LINGUIST List 14.2710

Wed Oct 8 2003

Qs: English Clausal Subjects; Ling Faculty Policies

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. J-C Khalifa, Q: THAT-clause subjects
2. Leo A. Connolly, Tenure and promotion in langage departments

I was just wondering whether there has been any work at all on the 
acceptability of clausal subjects like, say :

THAT Arnold was elected

which are perfectly acceptable with adjectival predicates like : 
_________was surprising
or verbal predicates like: ___________surprised everyone.

with bare copulas followed by another THAT-clause. In other words, are 
there any contexts where THAT ARNOLD WAS ELECTED WAS THAT VOTERS WERE BLIND 
might be acceptable? They are (are they?) with verbs like MEAN (That Arnold 
was elected means that voters were blind) Does anyone know of any such 
sentences in corpora, and/or any relevant work into that question?

I'll gladly post a summary if feedback proves interesting. Thanks in advance,

 Jean-Charles Khalifa 

In May of last year, Lynn Pearson posted a useful summary of how
various universities accommodate (or do not accommodate) faculty whose
research areas would not so easily produce the "book" that is required
for tenure and/or promotion.

At the University of Memphis, our departmental guidelines absolutely
require a monograph for promotion to full professor. No one has been
promoted since this requirement was introduced in 1996. I am trying
to have our guidelines changed, since not only linguists, but also
experts in language acquisition and pedagogy are far more likely to
publish articles than monographs, while pedagogues might well produce
textbooks which, though praised, will definitely not count for
promotion.

I would be interested in collecting information about how other
universities (especially the more research-oriented ones) handle these
faculty. I'd be particularly grateful for links to guidelines or
criteria which are available on line. I will post a summary of the
responses.

Thank you in advance.

Leo Connolly
Professor of German and linguistics
Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures
University of Memphis