SNEWS (Southern New England Workshop in Semantics) takes place this Saturday, September 30, at Yale. Nearly a dozen UMass Amherst linguists will make the trip south. Shai Cohen, Chris Davis, and Amy Rose Deal will present.
| Shai Cohen | Too in the complement of Believe |
| Chris Davis | The Japanese discourse particle yo as a marker of illocutionary strength |
| Amy Rose Deal | Antipassive and intensionality |
Barbara Partee and Vladimir Borschev's Mathematical Methods for Linguists class is always open to guests; all are welcome. The schedule is posted here. The class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00-2:15, Herter 640
The topic for the next two meetings: infinities (perhaps infinitely many of them). Here are Barbara and Volodja's overview descriptions:
Lecture 5 (September 28)
Infinities, introduction. Finite vs. infinite. Denumerable, non-denumerable infinity. Diagonal arguments. (Partee, ter Meulen, and Wall, Chapter 4)
Lecture 6 (October 3)
What is the cardinality of a natural language? Finite (occasionally suggested, challenging aspects of competence/performance distinction), denumerably infinite (the standard Chomskyan view), non-denumerably infinite (Langendoen and Postal), unspecified as between denumerably and non-denumerably infinite (Pullum)? The goal is not to settle the question, but rather to become literate about the debate and be able to follow the arguments and to identify the assumptions on which they rest. The related handout from Ling 409, Fall 2005, will be updated for October 3.
The Partee-Borschev NSF Grant Group will have a number of open meetings this semester for project participants and anyone else who is interested to discuss project research and topics that are related to the project.
The first meeting will be held Wednesday October 4, 5:30-7:30 pm (with some sort of food included, TBA, suggestions welcome), in the Partee room. Everyone is welcome!
Agenda
Anna Verbuk will give a practice talk of her upcoming 20-minute paper for WECOL, 'The acquisition of the Russian or'.
Brief abstract: In languages such as English and German, the disjunction operator is interpreted inclusively under the scope of negation. In languages such as Russian and Hungarian, the disjunction operator is interpreted exclusively under the scope of negation because it is a PPI (Szabolcsi 2002). I discuss an experiment that I did on the acquisition of the Russian "or." Russian-speaking children start out by going through the "English" stage where they interpret the Russian "or" inclusively when clausemate negation is present. I argue that the default setting of the PPI parameter is {-PPI}, and propose a trigger for changing the initial setting of the parameter to the Russian {+PPI} setting.
Barbara Partee will present a paper currently under final revision for a volume resulting from an Aspect conference organized by Susan Rothstein in Tel Avis in June 2005; the title is "Negation, Intensionality, and Aspect: Interaction with NP Semantics", and a draft is available here.
Brief abstract: This paper is about the interaction of the meanings of Noun Phrases (NPs) and various operator-like elements that a sentence may contain: negation, intensional verbs (want, expect,hope for, seek), tenses, modal verbs, aspectual operators, and other elements. I focus mainly on negation and intensionality, with discussion of aspect-related problems at the end. The patterns of interaction of NPs and various operator-like elements sometimes show negation and intensional operators patterning alike, sometimes differently. Negation is not an intensional operator; so the question arises why it sometimes, but not always, patterns with the intensional operators.
The Russian "genitive of negation" construction seems to lump negation and some intensional verbs together. We review hypotheses about interactions among scope, NP interpretation, and the semantic properties of negation and intensional operators. Then we add aspect to the picture, drawing on recent works by Paul Kiparsky and by Dmitry Levinson. After challenging some appealing but questionable claims by Kiparsky (Kiparsky 1998) about parallels between partitive case in Finnish and imperfective aspect in Russian, I adapt some arguments from Dmitry Levinson's work (this and this) on a slightly different kind of parallel between imperfectivity and genitive case under negation, to further support the idea of similarity between NPI contexts and intensional contexts. In the concluding section I opt for a view of "family resemblance" properties that many but not all instances of negation and intensionality share, so as to allow for equally important differences that show up among the family members.
Discussion of plans for future meetings. We will have presentations in the future at least by Florian, Keir, Amy Rose, and Aynat, some additional presentations by Barbara and/or Volodja, and we would be glad to have volunteers for additional presentations. This can be an additional venue for practice talks, for instance. Let Barbara know if you'd like to present something.
[Thanks Florian!]
At the next DARLings meeting (October 3, 6:30 pm, in the Partee Room), Ryan O'Mara will be presenting on the recent works of Maribel Romero in preparation for her colloquium on Friday, October 6. Maribel's works focus mainly on formal semantics and the syntax--semantics interface.
[Thanks David!]
On October 3, Leah Bateman will present some preliminary findings from her fieldwork on Tibetan at the Evidentials Grant Group meeting. Leah spent much of the summer working with a Tibetan consultant in Nepal, investigating "new" evidentials and beginning to explore the interaction of evidentials and TAM markers.
The Acquisition Lab met on Tuesday, September 26, at 12:30 pm. Helen Stickney reported on her current research.
[Thanks Youri!]
PhG meets on Tuesday, October 3, at 3:30 pm. Lisa Shiozaki will give a practice talk fo her upcoming NELS 37 presentation. The work is currently called 'Category and position as correlates in determining patterns of default accentuation in Japanese: Evidence from nonce words'.
The Tuesday, 3:30 pm, time-slot is the regular meeting time of PhG this semester.
[Thanks Kathryn!]
The Syntax Reading Group meets today (September 28), from 5:30-6:00ish in the evening. It's a short planning meeting. The group is thinking about moving to a more SRG-like atmosphere (later in the evening, better lubricated).
They will also have a series of invited lectures this semester: from Cedric Boeckx (Harvard), Jonathan Bobaljik (UConn), and Line Mikkelsen (Berkeley).
[Thanks Cherlon!]
UMass Amherst Linguistics BA Heather Walts is living in Pakistan. Below is her latest report for WHISC. Visit her weblog Updates from Heather for much more on life in Pakistan and environs.
Christian Greetings --- at a loss for words
I've found during my time here that I never know what to say when greeting Pakistani Christians. Muslims use the Arabic greeting, assalaam alaikum (may the peace of Allah be upon on) and it's response is wa alaikum assalaam (and may the peace of Allah also be upon you). In the Arab world it's fine to use this greeting pattern with both Christians and Muslims, and the word in Arabic for the one God is Allah. Christians will use the same word when referring to God as they will also use Isa (Jesus). In Pakistan it's a different story.
The greeting used by Hindu Hindi-Urdu speakers is namaste, but in Pakistan this greeting is looked down upon. To say namaste means that you are an idol worshiper and an infidel, so this greeting is generally avoided. Also, most Urdu speakers insist that Hindi is a completely different language than Urdu because they use different writing systems and there is some variation in lexicon. They claim they can understand Hindi easily because they watch so many Hindi movies.
So namaste is out for the Christians as well, and as opposed to Arabic speaking Christians, Allah is not an acceptable word for God. Why? Well because xuda is the word for God used by Pakistani Christians and Allah refers only to the god of the Muslims whom they believe to be a false god. Christians also do not believe that worship and prayer must be done through the Arabic tongue, as Muslims believe, so the rejection of assalaam alaikum as a greeting is prevalent among the Christian community.
What do Christians say to greet each other? Sometimes salaam (Arabic- peace) is used all by itself, or with a person's title. Salaam khala (peace; maternal aunt). This is interesting because they are still using an Arabic word for greeting others. Some Christians use English greetings like hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and how are you? I thought this may be done by those within the church who are educated, but I've observed some Christians who are illiterate Punjabi speakers using English greetings as well.
When it comes to partings there is a similar problem. For Hindi speakers namaste doubles as a parting as well, but again since Muslims and Christians don't want to be thought of as idol worshipers or infidels, this parting is out. Urdu textbooks will teach xuda hafiz (may God protect you), but some Muslims have gone to change this greeting to allah hafiz. I once heard a Christian woman's son use allah hafiz and he was promptly reprimanded and told never to say that again. The Arabic parting m9-salama (with peace) doesn't seem to be used at all in Pakistan, although due to the meaning it seems this would create less controversy. Most Muslims don't mind if you say xuda hafiz and they seem to alternate between using xuda and allah when they refer to God. A zealot of fanatic will almost always insist of using allah exclusively but these kind of people I have only seen on TV and not encountered in person.
So what do I say? Well for greetings I use salaam alaikum unless I am with people who I know are Christians. Then I switch to salaam and English greetings. For partings, I exclusively use xuda hafiz because if I use allah hafiz everyone will assume I am a Muslim. Now with Ismailis (a sect of Shiia Islam) greetings are a different story altogether ...
John Kingston leaves soon for a Phonetics-a-thon across Europe. He'll be in Italy for work relating to his NIH grant, he'll be in Konstanz to speak at a workshop, and we think he'll be working hard in various other countries between and around those subtrips. More power to him.
Chris Potts is giving a colloquium at Harvard this Friday, September 29. The talk is called 'Performatives and pragmatic dimensions', and the slideshow is available at his homepage.
After seeing the poster below, Brian Whalley went to EMS expecting to get 15% off his purchases. He was surprised to find that they would only give him 15% of a single item. We think this is not a possible reading of the sign. The fine print at the bottom of the poster protects EMS again complaints about the offer, so we suggest instead buying 20 water bottles from them and then insisting that each be rung up separately.
Google software engineer on working on Google and working in grad school. Sounds like the major difference is that Google supplements recognition and praise with mind-blowingly large perks ...
