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Sesquipedalian, Volume III, Number 11
The SESQUIPEDALIAN WEEKLY HERALD Volume III, Number 11
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December 10, 1992
This week we conclude our study of the prospect of globalized Finnish:
FINNISH: A WORLD LANGUAGE?
Part Three 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.
The Direct Object
Most Finnish grammars are particularly easy to understand on this
point. The basic idea is: In Finnish the direct object (commonly
called the accusative object) may occur in the nominative, the
genitive, or the partitive case. In order to make things easier to
understand, nominative and genitive are called accusative. There is
also a real accusative which is not called anything at all. Utmost
care must be applied when interpreting the grammatical terminology.
If you encounter the word 'accusative,' it can mean nominative or
genitive, but never the real accusative. The term 'nominative' can mean
accusative or, possibly, nominative. 'Genitive' can mean accusative
or simply genitive, while partitive is always called partitive,
although it may be accusative.
Verbs
The best piece of advice is do not use verbs at all. Sometimes you
may find it a little difficult to pursue a meaningful conversation
without one, but with dilligent practice you will become adept at
this. We reduced the number of conversational errors by 20% after
discovering the method of omitting verbs. Another 15% can be
eliminated by omitting all adjectives, adverbs and pronouns, although
at this point conversation tends to sink to an extremely superficial
level, unless you are very good with your hands.
Pronunciation
Some difficult sounds:
aeae (a-umlaut a-umlaut): like 'e' in 'expatiatory,' but longer and
more intense. Mouth as open as possible, ears backward and
plastered to head.
aey (a-umlaut y): half palatal, half alveolar, half dental. Look
disgusted.
yoe (y o-umlaut): be very, very careful with this one.
uu: as in Arabic
r: a forceful trill. Loose dentures will be an advantage here.
Conclusion: We hope that this article will be of great help to all
those who wrestle with the question of whether to study Finnish. For
those already studying the language, this method can provide helpful
and easy applications for using conversational Finnish. As to the
question of the prospect of Finnish as a global language, I think I do
not misspeak myself by saying that the work of this article should
settle the matter clearly and finally.
-/-/-/ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /-/-/-
-- This past week Bonnie McElhinny presented a paper entitled 'From
Angry Parent to Distant Bureaucrat: Constructions of Masculinity in the
Policing Styles of Older and Younger Police Officers in Pittsburgh' in
a panel on Constructing Authority, at the annual meeting of the
American Anthropological Association in San Francisco.
-- Martha Swearingen has been named a researcher-in-residence for
1992-1993 at the Stanford Center for Latin American Studies, for her
current research on Palenquero (Spanish Creole).
-/-/-/ HOLIDAY WORKSHOP DOUBLE-HEADER /-/-/-
Holiday treats have started to roll in early this year! Phonology
workshop is pleased to end the year with a double-header:
Mark Liberman, University of Pennsylvania
'The Phonetic Interpretation of Tone in Igbo'
and
Young Mee Yu Cho, Stanford University
'Directionality in Labial Disharmony in Cantonese and Taiwanese'
Our Phonology Workshop year-end fest will include a feast of pizza
after our first speaker. Please join us! Note the early starting
time: 6.00 pm!
The Phonetic Interpretation of Tone in Igbo
This paper is a preliminary study of the phonetic interpretation of
Igbo tone. We use an experimental method first applied to Englis, in
which a speaker varies pitch range orthogonally with variation in
tonal material, and we compare the success of different models in
characterizing the interaction of tone identity, phrasal position,
tone sequence, and pitch range in determining patterns of measured F0
values. From the statistical structure of these data, we draw several
conclusions about Igbo tone and its phonetic interpretation.
Directionality in Labial Disharmony in Cantonese and Taiwanese
What is most puzzling in Labial disharmony in Cantonese and Taiwanese
is the fact that there is an asymmetry in the constraint on
vowel-consonant vs. consonant-vowel sequences such that a coda labial
is not allowed (*/tup/) but an onset labial can be followed by a round
vowel (/bo/). Similarly, a round glide blocks a coda labial (*tuap/)
but not an onset labial (/pau/). Yip (1986) and Steriade (1987)
propose a cooccurrence restriction on the Labial node, which interacts
with syllabification and redundancy rules. These analyses, however,
make incorrect predictions in disallowing such well-formed examples as
/pau/ and /mau/ while allowing such ill-formed sequences as /ou/ and
/tuo/. Though empirically more adequate, Lin's (1989) proposal also
suffers from two major problems: 1) two unrelated constraints are
needed to account for a unified prohibition on Labial, 2) the two
conditions require different notions of identity. This paper argues
for a unifying account where the notion of directionality, needed
elsewhere in phonology, is recognized in computing identity. For the
labial disharmony case in question, a directionality parameter of
right-to-left is proposed, which accounts for the asymmetry between
the onset and the coda.
-/-/-/ PARTY UPDATE /-/-/-
All systems are go for the biggest happy-hour ever, the Linguistics
Department Holiday Fest, immediately following the colloq this Friday
in Cordura. Sign-ups for dishes, snacks and beverages are in the
Greenberg Room in Bldg. 100 if you would like to contribute
consumables (all are encouraged to do so). Live entertainment will be
provided by [Editor's note: the last line of this blurb seems to have
gone missing...]
-/-/-/ CALL FOR PAPERS /-/-/-
PROSODY WORKSHOP: The European Speech Communication Association is
organizing its tutorial and research workshop in Lund, Sweden. The
aim of the workshop is to encourage an international scientific
exchange of current work in prosody in much the same way as the Nordic
Prosody Meetings function within Scandinavia. The workshop sessions
will be organized around the functions of prosody including
prominence, grouping, and discourse. Special sessions will also be
devoted to the production and perception of prosody. Additional areas
of interest can include technological, clinical and teaching
applications. Prospective contributors to this workshop are invited
to submit five copies of a 400-word abstract of their contribution not
later than January 15, 1993. The abstract should begin with the title
of the contribution, name(s), affiliation(s), fax and e-mail of the
authors. Please indicate which of the authors, if more than one,
should receive the acceptance notice. All correspondence to
ESCA Workshop on Prosody
Department of Linguistics and Phonetics
Helgonabacken 12
S-223 62 LUND, SWEDEN
email: prosesca@lingf.lu.se
phone: +46 46 10 97 91
fax: +46 46 10 42 10
SALA-XV: The South Asia Studies Program, in conjunction with the
Department of Linguistics at Iowa State University, announces that
they will host the fifteenth South Asian Languages Analysis
Roundtable, 21-23 May 1993. The theme of this year's conference will
be 'Subordination and clause connectives in South Asian languages.'
Proposals for papers are invited on any topic related to subordination
and clause conneciton. In addition, proposals for panels and papers
will be accepted in other areas of linguistics, including syntax,
semantics, and phonology, teaching South Asian languages, language
acquisition, sociolinguistics, translation theory and diachronic
linguistics. Abstracts will be considered for early acceptance
starting 15 November 1992. Final deadline for submission of abstracts
is 1 March 1993. Individual paper abstracts (one typewritten page)
and panel proposals (including one page abstracts for each paper and a
cover letter) should be sent to the Organizing Committee. Please
send all correspondence to BLAALDYUIAMVS.Bitnet or
Alice Davison and Frederick Smith
Organizing Committee, SALA-XV
South Asia Studies Program
226 International Center
University of Iowa
Iowa City IA 52242
UCLA: The Fifth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference will be held on
27-29 May 1993 at the UCLA campus. As in the past, we invite
theoretical and applied papers on any aspect of Indo-European Studies:
linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology and culture. Papers
on both interdisciplinary and specific topics (e.g. typology,
methodology, reconstruction, the relation of Indo-European to other
language groups, the interpretation of material culture, etc.) are
welcome. Abstracts should be approximately two typewritten pages
(double-spaced) and must be received by 15 February 1993. A period of
twenty minutes will be allotted for each paper, followed by a ten
minute discussion period. All abstracts and inquiries to
IE Conference Committee
c/o Germanic Languages Department
302 Royce Hall, UCLA
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90024-1539
phone: 310/206-4396 (weekdays)
email: ibcwgkg@mvs.oac.ucla.edu
-/-/-/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /-/-/-
The long-awaited Ray Jackendoff colloquium, the last colloquium of the year:
'"Something Else" for the Binding Theory'
Ray Jackendoff, Brandeis University
Expressions like 'someone else,' 'everything else,' 'anywhere else,'
etc. have anaphoric properties much like pronouns and reflexives--
including things like c-command conditions, weak crossover, and strict
and sloppy identity. However, instead of marking coreference, they
mark different reference. It is shown that the GB theory of binding,
in which coreference is marked by syntactic coindexation, cannot be
extended to these expressions. Rather, a theory of binding must be
adopted in which coreference is marked by relations in conceptual
structure.
To be followed by the long-awaited Department Christmas Party, the
only one of the year, instead of the usual happy hour (see elsewhere
in this issue for further details). It all begins this Friday, 12/11,
at 3.30 in Cordura Hall.
-/-/-/ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS /-/-/-
Announcement from the H&S Dean's Office: Correction to the Stanford
fellowships announced in last week's issue-- Students do not need to
be US citizens or permanent residents to apply for the WHITING or
HUMANITIES CENTER fellowships. They DO have to be US citizens or
permanent residents to apply for the LURCY or COMPTON fellowships.
The Dean's office apologises for any confusion caused.
LOS ALAMOS LABS: The Computer Research Group at Los Alamos National
Laboratory invites applications for postdoctoral positions in
computational linguistics, including: speech recognition, speech
synthesis, corpus linguistics, computer user interfaces, and natural
language modeling. Applications are accepted on a year-round basis
and are evaluated quarterly. The main evaluation criterion is the
applicant's research potential, as judged by letters and publications,
although programming experience is also highly desirable. You must
have received your Ph.D. within the last three years, and it must be
in hand when you start the fellowship. For firther information
contact speech@lanl.gov or
Post-doc recruitment
C-3 Speech Group
Mail Stop B265
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of
California and is an EOE/AA employer.
-/-/-/ TRUE LINGUISTS /-/-/-
House of Nanking, downtown San Francisco (Kearney & Columbus):
Reviewed by Tom Veatch
This unusual restaurant is a tiny little dirt-cheap hole-in-the-wall
place with everyone sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at little tables or
at the counter, beneath ten badly framed and haphazardly hung 'Best
restaurant in a zillion miles'-type award certificates. It's sort of
embarassing for the two empty restaurants you shuffle past while
waiting in the line to get in this place. Cramming inside after maybe
tweny minutes, everyone is squeezing past each other in opposite
directions as fast as it's possible to go down the 18-inch wide
hallway. Our counter seats gave a good view of the action. One guy
comes out of the dishroom in the back with two wet stacks of dishes of
various sizes, and plops them down in the middle of the chopping block
where a woman had been chopping eggplants a second before. I guess
she wasn't using it at that moment. Another guy is walking by on his
way to get a customer some water and without slowing down reaches into
a bin and tosses some snow peas on the top plate. Another guy turns
around from the stove for about two seconds to dump out half a wok of
chopped eggplants, and turns around again already putting something
else in the wok. Then the second guy walking back the other direction
with the water grabs a handful of sesame seeds with one hand from some
place I couldn't see, and throws some nonchalantly at the plate, and
mysteriously most of them actually hit the food. The proprietor, who
all this time is facing out the door and talking in a loud voice to
someone else, continues talking while he leans sideways to grab the
plate and throws the plate behind his back, without looking, onto the
counter in front of us. Was this our meal? Or did they just leave it
there because there was no counter space, as temporary storage until
someone would take it to a table? No eye contact, word, or other
signal said 'time to eat,' but since we had in fact just ordered that
same dish about 90 seconds earlier, we figuerd, what the heck, let's
hork out. And lo and behold, it was some really excellent szechuan
eggplant. If you go, remember to get their awesome shrimp cakes
(they're not on the menu).
-/-/-/ 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.)
AMERICAN TRANSLATORS COMPANY: We need your help to build upon the
enormous language opportunities created by the rapid globalization of
business and technology. If you are interested in international
business communication and enjoy working with people in diverse
linguistic and technical fields, we are interested in you. American
Translators is a fast-growing, international company which offers
translation, desktop publishing, and typesetting in 110 languages.
Our work environment is informal, yet structured enough to serve our
corporate clients' needs and to provide our employees with steady
guidance. We currently employ 35 people at our California
headquarters, have offices in Tokyo and Osaka, and work with hundreds
of freelance translators around the world. We are located south of
San Francisco near Stanford University, in an appealing area that
offers a wonderful mixture of natural beauty, pleasant weather,
cultural activity, and ethnic diversity. We are seeking applications
on a rolling basis for in-house translators from English, and for a
position as Translation management coordinator. Please send
introductory letter, your resume (noting GPA and salary history),
transcripts, and two or three references (letters of reference are
preferred; names and telephone numbers are acceptable). Your letter
should explain how your background, skills, and career objectives
relate to the position. Please send your materials as soon as
possible to
Jonathan Kendall, Operations Supervisor
American Translators
145 Addison Avenue
Palo Alto CA 94301
phone: 415/323-2244
fax: 415/323-3233
OXFORD UNIVERSITY: The University of Oxford (England) promises to
appoint a university lecturer in phonetics from 1 October 1993. The
successful applicant will also be the Director of the Phonetics
Laboratory which fulfils both teaching and research functions. The
lecturer will be expected to teach at undergraduate and graduate level
and to supervise research students who make use of the laboratory
facilities. The holder of the post may be offered a fellowship at
Wolfson College. Stipend according to age on the scale
#13,4000-26,407 (STG) per annum. Applications (eight typed copies,
one from overseas) including CV, a list of publications and the names
of three referees should be sent to
Mrs. E.J. Smith, University Offices
Wellington Square
Oxford OX1 2JD ENGLAND
phone: +44-865-270137
fax: +44-865-270708
Short-listed candidates will be interviewed in Oxford, possibly at
short notice. They should make sure that the application provides
sufficient information (telephone number, e-mail or fax) for quick
communication. Please quote on your application ref. p/1911.
Potential candidates from the US and Canada wishing further
information about the post are encouraged to contact
James Higginbotham
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
20D-204 MIT
Cambridge MA 02139
phone: 617/253-6958
email: higgy@athena.mit.edu
(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.)
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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'.
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. The views and opinions
expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Stanford
University or the Linguistics Department, and shall not be used for
advertising or product endorsement purposes.
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