Meetings
Meetings co-sponsored by Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies
are usually held at Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th Street, at New York University, Washington Square, or at John Jay College for Criminal Justice, CUNY, 445 W. 59th Street (off 10th Avenue) North Building, Room 2513.
THIRD SPRING PRESENTATION IN 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008 11 am at the Thurgood Marshall Room, 80 La Salle St., New York,
(Between 123rd and 125th Streets, between Amsterdam and Broadway. The building is the 2nd in a series from Amsterdam and the 3rd from Broadway at LaSalle St., four blocks north of Columbia Teachers College)
The speaker is:
Joseph L. Malone,
Professor Emeritus of Barnard College and Columbia University
Title: Transdialectal Patterns of Mutation in Aramaic as Evidence for
Special Origins: Isogloss Pockets, "Anachronic" Dialects, and More
Assuming a large and varied enough genealogy of dialects, study
of correspondences (reflexes of proto-segments) across these
dialects can be revealing of aspects of linguistic properties
and relations not foreseen in building up the genealogical
framework in the first place. Several case types are considered
on the basis of thirteen Classical Aramaic dialects.
click here for flyer (please post)
Q & A to follow talk. All are welcome.
For information contact:
Kathleen O’Connor-Bater.
******************
PREVIOUS:
Saturday, March 8, 2008, 11 am at the
Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Prof. Cecilia Robustelli, Università di
Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy, Associate Professor of
Italian Linguistics at the University of Modena and Reggio
Emilia.
Title: “The Role of the Italian Language in the New European
Landscape.” This paper examines the linguistic policy of the
European Union and the role of the Italian language in the new
multilingual EU landscape. The recent enlargement of the EU to
23 new member states has underlined the importance of promoting
effective multilingualism in the EU. Each member state has
developed its own strategies to contribute to EU multilingualism
by monitoring the use of languages within the EU bodies by
'reshaping' its own national language according to its new role
as EU language. The Italian language is accomplishing its new
role by adopting both external measures, i.e. by intervening in
the EU policy decisions, especially through the Accademia della
Crusca, the most prestigious Italian institution for language,
and by improving the communicative power of the language. The
proposals are aimed at (a) a consolidation of the national
language; (b) setting up of new ‘communicative’ varieties; (c)
monitoring linguistic borrowings and resultant lexical
enrichment.
Saturday, February 9, 2008, 11 am at rgood Marshall
Room
Dr. George L. Greaney,
Director of the Hofstra University English Language Program for international students and adjunct assistant professor of Comparative Literature and Languages at Hofstra
Title:
A talk about the challenges of translating literary texts that purport to be transcripts of oral presentation, discussing some issues of translation arising from the attempt to render into English an oratorical text preserved in a “dead” language. Issues of accuracy, faithfulness, orality, and differences of idiom in the source and target languages, as well as the problem of register in languages preserved only as published texts, will be considered
Saturday, December 8, 2007, 11 am at Thurgood Marshall Room,
Kate Parry, Professor in the Department of English, Hunter College, City University of New York and Chair, Uganda Community Libraries Association .
Title: "Languages in Africa"
Africa is one of the most linguistically complex regions on earth. This presentation will explore that complexity, considering, first, the enormous range of indigenous African languages, second, the development and status of the most important linguae francae, and, third, the present role of former colonial languages including, and especially, English. It will conclude with a discussion of the educational implications of this complex linguistic situation.
Saturday, November 10, 2007, 11 am at Thurgood Marshall Room
Peter T. Daniels (noted scholar and author).
Title: "Smudges, cuneiforms, moon-spun vowels: A Unified View of the Diverse Origins of Writing.”
Linguists recognize that all languages, however different they seem to be, share a basic unity. Why, then, do they not recognize the same thing about writing systems? Peter T. Daniels, independent scholar with degrees in linguistics from Cornell University and the University of Chicago, will talk about the Origins of Writing drawing upon his interests in Semitic historical linguistics and the history of decipherment.
Saturday, October 13, 2007, 11 am at Thurgood Marshall Room
David K. Barnhart (Editor, Lexik House Publishers).
Title: “The Sieve Syndrome: What happens to new words”
How and when do lexicographers evaluate novel lexical items; when do they become established; and, what happens to the unsuccessful novelties.
Saturday May 12, 2007, 11 am at Teachers College
Ann Delilkan, New York City College of Technology
Title: Codas and Head Feet in Malay
My investigation into prosody and its interface with phonological operations concerns itself largely with the asymmetry between what are termed head and dependent feet in Malay, where head feet are the bearers of primary word stress. Based on existing studies of stress placement in Malay, the contrast in the types of vowels that occur in prefixes as opposed to suffixes, and the way in which loanwords are assimilated into the language, and limits placed on affixation, I argue for a specific prosodic structure for the language. I claim that the Malay prosodic word begins with a dependent foot, with its head foot second. I also claim that such a word is composed of prefixes and roots, with suffixes falling ‘outside’. This characterization of Malay prosodic structure runs counter to claims in the literature about closely related languages, like Indonesian (cf. Cohn 1989).
Using this prosodic structure, I then show that a host of segmental changes--gemination, sonorant deletion, fusion, glottal stop insertion, resyllabification, schwa epenthesis and nasal place assimilation, to be precise-- occur predictably and asymmetrically if the locus of their application is described with respect to prosodic requirements. The asymmetry I examine relates not to the prosodic dimension of stress per se, but to the preferred syllable structure of the two types of feet. Specifically, these processes conspire to produce open and very light syllables in dependent feet. In claiming this, I assume that syllable weight is scalar (Gafos 1996), and that a word like the English definite article the is composed of a very light syllable, since it is open and contains the reduced vowel, /´/. By contrast, though, the application of the processes in question indicates that closed syllables are preferred in head feet, and often at great cost, phonotactically speaking. Crosslinguistic evidence suggests that the preferred syllable in most languages is open, not closed. My claim that head foot syllables are ideally closed then means that these syllables are marked as ‘prominent’ not just by virtue of their stress-bearing potential but also by virtue of their shape.
It is important to note that in invoking asymmetry between heads and dependents, I employ a template that has its foundations in syntactic analysis. Evidence of such asymmetries on the level of application of phonological rules thus strongly supports an organizational unity between syntax and phonology and has implications for acquisition of the rules in question. I refer to broad claims that a child must ‘pay attention to heads’ (cf. Dresher and van der Hulst (1995)) in order to produce the grammatical forms of the language. In essence, I claim that learning when a wide range of phonological processes may or may not apply in Malay requires consideration of the overarching demand in the language that head foot syllables be as prominent as possible, the maximal perceptual contrast thus assured between them and their dependent foot counterparts.
Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007, 11 am at Teachers College
Christa de Kleine, College of Notre Dame, Maryland
Title: Students from Anglophone West Africa in US Classrooms:
The Role of Pidgin & Creole English: In recent years, school systems in the US have experienced a significant increase in students who speak varieties of English-lexifier pidgin and creole languages. While studies have focused on the linguistic challenges experienced by Creole-speaking students from the Anglophone Caribbean, little research has been conducted among immigrant students from the Anglophone parts of West Africa where English-lexifier pidgin and creole varieties are widely spoken. This disparity results in large part from the assumption that language-related challenges observed among these students are rooted primarily in the interrupted education many have experienced. In my talk, I present findings that suggest a different cause. A detailed examination of writing assessments of students from Anglophone West Africa, all of whom were enrolled in ESL classes in secondary schools in a large suburban school district on the East Coast, indicates that these students face significant language problems that are at least partly explained by grammatical transfer from their West African pidgin and creole language varieties — a phenomenon that is furthermore often mis-interpreted by teachers. In my talk, I present patterns found in West African students’ writings, focusing mainly on the writings of Sierra Leonean students; I argue that patterns identified as problematic by teachers can often be traced to students’ Anglophone creole and pidgin languages, in this case Krio. I then explore potential reasons for this type of transfer, including grammatical camouflage. Finally, I outline the knowledge base that teachers should possess in order to modify (ESL) literacy instruction to meet the linguistic needs of this group of students.
Saturday, March 3,
2007, 11 am at Teachers College
Arthur K. Spears, The City College and
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Title: African American English: Recent
Advances in Understanding the Grammar-Use Interface
Please announce to your colleagues and students
Click here to for past presentation information