of entities will
be argued to be only possible if the set of entities is properly
partitioned into two.
In the case of (1), the absolute and the comparative readings
will be shown to correspond to the wide scope and narrow scope
vreadings of the superlative operator, resulting in different
directions of mapping between climbers and mountains.
The syntactic conditions on the comparative reading will be
claimed to be the same as the general syntactic conditions under which
an operator can have narrow scope with respect to another operator.
The specificity of absolute superlatives and the non-specificity of
comparative ones will also be derived from their wide scope, and
narrow scope, respectively.
The colloquium committee reports that thankfully, there will be no
colloquium next week. The following week it's back to CSLI for
Gillian Ramchand presenting her dissertation proposal (December 4).
Watch this space for abstract.
-/-/-/ TRUE LINGUISTS /-/-/-
Discussing his collection of essays 'The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax
and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language,' Geoffrey Pullum
reports:
'A more extended philosophical presentation of the same sort
can be found in Bill Bryson's recent book "The Mother Tongue." Bryson
(presenting no references at all) makes some dramatic claims about
several other languages, too. We summarize them in this table:
LANGUAGE WORDS FOR NUMBER
Arabic camels 6000
Araucanian hunger 'a variety'
Eskimo snow 50
Italian pasta 'more than 500'
Kilivila yams 100
Maori dung 35
Tasmanian trees one for every type of
tree but no general term
'Yes, that really does say Tasmanian at the end there. Yes,
we know, it is well known to students of Australasian indigenous
languages that the Tasmanian languages are essentially unrecorded, the
entire aboriginal population of the island having been exterminated
between 1800 and 1830 without a single grammar or dictionary having
been drafted; Bryson's source has to be communing with the spirit
world on that one.' (From 'The Village Idiom,' Spring 1991)
>From the Wages of Success file, this quote from an interview with
Deborah Tannen (currently at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in
the Behavioral Sciences... but don't let that out), on the publication
of her previous book, 'That's not what I meant!':
'"A lot of my colleagues say, 'I want to write a popular book,
too.' And I say, 'If you're in it for the money, forget it. It may
not pay off. The only guarantee is that you'll pull your hair out.
Don't do it unless you feel driven to do it.'" And even with her
current fame and fortune, Tannen is very conscious of the downside--
the incessant phone calls... the distortion of her views by the media,
reports of jealousy among colleagues, and the other trappings of
celebrity, even on a relatively modest scale. Asked whether the
experience has been worth the candle, Tannen replies, "I don't know
yet. If things go on this way, maybe not. My life is not my own
anymore."' (From 'Lingua Franca,' August 1991)
-/-/-/ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS /-/-/-
(NOTE ON REDUNDANCY: 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.)
-- LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY: Assistant professor of French and
Russian, tenure track, beginning September 1, 1993. Ph.D. required,
with specialty in linguistics preferred. Applicants must demonstrate
superior teaching ability and show evidence of publication.
Responsibilities include teaching French primarily for the upper
levels of the undergraduate program and for the MA program in Romance
Languages. For Russian, teaching responsibilities will be limited to
the undergraduate program. Must demonstrate native or near-native
fluency in both French and Russian. Applications accepted until
position is filled. May conduct interviews at the MLA convention in
New York, December 28-30. Send letter of application, CV & dossier
with letters of recommendation to
Dr. Tom J. Lewis, Head
Department of Foreign Languages
Louisiana Tech University
P.O. Box 3086, TS
Ruston, LA 71272
-- UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: The Institute for Research in Cognitive
Science (IRCS) at the University of Pennsylvania makes available each
year several postdoctoral positions in Cognitive Science. The
deadline for applicatons for next fall is March 1, 1993. To apply,
please send your resume and a cover letter indicating your proposed
research to
Mrs. T. Yannuzzi
IRCS
University of Pennsylvania
400C Walnut Street
Philadelphia PA 19104-6228
Please have three letters of recommendation sent to that address.
IRCS is an interdisciplinary institute of the Schools of Arts and
Sciences and Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of
Pennsylvania, with faculty and graduate students from the departments
of Computer and Information Sciences, Linguistics, Mathematics,
Philosophy, and Psychology. EOE/AA
-- UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee,
Department of Linguistics, invites applications for an anticipated
tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor of Japanese to begin
in the fall of 1993. Applicants should have the Ph.D. by summer of
1993 and some language instruction experience. Native or near-native
proficiency in standard Japanese and English required to teach
introductory and intermediate level language courses in an expanding
program associated with the UW-Milwaukee and Marquette University
joint International Studies Center, a DOE sponsored National Resource
Center. Preference given to candidates with formal linguistics
training and research interests. UWM is required to release upon
request the names of applicants and nominees who do not request
confidentiality and the names of all final candidates. Send letter of
application, vita, three letters of recommendation and one sample of
your research by March 1, 1993 to
David D. Buck, Chair
Japanese Search Committee
290 Holton Hall
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Box 413
Milwaukee WI 53201
phone: 414/229-3961
-- UC SAN DIEGO: Subject to availability of funds, the Department of
Linguistics at the Univeristy of California San Diego has a
tenure-track opening at the Assistant Professr level beginning
September 1993. We seek a specialist in PHONOLOGY. Desireable
qualifications include background in morphology, a strong language
background and familiarity with multiple theoretical frameworks. A
linguistics Ph.D. is required. The annual salary for an Assistant
professor is $35,900-$45,600. A letter of application, CV, the names
and addresses of three referees, and one representative publication
should be sent to
University of California, San Diego
Search Committee PH
Department of Linguistics, 0108
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla CA 92093-0108
no later than February 15, 1992.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: The Department of Linguistics at Northwestern
University announces the opening of a new tenure-track Assistant
Professor position in PHONOLOGY beginning September 1, 1993.
Candidates must hold a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field by the
starting date of the position. We are seeking candidates with a
primary specialization in phonology as well as additional expertise in
one or more of the following areas: morphology, language typology,
language change, language acquisition, and computational linguistics.
Preference will be given to candidates with publications beyond the
dissertation and/or teaching experience of demonstrably high quality.
Applications are due at Northwestern by January 22, 1993. The
application should include the candidate's CV, a brief statement of
current and projected research interests, teaching evaluations (if
available) and three letters of reference. Send materials to
Phonology Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston IL 60208-4090
phone: 708/491-7020
A departmental representative will be at the LSA Annual Meeting in Los
Angeles to discuss the position and answer questions. EOE/AA
-- YALE UNIVERSITY: The Yale University Department of Linguistics
invites applications for an anticipated position as assistant
professor in the area of phonological theory. The candidate selected
will be appointed to a three-year term beginning in the academic year
1993-94. Candidates should possess a Ph.D. in linguistics and should
be prepared to teach introductory courses in linguistics as well as
graduate and undergraduate courses in phonology. Preference will be
given to applicants with demonstrable teaching skills and with a
strong research background in non-Indo-European languages and/or in
the interaction of phonology with other areas (morphology, syntax,
computational linguistics, etc.). Please forward application, vitas,
representative publications, and three or more letters of
recommendation by February 14 to
Phonology Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
Yale University
P.O. Box 1504A Yale Station
New Haven, CT 06520
Further details can be obtained from the department chair, Larry Horn,
at the above address or at LHORN@YALEVM.bitnet. Prof. Horn will be
interviewing candidates for this position at the LSA. Recommendation
letters can be sent snail-mail or e-mail.
CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY: The Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn
University (Bangkok, Thailand) announces one open position for a
full-time lecturer, with an appointment beginning no later than June,
1993. Applicants must be Thai nationals, not older than 35, have or
show a significant progress towards obtaining a Ph.D. in linguistics
and preferably have a number of publications. Applicants are required
to send 1) applications, 2) CVs, 3) transcripts, 4) dissertation
abstracts. and 5) selected (published) papers, to
Head of the Department of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road
Bangkok 10330 THAILAND
email: kingkarn@chulkn.chula.ac.th
fax: 66-2-2154804
Please make sure that the following information is included in the CV:
Age and marital status, academic background, specialization(s) and
research area(s), language(s) that have been intensively worked on,
work experience, annotated bibliography of research papers, names and
addresses of two references. The deadline for applications is January 1993.
-- COORDINATOR FOR INTERCOLLEGIATE FOREIGN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION: The
Claremont Colleges seek to hire an innovative individual to advise and
coordinate foreign language instruction for the five undergraduate
colleges and the graduate school in Claremont, CA and direct an
intensive summer language program now under development. Requirements
for the successful candidate are the following: a broad knowledge of
foreign language pedagogy, including curricular and instructional
models; foreign language teaching and/or teacher training experience
at the senior high or post-secondary level; knowledge of
proficiency-based teaching and testing methods ability to coordinate
faculty professional development. Desired qualifications include:
training in oral proficiency testing; experience managing grant
monies; background in the use of multi-media resources. A Ph.D. in a
modern foreign language, foreign language pedagogy, or applied
linguistics would be an asset but is not required. Please send a
dossier including a CV, three letters of recommendation and any
appropriate written materials to
Thomas L. Ilgen, Dean of Faculty
Pitzer College
1050 N. Mills Avenue
Claremont CA 91711
Applications will be accepted until December 4, 1992, or until the
position is filled. EOE/AA
(NOTE ON REDUNDANCY: 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 /-/-/-
Insta-prize this week to the first who can identify which classic
linguistics textbook contains this unforgettable quote:
'Linguistics studies language as a formal system. Its three main
branches are phonology, the study of speech sounds and their patterns;
semantics, the study of meaning; syntax, the study of sentence
structure; and morphology, the study of words and word formation.'
-/-/-/ FINAL SCORE /-/-/-
For the first time in franchise history, the Sharks shut out their
opponents, the LA Kings, at the Cow Palace on Tuesday night (6-0).
The formerly sieve-like Arturs Irbe, called up from KC to replace
injured Jeff Hackett, became an impassable wall in the net, stopping
all 39 shots that managed to break through the Sharks' formidable
defensive line. Leading scorers for the Sharks were Johan Garpenlov
and Doug Wilson (still no hat trick, though).
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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 both at Stanford (in directory /user/linguistics/Sesquip), and
at Berkeley (in the directory /usr/pub.) The most current issue of
the Herald can be found by typing 'help quip'.
'My friends, no matter how tough the road may be, we
can and will never, never surrender to what is right.'
--Vice President Dan Quayle
in a speech to the Christian Coalition
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