LFG BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER 2001
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* LINGUISTICS IN THE NEWS *
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Q. What are the mandatorical parts of speech that is required to be in
a sentence?
A. To be grammatorically correct, a sentence must have three basic
elements: (1) A Subject, which is a noun that can be either a person,
place or mineral; (2) A Verb, which is a word that describes an
action, such as "kung fu," and (3) An Object, which is a noun that
weighs two or more pounds.
(Dave Barry "Mr. Language Person", Herald Tribune)
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* OTHER NEWS *
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Recent LFG Publications:
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A BANNER QUARTER FOR LFG PUBLISHING!
On the nonsemantic nature of argument structure. 2001. Alex ALSINA.
Language Sciences 23:355-389.
Time Over Matter. 2001. Miriam BUTT and Tracy Holloway KING (Eds.).
CSLI Publications.
Lexical Functional Grammar. 2001. Mary DALRYMPLE. Academic Press.
(Volume 34 of Syntax and Semantics)
Lexical-Functional Grammar: An Introduction to Parallel
Constraint-based Syntax. 2001. Yehuda FALK. CSLI Publications.
Formal and Empirical Issues in Optimality Syntax. 2001. Peter SELLS
(Ed.). CSLI Publications.
(Please send us the citation for your recent publications to include
in the next issue; announcements of publicly available theses are
encouraged.)
Upcoming LFG Conferences:
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- LFG2002, Athens, 3-5 July 2002
organizers: Dr. Yanis Maistros
Dr. Stella Markantonatou
email: marks@ilsp.gr
web page: http://thais.cs.ece.ntua.gr/LFG2002/
Call for papers available at:
http://thais.cs.ece.ntua.gr/LFG2002/FirstCall.html
[An abbreviated version is included here.]
Abstract submission receipt deadline: 15 February 2002
The conference will primarily involve 30-minute talks, poster/system
presentations and workshops. Talks and poster presentations will focus
on results from completed as well as ongoing research, with an
emphasis on novel approaches, methods, ideas, and perspectives,
whether descriptive, theoretical, formal or
computational. Presentations should describe original, unpublished
work.
This year we encourage an active poster session. All presenters will
be invited to display posters and to have a chance to chat in more
detail with participants about their work. In addition we will accept
papers for poster presentation only. Poster presenters will be asked
not to use their laptops in their presentations.
Workshops are a small group of talks (2-4) on a coherent topic that
can be expected to generate opposing views and discussion with the
broader audience. Participants to workshops are usually
invited. Workshop papers should be distributed in advance among
participants and participants should refer to each others approaches.
At this point in time, we welcome suggestions for workshops from
potential organisers or people with certain interests. Suggestions for
workshops should be sent to the local organizers at:
marks@ilsp.gr
This year we are hoping to hold a special session consisting of
invited presentations from students who have (or will have by the time
of the conference) recently completed PhD dissertations involving some
aspect of LFG. Such students (and/or their supervisors) are invited to
contact the program committee chairs for further information (see the
addresses below).
Deadline for receipt of talk submissions: 15 February 2002
Late deadline for poster-only submissions: 15 March 2002
Acceptances sent out: 31 March 2002
Deadline for workshop submissions: 15 January 2002
Workshop acceptances: 15 February 2002
Submissions should be in the form of abstracts only. Abstracts should
be one A4 page in 10pt or larger type and include a title. Omit name
and affiliation, and obvious self reference. A second page may be used
for data, c-/f- and related structures, and references.
Submissions should indicate whether they wish to be considered only as
a talk, as either a talk or a poster, or only as a
poster/demonstration. In the absence of specification, submissions
will be considered for both classes, and the program chairs may decide
that certain submissions are better as poster presentations than as
read papers.
Abstracts may be submitted by email or by regular mail (or by both
means as a safety measure). Email submission is preferred.
Regular Mail:
Include: - Eight copies of the abstract/paper.
- A card or cover sheet with the paper title, name(s) of the
author(s), affiliation, address, phone/fax number, e-mail
address, and whether the author(s) are students.
Email:
Include the paper title, name(s) of the author(s), address,
phone/fax number, email address, and whether the author(s) are
students in the body of your email message. Include or preferably
attach your paper as either a plain ASCII text, PDF, HTML, or
postscript file.
All abstracts will be reviewed by at least three people. Papers will
appear in the proceedings, which will be published online by CSLI
Publications. Selected papers may also appear in a printed volume
published by CSLI Publications.
ADDRESSES
Abstract submissions and inquiries about submissions:
Program Committee Chairs: Jonas Kuhn jonas@ims.uni-stuttgart.de
Rachel Nordlingerracheln@unimelb.edu.au
Mail: LFG2002
c/- Rachel Nordlinger
Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
University of Melbourne
VIC 3010
Australia
- LFG2003: somewhere in the USA; location is currently being
determined by the ILFGA Executive Committee.
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* ILFGA *
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BE IN THE ILFGA DATABASE:
Please add yourself to the ILFGA linguist database.
To do so, send email to Chris Culy (culy@ai.sri.com) with the
following information:
NAME
AFFILIATION
OFFICIAL ADDRESS
EMAIL ADDRESS
WEB PAGE
RESEARCH INTERESTS
RESEARCH LANGUAGES
The database can be accessed at:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/ilfga/member-database/ilfga-namelist.html
DONATE TO ILFGA: There are two ways to make a donation:
1. Send a check made out to "Intl. Lexical Functional Grammar
Assc." in US dollars to:
Tracy Holloway King
NLTT/ISTL
Xerox PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Rd
Palo Alto, CA 94304
USA
This is the simplest (and cheapest) method if you have access to US
dollars.
2. Have money transfered directly into the account. For this you
need the account number and the ABA number (this number
identifies the bank):
Acct number: 01185-04085
ABA number: 121000358
Acct name: Intl. Lexical Functional Grammar Assc.
Bank name: Bank of America
Note that there is usually a fee for transferring money this way and
so several people from the same institution/country may wish to
combine their donations into a single transfer.
Please let Tracy Holloway King (thking@parc.xerox.com) know once you
have made the deposit to get your receipt.
ILFGA is a 501(3)c organization (i.e. a non-profit) and as such
contributions are tax deductible in the US (and perhaps elsewhere; if
you are not in the US, check your home country for tax status). A
receipt will be issued for each donation.
JOIN ILFGA:
If you haven't yet, you can still join ILFGA, the International
Lexical Functional Grammar Association by sending mail to:
majordomo@lists.stanford.edu with the message:
subscribe ilfga-members
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* EDITORS *
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Please send updates, suggestions and news for inclusion in the next
LFG Bulletin (September 2001) to:
miriam.butt@uni-konstanz.de
thking@parc.xerox.com
Most importantly, please send information about:
- your recent publications or papers
- publically available grammars
- current grammar development efforts
- recent dissertations
Thank you,
Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
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Frequently Asked Questions: FAQs
Information on the following topics is available on the LFG WebPages:
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg
1. WHAT IS LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR?
2. WHAT ARE THE BEST INTRODUCTORY BOOKS/ARTICLES TO LFG?
3. THE LFG WWW SITE
4. THE LFG MAILING LIST
5. LFG BIBLIOGRAPHY, RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN LFG
6. HOW TO RETRIEVE LFG DOCUMENTS
7. PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE LFG SYSTEMS
8. CURRENT GRAMMAR DEVELOPMENT EFFORT
9. UPCOMING EVENTS
If you have access to ftp, but no access to Web, you can get a copy of
the FAQ by ftp or email (see "How to Retrieve LFG Documents" below).
Please help keep this document and the FAQ up to date!
Send updates and suggestions for improvements to the FAQ to
doug#essex.ac.uk.
Send updates, suggestions and news for inclusion in the LFG Bulletin
to miriam.butt@uni-konstanz.de or thking@parc.xerox.com, or post them
on the LFG list (LFG@listserv.linguistlist.org). Most importantly,
please send information about:
- your recent publications or papers
- publically available grammars
- current grammar development efforts
---
* HOW TO RETRIEVE LFG DOCUMENTS *
Some LFG documents are available on the web, by FTP, or by email.
There are three ways to get them.
(1) Most of the documents are accessible via the WWW:
The current version of the list of Frequently Asked Questions about LFG:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/lfg-information.html
Introductions to LFG:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/Introductions.html
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/Introductions.html
The LFG bibliography:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/bibliography.html
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/Bibliography.html
The bibliography is also available at the CL/MT Group Bibliographic
Search Page, maintained by Doug Arnold of the University of Essex.
The URL is:
http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/search/
(2) You can get the documents by anonymous FTP from:
ftp ftp-lfg.stanford.edu
All of the documents are in subdirectories of the directory
/pub/lfg. Here is a list of some of the files in that directory that
are relevant for LFG researchers:
in the directory /pub/lfg/bibliography:
The LFG Bibliography in various versions and formats.
in the directory /pub/lfg/lfg-information:
FAQ [the latest version of the list of
Frequently Asked Questions about LFG]
in the directory /pub/lfg/lfg-introductions:
pracinstrucsforlfg.ps [an introduction to LFG notation by
Michael Wescoat]
formal-architecture.ps [an introduction to LFG by Ron Kaplan]
neidle.ps [an introduction to LFG by Carol Neidle]
sadler.ps [a paper on recent developments in LFG by
Louisa Sadler]
in the directory /pub/lfg/lfg-presentations:
Slides and handouts from LFG conferences and courses.
in the directory /pub/lfg/papers:
Papers that have been submitted to the LFG Archive.
Compressed versions of some of these files are also available.
The file names of the compressed versions are the same, except
they have ".gz" at the end. There may be other LFG-related files
in that directory as well, which you are welcome to retrieve.
(3) You can get some files by email, via the Listserv "get"
command. A list of currently available files can be obtained by
sending a message to
LISTSERV@listserv.linguistlist.org
(please note: address the message to LISTSERV, not LFG). The
message should contain the following command:
index lfg
The following files are available, and there may be additional files
as well:
LFG-bulletin.txt [the latest version of the LFG Bulletin]
FAQ.txt [the list of Frequently Asked Questions]
lfgbib.text [the LFG bibliography]
To get a file, send a message to LISTSERV@listserv.linguistlist.org
containing the following command:
get <filename>
For example, if you want to get the latest version of the FAQ, you
would send a message to LISTSERV@listserv.linguistlist.org with
the following command:
get FAQ.txt
You will receive the file in an email message.