LINGUIST List 8.337

Sat Mar 8 1997

Confs: Language Acquisition, Minimalism

Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <suelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Antonella Sorace, Conf: Language Acquisition (GALA '97)
2. G. Alexandrova, Minimalism

- ----
 International Conference
 Language Acquisition: Knowledge Representation and Processing
 GALA '97

 4th - 6th April 1997
			Edinburgh City Chambers

 ---- Plenary speakers ----
 Melissa Bowerman
 Nina Hyams
 Peter Jusczyk
 Steven Pinker
 Bonnie D. Schwartz
 Paul Smolensky

The conference will take place at Edinburgh City Chambers, located on
the historic Royal Mile in the centre of Edinburgh. Information about
registration and accommodation in Edinburgh can be found at the GALA 97
www site: http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/gala/

The Spring Meeting of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain will
be held in Edinburgh immediately after GALA '97 (April 7th - 9th), in
Pollock Halls, University of Edinburgh.

Organisers: Antonella Sorace (Applied Linguistics), Caroline Heycock
(Linguistics), Richard Shillcock (Cognitive Science).
Address for email correspondence: gala97ling.ed.ac.uk

The programme consists of three full days containing plenaries by the 6
invited speakers, 40 20-minute talks, and 80 posters. Details of posters
can be found at http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/gala/.

Friday 4th April

8.30-9.30, Registration (continues throughout the day)

9.30-10.00, Opening Remarks

10.00-11.00 Plenary session
Melissa Bowerman, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics:
Predicate semantics and lexicosyntactic development:
a crosslinguistic perspective

11.00-11.30, Break

11.30-12.00:

David Lightfoot, Maryland:
Catastrophes and "cue-based" learning

Ocke-Schweren Bohn & Linda Polka, Aarhus and McGill:
The nature and significance of perceptual biases in infant vowel
perception

12.00-12.30:

Susan Powers & Julien Musolino, Potsdam & Maryland:
Precursor relative clauses in the acquisition of English

Suzanne Curtin, Heather Goad, & Joe Pater, McGill, Southern California
and British Columbia
On the acquisition of Thai VOT contrasts by native speakers of English

12.30-2.00, Lunch

2.00-2.30

Gert Westermann, Edinburgh:
A constructivist neural network learns the past tense of English verbs

Shanley Allen, Max Planck

A discourse-pragmatic explanation for the subject-object asymmetry in
early null arguments

2.30-3.00

Mark Seidenberg, Joseph Allen, & Morten Christiansen, Southern
California= : Language acquisition: learning and applying
probabilistic constraints

Lamya Abdul-Mareem, Thomas Roeper, & Jill deVilliers, UMass, UMass, &
Smith College: LF-Feature movement and negative islands in
acquisition

3.00-3.30

Joseph Allen, Southern California:
Probabilistic constraints in acquisition

Kenneth Drozd, Max Planck:
The syntax and semantics of "no" and negative constituents in child
English

3.30-4.00, Break

4.00-4.30

Boping Yuan, Cambridge:
An asymmetry of null subjects and null objects in Chinese speakers' L2
English

Matthew Saxton, Royal Holloway, London:
Corrective input in child language acquisition

4.30-5.00

Philippe Prevost, McGill
Subjects in second language acquisition: evidence for the truncation
hypothesis

Lourdes de Leon, Reed College:
Why verbs are learnt before nouns in Tzotzil (Mayan): the role of
caregiver input and of verb-specific semantics

5.00-6.00, Plenary Session:

Bonnie D. Schwartz, University of Durham:
The second language instinct

7.00-9.00, Reception

Saturday 5th April

9.00-10.00, Plenary Session:
Nina Hyams, UCLA:
Language development at the interface

10.00-10.30, Rita Manzini & Anna Roussou, UCL/Florence & Bangor:
Null arguments in early child grammars: a minimalist approach

Laura Bosch & Nuria Sebasti=E1n, Barcelona:
Factors in native-language discrimination at four months: phonological
proximity and bilingual exposure

10.30-11.00, Break

11.00-11.30

Linda Escobar, Sergio Baauw, & Bill Philip, Massachusetts at Boston &
Utrecht The wide scope interpretation of postverbal quantifier
subjects: QR in the early grammar of Spanish

C. Frenck-Mestre, Provence:
Examining second language reading: an on-line look

11.30-12.00

Silvina A. Montrul, McGill:
Transitivity alternations in Turkish as a second language

Tamar Kaplan, Iowa:
General learning strategies and the process of L2 acquisition

12.00-2.00, Poster display (Mandela Room and Councillors' Lounge) and
Lunch

2.00-3.00, Plenary Session:
Steven Pinker, MIT:
Words and rules

3.00-3.30, Helen Goodluck, Ottawa:
Relative clauses in the speech of Adam

S. Wauquier-Gravelines, C. Jakubowicz, P. Sauzet, C. Durand, &
S. Franc, CNRS Paris 5, CNRS Paris 5, CNRS Paris 8, CNRS Paris 5, &
Hospital R. Debray:
Phonological knowledge in developmental language disorders: "Liaison
ench a=EEn=E9e" and derivations in French

3.30-4.00

Cornelia Hamann & Kim Plunkett, Geneva & Oxford:
Subject omission in child Danish

Sarah Barrett, Cambridge:
The prototype conversion model and its role in the developing system

4.00-4.30, Break

4.30-5.00

Arild Hestvik & Bill Philip, Bergen & Utrecht:
Chain condition errors and lexical feature acquisition in Norwegian
children

Seyhun Topbas & Handan Kopkalli-Yavuz, Anadolu:
The onset of a linguistic system: is there evidence from the
acquisition of final devoicing in Turkish?

5.00-6.00, Plenary Session:
Paul Smolensky, Johns Hopkins:
Universal grammar and learnability in Optimality Theory

9.30-1.00am, Ceilidh (Dancing!)

Sunday 6th April

9.00-10.00, Plenary Session:
Peter Jusczyk, Johns Hopkins:
Constraining the search for structure in the input

10.00-10.30

Michelle Aldridge, Robert D. Borsley, Susan Clack, & Gwennan Creunant,
Bob Morris Jones, Bangor & Aberystwyth:
The acquisition of NPs in Welsh

European Room
Elizabeth Purnell, Indiana:
The missing link: prosodic marking in the two-word stage

10.30-11.00, Break

11.00-11.30

David LeBlanc, Tilburg:
Gradualness effects in the acquisition of null subjects: arguments
from a theory of economy of projection

Stefanie Jannedy, Ohio State:
Development of "narrow focus" prosody competence

11.30-12.00

Jeannette Schaeffer, MIT:
On the acquisition of object placement in Dutch and Italian

Conxita Lle=F3, Hamburg:
Filler syllables, proto-articles and early prosodic constraints in
Spanish and German.

12.00-2.00, Poster display (Mandela Room and Councillors' Lounge) and
Lunch

2.00-2.30

Nigel Duffield, Philippe Pr=E9vost, & Lydia White, McGill:
Adult L2 knowledge of clitic placement: evidence from sentence matching

Simon Kirby & James Hurford, Edinburgh:
The evolution of incremental learning

2.30-3.00

Liliana Sanchez, Carnegie Mellon:
Why do bilingual Spanish and Spanish in contact varieties drop
definite objects?

Aude Billard & Gillian Hayes, Edinburgh:
"Allo Kazam, do you follow me?": Learning to speak through imitation
for social robots

3.00-3.30

Marianne Starren, Max Planck:
>From scope adverbials to syntactic structure: the structural
organisation oftemporality in learner discourse

Robert Clark, Edinburgh:
Language acquisition and implications for language change: a computer
model

3.30-4.00, Break

4.00-4.30

Alison Henry, John Wilson, and Cathy Finlay, Ulster at Jordanstown:
Language acquisition and optionality

Madelyn Kissock & Mark Hale, Harvard/Maine & Concordia:
Nonphonological triggers for renewed access to "phonetic" perception

4.30-5.30, Plenary Session:
Title to be announced

=================================================================== 
 Open Linguistics Forum '97: PROGRAM
 web page: http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~s060054/ (aix1=www)
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Host: Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa

Theme: *** Challenges of Minimalism ***

 On the Way to Chapter 4 and Beyond

Content of presentations: 

Versions of Minimalism (1992/3 - 1995) should be applied to one,
preferably more languages. Papers on the languages of South-East Europe
would be highly appreciated. Authors are encouraged to pursue a comparison
between versions of Minimalism and in contrast to earlier stages of the GB
model. They should provide an objective analytical assessment of
theoretical (dis)advantages and empirical justification. 

Well-motivated predictions re the yet unwritten Chapter 5 of the
 Minimalist Program are especially valued.

Keynote Speakers:

	 Mark Baker *** Denis Bouchard *** Howard Lasnik
 McGill University ****** UQAM *****University of Connecticut
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
OLF Report:

	- approximately 50% of received submissions accepted for 20 min
 talks
 - approximately 20% invited for participation in interactive
 (=poster sessions)
- -------
	- an average of 3 reviews per submission
	- approximately 36% of the reviews included feedback for authors
- -------
	- authors of all papers invited for 20 min presentations have
	 confirmed participation 
	- two cancellations of poster participation to date - not included
	 in the program below
- -------
Acknowledgements:
	- the LINGUIST list has proven to be our most efficient ally in
	 publicizing the conference
	- special thanks to the OLF reviewers (names to appear in the
	 OLF'97 conference booklet acknowledgements) for accepting the
	 proposed format of reviewing despite time constraints
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Friday, March 21

Location: Faculty of Arts, 2nd floor, Lecture Hall 257

12:00 - 13:00 Mark Baker, McGill University
	Topic: Adjectives, Thematic Hierarchies and "the Spirit of the
 Minimalist Program"
- -----
10 min break
- -----
13:10 - 13:40 Galia Alexandrova, University of Ottawa
	Topic: Upgraded Control in a Government-Free Model
13:40 - 14:10 Artemis Alexiadou, ZAS Berlin, and Elena Anagnostopoulou,
 University of Tilburg
	Topic: Covert Feature Movement and the Placement of Arguments
- -----
10 min break
- -----
14:20 - 14:50 Virginia Motapanyane, University of New Brunswick, St. John
	Topic: A Multiple Spec Analysis of Focus Constructions
14:50 - 15:20 Huba Bartos, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
	Topic: Subjective and Objective Agreement in Hungarian
- ------
10 min break
- ------
15:30 - 16:00 Adam Szczegielniak, Harvard University
	Topic: Polish Optional Movement in the Minimalist Program
16:00 - 16:30 Takashi Toyoshima, Kyoto University/Cornell University
	Topic: Head to Spec Movement Hypothesis: Strictly Cyclic Movement
- ------
30 min break
- ------
17:00 - 18:00 Poster Session: Faculty of Arts, 4th floor

1. Aniko Csirmaz, Eotvos Lorand University 
	Topic: pro in Inflected infinitivals and DPs in Hungarian
2. Miriam Engelhardt, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
	Topic: Clitic Doubling as Agreement in GB and Minimalism
3. Sharon Armon Lotem, University of Maryland/Tel Aviv University
	Topic: Checking on CHECKING
- ------
18:30: Buffet dinner, Department of Linguistics
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, March 22

Location: Faculty of Arts, 4th floor, Lecture Hall 435

9:00 - 10:00 Denis Bouchard, UQAM
	Integral Minimalism: Contingent Properties of Interfaces and the
 Nature of C<HL>
- ----
10 min break
- ----
10:10 - 10:40 Hiroyuki Ura, Osaka University
	Topic: Grammatical Relations/Functions in the Minimalist Framework
10:40 - 11:10 Edit Doron, Hebrew University of Jerusalem & Caroline
 Heycock, Universities of Edinburgh & Delaware
	Topic: Minimalist Multiple Subjects
- -----
15 min break
- -----
11:25 - 11:55 Ruriko Kawashima, UBC
	Topic: Reducing the EPP to a Strong D-Feature of T.Numerals and
	Their Associated DPs in Japanese
11:55 - 12:25 Julie Anne Legate & Carolyn Smallwood, University of Toronto
	Topic: The Case Filter Meets the Minimalist Program: Evidence for
	Strong Case Features
12:25 - 12:55 Ning Zhang, University of Toronto
	Topic: Strong Q and Multiple Checkings
- -----
5 min break
- -----
13:00 - 13:50 Poster Session
1. Masayuki Oishi, Tohoko Gakuin University
 Topic: Reducing Procrastinate to Feature Strength
2. Masao Ochi, University of Connecticut
 Topic: Move or Attract: Attract-F and the Pied-Piping Chain
3. Charles D. Yang, MIT
 Topic: Minimal Computation
4. Juan Romero, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
 Topic: A/A' Movement and Attract
- ------
10 min break
- ------
14:00 - 15:00 Howard Lasnik, University of Connecticut
	Topic: On Feature Strength: 3 Minimalist Approaches to Overt
	Movement
- ------
15 min break
- ------
15:15 - 15:45 Kerstin Hoge, St. Hilda's College, Oxford, UK
	Topic: That-Trace Effects in English and Yiddish
15:45 - 16:15 Hisatsugu Kitahara, UBC
	Topic: Syntactic Operations and Binding Relations
- ------
15 min break
- ------
16:30 - 17:00 Andrew Simpson, UCLA/Frankfurt
	Topic: Wh-Constructions and the Locality of Feature -Checking
17:00 - 17:30 Norvin Richards, MIT
	Topic: Featural Cyclicity and the Ordering of Multiple Specifiers
- ------
18:30 Conference dinner (plus chamber music) at the NOVOTEL
(up to $20.00/$30.00 CAD, for students/non-students; e-mail registration
for discount prices or on-site registration; on-site payment)
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, March 23

Location: Faculty of Arts, 2nd floor, Lecture Hall 257

9:00 - 9:30 Javier Gutierrez and Luis Silva, UCLA
	Topic: Demonstratives in a Feature-Based Theory of Syntax
9:30 - 10:00 Bernadette Plunkett,York University, U.K.
	Topic: Attract and Covert Merge: Predicting Interrogative Variation
- ----------
5 min break
- ----------
10:05 - 10:35 Satoshi Oku, University of Connecticut
	Topic: A Minimalist Theory of LF Copy
10:35 - 11:05 Masanori Nakamura, Senshu University
	Topic: On the Role of Interpretability
- ----------
5 min break
11:10 - 12:00 Recap session: MP Chapter 5 according to OLF'97

++++++++++++++++++++++
Alternates for 20min talks:

1. John Whitman, Cornell University
	Topic: Kayne 1994, p. 143, fn.3
2. Susan M. Powers, University of Potsdam
	Topic: A Minimalist Account of Phrase Structure Acquisition
3. Eun-Young Yi, Cornell University
	Topic: Iterated Projections vs. Multiple Specifiers

++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Chairs of sessions:TBA


 +++++==+++===+++==+++++

 WE LOOK FORWARD TO A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL DISCUSSION 
 UNDER THE AEGIS OF INTELLECTUAL TOLERANCE 
 THE OLF ORGANIZERS

===+++++===+++++===++++==++++==+++=+++=++++==++++==+++++===+++++===

Please consult the OLF web page & links ibid. for: 
	
	-preregistration (by March 10th) & on-site registration fees
	-accommodation
	(NB! OLF'97 contract with the NOVOTEL: 
	$80.00 for single/double rooms;
	$90.00 for triple rooms)
	-tourist information about Ottawa&area
	-useful phone numbers/tips
	etc.

			Inquiries: 

Galia Alexandrova, Co-ordinator E-mail:s060054aix1.uottawa.ca
Department of Linguistics Fax: (613) 562-5141
University of Ottawa 70 Laurier East St., Ottawa ON K1N 6N5
========================================================================