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Sesquipedalian, Volume III, Number 22
The SESQUIPEDALIAN WEEKLY HERALD Volume III, Number 22
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March 18, 1993
ARGENTINIAN WELSH
(Mitzi, our e-mail correspondent, swears this is true.)
It seems that in Argentina there lives a community of Welsh
immigrants who descend from some Welsh speakers who emigrated about a
century ago and who speak a particular dialect known as Argentinian
Welsh. These people hold a special and curious place in the culture
of contemporary Wales, where the Welsh language had been in decline
until about twenty years ago when a resurgence of Welsh nationalism
led to a revival of the language. As a result, there has arisen a
practice of what might be called linguistic tourism, in which people
from Wales go and visit Argentina so that they might soak up what is,
to them, authentic pure Welsh. The problem is that Argentinian Welsh
is actually not particularly authentic or pure. Since these people
don't have any particular Welsh nationalism, they haven't taken any
particular care to keep their Welsh seperate from Spanish, so that a
large number of Spanish words have entered the Argentinian Welsh
lexicon. Yet the tourist trade brings in good money to these people,
so they have developed ways of sounding like they are speaking
authentic, pure Welsh when tourists are around.
In particular, there has arisen among the Argentinian Welsh a
practice of introducing back-formations from Spanish into their
understanding of English, or more precisely their understanding of the
ways in which the Welsh in Wales appropriate English words into Welsh
pronunciation and syntax when it is necessary to invoke a concept for
which Welsh doesn't have a word. (In Wales itself, incedentally, there
are many social occasions, such as when speaking to a minister, on
which it is frowned upon to use any words at all, so that one must
constantly monitor the topics of conversation so as to avoid concepts
which cannot readily be expressed in Welsh.)
This, when an Argentinian Welsh speaker is speaking Welsh in
the presence of a visiting Welsh tourist, and it becomes necessary to
express a concept for which Argentinian Welsh does not have a Welsh
word, what one does is to take the Spanish word, delete all the
obviously Spanish particles, and mechanically back-produce a form that
sounds like what English words sound like when they have been borrowed
into Welsh. Keep in mind that the Argentinian Welsh speakers know not
a single word of English, so that they have developed a more or less
conscious set of rules for this procedure, reminiscent of the rules of
Pig Latin, by induction from what they have heard in the Welsh spoken
by the tourists.
This procedure results in a number of accurate guesses, but it
also results in a large number of oddly Latinate quasi-Welsh-English
words as well. These latter words are taken by the tourists as a sign
of the authenticity and purity of the Welsh spoken by Argentinians,
because they sound like the tourists' idea of what Middle English
words sounded like once they were incorporated into Middle Welsh,
something about which they have no actual knowledge.
(Village Idiom)
-/-/-/ CALL FOR PAPERS /-/-/-
-- SPACL: The Society for Pidgin and Creole Languages will meet with
the LSA in Boston on January 6-9 1994 at the Sheraton Hotel. The
Society will also meet with the Society for Caribbean Linguistics in
August 1994. Abstracts on phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,
lexicon, social aspects of language, or any pertinent issue involving
pidgin and creole languages are invited for anonymous review by a five
member panel. This call for abstracts only applies to the January
1994 meeting with the LSA. Two abstracts of different length should
be submitted: (1) A short, publishable abstract for the Meeting
Handbook (for format specification, see attached Abstract form. (2) a
longer, single-spaced one-to-two-page version of the abstract (the
panel of reviewers will use this abstract for evaluating your
submission). Your name, address, affiliation, status (student,
faculty), e-mail address, FAX, and phone number should appear ABOVE
the SHORT abstract. Please put the full title of the paper on both
abstracts. Deadline: July 31, 1992. Mail to
John V. Singler
SPCL
Department of Linguistics
New York University
719 Broadway #502
New York NY 10003
-/-/-/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /-/-/-
Cynthia McLemore will be the speaker this Friday, March 19, at the
Stanford Linguistics Colloquium. The talk will be in Cordura 100, at
3:30pm, and the usual Happy Hour will follow. A dinner outing is
planned for 6:30 p.m. All are welcome to join.
PATTERNS OF INTONATIONAL USE IN CONTEXT
Cynthia McLemore
University of Michigan
Intonational forms are used not only to signal syntagmatic relations
between adjacent utterances (and their associated speakers,
propositions, and acts), but also to represent paradigmatic similarity
and contrast. Such paradigmatic choices arise from recurrent uses of
a certain form, or a sequence of forms, in particular relationships
with aspects of discourse, interactional or social context. This
patterned recurrence can create context-bound interpretive categories
which may become conventionalized to a greater or lesser degree. For
example, in particular contexts, junctural High tones may be used to
mark newness, cue a specific kind of response, or signal membership in
a particular social group. This process, and the intonational
variation that corresponds to it, depends on such socio-cultural
knowledge as interactional conventions, context-related goals, and
speaker status, as well as pragmatic categories of information status.
In this talk, I will present an account of English intonation
in which High and Low tones (stress-aligned and junctural) generally
function to foreground and background, respectively; and I will show
how various more specific interpretations depend on the local mapping
of intonational form to communicative function in particular contexts.
This will be contrasted with the widely-held belief that High pitch
accents mark new information and Low pitch accents mark old
information (Halliday 1967, Brown 1983) or lack of predication
(Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990). The proposed analysis will be
demonstrated with reference to data from different speech activities,
and its usefulness as a tool of sociolinguistic investigation will be
discussed especially with respect to language and gender.
-/-/-/ WORD OF THE WEEK /-/-/-
'Waylay,' in all its forms, is fair game this week. Please feel free
to use it whenever possible. Or even, whenever not possible-- we
encourage you to bend your sentences to fit the word. Modern
linguists agree that this word is grieviously underused today.
-/-/-/ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS /-/-/-
-- Dissertation Enhancement in Japan Awards: Proposal Deadlines: April
1 for stays in Japan to begin the following fall, November 1 for stays
to begin the following spring or summer. Support is provided for
doctoral dissertation research in any area of science or engineering
supported by NSF. Research plans must involve close collaboration
with a Japanese institution and a research stay in Japan for 3 to 12
months. Japanese host institutions can be from any sector:
university, government, or private industry. Awards are intended to
provide funds for international travel and other items not normally
available form the student's university or other sources.
Dissertation enhancement proposals must be submitted through regular
university channels by the dissertation advisor on behalf of a
graduate student. A proposal may be submitted while the student is
completing other requirements for the doctorate. Only students
enrolled at U.S. institutions who are U.S. citizens or permanent
residents are eligible. Academic departments should limit the
applications submitted to outstanding dissertation proposals with
unusual financial requirements that cannot be met by the university.
Please consult "Grants for Research and Education in Science and
Engineering: An Application Guide," NSF Publication 92-89, for a
complete guide to proposal submission and forms needed. Dissertation
enhancement proposals should have the same format and content as
proposals by faculty members for support of their own research. The
proposal must include NSF Cover Page (NSF Form 1207), Table of
Contents, Project Summary, Results from Prior NSF Support, Project
Description, Foreign Counterpart Endorsement, Bibliography,
Biographical Sketches, Undergraduate and Graduate Transcripts, 2
Letters of Recommendation, and a Budget (NSF Form 1030). The original
proposal with signatures along with 9 copies must be submitted to the
Proposal Processing Unit, Room 223, National Science Foundation, 1800
G Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20550. The project description
section may not exceed 15 pages and should contain the following
elements: Description of the scientific significance of the work and
the design of the project in sufficient detail to permit evaluation,
including a summary of progress to date if the research is already
under way; Description of mutual benefits anticipated from the
proposed foreign residence, including a justification for selecting
the host country and institution; (NB: this section should demonstrate
the student's awareness of the scientific resources and capabilities
of the proposed host country in the context of his/her overall career
objectives.) Schedule for research, including the date funds will be
required; If research involves survey questionnaires or interviews,
copies of the questionnaire, if available, or sample questions, and
information on who will conduct the interviews must be included; and,
Items for which funds are requested with an explanation of their
necessity for the research. Proposals must include copies of the
student's undergraduate and graduate transcripts and a letter of
endorsement from the host institution stating that the student will be
welcomed and that the proposed research plans are acceptable.
Proposals must also include a list of other financial aid received,
applied for, or anticipated during the award period. The biographical
section of the proposal must include information for the student, the
dissertation advisor, and Japanese collaborator including experience
directly relevant to the dissertation. Additionally, letters of
recommendation from two faculty members other than the applicant's
advisor or scientists from another institution who are familiar with
the applicant's work must be sent directly to the Japan Program, Room
V-501, Division of International Programs, National Science
Foundation, 1800 G Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20550. The
following allowable costs will be considered: 1. Transportation:
round-trip economy airfare and expenses from
U.S. to Japanese host institution plus $300 for excess baggage
2. Living Allowance: (includes housing, subsistence, and local
travel) up to $2,500 per month in Japan
3. Japanese Language Training: must identify and justify program
of study and itemize costs (may be undertaken in the U.S. and/or
Japan)
4. Professional Travel within Japan: up to $1000 unless additional
funds are requested and justified
5. Administrative Allowance: $500 to defray administrative
expenses in lieu of indirect costs
For more information, please contact Janice Cassidy, Program Manager,
Japan Program, at jcassidy@nsf.gov or (202) 653-5962.
-/-/-/ 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.)
-- FOREIGN LANGUAGES: The Department of Communications at Missouri
Southern State College will accept applications for at least one and
possibly two full-time, tenure-earning positions at the assistant
professor level in foreign languages. Openings are dependent on
bugetary process. We seek persons with at least MA's in a language,
although Ph.D's are preferred, with college teaching experience, and
with dual language teaching capabilities. Our languages are Arabic,
Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Applicants
must be lawfully authorized to work and teach in the United States and
must have a good knowledge of English. Applications will be screened
beginning April 1 and will be accepted as long as a funded position is
open. Send letter of application, detailed CV, evidence of excellence
in college teaching, and at least three leters of reference from
individuals having direct and current knowledge of language and
teaching ability to
Dr. Ray A. Malzahn, Dean
School of Arts and Sciences
Missouri Southern State College
Joplin, Missouri 64801-1595
Position or positions begin August, 1993.
BRAZILIAN TRANSLATORS: We have openings for translators to translate
technical documents for our downtown Palo Alto office. You should
offer a degree from a Brazillian (or Portuguese) university,
preferably in a technical or linguistic field; outstanding
comprehension of written English; and an attention to detail. Word
processing skills are necessary, and experience in technical writing
or editing would be advantageous. Compensation is negotiable and will
depend upon your education and work experience. Please send a letter
of introduction and/or your resume to
SimulTrans, Att'n: Bibi Momsen
145 Addison Avenue
Palo Alto CA 94301
phone: 415/323-1335, extension 122
(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 /-/-/-
Last week, Gillian brilliantly deduced, in a flash of divine
inspiration, realized that there was no way the skier could double his
average speed to 10 kph. He would have to ski down instantly.
That question couldn't be answered, but here's one that can: A worm
(are you reading, Jennifer?) is at one end of a rubber rope 1 km long.
Every second, the worm travels 1 cm and the rope stretches 1 km (after
the first second, the rope is 2 km; after the second second, it is 3
km; etc.). How long does it take the worm to reach the end of the
rope? Your intuition may tell you it never reaches the end, but it
does! How long does it take?
First correct answer via e-mail wins this week's insta-prize.
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-/-/-/ CONSERVE DISK SPACE /-/-/-
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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
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employees, and shall not be used for advertising or product
endorsement purposes.
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Void where prohibited
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