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Sesquipedalian, Volume III, Number 13
The SESQUIPEDALIAN WEEKLY HERALD Volume III, Number 13
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January 14, 1993
Welcome back, everyone. Due to the ponderous length of this week's
edition, we're not running a feature story this time around. But we
will start you off with an incidence of the word 'sesquipedalian' in
print, brought to our attention by one of our readers...
'...I actually came across the word "sesquipedalian" in print (I still
don't know what it means). In Sir Richard Burton's translation of the
Arabian Nights (1885), he devotes a large part of his introduction to
the trashing of all previous translations. He makes the following
comments about a translation by the Orientalist, Edward William Lane
(New Translation of the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, 1839):
"Worst of all, the three handsome volumes are rendered
unreadable as Sale's Koran by their anglicised Latin,
their sesquipedalian un-English words, and the stiff
stilted style of half a century ago when our prose was,
perhaps, the worst in Europe..."'
-/-/-/ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /-/-/-
The taste of LSA is still on everyone's lips... Stanford participants
at the LSA were:
Li-chiung Yang: 'Prosidic variations in Mandarin discourse'
Miriam Butt: 'Infinitive Agreement in Urdu'
Gillian Ramchand: 'Characteristic sentences and the stage/individual
level contrast'
Bonnie McElhinny: 'Police reactions to domestic violence: A discourse
account'
Tracy King: 'Licensing left-edge focus in Russian'
Daniel Dor: 'Deriving the conjugations of modern Hebrew: A
constraint-based approach'
Whitney Tabor: 'Rule frequency and syntactic innovation'
Chris Pin~o'n: Atelicity and definiteness in Hungarian'
Peter Sells: 'Nominative objects in Japanese and Korean'
Elizabeth Traugott: 'The development of English that-complements
revisited'
Andrew Garrett & Mark Hale: 'The phonetics and phonology of Grimm's
and Verner's laws'
Young-me Yu Cho: 'Directionality in labial disharmony in Cantonese and
Taiwanese'
Eunjoo Han: 'Prosidic compounding in Japanese and Korean'
Linda Uyechi: 'Against wiggling and circling in ASL'
Lynn Cherny: 'Government and modality in Palauan'
Alex Alsina: 'Argument structure binding: Romance reflexive clitics'
Maria-Eugenia Nin~o: 'VSO word order in Spanish declaratives'
Elizabeth Bratt: 'Case marking and constituent structure: Evidence
from Korean'
Jong-Bok Kim: 'On Korean resultative constructions'
Peter Sells, John Rickford & Tom Wasow: 'Negative inversion in African
American vernacular English'
Phillip Miller and Ivan Sag: 'French clitic movement without clitic or
movement'
On top of all that, John McWhorter, John Rickford, Penny Eckert, Eve
Clark, Peter Sells, and Arnold Zwicky all chaired sessions in their
areas.
But let's not forget all the other societies that met in conjunction
with the LSA, including the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics,
which featured papers by John McWhorter ('Diffusion, Spanish
colonization, and a new perspective on the creolization context) and
John Rickford ('Research Methods in Pidgin and Creole Studies').
Now if that's not an argument for holding the LSA at Stanford...
-/-/-/ CALL FOR PAPERS /-/-/-
-- NACCL-V (May 14-16, 1993, University of Delaware): The Fifth North
American Conference on Chinese Linguistics invites abstracts for
20-minute talks in all areas of Chinese linguistics. Send eight (8)
copies of a one-page, unreduced, anonymous abstract, along with a
seperate 3x5 card giving the paper's title and author's name, address,
affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address. Deadline for
abstracts: February 12, 1993. Send abstracts to
NACCL 5 Committee
Linguistics Department
University of Delaware
46 E. Delaware Avenue
Newark DE 19716-2551
phone: 302/831-6806
email: 18669@brahms.udel.edu
-- ACL-93: In conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Association
for Computational Linguistics, Ohio State University is presenting a
workshop on the acquisition of lexical knowledge from text, 21 June
1993. The intent of this workshop is to solicit papers on the state
of the art in acquiring aspects of a lexical entry-- either for
computational or lexicographic purposes-- through the use of computer
analysis techniques. The papers should report novel research in
automating the acquisition of lexicons from texts, whether by
preprocessing the texts or dynamically while parsing them. Authors
should submit eight copies of a full-length paper (5-10 pages) to the
program chair by 2 April 1993. Electronic submissions are strongly
encouraged. Contact
Bran Boguraev
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 704
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
phone: 914/784-7281
fax: 914/784-7455
email: bkb@watson.ibm.com
-- EACL-93: The deadline for submission is fast approaching for the
Workshop on MT Lexicons to be held in conjunction with EACL-93 in
Utrecht, The Netherlands on April 20, 1993. Deadline date: January
18, 1993. Send submissions and requests for further information to
Sergei Nirenburg, Chair
Center for Machine Translation
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
fax: 412/268-6298
email: sergei+@cs.cmu.edu
Electronic submission is strongly encouraged.
-/-/-/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /-/-/-
The Winter colloquium series kicks off with Annie Zaenen this Friday,
January 15, at the usual venue (Cordura 100). All are invited, and of
course, happy hour follows.
ON THE NOTION 'SUBJECT'
In a framework like LFG it is possible (but not necessary) to see the
subject function as universal in the sense that in every language one
finds its realization, and primitive in the sense that the notion
cannot be derived from more primitive notions. I will review some
recent and less recent literature on the subject to evaluate these
hypotheses.
Note: This is mainly an overview talk, not one that is based on
original work of my own; quite a few recent Stanford students have
written theses that are relevant to this topic and in this talk I want
to summarize what I think we can learn about the notion subject from
their work and which new research topics it points to.
-/-/-/ PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP /-/-/-
The phonologists charge into action yet again this quarter, with Brett
Kessler in the vanguard presenting a talk at 7.30 pm, TONIGHT, January
14, in Ventura 17.
Sandhi in Classical Sanskrit
The interword sanhi of Sanskrit is presented as an autosegmental rule
system within a Lexical Phonology framework. Since Sanskrit is widely
known to be a language with a sandhi system that is rich to the point
of artificiality, one of the more surprising of the conclusions is
that when sandhi is strictly defined as changes that apply
specifically at word boundaries, the Sanskrit system is limited to two
or three rules of lexical alteration similar to the English 'a/an'
pair. Virtually all of the familiar external sandhi-- including all
of the rules that Selkirk, Kaisse, et al. identified as word-juncture
rules-- can be more felicitously described as quite natural
postlexical rules that reference syllable structure. This clears up
some paradoxes where interword sandhi has been thought to apply to
certain inflectional suffixes ("pada" endings).
-/-/-/ PREPROFESSIONAL WORKSHOP /-/-/-
There will be a preprofessional workshop on non-academic jobs for
linguists given by Charlotte Linde (Consulting Professor and Senior
Research Scientist at IRL) on Monday, February 1 from 12-1 in 90-91A.
Dr. Linde has extensive experience in developing non-academic research
and consulting jobs; she will share this experience with you and
suggest ways to think about a non-academic career and how to approach
the job market.
-/-/-/ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS /-/-/-
-- NIMH SUPPORT FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE RESEARCH: The National Institute
of Mental Health aims to support a wide range of basic research in the
cognitive sciences, as part of its effort to expand knowledge of
fundamental aspects of human behavior and adaptation. NIMH encourages
proposals for basic research in such areas as perception, memory,
knowledge, thinking, learning, language, and performance. Methods may
include (but are not limited to) human and animal experimentation,
computer simulation, and formal/computational analysis. Investigators
may have backgrounds in psychology, computer science, linguistics,
philosophy, or any other cognitive science. Funding mechanisms
include grants for research projects of various sizes and durations,
pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, institutional training grants,
career scientist awards, and conference grants. Questions about
NIMH's support for cognitive science research can be directed to
Rodney Cocking, Ph.D.
Howard Kurtzmann, Ph.D.
Basic Behavioral & Cognitive Sciences Research Branch
National Institute of Mental Health
Room 11C-16
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville MD 20857
phone: 301/443-9400
fax: 301/443-4822
email: kwh@cu.nih.gov
-- PBK: Phi Beta Kappa, Northern California Association, offers
scholarships of $1000 or more for academic distinction to members of
Phi Beta Kappa who will pursue advanced study at a Northern California
institution in the forthcoming academic year. Nominees will be
selected by the University Phi Beta Kappa Chapter and final awards
will be made in June by the Association.
-/-/-/ TRUE LINGUISTS /-/-/-
And now, the long-awaited finalists in the 1992 'Block That Metaphor!'
competition:
'Both recruits are guards, and they will enable Montgomery to fill
what will be a sorely needed void in the Cardinal squad, given the
upcoming departures of senior backcourt members Marcus Lollie, Peter
Dukes, and Kenny Hicks.' -- Stanford Daily (contributed by Tom Wasow)
'The New York Times was the prism through which this lightning rod of
attention found its way to the book, there's no question about that.
But to say the long arm of the New York Times reached out to muzzle
us-- that's not true.' -- D. Segal, in the Boston Globe
'Like non-stick cookware, Republican legislators can now enjoy
protection from the partisan residue of Colorado's General Assembly
pressure cooker.' -- from the Boulder Sunday Camera
'Hartsaid the administration would try to name the new coach within
six weeks, but added, "There's no one out on the horizon that I've got
under my thumb."' -- from the Schenectady Gazette
-/-/-/ 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.)
-- CHINESE LECTURER: Pending budgetary approval, the Department of
East Asian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley,
announces a position as Lecturer in Chinese, 100% time, for the
1993-94 academic year. The lecturer will have responsibilities in the
first- and second-year Chinese Language Program. Duties include:
teaching, compiling teaching materials, training teaching assistants
and other administrative duties. Training in the methodology of
teaching Chinese as a second language and an MA or higher degree is
required. Send application letter with CV and three letters of
recommendation by February 26, 1993 to
Chair Jeffrey Riegel, East Asian Languages
104 Durant Hall (Box CLP)
University of California
Berkeley CA 94720
-- UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS: The Department of Linguistics at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is soliciting applications
for a nine-month appointment as visiting assistant professor in
comparative Semitic linguistics, with specialization in Arabic.
Candidates should have a Ph.D. in linguistics by 21 August 1992, the
date the appointment will begin. They should have near-native fluency
in standard Arabic, as well as the ability to establish and coordinate
an undergraduate program in Arabic, including the supervision of
teaching assistants. Dossiers, including three letters of reference
from faculty members familiar with the candidate's work, should be
sent to
Professor Elmer H. Antonsen, Head
Department of Linguistics
4088 FLB, University of Illinois
707 S. Mathews Avenue
Urbana IL 61801
-- BROWN UNIVERSITY: The Brown University Department of Cognitive and
Linguistic Sciences seeks applications for a part-time, visiting
Assistant Professor position in PHONOLOGY for the academic year
1993-94. Primary responsibilities will include teaching one
introductory and one advanced course in phonology, as well as some
student advising. Applications, including current CV, vitae, three
letters of recommendation, recent publications, and a cover letter
expressing interests and qualifications should be sent to
Phonology Committee
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences
Brown University, Box 1978
Providence, RI 02912
phone: 401/863-2255
Deadline: February 15.
-- SIEMENS INC: Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ, is
looking to hire an additional researcher for its information
structuring and retrieval project in the Learning Systems Department.
The position requires either a Ph.D. in computer science (information
retrieval, knowledge representation, etc.), computational linguistics,
or a similar field (preferred) or a masters degree with some
experience in a related field. The main responsibility of the
successful candidate will be to conduct research in automatic
information retrieval and (statistical) natural language processing.
People interested should send a PLAIN ASCII resume to
Human Services
Department EV
Siemens Corporate Research Inc.
755 College Road East
Princeton NJ 08540
email: ellen@learning.siemens.com
-- KIEL UNIVERSITAET: Applications are invited for three positions in
research projects for periods of up to four years at the Institute for
Phonetics and Digital Speech Processing at the University of Kiel,
Germany. The department has very good hardware and software
facilities for recording and analysing speech (acoustic, articulatory
and physiological), for carrying out speech synthesis and for running
perceptual experiments. Prerequisites: degree in phonetics,
psychology or linguistics, familiarity with speech processing by
computer; knowledge of German is very helpful. The persons to be
appointed are offered a certain flexibility in choosing the languages
they would like to work on within the respective projects, and it is
expected that they develop their own initiatives for the succesful
pursuit of the project goals. Send applications containing the usual
documents and the names of three referees to
Prof. Klaus Kohler
Institut fuer Phonetik und Digitale
Sprachverarbeitung
Universitaet Kiel
Olshausenstr. 40
W-2300 Kiel, GERMANY
phone: +49.431.880.3319
fax: +49.431.880.1578
email: gph33@rz.uni-kiel.dbp.de
-- CANON RESEARCH CENTRE: Canon Research Centre Europe is looking for
new recruits in its natural language processing research group. We
are looking for people who fit will into the NLP group on a permanent
basis, rather than for specific projects. A good general computer
science or linguistics background is important, as are excellent
programming skills, including fluency in Prolog. Creativity and a
flair for innovative work are essential. Please note that you need to
have the right to work in Britain to apply for this position. If you
are not a citizen of one of the EC member states, please check whether
you are eligible before applying. Send detailed CV to
Shirley Alexander-O'Neill
Personnel, NL Position
Canon Research Centre Europe
17-20 Frederick Sanger Road
Surrey Research Park
Guilford GU2 5YD, UK
phone: +44.483.574325
fax: +44.483.574360
email: nljob@canon.co.uk
Deadline: February 15, 1992. If you need more information, please get
in touch with Tom Wachtel (wachtel@canon.co.uk) or Shirley
Alexander-O'Neill (personnel@canon.co.uk).
(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 /-/-/-
To give the computational linguists their fair shake, this week we
offer you this little brain-teaser. Claim your instant prize by being
the first to e-mail me the correct answer at kyle@csli.
A python breeder decides to sell all of this years' hatchlings. First
he sells one-half of his snakes, plus half a snake, to one buyer. He
then sells a third of what remains, plus one-third of a snake, to the
next. Then he sells a fourth of what remains, plus one-fourth of a
snake, to someone else. The next buyer buys a fifth of what remains,
plus one-fifth of a snake. The breeder then donates the 11 remaining
snakes to the San Diego zoo. Of course, no snakes were divided or
injured in any way. How many baby snakes were there in the litter?
-/-/-/ SPACE AVAILABLE /-/-/-
There is a large room in a South Palo Alto (off El Camino) apartment
available for winter quarter, $375 a month. Contact Parvathy
Kanathasamy (parva@csli or 858-0571).
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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, or their employees. 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.
'People are different, and I think I'm weird.'
-- One of our professors
but we're not telling which one
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