Enfoques Formales a la Lingüística Eslava (FASL), MIT

El Departamento se enorgullece de acoger la 20 ª sesión de Enfoques Formales a la Lingüística Eslava (FASL) . La conferencia, que se desarrolló a partir del 13 al 15 de mayo, tuvo un éxito rotundo, y contó con lingüistas de 13 países y 3 continentes en el MIT. Las presentaciones incluyeron charlas de cuatro del MIT: los profesores Donca Steriade y Morris Halle (que fue presentado por Noam Chomsky), el profesor visitante Sergei Tatevosov de la Universidad Estatal de Moscú, y la reciente luminaria Ivona Kučerová (ahora en la McMaster University de Londres, Ontario) . Gracias a todos los presentadores, asistentes y organizadores que hicieron que el FASL 20 sea todo un éxito!

::lacan::arquitectura::

Esta semana me puse a revisar este libro, que me fue recomendado por el propio Mario Montalbetti en mis clases de Lingüística General en la Universidad Católica. Como lingüista le puse especial atención al primer capítulo, justamente el escrito por Mario, donde se parte de la idea del sistema saussureano para ir desarrollando diversas nociones como el significado y el significante y la propuesta lacaniana, donde destaca el Teorema de Lacán. En fin, los invito a darle una lectura.

Reseña

Este volumen recoge las experiencias del seminario //lacan//arquitectura// organizado por la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo y el Departamento de Arquitectura de la PUCP en el 2007. El evento congregó al lingüista Mario Montalbetti (Lima, 1953) y al arquitecto Jean Stillemans (Bruselas, 1954) quienes tuvieron la tarea de imaginar posibles resonancias del pensamiento de Jacques Lacan (París, 1901-1981) con el hecho de la arquitectura.

Una primera materialización de este trabajo quedó plasmada en dos textos: “L < >a” de Montalbetti y “Les trois dimensions de l’habiter/Habiter le réel (Las tres dimensiones del habitar) ” de Stillemans, base de las conferencias de ambos especialistas.

Paulo Dam, arquitecto y profesor en la PUCP tomó la iniciativa de publicar los dos textos por la importancia del evento: “Una conversación al tercer día del seminario permitió continuar el ejercicio de pensar, aclarando ideas por un lado y construyendo nuevas rutas y temas por otro”, sostiene.

Asimismo, se incluye en Notas del seminario //lacan//arquitectura// una transcripción del audio de una de las sesiones de la actividad en la que participó el público en diálogo con los ponentes.

De igual manera, el libro contiene como anexos la historia de Zeuxis y Parrhasios de Plinio, y la historia de Narciso y Eco de Ovidio, así como un breve lexicón de términos de psicoanálisis.

Fuente: Blog del Fondo Editorial PUCP

Concierto en honor a Noam Chomsky

Como muchos sabemos, el pasado 7 de diciembre, Noam Chomsky acaba de cumplir 81 años de vida. Este intelectual es uno de los más importantes del siglo y la persona más influyente en la vida actual. En esta oportunidad se estará realizando un concierto en su honor en el MIT. Para mayor información visiten: www. edwardmanukyan.com. Feliz Año Nuevo!!!

Los dejamos con esta pieza musical basada en las palabras de Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky se ha enamorado de ti

En abril del año pasado salió el disco TÚ NO EXISTES de Astrud que contiene la canción Noam Chomsky. Aunque sigo sin entender completamente el por qué de la canción, creo que puede ser una estrategia para vender más discos o simplemente mostrar el lado más humano de Noam Chomsky y su compromiso social, de ahí Noam Chomsky se ha enamorado de ti. No me gusta mucho la canción, pero espero que Noam Chomsky nunca se olvide del programa minimista. Ah, Noam Chomsky no utiliza Messenger y obvio que es muy paciente. En fin, los dejo con la letra y el video de la canción de Astrud. Estaré esperando encontrarlo en el campus del MIT o sino un pequeño paseo por el cauce del Turia, ja, ja, ja. Coméntenla.

ASTRUD, NOAM CHOMSKY

Baja a la cafetería del campus,
con el corazón en un puño,
sus colegas suspiran, y lloran sus alumnos.

Él tiembla como una hoja,
y le entra la risa floja,
y ahora llora,
y ahora euforia,
es Dioniso una noria.

Noam Chomsky se ha enamorado de ti,
hace tiempo que Chomsky está loco por ti.

Sólo piensa en volar de Boston a Valencia,
y pasear contigo por el cauce del Turia
hasta que tú le quieras,
él no tendría prisa,
y tendría paciencia,
él tendría paciencia.

Nadie sabe cómo llegó a tu página,
pero pronto se hizo asiduo,
será por las cosas que escribes,
o tus fotos o tus vídeos.

Cuando piensa que te lleva
más de 50 años
él querría no quererte,
pero no puede evitarlo.

Noam Chomsky se ha enamorado de ti,
hace tiempo que Chomsky está loco por ti.

No les coge el teléfono a los anarquistas,
ni piensa jamás en el programa minimista.
Sólo quiere que le añadas en el messenger.

Noam Chomsky se ha enamorado de ti,
hace tiempo que Chomsky está loco por ti.

The Noam Chomsky Website

Kenneth L. Hale, linguist and activist on behalf of endangered languages, dies

Speaking over 50 langauges, Professor Hale was 'truly a voice for the voiceless,' said Noam Chomsky

October 11, 2001

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Kenneth Locke Hale, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology known for his lifelong dedication to the study and preservation of endangered languages, died in his home in Lexington, Mass., on Monday, Oct. 8. He was 67.

Hale, who came to MIT in 1967, was internationally renowned for his ability to quickly learn and communicate in dozens of diverse languages.

Institute Professor Noam Chomsky, a colleague during the MIT years, responded "with inexpressible sadness and distress," he said, to the news of Hale's death.

"Ken Hale was a close and cherished friend for many years, a colleague whose contributions are incomparable and of immense intellectual distinction, and above all, a person of honor and courage, who dedicated himself with passion and endless energy to protecting the rights of poor and suffering people throughout the world. One of the world's leading scholars, dear to countless people, he was also one of those very few people who truly merits the term 'a voice for the voiceless.' The loss is immeasurable," Chomsky said.

Throughout his career, Hale sought to obtain training in linguistics for the native speakers of indigenous languages. Hale felt that the study and preservation of native languages should be conducted by members of the affected culture, in addition to outsiders. Two of his graduate students at MIT -- Paul R. Platero, a Navajo, and LaVerne Masayesva Jeanne, a Hopi -- are believed to be the first Native Americans to receive doctorates in linguistics.

In a paper entitled "The Human Value of Local Languages," Hale wrote,"The loss of local languages and of the cultural systems which they express, has meant irretrievable loss of diverse and interesting intellectual wealth. Only with diversity can it be guaranteed that all avenues of human intellectual progress will be traveled." In an interview in 1995, Hale said, "When you lose a language, a large part of the culture goes, too, because much of that culture is encoded in the language."

"Ken viewed languages as if they were works of art. Every person who spoke a language was a curator of a masterpiece," said Samuel Jay Keyser, MIT professor of linguistics, emeritus, and a close friend and colleague of Hale for over 20 years.

Keyser emphasized that Hale was one of the most significant linguists in the world and also, a man of grace and humility who believed that speaking to a person in his or her own language was above all, an act of courtesy.

"Many people have that ability to gain near-native command of language, but few have Ken Hale's theoretical imagination. I was constantly mesmerized by his creativity," Keyser said.

Philip S. Khoury, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT, recalled Hale's expertise and good humor. "Ken Hale was a giant in linguistics and a great, compassionate human being. He had the ability to learn and speak languages by the dozens and he did. Once I asked him about this, and he said, 'the problem is that many of the languages I've learned are extinct, or close to extinction, and I have no one to speak them with!'" Khoury said.

THEORETICAL INTERESTS
Hale's theoretical interests focused on the cross-linguistic study of language universals -- that is, he studied as many structurally diverse languages as possible in order to discover laws governing them all.

Sabine Iatridou, a professor of linguistics at MIT and a colleague of Hale, explained, "The idea is that if a particular phenomenon holds in a variety of languages, chances are it is reflection of what is called Universal Grammar, the properties of human language proper, not a result of accidental or historical reasons. A lot of theoretical linguistics relies on finding generalizations that hold across languages that are genetically unrelated."

Over the course of his long, passionately disciplined and devoted career, Hale contributed significantly to the development of a general theory of the human capacity for language, his colleagues agreed.

"Ken was the world's foremost crosslinguistic linguist. His knowledge of language and languages was legendary. Many of his hypotheses over the years had borne fruit, remarkable fruit, in fact. He also spearheaded many projects about endangered languages, all over the world. Just about every theoretical linguist teaching in this country was in some way or other a student of Ken's," Iatridou said.

A NEW HOME ON THE RANGE
Following the sudden death of his grandfather when he was six, Hale's family moved from Chicago to a ranch in Canelo, Arizona. There, Hale's pursuits included trapping and gunsmithing. He attended grade school in a one-room schoolhouse that he reached on horseback each day.

Hale's interests in language blossomed in 1948, when he was sent to the Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona. There, according to Keyser, "Ken first roomed with a Hopi boy and learned Hopi, then with a boy from Jemez, and learned Jemez. He had to figure out a way to write the languages since there was no writing system for them.

"I learned faster by working on more than one language at a time," Hale said, moving quickly on, in Tucson High School, to studying Navajo, O'odam, Pachuco, Polish and whatever else came along.

With characteristic passion, Hale also enjoyed rodeo bull riding. During his undergraduate days at the University of Arizona, he divided his time between weekend "jackpot" rodeos and studying anthropology and Native American languages. In his senior year, he won the bull-riding event in the University of Arizona Rodeo, and wore the trophy belt buckle for the rest of his life.

Hale received the B.A. in anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1955, the M.A. in linguistics from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1956 and the Ph.D. in linguistics from Indiana University in 1958. From 1958 to 1961 he received a NSF grant to conduct research on Australian Aboriginal languages.
Before coming to MIT, Hale taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana (1961 -1964) and at the University of Arizona (1964-1966).

Hale also taught a course on Walbiri literacy for Walbiri-speaking teachers in the Yuendumu School in Central Australia (1974) and a course on Navajo linguistics in Kinlichee, Arizona (1975).

From 1985 until the present, Hale made many trips to the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, to mentor native linguists in four indigenous languages of the region. During the last five summers of his life, Hale taught for, and served on the board of directors of, the Navajo Language Academy. He was also actively involved with the language revitalization project of the Wampanoag tribe in New England.

Dr. Hale is survived by his wife, Sara Hale of Lexington, Mass.; his brother, Stephen F. Hale of Tucson, Ariz.; and by four sons: Whitaker of Arlington, Mass., Ian of Tucson, Ariz., Caleb of Atlanta, Georgia, and Ezra of Lexington, Mass.
A memorial for Professor Hale will be held at MIT on Thursday, Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. in the Wong Auditorium. Burial will be private.

Donations in Hale's memory may be sent to the Navajo Language Academy, Attn: Peggy Speas, Treasurer, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, Mass., 01003.

Fuente: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/hale.html

Linguists doubt exception to universal grammar

Robin H. Ray, News Office Correspondent April 23, 2007

Controversies in the field of linguistics seldom make headlines, which is why the current imbroglio over an alleged counterexample to Universal Grammar (UG), made famous in the 1960s by Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of linguistics, is so unusual.

On one side is Daniel L. Everett, a linguist at Illinois State University, who has spent several decades studying Pirahã, a language spoken by roughly 350 indigenous hunter-gatherers in the Amazon rainforest. On the other are a number of linguists, including MIT linguistics professor David Pesetsky, who have thrown doubt upon many of Everett's claims, both cultural and linguistic, about the Pirahã.

In a telephone interview, Pesetsky said, "What we tried to do in our response was to highlight the ways in which we are trying to unravel the system that unites all the languages in the world," including Pirahã. The attributes that Everett claims are unique to that language are in fact extant in other well-documented languages, such as Bengali and even German.

Linguistics began to focus attention on UG several decades ago in an attempt to move their study from the particularization of philology--the detailed description of individual languages and language families, with which the field was preoccupied for centuries--to an understanding of the remarkable wealth of features that all languages share, and thence to an understanding of the human mind.

The current contretemps began with Everett's 2005 paper in Cultural Anthropology, "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language," which described a number of "gaps" in Pirahã morphosyntax (the relationships between words and how their elements convey meaning).

As a culture, says Everett, Pirahã speakers lack any sense of the past beyond what living individuals have personally experienced, and they have no creation myths or fiction, no sense of numbers or counting, and no art. Constraints of culture, Everett believes, in turn impoverish the language, which has no tenses, no names for colors and other allegedly unique paucities.

The language constraints, he claims, indicate "some of the components of so-called core grammar are subject to cultural constraints, something that is predicted not to occur" by Chomsky's universal-grammar model.

Everett's article and his colorful field career have been taken up by the popular press, with stories in the Independent, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the New Yorker, among other publications.

His critics--Pesetsky, Andrew Nevins of Harvard and Cilene Rodrigues of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil--fired back in March of this year with a paper entitled "Pirahã Exceptionality: A Reassessment," taking issue with virtually every claim to Pirahã's uniqueness that Everett advanced. Everett hastily answered (also in March), with "Cultural Constraints on Grammar in Pirahã: A Reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007)." (Those two papers may be viewed at the LingBuzz linguistics archive site,

ling.auf.net/lingbuzz, where they head the "Top Recent Downloads" list.)

Pesetsky marvels at the interest this debate has sparked, not only within the field but in the world at large. As of April 12, he noted in an e-mail, "Our paper has been downloaded 1,300 times and (Everett's) reply has been downloaded 910 times--astonishing figures for the site and for a field like linguistics."

While linguists at MIT pay a lot of attention to theoretical questions, such as the universal properties of sound systems, speech perception and speech production, field linguistics is far from moribund here. Linguistics grad student Seth Cable is heading off soon to Alaska on an National Science Foundation dissertation grant, to study the syntax and semantics of questions in Tlingit, a language spoken by an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. And one of the great figures in field linguistics, the late Kenneth Hale, was an esteemed member of the MIT faculty until his retirement in 1999; in his long career, he worked on languages as diverse as Hopi, Tohono O'odham (of the Sonoran desert region) and Warlpiri. His fluency in the latter, an indigenous language of Australia, was such that he was able to keep his sons, Ezra and Caleb, fluent in the language even after they had moved back to the United States. "He was a linguist's linguist," as Pesetsky put it

Fuente:http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/pesetsky-ling.html