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Newsletter Mar. 7, No. 19

 
                      C S L I   N E W S L E T T E R
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March 7, 1985                   Stanford                       Vol. 2, No. 19
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     A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
     Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
                              ____________

         CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *THIS* THURSDAY, March 7, 1985

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       No TINLunch this week
     Conference Room    
			
   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Redwood Hall       ``Objects, Chomeurs, and Careers in Clause Structure''
     Room G-19          David Perlmutter, 
			Linguistics Department, UC San Diego

   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall		

   4:15 p.m.		CSLI Colloquium
     Redwood Hall       ``A Theory of Variables''
     Room G-19		Kit Fine, University of Michigan

                              ____________

         CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, March 14, 1985

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       ``The Noun Incorporation Debate''
     Conference Room    Jerry Sadock, CASBS
			(Abstract on page 2)
			
   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Redwood Hall       ``Just a Matter of Convention''
     Room G-19          Douglas Edwards, CSLI
			Discussion led by Robert Moore, CSLI
			(Abstract on page 2)			

   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall		

   4:15 p.m.		CSLI Colloquium
     Redwood Hall       Title to be announced
     Room G-19		Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
			


Page 2                       CSLI Newsletter                March 7, 1985
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                    ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S TINLUNCH
                    ``The Noun Incorporation Debate''
                              Jerry Sadock
        Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences

      Seventy-five years ago, Edward Sapir took Alfred Kroeber to task
   for suggesting that certain Native American languages displayed forms
   that seemed to involve the incorporation of the direct-object of a
   clause into the verb.  Sapir argued that insofar as such a state of
   affairs would involve a mixing of syntax and morphology, it was
   impossible in principle; Sapir was thus the world's first lexicalist.
      Recently, this debate has flared up again.  In two recent articles
   in ``Language'' it is argued that nominal stems inside of verbs
   display none of the properties that we should expect of genuine bits
   of syntax and that morphology can be kept free of any taint of syntax.
      I will argue that despite these reaffirmations of lexicalism, it
   does seem that there are languages, in particular Eskimo and Tiwa, in
   which noun-incorporation of the Kroeberian sort appears.  The
   ramifications of their existence for linguistic theory are
   far-reaching.
                              ____________
                     ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S SEMINAR
                     ``Just a Matter of Convention''
                          Douglas Edwards, CSLI

      Quine's critique of empiricist reductionism focuses on the
   distinction between the analytic sentences used to set up the
   reductive framework and the synthetic sentences which are reductively
   related to observation sentences.  Quine holds, contrary to the
   reductionists, that the theoretical sentences of science cannot be
   divided into two classes whose rational evaluation proceeds in sharply
   different ways.  All theoretical sentences, according to Quine, are
   responsive both to observational evidence and to conventions
   arbitrarily adopted, via the influence of other theoretical sentences.
      Quine extends the reductionist view that analytic sentences are
   adopted by convention to the view that all theoretical sentences have
   an element of convention, since there is no unique theory implying a
   given set of observation sentences.  In ``Two Dogmas of Empiricism''
   Quine points out that theory choice is governed by considerations of
   simplicity and other rational virtues, but he strongly hints that even
   these considerations will not determine a unique theory for a given
   set of observation sentences, a position which becomes explicit in
   Word and Object.
      However, in expounding this conventionalist view Quine becomes
   committed to the view that certain particular sentences used in
   translation or theoretical reduction are conventional and are only in
   an incomplete sense hypotheses.  I point out that the status Quine
   gives to these ``analytical hypotheses'' is strikingly similar to the
   status of analytic sentences in reductionism.  In particular, they are
   effectively considered to be devoid of content.  I argue that, while
   the question is difficult and evidence one way or the other is scarce
   at present, it is at least as plausible at present to regard choices
   of analytical hypotheses as rationally determined in the same way that
   decisions to accept other sentences are rationally determined.  As in
   the case of the analytic sentences of the reductionists, the
   ``convenience'' of using one set of analytical hypotheses rather than
   another can be indispensable for rational thought in the long run.

Page 3                       CSLI Newsletter                    March 7, 1985
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                         LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
         ``Linguistic Variation in Adolescent Social Categories:
                         What's Class to Kids?''
                  Penny Eckert, University of Michigan
        Tuesday, March 12, 3:15 pm., History Corner, rm. 200-217

      Most sociolinguistic work has sought the social motivations for the
   spread of linguistic change in adult social categories, particularly
   in class and network structure.  However, the fact that preadolescents
   and adolescents lead in linguistic change indicates that the
   motivations for the spread of change are to be found in adolescent
   social categories and social process.  Linguistic and ethnographic
   evidence from the Detroit suburban area will be presented to
   illustrate the interaction between adolescent social identity and
   sociolinguistic variation.


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