[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 8 January 2003, vol. 18:15
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
8 January 2003 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 15
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 8 JANUARY 2003 TO 17 JANUARY 2003
WEDNESDAY, 8 JANUARY 2003
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
The Pedal-Powered Internet:
Wireless Village Systems in the Developing World
Lee Felsenstein
Jhai Foundation
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 9 JANUARY 2003
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Faulty Filters:
What to do about 'Rotten Information' in the Digital Age?
Geoff Nunberg
CSLI and Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 10 JANUARY 2003
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B03
Intuitive media: Depicting people and situations in mediated
environments
Judith Donath
MIT Media Lab
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
Naturalizing Moral Epistemology: A Defense of Partiality
Louise Antony
Ohio State University
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:30pm Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
A Semantics for Pseudo-Incorporation
Veneeta Dayal
Rutgers
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
Abstract below
4:15pm CS545: Database Seminar
Gates B12
AQuery: a simple, efficient extension to SQL for ordered data
Dennis Shasha
New York University
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
Abstract below
MONDAY, 13 JANUARY 2003
4:15pm Broad Area Colloquium in AI,
Geometry, Graphics, Robotics, and Vision
TCSeq 200
Jonathan Shewchuck
UC Berkeley
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
TUESDAY, 14 JANUARY 2003
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Bldg. 380:381T (math corner)
A paper "The first order properties of products of algebraic systems"
by S. Feferman and R. Vaught
Ting Zhang
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 15 JANUARY 2003
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
mailto:digitalvision@csli.stanford.edu for location
Brian Tucker
GeoHazards International
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Information below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Complex Event Processing: An Essential Technology for Instant
Insight into the Operation of Enterprise Information Systems
David Luckham
Electrical Engineering, Stanford
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 16 JANUARY 2003
12:15pm CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Mirror Neurons, Simulation Semantics, and the Neural Theory of Language
George Lakoff
UC Berkeley
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
The Speech Level Singing Method
- Tools and Tricks for Artistic Vocal Development
Dave Stroud
Professional Vocal Instructor
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Considerations Regarding Human-Level Artificial Intelligence
Nils J. Nilsson
Robotics Laboratory, Computer Science, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 17 JANUARY 2003
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B03
The How And Why of Google UI
Marissa Mayer
Google
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
Unity of Consciousness and the Self
David Roenthal
CUNY
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
4:15pm CS545: Database Seminar
Gates B12
The Evolution of Business Integration: from Data to Process
Dale Skeen
Vitria Technologies
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
3:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
The search for historical African American English:
Evidence from Mississippi-in-Africa
John Victor Singler
New York University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
Abstract below
____________
Stanford Blood Center status: Critical shortage of O+ and O-; a
shortage of A-, A+, B+, and AB-. For an appointment:
http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes
an hour of your time.
____________
COURSE ANNOUNCEMENTS
SSP 239e - Topics in Computational Linguistics: Grammar Engineering
Instructors: Dan Flickinger and Stephan Oepen
Course times: Tues. 2:15-3:05, Thur. 2:15-4:05
From machine translation to speech recognition and web-based search
engines, a wide range of applications demand increasing accuracy and
robustness from natural language processing. Meeting these demands
will require better hand-built grammars of human languages combined
with sophisticated statistical processing methods. In this course we
will focus on the implementation of linguistic grammars, drawing on a
combination of sound grammatical theory and engineering skills,
providing a hands-on introduction to the necessary techniques. A
combination of lectures and in-class exercises will enable the student
to investigate the implementation of constraints in morphology,
syntax, and semantics, working within a unification-based lexicalist
framework. While most of the course work will focus on developing
small grammars for English, we will apply our jointly acquired grammar
engineering expertise to at least one other language towards the end
of the term. A basic knowledge of syntactic theory, at about the
level of Ling 120, will be assumed, but no prior programming skills
are required.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 8 January 2003, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
The Pedal-Powered Internet
Wireless Village Systems in the Developing World
Lee Felsenstein
Jhai Foundation
http://www.jhai.org/
The Jhai Foundation is working with a group of villages in rural Laos
and has responded to the request of the villagers for a communication
capability. The system under construction is Linux-based,
802.11b-interconnected and intended to be operated by village
youth. With one station per village it will provide IP telephony to
both the local network and the Internet, and will also run the KDE
suite localized for Laos.
The story of the development of this system may provide some insights
into user-centric design in a completely different culture, and in
turn may inform further efforts to bring digital Internet-based
communications technology to other developing societies.
About the speaker: Lee Felsenstein is the designer of the Jhai system
and sits on the Jhai Foundation's Board of Advisors. He is an
historical figure in personal computer history and has been the
subject of many articles and some books.
Lee holds a BSEE from UC Berkeley and 12 patents. He resides in
Palo Alto.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 9 January 2003, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Faulty Filters:
What to do about 'Rotten Information' in the Digital Age?
Geoff Nunberg
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/
A few years ago, the press was once full of stories about the bright
future that the Internet would bring, transforming books, libraries,
schools, and all the forms of public discourse. Now we're more likely
to read about the dark side of access to information: the pornography
and graphic violence, the racist and anti-Semitic sites, the
Holocaust deniers, the scams and market manipulations, the
pseudonymous defamations and unsubstantiated rumors -- in short, what
we can think of as the problem of "rotten information."
There's a widespread view that these problems are merely bumps in the
road ahead, which will yield to a mix of legal and technological
solutions. In this talk I'll focus on one example of that approach,
the Children's Internet Protection Act (CHIP) passed in 2000, which
requires all libraries that received certain federal subsidies to
install software filters to screen out depictions of obscenity and
child pornography.
I served as an expert for the American Library Association in its
challenge this law, which argued that the inefficacy of filters would
result in the overblocking of Constitutionally protected speech. In
this talk, I'll go over some of the issues that were raised in that
trial -- social, legal, and technological -- and how these were
received by the federal panel that overturned the law last year. In
the end, though, I'll be asking how we can take these issues as a
model for thinking about problems of "rotten information" in general.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 10 January 2003, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Intuitive media:
Depicting people and situations in mediated environments
Judith Donath
MIT Media Lab
http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/
Most of our communication with other people consists of the exchange
of social information - about identity, reputation, trustworthiness,
motivations, etc. In face to face communication, these cues may be
sent via subtleties of gaze and intonation, as well as choice of words
and overt statements. In the mediated world of email, IM, discussion
boards, etc. these cues are often missing or difficult to discern.
This talk is about designing interfaces that can convey the subtle
signals that are essential for a vibrant social environment.
The main questions I will be addressing include: What is the
information we "read" in face to face interaction? What information
would we want to have in an idealized world? How can we legibly and
intuitively depict social patterns? Is one's face the best
representation of a person - and what are some alternative
About the speaker: Judith S. Donath is Assistant Professor of Media
Arts And Sciences and Director of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT
Media Lab. Her group explores the social side of computing, building
innovative interfaces for the online communities, virtual identities,
and computer-mediated collaborations that have emerged with the
convergence of computing and communication. She is the creator of
numerous projects that address the problem of design for social
interaction, such as Visual Who (a visualization of activity and
affiliations in a virtual community), Chat Circles, and Loom2 (a
visualization tool for Usenet groups). She received a PhD and an MS in
media arts and sciences from MIT and a BA in history from Yale
University. Donath has worked professionally as a designer and builder
of educational software and experimental media.
____________
STANFORD SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS WORKSHOP
on Friday, 10 January 2003, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
A Semantics for Pseudo-Incorporation
Veneeta Dayal
Rutgers
Many languages allow reduced nominals (those lacking determiners, case
marking, possibly also inflection and modification) as inner
arguments. This talk is concerned with the semantics of constructions
involving such reduced nominals.
The primary focus is on Hindi incorporation, which is known to
manifest a peculiar mismatch between syntax and semantics (Mohanan
1995, Dayal 1999, Wescoat 2002). The reduced nominal of Hindi
incorporation behaves syntactically like a complement of the verb,
with respect to agreement for example. At the same time, its
interpretive possibilities align it with nominals inside compounds.
Hindi can therefore be considered a pseudo-incorporation language.
This talk explores the possibility of deriving the interpretation
associated with compounds without necessitating a syntactic analysis
combining an NO with VO. It is shown that the semantics of
pseudo-incorporation must capture at least four properties, which I
illustrate with familiar examples from English:
(1) Kim is a book-seller.
(2) The baby ate *(something). It was a piece of fruit lying on the
floor.
(3) Sue didn't eat apples.
(4) Mary went apple-picking. #They/The apples were delicious.
Although the nominal in (1) is 'singular', there is no implication
that only one book is involved in selling. We can call this the
property of number-neutrality. Number-neutrality is related to, but
distinct from, the second property which we can call prototypicality.
As (2) shows, the intransitive version of eat restricts the
interpretation of the understood direct object to prototypical themes
such as meal. The third property is obligatory narrow scope, shown by
bare plurals in examples such as (3). Finally, pronominal anaphora to
compounds is disallowed, as shown in (4). Hindi pseudo-incorporation
is shown to manifest all four of these properties.
The two detailed proposals that have been made for the semantics of
incorporation (Bittner 1984, Van Geenhoven 1997) derive existential
interpretations, addressing only the properties of number neutrality
and obligatory narrow scope. They are therefore inadequate for the
construction at hand. A third proposal (Porterfield & Srivastav 1988,
Ramchand 1997, Dayal 1999), in terms of complex-predicates, attempts
to capture the other relevant properties but remains programmatic.
This talk takes up the challenge of fleshing out the details of this
proposal, deriving some of the desired effects via restrictions on the
rule of complex predicate formation.
The talk concludes with a discussion of the applicability of the
proposed semantics to other constructions involving reduced inner
arguments. This includes pseudo-incorporation in other languages
(Albanian, Hungarian, Niuean) as well as compounding (English) and
canonical noun incorporation (Mohawk, Greenlandic).
____________
CS545: DATABASE SEMINAR
on Friday, 10 January 2003, 4:15pm - 5:15pm
Gates B12
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
AQuery: a simple, efficient extension to SQL for ordered data
Dennis Shasha
New York University
(Joint work with Alberto Lerner)
As John McCarthy once pointed out when asked why Lisp was based on
lists rather than sets, any query expressible on a multiset of records
can be expressed on an array of records. The reverse doesn't hold. In
fact, when order-dependent queries are formulated against a (multi-)
set, they become intricate at best. For instance, the query to find
the average pair-wise differences between time-consecutive values of a
column in SQL:1999 requires a join, but the operation could be written
trivially as a single loop on an array.
In this talk, we
- Show motivating order-dependent queries coming from domains as
diverse as road traffic management, finances, biology, and network
management.
- Illustrate several flavors (categories) of order-dependent queries.
- Describe AQuery (a syntactically simple extension to SQL) as a
natural way to express these queries.
- Define the underlying data model that treats order as a property of
the model and algebra. In this model, data is semantically organized
in a structure called an "arrable" (array table).
- Discuss equivalences and transformation rules over the algebra for
purposes of optimization.
- Compare AQuery's performance to various implementations of SQL:1999
on the the queries discussed.
About the speaker: Dennis Shasha is a professor at NYU's Courant
Institute where he does research on biological pattern discovery for
microarrays, database tuning, the database design for time series, and
lately system design for catastrophe planning. He spends much of his
time building pattern recognition software these days.
After graduating from Yale in 1977, he worked for IBM designing
circuits and microcode for the 3090. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard
in 1984 (thesis advisor: Nat Goodman). Since he enjoys typing, he has
written a few books: a professional reference book "Database Tuning:
principles, experiments, and troubleshooting techniques" (2002, Morgan
Kaufmann), three books about a mathematical detective named Dr. Ecco
entitled "The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco" (1988, Freeman, 1998 by
Dover), "Codes, Puzzles, and Conspiracy" (1992, Freeman), "Dr. Ecco's
Cyberpuzzles" (2002, W. W. Norton), a book of biographies about great
computer scientists called "Out of Their Minds: the lives and
discoveries of 15 great computer scientists" (1995,
Copernicus/Springer-Verlag), and "Pattern Discovery in Biomolecular
Data: Tools, Techniques, and Applications" published in 1999 by Oxford
University Press. In addition, he has co-authored thirty journal
papers, 40 conference papers, and six patents. He writes a monthly
puzzle column for Scientific American.
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 14 January 2003, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Math Corner 380:381T
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
A paper "The first order properties of products of algebraic systems"
by S. Feferman and R. Vaught
Speaker: Ting Zhang (Stanford)
Feferman-Vaught theory of generalized products of algebraic systems is
a very comprehensive framework about how to discover the first order
properties of a complex system through analyzing the properties of its
components.
We will briefly review the method of elimination of quantifiers which
plays the central role in the proof of the basic composition theorem.
Then we show that the notion of generalized product unifies a variety
of ways of forming products in algebra and set theory. In particular,
we show how the direct product, weak direct product, cardinal sum
(direct sum) can be viewed as generalized products. Also the
decidability of the theory of a product system reduces to the
decidability of its factor systems and some certain subset algebras on
the index set.
Examples include the elementary theory of ordinal addition, cardinal
addition and the theory of arithmetic with only multiplication.
____________
REUTERS FOUNDATION DIGITAL VISION PROGRAM SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 15 January 2003, 3:00pm-4:30pm
email to check location and time mailto:digitalvision@csli.stanford.edu
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Brian Tucker
MacArthur Fellow, Disaster Prevention Specialist /
Seismologist, Founder and President GeoHazards International
Brian Tucker is a seismologist whose work focuses on preventing
readily available disasters in the world's poorest countries by using
affordable civil engineering practices. He founded GeoHazards
International (GHI) after recognizing that multi-story residences,
schools, hospitals, stores, and offices built from adobe, stone, or
unreinforced masonry in many regions of the world are death traps when
earthquakes strike. GHI is the only not-for-profit, non-governmental
agency dedicated to preventing structural failures in developing
countries. Tucker works on-site with local governments, artisans, and
citizens to implement cost-effective measures to construct or upgrade
schools and other public service buildings and to educate residents
about damage-prevention measures. He is an expert at adapting
techniques used by developed countries in risk mitigation projects so
that they fit within the social, political, and economic constraints
of at-risk communities in the developing world. GHI's principal focus
on schools is particularly important because their typically poor
construction makes them a common source for earthquake casualties. His
current work to develop and apply a Global Earthquake Risk Index is
designed both to estimate risk and to motivate risk-reduction
measures. His efforts have dramatically reduced the potential for
death and injury to children and others from earthquakes in vulnerable
cities around the world.
Brian Tucker received a B.A. (1967) from Pomona College, a Ph.D.
(1975) from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University
of California, San Diego, and an M.A. (1991) in Public Policy from
Harvard University. Tucker served as Principal and Supervising
Geologist at the California Division of Mines and Geology (1982-1992).
In 1991, he founded GeoHazards International. Tucker is a consulting
professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Stanford
University, and is a member of the editorial board of The Journal of
Earthquake Engineering as well as the board of the World Seismic
Safety Initiative.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 12 March 2003, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
Complex Event Processing:
An Essential Technology for Instant Insight into the Operations of
Enterprise Information Systems
David Luckham
Electrical Engineering, Stanford
"Instant Insight is a breakthrough analysis of electronic commerce
you keep secret and use to beat rivals" - Grover Ferguson (Chief
Scientist, Accenture - Wall Street Journal, Sept 27 2002) .
The enterprise information technology (IT) infrastructure has been
called "an event-driven nervous system". Complex Event Processing
(CEP) is an emerging technology for coping in realtime with the tasks
of managing the IT infrastructures of large electronic enterprises.
This includes a spectrum of management tasks such as effective control
of eBusiness supply chains, monitoring internet-based enterprise
collaborations by means of high level business events, autonomous
regulation of eMarketplaces, and Cyber defense of our national IT
infrastructures. At present we do none of these tasks well. And
effective solutions to any of them present an enormous business
opportunity.
All of these management tasks have in common the need to aggregate
high level intelligence from the lower layers of the enterprise
nervous system. CEP is a technology to track causality between events,
and to aggregate complex high level events from sets of lower level
events. CEP enables us to understand what activities are taking place
in our IT systems. That is, we gain instant insight into how those
activities will affect critical functionality of the enterprise. Only
then can we take effective action, or succinctly and correctly express
automated rules to manage the electronic enterprise.
This seminar will deal with the WHY and WHAT of CEP: why there is a
need for new technologies to manage electronic enterprises, and what
those technologies must enable us to do. The basic concepts of CEP
will be introduced, including basic events and complex events, common
relationships between events, event patterns and hierarchies of
events.
The HOW of CEP, how to build it, will be deferred to other
discussions.
About the speaker: David Luckham has held faculty and invited faculty
positions in mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering
at eight major universities in Europe and the United States. He was
one of the founders of Rational Software Inc. in 1981, supplying both
the company's initial software product and the software team that
founded the company. He has been an invited lecturer, keynote speaker,
panelist, and USA delegate at many international conferences and
congresses. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus of Electrical
Engineering, Stanford University. His research and consulting
activities in software technology include multi-processing,
event-based simulation languages and systems, and Complex Event
Processing. He has published four books and over 100 technical papers;
two ACM/IEEE Best Paper Awards, several of his papers are now in
historical anthologies and book collections. His latest book, "The
Power of Events", deals with the foundations of complex event
processing in distributed enterprise systems.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 16 January 2003, 12:15pm-1:30pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
The Brain's Concepts
Mirror Neurons, Simulation Semantics, and the Neural Theory of Language
George Lakoff
University of California, Berkeley
A discussion of recent collaborative work with Vittorio Gallese (of
the mirror neuron group in Parma) on the direct role of the
sensory-motor system in characterizing concepts - including abstract
concepts like freedom, love, or causation.
The talk is set with the Neural Theory of Language now being developed
at Berkeley. It discusses how semantics can be based on neural
simulation, with neural computational models provided via
Feldman-Narayanan structured connectionist models, and natural
language semantics provided via cognitive semantics.
There are two parts to the talk. The first contradicts the idea that
all concepts are "abstractions" in the sense that they must be
represented in the brain independently of the sensory-motor system.
It traces thoroughly through one example where enough is known about
the neuroscience, the neural computation, and the linguistics to
argue that the brain's sensory-motor system can fully characterize
the properties of the given concept.
The second part takes up the role of conceptual metaphors and "Cogs"
in adapting the sensory-motor system to characterize the meanings of
abstract concepts. The idea of "Cogs" is new, and central to how the
sensory-motor system can characterize the semantics of grammar.
Included is the idea of "dissociative learning" - the use of neural
inhibition to produce conceptual and linguistic generalizations from
exemplars.
The point of the talk is to cash out the idea of embodied meaning,
presented in the speaker's earlier work and underlying current
research on the neural theory of language.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 16 January 2003, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Considerations Regarding Human-Level Artificial Intelligence
Nils J. Nilsson
Robotics Laboratory, Computer Science, Stanford University
http://www.robotics.stanford.edu/users/nilsson/bio.html
AI researchers have several overlapping objectives. Among these are:
to build systems that aid humans in intellectual tasks; to build
agents that can function autonomously in circumscribed domains; to
build a general science of intelligence as manifested in animals,
humans, and machines; and to build versatile agents with human-level
intelligence or beyond. Some considerations regarding human-level AI
are described in my essay available at:
http://www.robotics.stanford.edu/users/nilsson/hlai.ps
Participants in this SSP Forum will be encouraged to discuss with the
author the claims made in the essay.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 17 January 2003, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
The search for historical African American English:
Evidence from Mississippi-in-Africa
John Victor Singler
New York University
What can the language in enclaves today in the African American
diaspora tell us about the history of African American English (AAE)?
My talk focuses on the language of the descendants of the 16,000
African Americans who immigrated to Liberia in the nineteenth century.
It concentrates on the Liberian Settler English of Sinoe (LSE-S), a
county that was originally established as Mississippi-in-Africa in
1838.
Recognizing the provenance of particular features in LSE-S is rarely
problematic. For example, the distribution of LSE-S features both in
other varieties of English and within LSE-S itself makes it possible
to identify (a) below as a feature that the Sinoe Settlers brought
with them from America and (b) as a post-immigration borrowing.
a. The habitual AUX 'dor'
'Government pay me for true. I dor get check.'
b. The non-punctual AUX 'de'
'Every year, it de be a disease comes on the chicken.'
However, to extrapolate historical AAE from a modern variety from an
African American diaspora enclave, one must consider two sociohistorical
questions:
1. What kind of AAE did the original African American emigrants speak?
2. What factors in the history of a particular enclave community might
have moved that community's language away from the language that the
original emigrants had brought with them from the US?
(It is their failure to provide historically informed answers to
these two questions that crucially undermines the work on African
American enclave varieties in the Dominican Republic and Canada by
Poplack (2000) and Poplack & Tagliamonte (2001).) I present the
demographics of the original Sinoe Settlers (80% came from the Lower
South) and then argue that the forces and factors likely to push LSE-S
closer to Standard English, while not non-existent, were weaker than
was true elsewhere. At the same time, I argue that ongoing hostility
between the Sinoe Settlers and their indigenous neighbors as well as
the status differential between the two groups sharply limited
influence upon LSE-S from local languages -- including the pidginized
English vernacular of the West African coast.
I apply the LSE-S evidence to the two controversies that dominate the
study of African American English: the convergence/divergence and
creolization/dialectology debates.
____________
END MATERIAL
The CSLI Calendar appears weekly on Wednesdays throughout the academic
year. Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in
the Calendar should be submitted to the editor, who reserves the right
to decide what does or does not go in the calendar
mailto:incalendar@csli.stanford.edu
Requests to be added to the mailing list should be sent to
majordomo@csli.stanford.edu. With the lines in the body of the text
of either
subscribe csli-calendar
for the long form or
subscribe csli-short-calendar
for the short form (i.e., no abstracts). Problems with subscribing or
unsubscribing should be sent to
owner-csli-calendar@csli.stanford.edu.
The full current issue is at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Archive/calendar/current.shtml
and the archives at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Archive/calendar/
People on most of the CSLI computers can type 'help csli-calendar' to
see the current issue.
The CSLI Calendar is also posted each week to
news://nntp-csli.stanford.edu/csli.bboard.
and
news://news.stanford.edu/su.events
Information about CSLI's research program is available at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
For maps to the Stanford University campus see
http://www.stanford.edu/home/visitors/maps.html
____________