LINGUIST List 10.140

Fri Jan 29 1999

Qs: NLP books, Micmac, Writing differences

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D., New NLP Books
2. sburdine, Micmac grammar
3. WWard, Ethnic Differences in Writing

After returning from the LSA conference in Los Angeles I was a little
dismayed at the almost total lack of new books (publication late 98 or
early 99) in NLP. I believe that of the two or three book publishers
who were there, there was only one new title in NLP.

Could readers post to me any newly published or soon to be published
books in this very important area of linguistics? I will post a
summary to the list. I would like references to new books dealing
with NLP from statistical or other approaches. I am especially
interested in books which talk about improvements to navigation and
control devices (particularly with commercially available speech
products), searching databases and the Internet, and question and
answer dialoging systems, but I would like to have as thorough a
bibliography of new works in NLP as possible.

Phil Bralich

Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
President and CEO

Ergo Linguistic Technologies
2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite #175
Honolulu, HI 96822
Tel:(808)539-3921
Fax:(808)539-3924

I'm looking for a Micmac grammar (non teaching) and/or articles that
deal with principles such as rheme, topic, determinacy, event,
voice/focus and role. Any suggestions are welcomed!

Stephanie Burdine
sburdineruf.rice.edu

We are developing assessments for the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards (NBPTS). As you may know it was originally hoped
that performance assessments would not have the adverse impact that
standardized tests do, but that has not yet worked out as hoped.
There are lots of possible reasons for this. We are exploring
explanations because we are not happy about adverse impact, and we do
not want to keep contributing to it, especially as the stakes for
National Board certification get higher and higher.

One explanation we want to look into may be differences in writing and
in interpreting writing across various cultural/ethnic groups. If
these exist, they would be important for both developing assessment
instructions and for scoring responses.

Could you please advise us of any research you know and/or share with
us results of your own research? Please also respond to me personally
and I will post a summary on the list.

Thank you so much!

Wanda Grady Ward
Senior Research Associate
Education Development Center, Inc. 
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02458
voice: 617/618-2124
fax: 617/969-3440
e-mail: wwardedc.org