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Sesquipedalian, Volume III, Number 30
The SESQUIPEDALIAN WEEKLY HERALD Volume III, Number 30
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May 13, 1993
GREAT MOMENTS IN ADVERTISING
(From 'American Demographics' Magazine)
Here's a look at how shrewd American businesspeople translate their
slogans into other languages:
-- When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, 'Fly in
leather,' it came out in Spanish as 'Fly naked.'
-- Coors put its slogan, 'Turn it loose,' into Spanish, where it was
read as 'suffer from diarrhea.'
-- Chicken magnate Frank Perdue's line, 'It takes a tough man to make
a tender chicken,' sounds much more interesting in Spanish: 'It takes
a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.'
-- The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries, since
'No va' translates into 'won't go' in Spanish.
-- When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years
back, they translated their slogan, 'Pepsi brings you back to life,'
pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, 'Pepsi brings
your ancestors back from the grave.'
-- When Coca-Cola first shipped to China, they named the product
something that, when pronounced, sounded like 'Coca-Cola.' The only
problem was that characters used meant 'Bite the wax tadpole.' They
later changed to a set of characters that mean 'Happiness in the
mouth.'
-- Clairol introduced the 'Mist Stick,' a curling iron, into the
German market only to find out that 'Mist' is German slang for dung.
Not too many people had use for the dung stick.
(Contributed by M. Iwai)
-/-/-/ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /-/-/-
-- At CLS-XXIX, the conference of the Chicago Linguistics Society,
April 22-24, Miriam Butt presented 'Object Specificity and Agreement
in Hindi/Urdu.' Whitney Tabor presented 'The Gradual Development of
Degree Modifier "sort of": A Corpus Proximity Model,' and Chris
Pin~o'n presented 'Paths and Their Names.'
-- Chris Pin~o'n and Tracy King will be presenting at the Formal
Approaches to Slavic Linguistics conference at MIT weekend. Tracy's
paper is entitled, 'VP Internal Subjects in Russian.' She has
received an IREX grant to study Georgian in Indiana next year.
-- LOOK WHO'S LISTENING: Martha Swearingen and Whitney Tabor have been
awarded stipends for the month of July to participate in the 1993 SST
(Seminar on Social Theory) Summer Workshop.
-/-/-/ CALL FOR PAPERS /-/-/-
-- NWAVE-XXII: October 14-17, 1993, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Abstracts are invited in all areas of linguistic variation theory for
20-minute presentations and for posters. Abstracts, including full
title, should be no longer than 500 words and may not exceed a single
8.5x11" page with 1" margins all around. Author's name should not
appear on the page. Include full title of the submission, and
author's name, affiliation, address, E-mail, fax and phone numbers.
Indicate here whether you wish your abstract to be considered for a
paper session, a poster session, or either. American Dialect Society
Members: indicate whether, if accepted, you wish your paper to be
included in a special ADS session. Send 6 hard copies of the abstract
and one copy of the cover page, AND (1) a 3.5" diskette containing
abstract page and cover page using MS Word for Mac or IBM, OR (2) an
e-mail message containing same, OR (3) an indication (on cover page)
if electronic submission is impossible. Deadline for receipt of
abstracts: July 1, 1993. Expected notification date: August 15, 1993.
Shana Poplack, NWAVE 22
Department of Linguistics
University of Ottawa
78 Laurier East
Ottawa, CANADA K1N 6N5
email: nwave22@uottawa.acadvm1.ca
fax: 613/564-9067
-- GALA (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition): 17-19
September, 1993, University of Durham. The conference aims to bring
together research within a generative framework on first language
development, second language development, signed language development,
and impaired language development. Abstracts are invited on all
aspects of language acquisition concerned with the relation between
development and linguistic theory, including (but not limited to)
syntax, phonology, morphology, the lexicon and semantics, as well as
the interfaces. Papers will be 30 minutes followed by a 10-minute
discussion session. Send four copies of a 1-page abstract (3
anonymous, one camera-ready with name and affiliation), with a 3x5
card bearing all the usual information, to
GALA 1993 Coordinators
School of English and Linguistics
University of Durham
Elvet Riverside, New Elvet
Durham DH1 3JT
ENGLAND
phone: (91) 374-2315; (91) 374-2643
fax: (91) 374-7471
email: Durham.Linguistics@durham.ac.uk
Deadline: Postmarked June 15. (Notification by 15 July)
-/-/-/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /-/-/-
Our Colloquium speaker this Friday (May 14th) will be Yoshiko Matsumoto.
The talk will be held in Cordura 100, starting at 3:30 pm., and will be
followed by a Happy Hour.
THE PRAGMATICS OF OBJECT HONORIFICATION
AND POLITENESS IN JAPANESE
Yoshiko Matsumoto
Stanford University
Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) proposed a universal model of
linguistic politeness, in which a willful fluent speaker of a natural
language is endowed with two properties, rationality and face. The
notion of face encompasses two universally defined aspects: negative
face and positive face, where the former is the want to be unimpeded,
and the latter, the want to be approved of. B&L identify linguistic
politeness strategies (negative and positive) to satisfy those face
wants.
Japanese is often described as emphasizing deference (negative
politeness in B&L's term) and as debt-sensitive, which is evidenced
in the linguistic forms of politeness, as pointed out by R. Lakoff
(1975, 1979) as well as Brown and Levinson. Sociological and
anthropological studies seem to support this view in that they suggest
that Japanese are strongly concerned about their ability to recognize
and acknowledge their position among participants in a relevant
situation. These studies, however, do not support the purported
characteristics of face as defined by B&L, especially negative face,
which lays an emphasis on an individual's territorial claim, rather
than on one's relation to or dependence on others.
This discrepancy between the observed general tendencies in
Japanese behavior and B&L's assumption of the characteristics of face
that motivates politenenss is well-indicated in Japanese language use.
I will give examples from formulaic expressions, honorifics and
expressions with verbs of giving and receiving to show that B&L's
model wrongly predicts the choice of politeness strategies in
Japanese, and will suggest that cultural and linguistic variability
must be a fundamental factor in any theory of politeness.
Having presented these general considerations on politeness
expressions, I will focus on so-called object honorification, to
examine in more detail whether the understanding of a politeness style
has its reflection in the choice of the linguistic forms and, if so,
how those socio-psychological factors are encoded in a language such
as Japanese. Recently, the syntactic study of object honorific forms
has emphasized the role of grammatical relations. A close
examination, however, reveals that it is not only objects that trigger
the honorification, which is in fact conditioned by a more pragmatic
factor, namely a benefactivity relation (and the recognition of debt
transfer) between the relevant referents, rather than the grammatical
relation of some NP to the predicate.
-/-/-/ HISTORICAL WORKSHOP /-/-/-
Paul Kiparsky will give a historical workshop TONIGHT (Thursday) in
Cordura 100:
The History of Anaphora
Paul Kiparsky
Dept. of Linguistics
Thursday, May 13, 7:30 PM, Cordura 100
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NOTE: Orrin Robinson's workshop next Tuesday will take place in 200-124
(History Corner):
Upcoming workshops:
May 18 Orrin W. Robinson "Rewriting the Handbooks"
7:30 PM, 200-124
May 27 Andrew Garrett 7:30 PM, Ventura 17
June 3 Martha Swearingen 7:30 PM, Ventura 17
-/-/-/ SYNTAX WORKSHOP /-/-/-
"Categorial mismatches and the morphology-syntax interface:
The case of Kayardild verbal case"
Nick Evans
Linguistics, University of Melbourne
Monday, 24 May, 2:00 PM
Conference Room 2511, Xerox PARC
It is normally assumed that there is a straightforward categorial
matching between the entities in morphology (defined by morphological
criteria, such as the presence of particular inflectional categories)
and the entities in syntax (defined by syntactic criteria, such as
particular patterns of constituency). In this paper I examine a
phenomenon in Kayardild (an Australian language of Bentinck Island,
Queensland) which poses acute problems for this view: one subset of
case inflections, "verbal case", to which eight of the twenty or so
Kayardild case suffixes belong, morphologically converts its hosts
>From noun to verb, even though they continue to function like nouns
syntactically. Like (syntactic) nouns they take a case
subcategorizable by a main verb, show agreement over a NP, and exhibit
ordering patterns and subconstituency possibilities specific to NPs.
But like (morphological) verbs they inflect for tense, mood and
polarity; oppose active to middle (i.e. passive or reflexive) forms,
and can be participialized.
In the first part of the paper I describe the phenomenon in sufficient
detail to dispose of certain initially attractive but empirically
inadequate analyses, as incorporation or serial verb constructions. In
the second part I propose a modification of the theory of autolexical
syntax that allows, in such marked situations as Kayardild verbal
case, for the possibility of linking morphological and syntactic
entities of different categories.
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If you are coming from Stanford for this talk, please plan to arrive
at the employees' entrance at Xerox PARC at 1:45 to be escorted to the
talk.
-/-/-/ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS /-/-/-
-- ROTHMANS FOUNDATION: Fellowships of $39,000 AUS per year plus an
institutional allowance of $8000 AUS per year, are offered to citizens
of any country who have held a doctoral degree for no more than three
years at the closing date for receipt of applications. Travelling
expenses may also be paid. Fellowships are for postdoctoral research
and are tenable at any university in Australia. There is no
restriction on the discipline area. The object of the fellowships is
primarily to assist in the development of postdoctoral studies in
Australian universities. For more information contact
Rothmans Foundation
Executive Director
Education Division, Level 13
309 Kent Street
Sydney, NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA
phone: (02) 299-2500
fax: (02) 299-2464
-/-/-/ TRUE LINGUISTS /-/-/-
Time for another look at some letters to the Sesquipedalian:
'Dear Editors,
I read your article last week, "Car Wreck Leaves American
Speaking Like a Frenchman," [Sesquipedalian #29, May 6] with great
interest. For the past several years I have been studying Spanish,
and though I am beginning to grasp the grammatical concepts, the
proper accent still eludes me. What sort of accident would you
recommend to develop pronunciation in Spanish?
a) train crash
b) airline disaster
c) bicycle collision
d) frying pan over the head
e) other (please explain).
Sincerely, Lance "Pablo" Goldberg.'
Mr Goldberg: Unfortunately, due to legal obligations, we cannot
encourage the practice of employing any sort of head injury to improve
pronunciation in any language. However, for your particular case you
may find that (d), above, may do you a world of good in general.
'Dear Sesquipedalian,
Is there a hyphen in "anal retentive?"
Signed, A Worried Linguist.'
DEAR WORRIED: We really wish we could help you.
-/-/-/ COMPLEX PREDICATES WORKSHOP /-/-/-
The Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford
University, will host the "Complex Predicates Workshop" on May 21-23.
The workshop will take place in the large conference room in Cordura
Hall (Cordura 100). All are welcome; however, as this is intended to
be a working environment, those attending are requested to be present
throughout each 90-minute session. Following each presentation there
will be a 15-minute commentary by a designated commentator and 30
minutes of general discussion.
FRIDAY MAY 21:
Commentators: Paul Kiparsky and Chris Manning
9:00-9:45 Ken Hale: "On the complex nature of simple predicators"
9:45-10:30 Commentary and discussion.
11:00-11:45 Adele Goldberg: "The `way' construction"
11:45-12:30 Commentary and discussion.
Lunch break
2:00-2:45 Edwin Williams: "Lexical and syntactic complex predicates"
2:45-3:30 Commentary and discussion.
4:00-4:45 Carol Rosen: Title TBA
4:45-5:30 Commentary and discussion.
SATURDAY MAY 22:
Commentators: Judith Aissen and Mary Dalrymple
9:00-9:45 Mark Durie: "Grammatical structures in verb serialization"
9:45-10:30 Commentary and discussion.
11:00-11:45 Alex Alsina: "A theory of complex predicates: Evidence
from causatives in Bantu and Romance"
11:45-12:30 Commentary and discussion
Lunch break
2:00-2:45 Miriam Butt: "The structure of complex predicates in Urdu"
2:45-3:30 Commentary and discussion.
4:00-4:45 William Foley: "Complex verb formation in Yimas"
4:45-5:30 Commentary and discussion.
SUNDAY MAY 23:
Commentators: Jane Simpson and Bill Poser
9:00-9:45 Nick Evans: "Role or cast? Noun incorporation and
complex predicates in Mayali"
9:45-10:30 Commentary and discussion.
11:00-11:45 Farrell Ackerman: "The lexical representation of phrasal
predicates"
11:45-12:30 Commentary and discussion.
Lunch break
2:00-2:45 Tara Mohanan: "Multidimensionality of representation:
Noun-verb complex predicates in Hindi"
2:45-3:30 Commentary and discussion.
4:00-4:45 Mark Baker: "Complex predicates and agreement in a
polysynthetic language"
4:45-5:30 Commentary and discussion.
-/-/-/ INSTA-PRIZE /-/-/-
Speaking of advertising, what product employs the slogan, 'Don't be
afraid of the dark?' (Hint: They also have employed the slogan, 'Not
all black magic is mumbo-jumbo.')
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-/-/-/ CONSERVE DISK SPACE /-/-/-
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the Herald can be found by typing 'help quip'.
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