Note to potential "friends" in the special LiveJournal sense in which "friend" has become a verb: I would like to know who you really are, especially if you'd like to be mutual friends. Please see the nice essay written on this topic by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) petrark here: http://petrark.livejournal.com/2690.html#cutid1, asking potential friends to let him know their identity: I agree with the sentiments expressed there. And getting in touch with me is not hard; my Live Journal profile includes my real website, and my website includes my e-mail address. Thanks!
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Every now and then I discover a new Russian word that strikes me as just wonderful, but I don't usually manage to write them down. I'll write this one down quickly before I forget:
междусобойчики
Isn't that a wonderful word! No one-word equivalent in English. And it has a wonderful sound, as nice as Черёмуха (I can't explain why I like the sound of that word so much.)
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Happy birthday to txori ! May every day be a good one!
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Hmm, unlike Facebook, Live Journal doesn't have a way to write on a friend's journal except as a comment on one of their posts, and for that, you have to find a relevant one. So I have to put this note in my own journal, though I'd rather write it directly to q_pheevr 's. I have insider information (since I'm on Linguist List's Advisory Board), that q_pheevr has just written a VERY NICE testimonial letter about why he contributes regularly to Linguist List from Canada, and why he would encourage others elsewhere to do so too. Watch for it to show up on the Fund Drive site soon!
Right now my own "Fund Drive Challenge" is running on Linguist List -- you'll see it on their home page -- it has about four hours to go! (Until 4pm today East Coast time.) I'm eager to see how much money it helps bring in!
And I'm separately working on encouraging Moscow linguists and linguistics students to make donations, either with their own credit cards if they have one, or by getting money to me and I'll collect it and send it with my credit card. You can get money to me via the MGU linguistics department (Kibrik's laboranty) or the RGGU linguistics department (Vera Podlesskaya's laboranty), or directly to me in my semantics class at MGU tomorrow or the following Friday, or at the Moscow Student Linguistics Conference on Wednesday April 15.
q_pheevr says, among other things, "I donate because I
want the LINGUIST List to continue to be available free of charge to those
who cannot afford to donate, and it makes me feel good to think that at
the same time, my contribution helps fund jobs for linguistics students.."
So if you are one who CAN afford to donate, even if only a hundred roubles or a few dollars, I hope you will! We all need Linguist List, and right now, Linguist List really needs all of us!
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My MGU speckurs, Formal Semantics and Pragmatics, will meet on Friday afternoons. Lecture: 16:20-17:50, Seminar 18:00-19:30. First class meeting: Friday, February 20. I don't know the room yet, but they will know in the Kafedra.
The website is up (see my previous post), and I will keep it updated with the schedule of what topics we will talk about on what days.
The course is designed principally for 3rd and 4th year OTiPL students, but everyone is welcome. If you've had my course before, there will be nothing new in the first 3 weeks; what I'll do in week 4 (introduction to pragmatics), I did in Moscow only once before, MGU 2007, and I'll revise it this time. Weeks 5 and 6 will be a mix of old and new (Heim and dynamic semantics, but with new emphasis on formal representation of context, context-dependence, context-change, including things we didn't discuss in past years when the emphasis was on indefinites, definites, quantification, and anaphora.) Starting in week 7 I think it will all be new.
Remember that a propusk is needed. From OTiPL:
Поскольку в МГУ служба охраны требует наличие пропуска для прохода в здание, необходимо заранее сообщить на каф. ТиПЛ о желании посещать курс, чтобы лаборанты могли составить и подать списки в службу обеспечения безопасности. Необходимо указать (полностью) имя, отчество, фамилию и место учёбы/работы.
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I finally have the preliminary version of my course website up. It's here: http://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_2009/ . It has taken me some time to get even this very preliminary form posted, because I had to learn a new web page editor. I did it with Dreamweaver, which I have on a 30-day free trial from Adobe. But Stephen Anderson is advising me (on Facebook) that the iWeb editor I already have on my Mac is much simpler and is plenty good enough and user-friendly enough for a simple website of this sort. So before I go much farther with Dreamweaver, which is rather complicated and not totally user-friendly, I may take some time to explore iWeb.
This course website looks very different from all my previous ones. Since it's still in a very preliminary state, I could still change it. I'd be interested in reactions as to whether it looks like it will be an improvement, or the opposite, compared to my earlier ones such as http://people.umass.edu/partee/RGGU_2008/RGGU08_formal_semantics.htm .
After the Feb 12 14:10 organizational meeting decides on the schedule, I'll post that on the website and in Live Journal.
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The organizational meeting for my MGU Speckurs "Formal semantics and formal pragmatics" will be this Thursday, Feb 12, at 14:10, somewhere in or near the OTiPL office; propusk required. It's just to determine the regular course meeting time; first real class will be next week. So it probably makes sense for only MGU students to come to the organizational meeting. Others who are interested please let me know; and since not everyone is on Live Journal or mosling, I hope those who are will let your friends know. As soon as I know the real schedule, I'll post it here and on mosling.
I had promised to get a course website set up this weekend, but I'm slowed down by my new Mac, and haven't yet worked out what webpage editor to use. I will probably get something primitive up today or tomorrow, with improvements to come later. I'll announce it here when it's up.
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A very happy birthday to petesta ! The irony of our current geographical situations, on each other's home turf, is that it's your birthday already where I am, though not yet where you are! In any case, have a wonderful day and many happy returns!
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Is the following sentence (i) OK, and if it is, then with what scope possibilities? (This is a variant of an example in isya 's SALT paper: his example had -нибудь instead of -то, and is grammatical, and has only narrow scope for кого-нибудь.)
(i) Петя часто встречал кого-то из своих одноклассниц.
I suppose this one is grammatical and I suppose it can get a wide-scope reading; but can it also get the narrow-scope reading of different classmates at different times? I would have guessed 'no', but I'm reading something that seems to predict 'yes'.
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Спецкурс: Формальная семантика и формальная прагматика
Barbara H. Partee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
МГУ, Feb-June 2009
Курс начинается с краткого введения в формальную семантику и в неформальную прагматику.
Затем будут рассмотрены некоторые центральные темы, связанные с развитием «динамической семантики» и формальной прагматики. Темы эти относятся прежде всего к взаимодействию значения и контекста и к «non-truth-conditional» аспектам значения.
Предварительного знакомства с формальной семантикой не предполагается.
Курс ориентирован в основном на студентов 3-4 курса. Каждую неделю будут и лекция, и семинар (всего две пары).
Некоторые темы курса:
Presupposition and presupposition accommodation
Conventional implicature
The semantics and pragmatics of questions
The typology of indefinite pronouns and the diversity of their pragmatic ‘origins’
Lexicalized intonational meaning – the meaning of comma intonation and other intonational patterns
Topic-focus structures: their semantics and pragmatics
Expressive meaning – honorifics, depreciatives, formal/familiar pronouns
Cross-linguistic similarities and differences in pragmatics: pragmatic typology
Некоторые релевантные авторы: Paul Grice, Robert Stalnaker, Irene Heim, Mats Rooth, Nirit Kadmon, Christopher Potts, Philippe Schlenker, Angelika Kratzer, Craige Roberts, Gennaro Chierchia, Robert van Rooy, Kai von Fintel. Все, что надо читать, будет доступно на интернете.
Будут рассмотрены также семантические и прагматические проблемы, предложенные участниками спецкурса для обсуждения. Возможны какие-то “Guest Lectures” в семинарах.
Языки курса: Лекции, хендауты – в основном по-английски. Семинары и обсуждения – по-русски и/или по-английски. Все домашние работы могут выполняться по-русски.
Планы аналогичных курсов можно посмотреть на сайтах http://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_2005/MGU05_formal_semantics.htm , http://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_2007/MGU07_formal_semantics.htm , http://people.umass.edu/partee/RGGU_2008/RGGU08_formal_semantics.htm.
For more information contact Barbara Partee: partee@linguist.umass.edu, 757-0108 or 8-915-212-8771. (As of January 26, I don't yet know the time of the first meeting, after which the schedule will be decided to fit the schedules of the prospective participants. When I know more, I will put it on a website, still to be created, which will be accessible from http://people.umass.edu/partee/Teaching.htm .)
Пропуск: Поскольку в МГУ служба охраны требует наличие пропуска для прохода в здание, необходимо заранее сообщить на каф. ТиПЛ (otipl@philol.msu.ru) о желании посещать курс, чтобы лаборанты могли составить и подать списки в службу обеспечения безопасности. Необходимо указать (полностью) имя, отчество, фамилию и место учёбы/работы.
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I was just looking back through my earlier journal entries (because soon I will put up a post about my semantics-pragmatics course at MGU this semester) and I came across an entry I posted last January 20, when Obama had just surprised everyone by winning the Iowa caucus. Reading that entry made me smile -- everything I felt then I still feel now, and the back-and-forth discussion with petrark about differences between Russia and US was (sadly) similar to the one we just had when I was so emotionally engaged in our inauguration day on Tuesday. Last January I could hardly dare to believe that Obama could win, but Iowa was (not only for me but for a great many people) a really huge victory and the first really serious confirmation of "Yes we can!". How wonderful that it's reality now!
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My graduate assistant Jesse back home (I'm in Moscow now, by the way!) just asked me whether Russians are sharing at all in the excitement about tomorrow's inauguration of Barack Obama. I don't really know, because I've mostly been at home, and on the internet I'm mostly following things in America just now (watching all sorts of inauguration-related things with tears of happiness). When I went to the market across the street, one of my Tadzhik "girlfriends" who sells fruit there (they've all made friends with me -- I'm 'their American') was happy to see me back in Moscow and immediately started talking about Obama and his promise to end the war in Iraq, and we talked about him for several minutes. So if I take her as my sample, the answer is certainly "yes". But I don't know how widespread it is.
Personally, I think tomorrow will be one of the biggest "good" days in American history. I know that Obama is only human and we can't expect miracles, and especially we can't expect instant miracles. But I think Americans understand that what we can expect is an appeal to our better selves, a call to all of us to work together for good, and to me it will be incredibly wonderful to have a leader who is working to get us all moving in a positive direction and who is himself doing everything in his power to try to restore honor, dignity, humility, and goodness to America and to America's name.
I heard a French reporter discussing how puzzled the French were that the same country that elected George W. Bush -- twice!! -- could then elect Barack Obama. And she also said that Europeans as a whole were startled and perhaps a little uncomfortable to realize that America is apparently way ahead of Europe in embracing ethnic diversity -- that the French would never elect an Algerian president, or the Germans a 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant of Turkish or Moroccan descent.
But I don't myself know anything yet about Russian reactions to Obama. Help?
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On today's science page of polit.ru they report on a conference in Moscow where Volodja gave a talk yesterday, with a very nice photo of Volodja giving his power point presentation. http://www.polit.ru/science/2008/11/08/schreider.html
The conference was in honor of Yulij Shreider, a mathematician and theoretical scientist who was the head of Volodja's department at VINITI (part of the Russian Academy of Sciences) for many years, and his sometimes co-author, who died quite a few years ago -- various mathematicians and philosophers discussed Shreider's ideas and what influence they had on later work. Volodja discussed both Shreider's ideas about scientific infrastructure and their relevance to the internet age, and Shreider's innovative topological approach to formal grammar description, which is relevant to contemporary model-theoretic syntax.
Володя говорит, что он "попал под лошадь", но забыл, как называется этот рассказ Чекова.
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I was just trying to find out when Malia Obama's birthday is to see how close in age she is to my grandson (turns out she was born on July 4, 1998 -- our Independence Day), so she's about half a year older than Sean, who was born December 30, 1998.
But what I found out along the way, from a Wikipedia article, is that the younger daughter Sasha's real name is Natasha -- Sasha is her nickname. That's ungrammatical!!
-- But I love them, and I won't tell them. In America, everything is possible.
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Yesterday afternoon my 9-year-old grandson Sean and I were playing the board game Risk, and we were having a battle between Kamchatka and Alaska, and I asked him if he'd heard about Sarah Palin saying she could see Russia from Alaska, and he had, and he knew she was a vice-presidential candidate, and then he paused and said with a little bit of uncertainty, "And she's a comedian, isn't she?"
Isn't that great? I suppose it's because of all the Saturday Night Live programs with Tina Fey impersonating Palin and once with Palin herself -- these are much watched on YouTube -- , and I explained that to Sean.) (You can read about it and see the videos here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/18/sarah-palin-on-snl-with-t_n_135887.html .
Sean and I reached agreement that we hope she doesn't win the election, but she probably has a good career ahead on TV.
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Happy birthday to anortorn !
Happy birthday to fbmk !
I'm very happy to share my birthday with you both!
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I saw that petrark did it, so I'll do it too -- it very conveniently answers the question of "where" to put birthday greetings. So: it's my birthday now, at least by Moscow time, and if it were practical, I'd invite everyone over and make a strawberry shortcake to share -- I feel very lucky to have a birthday in strawberry season. I'm actually in Kazan', though, so I don't think I'll see any of my ЖЖ friends on my birthday this year. But I'll be very happy to hear from you!
I've made myself a birthday breakfast for tomorrow morning already -- ovsjannaja kasha in moloko, no cooking, with cut-up kuraga, chernosliv, izjum, jabloko -- and in the morning I'll add banana and strawberries. Yum.
Best wishes to everybody!
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Happy Birthday to hlamushka ! With many happy returns of the day!
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calm
curious